TARRYING WITH THE APOCALYPSE 263

TARRYING WITH THE APOCALYPSE 263

But this process of “glid[ing] from one bearer to the other”, this gradual “pac[ing] off [of] the whole orbit of creation” cannot happen all at once; the apocalyptic energy of love has to be “retained” if it is not to destroy but to trans- form creaturely reality. The obstacle of ritual, a stumbling block of heteronomy that will disrupt its spontaneous overflow, must slow its restless negativity down. Thus, while in Hegel, the rush of negativity is being slowed down in the works of

the Slave, living in “the fear of the Lord”, 19 in Rosenzweig, the revolutionary discharge of love is counteracted by the controlling device of the Law as the non- negotiable given. Both, however, derive their notions of “retainers” from the same proverb in the Book of Job: “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom” (Job 28:28). In Rosenzweig, the element of “fear”, interpreted as non-negotiable respect for the Law’s heteronomy, leads to the “wisdom of love”, as opposed to love’s “madness”.

Although Gershom Scholem felt no sympathy for Rosenzweig’s project, it was nonetheless he who spotted the crucial role of the Rosenzweigian concept of the Law as a defensive mechanism, a sort of stopping device, designed to interrupt, arrest and attenuate the apocalyptic fire, to prevent both the subject and the world from instantaneous annihilation. To explain the functioning of this defence, Scholem introduced two useful metaphors. First, the traditional meta- phor of lightning that symbolizes the vertiginous moment of revelation as an antagonistic flash of the transcendent in the immanent: an infectious fire that, when left uncontrolled, burns the soul down to cinders (which is precisely what happens in Levinas, for whom the traumatism of revelation necessarily leads to sacrificial death in the act of substitution). The second metaphor, of his own making, is the one of a “lightning rod”: the device which both uses and tames divine energy, directing it towards the ground of the creaturely condition, and thus makes it separate, “no longer in heaven” (lo beshamaiim). Thus, between revelation itself and the religious ethics of the Law, which, in fact, is nothing else but the other name of the “lightning rod”, there appears a moment of non-iden- tity, a very Derridean différance indeed, in terms both of “difference” and

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“delay”: Here, in a mode of thought deeply concerned for order, it (the anarchic element)

underwent metamorphosis. The power of redemption seems to be built into the clockwork of life lived in the light of revelation, though more as restlessness than as potential destructiveness. For a thinker of Rosenzweig’s rank could never remain oblivious to the truth that redemption possesses not only a liberating but also a destructive force — a truth which only too many Jewish theologians are loath to consider and which a whole literature takes pains to avoid. Rosenzweig sought at least to neutralize it in a higher order of truth. If it be true that the lightning of redemption directs the universe of Judaism, then in Rosenzweig’s work the life of the Jew must be seen as the lightning rod whose task it is to render harmless its destructive power. (Scholem 1995, p. 323)

19. See the section ‘Fear’, para. 195 in Hegel (1967).

BIELIK-ROBSON

Scholem himself, personally more prone to apocalyptic solutions, feels somewhat ambiguous toward Rosenzweig’s wary and considerate ways. He praises Rosenz- weig for noticing the apocalyptic breeze at all, which “provides some fresh air in the house of Judaism” (Scholem 1995, p. 323). Yet, he criticizes him for his general intention to appease “the anarchic element”, which, as I have attempted to demonstrate here, is neither completely true nor fair: the lightning rod of rituals and Halachic orders does not serve to render the destructive power of apocalyptic revelation “harmless,” but to make it effective; it is not to manifest itself in futile “restlessness”, but in concrete mitsvot. The Law, therefore, is a defensive mechanism, but not in a purely pejorative sense; like all Freudian Abwehrmechanismen , it also has a functional side of a necessary compromise formation between the commandments of other-worldly love and the necessities of the fallen worldly condition.

The intention of both philosophers, Rosenzweig and Levinas, is thus similar — they both want to use revelatory energy as a redemptive ethical force, and thus change the plane of the messianic concern: from the ontological to the strictly moral. Yet, the difference lies in the way in which they perceive the true locus of commandments. Whereas Levinas locates ethics in the flash of revelation itself, which, as a “madness” of anarchy and amorphy, undermines every form as such, Rosenzweig doubles this locus, introducing in between an essentially defensive moment of a form-giving neutralization. It is no longer the strong light that destroys but energy harnessed to redemptive works, in which the subject passes this energy from one neighbouring thing to another, thus aiming at the redemptive transformation of the whole world. This careful channelling, which

does not allow the catastrophic repetition of the “breaking of the vessels”, 20 is absolutely necessary if the hand of the world clock is to move from the stage of passive revelation to the stage of active redemption, where “the love for God is to express itself in love for one’s neighbor” (Rosenzweig 1985, p. 214). It needs the unbreakable vessel of the Law that burns a steady flame of “effective” neighbourly love, constantly fuelled by apocalyptic lightning.

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In his “Reflections on Jewish Theology”, Scholem (1976, p. 277) claims that messianism is a distinctive feature of the entire “living Judaism”, which includes not only Benjamin with his peculiar Sabbatian-Frankist, radically antinomian twist, but also Franz Rosenzweig, a law-obeying, pious Jew. Despite his own reluctance concerning the all-too-patient Rosenzweigian strategy of postpone- ment, where the Law becomes a “lightning rod” for the apocalyptic fire of revelation, Scholem does not deny Rosenzweig access to the messianic. In my analysis, I have tried to facilitate this problematic access and show that by inventing the defensive mechanism of the “lightning rod”, Rosenzweig makes the Law function within the messianic logic of redemption — as a mediator or an

20. This, obviously, is the famous Lurianic motif of shevirath ha-kelim, which begins the cosmic catastrophe of creation.