Arts, Culture and Media

This article studies midrash using a cognitive-narrative approach to cultural change, focusing on emotions. It suggests that transfer of traditional cultural material has to address emotions as a legitimate incentive for action. Changing the emotionality in traditional material to fit the current cultural, enables to keep the continuity with the past, and to introduce necessary changes to the culture. In this article I introduce the concept of ‘mythic cognition’ (Donald), the human tendency to perceive reality as a story; I will then study the cultural artefact produced by mythic cognition, stories and narratives, and the pivotal role emotions play in them, according to scientific (LeDoux, Damasio) as well as cultural (Frevert, Rosenwein) study of emotions. Lastly I will present a case study from rabbinic culture, studying how the rabbis interpret biblical narrative thereby adapting the emotionality to their culture. I will theorize this interpretive rabbinic activity focusing on narratives and emotionality, and will compare it with some other theories of midrash.

This article takes the narrative nature of parables seriously and looks at their role from this perspective. After theorizing the role of stories from a 'culture and cognition' perspective, four meshalim from the Tanchuma Midrashim are studied: 'Grasshoppers in a jar' (about the Tower of Babel), 'Abraham's circumcision', 'The baby on the table' (about the sacrifice of Isaac), and 'The calf and its mother' (about Joseph and the Egyptian exile). The conclusion  of this case study is that the role of the meshalim is not to interpret the biblical text as such, but to change the audience's attitude toward the biblical story. For this, the points of agreement between the mashal and the biblical story need only be minimal. In order to effectuate this new attitude, the meshalim in the Tanchuma Midrashim, which are usually based on earlier midrash on the said biblical text, adopt these existing midrashim while at the same time trasforming them into new stories that are more suitable for the Tanchuma audience. usually this amounts to a 'softening' of the message of the existing, earlier midrash.

for the AAJS conference " By the Rivers of Babylon: Memory, Emotion and Jews " 11-12 February 2018, Curtin University, Perth (Western Australia) Surprisingly, the verse from Ps. 137:1 does not find expression in Midrash Tanchuma, a late midrash which is the focus of my research; but other people in Tanchuma do cry, and my presentation will focus on them. My research is based on cutting edge neurological research of emotions conducted by Lisa Feldman Barrett and presented in her book How Emotions Are Made ; Feldman Barrett claims that emotions are not universal, but are very much culturally constructed. Therefore, when studying emotions in ancient cultures, one should not assume that the ancient narratives refer to the emotional phenomena known in modern cultures. Historical studies of emotions have coined concepts such as 'emotional communities' and 'lost' and 'found' emotions, and these help to study the unique emotionality found in ancient culture. In order to discern the emotionality connected with crying in Tanchuma, I will study storylines where the verb 'to cry' (‫בכה‬) appears. I will compare biblical usage of the verb 'to cry' to the midrashic usage; in Tanchuma we find cases where the biblical protagonists do not cry, but in the midrashic storyline they do, we also find cases where the biblical protagonist cries, but the midrash changes the storyline, and this points to a usage different from the biblical one. This new approach to the study of emotions, which is story-based and not word-based, is very revealing of the uniqueness of ancient emotions, and avoids the tendency to ascribe modern emotionality to ancient people.

The aim of this study is to introduce emotions as an analytic concept into the study of Early Judaism. Emotions are the incentive for action for any organism, and much more so for humans, who are driven not only biologically but also by culture, which is their imagined reality. Based on cutting edge neuroscience research (Feldman Barrett), as well as the historical study of emotions (Rosenwein, Frevert), this paper will closely examine one case of such evolution, namely the translation of emotions from biblical stories into midrash, the narrative form of rabbinic literature. The story of the expulsion of Hagar and its reception in the Tosefta. I will show how in order for the biblical story to be accepted in the rabbinic culture, an adaptation of the emotionality had to take place. I will infer the emotions not from studying emotional words, but from studying what drives the protagonists into action. Lastly, I will theorize this rabbinic midrashic activity focusing on narratives and emotionality, and will compare this approach with other theories of midrash (Heinemann, Fraenkel, Boyarin, Halertal, Levinson, Rosen-Zvi). This article will therefore contribute to theorizing the midrashic activity, as well as to the study of emotions from a cognitive-narrative perspective. I hope to show how important the study of emotions is when aiming to understand historical processes, especially those of development of new

This article studies how parables are used by the implied author in Tanchuma for establishing an emotional community.

To be published in the volume Parables in Changing Contexts (to appear in the JCP series, Brill, Leiden, Spring 2018), edited by  Annette Merz, Eric Ottenheijm & Marcel Poorthuis

Organized by Ronit Nikolsky Report The original mission statement ('event rationale') The rationale behind the initiative is to upgrade the study of rabbinic literature to the evolving field of 'history of emotions'. This field of research can be perceived as part of the cognitive revolution in the humanities, but contrary to some directions such as cognitive linguistics or some forms of the cognitive study of religion, the history of emotions is very much culture focused, both by its data as well as by its results: the objects studied are cultural, such as texts or artifacts and not human brain, as in the cognitive studies; further, the result are always about cultures and not about the brain. Emotions are part of human cognition both in modern neurology as well as in the field of culture-and-cognition. Within cognition they have a special status, being the bridge between cognitive abilities and the sphere of meaning: things are meaningful when they have an emotional impact and are subject to emotional engagement. Therefore, emotions are an important tool for culture change: they enable engagement with the new, especially if it is well connected to the familiar. Rabbinic literature is an especially fertile ground for the study of cultural change, because on the one hand it is a locus of change and innovation, but on the other hand, it is traditional and dependent on an ancient text, the Bible. Adaptation of the biblical text to the rabbinic culture had to take place in, and engagement with an old (and not so familiar) text had to be established, in order for rabbinic culture to be a defined group with a glorious past. In rabbinic literature we find emotionally based engagement created with the new culture, with halakha (for example in midrashim which are stressing the costliness of it, and its divine origin), with the Bible as a divine revelation, and with the protagonist of the biblical stories and their emotions as models of behaviour (for example when biblical character are said to act out of halakhic considerations). We therefore seek to established the typification of emotions in rabbinic literature, by following how the rabbis suggest emotional connection with their emerging culture. Technical information about the workshop The workshop aimed at establishing the research of emotions in Rabbinic literature. Much research is conducted about emotions in other literatures and cultures of Late Antiquity, including emotions in the Bible, in Qumran and Hellenistic cultures and Hellenistic Jewish