THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW,Vol.97,No.3(Summer2007)379-415 On the Cusp of Christianity: Virgin Sacrifice in Pseudo-Philo and Amos Oz YAEL S. FELDMAN It has been our mortal shame that only Christian scholars have con- cerned themselves with our own ancestral heritage of the end of the Second Temple and the beginning of the post-Destruction period. By this book the shame is somewhat alleviated. Yet in this time of revival theJewishpeoplemustreturntotheirancientpossessionsandbuilda new life on the national-humanistic ideals that earlier generations had bequeathedtoit. JosephKlausner,1921–26 Rightly is thy name called Seila, that thou shouldest be offered for a sacrifice... TheBiblicalAntiquitiesofPhilo She’ula,theycalledafterher,forPitdaisshe’ulatotheLord,abrideof blood. AmosOz,1966 BREACHING THE CANON: ‘‘WILD MAN’’ AND PSEUDO-PHILO OVER A CENTURY haspassedsincethemodernrediscoveryoftheinter- testamentalLiberAntiquitatumBiblicarum,orTheBookofBiblicalAntiquities, known mostly as Pseudo-Philo.1 The vicissitudes of this fascinating text, bothinthelastcenturyandtheprecedingtwomillennia,havebeenoften toldfromthetimeitwasfirstintroducedbyLeopoldCohninhispioneer- 1. Namedsoinmodernscholarshipbecause,thoughanonymous,ithadbeen erroneously attributed to Philo of Alexandria. In this article I will refer to the Biblical Antiquities as Pseudo-Philo, referring in all cases to the work, not to the anonymousauthor. TheJewishQuarterlyReview(Summer2007) Copyright(cid:2)2007CenterforAdvancedJudaicStudies.Allrightsreserved. 380 JQR 97.3 (2007) ing essay ‘‘An Apocryphal Work Ascribed to Philo of Alexandria,’’ pub- lishedintheJewishQuarterlyReviewin1898.2Despitesomedisagreement, thereis currentlya scholarlyconsensusthat thistext datesfrom the first or second century, and that it falls into the category of the ‘‘rewritten Bibles’’—suchasTheBookofJubileesandtheGenesisApocryphon—yetwith astrongancient,pre-rabbinic,midrashicstreak.3 While studiesof this textflourished inWestern languages, ithad little impact on Hebrew culture. Like most intertestamental literature, it re- mainedontheperipheryof the HebrewRenaissance,asJosephKlausn- er’searlypleaabovebearswitness.4EvenafterthepublicationofArtom’s Hebrew translation in 1967,5 it continued to sit on the sideline in Israeli education and popular consumption, while only academics occasionally mineditforthecuriousflourishesofitsrewriting.6 Against this background, it may sound odd to suggest that Pseudo- Philohadasignificantimpact—heretoforeunacknowledged—onamajor Israeli author, in fact, one of Israel’s most canonical writers, Amos Oz (ne´ Klausner!).Tocomplicatematters,thestoryinquestion,‘‘IshPere’’’ (Wild Man), had been published in 1966—a full year before Artom’s Sefer kadmoniyot ha-mikra’ appeared in print.7 As we will see, the young Oz had fortuitously stumbled on a Hebrew rendition of a fragment of 2. For recent scholarship, see Howard Jacobson, A Commentary on Pseudo- Philo’sLiberAntiquitatumBiblicarumwithLatinTextandEnglishTranslation,2vols. (Leiden,1996).Myepigraphiscited,however,fromthefirstEnglishtranslation byM.R.James(London,1917),initsrepublicationbyKtav,TheBiblicalAntiqui- ties of Philo (New York, 1971), with an extensive prolegomenon by the editor, LouisFeldman. 3. For the later dating argument, see Alexander Zeron’s Ph.D. dissertation, ‘‘Shitatoshelba‘alkadmoniyotha-mikra’’’(TelAvivUniversity,1973),inwhich Zeron arguedinter aliafor alonger span of dating(‘‘after the Destruction,and perhapsaftertheBar-KokhbaRevolt,butbeforethe8thCentury,’’45–54),and henceforacloserrelationshipwithrabbinicmidrash. 4. The Messianic Idea in Israel, ‘‘General Note’’ to part 2, ‘‘The Books of the ApocryphaandPseudoepigrapha,’’signed1921–26(p.153oftheHebreworigi- nal[Jerusalem,1927],andp.247oftheEnglishtranslationbyW.F.Stinespring [London,1956]).Mytranslationissomewhatmodified,however.Alltranslations fromtheHebrewaremineunlessotherwisestated. 5. E.S.Hartom,Seferkadmoniyotha-mikra’(TelAviv,1967).Remarkably,Bib- licalAntiquitiesisnotincludedintheentry‘‘Apocrypha’’intheEncyclopediaJuda- ica, although by the time of its publication Biblical Antiquities had been already comparedtoJubileesandotherapocryphalbooks. 6. SuchastheexoticadventuresofKenaz,anotherwiseratherobscurebibli- calfigure(talkswithYairaAmit,YaakovElboym,AvigdorShin’an). 7. AmosOz,‘‘IshPere’,’’Keshet9.1(Fall1966):86–104. ON THE CUSP OF CHRISTIANITY—FELDMAN 381 Pseudo-Philo, though he clearly had no idea about its provenance, as it hadbeenpublishedwithoutanyattribution.8Obviously,Ozwasunaware of theproblematically marginal source ofthe text. It isalso questionable whether he knew of his great uncle’s call, four decades earlier, for re- newed interest in intertestamental literature. Yet I would argue that it was precisely the marginality, or perhaps liminality, of this text that of- fered him a different vantage point, an ‘‘extraneous’’ perspective, from which he could reenvision and intertwine the two troubling sacrificial narrativesoftheHebraic(andJewish,andZionist)canons:theAkedah, orBindingofIsaac,andthesacrificeofJephthah’snamelessdaughter. True, to the modern mind there is nothing unusual in the coupling of thesetwonarratives,seeminglywovenwiththesamemythicalyarn(and thisdespitetheobviousdifferencesbetweenthem,as So¨renKierkegaard famouslyremindedusinFearandTrembling).9YetIdaresaythatthisper- ceptionrepresentsaChristiantradition,whichisquitedifferentfromthe Judaic one. My emphasis is on ‘‘tradition,’’ since in contemporary culture the linking of the two sacrificial narratives is commonplace10 (with the exception of Derrida’s essay, The Gift of Death,11 to which we will later return). My argument, then, is that by weaving these two stories together Oz breached the Hebraic canon. Moreover, by doing this in 1966 he also unobtrusivelyanticipatedboththefeministcritiqueoftheJephthahstory andtheIsraelipsycho-politicalassaultontheAkedah,commonlyblamed on the 1967–73 wars. Most importantly, I propose that the particular amalgam created by Oz was greatly facilitated by one of Pseudo-Philo’s celebratednarrativeextravagancies:itsmagnificationoftheroleofJeph- thah’s daughter (among other women characters),12 who is named here for 8. Nashim ba-tanakh (Women of the Bible), compiled and edited by Israel Zmora(TelAviv,1964),94. 9. So¨renKierkegaard,FearandTrembling,trans.W.Lowrie(Princeton,N.J., [1941]1970),68–69. 10. Tonamejustafewexamples:MiekeBal,DeathandDissymmetry(Chicago, 1988), 109–13; Jon Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (New Haven, Conn., 1993);AliciaOstriker,‘‘Jephthah’sDaughter:ALament,’’Cross-Currents(Sum- mer2001).MythankstoAliciaformanyinspiringconversations. 11. JacqueDerrida,TheGiftofDeath,trans.D.Wills(Chicago,[1992]1995). 12. Sincethelate1980s,scholarshaveexploredindetailthespecialattention thattheauthorofPseudo-Philohadlavishedonhisfemalecharacters.PieterW. Van der Horst even suggested that the book could not have been written by a male author! See his ‘‘Deborah and Seila in Ps-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Bibli- carum,’’ Messiah and Christos: Studies in the Jewish Origins of Christianity, ed. I. 382 JQR 97.3 (2007) thefirst time,andwhodaringlyidentifiesherself—consciouslyandenthu- siastically—withthesacrificed(ratherthanbound)Isaac. Before I unfold my three-tiered argument, however, the first question to ask is why is this story the least-known short fiction in the corpus of thismasterfulcraftsman? Well,technically,‘‘IshPere’’’isavailableonlyinits1966journalpubli- cation, which appeared closely after Oz’s first collection of stories and apparentlygottotallyeclipsedbythedebutoftheyoungauthor.13Atthat time,itmusthaveconfronteditsreaderswithasenseofforeignness,both thematically and stylistically. Unlike most literary protagonists of the time, the wild man of the title of this story is not a contemporary Israeli but rather Jephthah, the infamous biblical judge who in less than two taut chapters succeeded in delivering the Israelites from the oppressive Ammonites but also committed two heinous crimes: the sacrifice of his namelessdaughter,andtheslaughterofsome42,000haplessEphraimites who could not distinguish between the sounds ‘Sh’ and ‘S’—a historical irony tobe revisited in the final section below.Moreover, the title of the story points to an even earlier archetype, Ishmael—the wild man of the patriarchal sagas, the ish pere’ of Genesis—thereby signaling a generic choice,thehomiletic/midrashicmode,thatfeltquiteoutofplace,certainly unexpected from a young Israeli author. Moreover, though centered on Jephthah, this story in fact attempts a synthesis of the major fraternal and filial dynamics that run through the family sagas from Genesis throughJudgesandwhilesodoingtotallyreinterpretstheminwaysthat seemalientomainstreamJudaism. That this choice was no coincidence became clear only a decade later, when the story was expanded, given a new title, and republished as the closure of the second edition of Artsot ha-tan.14 The new title, ‘‘‘Al ha- ’adamah ha-ra‘ah ha-zo’t’’ (Upon This Evil Earth), reflects a deliberate effort at creating a mythological palimpsest by superimposing on Jeph- thahandIshmaelanevenmoreprimordialfigure,Cain.Cainisofcourse the first in a line of unfavored biblical siblings, the one whose sacrifice resultedinfratricide,whichinsometraditionsmarkedas‘‘evil’’theearth/ ground on which human history was doomed to unfold. As we will see, the new title provides a clue to additional intertestamental sources, thus farunidentified,thathaveapparentlyinspiredOz’s‘‘midrash.’’ Gruenwald, S.Shaked, and G.Stroumsa (Tu¨bingen, 1992), 111–17.Cf. Cheryl Anne Brown, No Longer Be Silent: First Century Jewish Portraits of Biblical Women (Louisville,Ky.,1992). 13. Oz,Artsotha-tan(TelAviv,1966). 14. Oz, Artsot ha-tan (Tel Aviv, 1976), 200–43; Where the Jackals Howl; trans. N.deLange(NewYork,1981),168–217. ON THE CUSP OF CHRISTIANITY—FELDMAN 383 Itwasinthislaterguisethatthestorydrewsomecriticalattention.Of the few reviewers, however, just two mentioned in passing its ‘‘foreign- ness,’’cautiouslytouchingonits‘‘messianicdelusions’’(Porat)or‘‘Chris- tian martyrdom’’ (Weiss).15 Yet neither has analyzed the sources or the implicationsofthis‘‘foreignness,’’norhasanyoneconsidereditsmeaning inthecontextofitsoriginalcomposition,namely,Israelofthe1960s.For between the publication dates of the two versions of the story, 1966 and 1976,Israeliculturalclimatewasconsiderablytransformed.16Thisispar- ticularlytrueforthepublicandliteraryIsraelidiscourseonnationalsacri- fice. Any ideas that were taken for granted at the later date would not havebeensoadecadeearlier. To my mind, therefore, Oz’s early story is a subversive midrash on sacrifice, past and present. Furthermore, this subversion is constructed via several previously unacknowledged intertexts—biblical, intertesta- mental, and modern—that facilitate the author’s own startling take on sacrifice. In the following pages I offer an analysis of these intertexts, whichincludenotonlytheliminalrewritingbyPseudo-Philobutalsothe seditious teachings of the Gnostic sect known as ‘‘the Cainites,’’ those whoare believed tohaveproducedtherecently ‘‘discovered’’ (andmuch publicized)‘‘GospelaccordingtoJudas.’’ My reading, informed by recent debates on the ethics and gender of humansacrificeinbothpaganmythologyandtheJudeo-Christiantradi- tion, ultimately compels us to rethink some of the assumptions of these debates,aswellastoantedateamajorturningpointintheIsraelipsycho- politicaldiscourseonnationalsacrifice. HUMAN SACRIFICE—JEWISH VS. CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVES17 I assume that the biblical story of Jephthah and his daughter from the book of Judges 11–12 needs no repetition here. The careers of its two 15. ZefiraPorat,’’TheGolemfromZion,’’Molad(1976):481–89;HillelWeiss, ‘‘Remarkson‘TheBindingofIsaac’inContemporary[Hebrew]Literature’’(He- brew), Ha-tokheh.ah ve-ha-‘akedah (Fathers and Sons: Myth, Theme and Literary Topos),ed.Z.Levy(Hebrew;Jerusalem,1991),31–52. 16. ForthepoliticalandculturalrootsofOz’searlythematicsandpoetics,see NuritGertz’smonographAmosOz(Hebrew;TelAviv,1980).Althoughthestory treatedhereisnotevenmentionedinpassinginherotherwisethoroughexplora- tion,thelatterprovidesanappropriatesettingforit.Myanalysisadds,however, another context, one rooted in the postbiblical, apocryphal, and gnostic litera- tures that were being published at the time and to which the young writer was apparentlyexposedinhisyearsattheHebrewUniversity.SeeGertz’semphasis onhisdialoguewithhisacademicreadingpublic(p.13). 17. An earlyversion ofthis section, and of the final section below,was pub- lishedinHa’aretzLiterarySupplement(June12,2005)underthetitle‘‘WasJeph- 384 JQR 97.3 (2007) main characters in postbiblical literature do bear recalling, however. As can be expected, this unsavory biblical episode has raised many an eye- brow over the past two millennia. Jewish tradition had mostly found Jephthah culpable for the senseless death of his daughter, which was perceivedasapunishmentforhisprideandhisrashvow.Themidrashic talesswervedrasticallyfromthebiblicalnarrative,allowingthedaughter to antagonize her father, and empowering her—contra Scripture, and contra the readings of contemporary feminists18—to argue for her life, eitherfromknowledgeofthelawconcerningvowsorfrombiblicalnarra- tive prooftexts.19 Medieval exegetes, on the other hand, from David Kimhi (Radak) to Isaac Abravanel made a valiant effort to save both Jephthah’smoralsandhisdaughter’slifebyarguingfromlanguage(‘‘his only daughter’’) and syntax for an analogy between their story and the Akedah.20 From this analogy they concluded that, like Isaac, Jephthah’s daughter was not sacrificed at all but rather was consecrated to a life of ritual service.21 In the Bible there were of course only male precedents for such a solution, most notoriously Hannah’s son Samuel (yet another intertextuallinktobeexploredbelow).Thismedievalreadingisreminis- cent,however, ofcertain versionsof the Iphigenia myth,suchas Euripi- thah’s Daughter Really Named She’ila and How Did She Become a Christian Martyr?’’ 18. E.g.,Bal, DeathandDissymmetry; EstherFuchs,‘‘Marginalization,Ambi- guity,Silencing:TheStoryofJephthah’sDaughter,’’andJ.CherylExum,‘‘On Judges 11,’’ both in A Feminist Companion to Judges, ed. A. Brenner (Sheffield, 1993), 116–30 and 131–44, respectively. My thanks to A. Brenner for fruitful conversationsonthisissue. 19. Shulamith Valler, ‘‘The Story of Jephthah’s Daughter in the Midrash,’’ andPhyllisSilvermanKramer,‘‘Jephthah’sDaughter:AThematicApproachto the Narrative as Seen in Selected Rabbinic Exegesis and in Artwork,’’ both in Judges: The Feminist Companion to the Bible (Second Series), ed. A. Brenner (Shef- field,1999),48–66and67–92,respectively. 20. Theyalsoreadthe‘‘and’’connectingthetwopartsofthevow(Jgs11.31) asmeaning‘‘or,’’therebyjustifyingthesurvivalistinterpretation.SeeDavidMar- cus,JephthahandHisVow(Lubbock,Tex.,1986),8–9etpassim;DavidM.Gunn, Judges(Oxford,2005),141. 21. SeeElishevaBaumgarten’srecentsuggestionthatAshkenaziJewrycould nothaveacceptedtheProvenc¸alinterpretationduetotheirtraumaticexperience intheCrusades.IthankE.Baumgartenforsharingwithmeheressay‘‘‘Remem- ber that glorious girl’: Jephthah’s Daughter in Medieval Jewish Culture,’’ JQR 97.2(2007):180–209,priortoitspublication.Asimilardistinctionhadbeensug- gested by Shulamith Elitzur, ‘‘The Binding of Isaac: With Tears or Joy? The Impact of the Crusades on the Biblical Story in the Liturgy,’’ ‘Et Ha-da‘at 1 (1997):15–35;mythankstoYairaAmitforcallingmyattentiontothisessay. ON THE CUSP OF CHRISTIANITY—FELDMAN 385 des’IphigeniaamongtheTaurians,whereIphigenia,havingostensiblybeen rescuedatthelastminutebythegoddessArtemis,servesasapriestessin hertempleinTauris,and,ofcourse,oftheCatholicpracticeofcloistered virginityofwhichtheProvenc¸alsagesmusthavebeenaware.22 The‘‘survivalist’’reading,asitiscalledinthescholarship, hadquitea stormyhistoryintheChristianChurch,servingasalynchpinintheCath- olic/Protestant controversy over the appropriateness of female monasti- cism.23 Early Christianity, on the other hand, had eagerly accepted the enactedsacrificeand evenelevatedJephthahtoastatusofagreat‘‘hero offaith’’onaparwithSamuelandDavid(Heb11.32).Inearlymedieval visualrepresentationsheisalsocomparedtoAbraham.24InthehighMid- dleAges,however,hisdaughterbegantotakecenterstage,consequently becominganemblemoftheVirginMaryandoffemaleasceticismingen- eral,andevenamodelforChristianmaternalmartyrdomandchildobla- tion (just like the biblical Hannah, who consecrated her son Samuel to God).25 A rich history of literary and artistic representations attests that eventually both father and daughter were embraced as prefigurations of the ultimate willing sacrifice, Jesus Christ. As such, they became analo- gousinChristianitytoanothergreatsacrificialpair:AbrahamandIsaac. Inadifferentguise,thedivergencebetweenWesternandHebraicsym- bolicconstructionscontinuedin moderntimesas well.TheChristianap- proval of the sacrificeof Jephthah’s daughter seems to bealive and well in the ostensibly secular school of European political thought, from Hobbes and Locke to Rousseau, where she had been apparently appro- priated as a model for the ‘‘good subject/ citizen’’ whose life is wholly dedicated to the service of his sovereign (and later, of his fatherland).26 In Israel, on the other hand, it is Abraham’s sacrifice, not Jephthah’s, that has come to stand for national sacrifice—in a way a more ‘‘natural’’ 22. Recently Joshua Berman suggested an earlier (Karaite) source for this reading;seehis‘‘MedievalMonasticismandtheEvolutionofJewishInterpreta- tiontotheStoryofJephthah’sDaughter,’’JQR95.2(2005):228–56. 23. AnnaLinton,‘‘SacrificedorSpared?TheFateofJephthah’sDaughterin Early Modern Theological and Literary Texts,’’ German Life and Letters 57.3 (2004):237–55. 24. See Baumgarten, ‘‘‘Remember that glorious girl’,’’ who argues inter alia thatJephthah’sstatuswaswaningjustashisdaughter’sstatusbegantorise. 25. I thank Barbara Newman for the copy of chapter 3, ‘‘Crueel Courage: ChildSacrificeandtheMaternalMartyrinHagiographyandRomance,’’inher bookFromVirileWomantoWomanChrist(Philadelphia,1995). 26. MythankstoDanielleS.AllenforherbookTalkingtoStrangers(Chicago, 2004),andforreferringmetothechapter‘‘SacrificeandCitizenship,’’37–49. 386 JQR 97.3 (2007) choice, given the sex difference between the progeny sacrificed in the ostensiblyanalogousstories.27 Rabbinic Judaism, however, had vehemently rejected any imputed analogy be- tween Abraham and Jephthah. In fact, the only rabbinic text that brings these two sacrificial narratives together does this precisely in order to deny their similarity. This midrash, frequently cited in the talmudic cor- pus,beginswithaquestion:Why,outofthethreeorfourbiblicalperso- nae who asked ‘‘improper questions’’ (Eliezer, [Caleb], Saul, and Jephthah), was one only, Jephthah,answered in an ‘‘unfitting manner,’’ therebybringingaboutanunfathomedtragedy?28Insomeofitsversions thismidrashexplainsthedifferencebetweenJephthahandtheothersby placing him alone in the paradigm of human sacrifice, in tandem with AbrahamandMesha,KingofMoab.Yetassoonasthisparadigmisused, itispassionatelynegated,onlytostressthechasmseparatingAbraham’s actfromthoseofJephthahandMesha.29Thisisparticularlyevidentina later retelling of this midrash in Tanh.uma, where the quandary in fact ends with an anguished outcry that brings home the total impropriety of human sacrifice and repeats the demand for symbolic or monetary substitutionforit: ThentheHolySpiritproclaimed:DidIdesireyoutosacrifice[human] livestome,[lives]whichInevercommanded,neverspokefor,andwhichnever entered mymind (Jer19.5)? WhichI nevercommanded Abraham,that he slaughters his son. Instead I told him: Do not raise your hand against thelad(Gn22.12)...IneverspoketoJephthahtoofferuphisdaugh- ter as sacrifice to me, nor did it ever enter my mind . . . that Mesha king of Moab should offer up his firstborn son to me as sacrifice (2 Kgs3.27).(Beh.ukotay7) TheHolyOnesaidtoIsrael:Ifyoubringbeforemeyourvalueequiva- lents,I willascribeitto youas ifyou had offeredup your livesbefore 27. Given this difference, one may indeed wonder how the ‘‘social contract’’ hasovercomethelackoffitbetweenJephthah’sdaughterandthemalesexofthe typicalsoldier-citizenofthenewpolitical-militaryconstellation. 28. ThismidrashappearsinsomevariationsintractateTa’anitintheBabylo- nian Talmud, and in Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, Tanh.uma, Yalkut Shim‘oni;seeValler,‘‘TheStory,’’foradetailedanalysis.Cf.Weiss,‘‘Remarks.’’ 29. Thisabsolutedivergencesomewhatdissipateswhenweremembertheal- lusions to the implementation of the Akedahcollected by Shalom Spiegel in his monumental ‘‘Me-’agadot ha-‘akedah’’ [1950]; English translation by Judah Goldin,The Last Trial (NewYork, 1967).Spiegel’s findingswerefurther elabo- ratedandannotatedbyLevenson. ON THE CUSP OF CHRISTIANITY—FELDMAN 387 me. It is therefore stated, When anyone explicitly vows to the Lord (Lev 27.2), The Holy One said: By virtue of the value equivalents I am savingyoufromGehinnom.(Beh.ukotay8)30 Itishardtooverestimate thegulfbetweentheinterpretativepositionsof the Jewish and Christian traditions vis-a`-vis the resemblance and diver- gencebetweenthestoriesofAbrahamandJephthah.Thisgulfhighlights theuniquenessofOz’sbiblicalstory,preciselybecausehesituatedatthe core of his rewriting the very amalgam that classical Judaism had re- jected.31 Hence our first challenge is to inquire why and how Oz has conjoined two sacrificial narratives that the Jewish tradition had only grudgingly and rarely linked together. A second, not unrelated query would be: How has this choice affected his revision or perhaps re- visioningofJephthah’sdaughter? Let us begin with the latter. It is quite evident that Oz’s construction of Jephthah’s daughter is very different from her midrashic image, and evenmoresofromthemedievalone.First,sheisendowedwithaproper name,theabsenceofwhichinboththeBibleandthemidrashicretellings has aroused the ire of all feminist critics.32 More importantly, not only does she not object to fulfilling her father’s vow; on the contrary, she willfullychoosestogooutandgreethim—notinnocently,asthetraditional readingofJudges11wouldhaveit,butwithfullawarenessofhisvow. To render this act psychologically credible, the author creates a star- tling psychological family economy, which I will describe below. How- ever,itstillremainstobeseenwhetheranactofconsciouschoicesuffices to release the daughter from being a victim and whether it empowers her as a subject in her own right—an expectation often voiced in recent scholarship. I propose, on the contrary, that despite Oz’s proto-feminist choices,andnotwithstandingthedaughter’sconstructionasanamedper- son,hernarrativeisultimatelyabsorbedbyandsubjectedtothepaternal metanarrative. In the final analysis, ‘‘Ish Pere’ ’’ turns out to be yet an- 30. Translationsfollow(withsomeemendations)JohnT.Townsend’sEnglish editionofMidrashTanh.uma(JerseyCity,N.J.,1997),2:368–69.Ithankmycol- leagueJeffreyRubensteinforhishelpwiththemidrashicsources. 31. It is still an open question whether this rejection continued also in the manyfictionalrewritingsoftheJephthahstoryinJewishliterature.Seenote65 belowforLionFeuchtwanger’streatmentofthisissue. 32. BeginningwithElizabethCadyStantoninTheWomen’sBible(1895,2:25– 26), but mostly heard since the 1980s in the pioneering work of Trible, Bal, Fuchs,Brenner,Exum,etal.Itshouldbenoted,however,thatintherichlitera- turesincetheMiddleAgesthedaughterhasbeenendowedwithmanydifferent names. 388 JQR 97.3 (2007) other incarnation of the revised Akedah story that had just begun to make itsroundsinIsraelifictionofthetime. FROM BINDING TO SACRIFICE IN ISRAEL FollowingS.Yizhar’sfamousattackon‘‘FatherAbraham’’inhismassive War-of-Independencenovel,YemeZiklag,33thisnewnarrativehadslowly transposed the ‘‘binding’’ of Isaac to ‘‘sacrifice.’’ I believe, however, that in none of the many rewritings of this narrative were the ethical and ideologicalrevisionssoextremeandthecritiqueofsacrificesoaudacious as in Oz’s story, and this precisely due to its unique fusion of male and femalesacrificialnarratives. Toappreciatethispoint,weneedfirsttorecallthatdespitetherejection ofwhatwasperceivedasadiasporicpsychologyofIsaac-likeobedience, Hebrew Zionist culture maintained—its secularism notwithstanding— the traditional representation of the Akedah as a voluntary mission, carried out by father and son together. To this point, demonstrated else- where,34Iwouldliketoaddthatthepsycho-ethicaldynamicsofthiswill- ingnessfor self-sacrifice,for martyrdom,especiallyin itsmodern-secular manifestation,isofnecessitydifferentfromthedynamicsDerridaidenti- fies as ‘‘the gift of death,’’ the label he applies to Abraham’s ultimate sacrificeoflovetohischosen(divine)‘‘other,’’forwhomhefeelsasingu- larresponsibility.ByfocusinghisdeliberationsonthefirstportionofGn 22,ratherthanonitsclosureoritsdiversepostbiblicalversions,Derrida managestoexcludeIsaac,whetherassacrificeormartyr,andtoexplore, just like Kierkegaard before him, Abraham’s affair of love and responsi- bility unto death. (In this case it is not Abraham’s own death, of course, but rather the near-death of his human ‘‘other,’’ Isaac.) As a result, the KnightofFaith’s‘‘giftofdeath’’doesnotrepresenttheperspectiveofthe sacrificed but rather that of the sacrificer. Hence both Kierkegaard and Derrida view it, and correctly so, as marked by an economy of betrayal (of the victim), which like any act of betrayal dictates a behavioral code thatisasocial(andsomewouldsayunethical)—secrecy,silence,isolation, internalization.35 33. S.Yizhar,YemeZiklag(DaysofZiklag)(TelAviv,1958). 34. See my ‘‘Isaac or Oedipus? Jewish Tradition and the Israeli Aqedah,’’ BiblicalStudies/CulturalStudies:TheThirdSheffieldColloquium,ed.J.C.Exumand S.Moore(Sheffield,1998),159–89.ForanupdatedbibliographyseetheHebrew versioninAlpayim22(2001):53–77.Cf.myforthcoming‘‘WhoseSacrificeIsIt, Anyway? The Rise and Fall of Abraham in the 1950s’’ (Hebrew), Mikan 12.3 (2007). 35. Derrida,TheGiftofDeath,53etpassim.