What Is a Jewish Classicist?: Essays on the Personal Voice and Disciplinary Politics

201 Pages·2022·5.708 MB·English

by  Simon Goldhill

What Is a
Jewish Classicist?
i
Rubicon
Series editor: Th omas Harrison
Th is new series seeks to challenge and refresh the study of antiquity: to
re-examine central texts and questions, to disrupt stale orthodoxies, to
test and problematize the nature and limits of our disciplines, to
champion new approaches and to respond to the latest developments
in research and in our contemporary world. R ubicon breaks
through barriers – to open up the history, literature and culture
of the ancient world.
ii
What Is a
Jewish Classicist?
Essays on the
Personal Voice and
Disciplinary Politics
Simon Goldhill
iii
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks
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First published in Great Britain 2022

Copyright © Simon Goldhill, 2022

Simon Goldhill has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as Author of this work.

Cover design: Terry Woodley

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iv
Contents
Series Editor’s Preface vii
Introduction: Fitting in 1
1 Th e Personal Voice: Six Fragments of a
Sentimental Education 15
i Sleepless in Seattle 15
ii Confession 19
iii A real Jew 27
iv Label me 36
v A sentimental education 41
vi Self-explanation 44
2 What Is a Jewish Classicist? 51
i Doing religion 51
ii Character-building 66
iii Let me tell you a story 78
3 Translation and Transformation 95
i Th e culture of translation and the translation of culture 95
ii Walter Benjamin meets Henry Montagu Butler 105
iii Double vision 123
v
vi Contents
iv How awkward! 133
v Tradition’s claim 140
Bibliography 159
Index 181
Series Editor’s Preface
How does the study of antiquity move forward? How does it progress?
In one common model, the study of the past is fi gured as a process of
the fi lling-in of gaps. (‘Th is book fi lls a much-needed gap’, Moses
Hadas quipped in a well-known rejoinder.) Even if we accept that this
is a process without end – that our object of study is like a jigsaw
puzzle that will always defy completion – it is a model that is easily
taken for granted. For one thing, it makes easy sense to the wider
audiences for academic research. ‘How can you say anything new
about that?’, I am asked incredulously. In response, talk of new
discoveries provides a kind of trump card. But the model of gap-fi lling
is also an easy refuge for scholars of antiquity themselves. With the
increased specialisation and compartmentalisation of our areas of
study, and the imperatives of research assessment, tenure or
promotion, there are ample pressures to fi nd a comfortable niche that
you can make your own, and to write footnote-heavy works that few
will object to (or read in the fi rst place).
Rubicon is founded in an alternative understanding of modern
scholarship. Major new papyri, a coin hoard here, an inscription there:
these can certainly re-orient our overall picture. Sometimes they can
do more, and throw all the pieces of the jigsaw in the air. More oft en
than not, however, change in understanding comes from other
directions: from shift s in intellectual fashion, developments in other
vii
disciplines, or – underlying these – from the changed world in which
we are operating. Rubicon starts from the position that, as scholars
and readers, we are located in our particular times and places, shaped
by our individual histories, and that the rules of the game of the study
of antiquity – far from being timeless and immutable – have a history
also. It sets out to understand and to interrogate these larger currents
that impact on the study of antiquity, to engage with fundamental
aspects of antiquity and our relationship with it.
Rubicon also sets out to break through the boundaries that
too oft en confi ne and restrict our approaches: the boundaries
between disciplines and scholarly approaches; between time periods;
and between areas of study. Th e series encompasses – and moves
between – the history, literature, languages, art and material culture of
the ancient world (and anything else not covered within that list!),
and the ‘reception’ of antiquity in later centuries. It seeks to draw on
the insights of other disciplines and fi elds of study. Th e volumes in
this series also range across the Mediterranean and Near Eastern
worlds – and further afi eld. Th is is not a ‘Classics’ series, and no people
or culture has an assumed primacy.
Finally, although all the volumes are informed by a deep expertise,
they are not weighed down by it. ‘If the love and knowledge of Greek
literature ever die . . . ,’ wrote the Irish Hellenist E. R. Dodds in 1943,
‘they will die of a suff ocation arising from its exponents’ industry’. Th e
title of this series, Rubicon, is not quite an invitation to march on
Rome, or to dismantle the structures and institutions of our disciplines.
It does, however, represent a challenge: to question the assumptions
and orthodoxies of our fi elds; to open up new areas of study, new
vistas; and, above all, to take risks.
Th omas Harrison
St Andrews
viii
Introduction: Fitting in
Every year, King’s College, Cambridge, where I work, holds a dinner
for its newly arrived fi rst-year students. It has done so for centuries. As
a Fellow, I sit with the new classicists whom I am going to teach for the
next three years (or more). It is always a slightly nervy, even febrile
occasion, as the new students, in the imposing Hogwarts-esque
surroundings, are faced with unfamiliar classmates for the fi rst time,
over a dinner more formal than almost everyone is used to – lots of
glasses and cutlery, a menu, food and wine served by staff – and they
are all trying out their role as Cambridge students for the fi rst time in
Cambridge, in a mixture of performed insouciance, over-excitement
and nervous apprehension (or just resistance). One year, the girl
sitting next to me, turned and asked why I was not eating meat as she
and the others around her were. I might have said that I was a
vegetarian – easy option, oft en taken – but I replied that I was Jewish
and ate only kosher meat. ‘Oh,’ she said, surprised, ‘I didn’t know you
could be Jewish and English.’
She had, she went on, actually never met a Jew. Now, this scenario
may seem just fl abbergasting, if not ridiculous, or strike you as a sign
of desperate parochialism (all too English?). But this girl turned out to
be a very accomplished young woman, indeed, who graduated in
classics with a double fi rst, the very highest possible degree, and then
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