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Speaker 1: Greetings, friends, and welcome back to the Podcast of Jewish Ideas,

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a Torah in motion production. I'm jj Kimbrie. On today's episode,

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we will turn to one of the most enigmatic and

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influential thinkers of the twentieth century, Walter Benjamin. Living between philosophy,

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literary criticism, theology, and political theory, Benjamin produced a body

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of work that resists easy classification but continues to shape

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the way we think about history, modernity, and culture itself.

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We will be paying particular attention to the Jewish and

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Jewish inflected dimensions of Benjamin's thoughts, including his engagement with

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themes such as Messianism, translation, and exile, and how these

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themes inform his distinctive philosophy, joining us to discuss the

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fascinating thoughts of all the Benjamin is a leading scholar

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of modern German Jewish thought. Doctor Vivian Liska, who is

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a Professor of German Literature and director of the Institute

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of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp and also

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a distinguished visiting professor at the Hebrew University. Professor Lisker's

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extensive work in the field of modern Jewish thoughts written

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in several languages, includes her twenty seventeen work German Jewish

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Thought and Its Afterlife, A Tenuous Legacy, published by Indiana

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University Press. It is a pleasure to welcome her to

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the Podcast of Jewish Ideas Today, Professor Lisker, thank you

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for joining us.

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Speaker 2: JJ, Thank you for having me. So, writer Benjiam.

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Speaker 1: Lewis a Yes, Walter Bejumin. We are very excited to

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jump at him. So let's start off because not so

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many of our listeners may be all that familiar with him.

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His life is circumstances. Let's start off with just the background,

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the biography. Who was he, when did he live, and

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how did his life play out?

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Speaker 2: So Writer Benjamin was one of the most challenging, magnetic,

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and enduring figures in modern Jewish intellectual history. Unlike other

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important German Jewish thinkers such as Franz Rosensweig or Gashum Scholem,

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and more like Kafka hana Are, he became one of

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the major thinkers of and about modernity, way beyond the

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German or the Jewish fear so one could practically call

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him a universal figure. Benjamin lived from eighteen ninety two

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to nineteen forty, and his life in many ways reads

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like a condensed history of European Jewish modernity and its crises.

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He was born in Berlin into an assimilated, upper middle

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class Jewish family, secure cultured, deeply invested in German civilization.

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Like many German Jews of his generations, his parents believed

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the Jewish life in Germany was stable and secure, that

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emancipation and cultural integration were irreversible achievements. Benjamin grew up

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surrounded by books, music, and the ideals of build Ung.

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It's one of those words that are how to translate

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and that I think have entered the English vocabulary, so

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the Enlightenment ideal of cultural self formation. In that sense,

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he grew up in the German humanist bourgeois world before

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Judaism became an explicit theme in his thinking. Some scholars,

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like George Mosser is a prominent example, have described build

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Ung and liberalism as the defining features of modern German

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Jewish intellectual life. Benjamin, however, belongs to a generation that

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increasingly rebelled against precisely this idea, and the scholar Stephen

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Asheim has argued this against his teacher Mosser alongside other

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German Jewish thinkers, Benjamin diagnosed the ills of his time

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as a form of enlightenment or modernity gone awry that

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contributed rather to the actual and looming political and cultural

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catastrophes of the twentieth century, rather than wanting that off.

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So that critical stance forms an important background to how

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he later engages with the Jewish tradition. Even early on,

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Benjamin felt out of place in his bourgeois surroundings. He

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never quite fit the established institutions of or expected life path.

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He completed a brilliant doctoral dissertation, but his attempt to

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pursue an academic career failed decisively when his habilitatsion on

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the German So That's a higher doctorate on the German

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Broke Towerspiel or Morning Play was rejected. Some say it

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was because of anti Semitism, but certainly it was also

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because Benjamin didn't write in a conventional academic idiom. He

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was already thinking across philosophy, theology, literature, and politics in

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ways universities at that time and maybe even today simply

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could not accommodate. This failure was devastating for him, but

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it was also formative because it forced him out of

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the academy, and although he lived the rest of his

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life as an itinerant intellectual, writing essays, translating literature, producing

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radio broadcasts, reviewing books, and relying heavily on friends for support,

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he never held a stable position. He lived in constant

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financial insecurity. Yes, it was precisely this life outside of

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institutions that enabled him to develop one of the most

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original and unsettling bodies of thought in the twentieth century.

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He married Dora Pollard, but that marriage failed and his

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relationship to women in generals was rather problematic. His later

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infatuation with the communist Asia Latis, who was very important

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for him, came to nothing. Benjamin's adulthood unfolded under the

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shadow of catastrophe. World War One shattered the belief in

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progress that had sustained the European culture. Unlike many contemporaries,

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Benjamin did not see the war as a tragic exception,

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but as a revelation of modernity's destructive core. From the

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twenties onwards, he became increasingly convinced that European civilization was

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moving toward disaster. His writing from this period on language, art, history,

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and violence attempts to think within this crisis rather than

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explain it away. Benjamin was forced to leave Germany and

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lived in France for many years. Actually, Benjamin contemplated leaving

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Europe in his youth. Later he spoke repeatedly of emigrating.

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But maybe we'll still talk about this later, urged by

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his close friend Gasham Scholem, and yet he never left Europe.

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It was not just a place for Benjamin. It was

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his whole intellectual home. Its languages, libraries, archives, and cultural

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sediments were the very material of his thinking. By nineteen thirty,

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Benjamin was living in Paris, increasingly isolated, stateless, and vulnerable.

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After Hitler's rise to power, his situation grew desperate in

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nineteen forty as the Nazis advanced through France, Benjamin attempted

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to flee across the Pyrenees into Spain. When he was

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denied entry and faced the prospect of being handed back

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to the authorities, he took his own life in the

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border town of Poppu. Benjamin died at forty eight on

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the literal and symbolic threshold between countries, languages, Europe and Judaism,

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exile and the hope of rescue. His death is tragic,

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but it is not merely biographically. It crystallizes the core

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of his life, a thinker who never arrived, never settled,

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never reconciled himself to the world as it is. And yet,

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and this is crucial, after his Benyamin's work began its

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extraordinary after life and is not only stilly but mainly

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particularly relevant today but maybe every generation since. Benjamin, who

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participated in his reception, believes that excellent.

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Speaker 1: So, firstly, I'm glad you touched on a few things

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which we do want to expand on later, such as

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his restlessness and his constant traveling and unwillingness to settle anywhere,

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as well as the extraordinary afterlife of Benjamin's works, which

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will get you intwo course. But before we do, I mean,

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let's do a little bit of a bird's eye view

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on what were the kinds of topics and ideas that

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Benjamin wrote about to a great extent. Again, you know,

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he was a very prolific and important European intellectual of

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of those early twenty century decades. So what sort of

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things was he was he broaching? What was he writing?

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And then we'll go into the Jewish aspects.

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Speaker 2: If I had to summ up Benjamin's intellectual life, I'd

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probably say that he spent his entire career trying to

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understand how meaning, justice, even redemption are still possible in

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a world that seems to be falling apart. No matter

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what he was writing about language, art, history, politics, this

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question was somehow always in the background. But striking about

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Benjamin is how wide his interests were. He moved effortlessly

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between philosophy, literature, theology, politics, esthetics, and also importantly everyday culture.

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But this wasn't really eclecticism. He refuses the usual borders

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between disciplines and becomes a master in linking microscopic phenomena

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to the big metaphysical picture of things. Benjamin was never

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a system builder. Instead, he thought in fragments, images, constellations,

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moments where insights flash up, rather than unfolding them step

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by step. One of his earliest and most decisive interests

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was language, and it was the time of the linguistic

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turn with sinkers like Wittgenstein and Smautner. It's all and

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in a remarkable essay from nineteen sixteen, one of his

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early important essays called on Language as Such and on

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the Language of Men. Benjamin rejects the idea that language

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is mainly a tool for communication and goes way beyond

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that towards and that's where his first steps into the

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Jewish tradition are manifest into a certain way of understanding

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language that has resonances with the Kabbalah and even with Bashi,

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with the idea of God telling man to name the world,

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to name the animals. So there is that transcendent moment

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that appears already in this early essay. Then there is,

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But maybe we'll talk about that later as well, because

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that is a major way of understanding how Venine relates

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to the Jewish tradition. Are questions of language and translation,

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and there too one can already detect some elements of Jewish,

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of the Jewish textual world. Another major strand of his

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work is literary criticism, especially his engagement and with German literature.

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His book on the Baroque Tawerspield The Morning Play already

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draws a world that sees history as a landscape of ruins,

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and that also will become a motive for him later

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on in the twenties and thirties, Beny I mean turns

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increasingly toward modern culture and everyday life. So there are

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certain aspects of modern culture, especially his reflections on the

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new media. What were new media at the time became

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very important, and one of his famous essays is the

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Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, where

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he examines how new technologies destroyed the aura of artworks. Now,

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sometimes in these speculations about the new media, he also

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got it wrong, for example, when he celebrates film, the

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new medium of film as something that can improve vigilance

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because images flash by so quickly that you have to adapt,

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and that somehow Benjamin believed could have even a political effect.

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Now as we know later under national socialism, film was

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used for Nazi propaganda. And this is just one point

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where I thought that, okay, that as we speculate about

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our new media today, we wouldn't be the first ones

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to get it wrong. At the same time, Benjamin developed

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philosophy of history, became deeply engaged with Marxism, especially with

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historical materialism, but always at arm's length. He never becomes

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an orthodox Marxist, and his Messianism, which we will certainly

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talk about in the context of his references to the

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Jewish addition, will be in an important and illuminating tension

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with his Marxism. So this constellation of Messianism and Marxism

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will be very important. This this tension accompanies him throughout

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his work. Even in the Major Study, if one can

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call it that, it's really a collection of a whole

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archive that he creates with the Arcades Project, and that

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which was something he would do until the end of

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his life. But at the very end he writes the

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thesis on the philosophy of History that are for many

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his testament. So Benjamin's intellectual biography cannot be separated from

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his method of thinking and his primary concern with finding

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a form and a mode of thinking that would correspond

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to what he perceived as the catastrophic period of history

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that he is living in.

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Speaker 1: That again, a splendid overview of quite difficult and often

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we'll actually we'll get to Benjamin the form of Benjamin's

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right consumed, because that's also I think plays important role

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in the story. Before we do, I want to jump

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a little bit into the into his Jewish background. So

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you know, this is a man, as you mentioned, he

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was seculary his whole life. He was a Marxist, he

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did not seem to, you know, he certainly didn't write

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anything which can be let's say, tradition, be called Jewish

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or at least sort of in some some sort of

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recognizable Jeish cannon. But nonetheless, there are many who have

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claimed Benjamin within the Jewish cannon. So let me ask

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at least the first question, a sort of more biographical one,

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which was what kind of Jewish background, or sympathies or

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education did the man have? I mean, did he how

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much did he know? What did he know? And from

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there let's jump into the bigger question of well, what

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Jewish themes influences et cetera week and we have so,

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I mean, in his life? How Jewish was Benjamin's life?

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Speaker 2: I'm always fascinated with the way in which one asks

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this question, you know, what is Jewish about which? And

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how Jewish was Benjamin? Well, it is interesting that is

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how Jewish almost implies a quantitative element. Was it very Jewish?

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A little bit Jewish? And I mean it is striking

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that it's precisely in Judaism that you're either Jewish or

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you're not, but that the rabbis have made sure that

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one shouldn't be a little bit more or less Jewish.

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But of course I understand what you mean when you

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ask the question. Benjamin wasn't educated in a traditional Jewish way,

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he wasn't observant, he never joined the Jewish movement in

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any straightforward sense, and yet Judaism becomes one of the

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most powerful and persistent forces shaping his thinking. Now, I

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resist this distinction between Jewishness and Judaism. And this is

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relevant here because for many Benjamin is. You know, one

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can think of Benjamin's Jewishness, but it would be wrong

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to think of him in terms of any significant contribution

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to the Jewish tradition as Judaism, with the exception of

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a few motives. But I think that there is much

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more to it than that. I think that there is

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another distinction that is much more interesting, a distinction that

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is made by Stefan Moses. Moses makes the distinction between

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what he callsed normative and critical Jewish modernity. He formulates

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the question is it's in a text where he formulates

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the question is the thread of tradition broken? And then

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he considers two groups of thinkers. For me, that was

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a crucial moment because I realized that all the figures

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I've been dealing with in my own research fell into

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one of these groups, and that explained something to me.

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So what are these two? What is the distinction between

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the normative and the Jewish modern thinkers. Moses explains that

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normative modernity tries to preserve continuity by translating the Jewish

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tradition into modern terms, often in the service of renewal

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or identity. Benjamin belongs firmly to the other group, which

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Mosaes caused critic, Jewish modern thinkers. These do not modernize Judaism,

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but they think about modernity in Jewish categories. And it

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is not the aim to renew you know, like Bubba's

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Jewish Renaissance. That was not the idea. And Mosases makes

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a very interesting remark after he introduces this distinction in

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this essay, it seems like Mosaes, who was a professor

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of German he actually was the first chair of the

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German department at Ibrew University, he seems like a normative

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thinker himself, who is all about renewing Jewish thought in

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the modern world. And yet at the end he says,

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there's a lot of continuity among the normative thinkers, but

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it is among the critical ones that there is actual

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hope because they, although it is not their goal, they

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allow us to look at the Jewish tradition with new

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eyes and discover the unexpected in the tradition itself, not

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projecting it, but actually discovering that it is already there.

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And this could be a framework to understand how Benjamin

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operates in terms of the Jewish tradition. So there there

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are certain contemporary scholars who say that all these German

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Jewish thinkers are barely Jewish. So an answer to your question,

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how Jewish was Benjamin because they didn't read their primary literature.

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And with the argument, you know, you wouldn't call somebody

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in the tradition of Greek philosophy if he hasn't read

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his he or she hasn't read the you know, the

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basic works of Plato an Aristole, And if they haven't

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read The Tumult and its commentaries in any depths, one

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can call them Jewish. And I've really think that this

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is not the right approach for me. It became it

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became clear that all these thinkers, So who are the normatives?

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I didn't mention this, but who are the normatives? From

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Osesse there are Rosensweig, Buber and Levinas man Coin, and

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the critical ones are Kafka, Ceylan are Benjamin, and then

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there is Sholem, where he doesn't quite know where to

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place him. But that's another story. So for me, it

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became obvious that I was particularly interested in what remains

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in what remains of the Jewish tradition, precisely in thinkers

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that are not primarily concerned with reviving it. That is

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the one thing, and the other. A moment when I

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became really interested and even convinced of the of the

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deep jewishness of Benjamin and these other critical modernists was

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when I read interpretations that deny their Jewish aspect, be

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it from Jews who would consider a Jewish thinker only

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one who is actually deeply in the tradition, but also

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by those who who christianize Benjamin, for example, and that's

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another story within his reception. At my Institute of Jewish Studies,

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twenty years ago, we organized a Benjamin conference, and we

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had together with the German Institution. We organized this. There

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were one hundred speakers who spoke about Benjamin, and the

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only place where the word Jewish came up was at

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the top of the poster where it said insttitude of

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Jewish studies so.

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Speaker 1: Hardly a ringing endorsement of the Jewish. So so then

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I'm afraid you've opened yourself up to the to the

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natural following question, which is well also elaborate. I mean, what,

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when reading Benjamin's you know, works on these various topics,

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what discernibly Jewish? Because, as you noted correctly, he isn't

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writing we didn't receive a Jewish education, not writing in

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the classical text tra tradition. But but what can be deduced? What,

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in your opinion of his ideas and of his writings

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bear a Jewish imprint?

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Speaker 2: I want to I want to start with two quotes

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to reply, please, two quotes by by Benjamin. One is

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from an early letter to a friend, Ludwig House, where

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he writes everything Jewish is self understood, and everything that

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goes beyond that is dangerous. I think that what is

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behind this rather enigmatic sentence is the fear of a

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kind of parochialism, nationalism, Jewish centeredness that he certainly wanted

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to avoid when he talks about you know, everything that

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goes beyond that which is self understood when you look

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closely at the way he dealt with Jewish motifs. They

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are everything but self understood. They're even sometimes how to understand.

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But my second quote, and that was that cheme as

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a surprise. It is in a letter he writes to

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Cholem in nineteen thirty five, one year after Hitters rise

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to power, where he reflects on Kafka. They had a

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very intense exchange about Kafka, and Benjamin talks about the

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world of Kafka's novels as a swamp world. And then

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he writes, the world that Kafka depicts is a world

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in which the work of the Torah has been thwarted.

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And he says Torah doesn't write the Bible. He says

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the Torah he adds in pencil, and that one can

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in the book. It's a footnote introduced by Sholemb that

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everything Moses once accomplished would now have to be accomplished again.

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Now this is a quote from the footnote, from Scholem's

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footnote saying that this is what Benjamin is it in

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his letter. Now this raises a big question. Does Benjamin

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mean that one would have to revive the Torah in

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our time? Does it mean that one would have to

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reread the Torah in different ways and new or even

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create a new one. He leaves that open, but the

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critique that it is a world. So for him, Kafka

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depicts the modern world and everything that's wrong with it

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and and diagnoses this in terms of the work of

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the Torah that has been thwarted. Now you asked me

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more concretely about what it is that interested. I mean,

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I can maybe start saying yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean, my question was more sort of your position

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on this, because as you mentioned, there's there's a wider

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ray of interpretation of how to position Benjamin in returns

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in terms of the Jewish question. My question you as

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you know, what what do you see when reading his

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books is essay, et cetera. What Jewish characteristics that that

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are unmistakably Jewish if any, if any sort of exists

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in his more general work. It's because you know, as

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you mentioned, that there's such a wide array of readings

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of Benjamin. Everyone has been arguing about this now for

356
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so many decades. But but you seem to really you've

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placed him within this umbrella of German Jewish thought, and

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you know you've seen him as part of this tradition.

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So so let's let's, as you say, nail it down

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a bit more concretely, like what what what is Jewy

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about about Benjamin?

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Speaker 2: I think that Benja means Jewish commitments were intellectual, ethical, political,

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and in some big way metaphysical, and the way he

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combines these is fascinating often hard to grasp. But personally

365
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I'm a I'm a very close reader of texts, so

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to make grand general statements is dangerous for me. It's

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easier for me to actually draw evidence from texts, and

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in Benjamin's case, because of the subtlety of his writing,

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this is very important. The most obvious motif that really

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does run throughout his work is Messianism. No one has

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to see exactly what that is what it is for him,

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and that opens up a whole world. I mean, I

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personally went through a development in my relationship to Benjamin

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and to the way he deals with the Jewish motives.

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At first, I was fascinated by the radicalism of his thinking,

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and Messianism in many ways seemed to me like a

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demand put on the world that was total, and I

378
00:29:08,319 --> 00:29:15,599
gradually understood that this was neither something I would particularly

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admire nor was it actually there and Benjamin. Now, whether

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my idea of Benjamin has changed because my expectations changed,

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or whether I just read them more closely and found

382
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another dimension in him is hard for me to tell.

383
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We could ask the question why wouldn't Marxism be enough?

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If as a kind of critique of his situation, Marxism

385
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or utopia, why would it have to be Messianism? Now,

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in some ways Messianism is much more radical. It demands

387
00:29:58,279 --> 00:30:03,440
a much more total idea of redemption then Marxism that

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00:30:03,599 --> 00:30:09,400
is merely class struggle and equality, and Messianism actually speaks

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of total redemption.

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Speaker 1: So I ask, if if I can interjects, because this

391
00:30:13,920 --> 00:30:17,400
is actually an important point, what did Benjamin mean by Messianism?

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Speaker 2: How do he?

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Speaker 1: Because of course Messianism in the very religious context is

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readily understandable. It means a messiah, you know, someone coming

395
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to redeem the world, like a person literally or yeah,

396
00:30:27,799 --> 00:30:30,359
there are other explanations, but that's classically it's understood. For

397
00:30:30,519 --> 00:30:34,279
a secularist or secular thinking like Benjamin, what does he

398
00:30:34,519 --> 00:30:36,759
mean when he writes about Messianism and how does he

399
00:30:36,799 --> 00:30:37,440
see it come about?

400
00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:37,519
Speaker 2: Like?

401
00:30:37,519 --> 00:30:40,079
Speaker 1: What what does that mean? Within his within his world

402
00:30:40,119 --> 00:30:41,720
of ideas, I can.

403
00:30:42,759 --> 00:30:48,480
Speaker 2: Maybe give you a little moments where his Messianism is expressed,

404
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:53,119
and always a bit in a bit different way. For example,

405
00:30:53,200 --> 00:30:58,559
in his language essay, Benjamin speaks of a language of

406
00:30:58,680 --> 00:31:04,359
an us primal language, a pure language, that is, the

407
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:09,240
language that or a damic it's also called the Adamic language,

408
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:14,160
a language where the where word and thing coincide completely,

409
00:31:14,599 --> 00:31:18,319
where things were named in the in their true way

410
00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:22,839
and guaranteed by God in a way like you know,

411
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like God's own language. And with the fall from Paradise,

412
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this language got lost and language became arbitrary, just conventional.

413
00:31:33,960 --> 00:31:40,160
In Benjamin's Messianic idea, eventually language will be restored. Now

414
00:31:40,519 --> 00:31:44,319
that language that you know, language where word and thing

415
00:31:44,799 --> 00:31:51,400
will perfectly coincide again, will be restored. Now. Benjamin, as

416
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:56,000
in the Jewish tradition, does not go into any length

417
00:31:56,160 --> 00:32:01,680
as to what this world would look like, right, and

418
00:32:01,759 --> 00:32:06,039
so that in itself, you know, would not correspond to

419
00:32:06,079 --> 00:32:09,119
the Jewish tradition if he were actually to say what

420
00:32:09,319 --> 00:32:12,720
is happening in what the Messianic world would look like.

421
00:32:13,119 --> 00:32:16,920
But he wrote somewhere that as long as there is

422
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a single beggar still in the world. The world is

423
00:32:21,519 --> 00:32:27,400
not redeemed, so from that one can extrapolate what redeemed

424
00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:33,400
world would be like. And one of the best places,

425
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:38,559
although that too is a very complex text, but one

426
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:41,640
of the best places to go to is his in

427
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:48,640
German theologist politicians fragmented, theological political fragment. And there he

428
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:57,839
so he draws a fascinating sketch in which he has

429
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:03,920
the divine redeemed world and there is the profane world,

430
00:33:04,000 --> 00:33:08,680
and the two are separate. And Benjamin insists that one

431
00:33:08,720 --> 00:33:12,880
cannot reach a messianic world in any straight way. So

432
00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:17,200
let's say, as in the religious idea, that with good

433
00:33:17,279 --> 00:33:20,920
deeds and prayer, if all the Jews would keeps about,

434
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:28,920
for example, then the Messiah would come. But he has this, uh,

435
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:36,240
this dialectic motion where the more you strive for happiness

436
00:33:36,279 --> 00:33:40,720
in the in the here and now, and with happiness

437
00:33:41,279 --> 00:33:45,400
what is implied is justice, and so social justice and

438
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:48,519
so on. The more you strive for happiness in this world,

439
00:33:48,799 --> 00:33:55,799
the more you are you are bringing the Messiah or

440
00:33:55,799 --> 00:34:00,039
the Messianic world closer. And there he has this no

441
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:04,759
of two errors that pass by each other and that

442
00:34:05,039 --> 00:34:13,800
reinforce each other. Now we talked about plausibility before there

443
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:17,440
is a You know, for many this is just a

444
00:34:17,559 --> 00:34:24,920
kind of phantasm of a post Enlightenment, post rational worldview.

445
00:34:27,199 --> 00:34:32,760
Another another instance where he invokes Messianism is in the

446
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context of translation. So for him, translation is much more

447
00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:40,719
than just passing from one language to the other. But

448
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:45,719
for him, the very act of the experience of translation

449
00:34:47,159 --> 00:34:54,519
points to the loss of that primal, divine, pure language

450
00:34:55,280 --> 00:35:00,480
and thereby participates in it. Not in its rest storation,

451
00:35:00,639 --> 00:35:06,119
because it is not for humans to restore the pure language,

452
00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:12,760
but by experiencing that we do not have that, by

453
00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:15,719
experiencing that when you pass from languag one language to

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00:35:16,519 --> 00:35:20,679
the other, it is not it doesn't coincide perfectly. So

455
00:35:20,719 --> 00:35:28,199
by experiencing the lack of this perfection, you somehow participate

456
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:33,800
in bringing yeah, in bringing it about. Bringing it about

457
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:37,199
is even too much pen I mean speaks of sparks

458
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:44,440
and splinters, of Messianic sparks and Messianic splinters that exist

459
00:35:44,559 --> 00:35:50,840
in every generation. Every generation has a weak Messianic force.

460
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So there are these these tiny elements that consist of

461
00:35:56,559 --> 00:36:01,280
the most diverse phenomenon, and they are usually they are profane,

462
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:06,119
but somehow by activating them, there is something of this

463
00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:09,880
Messianic force that comes alive.

464
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Speaker 1: So this is fascinating, especially the part about translation. And

465
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there are many who have rightly seen his essay on

466
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:20,719
the Task of the Translator and other such works as

467
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:25,119
having these sort of Jewish points of origin. Let's say,

468
00:36:25,599 --> 00:36:29,000
so let me ask him, do you see his is

469
00:36:29,559 --> 00:36:31,519
writings on translation and on this is kind of a

470
00:36:31,559 --> 00:36:37,000
Damic language as being consistent? Well, are two parts of

471
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:39,400
this question actually? A do you see it as somewhat

472
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:42,079
rooted in Jewish ideas? I mean, within certainly within Jewish

473
00:36:42,079 --> 00:36:44,920
mystical traditions, there are some that there are some that

474
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:47,719
say parallel ideas of a kind of a pristine language

475
00:36:47,719 --> 00:36:49,719
that that suffered some kind of fall and has to

476
00:36:49,760 --> 00:36:53,000
be piece back together. And also, of course the fact

477
00:36:53,039 --> 00:36:56,760
that as a Jew, and as perhaps you know, if

478
00:36:56,840 --> 00:36:59,920
one might want, a stereotype of sort of wondering cosmopolitan

479
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:02,920
of the early twentieth century, who you know, had no

480
00:37:03,039 --> 00:37:06,199
specific home, but found his home in various European capitals

481
00:37:06,199 --> 00:37:10,199
and various civilizations and various places in the world, and

482
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:13,519
he therefore had to be a translator in and of himself.

483
00:37:13,559 --> 00:37:15,719
I mean, of course, if you were born in very

484
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:17,519
first place in Europe, you live sometimes in Berlin, you

485
00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:19,480
live sometimes in Paris, you do sometime here and there,

486
00:37:19,679 --> 00:37:21,360
and you're sort of wondering between cultures. You have to,

487
00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:24,119
in a way constantly be translating. You have to constantly

488
00:37:24,159 --> 00:37:27,599
be a sort of cultural courier, a bridge, as it were.

489
00:37:27,639 --> 00:37:30,119
And so do you think that Benjamin's writing on translation,

490
00:37:30,159 --> 00:37:34,239
which are extremely a valuable do they have these would

491
00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:38,119
you say that these stem from some kind of Jewish background?

492
00:37:39,440 --> 00:37:43,239
Speaker 2: You see, we hear just listening to the way you

493
00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:46,960
put the question. There is a part of it that

494
00:37:47,159 --> 00:37:50,719
is Jewish nest that has to do with moving from

495
00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:54,239
one place to the other, with being cosmopolitan. And then

496
00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:59,000
you also mentioned the Kabbalah, and certain the sacredness of

497
00:37:59,119 --> 00:38:05,480
language and the immense impact of every letter that you have.

498
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:11,199
And so these two realms, the way they interact. It

499
00:38:11,320 --> 00:38:17,320
is certainly not not conscious that you know that Benjamin,

500
00:38:17,599 --> 00:38:23,800
confronted with the multiplicity of cultures and languages, would therefore

501
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:29,280
give language such a such a way. But the way

502
00:38:29,320 --> 00:38:32,880
he does it is specific. So the way he brings

503
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:38,199
this together. So, for example, he opposed very strongly these

504
00:38:38,360 --> 00:38:46,000
artificial universal languages Esperanto for example, that was, you know,

505
00:38:46,079 --> 00:38:49,559
there was a kind of hope that this would contribute

506
00:38:49,639 --> 00:38:54,760
to peace and to understanding between humans, and Benjamin rejected

507
00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:58,559
that completely because that two wouldn't be nothing but a

508
00:38:58,639 --> 00:39:04,800
convention between between humans. So there is an insistence on

509
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:08,280
something that actually has a transcendent dimension.

510
00:39:08,559 --> 00:39:11,400
Speaker 1: Okay, that's fair enough, in which case, let me let's

511
00:39:11,400 --> 00:39:13,719
attack this question from a different angle, which is something

512
00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:15,719
I've been wanting to bring up the entire conversation, which is,

513
00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:19,039
of course his friendship with Gersham Shalam, because of course,

514
00:39:19,039 --> 00:39:21,159
one thing that you know, students of George still do

515
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:23,239
know about what's Benjamin is that he was very close

516
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:26,760
friends with with Gersham Charalam, who saw in him both

517
00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:29,719
a very close personal friend also a close intellectual collaborator

518
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:32,119
as it were, So could you and I think this

519
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:34,880
directly touches upon the themes that we've been broaching now

520
00:39:34,920 --> 00:39:37,880
Messianism and translation and other sort of things, because it

521
00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:39,639
could and has been argued. I think that if if

522
00:39:39,639 --> 00:39:43,679
Benjamin had any portal into Judaism or Jurishnis, it would

523
00:39:43,719 --> 00:39:45,559
have been his close friend Gersham Charalam, who of course

524
00:39:45,800 --> 00:39:48,800
would would go on to become the sort of founder

525
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:51,840
of modern studies of Pabala. We've had, you know, conversations

526
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:54,119
on this podcast about Shlom before, So could you perhaps

527
00:39:54,159 --> 00:39:57,519
give us firstly that kind of biographically their friendship and

528
00:39:57,559 --> 00:40:01,559
secondly intellectually what did they gain from each other? What

529
00:40:01,559 --> 00:40:05,039
were they talking about, who influenced whom and how? And yeah,

530
00:40:05,039 --> 00:40:07,320
could you sort of give us a window into that

531
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:07,960
particular world.

532
00:40:08,159 --> 00:40:11,280
Speaker 2: The friendship between Benjamin and Scholem is one of the

533
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:17,000
most intense, productive, and ultimately tragic intellectual relationships of the

534
00:40:17,039 --> 00:40:23,000
twentieth century. It begins in nineteen fifteen, when both men

535
00:40:23,079 --> 00:40:26,800
are still very young Benjamins twenty three and Sholem was

536
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:30,440
only nineteen, and it lasts in one form or another

537
00:40:30,800 --> 00:40:37,679
until Benjamin's death in nineteen forty and beyond. In Schorlem's writings,

538
00:40:38,840 --> 00:40:45,320
Charlem edited Benjamin's text after his death and wrote about

539
00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:48,840
their friend wrote the whole book about their friendship, and

540
00:40:49,360 --> 00:40:55,159
published letters so he was he actually would say it

541
00:40:55,239 --> 00:40:59,840
faithful to this friendship beyond Benjamin's death. What makes this

542
00:41:00,119 --> 00:41:05,280
friendships are extraordinary It is not just its emotional depths

543
00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:08,800
with mainly came from Chorlem, who at times in his

544
00:41:09,719 --> 00:41:13,079
diaries in his youth diaries, sounds like he's in love

545
00:41:13,119 --> 00:41:19,360
with Benjamin, but the way it stages the central tensions

546
00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:23,519
of modern Jewish thought between them and for me, it

547
00:41:23,599 --> 00:41:27,559
was particularly interesting to see what they disagreed. From the

548
00:41:27,679 --> 00:41:31,760
very beginning. Sholem sense that Benjamin was an exceptional thinker

549
00:41:32,519 --> 00:41:39,199
and also a precarious figure. Chorlem was already on quite

550
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:44,559
a clear path as a young man. He was turning

551
00:41:44,639 --> 00:41:50,679
decisively to Jewish theology, to Hebrew, to Kabbalah, studied tunneled,

552
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:55,280
and obviously to Zionism, convinced that the Jewish tradition had

553
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:59,760
to be reclaimed with full intensity after the collapse of

554
00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:05,920
you assimilation. Benjamin by the collapse and the danger of

555
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:12,239
the attraction of European assmilition. Benjamin, by contrast, was immersed

556
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:18,519
in German philosophy, literature, esthetics, deeply skeptical of any straightforward

557
00:42:18,599 --> 00:42:24,440
return to religion. And yet Lem immediately recognized that Benjamin's

558
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:33,159
thinking was already structured by Jewish categories, especially language, redemption, revelation, messianism,

559
00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:38,519
that these were already there latently, and that he only

560
00:42:38,559 --> 00:42:42,280
had to actually bring them out, and that he only

561
00:42:43,159 --> 00:42:49,840
yeah that Benjamin resisted them precisely for the reasoners that before,

562
00:42:49,880 --> 00:42:52,440
because he was afraid that it would be parochial. But

563
00:42:52,559 --> 00:42:59,079
for Scholem that that was not an argument. Their correspondence

564
00:42:59,519 --> 00:43:03,519
with stretches over decades is one of the great documents

565
00:43:03,599 --> 00:43:10,400
of German Jewish intellectual history. So I wrote a long

566
00:43:11,559 --> 00:43:17,320
essay in which I go through all these letters, and

567
00:43:17,519 --> 00:43:22,760
in which Scholem tells Benjamin to come to Palestine, and

568
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:31,559
Benjamin hesitates, is tempted, promises, withdraws, and one can see

569
00:43:31,599 --> 00:43:34,480
that there is there is just so much going on

570
00:43:35,079 --> 00:43:41,039
between them that involves much larger questions, even larger questions

571
00:43:41,119 --> 00:43:45,239
than Palestine or Europe. There are questions of yeah, of

572
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:49,559
what would give meaning and what means survival. And so

573
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:55,199
Charlem presses Benjamin to learn Hebrew. Okay, but that also

574
00:43:55,239 --> 00:43:58,239
had something to do with his engagement he had. He

575
00:43:58,360 --> 00:44:05,679
wanted to get him position here in Jerusalem, and so

576
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:08,559
the for this year to learn Hebrew. And this never

577
00:44:08,639 --> 00:44:13,280
came about a controversy between you know, those who think

578
00:44:13,320 --> 00:44:16,760
that Scholem didn't really try hard enough and the others

579
00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:20,760
who think that that it was Benjamin who didn't live

580
00:44:20,880 --> 00:44:24,320
up to this promise, so that was an important moment.

581
00:44:24,920 --> 00:44:29,639
One of their main debates later was between Marxism and Messianism,

582
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:35,119
and Sholem always wanted to pull Benjamin a way and

583
00:44:35,239 --> 00:44:40,800
said he doesn't really believe it himself, and that he's

584
00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:48,760
for some reason denying his allegiance to Judaism because he's

585
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:54,519
being pulled away to the Marxist ideology. I became particularly

586
00:44:54,599 --> 00:44:59,920
interested in their debate on Kafka, and there you can

587
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:08,079
see how their differences play out, because Schorlem reads Kafka

588
00:45:08,119 --> 00:45:14,480
from with Kabalistic vocabulary, so he speaks of Kafka as

589
00:45:15,159 --> 00:45:21,199
the nothing of revelation. What one can see in Solem's

590
00:45:21,199 --> 00:45:27,719
writings about Kafka is his negative theology. So God is absent,

591
00:45:27,880 --> 00:45:33,079
he is unreachable. But that is where God manifests himself

592
00:45:33,159 --> 00:45:40,280
in modernity. And Benjamin uses another vocabulary, even where he

593
00:45:40,320 --> 00:45:44,840
refers to the Jewish tradition. And Benjamin, at some point,

594
00:45:45,559 --> 00:45:51,159
although he knew this distinction from Chorlem, the distinction between

595
00:45:51,239 --> 00:45:56,239
halaha and agada in the time mould between the legal

596
00:45:56,599 --> 00:46:01,400
and the narrative parts in the time, and he calls

597
00:46:01,519 --> 00:46:07,800
Kafka stories a kind of agada to Alaja and this

598
00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:16,199
difference between the Kabbalistic notions that Shortlam brings in and

599
00:46:16,239 --> 00:46:22,280
the Talmudic category that Benjamin brings in. You can see

600
00:46:22,400 --> 00:46:28,079
how there are two different paths that Jewish modernity can

601
00:46:28,159 --> 00:46:33,239
go in its reference to the older Jewish textual tradition.

602
00:46:33,880 --> 00:46:39,800
And it becomes clear that for Benjamin the time, because

603
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:45,000
it is concerned with everyday life, has more potential to

604
00:46:45,519 --> 00:46:54,880
be even politically relevant than short Lim's kabbalistic notions. And

605
00:46:54,960 --> 00:47:00,320
for me that was a moment when although Benjamin got

606
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:07,880
most of his Jewish education from Cholem, where if I

607
00:47:08,000 --> 00:47:15,480
felt that Benjamin was more Jewish, although I resist you

608
00:47:15,639 --> 00:47:17,599
how Jewish? More Jewish?

609
00:47:18,119 --> 00:47:20,079
Speaker 1: Can I point out to the listeners of this podcast

610
00:47:20,079 --> 00:47:22,760
that the professor is using her fingers for air quotes

611
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:25,559
when she says more Jewish here, that I can see

612
00:47:25,559 --> 00:47:27,199
her on the video, but the listeners will not be.

613
00:47:27,559 --> 00:47:29,639
That's an important thing to point out that you are

614
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:32,199
practicing this with the air quotes when you say more Jewish.

615
00:47:32,320 --> 00:47:37,239
Speaker 2: But yes, God, Yes, because that in this debate Charlem,

616
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:42,920
at some point he talks about the law as the

617
00:47:43,039 --> 00:47:47,840
law with a big L, as something that is unfulfillable,

618
00:47:49,480 --> 00:47:56,280
and there is so this resistance or maybe this is

619
00:47:56,320 --> 00:48:01,199
something that probably resonates with the idea of redemption through sin,

620
00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:08,440
so of transgression. And for me, partly because I worked

621
00:48:08,519 --> 00:48:15,000
on I mentioned this before indirectly, this Christian Christianizing reception

622
00:48:15,559 --> 00:48:18,800
of Benjamine, of Kafka, of all these figures that I've

623
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:21,599
been working on in the book you mentioned when you

624
00:48:21,679 --> 00:48:26,119
introduced me, and I felt that that approach to Alaja

625
00:48:26,360 --> 00:48:30,559
that one finds in Scholem, in this Kafka text this

626
00:48:30,719 --> 00:48:35,880
is it's not Paulinian, but it is let's say, it

627
00:48:36,360 --> 00:48:40,599
betrays sympathies with a certain side of that idea of

628
00:48:41,039 --> 00:48:44,880
you know, the underpaid, unattainability. This is actually what Paul said.

629
00:48:44,920 --> 00:48:48,239
It says the Jewish law has to be suspended because

630
00:48:48,239 --> 00:48:51,199
it turns us all into signos, because it cannot be fulfilled.

631
00:48:51,840 --> 00:48:56,360
And Benjamine has no problem with Jewish law. He has

632
00:48:56,400 --> 00:48:59,800
a problem with state law because there was a certain

633
00:49:00,079 --> 00:49:05,159
narkist leading in him. But yeah, I found that moment

634
00:49:05,239 --> 00:49:09,239
between Charlem and Benjamine particularly revealing interesting.

635
00:49:09,280 --> 00:49:11,599
Speaker 1: Okay, fine, fair enough that there's a lot that I mean,

636
00:49:12,000 --> 00:49:15,920
let me ask you sort of one biographical detail, because

637
00:49:15,920 --> 00:49:18,039
this is also a point of controversy with Benjamin's life,

638
00:49:18,039 --> 00:49:20,639
which is that, as you mentioned several times, there was

639
00:49:20,679 --> 00:49:24,119
a possibility of him joining Charalam in Ersustrael and Israel,

640
00:49:24,639 --> 00:49:27,599
and Charlam maybe would have found a position there, and

641
00:49:27,639 --> 00:49:29,599
several times he did not. He sort of demurred, he

642
00:49:29,639 --> 00:49:32,840
delayed until unfortunately his his tragic ended in nineteen forty.

643
00:49:33,320 --> 00:49:36,840
And the question is, you know, do you see this

644
00:49:37,639 --> 00:49:41,880
as I simply like a coincidence in his biography, is

645
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:44,920
something that you know was just just happened to be

646
00:49:44,960 --> 00:49:46,599
the case that Benjamin dride a few times comes to

647
00:49:46,639 --> 00:49:48,079
Israeld that it didn't work out. What do you see

648
00:49:48,079 --> 00:49:51,639
this as very symbolic of Benjamin himself and his sympathies,

649
00:49:51,679 --> 00:49:53,679
because this is a man very rooted, let's say, in

650
00:49:53,719 --> 00:49:57,760
European culture, and also very committed to moving from place

651
00:49:57,760 --> 00:49:59,599
to place and being mobile, sort of being able to

652
00:49:59,599 --> 00:50:02,360
cross back, and of course settling in the land of

653
00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:05,440
Israel like Shalam did. Is firstly a move away from

654
00:50:05,440 --> 00:50:08,519
Europe and European culture, which was considered the cultural center

655
00:50:08,519 --> 00:50:10,440
of the world at the time, but also seen as

656
00:50:10,480 --> 00:50:14,280
sort of a step away from from the itinerant life

657
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:21,039
from and a step into rootedness and Jewishness, writ Large

658
00:50:21,079 --> 00:50:23,679
Island House to put it a commitment to stay in,

659
00:50:23,719 --> 00:50:26,119
a commitment to be ground. And as Charlom was fine.

660
00:50:26,159 --> 00:50:28,239
Charlom was a very committed Zionis, and he was fine

661
00:50:28,239 --> 00:50:29,679
and doing the un the constrious. His dreamed to do that,

662
00:50:29,719 --> 00:50:31,840
and he did it very well. So you know, do

663
00:50:31,920 --> 00:50:34,320
you think do you agree with that sort of reading

664
00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:38,119
of Benjamin's hesitancy and ultimate decision not to go until

665
00:50:38,119 --> 00:50:38,880
it was far too late.

666
00:50:39,519 --> 00:50:43,360
Speaker 2: So this is what the passages in the letters to

667
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:49,920
show Lem revealed over twenty years. Benjamin considers leaving Europe.

668
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:53,760
He writes very early on, in one of his early

669
00:50:53,840 --> 00:50:59,679
letters to Ludwig Schaus, he writes, I have to leave

670
00:50:59,760 --> 00:51:03,760
you and I can't. I have to do it, and

671
00:51:03,800 --> 00:51:07,679
I can't bring myself to it already. Then he doesn't

672
00:51:08,199 --> 00:51:12,400
say leaving it for what, But there was a sense

673
00:51:12,480 --> 00:51:19,079
that it was doomed. Europe was doomed, and at the

674
00:51:19,119 --> 00:51:23,039
same time he was deeply, deeply tied to it. But

675
00:51:23,639 --> 00:51:30,960
he was also ambivalent about Palestine, and surprisingly it was

676
00:51:31,199 --> 00:51:34,239
not at least if one takes what he writes at

677
00:51:34,239 --> 00:51:38,880
face value, not because it was too Jewish, because and

678
00:51:39,079 --> 00:51:44,760
I have a So there is an incredible quote where

679
00:51:45,320 --> 00:51:52,360
he talks about Zionists as it's a pretty terrible term.

680
00:51:52,840 --> 00:51:58,079
I've mentioned half humans who And then he says, have

681
00:51:58,280 --> 00:52:05,639
they ever thought about schools, about running a state in

682
00:52:06,000 --> 00:52:11,360
Jewish terms? He says, they call themselves Zionists, and they

683
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:16,000
booze in German. So he says that they wouln't that

684
00:52:16,400 --> 00:52:20,559
they would lose their Jewishness. Not they would. They do

685
00:52:20,679 --> 00:52:26,320
lose their Jewishness because they import into Palestine they are

686
00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:33,000
German ways, and he didn't believe that Palestine could actually

687
00:52:33,039 --> 00:52:40,480
sustain the spiritual dimension of sholemns of what made come

688
00:52:41,159 --> 00:52:44,679
to Palestine at the time. You know, he turns it

689
00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:50,880
in these letters into something almost positive, the hesitation itself.

690
00:52:52,480 --> 00:52:58,400
At some point he writes, you get passages like, dear Gohard,

691
00:52:59,039 --> 00:53:03,800
everything's ready. I'm coming in November. I'm in Jerusalem. Everything's ready.

692
00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:08,719
All my affairs are settled now. Actually my mother is

693
00:53:08,800 --> 00:53:14,519
sick and I'm expecting guests, and I don't have any money. Now.

694
00:53:14,679 --> 00:53:17,280
I forgot to tell you that I just bought the

695
00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:22,280
complete volumes of good in some antique shop. Right after

696
00:53:22,360 --> 00:53:25,440
saying that he has no and there is a self

697
00:53:25,599 --> 00:53:29,639
undermining that goes on, and at one point even himself

698
00:53:29,679 --> 00:53:36,960
talks about his patrological hesitation. And yet in one of

699
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:46,400
those letters he talks about the glorious spill rowmleeway that

700
00:53:46,599 --> 00:53:51,519
happens in hesitation, because he said, he writes, at the

701
00:53:51,800 --> 00:53:56,400
actual moment, when the catastrophe is here, there is no

702
00:53:56,480 --> 00:53:59,960
more lieveway, there is no more spill roun to hesitate.

703
00:54:00,800 --> 00:54:05,440
So Benjamin was not only a man full of tensions,

704
00:54:05,519 --> 00:54:10,599
but he embraced tension itself as a mode of thinking

705
00:54:10,679 --> 00:54:12,159
and as a source of inspiration.

706
00:54:12,639 --> 00:54:16,440
Speaker 1: Right, And I suppose it's one of these tragic, tragic

707
00:54:16,440 --> 00:54:20,199
instances where life kind of mirrors philosophy in a way.

708
00:54:20,639 --> 00:54:23,800
Was after all those hesitations, after all those you know,

709
00:54:24,039 --> 00:54:28,920
after all those series of decisions to stay within Europe,

710
00:54:29,039 --> 00:54:35,039
he stayed there forever, essentially because his tragic absolute So

711
00:54:35,679 --> 00:54:41,360
one sort of final important question regards Benjamin's afterlife, because

712
00:54:41,960 --> 00:54:43,800
obviously his I mean or not obviously, but it is

713
00:54:43,840 --> 00:54:46,199
the case that his works have been subject to a

714
00:54:46,199 --> 00:54:49,920
great deal of interpretation and argumentation, review, and especially his

715
00:54:50,039 --> 00:54:52,320
work within the broader context of the Frankfurt scho which

716
00:54:52,320 --> 00:54:54,760
we haven't really talked about, but he was a collaborator

717
00:54:54,760 --> 00:54:57,719
and interlocutor with I don't know and hr time Man,

718
00:54:57,719 --> 00:54:59,920
and you know, a series of very important figures who

719
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:02,800
later on in post war and the United States, became

720
00:55:02,880 --> 00:55:05,960
very important cultural critics of their own in their own rights.

721
00:55:06,159 --> 00:55:09,239
But there has also been arguments after Benjamin's death as

722
00:55:09,239 --> 00:55:11,039
to the question. We've been discussing that, and I wonder

723
00:55:11,039 --> 00:55:14,119
if you could maybe guide us a little through this

724
00:55:14,239 --> 00:55:17,880
quagmire of kind of debate and discussion regarding Benumin, especially

725
00:55:17,880 --> 00:55:23,280
his his Jewish or otherwise roots or sort of aspects

726
00:55:23,280 --> 00:55:25,360
of him, and also just the sort of the stakes

727
00:55:25,400 --> 00:55:27,920
of it. You know, why would it be important either

728
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:32,760
to to bring Benjamin closer or to distance him from

729
00:55:33,159 --> 00:55:36,840
Jewishness or Judaism. What are the sort of underlying motivations

730
00:55:37,079 --> 00:55:40,559
within such a debate that that occurred in the decades

731
00:55:40,760 --> 00:55:41,760
after Benyamin's death.

732
00:55:41,880 --> 00:55:45,840
Speaker 2: Maybe the best place to start to answer this is

733
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:49,440
to pick up the idea of a man of many tensions,

734
00:55:50,360 --> 00:55:55,880
this tension between Marxism and Messianism, between politics and theology,

735
00:55:56,880 --> 00:56:02,760
between Europe and Palestine, between an affirmation of modernity and

736
00:56:03,800 --> 00:56:09,599
a radical critique of modernity. Benjamine does touch on some

737
00:56:09,760 --> 00:56:16,840
of the fundamental questions that any intellectual in the twenties

738
00:56:17,039 --> 00:56:20,360
and still in the twenty first century has to find

739
00:56:20,400 --> 00:56:25,760
an answer for. And these replies are so complex and

740
00:56:25,800 --> 00:56:32,760
subtle that they invite multiple viewpoints on the and this

741
00:56:33,079 --> 00:56:39,280
to this day. So, for example, the question of you know,

742
00:56:39,320 --> 00:56:47,559
with the agreement among intellectuals that the system was was

743
00:56:47,639 --> 00:56:53,599
catastrophic and that one had to so a certain idea

744
00:56:53,639 --> 00:56:57,960
of revolution, of the revolution, And the question to what

745
00:56:58,119 --> 00:57:04,280
extent violence is justified when you are in a tyrannical

746
00:57:04,360 --> 00:57:10,000
system a question that leads us right into our days.

747
00:57:10,719 --> 00:57:15,519
But Benjamin answers this. So there is for example, in

748
00:57:15,639 --> 00:57:18,800
his in his essay Critique of Violence that has a

749
00:57:18,920 --> 00:57:23,320
very strong Jewish dimension. It is fascinating to see how

750
00:57:23,760 --> 00:57:29,760
some people read this completely without the Jewish dimension and

751
00:57:29,920 --> 00:57:34,360
read it as an affirmation of the right to violence

752
00:57:34,639 --> 00:57:41,880
in the revolutionary context, and others do the opposite. And

753
00:57:42,119 --> 00:57:47,679
I've I've written on this text recently, and it became

754
00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:54,119
clear to me that one of the the aspects of

755
00:57:54,599 --> 00:58:00,639
especially German, of the German intellectual landscape, was the question

756
00:58:00,719 --> 00:58:07,880
of myth. Benjamin rejects myths radically and at very different levels.

757
00:58:08,239 --> 00:58:12,400
And in this text he talks about mythical violence, and

758
00:58:12,519 --> 00:58:17,239
mythical violence is the violence that a state or anyone

759
00:58:17,360 --> 00:58:21,440
in power. So the powers that we exert in order

760
00:58:21,519 --> 00:58:26,199
to create their position of power and sovereignty or to

761
00:58:26,320 --> 00:58:31,039
maintain it both are mysical. There he calls that mythical

762
00:58:31,119 --> 00:58:35,960
violence and opposes that to a mysterious notion of divine violence.

763
00:58:37,079 --> 00:58:41,440
And in explaining what divine violence is, that is so

764
00:58:41,559 --> 00:58:45,840
that is justified violence, and the way he describes it

765
00:58:45,880 --> 00:58:50,519
is almost frightening because it is a kind of unjustified,

766
00:58:50,719 --> 00:58:55,119
non negotiated momentum. And then it brings in the story

767
00:58:55,119 --> 00:59:01,960
of Korrah from the Bible, Korrahus swallowed up to the

768
00:59:01,960 --> 00:59:07,440
earth after rebelling against the authority of Moses and our

769
00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:13,280
own And you can see that, you can you could

770
00:59:13,320 --> 00:59:19,840
discuss even our contemporary actuality in terms of where Benjamin

771
00:59:20,039 --> 00:59:23,800
actually situated. Is this justified or is it not? And

772
00:59:24,039 --> 00:59:26,840
I had the feeling that there is something there that

773
00:59:26,920 --> 00:59:38,119
Benjamin leaves purposely inaccessible, that one can discern the dimensions

774
00:59:38,159 --> 00:59:42,159
and the cultures of what he is describing there, but

775
00:59:42,880 --> 00:59:46,760
it is not readily accessible so that one could define

776
00:59:46,800 --> 00:59:51,360
what is this divine violence and what makes it legitimate.

777
00:59:51,639 --> 00:59:57,400
But what one does sense is that in this inaccessibility

778
00:59:57,960 --> 01:00:03,119
of this concept, he points to the fact that this

779
01:00:03,320 --> 01:00:10,360
kind of violence itself is not accessible to humans. So

780
01:00:10,400 --> 01:00:15,840
there is he does, at the same time introduce this radical,

781
01:00:16,039 --> 01:00:22,559
total dimension and words off the dangers of it. And

782
01:00:22,599 --> 01:00:25,199
I think that that's is true for Messianism as well.

783
01:00:25,400 --> 01:00:31,639
Today Messianism has a very bad press, especially relating to Israel.

784
01:00:31,960 --> 01:00:36,239
This is precisely so when one talks about Benjamin's Messianism.

785
01:00:36,639 --> 01:00:40,559
This is maybe the most interesting thing that he at

786
01:00:40,559 --> 01:00:46,599
the same time does invoke such the idea of redemption

787
01:00:47,159 --> 01:00:50,159
and at the same time takes it out of human

788
01:00:50,280 --> 01:00:55,920
hands because of the dangers that this could bring about.

789
01:00:56,159 --> 01:00:59,920
And the same thing with there's a little sentence of

790
01:01:00,440 --> 01:01:04,079
in the context of where he talks about divine violence,

791
01:01:04,440 --> 01:01:10,719
where he says where this actually applies is not available

792
01:01:11,679 --> 01:01:18,239
to humans. So and with Messianism, where you it radically rejects.

793
01:01:18,400 --> 01:01:23,599
Benjamin's reflections of Messianism radically reject any kind of theocracy

794
01:01:24,039 --> 01:01:29,639
and any kind of you know, claiming that for any

795
01:01:29,800 --> 01:01:30,639
political action.

796
01:01:33,400 --> 01:01:37,519
Speaker 1: Well that is now I was very thorough answer to

797
01:01:37,559 --> 01:01:38,039
that question.

798
01:01:38,599 --> 01:01:42,280
Speaker 2: The question the question about the reception. Maybe what I

799
01:01:42,400 --> 01:01:44,760
tried to do is show you asked me. I think

800
01:01:44,800 --> 01:01:47,199
I answered to one part of your question, which is

801
01:01:47,199 --> 01:01:53,159
what is at stake in the way one reads Benjamins.

802
01:01:53,199 --> 01:01:56,119
So I think that maybe I've given some idea of

803
01:01:56,159 --> 01:02:00,960
what is at stake. I experienced too in in my research.

804
01:02:01,679 --> 01:02:07,920
Two areas of the reception of Benjamin's reception that I

805
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:12,760
found particularly significant. And the one, and this I did

806
01:02:12,880 --> 01:02:16,920
mention before briefly was when I dealt with a group

807
01:02:17,039 --> 01:02:24,280
of contemporary philosophers who read Benjamin in a Christian way

808
01:02:24,519 --> 01:02:28,440
that as a as a kind of Christian anarchist, where

809
01:02:29,199 --> 01:02:36,840
associating Benjamin with the apostle Paul that brings Benjamin to

810
01:02:37,199 --> 01:02:42,639
a radically anti Judaic position that I think is very

811
01:02:44,400 --> 01:02:48,239
dangerous and wrong, not only because it would lose Benjamin

812
01:02:48,280 --> 01:02:51,440
would lose the Jewish dimension, but because of the kind

813
01:02:51,480 --> 01:02:54,679
of Benjamin that comes out of this. It is a

814
01:02:55,400 --> 01:03:00,880
he would then be a radically Antinomian figure, rejecting not

815
01:03:01,000 --> 01:03:05,440
only state law but all law, and driving into some

816
01:03:05,559 --> 01:03:13,599
kind of an apocalyptic abyss. And I, yeah, I see

817
01:03:13,639 --> 01:03:18,920
a completely different Benjamin. There a key moment that illuminated

818
01:03:18,960 --> 01:03:23,360
me about this is when the contemporary philosopher, and that

819
01:03:23,559 --> 01:03:26,920
is at the heart of my of my book on

820
01:03:26,960 --> 01:03:31,519
the Tenuous Legacy of the German Jewish afterlife, it is

821
01:03:32,760 --> 01:03:39,639
a Gamben, Giorgio Agamben, Italian philosopher who who many consider

822
01:03:39,960 --> 01:03:46,679
the most important era of Benjamin. He writes about Kafka's

823
01:03:46,760 --> 01:03:52,559
text before the Law. This the following is a reading

824
01:03:52,719 --> 01:03:58,239
of Kafka's story in Beniaminian light. So this is in

825
01:03:58,280 --> 01:04:01,920
the Benyaminian spirit. And then you know, it's the story.

826
01:04:01,920 --> 01:04:03,800
I'm not going into it in detail, but it's the

827
01:04:03,880 --> 01:04:05,880
story where a man comes to the law, it has

828
01:04:05,960 --> 01:04:08,280
no access to it, and waits his whole life in

829
01:04:08,320 --> 01:04:12,360
front of the entrance to the law. There's a doorkeeper

830
01:04:12,480 --> 01:04:17,559
who doesn't let him in, and the man whaits all

831
01:04:17,639 --> 01:04:22,039
his life is negotiating with the doorkeeper. And at the end,

832
01:04:22,199 --> 01:04:25,039
after seeing a glimmer of light coming through the door,

833
01:04:25,440 --> 01:04:29,519
he says, how come nobody else passed by here, and

834
01:04:29,679 --> 01:04:32,239
the doorkeeper says, well, it was meant for you and

835
01:04:32,360 --> 01:04:36,119
shuts the door. Slams the door shut. A gun Ben

836
01:04:36,400 --> 01:04:40,519
is the only one who and he says this in

837
01:04:40,599 --> 01:04:45,840
a Benaminian spirit, this would read as follows and then

838
01:04:46,280 --> 01:04:49,519
always this had This story has been written mainly as

839
01:04:49,559 --> 01:04:55,480
the inaccessibility of the law, especially if considered as divine

840
01:04:55,559 --> 01:04:59,280
law for a modern man and a gun. Ben writes, No, No,

841
01:04:59,360 --> 01:05:03,079
the key mood moment is when the doorkeeper slams the

842
01:05:03,119 --> 01:05:05,599
door shut, because finally we are rid of the law,

843
01:05:06,159 --> 01:05:09,719
and that would be a kind of fulfillment the suspension

844
01:05:09,880 --> 01:05:13,800
of the law, as Paul did to Jewish law. So

845
01:05:14,840 --> 01:05:18,719
the law is suspended now, and that would be Benjamini,

846
01:05:18,920 --> 01:05:22,360
just to give you an idea of how this kind

847
01:05:22,400 --> 01:05:30,320
of reading really shows how precarious the reception of Viter

848
01:05:30,440 --> 01:05:33,039
Benjamin and of this Jewish tradition is.

849
01:05:34,199 --> 01:05:38,280
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, We've covered an enormous amount of ground, and

850
01:05:38,320 --> 01:05:40,719
I wish to cover more. How we're gonna have to

851
01:05:40,760 --> 01:05:43,599
stop it. We're going to draw the cut down in

852
01:05:43,639 --> 01:05:45,400
a moment. Before we do, I would like to ask

853
01:05:45,400 --> 01:05:47,840
a question that I asked many of my guests, which

854
01:05:47,840 --> 01:05:50,440
goes as follows. If you could sit down tonight for

855
01:05:50,519 --> 01:05:53,840
dinner with Walter Benjamin, what would you want to ask him?

856
01:05:53,880 --> 01:05:55,480
What would you be talking to him about? First it

857
01:05:55,480 --> 01:05:58,039
do you think would be a pleasant experience? And what

858
01:05:58,079 --> 01:06:01,159
would you what would be chatting to Benjamin about tonight.

859
01:06:01,719 --> 01:06:07,679
Speaker 2: I would ask him the question that he asks of

860
01:06:09,239 --> 01:06:14,800
the afterlife of a work, that it be torn away

861
01:06:15,000 --> 01:06:19,840
from the conventions and not be regarded in terms of

862
01:06:19,880 --> 01:06:23,440
what it meant in its time, but what it would

863
01:06:23,519 --> 01:06:29,400
do in hours. And I would ask Benjamin whether he

864
01:06:29,440 --> 01:06:33,239
would agree with me that it is not the radicalism,

865
01:06:33,639 --> 01:06:41,800
but the simultaneity of the intensity and the subtlety of

866
01:06:41,880 --> 01:06:43,880
his thinking that would matter today.

867
01:06:45,159 --> 01:06:48,320
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a very it's a very would be very

868
01:06:48,320 --> 01:06:50,599
interesting thing. And you know, if you ever get an

869
01:06:50,639 --> 01:06:52,719
answer from him, please do let us know on this

870
01:06:52,760 --> 01:06:56,280
particular point. Professor Vivian Liska, thank you so very much

871
01:06:56,400 --> 01:06:58,599
for Johnny yesterday on the podcast Jewish Ideas to talk

872
01:06:58,599 --> 01:07:01,800
about what Benjamin. This has been a great pleasure, and

873
01:07:01,800 --> 01:07:04,840
thank you for illuminating this particularly complex and difficult thinker.

874
01:07:05,440 --> 01:07:06,519
We hope to see you again soon.

875
01:07:07,000 --> 01:07:07,400
Speaker 2: Thank you.

876
01:07:09,079 --> 01:07:11,519
Speaker 1: This has been the podcast of Jewish Ideas by Tora

877
01:07:11,599 --> 01:07:15,880
in Motion, produced by Alisha Kellman and myself Jjkimbri, edited

878
01:07:15,920 --> 01:07:18,320
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879
01:07:18,400 --> 01:07:21,199
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880
01:07:21,199 --> 01:07:23,760
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881
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