Divinely Abused: A Philosophical Perspective on Job and His Kin

179 Pages·2010·3.19 MB·English

by  Nehama Verbin

Divinely Abused
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Divinely Abused
A Philosophical Perspective on
Job and His Kin
N. Verbin
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704, New York
London SE1 7NX NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
permission of the publishers.
Copyright © 2010 by Nehama Verbin
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-0-8264-3588-0 (hardcover)
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed in the United States of America
Cover image: Ruth Adler
In memory of D. Z. Phillips
a teacher, a friend
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xii
1. What is Abuse? 1
1. Self-Worth 3
1.1 Self-worth and justifi cation 3
1.2 Resentment and self-worth 6
2. Happiness 7
2.1 The Socratic conception 8
2.2 The Maimonidean conception 9
2.3 The Wittgensteinian conception 10
3. Power 11
3.1 The intuitive paradigm 12
3.2 The moral paradigm 13
3.3 The self-restraint paradigm 15
2. Divine Abuse 22
1. Job’s Conception of Happiness 23
1.1 The worldly conception 23
1.2 The moral conception 26
2. Job’s Conception of Self-Worth 28
2.1 Humiliation and elevation 29
2.2 Resentment and moral hatred of God 31
3. Power and Power Relations 34
3.1 Job’s conception of power 34
3.2 Job’s manner of exercising his power 39
3. The Way Out: From Abuse to Suffering 47
1. Affl ictions of Love and Love of Affl ictions 47
1.1 Affl ictions of love 47
1.2 Love of affl ictions 51
2. Providence and Intervention 58
2.1 Providence as intervention 58
2.2 Maimonides 60
2.3 Simone Weil 67
viii Contents
3. Providence Lost 71
3.1 Affl ictions of hate 71
3.2 Malevolent providence 72
3.3 From abuse to suffering 74
4. Forgiveness 84
1. The Victim 85
1.1 Harms, wrongs, and hostile emotions 85
1.2 Resentment and reason 88
1.3 Overcoming resentment 96
2 The Assailant 99
2.1 Telling the moral story 99
2.2 Telling the biographical story 101
2.3 Telling the same story 103
3. Forgiveness 106
3.1 Forgiveness without reconciliation 106
3.2 Reconciliation without forgiveness 108
3.3 Forgiveness and reconciliation 110
5. Forgiving God 116
1. Protest 116
1.1 Roth’s theodicy of protest 117
1.2 Blumenthal’s ‘theology of protest’ 118
2. Beyond Protest 121
2.1 Protest in context 121
2.2 Beyond protest 127
3. Forgiving God 130
3.1 The logical space for forgiveness 131
3.2 Forgiving God 139
3.3 Subsisting in brokenness 141
Conclusion 147
Bibliography 151
Index 157
Acknowledgments
Many have contributed to the coming to being of Divinely Abused. I would
like to start by apologizing to all those that have helped me in the process
and that I fail, at this moment, to remember and acknowledge in print.
Your names and contributions would probably come to my mind when the
book is in print. I am deeply sorry for failing to do you justice.
My life is divided between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. I hold an academic
post at Tel Aviv University and a fellowship at the Shalom Hartman
Institute in Jerusalem. Both places have welcomed me and my passion for
philosophy of religion in a manner that makes me feel at home in them.
I would like to start by thanking Shlomo Biderman for the interest that
he had taken in my work, for his encouragement and support, for kind
words and kind deeds. Without him, I might have been still looking for an
academic post in Israel. I am also grateful to Zvi Tauber and Yaron
Senderowich for my fi nding a home at Tel Aviv University.
Menachem Fisch’s encouragement, the door to his offi ce that has always
been open for me, his faith in me and, above all, his friendship have been
enormously important to me and they remain so. I am also grateful for
various conversations during which he had shared with me his work on the
confrontative Talmudic approach to God. They have signifi cantly enriched
my understanding and appreciation of the Talmud.
My conversations with Menachem Lorberbaum about Maimonides and
Wittgenstein about poetry and life have penetrated the book and remain
very much alive in my head. I am grateful for the conversations and the
friendship.
Galia Patt Shamir and Tamar Aylat-Yaguri have made the corridors of
Tel Aviv University sunny and shiny, and religion and religiosity even more
exciting than they ordinarily are for me. I am grateful for numerous
personal and philosophical conversations with both. I am also grateful to
Miri Rozmarin, with whom it was and is a pleasure to share a room and
discuss feminism, motherhood and the relevance of a transcendence
beyond. Special thanks are also due to Anat Biletzki for her support of my
academic passion, for her genuine interest and care.
David Hartman and Donniel Hartman, who have welcomed me into the
Shalom Hartman Institute, where God is very much alive and kicking,
have had a tremendous infl uence on my life and thinking. It is here that
I have discovered the bold world of Talmudic thought and the challenging
world of Jewish thinking.