Black Fire on White Fire
by Betty Rojtman
MICHAEL C. BEARD
(Independent Scholar)
A review of Black Fire on White Fire: An Essay on Jewish Hermeneutics, from Midrash
to Kabbalah by Betty Rojtman, translated by Steven Randall (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and
London: University of California Press, 1998).
Betty Rojtman’s Black Fire on White Fire is an extraordinary work of
detailed scholarship that defies her humble appellation essay. It is not only a
significant contribution to the Contraversions series ("Critical Studies in
Jewish Literature, Culture, and Society," Daniel Boyarin and Chana Kronfeld, general
editors), but also a valuable addition to the literature on general linguistics, semiotics
and structuralism, and historical hermeneutics. Kudos, too, to Steven Randall for a
brilliant translation.
(As an aside, the title Black Fire on White Fire is a reference to Jewish
mystical belief that God wrote the Torah in letters of "black fire on white
fire" – Tan’huma, Genesis 1.)
As the subtitle suggests, Rojtman explores the methods of Jewish hermeneutics from
midrashic-talmudic exegesis to the mystical interpretations of the Kabbalah. In order to
make such a daunting task manageable, she examines the interpretive treatment of the
Hebrew demonstrative pronoun (masculine) zeh, (feminine) zot across the
spectrum of her hermeneutic field. Even so, such a seemingly limited scope must be further
constrained by limiting discussions of the neuter form and omitting the number features
(dual/plural) – regrettable but understandable.
Rojtman begins her work with a necessary orientation to historical exegetical and
hermeneutic principles held by Jewish interpreters for centuries. These are firmly
established principles ranging from the primacy of the oral tradition to readings of
scripture at the levels of literal (Peshat), allusive (Remez), parabolic (Derash), and
anagogic (Sod) (12).
Addressing the treatment of zeh/zot, Rojtman begins with a concise, lucid
explanation of its linguistic function as a demonstrative. She shows that the first levels
of traditional Jewish exegesis (literal through parabolic) conform to this
"norm" of deictic and anaphoric functionality in the Hebrew grammars and the
Midrash (16-22). We quickly move, however, to an unusual (to the non-midrashic mind)
extension of the referential function of the demonstrative to an
"anaphorization", or, borrowing Ehlich’s designation, "textual
deictic" (172, n. 11). That is, "the meaning of the passage is to be sought in a
preceding occurrence of Zeh" (172, n.11) – a method used in the Midrash
and known in Hebrew as gezerah shavah:
"… one text [is] embedded within the other, the former being connoted by the
common term zeh or zot, which occurs in both verses. Here the
referentialization is internal, intertextual in the literal sense of the term" (52).
Rojtman gives a plentitude of examples to show this hermeneutic in operation. It
amounts to a "semanticization" (50, 51) of the demonstrative and a shift in
category from demonstrative to noun, which even in the field of grammaticalization is a
reversal, though the comparison is a leap since grammaticalization is diachronic whereas
the categorial shifts in focus are synchronic. In terms of semiotics, zeh as the
signifier, by reference, is extracted from the text, given significance, and re-inserted
as the signifier of a semanticized theme (58). Thus the categorial "shift" is
semantic in nature, yet zeh/zot retains the syntactic function of a
demonstrative.
As startling as gezerah shavah might be to those of a formal linguistic or
conventional exegetical orientation, at least the referents are contextualized and bounded
by linguistic content. It is the hermeneutic step away from context and into the Kabbalah
that presents more of a challenge. Rojtman acknowledges this divergence by stating that
the "level of the interpretation of Sod [is] radically discontinuous with respect to
the lower levels of exegesis" (99). Later, after deftly wading through a clarifying
exposition of zeh/zot in the Kabbalah, she shows the
"discontinuous" nature of these systems evidenced in the treatment of the
demonstrative as two "paths":
"On the one hand, on the basis of the structures of the text, a subtle semantic
construction develops a series of connoted actualizations. On the other, a network of
symbols projects an organized thematic ensemble into each term of the sacred language.
"Textual" hermeneutics proper, which brings together the first three levels of
exegesis…, is thus radically distinguished, by its semantic relations as well as by
the laws of its functioning, from the solutions governed by anagogy" (119).
What rises to the forefront at a number of points in Rojtman’s analysis is the
concern for coherence between these seemingly incompatible hermeneutics. And therein is
the beauty and skill of chapters three and four; chapter three elucidating the place of zeh/zot
within the "secret/coded" language of Sod; chapter four bringing coherence
between Midrash and Kabbalah.
As might be expected when examining mystical symbolics, one almost presupposes a lack
of logical integrity and a weak, if any, coherence system. Rojtman shows that the
"discontinuous" paths followed by "the lower levels of exegesis" and
the Kabbalah are actually motivated by surprising consistency and constrained by a logic
"beyond the obvious features of the text" (106). Indeed, when one takes on the
final two chapters of Black Fire on White Fire, it is like stepping into an area of
linguistic/philosophical speculation that tempts the exegetical scholar yet frightens at
the same time.
Rojtman’s conclusion is a description of the very coherence system hinted at
throughout her work. If one is to question the discoveries explicated throughout the book
and finalized in chapters four and five, such questions would have to address the
conclusions for coherence first. Here Rojtman states that "the text—the
labyrinthine paths of meaning—is only a new modality, another unveiling of this
unique underlying structure" (159). Rather than argue that point, it would be a
worthy task to examine other hermeneutic systems of the same time (ancient through early
medieval) to see if there is additional evidence for a universal, constraining semiotic
motivating coherence systems.
