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Sacred Body: Readings in Jewish Literary Illumination by Roberta Sterman Sabbath
Zev Garber
Roberta Sterman Sabbath, Sacred Body: Readings in Jewish Literary Illumination. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2023. Pp. 216. $95.00, cloth; $45.00, e-book.
In her laudable study of "sacred body" in select readings of Jewish religious and secular texts and assessment of cultural practices, Sabbath proposes separating the divine-oriented religious belief and interpretation of practitioners from the popular religion representing the great mass of the people. Abounding with contextual readings and resources, this religiosociological treatment of Jewish texts from the Hebrew Bible, Talmud, Kabbalah, philosophy, enlightenment, contemporary literature, and dance investigates the constituent characteristics of living Judaism, yielding a complex interdependence of orthodoxy and heterodoxies viewed separately and synoptically. Her chapters reflect expressions of Jewishness that speak from biblical-rabbinical-mystical-enlightenment periods to contemporary divine-human issues of concern, such as the treatment of sin, God's justice, personal lament, the making of vows, the view of self and outsider within the prophetic visionary tradition, material culture, etc. Sabbath's methodological approach focuses on the secular personalization of Israelite-Judahite religious belief, theosophy, and practice. Overall, the volume critically surveys the scholarship and raises important exegetical and sociological questions relevant to her objective to understand further the religious life of Israelite-Judahite society from the perspective of secular individual experience and expression.
Sabbath reads her "everyday sacred" literary illumination as text and emphasizes word study, elements of style, conceptual clarification, and heightened emphasis. Accompanying the literary selections are concise, detailed explanations that help clarify Jewish ideas and arguments within the broader historical and ideological context of Jewish sacred and secular history. The Introduction [End Page 287] charts the book's divisions and sections and explains the rationale for selection and interpretation. Her methodology immerses traditional Jewish exegesis and eisegesis in categories of enlightened modernity. She is less interested in an inclusive discussion of items and issues (such as abstraction, metaphysics, and apocalypticism) than in illustrating genres and their features. Chapter One discusses narratives related to Eve, Abraham, and Sarah to illustrate Jewish literary illumination depicting everyday sacred obligations. The second chapter highlights Second Temple rabbinic texts that discuss compassionately and supportively sensitive life-affirming and life-negating body-oriented issues: sexuality, suicide, and martyrdom.
Chapter Three delves into streams of Kabbalah, which understand God as transcendent and immanent, a teaching that postulates the presence of the sacred in everyday life and the importance of perpetuating life in all human activity. Chapter Four surveys events of Jewish history over sixteen to eighteen centuries to explain the beginnings of two major but different views on Jewish survival, one messianic (Sabbatai Tzvi), one earthly (the rationalist enlightenment of Moses Mendelssohn and Gotthold Lessing). Chapter Five continues the discussion of divine and worldly: the depiction of the Shoah and the birthing of the State of Israel illuminated in messianic tropes and tikkun `atsmi, post-Shoah repairing/caring of the self—not necessarily of the world.
The sixth chapter engages Margo Mink Colbert's ballet, "TRANSITION: Emigration Transformation," on individual and group Jewish identity reflected in departure, courage, and arrivals. "Survival depends on strong cultural, social, economic, and communal ties, on the love of family, and the need for creative fulfillment" (p. 18). Sabbath observes that stable existence in the unforeseen future depends not on heavenly decree but on one's ability to venerate one's "sacred body" to create meaning for everyday life.
Sabbath's erudite chapters are appealing and well written. A minor problem is her dependence on secondary sources, which may explain semantic errors and alternate source interpretation. Overall, she effectively challenges that secular Jewish expression detracts from practicing and preserving legitimate Jewish belief and practice. Her charge that earthly life is inspired by action more than awe is challenging and enables infinity to conjoin with the actual in the Jewish view of the "sacred body." [End Page 288]
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