Wimpfheimer_ Is it not so.pdf

80 ❙ Barry Wimpfheimer
35 The term vela hi has an intriguing history. Early Talmud critics noted the tendency
for this term to end all dialogue and disagree with prior conclusions. This led to
the assumption that some, and for later critics most, of these statements are later
additions to the Talmud's text. A summary of early sources can be found in
Shamma Friedman, ``¦Al derekh eker hasugya,'' in Mekarim umekorot: Me¥asef
lemadda¦ei hayahadut, ed. ¼aim Zalman Dimitrovsky (New York: Jewish Theological
Seminary, 1977), 286 n. 14; Moshe Benovitz, ``Critical Commentary to
Chapter Shevu¦ot Shtayim Batra of the Babylonian Talmud'' (Ph.D. diss., Jewish
Theological Seminary, 1993), 520, states succinctly that the term results from a
period in which the formulated text is unchangeable and must be reacted to rather
than changed. Here we are arguing that the stam does not change Rava's response,
but protests this response through the usage of this term.
36 In our parallel example, Freud seemingly retains the last word as the editor of Dora's
case history. While Dora's voice is heard mutely against a loud Freudian backdrop,
the decision to abandon treatment is psychoanalyzed as a fault of Dora's, not a
shortcoming of Freud's. Freud's publisher, coming after Freud's editing of Dora's
story, parallels the stam in overcoming the controlling ego of the text's primary
scholar. Freud's original title eliminates the subjectsÐDora and himselfÐand
focuses on the object: ``Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria.'' The publisher
creates the more compelling title, Dora, and recognizes the relational author
of the story, the analysand.
37 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), 158 and Dinitia Smith, ``Philosopher
Gamely in Defense of His Ideas,'' New York Times, 30 May 1998, B7: ``Mr. Derrida
did not seem angry at having to de®ne his philosophy at all; he was even
smiling. `Everything is a text; this is a text,' he said, waving his arm at the diners
around him in the bland suburbanlike restaurant, blithely picking at their lunches,
completely unaware that they were being `deconstructed.'''
38 Jacques Derrida, ``Structure, Sign and Play,'' in Richard Macksey and Eugenio
Donato, eds., The Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences
of Man (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), 264.
39 It is possible that this clash is a replaying of the time-honored clash between Torah
and Derekh Erets.
40 See Sifre Devarim Piska 34.
41 Two versions of this name circulated among the original textual witnesses: Mar and
Mari, though the latter had spellings with and without an `. The names eventually
appeared in the early printed editions as consecutive words until Solomon ben