{"id":56811,"date":"2019-06-04T15:24:37","date_gmt":"2019-06-04T12:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=56811"},"modified":"2020-04-24T14:04:02","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T11:04:02","slug":"malbims-dispassionate-scripture-naomis-lament-turned-lecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/malbims-dispassionate-scripture-naomis-lament-turned-lecture\/","title":{"rendered":"Malbim\u2019s Dispassionate Scripture: Naomi\u2019s Lament Turned Lecture"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[337],"acf":{"old_id":"56811","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":48165,"related_cahpter":"235","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"As we count up to Shavuot we are excited to share new, exclusive content  from a collection of essays: \u201cGleanings: Reflections on Ruth\u201d edited by Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern of YU, published by Maggid\/Koren. We\u2019re grateful to be able to share selected excerpts from a wide array of writers, leading up to Shavuot and the reading of the Megillah.","content":"<p>A penniless Naomi stands on the threshold of Bethlehem, and, reacting to the shock of old neighbors, she offers us what is ostensibly one of the rawest moments in Scripture. And yet, Malbim (Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Weisser, 1809-1879) \u2013 with highly intricate and deeply original interpretive mechanics \u2013 neuters her emotive force and contorts her poetic but visceral grief into an act of deliberate and calm teaching. As we shall soon see, he turns what others have read as blistering lamentation into a placid lecture. And this evasion, even erasure, of natural feeling, forms a broader pattern across the biblical commentaries of this exegetical master.<\/p>\n<p>Malbim\u2019s pattern of interpretive work emerges as a deliberate choice designed to mitigate the sentimentalization of Scripture \u2013 a choice stemming from a larger spiritual vision. Within this context, Malbim\u2019s inimitable treatment of Naomi\u2019s aforementioned grief no longer serves as a mere exegetical curiosity but contributes to a broader philosophy of both interpretive and spiritual ethics. Malbim\u2019s transformation of Naomi\u2019s pain into a moment of composed pedagogy functions as a signal for how he intends the biblical text to be read writ large, and how he believes the righteous should live their lives.<\/p>\n<p>For Malbim, the pinnacle of spiritual life is the riddance of self-interest \u2013 the saint must subdue every sense of fiscal, physical, or psychological pleasure. Even when directed toward a virtuous cause, visceral instinct is a distraction from the equanimity that pure service requires \u2013 it cannot contribute toward a redeemed existence as it drags the soul into a narcissistic state, a state when the self begins to eclipse divinity. Thus, for Malbim, life is best spent pruning impulse to improve the soul. In perhaps its pithiest form, this time in his biblical commentary, Malbim puts it as follows: &#8220;The core of living is the life of the intellect and of service, which is called \u201cHuman Living,\u201d not the life of feelings, which is mere animal living&#8221; (Gen. 23:1).<\/p>\n<p>So, though Malbim fails to produce an exegesis suffused with feeling, it is not because he is incapable of it or confined by the Ghetto\u2019s oppressive ceiling \u2013 he bends the text in a very different direction because he seeks a very specific kind of spiritual perfection; he moralizes the ostensibly dramatic so as to produce a deliberate and dispassionate ethic.<\/p>\n<p>For Malbim, the biblical text manifests its sanctity as a pedagogical document, not as a mythic drama; biblical figures are most profound when they are teaching, not merely feeling. Jephthah\u2019s failure and Naomi\u2019s fall are justifiably canonized \u2013 in Malbim\u2019s eyes \u2013 for their normative worth, not their emotive force. Naomi\u2019s Jobian lamentation may well engage our emotional imagination, but, for Malbim, it fails to educate our moral imagination; it may well move us, but it fails to improve us, and thus it must be rendered differently. This is how Malbim felt that he had to read Naomi\u2019s speech, and this is how we are to best understand Malbim\u2019s dispassionate Scripture.<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":55486,"id":55486,"title":"judges-ruth-gleanings3","filename":"judges-ruth-gleanings3.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/judges-ruth-gleanings3.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/struggles-storytelling-and-salvation\/judges-ruth-gleanings3\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"judges-ruth-gleanings3","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":55288,"date":"2019-05-14 13:26:00","modified":"2019-05-14 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