Citation

Horowitz A. Prooftexts - Journal of Jewish Literature History 2022; 39(2): 257-276.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022)

DOI

10.2979/prooftexts.39.2.04

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article offers a reading of Yaakov Shabtai's Past Continuous in light of the theory of messianism espoused by Gershom Scholem, whom Shabtai deeply admired both as a historian and as a thinker. This interpretation identifies the novel's realm as a postideological and postrevolutionary one. Definitive worldviews and metanarratives such as communism, socialism, and, in the Israeli case, Zionism have long been gone, creating a moral and existential decline and void that is explained in messianic terms. Following the dialectical interpretation of messianism presented in Scholem's work on Jewish mysticism, this essay reads Past Continuous as a postmessianic novel. Its main venue is life experience in a postmessianic world, and it draws from a particular narrative in Jewish history that Scholem vividly depicted, primarily in his 1937 essay "Redemption Through Sin" and his 1957 voluminous biography of Shabbetai Ẓevi, the seventeenth-century false messiah, as well as an extensive interview with him, which, as documents in Shabtai's archive show, had a significant influence on the making of Past Continuous. A reading of the novel in light of Scholem's texts can also extract three major stances on life in a postmessianic world, which derive from Scholem's writings and are projected in the philosophical conversations as well as in the mundane activity of the various protagonists. The article stresses the similarity between Shabtai's novel and Scholem's historical and theoretical premise and points to the three theoretical alternatives demonstrated in the novel, as well as a fourth alternative: Goldman's suicide as a result of his failure to follow none of the three worldviews. Demonstrated here is the political theology of Past Continuous: a compelling narrative of messianic decline that illustrates an existential predicament as well as a radical fracture in post-1948 Jewish and Israeli identity. © Prooftexts Ltd.

Language: en