IJS Conference September 1-2, 2015

DEPICTING JEWISH THOUGHT:

Jewish Representations of Thinking, Knowledge and Learning
From Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period

Seeing with Ears

Mashal Depiction in Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah

Elad Lapidot

Depicting Thought?
Now first of all we must, in my judgment, make the following distinction:
between that which is always in being and has no becoming, and that which is
always in becoming and never in being. The first one is comprehensible by
thought, with reason (meta logou), and it is always the same, whereas the other
is imaginable by perception, with unreasoning sensation (met aistheseos
alogou), since it becomes and perishes but never really is.1
In these words, Plato, in his Timaios, as in other places, formulates a
fundamental distinction between the realm of Thought and Reason, of noesis
and logos, and the a-logical realm of Perception and Sensation, of doxa and
aisthesis. Thought provides truth; sensation only semblance. It is this distinction
that leads the Timaios, Platos account of the worlds creation, of genesis, to
define itself not as a true logos but as a mere myth.
1

Plato, Tim. 28a.

This elementary tension and even contradiction between Thought and

Perception or Imagination is arguably one of Platos decisive legacies to the
tradition of Philosophy. In modern philosophy, this dualism is observable for
example in Kants distinction between the forms of Anschauung and the pure
logical categories of Verstand, in Hegels interplay between Begriff and
Vorstellung, in the similar Heideggerian distinction between Denken and
Vorstellen and no doubt as the basic tension generating the entire discourse of
phenomenology philosophy as the science of phenomena both Husserlian
and post-Husserlian.
Asking about the Depiction of Thought, namely the sensual, aesthetic
perception and representation of thought itself, could be therefore taken as a
subversive way of interrogating or even putting in question an entire tradition of
thinking, namely the philosophical thought.
Now what about the depiction of Jewish thought? Is there at all Jewish
thought, a specific way of thinking, which is Jewish? How would it be
possible to grasp this specificity meta logou or met aistheseos? Is
Jewishness itself at all thinkable? Or perhaps better imaginable? Would the
Jewishness of Jewish thought be therefore definable, vis-a-vis philosophical
thought for instance, precisely by its specific relation to perception, to seeing? In
other words, would depiction be a way of defining Jewish thought? Isnt
Jewish thought, however, characterized, quite to the contrary, rather by a
monotheistic rejection of the image, of the picture, and the total immersion in
abstraction or in text? Wouldnt the depiction of Jewish thought constitute or at
least verge on idolatry?
These questions, at least some of them, to some extent, I wish now to
contemplate in the context of at least one important Jewish tradition of thought
the rabbinic tradition. I will perform this contemplation by a paradigmatic act of
rabbinic thought, namely by looking at or in a text. The text Im going to look at

is known as Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah. This text itself is a paradigmatic

performance of rabbinic thinking by reading or perhaps, in contrast to
sense-perception, we could say text-perception , as it consists in a
collection of midrashim on the Song of Songs. This makes it especially suitable
for our current discussion.
As an introduction to Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah, I will start by showing the special
suitability of Shir ha-Shirim, the Song of Songs, as a locus for contemplating
depiction and thought.

Shir ha-Shirim
Shir ha-Shirim could be said to be the most picturesque of the corpus of texts
canonized by the early rabbis as the mikra, which serves as the textual world for
their midrashic thinking. In fact, its imagery sets it apart from the other books of
the canon: it is almost a still picture that stands by itself. It contains none of the
great themes of the biblical saga: justice, history, politics, good and bad, laws,
God. The Song rather exclusively sings the intimate conversation between
lovers, and is untypically for the mikra full with detailed portrayals of
nature, body and erotic scenery. 2 Shir ha-Shirims singular appearance, almost
by itself, calls and has called for reflection on its relation to the rest of the mikra,
and consequently on the exact nature of the mikra project itself. In other words,
it is precisely by its super-aesthetics that the Song of Songs raises thought; and
to begin with about the relation of aesthetics to thought.
Modern readers, for instance, from Herder and Goethe to contemporary
research, were led by the rich imagery and sensual descriptions to completely
dissociate the Song of Songs from the biblical project, and associate it instead

I was made aware of this unique character of Shir ha-Shirim by Yoav Lvy, to whom I am very grateful.

with genres of oriental and Egyptian love songs. Such readings often seem as
embracing aesthetics and corporeal, worldly life against the traditional platonictheological intellectual abstractions. Their often underlying assumption, I think,
nonetheless remains the platonic separation between thought and sensation. The
explanation of such modern readers to why ancient readers did include the Song
of Songs in the biblical canon would typically be that they must have read it to
mean something different than what it actually says, namely allegorically: in
order to think the soul, the body had to be covered.
In fact, one powerful example of such allegorical reading seems to be that of the
3rd century church father Origen, one of the first Christian exegetes, who was
very influential in shaping Christian hermeneutics. Origen composed several
works on the Song of Songs, including a 10-volume commentary, considered to
be a high point of his entire exegetical project. His point of departure is Platos
distinction between the Intelligible and the Sensible, whereby the visible,
corporeal thing is only the likeness of the ideal, incorporeal and invisible
paradigm, which is alone true.3 This metaphysical dualism Origen shapes into a
hermeneutical principle by adopting the Pauline distinction between the Spirit
and the Letter of the text: spirit is covered by the veil of flesh as much as by
the veil of the letter. 4 The spiritual reading developed by Origen thus strives
to undress the text of its literal-carnal meanings and to unveil another,
allegorical meaning, seen not to the eye but to the mind alone.
What about the seemingly hyper-sensual Song of Songs? Interestingly, for
Origen it is the perfect song. 5 Rather than corporeal, he perceives the Song of
Songs as a completely bodiless, asomatos text. Commenting the title the
Song of Songs which is Solomons he says: the Song of Songs is simply
Solomons; it belongs neither to the Son of David, nor to Israels king, and there
3

Cant. 3.13.16, 20 (SC 376. 633-4, 36) = Lawson (3.12), 220-1.

Hom. in Lev. 1.1 (SC 286. 66-70); King 50.
5
Cant. prol. 4.3-4; King, 23.
4

is no suggestion of anything carnal about it. 6 In other words, this text speaks
only pure eternal truths, it has no sensual meaning, such that its literal meaning
is immediately its spiritual meaning. As Christopher King7 notes, this means that
for Origen, unlike all other biblical texts, the spiritual reading of the perfect
Song of Songs requires no allegory.
Thus, for instance, in his reading of verse 1:11 . This he reads,
first of all, in the Septuagint Greek, since spiritual reading transcends all carnal
literality (btw. Origens commentary on canticum canticorum has been in its
turn preserved only in Latin translation). was rendered in Greek
homoiomata xrusiou, the likeness of gold, which Origen reads as the biblical
Law and prophets that are filled with figures and images, and likenesses and
parables. 8 The Song of Songs, in contrast, is true gold, because absolutely
non-figurative, containing no image, no parable, speaking only the pure,
incorporeal spirit of Christ.

Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah

Origens spiritual reading, which I suggested is still implied in modern carnal
reading, is closely related to the midrashic reading. Historically, scholars have
already pointed at Origens probable exchanges and polemics with 3rd century
Palestinian rabbis during his time in Caesarea. 9 Comparing their respective

Cant. prol. 4.21 (SC 375. 162). [NB: using the Greek translation, infers, e.g. that Song 1:6, the sun looked
down on me, is not at all physical/sensual but spiritual].
7
J. Christopher King, Origen on the Song of Songs as the Spirit of Scripture: The Bridegroom's Perfect
Marriage-Song, Oxford 2005.
8
Cant. 2.8.12 (SC 375. 412-14), Cant 2.8.23 (SC 375. 420).
9
Maren Niehoff, Questions and answers in Philo and Genesis Rabbah, Journal for the Study of Judaism (2008)
39, 337-366.

readings of the Song of Songs, Reuven Kimelman went as far as to speak of A

Third-Century Jewish-Christian Disputation. 10
The similarity, a necessary condition for any polemic, is in fact striking. If
Origen considers the Song of Songs as the perfect song, Shir ha-Shirim
Rabbah reports R. Akivas saying that is , the Holy of
Holies. Both agree about the outstanding status of this text with respect to the
rest of the canon. What is the polemic about?
To begin with, whereas Origen sees the Song of Songs as the true gold,
transcending the mere likeness of the Law and the Prophets, which are only
preparatory works, the Great Midrash, from the very first proem, , as
Daniel Boyarin pointed out 11, portrays Solomons Song, on the exact contrary,
as a means to reading the Torah. In other words, King Solomons text is
perceived as the proto-type of the rabbinic midrash itself, Shir ha-Shirim as the
Urbild of Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah. And the essence of this Urbild is not its
bodilessness, but on the contrary, that it is Bild, an image, a figure, a parable, or
as the rabbis call it mashal.
What kind of relation between thought and image does mashal embody? What
kind of a Denkfigur is it? How is it different than Orignes bodiless text?
According to Boyarin, Origens platonic, allegoric reading consists in moving
from concrete, visible figures to abstract concepts, to philosophical or
theological truths.12 In more precise and radical hermeneutical terms,
allegoresis, says Boyarin, is correlating text to hidden meanings. 13 Midrash,
on the other hand, is simply trying to fill in the gaps in the plain narrative of

10

Reuven Kimelman, Rabbi Yoanan and Origen on the Song of Songs: A Third-Century Jewish-Christian
Disputation, Harvard Theological Review 73, 1980, 567-595.
11
Daniel Boyarin, ''Two Introductions to Midrash Shir Hashirim'' (Hebrew), Tarbitz 56 (1987): 479500.
12
Ibid, 490.
13
Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press: 1990,
p. 20.

the Torah. 14 This it does by correlating not text to meaning, but text to text15
midrashic reading consists, Boyarin famously says, in intertextuality.
And this to him is precisely the role of mashal: it functions as a narrative
expansion for binding diverse texts together.16 Interestingly, this position leads
Boyarin, similarly to Origen, to virtually neutralize the figurative function of the
Song of Songs: where Origen overlooks the image to see Spirit, Boyarin
overlooks the image to see the biblical narrative, which is more concrete than
the narrative in the mashal. 17 Is it not, once again, spirit versus letter, abstract
thought versus concrete body?
What I wish to suggest is that mashal does more than just connect together
different signifiers and texts, but precisely through its figurative nature, as image
and picture it conceptualizes and generalizes, i.e. thinks. As such, mashal is in
fact a figure of thinking, perhaps the figure of thinking tout court. To show this,
I will now show how Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah itself shows it.

Making Ears to the Torah

I am looking at the 4th proem, a midrash on the first two words of Shir ha-Shirim
Shir ha-Shirim. 18 Why is this Song exceptional, the Song of Songs? The first
step is inter-text, bringing Kohelet 12:9 that describes the special merit of
Kohelet, the son of David, a king in Jerusalem (Koh. 1:1), namely of Shlomo,
whose song the Song of Songs is: Kohelet was more than a wise man. This
means, the midrash says, that there is a special reason to read his Song or, in the
14

Ibid., 17.
Ibid.
16
Ibid., 80, 92.
17
Ibid., 82.
18
Ms Vatican, 1379. H.E. Steller, Preliminary Remarks to a New Edition of Shir HaShirim Rabbah, in: Rashi
1040-1990, Hommage Ephram E. Urbach, Gabrielle Sed-Rajna (ed.), Paris, Cerf 1993, 301-311. For this
reference Im grateful to Tamar Kadari, whose online synoptic edition of Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah I used for this
paper, see www.schechter.edu.
15

midrash words, to bend your ears and hear these words. What is the special
reason? How was Shlomo more than wise?
The midrash continues with the Kohelet quote: Kohelet was more than wise
he also taught the people knowledge and pondered, and searched out and
arranged many meshalim. Shlomos great wisdom was that he taught others to
know, or as the midrash later puts it: until Shlomo arose, no one was able to
make sense ( )of the words of Torah; after Shlomo arose everyone began
to contemplate ( )Torah. This means that Shlomo was the first rabbi, who
not only showed everyone how to learn, but also showed them how to teach. We
can say that Shlomos greatness was that he showed everyone, including the
authors of Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah, what is and how to think , ,
the words of the Torah. Shlomo was and is the very image of thought. So
what does it mean to think the Torah? Was heit denken?
To explain what thinking is, the midrash does not define, but shows: namely
performs an act of thinking. More precisely, it performs an act of thinking the
words of Torah about thinking the words of Torah. The basic operation of the
midrashic thinking is literal, it is done within and through words, in the letter.
The words are Shlomos own words in the quoted Kohelet: Kohelet was more
than wise he also taught the people knowledge and pondered, and searched out
and arranged many meshalim,
. The midrash focuses on one of the words describing Shlomos
intellectual activity, . Shlomo, says the midrash, . The word
could be and was explained and translated pondered (New American
Standard), considered or balanced (Elberfelder, Luther 1984), gave heed
(King

James,

Luther

1545),

explained

(Vulgata)

or

listened

(Einheitsbersetzung).
The midrash however does not translate or explain the word with a different
word. Rather, in order to think thinking through the word , it goes deeper into

the flesh of the letter and searches the image, the visible body. , the
midrash contemplates, is . The image of reading and learning as
bending ears was already introduced in the first lines of the midrash. Now we
read that to say Shlomo taught Torah, made people think the words of the Torah,
means that he made ears to the Torah. By leading the abstract word back
to the body, the human corporeal body and its own body as word, by reincarnating it, the midrash itself thinks and makes us think thinking in the image
of , of the ear: What does ear mean exactly? Does thinking Torah mean
hearing? Does the ear then belong to the thinker or to the Torah? What
does it mean to make ears to the Torah?
Much food for thought. At this point, the midrash has shown at least one thing:
if making ears is in fact the way of generating thought, of thinking the words
of the Torah that the midrash, as everyone else, learned from Shlomo, if
making ears is therefore precisely what the midrash itself has been doing with
the Kohelet verse and the word , then what it means is: to provide an image,
to show. Making ears is giving something to see. The vision of the ear
seeing hearing shows thinking in the image of perception, noesis as aeisthesis.

Mashal
Does midrashic thinking then only consists in showing pictures? Could this still
be called thinking? I think not and wish now to point at the next step done here
by Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah:
Having demonstrated thinking by seeing, the midrash goes on to raise the
explicit question concerning Shlomos concrete intellectual project. How did
Shlomo make ears to the Torah? At this stage the question is however already
formulated in the explicit terms of midrashic contemplation, of aesthetic

10

thinking, which looks for likeness: ? , until

Shlomo arose, what was the Torah like?
In response, the midrash provides a series of five images, which are explicitly
displayed as such, using the likeness formulation: - and it was similar
to something and so in the same way it was so and so. There are three
groups of images. I suggest that the second group, the tannaitic, brought in the
name of earlier rabbis, should in fact be read first because it provides the most
direct and literal imaging of making ears to the Torah: R. Yosey said: it was
similar to a big crate full of fruits that had no ear and could not be carried and
one clever person came and made ears to it and it started to be carried by
means of the ears, so in the same way, until Shlomo arose, no one was able to
make sense of the words of Torah; after Shlomo arose everyone began to
contemplate Torah. The ear now literally belongs to the Torah itself and is no
longer the human hearing organ, but a handle for carrying around heavy
weights. The two other groups also provide images of mediated accessibility to
the Torah.
The specific element I wish to indicate, however, and therewith to conclude, is
the further step done by the midrash, from the image to the concept. The first
instance of this operation is found in the first print version of Shir ha-Shirim
Rabbah from around 1520. Here the contemplation of Shlomos seminal act of
teaching making ears to the Torah is not carried out only through a
question on its likeness (What was the Torah like?). This version makes a
further step and indicates what for the midrash is the essential element common
to all the images provided, which it now therefore generalizes and
conceptualizes: , until Shlomo arose, there was
no dugma. comes from the Greek word, deigma, meaning that which is
shown and demonstrated, the manifest, the visible, that can be seen. In other
words, Shlomo has shown how to show, he provided the image for imaging.

11

This is the Song of Songs: the Urbild, the first image, the first ear to the
Torah.
But the conceptualization, which completes the basic gestus of the midrashic
thinking, is not just a later addition. Besides and perhaps prior to , the
midrash proposes another concept, which it already mentioned earlier, and to
which its entire discourse leads. Having shown the image of Shlomos
hermeneutical project in the Song of Songs, i.e. thinking by seeing, being the
model for all rabbinic midrash, our midrash concludes by naming this figure of
thought, which is the very figure of thinking. This the midrash does through
inter-texting with Shlomos third work, next to Shir ha-Shirim and Kohelet,
which in its first verse describes itself as: , the
meshalim of Shlomo ben David the king of Israel. Thus, concludes Shir haShirim Rabbah, it is by Shlomos meshalim that he made sense of the words of
Torah.