A brief message for 10/7
To represent for others and for ourselves our lived felt sensed suffered experience; to represent — to re present, to make present, bring into time, our suffered, undergone, life — we have to use the language we are born into. And that language is always the possession of those whose hands into which we are delivered. And so — by this simple fact, that our — not just knowledge of the world but the alphabet to build the a.bability to say it — this felt suffered lived knowledge — is the possession of the others, we, each one, are two. We are the (1) body from a body pushed out or cut out into life, and the (1) into which the tongue of our house is pushed down into, a, cut through into our body — becoming our body of words and speech. And so — this fundamental, plain idea: of two territories, joined by a border — what is felt imagined and undergone, and what can be spelled and said of it to others and ourselves, this simple fact of word within world is given the single word — by replacing the inwardness of inmost life with the external tongue within us, replacing IN with EX, creating extimacy.
"Extimacy," coined by Jacques Lacan, disciple of Freud.
Because Moses dies — not submitting to time as everyone dies, expiring, but obeying the command, "Die on the mountain," given by God: die on the mountain — not a command for suicide, because Moses did not commit suicide. Moses, like his brother Aharon, dies of speech. Dies by speech. Dies by making what is heard come to pass. Moshe pays the price of his not making the speech of G d come to pass with permanent exile from The Land: he will not cross the Jordan. Death not the price of transgression (at the Waters of the Rock), but exile — even his grave unknown, forever. Exile the price for not making what is heard-spoken come to pass. Death — this his being at the peak of his powers, his final act of making what is heard-spoken come to pass — "go die on the mountain," Hashem says to Moshe, once all his speaking is through — meaning: your work is now complete. And in this way — because it is the speech of Moshe which gives the Jews their tongue, their vocabulary, their — our — tongue, our vocabulary, our memory — not the memory of our (1) lived suffered unutterable intimate experience, but the vocabulary of our extimacy, vocabulary of the having a tongue cut into (1) and making it (1) of others. And so in this sense, Moshe permanently holding a place outside the land — in view, but outside it, unable to enter, holding a place that's only known through speech — his grave, also, by speech lost — Moshe becomes the extimacy of the people Moshe becomes the diasporic body of Israel having now cut its tongue into its body. He remains the outside within. And so — there is a fundamental structure of exile within the very meaningfulness and structure — the very inception — lekh lekha — of the Jew — whether as State or People or person, and in this sense we — those not inside The Land who were not born inside The Land who have not made it in return to The Land yet or ever will — we are the extimacy of Israel. We are the presence that makes possible absence which cannot be spoken — that shadow cast by language which is the life blood of the human. Just as language is a shadow cast by lived suffered undergone life that cannot be encompassed by the tongue cut into us just as language is the shadow cast by what cannot be spoken what cannot be spoken is the shadow cast by what can — shadows casting shadows the living silhouette of human being — a being so near to itself yet never crossing over, to itself. We in the diaspora are the extimacy of Israel, we are Moshe's presence overlooking, not entering — and within the borders, within The Land — you living in it, we are — we not in it — are within you as you are within us. We — our presence outside — is within you. We are your extimacy. Just as your extimacy, your most felt, lived, undergone, suffered Beyond is within you.
Today I do not want to speak Latin, which is pure exteriority, the tongue of the outside. Not an overlooking, but a looking away. Not to speak Latin and say "October 7" but to know Simchat Torah is the true anniversary, one that tells the time of The Book. The Book that is the tongue cut into each one of us — read or not; The Book in which the man Moshe writes, in reality, the fact of his own death and its aftermath — not as fiction, but the writing itself is the real event which comes to pass in the writing which is its becoming. It is so. Which of course seems impossible — and that is exactly what cleaves the (1) tongue to the (1) tongue. Simchat Torah — giving of The Book and rebeginning of The Beginning is the mark of the (1) year and mark of the extimacy of Israel, which we all bear — within and without its borders.
This just a note from a (1) more literally Moshaic, diasporic member of the land — a message to say: this is why we suffer as if we are there — because inside it our absence makes its eternity and reality possible and true. Even if we were (and will be) all gathered in, the gaze, overlooking, is its — our — foundation. Diaspora is extimacy and heart of The Book and The People and The Land — because it's the book — of love.
Comments