Meditations On Authority by Shulman, David Dean

This volume, the first in the Notebook
Meditations on Authority
Series of the Martin Buber Society
of Fellows, addresses the notion of
authority in a set of multi-disciplinary
and inter-cultural perspectives. The
essays share a meditative quality,
perhaps more accessible than the usual
academic format would allow: a great
mathematician reflects on the kind of
authority mathematical truths can
(and cannot) claim; historians explore
shifting forms of institutional authority
in different historical contexts; a linguist
Meditations
on Authority
probes the authority implicit in the use
of the second person singular in modern
Hebrew oral narratives by soldiers
serving in the territories; a political Edited by David Shulman
scientist offers an unsettling account
of the largely fictive authority implicit
in democratic systems and the role of
science in rationalizing that authority;
and so on. Many of the essays embody or
give voice to the ambivalence endemic
to issues of authority, which habitually
arouses inner protest and resistance
that can become authoritative in their
own right. Wide-ranging, irreverent, and
often highly personal in tone, these essays
reflect the rich conversations and the
sheen of intellection at the Martin Buber
Society of Fellows.
Cover drawing: Eileen Shulman
 
Martin Buber Society of Fellows Notebook Series

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www.saybrand.co.il :‫עיצוב העטיפה‬ 2013 ,‫ יולי‬:‫מהדורה ראשונה‬
Edited by
David Shulman
Edited by
David Shulman
The Hebrew University Magnes Press, Jerusalem

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Printed in Israel
Contents
Preface
David Shulman VII
Trusting Experts: Reflections on Authority as a
Social Epistemological Notion
Carl Philipp Emanuel Nothaft 1
The Authority of Science in the Modern Democratic
State and its Decline since the Later Decades of the
Twentieth Century
Yaron Ezrahi 22
Under the Authority of Signs
Roy Wagner 29
Authority in Mathematics
David Kazhdan 42
Response to David Kazhdan by David Shulman 48
On Authority in Physics
Eliezer Rabinovici 51
Authority in the Bee’s Brain: Three Thoughts
C. Giovanni Galizia 56
Eger 1449: On Poverty and Authority in a Bohemian
Jewish Community
Rainer Josef Barzen 71
Conflicting Authorities: Rabbis, Physicians, Lay
Leaders and the Question of Burial
Cornelia Aust 87
“Blessed are the Peace Makers”: An Ecclesiastical
Definition of Authority in the Early Islamic Period
Uriel Simonsohn 101
Like Jonah’s Gourd: Meditations on Scriptural
Authority and the Medieval Author
Yehoshua Granat 128
Rage and Authority in S. Auslander's Foreskin's Lament
Andreas Kraft 142
“So you just flow with it”: The Inclusive Second
Person as a Discourse Strategy in “Soldier’s Testimonies”
from the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Eitan Grossman 157
Chaos, Conflict, Control: Modes of Authority in
Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies about the Occupation
Yael A. Sternhell 192
Preface
“Authority” is one of those words. You can abuse it by casual use,

assuming wrongly that everyone knows what it means. You can also
overload it with metaphysical baggage and color it with emotional
resentment, since most of us detest authority insofar as it impinges
on our wishes and whims, which it usually does. Even worse is the
academic habit of taking authority to be an “it,” an objectified notion
that is definable, say, in a Weberian cosmology or, if not Weber’s, then
someone else’s. I can honestly say that I don’t know what authority
is and often have trouble recognizing it where others see it, and if
I had to translate it into Sanskrit or Telugu or Malayalam, I might
not be able to come up with anything remotely like a commensurate
term.
Hence – given this cloud of unknowing, which I assume I share

with most of us – this volume. All the papers have intentionally
taken on a meditative format. They are not necessarily your standard
academic essays, with appropriate footnotes, though some of the
papers do follow these conventions to powerful effect. The authors,
most of them post-doctoral Fellows in the Martin Buber Society of
Fellows at the Hebrew University, together with colleagues of ours
from the Hebrew University and from the Zukunftskolleg at the
University of Konstanz, themselves invented this playful format as we
approached the conference on authority at the end of the first year of
the Society’s existence. The topic itself emerged from an after-dinner
discussion and seemed at once to be broad enough and interesting
enough to embrace all the disciplines and orientations present around
the table. As such, it provides the rudiments of a paradigm for the
VIII David Shulman
series of publications that begins with this book and that will, we
hope, be the visiting card of the MBSF, or one of them.
If we don’t know what authority is, why do we hate it so passionately?

Is it because the idea of an authored norm, heavy with formal
conventions, naturally tends to brittle objectification, probably the
prime enemy of anything alive? There is a story told about the well-
known scholar of religion, in particular of Islam, Wilfred Cantwell
Smith. Once, after a lecture on the notion of scripture, someone
asked him: “Is the Qur’an a scripture for you?” He answered: “It
was, once in my life.” He was on a boat somewhere in the Arabian
Sea, far from his family, worried about some family matter; suddenly
he “heard” in his mind the Qur’anic verse, “My mercy is more than
enough for you.” That put his heart at ease. At that moment, the
text was scripture – authoritative, we could say, in a living way. But
as I tell this story, which I heard from my friend Charles Hallisey,
already I feel that I have inflicted some harm on it; that I have, in
fact, made it into something authoritative in the most negative sense
of the word. Now the story has become scripture, and thus an object
of rebellion and distaste. I’m already sorry that I told it here.
Listen to the voice of Annamayya, a fifteenth-century Telugu poet

at the great temple of Tirupati in south India. He is speaking in a
slightly indirect fashion to the temple god, Lord Venkatesvara:
What can I say about my crazy ways?

Just laugh them off.
Take care of me.
You speak through me,

and I’m proud of my eloquence.
You control the whole world,
but I think I’m the king.
What can I say?

Preface IX
You create all these people,

and then I think I’m my children’s father.
You give whatever I have,
But I’m sure I’ve earned it all.
What can I say?
You give this world and the other,

and I think I’ve won them by my prayers.
You’re not finished with me yet.
I’m the great expert
on God.
What can I say?1
Here is a statement on authority we could live with: ironic, playful,

self-deprecating, subversive. It comes to us in what is called a padam,
a short 3-verse poem, with a refrain, that encapsulates a single, non-
repeatable moment, as befits the kind of authority made present in it.
The poet acknowledges the god as the true source of all that he says,
does, and knows; yet the ironic conclusion to the poem – the claim
to have expertise that applies to the god he has been addressing – is
not entirely unfounded. “You’re not finished with me yet” – the poet
comes close to making a threat. Annamayya does know about this
god, in an internal or intuitive way that may well surpass the god’s
own self-knowledge. Authority, here, is thus somehow mutually
fashioned or negotiated, not in any sense a given a priori, whatever
the niceties of ontic priority may be.
Can there exist something like a non-arbitrary authority – some form

of organic and integral and relatively autonomous expression of what
is true, or what is real? I tend to doubt it, although all of us have
had what could be called “truth experiences,” as if we know truth
when we encounter it. Some incontrovertible authority surely resides
1 Translated by Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman, God on the Hill:
Temple Poems from Tirupati. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
X David Shulman
in, say, the fragrance of the pine tree or the taste of fresh bread.
However, there is always the problem of designation. Kafka says,
“We were created to live in Paradise, and Paradise was designed
to serve us. Our designation has been changed; we are not told
whether this happened to Paradise as well” (Zuerau Aphorisms 84).
Who had the authority to change our designation? I think this is an
intractable problem, worthy, however, of meditation. As to changing
the designation of Paradise – is not the implication of Kafka’s dictum
that we do this routinely, thereby abusing our own innate authority?
What would innate authority feel like? One part of myself may
ally itself with conscience, or with a commitment to truth, or with
an overriding need or goal, against other, more slippery parts.
Presumably, a battle is going on much of the time. The balance at
any given moment is uncertain. Probably, in the last analysis, we
rely – as an indication of truth – only on what we have experienced
ourselves or, as Vico said, have made ourselves; only the latter are
capable of being understood. Inner authority of this kind may be a
physical, concrete matter, something one knows from bodily pain
or delight. Against such authoritative knowledge there will also, no
doubt, be a temptation to rebel, as there normally is on the level of
collective structures of authority. Indeed, we should be grateful for
the existence of such structures, since they alone have given us the
joys of resistance.
Is there a kind of authority that would be immune to rebellion and

protest? What would a world built around such a notion look like?
I suppose it would be a world not tyrannized by memory, and free
from the collective coercion derived from the brittle mythic past.
Henry David Thoreau, iconoclast, skeptic, nature mystic, wrote of
such an authority in his famous essay “On Walking”:
“He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing
life in remembering the past…His philosophy comes down to a more
recent time than ours. There is something suggested by it not in
Preface XI
Plato nor the New Testament. It is a newer testament – the Gospel

according to this moment.”
But how many of us can truly live according to such a Gospel?
Even worse, in my experience, than living with an external authority

that I cannot abide is inflicting authority from inside myself on others.
Thus, as Director of the MBSF and the editor of this volume, I must
conclude this introduction as soon as possible.
David Shulman
Trusting Experts:
Reflections on Authority as a Social
Epistemological Notion
C. P. E. Nothaft
In talking about authority, the English language provides us with

a useful distinction between people who are in authority and those
who are an authority.1 The first notion, the one referring to people
in authority, is usually addressed in political and social contexts. It
essentially means that someone is entitled to make decisions about
how other persons act or to restrict their range of possibilities to act.
To have people who impose their will on us in this way stands in a
perennial conflict with the ideals of freedom and autonomy, which
has ensured that “authority” is perceived as a fairly dirty word in
some quarters.
A similar conflict is encountered in the second case, where people
are an authority, in the sense that they exert an influence on what
others believe (which in turn may have practical consequences).
Authority is here first and foremost an epistemic notion, which again
harbors a slight ambiguity, because epistemic authority can accrue
both to speakers and to statements. The latter possess authority, in so
far as they can serve to justify or support other statements. A person
1 The distinction offered here is largely congruous with the one between practical
and theoretical authority in Edna Ullmann-Margalit, ‘Trust in Authority,’ in The
Concept of Authority: A Multidisciplinary Approach, ed. Pasquale Pasquino and
Pamela Harris. Rome: Fondazione Adriano Olivetti, 2007, 53-73, at 54.
2 C. P. E. Nothaft
qualifies as being an epistemic authority in a certain context, if at

least some of her statements will be treated by others as justified or
authoritative just by virtue of her having uttered these statements.
At first glance, the epistemic authority of persons seems to be
in no better shape than practical or political forms of authority. The
mere fact that a person utters a certain statement at time t does not
seem to be a good reason for believing anything. This intuition is
reflected in our rejection of arguments from authority, i.e., logical
fallacies of the form “x says that p, therefore p.” In the history of
Western thought, the resistance against epistemic appeals to authority
has a long and venerable tradition. In the introduction to his famed
Opus majus (1266/68), the English Franciscan Roger Bacon identified
reliance on false authority as one of the four common causes of error
found in learned writing. John Locke later dropped the circumspect
adjective false and simply listed “authority” among the four sources
of “wrong assent or error” in book four of his Essay Concerning
Human Understanding (4.19.7).2
As is well known, the emancipation of human thought from
authorities of any kind (including revealed religion) became one of the
principal goals of the Enlightenment, nicely enshrined by the Kantian
demand to “think for oneself.” This ideal, however, contrasts quite
conspicuously with the basic facts of our own ontogenesis. During our
infancy and early childhood years, our world-knowledge is to a large
degree shaped by our parents or other adult caregivers, whom we trust
instinctively and who for that matter serve as our ultimate epistemic
authorities. In the course of our further socio-cognitive development,
the authority of parents usually decreases, only to give way to new
authorities, whose influence is now restricted to certain domains of
competence. These sources typically include school teachers, but also
the members of one’s peer group, the media, and the opinions of
2 John Henry Bridges, ed., The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, 3 vols. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1897-1900, 1:1-32, 3:1-35; John Locke, An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding. London: Basset, 1690, 356.
Trusting Experts 3
certain role models such as athletes or pop musicians.3

Our reliance on second-hand knowledge by no means comes to an
end once our formative years are over. An epistemically completely
autonomous individual could not trust the diagnosis of her doctor,
neither could she reasonably expect the mechanic to fix her car, and
she would feel compelled to take an umbrella outside even when
the weather report announces a sunny and cloudless sky. Most
importantly, however, she would have to abstain almost completely
from the wonderful treasure trove of knowledge that is opened up
to us by the natural and social sciences, by geography, history,
and all the other disciplines that deeply shape our contemporary
worldview.
Our trust in testimony is valuable, because it allows us to extend
the borders of our knowledge far beyond the range of what we could
achieve on our own. Even if our range of abilities is considerable,
the reliance on testimony conveniently limits the amount of energy
that we are prepared to invest in a particular line of investigation. For
example: I have neither the competence nor the resources to test the
claims of quantum electrodynamics (and, life being short, I do not
expect this to change), but I will happily quote Richard Feynman’s
famous statement that the predictions made within his field reach
a degree of precision comparable to measuring “the distance from
Los Angeles to New York … to the thickness of a human hair.”4
My trust in Richard Feynman’s statement is rooted in the fact that
he plays the epistemic role of an expert. At first approximation, one
may say that a speaker counts as an expert if she is treated as an
3 For assessments of these phenomena from the point of view of social psychology,
see Fabrice Clément, Melissa Koenig, and Paul Harris, ‘The Ontogenesis of
Trust,’ Mind and Language 19 (2004): 360-79; Arie W. Kruglanski, Amiram
Raviv, Daniel Bar-Tal, Alona Raviv, Keren Sharvit, Shmuel Ellis, Ruth Bar,
Antonio Pierro, and Lucia Mannetti, ‘Says Who? Epistemic Authority Effects
in Social Judgement,’ Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 37 (2005):
345-392.
4 Richard Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985, 7.
4 C. P. E. Nothaft
epistemic authority for a certain range of utterances by a sufficiently

large number of hearers.
Philosophically speaking, the epistemic authority of experts can be
viewed as a special problem within the epistemology of testimony.5
Abstracting from the more involved level of contemporary philosophical
discussion, the basic problem may be summarized thus: imagine
Valerie is standing in broad daylight in front of her house, observing
her neighbor Bianca, who is chopping woodblocks in her front yard.
Let us call this observation of Valerie’s a perceptual episode, which
– under normal conditions – will cause her to believe that Bianca is
standing in the front yard chopping wood. Since Valerie’s belief is
properly causally linked to a perceptual episode, and since Valerie
qualifies as a reliable observer under normal conditions, we can say
that Valerie is thus entitled to her belief.
In fact, Valerie’s perceptual episode does not only entitle her to
this belief, but it can also entitle others, who were not there to observe
things themselves. Imagine, for instance, that Valerie walks over to
the garage, where her friend Samantha is fixing the car engine, and
reports to her what she just witnessed in Bianca’s front yard. The
assumption is that, if Valerie knows that p, so will Samantha once
she accepts Valerie’s testimony. In the scenario just described, both
Valerie and Samantha acquire knowledge about the same proposition,
but in different ways. Valerie’s knowledge is perceptual, while
Samantha’s is testimonial. At the same time, we can say that the
ultimate warrant for the proposition stays the same in both cases.
Valerie can justify her belief by citing her perceptual episode, while
Samantha can justify hers by citing Valerie’s belief, which in turn is
justified by the same perceptual episode. The warrant for Valerie’s
belief thus also warrants Samantha’s belief, even though it remains
beyond her grasp.
5 On this field see, e.g., C. A. J. Coady, Testimony: A Philosophical Study. Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1992; Jennifer Lackey, Learning from Words: Testimony as a
Source of Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Trusting Experts 5
There are different ways to construe the epistemic role of testimony

in the example just presented. According to the non-reductionist
view, which is generally traced back to the Scottish Enlightenment
philosopher Thomas Reid (1710-1796), testimony is a possible source
of knowledge, which in that capacity does not differ significantly from
other sources such as perception, memory, and reason. Just as Valerie
is entitled to her belief that p on the basis of perception, provided she
is not aware of any evidence to the contrary (which might indicate
her unreliability as an observer), Samantha will, too, be entitled to
her belief that p on the basis of Valerie’s testimony, provided that she
is not aware of any evidence to the contrary (which might indicate
that Valerie is an unreliable reporter, who is lying, misremembering,
etc.). In Tyler Burge’s modern account, the non-reductionist position
reads as following: “A person is entitled to accept as true something
that is presented as true and that is intelligible to him, unless there
are stronger reasons not to do so.”6 This is what Burge calls the
“acceptance principle.”
There are reasons to object to this view, in particular because it
seems to endorse gullibility and epistemic recklessness. Indeed, there
is something intuitively askew about the claim that we are entitled by
default to blindly trust others, just because we see no indicators to
the contrary. Our psychological attitude toward testimony is simply
not the same as our psychological attitude toward perception and
memory – and rightly so. It is true that perception and memory can
prove unreliable and deceive us just as other people can deceive us,
but unlike perception and memory, people also have intentions. They
can be reliable observers and know that p and still choose to tell us
that not-p. As a result, we should demand that a hearer is only entitled
to a testimony-based belief if there are at least some good reasons for
accepting the speaker’s testimony. Samantha, if challenged about her
belief, might appeal to her experience of living with Valerie under
the same roof for many years, during which she has proved to be a
6 Tyler Burge, ‘Content Preservation,’ Philosophical Review 102 (1993): 457-488,

at 467.
6 C. P. E. Nothaft
generally reliable reporter and shown no propensity towards being a

liar or a prankster.
On a reductionist understanding of testimony, as it has been
advocated by Thomas Reid’s compatriot David Hume (1711-1776)
and many others, the entitlement to testimony-based belief is
thus reducible to inductive reasoning about a particular speaker’s
reliability, based on perception, memory, and so forth. The problem
with the reductionist viewpoint, however, is that it tends to ignore
that part of the warrant for a testimony-derived belief is usually not
available to the hearer, as it is the warrant that entitled the speaker
to her belief that p in the first place. This warrant has to continue to
support the hearer’s belief, if testimony is supposed to be a source
of knowledge that p. Otherwise, what is left is merely a justified act
of deference, but nothing that would easily count as knowledge is
obtained through it.7
These are some of the reasons why more recent discussions
in epistemology have led to the proposal of hybrid theories of
testimonial knowledge, which try to overcome the rigid dichotomy of
reductionism vs. non-reductionism by combining both perspectives.
They emphasize that “it takes two to tango,” meaning that both parties,
the speaker and the hearer, have to make a contribution in order for
testimony to become a viable source of knowledge. The speaker has
to be sincere and possess sufficient warrant for his claim, while the
hearer is obliged to assess the hearer’s reliability and sincerity in a
non-gullible way.8
7 For the sake of simplicity, I shall bypass any discussion of how knowledge
should be defined and how it relates to the status of justified true belief. For
an attractive argument that knowledge should be instead construed along the
lines of infallible belief, see Daniel Lewis, ‘Elusive Knowledge,’ Australasian
Journal of Philosophy 74 (1996): 549-567.
8 See, e.g., Paul Faulkner, ‘The Social Character of Testimony,’ The Journal of
Philosophy 97 (2000): 581-601; Jennifer Lackey, ‘It Takes Two to Tango: Beyond
Reductionism and Non-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony,’ in
The Epistemology of Testimony, ed. Jennifer Lackey and Ernest Sosa. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006, 160-189.
Trusting Experts 7
Another condition, emphasized by Elizabeth Fricker, is that the

speaker should be better placed epistemically with respect to a
proposition than the hearer and that the hearer must recognize this
to be so.9 Why is this condition important? Imagine Samantha was
not in the garage fixing the car when Valerie observed Bianca’s
wood-chopping, but stood right next to her with her eyes closed.
In this case, she could have still relied on Valerie’s testimony that
p, but would we really be inclined to say that Samantha acquired
knowledge that p on this basis, if all she had to do was to open her
eyes in order to verify p for herself? It seems that in this example
both Valerie and Samantha were equally well-placed with respect
to proposition p, which is why Samantha acted in an epistemically
irresponsible way when she relied on Valerie’s testimony without any
attempt at fact-checking. In this scenario, the possibility – however
small – that Valerie was not telling the truth becomes relevant to the
question of epistemic entitlement, while it could have been properly
ignored if Samantha had been blind or extremely shortsighted and
thus dependent on Valerie’s testimony.
Notwithstanding the point just made, there are cases in which
even persons with closely shared expertise can be expected to rely
on each other’s testimony, especially if this is the only way to gain
new knowledge. One example would be the kind of large-scale
experiments conducted in particle physics, where dozens, sometimes
hundreds, of scientists are working on the same project for a long
period of time. This can lead to scientific papers written by dozens of
co-authors, all of whom have played different roles in the course of
the project and will therefore not always be able to personally verify
the numbers and results provided by their peers. Such cases pose a
special challenge to our understanding of knowledge as an epistemic
concept and have led some philosophers to propose that there can
be communal knowledge, shared by a group, or that knowledge in
9 Elizabeth Fricker, ‘Testimony and Epistemic Autonomy,’ in Lackey and Sosa,

The Epistemology, 225-250.
8 C. P. E. Nothaft
general is a social status not reducible to an individual knower.10

Be that as it may, it seems generally to hold true that we have good
reasons for belief in a proposition, whenever we have good reasons
to believe that others have good reasons for belief in that proposition.
Even more striking is the conclusion, advanced by the philosopher
John Hardwig, that “it is sometimes irrational to think for oneself.”11
If another person is in a better position to arrive at true beliefs
about a certain subject matter, one will best mind one’s epistemic
obligations by deferring to that person’s authority. In fact, one can
go further and claim that knowledge can sometimes be acquired via
testimony in cases where the hearer has only a minimal grasp of the
statement in question or the methods by which it is verified. Such a
strategy can be perfectly rational if one has good independent reasons
to judge the informant reliable and trustworthy, but things can get
slippery if the obscurity of a person’s pronouncements are held in her
favor and make hearers rely on her utterings more strongly than they
would if the person in question spoke plainly and understandably.
This reinforcement of intellectual authority through obscurity of
expression (the “guru-effect”) is the result of a collective epistemic
dynamic, as it can be observed in the case of religious sects and
their leaders, but arguably also in the reception of certain continental
philosophers.12
Yet there is also the opposite extreme of people who categorically
refuse to trust experts, even if there are very good reasons to do so.
Psychologists have noted that such behavior can be influenced by an
individual’s personal socialization. “Compulsive self-reliance,” which
10 See, e.g., John Hardwig, ‘Epistemic Dependence,’ The Journal of Philosophy 82

(1985): 335-349; Hardwig, ‘The Role of Trust in Knowledge,’ The Journal of
Philosophy 88 (1991): 693-708; Martin Kusch: Knowledge by Agreement: The
Programme of Communitarian Epistemology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002.
11 Hardwig, Epistemic Dependence, 343.
12 For further reflections on this topic, see François Recanati, ‘Can We Believe
What We Do Not Understand?’ Mind and Language 12 (1997): 84-100; Dan
Sperber, ‘The Guru Effect,’ in Pasquino and Harris, The Concept of Authority,
129-145.
Trusting Experts 9
is the exaggerated ascription of epistemic authority to the self, is

exhibited more frequently by individuals with avoidant attachment
patterns than those with secure attachment to other people.13 Such
forms of exaggerated or compulsive self-reliance appear not only on
the individual level, but can also be displayed by entire groups. An
instructive example is the movement of Zetetic astronomy in nineteenth-
century England, which reacted against the rapid professionalization
and specialization in natural science by propagating a lay ethos of
scientific theorizing, whose core tenet was the denial of the earth’s
sphericity. Even allowing for the fact that many adherents to Zetetic
astronomy were motivated by biblical literalism – a strong form of
deference to epistemic authority – it is striking to see how belief in
a flat earth was here construed as a sign of epistemic independence,
an act of self-liberation from the authority of scientific experts by
relying only on one’s own senses.14
An epistemic revolution towards greater self-reliance and freedom
has also frequently been associated with Web 2.0 and its various
symptoms (such as Twitter or the blogosphere), which seriously
raise the question whether the twenty-first century is about to see an
erosion of the epistemic authority of experts. An interesting challenge
in this direction is posed by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, where
knowledge is collected, codified, and distributed in a remarkably
open, egalitarian, and bottom-up way. One of the guiding principles
of Wikipedia is that everyone can be an “editor” for any field of her
choosing, without questions of expertise or professional entitlement
getting in the way. Even critics will have to admit that this principle
has resulted in a remarkable fecundity, completeness, and sometimes
13 See Mario Mikulincer and Philipp R. Shaver, ‘The Attachment Behavioral

System in Adulthood: Activation, Psychodynamics, and Interpersonal Processes,’
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 35 (2003): 53-152, at 61-71;
Mikulincer and Shaver, ‘Contributions of Attachment Theory and Research to
Motivation Science,’ in Handbook of Motivation Science, ed. James Y. Shah and
Wendi L. Gardner. New York: Guilford Press, 2008, 201-216.
14 See Christine Garwood, Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea. London:
Macmillan, 2007.
10 C. P. E. Nothaft
even quality of Wikipedia’s articles, some 4 million of which

currently exist in English alone. This success has startled many and
invited questions along the lines of how knowledge is going to be
administered in the future. Does Wikipedia provide the foundation to
a new approach, in which “the truth” is democratically determined –
an approach that the computer scientist Jaron Lanier has warningly
dubbed “Digital Maoism?”15
I tend to believe that the answer, in general, is no, especially
when we think about expertise in the so-called “hard sciences,” such
as physics and biology, but also in mathematics and formal logic.
Wikipedia has been able to achieve a remarkable degree of quality
in articles within these fields, which – as a survey conducted for
the journal Nature allegedly indicates – might occasionally rival
respected resources like the Encyclopaedia Britannica.16 The reasons
for this are not far to seek: owing to the high degree of technical
difficulty and the role of jargon, articles in these fields are more
likely to be written by users with a fair degree of requisite expertise.
Interventions by laypersons, who might bring false information to
the table, are easily warded off through open discussion, because
the leeway for disagreement is generally smaller and arguments are
easier to resolve on a technical level than in the humanities.
It is in fields such as history and religion, which are relevant
to a broad range of political and ideological matters of concern
and therefore attract a large amount of lay interest, that the role
of experts might be imperiled by the openness of Wikipedia. As a
less-technical discipline whose contents can be discussed in a fairly
ordinary language, history is particularly prone to invite dilettantes
and pet-theorists to propagate their views with online articles. Once a
15 Jaron Lanier, Digital Maoism: ‘The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism,’
Edge (2006), www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html [accessed
18 April 2012].
16 For the Nature-report, see Jim Giles, ‘Internet Encyclopedias Go Head to Head,’
Nature 438 (2005): 900-901, but cf. also the rebuttal published on Enyclopaedia
Britannica’s website: http://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.
pdf [accessed 18 April 2012]
Trusting Experts 11
particular article has attracted interest from these quarters, things can
become difficult and the quality of an article can begin to decline.
Lawrence Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, who has since parted
ways with his project, even suggests the following law-like hypothesis:
“Over the long term, the quality of a given Wikipedia article will do
a random walk around the highest level of quality permitted by the
most persistent and aggressive people who follow an article.”17
In other words: the user with the greatest persistence – or the most
time on her hands – will likely get through, even if there are more
competent users besides her. The reason for this lies in Wikipedia’s
decidedly egalitarian nature. Controversial changes to an article are
not simply removed by another user, who is invested with greater
authority, but discussed and fought over on the appropriate page
attached to each article. The result is often a heated back-and-forth
over minute detail, which can escalate into a so-called “edit war.”
Since all contributors are in principle held to be equal in epistemic
authority and are allowed to remain anonymous, the dispute will
either be resolved by both parties coming to a consensus or – what
is more likely – by the more adamant user prevailing, because her
opponent simply “gives up.” The worrying fact is that experts tend to
be very busy professionals, who rarely have the time and the nerves
at their disposal to win a protracted “edit war.” As a result, they lose
by default. Wikipedia’s co-founder Lawrence Sanger admitted in an
interview that one of the reasons he left the project was the lack of
any provisions to take into account the role of experts. According to
Sanger:
There’s a whole worldview that’s shared by many programmers –
although not all of them, of course – and by many young intellectuals
that I characterize as “epistemic egalitarianism.” They’re greatly
offended by the idea that anyone might be regarded as more reliable
on a given topic than everyone else. They feel that for everything to
17 Lawrence A. Sanger, ‘The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia,’ Episteme 6 (2009):

52-74, at 64.
12 C. P. E. Nothaft
be as fair as possible and equal as possible, the only thing that ought
to matter is the content [of a claim] itself, not its source.18
The attitude described by Sanger is at least partly understandable. After

all, it is one of the core insights of Enlightenment philosophy that
authority of any kind is unintelligible apart from our acknowledgment
of this authority, i.e., apart from its being instituted by our practical
attitudes of taking or treating statements as authoritative.19 As with
other forms of authority, the epistemic authority conferred on experts
is thus often perceived as conflicting with the core principles of
democratic society. In the case of the sciences, this has led to a
demand for greater “democratization,” which involves the integration
of lay views and needs into the scientific process.20 One of the most
vocal and well-known critic of science along these lines was Paul
Feyerabend (1924–1994), who, in his essay Science in a Free Society,
argued that a true democracy has to grant every citizen the equal right
to have her say in matters pertaining to science and education. The
participation of laymen in such fundamental decisions, he insisted,
must be mandatory “even if it should lower the success rate of the
decisions.”21
18 Kathryn Schulz, ‘This Interview is a Stub: Wikipedia Co-Founder Lawrence

Sanger on Being Wrong,’ Slate (2010), www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/
archive/2010/07/26/this-interview-is-a-stub-wikipedia-co-founder-larry-sanger-
on-being-wrong.aspx [accessed 18 April 2012].
19 See Robert B. Brandom, Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and
Discursive Commitment. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994,
50-52.
20 For an instructive summary of cultural criticisms of science, see Stanley
Aronowitz, ‘The Politics of the Science Wars,’ Social Text 46/47 (1996):
177-197. For penetrating counter-critiques, see Paul R. Gross, and Norman
Levitt, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science.
Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1994; Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont,
Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. New York:
Picador, 1998; Alan Sokal, Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
21 Paul Feyerabend, Science in a Free Society. London: NLB, 1978, 87.
Trusting Experts 13
In Feyerabend’s view, one of the grave dangers of leaving science

solely to the experts is that these might begin to manufacture unanimity
on particular issues by political rather than scientific means, i.e., by
the suppression of dissenting voices. Oddly enough, he himself went
on to propose a solution to this problem that was likewise political,
by demanding that the work of experts be taken under the close
scrutiny of laypersons. Feyerabend’s dream was that a “slow erosion
of the authority of science and of other pushy institutions” will be
produced by so-called “citizens’ initiatives.”22 It is as participants in
these citizens’ initiatives that Feyerabend hoped laypersons would
finally reach the kind of maturity that is a prerequisite for true
democracy. In such a democracy, he predicted, each citizen would
possess the kind of experience and sensitivity that enabled her to
competently assess what is to be done in fields such as research,
education, and technology, and how knowledge was to be gained
and applied.
The idealistic thrust of Feyerabend’s suggestions seems
commendable, but they fail at the front of practicability. While it
is true that a hierarchical culture of scientific expertise can harbor
dangers, especially when political interest gets involved, the problems
posed by Feyerabend’s egalitarian vision are no less acute. One
needs only to look at the judicial conflicts over school curricula that
have arisen in several U.S. states during the past decades, conflicts in
which organizations, pressure-groups and other “citizens’ initiatives”
affiliated with the religious right have fought hard to stifle sexual
education or to bring so-called “creation science” or “intelligent
design” back into the textbooks, claiming that biology classes
have to teach a “controversy,” which according to the overwhelming
majority of evolutionary biologists does not even exist. It is doubtful
whether Feyerabend, as a self-avowed liberal, would have been
happy about these developments, even though he himself went as
far as claiming that “if the taxpayers of California want their state
universities to teach Voodoo, folk medicine, astrology, rain dance
22 Ibid., 107.
14 C. P. E. Nothaft
ceremonies, then this is what the universities will have to teach.”23

Critics like Feyerabend tend to overlook that our present culture
of scientific specialization is not the result of political whim, but was
necessitated by an ever-growing amount of data and knowledge and the
increasing complexity of the skills required to organize and augment
this knowledge. This entails that for laypersons to competently assess
the work of scientific experts would require them to become experts
themselves, a prospect that would lead Feyerabend’s critique of
expertise ad absurdum. Our habit of deferring to experts is rooted in
the experience that a society greatly profits from a division of labor,
epistemic or otherwise. The demands of our daily life require us to
make more decisions and hold more opinions than we could possibly
obtain first-hand justification for. Instead of focusing, like Feyerabend
does, on the actual methods of science, it seems more reasonable to
leave these questions to the experts, but what could and should be
improved is the public understanding of the way science works as an
institution. This kind of knowledge can help in the choice of experts
and hence in the choice of the epistemic authority that one decides to
trust. The real question is: how can a non-expert distinguish experts
from charlatans and what should we do when faced with conflicting
testimony from experts?
In the Platonic dialogues, the problem is addressed in the context
of a situation in which a non-medically trained person needs to
discriminate between a real doctor and a someone who merely
pretends to be one. According to Socrates’ opinion, expressed in the
Charmides (171c), one must be a homotechnos – a fellow-expert of
the doctor, who is familiar with the requisite discipline (or technē)
– in order to properly discriminate between experts and quacks.24
23 Ibid., 87, 134. On the insight that postmodern critiques of science may have
turned out to benefit the “wrong side,” see also Bruno Latour, ‘Why Has
Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,’
Critical Inquiry 30 (2004): 225-248; Michael Bérubé, ‘The Science Wars Redux,’
Democracy 19 (2001): 64-74.
24 On the background, see Jyl Gentzler, ‘How to Discriminate Between Experts
and Frauds: Some Problems for Socratic Peirastic,’ History of Philosophy
Trusting Experts 15
Luckily for us, Socrates’ view is not the last word on the matter,
as contemporary social epistemologists have worked to come up
with useful criteria by which any layperson can attempt to judge
the credibility of one expert relative to another.25 This holds true
even for cases where the subject involved is so esoteric as to be
practically inaccessible to any non-expert. While the latter is often
unable to make proper use of the relevant evidence, one factor that
can still be assessed is the dialectical superiority that one expert may
display compared to her opponent in the course of a debate. Such
dialectical superiority is witnessed, whenever expert1 can produce a
palpable rebuttal for every argument expert2 produces, while expert2
does not manage to do the same for expert1. Although the layperson
may have no way of evaluating the soundness of the rebuttals
themselves, she can thus use the outward trajectory of a back-and-
forth between two experts as a useful indicator of their respective
credibility.
Needless to say, assessing a conflict between experts on this
basis is a delicate business. Laypersons with no experience in the
domain in question can be quickly deceived by skilled debaters into
mistaking polished presentation and rhetorical quickness for actual
signs of superior expertise, even though the rebuttals presented
are little more than sophistry. For these reasons, it is advisable to
combine the indirect evidence drawn from dialectical superiority with
other criteria. One strategy is to refer back to an individual expert’s
past track-record in her field. Did she make great contributions to
her discipline, involving claims or theories which were triumphantly
corroborated by further research or practical applications? Even
though, for reasons already outlined, laypersons will usually not be
in a position to assess the precise merits of an expert’s work, one
might thus still be able to get a sense of an expert’s “impact” in her
Quarterly 12 (1995): 227-246.

25 The following remarks are based on the distinctions offered by Alvin I. Goldman,
‘Experts: Which Ones Should You Trust?’ Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research 63 (2001): 85-110.
16 C. P. E. Nothaft
own field, thus increasing the weight of her opinion vis-à-vis that of
her opponent.
A further strategy, which is perhaps more accessible in most
cases, involves turning to the opinions of a third party. The layperson
may inquire about the number of experts within the same domain
who agree with expert1 compared to the number of experts who
agree with expert2. If almost all other experts side with expert1, then
the layperson will be prima facie justified in trusting this expert,
even though it may still be the case that her opponent is correct. A
comparable form of third-party advice would be the consultation of
“meta-experts,” i.e., of experts who can provide a skilled assessment
of the relative expertise of both parties. If such “meta-experts”
rate the expertise of expert1 higher than that of expert2, or make
depreciating judgments concerning expert2’s skills, then the layperson
will have additional justification to rely on expert1. A more mundane
kind of such meta-assessment involves the earning and granting
of academic degrees and professional accreditations. The different
ranges of competence attested by a doctoral degree in physics
compared to a bachelor’s degree in economics should clearly not be
ignored by a lay audience, especially if the disputed matter is cold
fusion.
Following the majority vote of experts in favor of a particular
opinion naturally presupposes that the various experts and “meta-
experts” in question are sufficiently independent of each other and
base their view on objective evidence. Sensitivity to the fact that
this may not always be the case is quite widespread among the
contemporary lay public, as can for instance be seen from the heated
debates surrounding Afro-centric accounts of ancient history that took
place on and off U.S. campuses during the 1990s. Although defenders
of Afro-centrist theories, such as Martin Bernal, usually had inferior
academic credentials and track-records, could not answer many of
the methodological and factual rebuttals they encountered, and were
generally outnumbered by opposing experts in the fields of classics
and Egyptology, they gained considerable public support for their
theses and were even able to occupy moral high-ground thanks to the
Trusting Experts 17
(largely baseless) charge that the views of their academic opponents

were tainted by racial bias and self-interest.26
That there may be a general bias-problem in science, which runs
far deeper than just the disingenuous behavior of a few individuals,
has been repeatedly argued by feminist philosophers and theorists,
who claim that female viewpoints are systematically excluded or
underrepresented in certain fields of research.27 This latter charge
is directly related to the possibility that the majority of experts or
even all experts in a field may be wrong about a certain question
at a given time. This problem is a real one, but there is not much
a layperson can do about it. Owing to the barriers that prevent
most people from gaining the knowledge necessary to participate
in scientific discourse, the democratization of science can at best
approximate the form of an indirect, representative, as opposed to a
direct, participatory model of democracy. In practice, this could mean
that future research will be carried out by a more democratically
selected group of researchers, which would ensure that the particular
viewpoints and needs of, say, women and ethnic minorities are taken
into consideration in the research process. The result would not be
a bias-free science, but one in which the greatest possible variety of
different biases are at work.28
In any case, the mere possibility that an entire paradigm or school
of research may be fundamentally flawed does not automatically
26 On Bernal and his critics, see Suzanne Marchand and Anthony Grafton,
‘Martin Bernal and His Critics,’ Arion, 3rd Ser., 5 (1997): 1-35; Ronald H.
Fritze, Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-Religions.
London: Reaktion Books, 2009, 221-255. For an interesting first-hand account
of the racial dynamics in these debates, see Mary Lefkowitz, History Lesson: A
Race Odyssey. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008.
27 The classic text in this field is Sandra Harding, The Science Question in
Feminism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986.
28 For a compelling argument in this direction, see James Robert Brown, Who
Rules in Science? An Opinionated Guide to the Wars. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2001, 169-188. See also Philip Kitcher, Science,
Truth, and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
18 C. P. E. Nothaft
entitle anyone to commit herself to any given opposing view,

especially if the latter is lacking proper support from the available
evidence. The evolutionary biologists’ biases or mistakes lend no
real support to the “intelligent design” proponent. Our obligation as
participants in cognitive, discursive practices is to commit ourselves
only to those statements that we are entitled to. In the case of beliefs
acquired via testimony, we best measure up to this obligation by
relying on the views of experts and by trying to adjudicate between
divergent expert opinions by recourse to the criteria mentioned.
The fact that this procedure will lead to justified belief in many or
most cases does not guarantee knowledge, for a belief may be fully
justified and still turn out to be wrong. As merely human seekers of
knowledge, we can never escape uncertainty, regardless of whether
we rely on our own senses or defer to the testimony of others.
Fortunately, our task as rational beings is not to attain certainty,
but to do the best we can do with the cognitive facilities that we
are given. Our practice of bestowing epistemic authority on experts
and deferring to their opinion is one way in which we fulfill this
task.
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The Authority of Science in the Modern
Democratic State and its Decline since
the Later Decades of the Twentieth
Century
Yaron Ezrahi
I shall discuss the properties of scientific and political authorities,

the reasons for their temporary integration in or partnership with
Enlightenment–inspired Western democracies during the 19th-20th
centuries, and the decline of this partnership since the final decades
of the 20th century.
This is a vast subject. I will disregard important aspects of
this story like the metaphysical foundations of modern science
and politics. In order to understand the role of science in modern
democracy, we need to start with the dilemma of political authority in
liberal democratic states. Liberal democracy as a social and political
order tries to weld incompatible principles: individual autonomy
and government, freedom and authority, self–government and order.
Since democracy is only one step beyond anarchy, it has attempted
to involve a host of mechanisms, fictions and procedures that will
regulate collective life, while: a. rejecting forms of personal authority
(this is a reaction to the monarchic past); b. rejecting also hierarchy
that violates equality; and c. reducing or eliminating the power of
mediating bodies between the people and the seat of power and
authority (on this last point Jean Jacques Rousseau made particularly
strong arguments). Nevertheless, the unbridgeable gap between the
Authority of Science 23
necessities of authority and order and the principle of freedom has

constantly destabilized democratic regimes. What were the main
means which were historically devised to reconcile authority and
order on the one hand and freedom on the other? Clearly, simply
ensuring inclusive direct participation modeled on the gatherings in
Athens’s agora could not be practically sustainable without multiple
cultural and institutional supports already evident in ancient Greece,
in Rome and in the many societies that have attempted to establish
democratic regimes since.
The random selection of public servants by lottery in ancient Athens
was a very short episode that was briefly repeated in future political
contexts that sought to depersonalize or depoliticize the selection
of leaders. The formation of parties and periodic elections emerged
as a more advanced and endurable method of authorizing leaders
and representatives and reconciling lay participation and legitimate
government. Usually such arrangements had to be buttressed by
constitutions that secured the development of governments of laws,
not of men. Democratic constitutions usually served also to ensure
constraints on the centralization of power and authority, dividing
them between branches of government and regulating their balance
and cooperation.1
The “free” market has evolved as another institutional method of
reconciling or balancing freedom and the orderly allocation of goods
in commercial liberal societies. The history of the market mechanism
has been very complex. Whereas in some respects it constituted a
check on the centralized bureaucratic power and authority of the
modern state and secured in some contexts the status of individual
entrepreneurs and free competition, it has been also the most effective
mechanism for the production of inequalities in modern societies.
Most of these means were only partly successful and vastly abused.
Take for example the key democratic means: elections. Edmund
Morgan, an American historian, shows the pervasiveness of bribery
1 Yaron Ezrahi and Mordechai Kremnitzer, Israel Towards a Constitutional

Democracy. Jerusalem: The Israeli Democracy Institute, 2000 (Hebrew).
24 Yaron Ezrahi
and loyalties in election practices during decades of American and

English elections.2 More recently, in the U.S. elections of the year
2000 there was a whole scandal about the voting procedure and fraud.
Given all the abuses in the practice of this election, the decision about
the results was made finally by the Supreme Court. Of particular
interest to us is the fact that the judges refused to check the details
of the election practices in order to avoid the danger of revealing
facts and practices that would encourage public distrust in elections
as a means to legitimate the Government. This fact demonstrates the
judges’ appropriate appreciation of the important role of the myth of
fair elections in enabling democratic governments.
Perhaps the greatest hope inspired by the Enlightenment for
reconciling freedom and public authority since the late 18th century
was the rise of the apolitical-secular authority of science and the
growing expectations that, in addition to the role of elections,
political leaders’ rotation, and parliamentary parties, science could
appear to have the unique power to induce rational consensus on
matters of public affairs, to depersonalize public policy decisions, to
delegitimate the exercise of hierarchical authority and to check the
arbitrary use of political power and authority.
Why science? Science appears to have projected a host of features
compatible with democratic values. Science is a non-hierarchic
human enterprise based on peers’ judgments.3 Moreover, it appears
as the work of independent rational individuals, an enterprise based
on persuasion, not on violence, respecting the norms of skepticism
and criticism.4 As reported by the first historian of the Royal Society
of London (1667), Bishop Thomas Sprat, from the very beginning
science has also projected the image of public, not esoteric knowledge.
2 Edmund Morgan, Inventing the People, Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England

and America Norton, 1989.
3 Yaron Ezrahi, Imagined Democracies: Necessary Political Fictions. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012.
4 See Robert K. Merton, ‘Science and the Social Order.’ In The Sociology of
Science, Norman W. Storer, editor. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1973, pp. 254-266.
Moreover, since the 19th century science has publicly validated its
claims to lay people by visibly successful technology in areas such
as medicine, energy and transportation. A particularly early dramatic
example of the role of technology in projecting “scientific truth”
occurred on October 15th, 1773, in the French city of Metz, where
the first gas balloon flight was cheered by 100,000 Frenchmen. One
of the journals wrote at the time that this event was more important
in confirming to the public Lavoisier’s gas theory than his scientific
articles.5 Furthermore, many laymen believed that the scientist was a
kind of redeemer who could convert misfortune into justice, eliminate
the pains of natural necessity and replace hard labor by machines.
Finally, also the impersonal authority of scientists perceived as
objective representatives of the laws of nature appeared to project the
kind of apolitical authority that could command enormous support.
This attitude was cultivated by scientists themselves. For example, in
his lectures in 1830 to the British aristocracy at the Royal Institute of
London, Michael Faraday, pioneer of the industrial revolution, insisted
that he had invented nothing, that everything that he conveyed to the
public was what he had learned in the “school of nature.” Because of
all these virtues, scientists appeared to carry a kind of self-denying
authority.6 Governments and politicians were quick to learn that the
authority of science could be used as a valuable political resource
to depersonalize policy decisions and depoliticize unpopular political
choices. In other words, science appeared to enable the concealment of
political decisions beyond the facade of objective apolitical authority.
Not surprisingly, for many decades, science was used as a political
resource to project the virtues of objectivity, rational consensus, and
instrumental efficacy by modern governments. Many case studies
5 Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.
6 David Gooding, ‘In Nature’s school: Faraday as an Experimentalist.’ In Faraday
Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday 1791-1867.
David Gooding and Frank A.L. James, editors. Basingstock, N.Y.: Stockton
Press, 1985, pp. 105-135.
26 Yaron Ezrahi
show that the authority of science was quite easily detached from its
knowledge base and used obligingly to enable the liberal democratic
state to claim neutrality.7
Throughout the 20th century, the partnership of science and
government was reinforced by the exchange of assets between
scientists and politicians. Scientists as indicated above provided
politically valuable sanction to state decisions, and sometimes even
some valuable knowledge and information. On the other hand,
politicians provided valuable legitimacy for scientific institutions and
for science as a social goal and, no less important, money to go into
laboratories and costly research.
Around the 1960s this partnership began to fall apart: the challenge
of creationists as well as environmentalists indicated that, like the
Holy Scriptures, nature can be interpreted and imagined in different
ways that reflect many distinct domains of human values and practice.
Scientists have no monopoly over nature or its representation. The
more science and technology intervened in the domain of public
policy, the more they stirred up controversies within the scientific
community that undermined social perceptions of rational consensus
and objectivity within the scientific community. Some of the most
dramatic examples are the controversies on the uses of nuclear energy,
on the relations between group distribution of IQ and genetics and
on stem cell research. Around the 1960s, with the growing public
suspicion of technology, public and private agencies established new
procedures for technology assessment. This development reflects the
recognition that each technology is also a set of value choices whose
consequences involve the redistribution of benefits and losses among
competing groups, that technology is not only a branch of physics
but also of ethics (the choice to invest in faster transportation through
air travel has implied many years of neglect of train transportation as
a major means of conveying the lower classes).
Supported by the authority and ethos of economics as a
7 Yaron Ezrahi, The Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of

Contemporary Democracy. Cambridge: Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.
quantitative, supposedly objective nonpolitical science, the impact

of the market and of neoliberal capitalism has actually turned
citizens into consumers. It has transformed the state from a moral
civic association into an economic-industrial exchange system. The
amorphous, ambiguous, unstable idea of public opinion replaced the
deliberative democratic discourse envisioned by the Enlightenment.
John Dewey, the American philosopher, was concerned that modern
public opinion would become like “a blind ghost that kicks,”
destroys and rarely constructs. The decline of the social authority of
science was further enhanced by scholars like Bruno Latour and Paul
Feyerabend, who exposed the contingent and heuristic dimensions of
decisions taken by scientists in their laboratories. It’s a well known
fact that closely observing the process of hotdog production is not
congenial for the appetite. Similarly, very close observation of the
political processes that create laws and the infinite numbers of tacit
decisions and assumptions underlining the production of scientific
knowledge is not congenial for their respective kinds of authority
among laymen. These comments are not meant to imply that, unlike
hotdogs, laws and knowledge are not brilliant and necessary socio-
cultural inventions, but only to suggest that authority always requires
a degree of often desirable mystification and constructive faith.
In conclusion, in current democracies where the illusion of the
possibility of escaping from politics to knowledge and expertise has
been exposed, the dilemma of reconciling authority and freedom
remains as acute as ever. The French theorist, Bertrand de Jouvenell,
believed that in politics “problems are never solved; at best they
are temporarily settled.” Professor Charles Lindblom, a theorist of
public policy and social action, indicated already in the early 1960s
that instead of rational choices we are condemned to “muddling
through,” that is, to continual navigation in stormy waters.8 In other
words, the logic of political balancing eclipses the certainty of the
functional logic of instrumental action. Democratic societies today
8 Charles E. Lindblom, Inquiry and Change, The Troubled Attempt to Understand

and Change Society. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.
28 Yaron Ezrahi
are governed by constant competition and conflicts between multiple

legal, scientific, political, moral and religious authorities. The basic
principle of the current democratic state is not an effective application
of power and authority to advance an agreed upon concept for the
public good, but rather splitting political power and authority such
that they cannot do much evil, but also not too much good.
Under the Authority of Signs
Roy Wagner
1. Ernst Cassirer entangles us in a symbolic web
“The great thinkers who have defined man as an animal rationale,”

writes Ernst Cassirer, “were not empiricists, nor did they ever intend
to give an empirical account of human nature. By this definition they
were expressing rather a fundamental moral imperative. Reason is a
very inadequate term with which to comprehend the forms of man’s
cultural life in all their richness and variety. But all these forms
are symbolic forms. Hence, instead of defining man as an animal
rationale, we should define him as animal symbolicum.”1
Cassirer wrote this statement in exile, in the early forties, at a time
when what he saw as rationality had little to do with human existence.
This was the statement of a philosopher whose hopes and faith – the
enlightenment’s hopes and faith that had become anachronistic even
before his own birth – had succumbed to the reality of World Wars.
Rationality became too utopian an ideal. Symbolic forms were the
next best thing.
For Cassirer the function of symbolic forms was to mediate
between man and reality. “Between the receptor system and the
effector system, which are to be found in all animal species, we
find in man a third link which we may describe as the symbolic
1 Cassirer, Ernst. An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human

Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974, pp. 25-26.
30 Roy Wagner
system … No longer in a merely physical universe, man lives in

a symbolic universe. Language, art, and religion are the parts of
this universe. They are the varied threads which weave the symbolic
net, the tangled web of human experience. All human progress in
thought and experience refines upon and strengthens this net. No
longer can man confront reality immediately, as it were, face to face.
Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man’s symbolic
activity advances.”2
Cassirer’s model (my diagram)
To characterize “man,” is something I’d rather not do, for reasons that
will become clear later. But given his view of man, it is reasonable
to characterize this bitter and disappointed man, Ernst Cassirer, as
a man busy with “enclosing” himself in a “symbolic net,” a neo
Kantian scheme that will keep the senseless, painful, noumenal
reality at bay.
The evolution of symbolic forms (language, myth, religion, art
and science) from primitive (according to Cassirer: African, American
2 Cassirer, Essay on Man, pp. 24-25, emphases mine.

Under the Authority of Signs 31
Indian, etc.) to the most highly developed (Indo-Germanic, of course)

runs from concrete to abstract, from singular to general, and from
substantial to relational. Progress therefore consists in strengthening
the abstractive, generalizing and relational symbolism that shields
us from a reality that has, for Cassirer, become unbearable. This
had already been Cassirer’s attitude early on, which earned him the
mockery of the student audience in his Davos debate with Heidegger
– an audience which portrayed Cassirer as a dusty relic mumbling
about culture. But given his interpretation of Fascism (in the Myth
of the State) as a regression to a mythical symbolic form, thickening
our symbolic web became for Cassirer, in his later years, an even
more urgent and compelling task.
Cassirer is part of an important philosophical tradition that thinks
it most essentially human to dwell under the authority of what
man constructs to separate men from reality (and, I guess, separate
women too, who are also often forced to live in the worlds that men
construct, even when, as in Cassirer’s work, they are hardly ever
mentioned). I find this trend admirable, compelling, reprehensible
and haunting. This is what I would like to dwell on here.
2. Charles Peirce turns us into symbols striving for reality
Cassirer’s “third link” stems from a Kantian tradition (although

Cassirer’s version is much more flexible and man-made than the
schematic link that Kant had allowed). But there’s nothing essentially
neo-Kantian in thinking of subjecting human essence to the authority
of signs. And so I’d like to move on to Charles Peirce, a nineteenth
century American scholar, the father of the still dominant (at least
in the U.S.) pragmatist school of thought (or, as Peirce preferred,
pragmaticist – a word so ugly, he hoped, that no one would take it
away from him to abuse it).
According to Peirce: “the fact that every thought is a sign, taken
in conjunction with the fact that life is a train of thought, proves
32 Roy Wagner
that man is a sign … That is to say, the man and the … sign are
identical, in the same sense in which the words homo and man are
identical. Thus my language is the sum total of myself; for the man
is the thought.”3
Of course, men, unlike most signs, have emotions and
consciousness, but these Peirce attributes to the animal part of man.
The essentially human, that is, the train of thought, is a material
train of signs; whatever is unthinkable is essentially removed from
humanity for Peirce.
So, as with Cassirer, the essentially human remains under the
authority of the symbolic. But how do signs and reality relate for
Peirce? “The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information
and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore
independent of the vagaries of me and you. … those two series of
cognitions – the real and the unreal – consist of those which, at
a time sufficiently future, the community will always continue to
reaffirm; and of those which, under the same conditions, will ever
after be denied.”4 Everything other than that which the community
will eventually continually reaffirm might as well be left outside our
notion of reality.
This form of realism descended from the scientific world view of
the early modern period, the time when scientific truth was formed
in the image of Boyle’s ideal of a community of peers observing
together and arguing toward consent – an ideal closely related to the
political parliamentary ideal (see Shapin and Schaffer’s Leviathan and
the Air-pump). Instead of putting symbols between man and reality,
as did Cassirer, this form of realism equates man with symbols and
views reality as those symbols that will remain. This was a form of
realism that young Peirce, a full member in the symbolic world of
academic discourse, could easily endorse.
3 Peirce, Charles. Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotics. Chapel Hill: University

of North Carolina Press, 1991. From the essay ‘Some Consequences of Four
Incapacities,’ p. 84.
4 Peirce, Peirce on Signs, ‘Some Consequences of Four Incapacities,’ p. 82.
But as Peirce grew older he found himself cast out of the world
of symbolic academic debate (partly due to his style of reasoning and
partly due to his relationship with his future wife while separated,
but not yet divorced, from his former wife). The bitterness directed
by the older Peirce at the symbolic intellectual world was explicit:
“Some years ago I wrote a book entitled ‘New Elements of
Mathematics.’ It was such a book as a man with considerable natural
aptitude for logic and mathematics, who had devoted the best of his
time for forty years to the study of the former … was able to write by
devoting a year exclusively to it. If the author had been a German …
it would have been in print long ago. … [But a] publisher who was
so well versed in the elements of mathematics [as to have published
a book claiming mathematical results which are well known to be
false] was not convinced by it … even though he took the book home
with him and glanced at it during the evening. A writer on the logic
of mathematics in America must meet American requirements. …
The modern book … in order to be approved, must be approved by
a densely stupid and unspeakably indolent young lady as she skims
its pages while looking out of the window to be admired. In order to
be put into such a shape that it cannot fail to be apprehended by her
… not the smallest step shall be left to her own intellectual activity.”5
(To avoid portraying Peirce as too misogynistic, note his subsequent
lashing at “overfed and logy” schoolboys and at their typical teacher
“who knows nothing about logical structures”).
The experience of this older, bitter Peirce affects his attitude toward
reality as well. If for the younger Peirce reality was the eventual
course of the human=symbolic reasoning, for the older Peirce, as for
Cassirer, the symbolic becomes something that stands between man
and a further and further removed reality.
For the older Peirce signs exist through their actual replicas
(spoken words, written marks, etc.) 6 But this phenomenal existence
5 Peirce, Charles. The Essential Peirce, Vol. II. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1998. From the essay ‘New Elements,’ pp. 300-301.
6 Peirce, The Essential Peirce, Vol. II, ‘New Elements,’ p. 321.
34 Roy Wagner
“is for an instant and it is gone. Let it be no more and it is absolutely

nothing.” An enduring reality, therefore “only exists as an element
of the regularity,” where regularity here means anything from a
self-controlled habit to a law of nature. “And the regularity is the
symbol. Reality therefore, can only be regarded as the limit of the
endless series of symbols.” – a necessarily unbounded series of
controlled interpretation that must, according to Peirce, eventually
“have a limit.”7 Now Peirce’s definition of limit is crucial here: “an
object which comes after all the objects of that series ….”8 Reality
is delayed from what was formerly described as “a time sufficiently
future” to the limit beyond all future.
A careful reading would show that the differences between Peirce’s
earlier and later forms of realism are more nuanced than I portrayed
them here. But the later tone gives much more weight to reality as
deferred, as that which here and now is only beginning to emerge:
“It is in the nature of the sign to be an individual replica and to be
in that replica … an embryonic reality endowed with the power of
growth into the very truth, the very entelechy of reality.”9
Moreover, while reality is being deferred, the symbolic realm that
stands between us and reality becomes ever thicker (as Cassirer would
indeed like it to be). The ontology of the older Peirce consists of a
universe of regularities (symbols), a universe of perceived qualities
or unactualised ideas, and a universe of worldly individuals, actions
and facts. The world of man is the world of symbolic regularities that
relate perceived qualities to worldly actions (like Cassirer’s symbols
that mediate the receptor-effector system). And this world, the world
of man that is not yet reality, grows exponentially thicker. For the
younger Peirce signs were divided into 3 kinds. But later, each sign
was analyzed according to 3 dimensions, each divided into 3 kinds,
yielding altogether 33=27 kinds (only 10 of which Peirce deemed

8 Peirce, The Essential Peirce, Vol. II, p. 538, emphasis mine.
possible).10 Then the number of dimensions grew to 10, yielding

310=59,049 kinds of signs,11 whose classification Peirce could only
barely embark on in the few years he had left to live.
Peirce’s model (my diagram)
3. Me, trying to get away
Let’s recapitulate. So far I’ve told a story of two thinkers, who

saw the essence of man in the symbolic. The first, Cassirer, put the
symbolic between man and reality, apparently to distance himself
from reality’s gruesome vicissitudes. The second, Peirce, attempted
to reduce reality to the eventual course of symbolic reasoning, but,
10 Peirce, The Essential Peirce, Vol. II, ‘Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic
Relations, as Far as They Are Determined,’ p. 296.
11 Peirce, The Essential Peirce, Vol. II, ‘Letters to William James,’ p. 501.
36 Roy Wagner
rejected by his contemporary world of academic discourse, came to

think of reality as further and further removed, and of the symbolic
as an ever thicker infinite path after which reality would come.
This story, a three-penny psychology of philosophers, doesn’t live
up to the demands of historians’ methodology. To meet the demands
of academic historians I would have to delve into diaries and letters,
and, by means of comparison with other relevant philosophers, set
apart the impact of Cassirer’s and Peirce’s intellectual influences
from the impact of their own social and psychological course. But
I’m not a historian. I am not telling this story as a historian. I’m
telling it as a philosopher. And as a philosopher, I do not need these
stories to be historically true, I only need to make them thinkable.
And if I want to be an interesting or relevant philosopher, I need to
make them interestingly or relevantly thinkable.
Now the interest or relevance of this story to what’s going on
here and now is easy to demonstrate: this story is a projection of
my own predicament on two dead white men. The person who is
really concerned here about his entanglement in worlds subjected
to the authority of symbols is, of course, me. As I do my academic
reading and writing, taking a facebook or email break every 50 or
15 or 5 minutes, reading reports about how everything around is
going to hell, I feel as if my research (as Cassirer might claim) is
an autonomous symbolic web that comes between me and reality;
or at best, I feel (as Peirce might) that my work is something that
would only become a reality after traversing an infinitely long and
exponentially exploding path. On the other hand, if I drag myself
away from my desk into the supposed “real world,” I am again
surrounded by symbols: the signs and slogans of demonstrations,
symbolic acts of resistance, an entirely symbolic politics that even
when we call it “direct action” seems to be removed from reality in
at least one crucial sense: the sense of being able to change it.
I have no nostalgia for a direct grasp of reality without symbols.
I might not be as old as Cassirer and Peirce, but I am already old
enough to view attempts to break through the symbolic and reach into
reality “itself” as bad remakes of Hollywood movies of The Matrix
sort. But I’m still not happy with the current state of the symbolic,
the authority of which is essential, if not to man in general, then to
working philosophers – an essential authority that comes between
philosophy and what it constructs as reality.
4. Foucault-by-Deleuze releases us from the symbolic web, but

ties a noose around our necks
So let’s make one more philosophical attempt, one that might help
us go beyond an entanglement under the authority of symbols into
a livelier notion of humanity. This notion comes from Deleuze’s
reinterpretation of Foucault (to be sure, if you happen to know
Foucault and don’t recognize anything Foucauldian in what I present
below, it’s not your fault – it’s Deleuze; he allows himself quite a bit
of philosophical license in his interpretations).
Like Peirce, Foucault-interpreted-by-Deleuze also offers us a triple
ontology: knowledge, power and self.12 The world of knowledge is
comparable to Peirce’s symbolic: it is the stratified, repetitive, habitual
tying together of singular entities. The next world, that of power, is
comparable to Peirce’s world of individuals, action and facts: it’s a
world of the power relations between singular entities, that is, the
ways they restrict each other’s possibilities. The third world, the
world of self, like Peirce’s world of perceived qualities and ideas, is
a “subjective” world; but it would stretch the analogy much too far
to tie Peirce’s and Foucault’s “subjective” worlds together. Indeed,
for Peirce this is a passive world, and for Foucault-by-Deleuze this
is the reflexive world par excellence.
12 Deleuze, Gilles. Foucault. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998,

p. 114.
38 Roy Wagner
Foucault-by-Deuleuze’s model
(Deleuze’s diagram, my annotations)
For Foucault-by-Deleuze the self is not a bunch of perceived qualities

and vague ideas, but a constellation of forces: it is a space of forces
acting on themselves. Foucault gave us some examples that make
this notion of self more concrete. Foucault’s first example of a self
is the classical aristocratic Greek form of governing one’s diet, one’s
economy and one’s sexuality in order to be able to govern others.
Then Foucault elaborated the Christian self that controls one’s own
desires in order to submit oneself to God (and its church). And then
Foucault died, but he did leave us enough hints about modernity to
reconstruct at least the early modern self as a reflexive application
of disciplinary forces. And here, in our post-modern world, we can
speculate about the reflexive application of consumerist forces and
the selves that are constituted through them.
There are several reasons why I bring you this model. First, it fits
the story that I’ve just projected on to Cassirer and Peirce: Deleuze
insists that it was Foucault’s disappointment with political struggles
in the 1970s that led him to go from an inquiry into knowledge

(parallel to Peirce’s and Cassirer’s symbolic) to an investigation of
the self. So here, too, philosophy may be a result of a crisis of the
philosopher’s own world view.
Second, this model allows the symbolic an important place, but
does not over-privilege its authority with respect to other phenomena.
In a world of knowledge (symbolic regularities), which depend on
coalitions of active powers and reflexive self making, there’s enough
ontological variety not to get too caught up in symbols. Here symbols
are simply sediments of real forces, as opposed to Cassirer’s symbols
that come between reality and ourselves.
Third, the ontology of this model is more amenable to change.
Since everything here depends on regularities and coalitions between
fleeting singular forces, the formations we encounter of knowledge,
power and self are subject to undirected historic variation, as opposed
to Peirce convergence toward an ultimate eternal reality.
But all these nice aspects of this model come with a price (or,
perhaps, bring an additional boon): this model demotes the human.
The human, according to Foucault, is not an eternal essence, symbolic
or otherwise. The human is a specific constellation of powers,
only some 300 years old and already on the verge of extinction.
According to Foucault’s The Order of Things, the human, as of the
eighteenth century, no longer has an ideal essence, but is a specific
reflexive application of the forces that make our labor, language,
and life finite. The human emerges as nothing but a highly limited
form of work, speech and organism. But labor, language and life
can change dramatically as we change our means of production,
channels of communication and modes of survival; and humans will
transform even more radically if the reflexive application of forces
that constitute our selves end up revolving around elements other
than labor, language and life.
For Foucault-by-Deleuze all this is highly subject to change,
because at bottom our thought, which is our vehicle for making our
selves, is not so much Peirce’s rational train of signs, but “a dice-
throw. What the dice-throw represents is that thinking always comes
40 Roy Wagner
from the outside.”13 This outside is the outside of chance encounters

with changing singular forces that can weave new relations of power,
new formations of knowledge and new reflexive applications of selves.
All this makes the question of the human and of the authorities that
regulate it a temporary question, a passing one, no longer a fateful
and permanent question that would inevitably hold us down – a
question we needn’t dwell on so much and so seriously.
But in order to give up the human, Foucault-by-Deleuze sets up
the self as a center of inquiry. At this center, “at the place of the
fissure [the reflexive self] the line [of thought] forms a Law, the
‘center of the cyclone, where one can live and in fact where Life
exists par excellence.’ … This is the central chamber, which one
need no longer fear is empty since one fills it with oneself.”14 This
statement is perhaps too sketchy and obscure to work with, but I find
that Deleuze’s ontological diagram (see above) suggests, more than
anything else, a noose hanging over a gallows with its trapdoor open.
Foucault-by-Deleuze may have rid us of the symbolically confined
man of Cassirer and Peirce, but in return he offers another form of
enclosure.
5. Martin Buber makes a cameo appearance to point a way out
To counter this predicament, I will bring up, deus-ex-machina, the

person under the sign of whose name I was paid, among other things,
for giving this talk. Two small remarks, not necessarily central to
Buber’s thought, and not presuming to reflect his system as a whole,
but remarks that will help us loosen the noose of self making. The
first remark concerns a request from the mathematician Brouwer that
Buber contribute to a new univocal dictionary of scientific terms.
Buber refused. He explained that “it is not the univocity of a word
but its plurivocity that constitutes living language. The plurivocity
13 Deleuze, Foucault, p. 117.

14 Deleuze, Foucault, pp. 122-123.
creates the problematic of speech and it creates its conquest in an

understanding that is not an assimilation but a fruitfulness.”15 In
other words, if we want to change the layers of symbols that we’re
entangled in, that is, while remaining under the authority of signs
to get away from the human, we don’t need a noose of reflexive
boundaries around our selves; we need a dialogue with people who
use words differently than we do.
The second remark concerns what asking about the human entails.
Buber writes: “You cannot invoke the root of one entity among others
unless you first separate the existence of this entity from the existence
of another known entity.” And it is “Nature alone that serves us in
this act of separation – nature, which indeed includes man too; but
as we penetrate and reach into the uniqueness of man, nature must
loosen its bindings and allow us to enslave this unruly creature …
to our specialized investigation.”16
If asking about the human forces us to first isolate the human, to
abstract it away from natural reality, and only at a second stage bring
it back into a relation with this reality, then perhaps the question of
the human, viewed either as a permanent essence or as a changing
contingency, is not a very good question. Perhaps asking about the
human necessarily entangles us into the authority of symbolic webs
or puts nooses around our philosophical necks. Perhaps we should
give away the assumption that the human is so damned special, and
try, without pretending thereby to subvert the authority of the symbols
that we make to rule our lives, to set the question of humanity aside,
and think ourselves in solidarity with a more animalistic and self-less
world.
15 Buber, Martin. Human Face (Hebrew). Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1965. p. 180.
Translation adapted from Maurice Friedman’s translation.
16 Buber, Human Face, p. 117, my translation.
Authority in Mathematics
David Kazhdan
The authority of mathematics in sciences is not questionable.

Mathematics is the paragon of reliability and precision. When Gauss
said that “Mathematics is the Queen of the Sciences,” he implied that
other areas of knowledge are sciences only in so far as they are able
to express basic concepts in the language of mathematics. But what
is the source of the authority of mathematics? We can, on one hand,
consider mathematics as an art or practice of logical deductions,
where new and often unexpected results are derived from axioms.
Taking this approach, we look for the foundation of mathematical
authority in the reliability of the deductive process. On the other
hand, if we follow Galileo and say that “mathematics is the language
with which God has written the universe,” then we are attributing
the reliability of mathematics to the success of applications, to the
striking agreement of the mathematically based predictions with
empirical observations.
This dual essence of mathematics, simultaneously a formal game
as well as the key to the understanding of nature, has frequently been
perceived as puzzling. There are questions about resting reliability on
deductive force, and there are questions about resting the authority of
mathematics on its applicability.
Let’s look first at the formal deductive side, when we derive

mathematical statements from a system of axioms.
The fact is that mathematics provides statements which are
unquestionably “true”; obtaining one proof of a mathematical claim
Authority in Mathematics 43
suffices; we “are assured” of the validity of the result and don’t look
for another proof. There is an anecdote about Andrei Kolmogorov,
one of the leading mathematicians of the last century. The story [or
perhaps legend] concerns Kolmogorov’s early work, which was in
art history. When Kolmogorov gave a lecture where he proposed an
identification of a Renaissance painter, he was told, “You have a
good argument, but please find more proofs.” As a result Kolmogorov
moved to a discipline where one proof suffices.
But why are we so sure of the reliability of mathematical proofs?
One could try to reduce the reliability of mathematics to the reliability
of logic and to argue that mathematical results are true because they
are sheer tautologies, that mathematical achievements are “nothing
new,” that mathematicians only explicate knowledge already contained
in previously known assertions. But this explanation of the reliability
of mathematics in terms of logic raises at least four problems:
(i) In other areas of investigation we do not rely on long chains of
reasoning even if all such reasoning sounds convincing. The longer
the chain of thought, the greater is our doubt in the validity of the
outcome. So, why do we accept incredibly long chains of reasoning
in mathematics?
(ii) We can also point out that if logical deduction were the “heart”
of mathematics then it should be possible to computerize the thought
processes of mathematicians, and that would produce a “computer”
which could prove theorems, just as we have “computers” playing
chess. But such a “possibility” is not on the horizon. Of course
mathematicians use computers to check conjectures and to provide
“experimental” data, but there is no success in attempts to “teach”
computers to solve mathematical problems. Not only do we not
have a computer program which “beats the world champion,” but [at
least until now] there are no results of any interest provided by the
“artificial intelligence” approach.
Actually proofs of deep results almost never come from a step-
by-step argument. Usually, after a long attempt to find an approach
which illuminates a whole class of problems, one “sees” [or guesses]
the existence of an unexpected structure which is able to organize
44 David Kazhdan
[that is, bring order] to that class of problems. For instance, consider
the anecdote about Newton’s celebrated apple when he realized that
the earthly and heavenly realms are governed by the same system
of laws.
(iii) And we must ask: how do we know that our system of axioms
is consistent, that it does not lead to a contradiction? Actually we are
so sure of the “truthfulness” of mathematics that Russell’s discovery
of a paradox – the realization that a free use of infinities leads to
a contradiction – did not impress the mathematical community. The
community was completely sure that this paradox does not threaten
consistency and gladly accepted Russell’s “linguistic” resolution.
(iv) Finally, the fact is that in practice we don’t see mathematics
as a purely formal game. From Antiquity people used mathematics
to answer questions about things around us. For example, the Greeks
found [with good precision] the distance to the sun. In more recent
times Hertz deduced the possibility of radio communication from a
certain term in Maxwell’s equation. In practice we constantly rely
on elaborate mathematical calculations and results even if we can’t
follow the arguments.
And as for applicability: The great physicist Eugene Wigner, in an

article entitled “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in
the Natural Sciences,” expressed his amazement at the usefulness
of the concepts and result of pure mathematics. He asked: “How
could mathematical concepts developed in the nineteenth century for
their sheer cogency and inner beauty have become indispensable for
the formulations of quantum mechanics and relativity theory which
emerged only in the twentieth century?”
Another way to put this is simply to say that even if we believe
in the validity of the logical deduction of mathematical theorems
from the axioms, we only reduce the question of the theorems’ truth
claims to the reliability of the axioms. In other words we should ask:
“Why do we accept axioms which are the basis of all mathematical
deductions” as ‘physically’ true?
One can try to ascribe the truthfulness of mathematical axioms to
the truthfulness of reality, that is to say that mathematics describes

the “objects that exist.” In this way the Greeks could say that one
can “see” the validity of Euclidean axioms. And Kant saw Euclidean
geometry as the basis for the entire structure of “things for us,”
namely, the world we see. The obvious objection to this point of
view is the lack of precision in our “seeing” [while only complete
precision could justify constant success] and the realization that the
assumption of the Euclideaness of our world is not adequate. To
speak to all of these worries and to clarify the relation between
two different aspects of mathematics – the formal aspect, when
we see mathematics as a prior axiomatic structure, and the aspect
of applicability – I suggest we look for a distinction between
Natural Sciences, involved in the study of impersonal nature,
and the Sciences of Spirit [Geistwissenschaften] proposed at the
end of the nineteenth century by Wilhelm Dilthey. According to
Dilthey, Natural Sciences seek to explain a phenomenon in terms
of cause and effect, in terms of the reduction of the particular to
the general, in terms of a universal scheme. On the other hand,
Geistwissenschaften seek to achieve an understanding through
an immediate connection with the object of study, through the
exemplification of the individuality of the phenomena in terms of
the relations of the part and the whole.
Where do we assign mathematics? On the one hand, mathematics
is the backbone of Natural Sciences, according to Kant’s maxim, “In
any special doctrine of nature there is only as much genuine science as
there is mathematics.” But mathematics does not explain any natural
phenomena and, therefore, does not belong to Natural Sciences. On
the other hand, while mathematics is our internal creation, there is
no trace of individuality in mathematical objects, individuality which
according to Dilthey characterizes Geistwissenschaften.
We see that Dilthey’s classification is not complete. While it
provides the space for Natural Sciences describing the “outside”
and Sciences of Spirit presenting inner experience, this classification
misses the part of the inner experience responsible for our ability to
“see” the “outside.”
46 David Kazhdan
I suggest that the role of mathematics is to provide a structure, to

“translate” the chaotic “outside” into the structured “world.” In other
words mathematics is our reflection on the presence of the “outside,”
the reflection which provides a framework to see and appreciate nature
as an organized “world,” the reflection which creates a possibility to
see the “outside” as structured.
Things on their own are not “seen.” If we look at a painting as a
collection of small color dots [as the computer sees a painting], we
will see “nothing” – that is no thing. Only through an organization
which we construct and impose is this “nothing” transformed into
a thing – in this case an art object. So I suggest taking literally
Galileo’s statement: “Mathematics is the language with which God
has written the universe.” In other words, mathematics is the activity
which makes the universe legible.
The Greeks were very careful observers who described phenomena
in everyday language. They clearly realized that there is a very
restricted area of permanent events which can be scientifically
described in natural language. Without an adequate mathematical
language for the phenomena of change, the Greeks were not able to
describe dynamics but only outlined generalities such as a maxim,
“Every object wants to return to its natural place.” Galileo’s great
discovery was of the possibility to use mathematics for the description
of the structured world where an ideal point is moving in an ideal
inertial reference frame. In particular, Galileo said that both light
and heavy bodies fall with the same speed. As you could imagine,
the experiment of throwing different objects from the Tower of Pisa
showed that heavy objects reach the ground faster. Galileo’s answer
was, “I’m talking about ideal objects.”
To summarize: the reliability of mathematics is a reflection of
the comprehensibility and the coherence of our existence. But it is
not the passive truthfulness of a reflection but a creative activity
which structures the “outside.” As a result of this activity, the
“outside” is transformed into “things” which can be analyzed. Since
this creative activity organizes outside nature it cannot be reduced
to a system of formal rules. On the other hand, since mathematical
activity is a prior, since it is an expression of internal experiences,

its development does not trail after the demand of Natural Sciences.
This answers Wigner’s question; this is why mathematics, which is
the core of our ability to organize, applies to the world.
Response to Kazhdan
David Shulman
It is not every day that a great mathematician reflects upon the

axiology of mathematical practice and, more specifically, on the
question of what sort of authority mathematical truths possess. When
I first heard David Kazhdan deliver his paper during the Authority
conference, I thought that, though I found it profoundly engaging, I
didn’t agree with certain central arguments in it. I told him that, and
he asked me to write a response. I agreed, and delayed for a long
time; this turned out to be a good thing. Now, after re-reading the
paper several times, I think that the differences between us are less
profound than it seemed.
The crux of the issue, it seems, lies in the correlation between
mathematics and the world “outside,” as Kazhdan several times calls
it. This correlation, which fascinated Kant – but which, it is probably
fair to say, he was unable to substantiate fully – leads Kazhdan to
Dilthey’s description of the Natural Sciences as seeking to explain
in terms of cause and effect (the reduction of the particular to the
general) and of the Geistwissenschaften as seeking understanding
through “the exemplification of the individuality of the phenomena
in terms of the relations of the part and the whole.” I am not sure that
Dilthey is the best point of departure for our problem, and not only
because mathematics does not actually explain natural phenomena.
Perhaps a more congenial starting point, from the perspective of the
Geistwissenschaften, would be Vico’s insistence that human beings
can only understand something they have themselves made (and not
“found” outside themselves).
Response to Kazhdan 49
If Vico is right, then there may, after all, be traces of individuality

in mathematical objects, and not only in mathematicians. In this
respect, “making” and “seeing” are very close to one another. As
Kazhdan writes, “things on their own are not ‘seen’.” Whatever we
see is highly organized, or “transformed” (in his language), or perhaps
projected and imposed. Better still (to adopt a South Asian point
of view): we see nothing without an imaginative act of perception.
I think it is at least possible that mathematical imagining can be
privileged, in some respects, or for some purposes, over other kinds
of imagining.
It seems to me that Kazhdan acknowledges this way of talking
about our thinking in general, and about truth, including mathematical
truths, in particular. Mathematics, he says, “is not the passive
truthfulness of a reflection but a creative activity which structures the
‘outside.’” There is that “outside” again, nicely put between quotes,
as if we can never be quite sure that it is really where we think it is,
namely, outside. Who knows where “it” is? Can we imagine a world
that has no outside? Some Indian schools, like that of the Kashmiri
authors of the Yoga-vasistha-maharamayana (eighth century),
inhabit such a world, which is nonetheless highly realistic and very
remote from a Western idealism. I myself would go far to evade a
representationalist episteme – for that matter, even the metaphor of
reflecting an external world seems to me suspect. Surely, we can do
better than that, and mathematics may well be a particularly useful
laboratory for such ontic quandaries. This is not because mathematics
offers a set of ineluctable truths, given the initial axioms, to follow
the first part of Kazhdan’s paper, but because those truths cannot be
judged authoritative without reference to the criterion of beauty. I
don’t think I’ve ever met a mathematician who denied the importance
of this criterion, on whatever level of application. Mathematicians
know they are doing something beautiful, first of all when what they
do works in its own terms, and then again when it seems to work in
some projection onto the cosmos we see.
I agree with Kazhdan: we organize, create, and impart a legible
structure to the world, which we can see only through these human
50 David Shulman
structures or fields of perception. Chaos, Kazhdan says, is amenable

to such human attempts at coherence, and mathematics is a potent
medium for these attempts. This process is, in fact, how “things”
consolidate themselves in our awareness and thus become the
“things” they are – not, please notice, by being reduced to a set
of formal rules (thus the lyrical ending to Kazhdan’s essay). But
what is the domain of application for this process of structuring and
perceiving? Does it have a limit? I am no mathematician, indeed
nothing of a scientist, but I often wonder – along with the authors
of Yoga-vasistha-maharamayana – if the coherence that we somehow
generate in the world we observe applies only to a very small, even
trivial segment of what passes for reality or the real universe or, for
that matter, for what might claim to constitute truth.
On Authority in Physics
Eliezer Rabinovici
I will start with a story.

Richard Feynman was an outstanding physicist. He also held a
very high opinion of himself. He tried to impress on many that he
could grasp in one minute all the knowledge others had accumulated
over years; then it would take him another minute to dissect the
problem and expose all the holes in your solution to it. One example
of his interface with the rest of the world was when he claimed, in a
well-attended press conference, to have uncovered the simple reason
why the Columbia Shuttle had exploded.
Discussing such a personality would seem a good starting point for
analyzing authority. In his book, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!
Feynman offers what he calls a footnote, in which he admits he was
outclassed in a certain situation; this is the only time I have heard of
in which he admitted such a thing either in private or in public. In
his own words: “I decided to trap the (Rabbinical) students ....I knew
the kind of nitpicking logic to use….I thought ‘Here’s fun’ .…My
plan was….And do you know what happened? They’re rabbinical
students, right? They were ten times better than I was !...I had thought
I had come up with an original idea ….it had been discussed in the
Talmud for ages…So they cleaned me up as easy as pie….”
I hope this makes crystal clear how I feel about expressing my
thoughts in this respected volume. It also gives a hint about what I
think of human authority in general.
Consider now the issue of authority in the context of studying
natural phenomena in general and Physics in particular from a
52 Eliezer Rabinovici
human point of view. Our predecessors made, and we continue to

make every day, a very large number of observations and interactions
with our near as well as our far surroundings. Should one search
for a framework to encode this enterprise? Does such a framework
exist?
It seems that we are hardwired to ignore the seemingly obvious
NOH principle. Nobody Owes Humanity a simple and concise
description of nature. It could well be that although human beings
do exist, all they can do is to record everything that they observe,
line after line. Nevertheless, for thousands of years and in various
forms, human beings have tried to discover and formulate a short
description of all of nature as they knew it. Although we are beings
whose height ranges in a scale of a very few meters, we have come
up with the megalomaniac claim that we can describe, and tersely at
that, the entire universe from its largest to its smallest dimensions.
The authority scientists acknowledge is constituted by the laws of
nature – or, from this point on, let us particularize our discussion to
the laws of Physics.
The first doubt we have to cast on this authority touches its very
existence. Are there indeed laws of Physics? If they do exist, does
the very nature of the human condition limit which types of laws we
human beings can uncover?
Laws that remain unaltered on time scales of years have a good
chance of being detected. Validating that laws operate for very long
time scales – say billions of years, which is the time scale for the
age of our universe – strengthens the utility of adhering to such
an authority. If such laws do exist, they can be tested by repeating
experiments over and over. If the results obtained follow what such
laws predict, one has enhanced their authority. The last two centuries
have seen considerable success in discovering such laws of Physics.
Moreover, these laws can be written down on one page of paper
in letters that can be read by the unaided eye.
These laws have been checked and rechecked, in many places
and under many circumstances and conditions, on a scale of years;
evidence that some of them have persisted for billions of years is
On Authority in Physics 53
available. One should note, however, that there is an evolutionary

advantage in identifying such laws if they exist.
There are other limitations associated with these laws.
One type is associated with the extra un-NOH demand, namely
that not only should one be able to expose the laws, but one should
also be able to understand why they, and not others, are laws. Here
one applies additional constraints:
a. Until now it was always required that the laws of Physics
be formulated in the language of Mathematics and that they
adhere to the laws of mathematical logic. The authority of the
law should obey the authority of Mathematics. Is Mathematics
a truth of its own that transcends human existence? So far, this
rule has worked.
b. Until now all laws were subservient to a higher authority,
the law of laws – the law that governs all descriptions of
basic physical interactions. Until the twentieth century, this
super-authority was classical physics. From then on it has
been Quantum Mechanics. But we have today even less
understanding of why the law of laws is what it is.
c. Some would prefer that the laws of Physics be, in a certain
sense, beautiful. For example, symmetry is associated with that
property. Some would like there to be one unique, consistent
theory, while others prefer variety and complexity. Here, once
again, human beings try to impose their tastes on the authority
they recognize, and from time to time they are very successful
in this.
Another type of limitation is anchored in human nature. Even when a
clear prediction is made for the result of an experiment, there is no way
one can use the measuring system to verify the prediction exactly. For
example, if someone predicts a null result in an experiment and it is
then measured to be of the value 0.0000000000000000000000, there
seems to be no way to be certain that the result of the experiment was
not actually, for example 0.00000000000000000000001. One cannot
confirm experimentally that the value is strictly zero. This doubt
54 Eliezer Rabinovici
seems to be there to stay. Apparently, we are doomed to remain with

some uncertainty as to how much the laws are truly an authority.
We also do not know if the laws of Physics will remain the same
on longer time scales and if the numerical values of the parameters
which appear in these laws can change over time. One can try to
check this out, and as far as it has been tested so far there is no
evidence that either the laws themselves or the numerical values
change over time. This result reinforces authority.
As Physics is exercised by human beings, there are human authority
issues involved. A strong authority is invested in leaders of the field,
who can judge if a certain work conforms with the authority of the
laws. Their opinion also weighs considerably in determining if a
particular piece of work is seen as very good or as boring. However,
the very same laws deprive these leaders of the right to impose their
results if these results themselves violate the laws. A first year Ph.D.
student could detect a mistake in a calculation made by the leader
of the field. No defense of the type, “How dare you claim I made
an error, do you not know that I did such and such a great piece of
work in the past?” – will hold for even a moment.
On the other hand, it is also very difficult to revolt against
authority in Physics. A person who finds, on the basis of new data,
that a prejudice that was held for centuries is wrong will not be
excommunicated. She would be required to explain why the dogma
worked until now, and how her new laws explain the past as well as
the new domain of phenomena that the dogma fails to explain. This
has been dubbed the correspondence principle. Once successfully
proved, she would simply be asked to join the leaders. There is no
old world to be brought down…That is not to say that there have
been no scientific revolutions since the eighteenth century; we know
there were monumental ones. But the former leaders of the field
were not burned at the stake. They did the best they could with the
information they had at the time.
Thus a benevolent dictatorship is in place. But the fact that the
correspondence principle has been very useful for over a century
does not insure that this will always be the case.
On Authority in Physics 55
I will end by noting a self-induced revolution against authority

from within the laws themselves. As I have mentioned, many would
like there to be one unique theory and one unique, unified equation
to rule all.
Try imagining the enormous power vested in such an equation.
How could we remove that concentrated power from the one
equation? Well, imagine that this equation has an infinite set of
solutions. The power to predict exactly everything is now taken away
from the equation. Its authority is once again more modest. It is
perhaps gratifying that exactly such a situation has emerged recently
in string theory.
Until gravity becomes a player, one can use the concept of energy
to help us choose the ground state of the system. The state with
lowest energy is the ground state. There are, however, theories which
do not contain gravity, for which there are an infinite number of
states with the lowest energy; and there are many more states with
higher energy. In the presence of quantum gravity in general and
string theory in particular, all states have the same energy. All of
them seem, as of now, to be equally entitled to be the ground state,
that is, the universe.
Authority in the Bee’s Brain:
Three Thoughts
C. Giovanni Galizia
Introduction
Honeybees and their social lifestyle have fascinated humans since

Antiquity. Hesiod (around 700 BC) mentioned the lazy life of drones,
Aristotle (384-322 BC) defined bees as “zoon politikon;” Virgil (70-
19 BC) saw a sex-free society that was divinely ordered, perfect in
every sense. Virgil’s reflections draw a sharp contrast between the
bees’ lives and his contemporary Roman society during the civil war
following Julius Caesar’s assassination. Virgil wrote: “The leader is
the guardian of their labors, to the leader they do reverence, and
all sit round the leader in a noisy throng, and crowd round in large
numbers, and often they lift the leader on their shoulders and expose
their bodies in war, and among wounds, seek a glorious death”
(Georgics Book IV). This view remained constant for a long time, as
seen in Shakespeare’s King Henry the Fifth (written approx. 1599),
where the Archbishop of Canterbury advises the King to attack
France, using a comparison to the order in the bees’ kingdom:
True: therefore doth heaven divide the state of man
in divers functions,
setting endeavour in continual motion;
to which is fixed, as an aim or butt,
obedience: for so work the honey-bees,
Authority in the Bee’s Brain: Three Thoughts 57
creatures that, by a rule in nature, teach

the art of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king, and officers of sorts:
where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds;
which pillage they with merry arch bring home
to the tent-royal of their emperor:
who, busied in his majesty, surveys
the singing masons building roofs of gold;
the civil citizens kneading-up the honey;
the poor mechanic porters crowding in
their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
the sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
delivering over to executors pale
the lazy yawning drone.
Note that up to this time, the bee state was seen as a monarchy. Thus,
not only did the beehive inspire as an example for human society, but
the hive itself was interpreted as a mirror of human society. It is only
much later that Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680) discovered that the
bee king was in fact a bee queen.1 Charles Butler had written a book,
“The Feminine Monarchy,” in 1609, where he had proposed a female
regent in the beehive. Swammerdam’s discovery in turn prompted
vivid discussions: again the beehive was used as inspirational for
visions about human society. Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815-1887)
1 My expertise is not in the history of science, thus these references should be

taken with care. Some sources indicate Swammerdam, as mentioned here, as the
first to discover the queen to be female. In other places I found Luys Méndez
de Torres, a Spanish scientist in 1586, and in addition to Charles Butler, the
English author John Lovett. See also ‘Burning The Fable of the Bees: Cultural
Poetics and the Incendiary Authority of Nature,’ in The Moral Authority of
Nature, L. Daston and F. Vidal (eds.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2003.
58 C. Giovanni Galizia
published “Das Mutterrecht” (Mother’s law) in 1861, proposing that

females would make the better rulers. In fact, discussions have not
stopped since: bees still inspire thinkers of all sorts to create parallels
between society and hives, and books about the natural history of
bees, e.g., The Wisdom of the Hive or Honeybee Democracy by
Tom Seeley, attract great attention well beyond the inner circle of
honeybee researchers.
My own work as a neuroscientist who uses bees as experimental
animals did not lead me into the analysis of honeybee societies, or
into an understanding of the bee’s social life. Studying learning and
behavior in bees, however, does include one crucial question: How
does the single bee “decide,” or “know,” what behavior it should
display at a certain time? This is, in fact, a topic relevant to “authority”
because it is at the root of how the division of labor is organized
in the hive. Is there, as proposed in many literary sources, a queen
that rules, or is it a democracy? (Again, this sentence takes from
human organization and reflects onto the defenseless bee.) Thus, in
the following, I will cover three aspects:
– How do bees live (this is fundamental to understanding
labor division)?
– How does the queen “rule” (i.e., what queen signals
influence the behavior of worker bees)?
– How does the brood “rule” (i.e., what brood signals influence
the hive)?
These aspects will lead to three “thoughts about authority.”
The bee: A brief natural history
Bees live in hives, large colonies of honeybees that together produce

sufficient honey for the next winter. A colony can grow to the size
of 50,000 individual bees! Each hive contains one queen, thousands
of worker bees (all females), and – in the mating season – the male
drones. The queen lays all the eggs in the hive, meaning that all
worker bees are sisters. A virgin queen flies out of the hive once,
early in her life, mates in flight with several drones, and stores the
sperm for the rest of her life, never to leave the hive again, until the
hive swarms and forms a new hive. In humans, sex is determined by
the sex chromosomes, either XY or XX. In bees, sex is determined
through a different system: fertilized eggs (with two chromosome
sets) produce females, and unfertilized eggs (one chromosome set)
produce males. This system is called haplodiploidy.2 The queen can
actively either fertilize an egg or not, and thus determine if and how
many male drones are produced in the hive.
Controlling sex by the number of chromosome sets is a trait
specific to hymenoptera (ants, wasps and bees). Interestingly, it is
in this group that we find most social animals, and therefore it is no
wonder that researchers have speculated whether there is a causal
link between haplodiploidy and social organization. Indeed, due to
haplodiploidy, sisters sired by the same drone father are related to
each other by 75% (the chromosome set from the father is identical
[50%], while the chromosome set of the mother has a 50% chance to
be equal, since each chromosome exists in two copies in the mother,
and only one is passed to each offspring). On the other hand, the
queen is related to her offspring only to 50%. Thus, if evolution
favors systems that improve the maintenance of own genes, it is
advantageous, for bees, to help a sister (75% shared genes), rather
than to produce offspring (50% shared genes). This once popular view
in sociobiology is less strong today, due to several difficulties. For
one, many social animals are not haplodiploid (the most prominent
example is the termite), showing that if haplodiploidy favors social
lifestyle, it nevertheless is not a prerequisite for social lifestyle.
Furthermore, predictions from the model have so far failed to be
confirmed. For example, honeybee workers should ideally be able
to recognize true sisters (from the same drone, 75% relatedness)
2 A haplotype is a single chromosome set (as in drones), a diplotype is a double

chromosome set (as in females: workers and queen). Humans, both males and
females, have diplotype chromosome sets.
and half sisters (from a different drone, 25% relatedness), but no

evidence for this has been found yet. Furthermore, many social
insects do not have single queens, but rather many queens, and it
appears that multiple queens are the ancestral state. In some social
species all workers lay eggs. Thus, relatedness among sisters may
favor social lifestyle, but is unlikely to be the evolutionary force
behind it.
Worker honeybees fulfill different tasks in the hive. Again,
diversity is the key among social insects. Ants, for example, have
different castes: worker ants, soldier ants, forager ants. They look
different, their bodies are specialized for a particular task, and
together they form a complex and integrated system of shared
labor. Honeybees have developed a system of age polyethism, i.e.,
the different tasks are related to the age of the bee. Every worker
bee looks the same, and every worker bee performs all tasks during
her life. Eggs develop into larvae that remain in the comb and are
fed by worker bees. It takes about three weeks for the adult bee
to emerge. Once hatched, the adult bee starts her life with in-hive
duties as nurse, feeding larvae and the queen, keeping the hive clean
(e.g., removing dead bees), building new combs. These tasks are
performed for about two to three weeks. Then, the bee leaves the
hive, performing a few orientation flights that allow her to know the
important landmarks in the environment, thus creating a representation
of the environment in her brain, which allows the bee not to get
lost later in her life. Then, she starts forager duties: first as a guard
bee, protecting the hive entrance from intruders. Next, she flies out
to collect nectar (used to produce honey), pollen (high protein food
for larvae) and water (also used for cooling the hive on hot days).
The total lifespan of an adult bee (indoor and outdoor duties) is
between four and six weeks in summer (bees that winter in a closed
hive live up to six months longer, until the spring generation bees
hatch).
First thought about authority: Who decides what I do?

The system of age polyethism seems quite robust: every bee covers all
tasks in her lifetime, so there are enough bees for each task. However,
not everything is lovely at all times: diseases or external events can
interfere with the ratio of foragers and nurses, and the question is
whether the system can adapt to such situations. Experimentally, we
can create extreme scenarios, e.g., remove all nurses, or remove all
foragers. Indeed, in this situation, the remaining worker bees readjust.
When all foragers are removed, the remaining nurses split, and half of
them will become precocious foragers. When all nurses are removed,
the remaining foragers split, and half of them will revert to being
nurses. These changes are complex changes, involving also changes
in the brain to the suddenly changed requirements to their behavior.
Thus, the question arises: who decides about which individual is
to change? In an anthropomorphic view – does the queen sit there
and distribute tasks? Well, no. The queen is, for all that we know
now, not involved at all in the process. Rather, each bee decides
alone. It turns out that bees differ in their sensitivity to sugar and
in their sensitivity to light. These sensitivities also change during
a lifetime and are correlated with the task transition from nurse to
forager. In the situation where foragers are missing, nurses do not
receive any fresh pollen and nectar from outside. In this situation,
the most sensitive ones will be the first to switch their behavior.
This sensitivity is not stochastic: it is related to specific genes that
are either strongly expressed or not. A prominent gene is the forager
gene: a gene that codes for a cGMP-dependent protein kinase (for
the experts) and has multiple actions – from sugar sensitivity to light
sensitivity to social behavior. The gene is not specific for bees: in fruit
flies, the same gene influences behavior, and individuals with high or
low expression are “rovers” (running about in search of food, thus
quite successful in finding new food sources, but consuming a lot of
energy while doing so) or “sitters” (with a more sedentary strategy,
less prone to being detected by predators, with fewer chances to find
new food sources, and less energy consumption).
Thus, the prevailing forces that “rule” labor division are: a signal
from outside, indicating the level of resources, and a threshold from
inside, responding to this signal. Social stability derives from the fact
that the threshold is not uniform, but every individual has a slightly
different threshold. The stability of the system derives also from the
fact that this threshold is relevant not only in the strongly perturbed
experimental situation, but also in a regular year: for example, the
same threshold is used by the bees to allocate how many bees collect
pollen (these are the bees that respond to lower sugar concentration),
and how many collect nectar.
How does the queen “rule” the hive? Part 1.
In a beehive, only the queen lays eggs. This is not the natural solution
for social insects: looking across species, there are those where all
workers lay eggs, and there are those where a few queens coexist.
Also, there are species where a single queen lays eggs, but workers
can lay “incognito” eggs. Other workers “police” the nest: if they
find eggs that do not belong to the queen, they destroy them. Not
so in bees: here only the queen lays eggs, at least under normal
conditions. However, if the queen dies, the queenless workers start
developing ovaries, and will lay eggs. Since these workers have
never mated, their eggs are unfertilized and result in all offspring
being male bees: the hive becomes a drone-rearing hive and will not
survive. The drones might find another queen with which to mate,
and thus reproduction of the hive (or better: of some individuals in
the hive) is possible.
Worker bees have no ovaries if the queen is alive and present,
but develop them as soon as the queen dies. How does the queen
prevent the development of ovaries? The answer is: pheromones. The
queen produces a pheromone (called QMP for queen’s mandibular
pheromone) that acts on the workers’ physiology. Pheromones
are odors that are produced by an individual and influence other
individuals of the same species.3 There are many examples in the

animal kingdom: for example, ants mark their tracks with a trail
pheromone, so that follower ants find their way, and dogs mark their
territory with urine so that other dogs recognize their borders. In
bees, pheromones are used as alarm substances (e.g., when a bear
attacks, the whiff of alarm pheromone attracts thousands of bees
that will attack the bear), as social cohesion signals, as markers for
flowers that have just been visited, and more. The body of a bee
has many glands that produce pheromone odors related to different
situations in the bee’s life.
Two types of pheromones are distinguished: primer pheromones
and releaser pheromones. Releaser pheromones influence the
recipient’s behavior (e.g., elicit aggressiveness or indicate a trail).
Primer pheromones change developmental processes, i.e., they act
in a way akin to hormones within an animal’s body. QMP acts in
both ways: it attracts males during the queen’s nuptial flight, thus
influencing their behavior (releaser pheromone). And it leads to the
degeneration of ovaries in worker bees (primer pheromone).
How are odors – and pheromones – coded?
A lot is known about odor coding in animals, and also in bees. In a

nutshell: there are many receptor neurons that are activated by odors;
3 Pheromones belong to the semiochemicals, i.e., odors that carry a meaning.

There are also semiochemicals that act not within one species, but between
two different species: allomones, kairomones and synomones. Allomones are
released odors that affect the behavior of individuals of another species, to
the benefit of the sender. For example, some plants release allomones when
attacked by herbivores, and the allomones attract predators of the herbivores.
Kairomones are odors that benefit the receiver, but not the sender. For example,
other plants, when attacked, release odors that attract even more herbivores.
Finally, synomones are odors that benefit both species.
in the bee’s case there are approximately 160 different receptor

types. Interestingly, bees can smell many more odors than they have
receptors. How does this work? The secret is: combinatorial coding.
Assume, for example, three receptor types A, B, C. One odor might
activate only A, one A and B, another one B and C, a fourth one
A and C, and so on. In this situation, the receptor type A has no
safe information about the odor quality, but the combination of the
different receptor types does. This allows for the coding of many
more odors than there are receptors.
This combinatorial code is not the only solution found in the
animal kingdom, and indeed other solutions might be realized within
the same species. At the other extreme, we have “labeled line”
coding: a receptor A responds to a particular substance with very
high selectivity. In this case, if the substance is present, receptor A
is active, and if receptor A is active, the animal knows that substance
A is present. Generally, labeled lines are used for pheromones
where efficient and fast communication is needed. However, not all
pheromone systems use labeled lines, and not all labeled line systems
code for pheromones. QMP is assumed to be coded in a labeled line
system, though a definite proof of this is still open.
Knowing how an odor is coded does not yet explain how it works.
In the case of releaser pheromones, the situation is conceptually
simple: odor receptors are neurons that send their information into
the brain, and the brain controls the animal’s behavior. Thus, the
idea that a particular odor will modify a particular behavior via
interactions between neurons in the brain is not surprising. Which
neurons are involved, and how the animal generates a priority of
possible behaviors, needs to be investigated individually in every
case. In the case of primer pheromones we know less: most likely,
the pheromone triggers the release of neurohormones from the brain
that in turn influences the development of the animal, e.g., inhibits
the growth of ovaries.
How does the queen “rule” the hive? Part 2.

QMP is a pheromone with multiple actions – we have seen its role in
ovary development and in attracting males during the nuptial flight. It
also affects the cognitive capacities of nurse bees, i.e., of those bees
that stay inside the hive to build the nest and care for the brood.
In order to understand this action, we first need to look at
the impressive learning capacities of honeybees. In their natural
environment, bees constantly learn odor details about their
environment. In particular, they learn the odor of flowers that yield
good nectar, so that they can return to them and exploit them better.
This is particularly important because bees are flower constant, i.e.,
they stick to a particular flowering plant for as long as the nectar
is good, before switching to a new crop. Beekeepers exploit this
capacity to produce selective honey, e.g., orange blossom honey.
Neuroscientists use this capacity to study how learning functions
in the brain. Bees can be conditioned to an odor: if a bee is rewarded
with a drop of sugar water she will extend her proboscis (tongue) to
lick the sugar water. If we present her with an odor just before the
sugar water, the odor is taken as predictor of the reward, and the next
time the bee will stick out the proboscis to the odor alone. This is
a nice example of classical conditioning, or Pavlovian conditioning,
the form of learning that was discovered by Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
with his dog and the sound of the bell that predicted food. It is called
appetitive conditioning for this reason.
Another form of classical conditioning is aversive conditioning:
here a neutral stimulus is paired with a noxious stimulus, and the
animal learns to react to the neutral stimulus in anticipation of the
noxious stimulus. This type of conditioning is often used in eyelid
conditioning experiments with humans, where a tone predicts an air
puff into the eye, and after successful conditioning the tone alone will
lead to the eyelid closing reflex. In honeybees, aversive conditioning
is also easily done: an odor is paired with a mild electric shock, and
after successful training the bee will extend her sting as response to
the odor alone, just as she does to the electric stimulus. Thus, bees
as experimental animals can be conditioned both to inclination and

aversion.
Or can they? Recent experiments yielded a surprising result4:
while forager bees learn well to associate an odor with either reward
or electric shock (even at the same time, for two different odors),
nurse bees do not! Nurse bees can learn to extend their proboscis to
an odor that predicts sugar water (reflecting their ecologically natural
behavior when they respond to incoming foragers that bring nectar
returning from their flights), but they do not learn to extend their
stings after aversive conditioning. Maybe they are too young? Maybe
this learning capacity only develops later in life? The answer is: no.
When kept outside the hive, nurse bees are just as good at learning
as forager bees. The reason they do not learn is a much more subtle
one: QMP inhibits aversive learning in nurse bees! Mechanistically,
it does so using two parallel channels, one being olfactory, the
other acting directly as a neurohormone. As a result, nurse bees are
docile and have a very low tendency to sting, a property that is
very useful in a crowded hive where otherwise reciprocal stinging
could be deleterious to social life. The QMP effect does not reduce
aggressiveness in older bees, who fly out of the hive and act as guard
bees to protect their hive: here a low stinging threshold is important
for efficient hive control.
Second thought about authority: How to control people?
Honeybee queens “rule” using odors: her QMP pheromone controls

not only the workers’ ovaries, thus making them infertile, but it
also controls the younger workers, the nurses, in reducing their
aggressiveness, keeping them docile. She uses odor both as a channel
for information, but also as a psychopharmacon, directly interfering
with the worker’s physiology (ovary control) and the worker’s
psychology (behavioral control of aggressiveness in nurses). One
4 This work has been done by Alison Mercer and her coworkers in Otago.
could claim that this chemical cocktail, acting as odor-pheromone-

psychochemical, bestows the queen with absolute power – a power
controlled by chemicals, somewhat reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World. Does this image, borrowing from absolutistic
human societies, work for bees? Does somebody control the queen?
How the brood controls the hive
We probably know much too little to understand how labor division

is really controlled in such a complex system as a beehive, where
50,000 individuals all follow their own, individual tasks, and the
whole hive looks like a single, well-organized organism. But we have
a few examples that indicate that it is not the queen who controls
the rest, but rather organization is working thanks to an intricate
network of signals in all directions: foragers controlling nurses,
nurses controlling brood, brood controlling nurses, controlling the
queen, etc. We have already seen one example: when all foragers
are removed from the hive, a sizable portion of nurse bees accelerate
their development and become foragers, thus reacting to a signal that
says “the number of foragers is not sufficient.” Similarly, the other
way round: when the nurses are removed, some foragers revert to
become nurses.
It seems that the brood is left alone. The brood: these are larvae
that live in the single cells of the combs, never crawl out, are fed
by nurses. How can they participate in controlling the hive’s life?
Indeed, they also play a role: it turns out that the brood controls
the sleeping behavior of nurse bees!5 Forager bees sleep in a way
somewhat comparable to our own. During the day, they fly out and
forage for nectar, pollen and water. At night, bees do not fly (their eyes
are optimized for strong light that allows fast flight, leaving plants
that flower at night to moths that specialize as pollinators, which
5 This paragraph is based on work done by Guy Bloch and his research team in
Jerusalem.
fly slowly and have eyes adapted to dim light). At night, forager
bees stay in the hive and sleep: their legs bend, their antennae do
not move, and a stimulus that would immediately lead to a reaction
in a forager bee in daytime is ignored. Do nurse bees also sleep?
Yes, they do, but their sleeping patterns are fundamentally different.
They sleep in short bouts and intermittently, both during the day
and at night. One could hypothesize that maybe they do not receive
information about daytime or nighttime, because within the hive it is
dark. However, if you remove a nurse bee from the hive, and keep
the bee in a dark place (so that she cannot be habituated to the day-
night rhythm by seeing the light), she nevertheless quickly reverts to
a day-night rhythm with the correct phase relationship to the external
world. This shows that even in the dark hive nurse bees are always
habituated to the appropriate time of day. However, they do not
show the typical sleeping behavior of foragers. Rather, they sleep
in short, distributed time stretches and keep feeding the brood day
and night, without pause, clearly an advantage for the hungry brood.
And, indeed, it turns out that it is a brood signal that suppresses
rhythmic sleep behavior in nurses. It is not yet known whether this
is accomplished using odors (a likely hypothesis), or other signals
(such as, for example, vibrations).
Third thought about authority: Bottom up control?
Thus, it is the brood that controls an important part of hive life! This
is very different from a queen being a sovereign regent over her
subjects. Rather, different aspects of the social life in the hive are
controlled by different players: the brood controlling sleeping behavior
in nurses, foragers and nurses together controlling how many bees
fly out and how many stay in, and the queen controlling reproduction
in the workers. The result is a complex web of interactions across
the different castes of a honeybee hive. This web strongly relies
on communication, and much of the communication in the beehive
is olfactory: a cocktail of odors, constantly changing and holding
society together. In such a system, “authority” cannot be attributed to

a particular player: authority is distributed. It is distributed because
different tasks are controlled by different individuals, and it is
distributed because – with the exception of the queen – all signals
are communal. For example, it is not a single nurse that gives the
signal “there are too few foragers, some nurses need to switch their
behavior” – the signal grows via a small contribution from each
individual, until the total signal (in many cases, the total amount of
pheromone odor) has reached a threshold. Here, however, the picture
changes: the threshold is not a social threshold, but an individual.
Every single individual has its own threshold, e.g., every nurse has
her own threshold whether to change her behavior and become a
forager. This system is very stable: there is no need for an authority
to be in command, and because thresholds vary across individuals,
changes in the hive are not abrupt but gradual, leading to a smooth
adaptation of the hive to changing conditions.
Authority in the bee brain – a model for human societies?
Let us return to the political and literary claims reviewed in the

beginning: if so many thinkers in our human history have used the
beehive as a model for human society, and if we see that, indeed,
the beehive is a well-organized society, should we not learn from the
bee, and copy some of the mechanisms? Some claim exactly that6:
given the long evolutionary history of bees, and the stability of their
hives, they had a longer time to experiment with how to organize a
society, and we could profit from them.
We might. Or we might not. It is instructive to expand our view
and not look at honeybees alone: bees are only one species of
social insects, but among different bee species, wasp species and
ant species there are many more, and if we expand more we should
6 See, for example, Ton Seeley, Honeybee Democracy. Princeton: Princeton

include termites (still remaining within insects – a view outside

insects would also help). All of these species have been around for
millions of years, have evolved and created stable social systems,
with complex interactions among their individuals. However, the
solutions that are found in different species are quite different. For
example, in bees each worker bee performs all kinds of tasks in
a sequence (age polyethism), while in ants individual workers are
born as a particular caste (workers, soldiers, nurses – the choice of
words again reflects our tendency to describe the animal kingdom
by borrowing from human society). In bees, the queen lays all eggs,
in other species several queens share a nest, or workers also lay
eggs. Thus, the social solutions of bees are not a natural solution, a
“pinnacle” of evolutionary optimization. It is but one solution, one
that works very well, but not better than another (whatever meter we
would use to measure “better”).
We are left with an intriguing system in honeybees of how authority
is organized and shared. We can, of course, develop ideas by looking
at solutions in animal societies, but we cannot infer whether these
ideas are good for humans, or workable at all. That, we will have to
find out for ourselves.
Eger 1449: On Poverty and Authority in a
Bohemian Jewish Community
Rainer Josef Barzen
What was authority in a Jewish community in the 15th century?

Who had authority in such a community?
Who gave authority to them?
Who was authority for them?
When I asked myself these questions, I immediately remembered some

remarks from the 15th century about a certain Jewish community
that was known to its contemporaries for a certain problem with
authority. Thus a Responsum from 1460, an exchange of letters
between Jewish juridical scholars, states about this community: “They
are violent and do not keep the law.”1 Which Jewish community
had caused the displeasure of the greatest scholars of its time? What
distinguished this community?
1 '‫שאנשי אייגר''א הם אלמים ולא צייתי דינ‬, Josef Kolon. Responsa (Hebrew).
Edited by Samuel Baruch haCohen Deutsch and Elyakim Schlesinger. Jerusalem:
Oraysoh, 1988, nr. 193, p. 426. The Responsum is dated in the year 1460 or a
little earlier. See Seibt, Ferdinandt.“Eger, Stadt und Land.” In Germania Judaica
III (1350-1519). 1. Teilband (=GJ III. 1): Ortschaftsartikel Aach – Lychen,
Arye Maimon (ed.), pp. 267-285. Tübingen: J.C.B Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1987,
here 271; Herde, Peter. ‘Regensburg.’ In Germania Judaica III (1350-1519).
2. Teilband (=GJ III. 2): Ortschaftsartikel Mährisch Budwitz – Zwolle, Arye
Maimon s. A., Mordechai Breuer and Yacov Guggenheim (eds.), pp. 1179-1230.
Tübingen: J.C.B Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1995, here p. 1189.
72 Rainer Josef Barzen
I. The Jewish Community of Eger until 1430
The answer is disappointing. The Jewish community was small in

the former Imperial city of Eger (Cheb) on the northwest border of
Bohemia, which was pledged to Bohemia from 1322. In the middle
of the 15th century this community was really not a significant center
of Jewish life. Its history was like that of dozens of other Jewish
communities in the Empire.
As in many Imperial cities Jews were documented in Eger already
in the late 13th century (1293). With the pledge of Eger and its
surroundings by the Roman-German King Louis IV (“the Bavarian”)
to King John of Bohemia in 1322, the Jews of Eger are attached to
the territory of the city in a special way. In the same way in which
Eger would not join the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Jews of this city
were not considered to be part of the Bohemian Jews. As to their
relationship to the pledge lord, they were considered to belong to
the other residents of Eger and to be part of the pledge of the city
and territory of Eger.2
After the persecution of the Jews during the Black Death, which
also decimated the Jewish population of Eger in 1350, Jews were
documented in Eger in 1352 again. The Jewish population fluctuated
greatly. In 1386 and 1410 the community seems to have attained a
certain size. In 1430, 22 or more Jewish families lived in Eger.3 The
city’s most famous Jewish scholar, Nathan of Eger,4 also lived there
at that time. I will come back to him later.5
In order to expel its Jewish population, the city of Eger managed,
parallel to many other cities of the Empire, to get an expulsion
2 Demandt, Dieter. ‘Die Judenpolitik der Stadt Eger im Spätmittelalter.’ Bohemia

24 (1983): 1-18, here 2.
3 Seibt, ‘Eger,’ GJ III.1, p. 267.
4 Yuval, Israel Jacob. Scholars in Their Time. The Religious Leadership of
German Jewry in the Late Middle Age (Hebrew). Jerusalem: Magnes Press,
1988, pp. 172-175; Seibt, ‘Eger,’ GJ III.1, p. 273.
5 See n. 43.
Eger 1449: On Poverty and Authority in a Bohemian Jewish Community 73
privilege6 from the Roman-German King Sigismund (who had

already been King of Bohemia since 1419) in 1430. Two motives
are mentioned. First, the municipal council stated that it could no
longer protect the Jews from the “common people.”7 Jews in Eger
did not have to do any military service, which angered the common
people. In the end the city of Eger accused the Jews of deception
and of ruining the poor. There would be no Jews in Eger in the next
five years.8
II . The New Community from 1435
Much changed with the resettlement in 1435. The city of Eger

understood how to use the new privilege to leave the old protectors
of the Jews, the Bohemian and Roman-German king, outside of
the city. The city council as the representative of the municipal
community emphasized its responsibility for the potential Jewish
citizens.9 The Jews were no longer to be an instrument of the power
of the Bohemian king or the emperor in the city, an instrument that
limited the city’s possibilities.10 Through their money-lending the
Jews were to serve only the interests of the city and thus without
economic limitations were to be useful to the city’s tax income. In
1435 the Eger city council allowed a new group of Jews to settle
6 Bondy, Gottlieb, Dworsky, Franz (eds.). Zur Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen,
Mähren und Schlesien von 906 bis 1620, Vol. I. Prag: Gottlieb Bondy, 1906, nr.
220, p. 102.
7 Seibt, ‘Eger,’ GJ III. 1, p. 271, n. 108; p. 274, n. 171.
8 Seibt, ‘Eger,’ GJ III. 1, p. 274, and n. 172; Yuval, Scholars, p. 175.
9 Bondy, Dworsky, Juden in Böhmen, Vol. I. nr. 225, 226, pp. 108-112. Demandt,
Judenpolitik, S. 11.
10 Seibt, ‘Eger,’ GJ III. 1, nr. 8a-c, p. 269.
in the city for ten years.11 Katzman of Gotha12 and Abraham,13 son
of Master Heller, are mentioned by name. Eight additional heads of
households were allowed to settle. The new Jewish inhabitants were
given municipal citizenship by the city. The city council promised to
give the Jews legal protection before the emperor and the Kingdom of
Bohemia and made them full and legal citizens of the city. Moreover,
the newly arrived Jews were awarded every right of an autonomous
Jewish community that had already existed in Eger before 1430. This
included the right to a cemetery, a synagogue, a hospital, the presence
of a rabbi who would be the head of the synagogue and a Jewish
court of justice, a cantor for worship services as well as “everything
else that is necessary for a synagogue, a hospital and a cemetery.”14
With the new settlement of Jews, the city of Eger cooperated in the
creation of the constitution of the new community in that it not only
included the communal institutions in it but also put the leadership in
the hands of two persons and taxed the community as a whole. The
community was to pay the city 300 Rhenish florines, to be collected
by the community, as long as at least five Jewish families belonged
to it. If the community were to be limited to four families, then the
city of Eger would expect 200 Rhenish florines annually as a fixed
sum from the Jews in the city. The city also decided who would be
part of this collective of tax payers, which Jewish individuals the
Jewish community was allowed to tax and who was to pay his taxes
directly to the city.15 The contract named the Jew Gossel (together
with a certain David), who was supposed to pay the city 100 Rhenish
florines apart from the Jewish community. At the same time Gossel
and David were to pay their financial contributions to support the
11 Bondy, Dworsky, Juden in Böhmen I, nr. 226, p. 109.

12 Löwenstein, U., “Gotha,” GJ III. 1, nr. 13b, 3, pp. 457-460, here p. 458.
13 His identity is uncertain. Seibt, “Eger,” GJ III. 1, nr. 13b, 1, p. 272, p. 280, n.
122. He lived perhaps later in Regensburg. Herde, “Regensburg, ” GJ III. 2, nr.
13b, 6, p. 1190.
14 “... was zu schulen vnd Selhaws vnd kirchhof gehoret, als es von alter herkommen
ist ....” Bondy, Dworsky, Juden in Böhmen I, nr. 226, pp. 109-110.
cemetery, the synagogue and the hospital as part of their membership

in the community.16
The city council of Eger supported the Jewish community’s old
practice of allowing further Jews to settle in the city only after the
Jewish community had approved them.17 One section of the settlement
document stands out particularly in that it is completely different
from practices known to the 15th century and was certainly surprising
to Jewish communities in the Empire. It states:
“We have also given them authority over the poor Jews, which are
called Shalantjews, who roam around the countryside and who could
become dangerous for the city or in it. They should punish them or
expel them from the city. If you need our help for this we will come
to your aid ...”18
The document describes an unheard-of procedure.19 The local Jews
are given the option to rid themselves of poor Jews, a regulation
unknown in every other community in the high and late Middle Ages
in the Empire. The term “shalantjew”20 refers at first not to poor
Jews, who were in special relationships of dependency on rich Jewish

17 Bondy, Dworsky, Juden in Böhmen I, nr. 226, p. 110; Seibt, “Eger,” GJ III.1,
nr. 6a,b, p. 268.
18 “Auch haben wir in die macht gegeben vmb die schalanp Juden, die do pflegen
zu wandern durch die lanndt, die da vngewerlich weren der Stat oder in, das
sy dy mugen straffen vnd vorweisen aus der Stat; bedorfen sy vnser darczu, so
sullen wir in darczu behulfflich sein ...” Bondy, Dworsky, Juden in Böhmen I,
nr. 226, p. 110.
19 Guggenheim, Yacov. ‘Meeting on the Road. Encounters between German Jews
and Christians on the Margins of Society.’ In In and Out of the Ghetto.
Jewish-Gentile relations in late medieval and early modern Germany, R.
Po-chia Hsia, Hartmut Lehman (eds.), pp. 125-136. Washington, D.C.: German
Historical Institute and Cambridge University Press, 1995, here 133.
20 “Schalanp Juden,” “Schalant Juew.” Guggenheim, Yacov. ‘Social Stratification
of Central European Jewry at the End of the Middle Ages: The Poor’ (Hebrew).
In Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, division B, vol.
1 (The History of the Jewish People), pp. 130-136. Jerusalem: Magnes Press,
1990, here pp. 131-132.
families and who were still protected by them to a certain extent.

It was the vagrant Jewish poor who were called “shalantjews” in
certain written traditions from the 15th centuries.21 Thus in Frankfurt
am Main in 1390 and 1433 the Jewish hospital was known by
the name “schalanthus” as a hospice for Jewish strangers.22 These
beggars, whom Israel Isserlein called “Orkhei uFarkhei,” “guests and
transients,”23 included whole families who were often equipped with
begging letters and who travelled from one Jewish community to
the next in order to earn their living by begging. From the Jewish
perspective supporting these poor was a burden that was taken as
a matter of course, even though it was difficult. How is a license
against Jewish strangers, like the one given to the Jewish community,
to be understood, since it amounts to the Jewish community’s right to
expel these Jews? How does this tie into the question of authority?
The 1430s were known in many parts of the German Empire as
years of failed harvests and grain shortages, which ended in 1437-
1440 in a famine in a large number of cities, and this was repeated
in the 1490s.24 This escalation must have become so clear to the
city council of Eger in 1435 that, in an effort to combat famine, it
probably wanted to extend the expulsion of poor people who were
21 Ibid.
22 Andernacht, Dietrich/Lenarz, Michael/Schlotzhauer, Inge. “Frankfurt am Main,“
GJ III. 1, pp. 346-392, here nr. 3a, p. 346, 3c, p. 347.
23 ‫דמחשב ליה כארחי ופרחי כי כן רגילות הוא שהיהודים הולכים ממקום למקום כרצונם‬
Israel Isserlein. Trumat haDeshen (Hebrew), vol. 1, Responsa, edited by Samuel
Avitan. Jerusalem, 1990, nr. 342 p. 234. See as well ‫ובכל עת באו עניים ארחי‬
‫ופרחי ואמרו הלבישוני או פרנסוני‬, Moses Minz, Responsa (Hebrew), 2 vols., edited
by Yonatan Shrega Domb. Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim 1991, I, nr. 60, p.
142. See Guggenheim, Social Stratification, p. 131.
24 Jörg, Christian. ‘zu ratslagen von des kornes wegen,’ – Überlegungen zu den
Rahmenbedingungen städtischer Versorgungspolitik in Zeiten von Hungersnöten
während des 15. Jahrhunderts im oberdeutschen Raum. In Inklusion / Exklusion.
Studien zu Fremdheit und Armut von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Andreas
Gestrich, Lutz Raphael (eds.), pp. 309-338. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang,
2004, here pp. 310-317.
not citizens of Eger to the Jewish poor. The expulsion of the poor,25
which is documented as having been practiced in the large cities of
the Empire,26 was important as a means to combat poverty, because
the expulsion of the poor who were not citizens of the city meant
that demands on the city’s grain supplies were eased and the citizens
of the city could be supplied. It was self-evident in the large cities
that up to 30% of the population was not able to maintain its own
grain supply.27 Thus supplying the local population while excluding
poor strangers was a measure of domestic politics to keep the peace
and to further keep the ruling elite in its place. Thus the instigator
of the right to expel poor Jewish strangers should be sought on the
side of the Christian community. 28
But what were the benefits of this right for the leaders of the Jewish
community, who accepted it so readily? The city of Eger offered to
help the leaders expel the Jewish strangers, which strengthened the
leaders in their position in relation to the individual members of the
community. The authority of the community leadership from now on
did not have to be acquired only within the framework of Jewish law;
neither did it have to be recognized solely by the Jewish community
or by other Jewish authorities of the extended Jewish community in
the Empire. The Jewish leaders of the community of Eger could now
derive their power directly from the support of the local rulers. But
this strong authorization of the Jewish council by the local Christian
council did not only apply to the issue of expelling poor strangers.
The document states further:
“…also when they impose taxes or in other issues that affect the
community, if then someone (from the Jewish community) resists, and
if we are called on to help by the most influential persons or the
community leaders of the abovementioned Jews, we will make our
25 Christian, Ratslagen, pp. 324, 326.

26 Augsburg 1459, Cologne 1437/40, Strassburg 1475/76. Ibidem, pp. 324-325.
27 Ibid., p. 337.
28 Ibid., p. 329.
servants (security personnel) available to them, which the Jews must

pay for... ”29
The special authorization of the Jewish council of Eger by the
local city council was thus conferred in other areas of community
life, like taxation, and could at the discretion of the community
leadership be applied to other areas or Jewish community conflicts
as well. Thus within the framework of the settlement contract of
1435 the Christian leadership of the city of Eger and the leadership
of the Jewish community had come as close as possible. The leading
Jewish families of the city used this balancing of interests particularly
to maneuver themselves into a special position. The “two leaders”
referred without a doubt to these families. These two leaders were able
to decide whether the Jewish poor remained or departed, if necessary
with the help of Gentiles. In other conflicts as well within the Jewish
community, the Christian city council would support the Jewish
leadership. In this way the leading families flouted general Jewish
custom. In the future they would decide for themselves. They would
be their own authority, if necessary also against Jewish influence and
pressure from outside, by having secured the help of the Christian
council. As the leadership of the Eger Jews, they might possibly isolate
themselves from the other Jews in the Empire. Could that work?
III. An Attempt to Expel Two Families
The fact that the leaders of the Eger community were ready to take
advantage of these rights and if necessary to exercise them against
members of their own community became clear from a tax conflict
in 1449.
29 “...auch ab sie solten gelt haufheben cu geschosz oder tzu anderley das sich vnter
der Gemein von redlichen sachen geburet. Wer dann das sich yemant darwider
setzte, wenn vns dann die edelsten oder die vorsteer von den vordersten genanten
Juden wegen anrufften, So sullen wir in vnser Knecht leihen, das man die
Juden darumb pfende ...” Bondy, Dworsky, Juden in Böhmen I, nr. 226, p. 110.
Moses and Samuel, 30 the leaders of the Jewish community in

Eger, had, as part of an annual tax evaluation, attributed a certain
tax amount to Has Katz31 and Menzlin.32 But Has Katz and Menzlin
refused to accept the amount and did not pay it. After a final refusal
Moses and Samuel tried to have the two members of the community
expelled,33 and based on the settlement contract they had the means to
enforce this expulsion with the help of the Christian city council.34
What alternatives were there for the two family heads, Has Katz
and Menzlin, to defend themselves against the decision of the two
community leaders? Even if both of them tried to emphasize before
the leaders of the Eger Jewish community that an expulsion as the
first step in a tax conflict based on Jewish law was not usual, it
would not have helped them. The power of the leadership due to the
city’s support could not be overcome within the community. Katz
and Menzlin appealed to legal norms recognized within the Jewish
community and represented by Jewish legal authorities at large. Their
only hope left was to appeal to those Jewish authorities independent
of the local community.
What were these Jewish authorities outside of the Eger community
like, on which Has Katz and Menzlin dared to pin their hopes?
According to tradition the conflict should have been mediated within
the community. In a large community the two parties would have
gone before a local Jewish court. In small communities both parties
would have gone before a Jewish court of their choice. But this
also assumes the good will of both parties to agree on a court, for
there were no hierarchical Jewish courts related to each other in a
30 Seibt, ‘Eger,’ GJ III.1, nr. 23, 8, p. 273.

31 Seibt, ‘Eger,’ GJ III.1, nr. 13b, 8, p. 272.
32 Ibidem.
33 Israel Bruna. Responsa (Hebrew). Jerusalem: Boys’ Town Jerusalem Press, 1960,
nr. 128-131; Suler, B[ernard]. Rabbinische Geschichtsquellen (Fortsetzung).
Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der čechoslovakischen
Republik 9 (1938): 101-170, here nr. 12, pp. 121-125; Seibt, ‘Eger,’ GJ III.1,
nr. 13a, p. 271.
constitutional manner. In the same way there was no hierarchical

territorial organization of all Jewish communities in the German
lands.35 The Jewry of the Holy Roman Empire in the high and late
Middle Ages had a visible presence, but not a constitutional reality
(like in the countries on the Iberian Peninsula36). Why was that so?
Jewish life in the high and late Middle Ages in central and western
Europe was organized in autonomous communities, which by
definition were not allowed to interfere in the decision-making power
of the other communities.37 This made it possible for the community
leaders to network politically and for regional Jewish organizations
to form, which could associate small Jewish settlements with larger
communities and their cemeteries, courts, synagogues, etc. But this
prevented both a Jewish political hierarchy from being formed for the
Jewry throughout the Empire, and a hierarchy of courts and judges.
In this sense it was the Jewish legal scholars, who carried the title
“Rav” (“Rabbi”), without an office, after a regulated and extensive
education and who had to depend only on the “charismatic” authority
that grew over the years from their expertise and the fame of their
teachers. This legal expertise made them, at least from the second
half of the 13th century, the “Rav” (“Rabbi”) of the community in
which they lived, honored and respected but not appointed or paid
by the community.38 Only in the second half of the 15th century was
35 Breuer, Mordechai/Guggenheim, Yacov. ‘Die jüdische Gemeinde, Gesellschaft

und Kultur,’ In Germania Judaica III (1350-1519). 3. Teilband (=GJ III. 3):
Gebietsartikel, Einleitungsartikel und Indices, Arye Maimon s. A., Mordechai
Breuer and Yacov Guggenheim (eds.), pp. 2079-2138. Tübingen: J.C.B Mohr
(Paul Siebeck), 2003, here pp. 2130-2132.
36 ‘Rav del Cortez’ in Castile, ‘Nagid,’ or ‘Nassi,’ in Muslim Spain, see
Guggenheim, Yacov, ‘Die jüdische Gemeinde und Landesorganisation im
europäischen Mittelalter.’ In Europas Juden im Mittelalter. Beiträge des
internationalen Symposiums in Speyer vom 20.-25. Oktober 2002. pp. 86-106.
Trier: Kliomedia, 2002, pp. 98-99.
37 Breuer, Guggenheim, ‘Gemeinde,’ GJ III.3, p. 2090.
38 Breuer, Guggenheim, ‘Gemeinde,’ GJ III.3, pp. 2100-2104; Yuval, Scholars, pp.
13; 72-148.
the authority of the scholars gradually strengthened constitutionally

through the more common practice of the communal office of
a “community rabbi.”39 The legal decisions of such scholars of
rabbinic law could be made upon written request. They were in and
of themselves not legally binding. But the authority of the scholars
required that they be obeyed.
The efforts at a political reform of the Holy Roman Empire from
the 15th century on the part of the emperor had an effect on the
situation of the Jews. Christian rule tried, definitely after conferring
with leading Jewish personalities, to gather the Jews of the Empire
together under Imperial rabbis (“Reichsrabbiner,” “Judenmeister”),
who were appointed by the emperor to represent all of the Jews
in the Empire before Christian official authorities. In 1407 King
Rupert named Rabbi Israel40 ben Isaac of Rothenburg ob der Tauber
as Imperial rabbi of all Jews in the Empire. In 1426 King Sigismund
commanded that three of the most important Jewish scholars be named
Imperial rabbis41: Yochanan Treves42 in Chambéry for Savoy (and the
francophone west of the Empire), Jacob Molin43 in Mainz for the
Rhineland (Archdioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Trier) and Nathan Eger44
(for the eastern part of the Empire).45
39 Breuer, Guggenheim, ‘Gemeinde,’ GJ III.3, pp. 2101-2102; Yuval, Scholars, pp.

15-20; 322-436.
40 Wunschel, Hans Jürgen. ‘Rothenburg ob der Tauber,’ GJ III. 2, pp. 1252-1276,
here nr. 13b, 9, p. 1260.
41 Yuval, Scholars, p. 174; Breuer, Guggenheim, ‘Gemeinde,’ GJ III. 3, p. 2132.
42 Schwarzfuchs, Simon. ‘Schlettstadt,’ GJ III. 2, pp. 1317-1326, 1995, here nr.
13b, 3, p. 1320, n. 65, pp. 1323-1324; Breuer, Guggenheim, ‘Gemeinde,’ GJ
III. 3, p. 2132.
43 Schütz, Friedrich. ‘Mainz,’ GJ III. 2, pp. 786-831, here nr. 13b, 19, pp. 798-800.
The identification of “Jacob of Mainz” is not clear. Maybe the successor of
Maharil, Jacob Katz was more likely to have gained the attention of the king. In
the year 1426 Jacob Molin lived not in Mainz anymore, but in Worms. See ibid,
nr. 13b, 17, p. 798 and Breuer, Guggenheim, ‘Gemeinde,’ GJ III. 3, p. 2132.
44 Seibt, ‘Eger,’ GJ III.1, p. 273; Breuer, Guggenheim, ‘Gemeinde,’ GJ III. 3,
p. 2132. Yuval, Scholars, p. 174.
45 Breuer, Guggenheim, ‘Gemeinde,’ GJ III. 3, p. 2132.
These mandated institutions failed because of the resistance of

various communities and leading rabbis, even if individual rabbis
were not against the idea of strengthening their positions. In the
following years there were more attempts to institute an Imperial
rabbinate.46 But without success.
In the meantime the two threatened family heads from Eger had
only the traditional way of claiming their rights. First the two, Has
Katz and Menzlin, turned to the greatest Jewish legal scholar nearby
with their case47: Israel Bruna.48 He was a good choice, not only
because of the special relations between Menzlin and Bruna.49 While
Israel Bruna (1400-c.1477) had only arrived in Regensburg in 1446
as an eminent scholar, by 1448 he had already prevailed as the de
facto community rabbi in the Imperial city. He was ordained as rabbi
by his famous teachers,50 Israel Isserlein51 (Wiener Neustadt), Jacob
Weil52 (Augsburg) and by Salman Katz53 (Nuremberg) and served first
as a community rabbi in Brünn (Brno). After moving to Regensburg,
along with being the community rabbi he headed the local court
and a yeshiva. Israel Bruna’s political potential was recognized by
the Christian rulers of the time. Emperor Frederick III named him
Imperial rabbi before 1468 and at the request of Israel Bruna in 1468
permitted him to practice this “Meisterschaft” in the Habsburgian
territories as well.54 Israel also promoted the position elsewhere that
46 Ibidem.
47 Israel Bruna, Responsa, nr. 128.
48 Herde, ‘Regensburg,’ GJ III. 2, nr. 13b, 34, pp. 1193-1194.
49 He was the stepson of Israel Bruna’s teacher Jacob Weil (see n. 52). See Herde,
‘Regensburg,’ GJ III. 2, nr. 13b, 61, p. 1197, n. 470
50 Yuval, Scholars, p. 43. On the ordination by the above-mentioned rabbis, see
Yuval, Scholars, p. 42.
51 See n. 58.
52 Seitz, Reinhard H. ‘Augsburg,’ GJ III. 1, pp. 39-65, here nr. 13b, 12, pp. 46-47;
53 Toch, Michael. ‘Nürnberg,’ GJ III. 2, pp. 1001-1044, here nr. 13b, 47, p. 1020;
54 Herde, ‘Regensburg,’ GJ III.2, nr. 13b, 34, p. 1193, n. 411. Yuval, Scholars,
the settlement ban (“Kherem haYishuv”), a community’s right to

forbid a Jewish stranger to settle there, was no longer valid because
of the devastated condition of the Jewish community. So it is no
wonder that he was skeptical about the expulsion of two families by
the Eger Jewish council and in the end gave a detailed responsum on
it why these two families had a right to stay.55 Israel Bruna took it for
granted that his legal decision would be followed, and he wrote:
“Incidentally, apart from the law, I place my trust in you, that you
will do that which I have asked you to above and it will be pleasing
to me and to all our friends and to R. Lesar of Landshut.56 And
receive a blessing. Thus speaks Israel of Bruna.”57
But the two community heads were reluctant to acknowledge
Israel Bruna’s decision. Thus they rejected not only Israel Bruna as
a person, but also the traditional form of seeking a compromise in
legal conflicts, which recognized the great rabbis/scholars as neutral
parties. Has Katz and Menzlin did not appear to have been aware of
this fundamental rejection of such authorities by the Eger community
leadership, or they did not yet want to give up hope. They dared to
try again and brought the case to the attention of Israel Isserlein,
probably in the hope that the ones responsible in Eger could not
disregard the weight of another authority as great as this.
In Israel ben Petachya Isserlein58 (ca. 1390-1460), the two
threatened heads of families from Eger had turned to the most
influential rabbinical authority in Imperial Germany of the second half
pp. 396-397.
55 Israel Bruna, Responsa, Nr.128. See as well ibidem, nr. 129-131.
56 Reading ‘Landshut,” see Suler, Rabbinsche Geschichtsquellen II, p. 124 n. 27,
p. 160. On “Lesar of Landshut,” see Volkert, Wilhelm; Götschmann, Dirk,
“Landshut,” In Germania Judaica III, vol. 1, S. 714.
57 ‫אמנם דל דינא מהכא מובטחני בכם שתעשו כאשר בקשתי אתכם למעלה ויעלה לי ולכל‬
‫ כנ' נאם ישראל מברונא‬,‫אוהבינו ולהר"ר ליז''ר לחן ולרצון ושאו ברכה‬, Israel Bruna,
Responsa, nr. 128, p. 89. See as well Suler, Rabbinische Geschichtsquellen II,
p. 124.
58 Lohrmann, Klaus/Breuer, Mordechai, ‘Wiener Neustadt,’ GJ III. 2, pp. 1619-
1641, here nr. 13b, 15, pp. 1625-1626.
of the 15th century. He grew up in Krems and studied in Schweidnitz

(Świdnica), Erfurt, Nuremberg, maybe even in northern Italy. From
the 1430s and also in 1449 he was rabbi in Marburg an der Drau
(Maribor), later in Wiener Neustadt. Next to his congregation he
was especially dedicated to his yeshiva.59 He was the teacher of
Moses Minz and also of the abovementioned Israel Bruna. Isserlein
demanded that they give up their efforts at expulsion and accept the
compromise. Just how impertinent the behavior of the two heads of
the Eger Jewish community must have appeared to Jews in other
communities in the German Lands was made clear by Israel Isserlein
in his letter to the Eger community leaders:
“Your matter was sent to my colleague R. Israel (Bruna) in
Regensburg and he has decided among you. But you did not want
to obey his decision and even though many scholars have agreed
with his decision you have not paid attention to them. Your actions
are very remarkable for you did not receive them from your father
of blessed memory. In particular, you have acted unreasonably in
that you have rebelled against the decision of the aforementioned
rabbi (…). For this reason, no matter what, you are urgently warned
against using the force of Gentile offices against them, be it great
or small. If you have legal conflicts to carry out against each other,
so act according to the (Jewish) law, but not according to their (i.e.,
Christian) laws, which God forbid. If you do not obey you will be
persecuted for it. Thus spoke the littlest and least in Israel.”60
59 Ibid.
60 ‫ונשתלחו דבריכם לעמי' הה''ר ישראל לרינוש''פורק ופסק ביניכם ולא אביתם לקיים‬
‫ ואף כי כמה בעלי הוראה יושבי על מידין הסכימו לפסק שלו ולא השגחתם‬,‫כאשר פסק‬
‫ הרבה יש לתמוה עליכם על הדברים הללו כי לא כך יורשתם מאביכם‬,‫ א''כ הוא‬,‫להם‬
‫ לכן בין כך ובין כך תהיו מוזהרים‬. )...( '‫ ובפרט אשר התרסתם נגד פסק הרב הנז‬,‫ז''ל‬
‫ אם יש לכם‬,‫בתוקף לבילתי הבא עליהם בשום כוח שלטוני האומות אם מעט אם רב‬
‫ אם לא תשמעו תהיו‬.‫ ועפ''י דיניהם ח''ו‬,‫דין או דברים איש נגד אחיו תעשו כדין‬
‫נרדפים על ככה נאם הקטן והצעיר שבישראל‬. Israel Bruna, Responsa, nr. 131.
See as well Suler, Rabbinische Geschichtsquellen II, pp. 124-125; Horowitz, H.
‘Die Jüdische Gemeinde Eger und ihre Gelehrten (II. Fortsetzung).’ Zeitschrift
für die Geschichte der Juden in der Tschechoslowakei 4 (1934): 5-9, here 7-8.
Israel Isserlein here tried to save his rabbinical authority and that of
his colleague Israel Bruna in a traditional way. He probably thought
of a ban that he as a rabbinical authority had the right to put in
place. We do not know how the expulsion conflict was concluded.
But fear of the ban, an excommunication that was equal to being
expelled from the Jewish community, would hardly have prevented
the expulsion of the Has Katz and Menzlin families by the Jewish
council in Eger.61 The remark mentioned earlier, “They are violent
and do not obey the law,” most probably goes back to this incident.62
Summary
If we place the two incidents in Eger in the context of the 15th

century, we can determine the following in connection with the
question of authority as it relates to Jewish communities: Already
with the settlement contract of 1435, those responsible for the new
Jewish community that was to be established in Eger had left the
traditional consensus, which saw a Jewish community as being just as
autonomous from the Gentile rulers as it was from neighboring Jewish
communities. This traditional autonomy was given up in favor of
securing leadership for future Jewish leaders, who tied their authority
in the community to the political power of the Gentile, Christian city
council outside of the traditional community constitution. This, in
turn, made the leadership of the new community in Eger independent
of interference by Jewish authorities. The community head could dare,
as happened in 1449, to defy the major rabbinical scholars who were
recognized by other communities. But this very contradiction was
unacceptable to the two scholars, Israel Bruna and Israel Isserlein.
Damage to the autonomy of the Jewish community does not appear
61 Seibt, ‘Eger,’ GJ III.1, nr. 13b, 8, p. 272. Menzelin is later documented as being
in Regensburg (Herde, ‘Regensburg,’ GJ III.2, nr. 13b, 61, n. 469, p. 1197).
62 '‫שאנשי אייגר''א הם אלמים ולא צייתי דינ‬, Josef Kolon, Responsa, nr. 193, p. 426.
See as well Seibt, “Eger,” GJ III.1, nr. 13a; p. 279, n. 121, p. 271.
to have been the preeminent issue for the two. The rejection of the
legal decision was not made by an equally qualified scholar but by
unworthy people who acted presumptuously towards the traditional
authority of a scholar. The highly emotional reaction of Israel Isserlein
to the refusal of the Eger community head to see the legal decision
of a rabbi as binding should also be understood in the context of the
15th century, when the great rabbis began to gain a spiritual-political
office as leaders that was equal to their own self-image and that
was supposed to take shape in the form of the Imperial rabbi with
the help of the emperor – an effort that failed in the end. Thus the
community leadership of Eger not only rejected the authority of the
scholar but also denied the political authority that a rabbi like Israel
Isserlein increasingly took for granted. The community leadership in
Eger favored close ties to the Christian community due to political
conditions within the city and the territory of Eger (city and Jews
together) and because of current conditions, like the famine. The
representatives of the Jewish community considered support from the
Christian powers at least as important as, if not more important than,
being at peace with far-away rabbinical authorities.
Were the strong ties of the Jewish leadership to the city of Eger
able to secure the survival of the community during the waves of
expulsion in the 15th century that threatened to annihilate Jewish
life in the Empire? Hardly. In 1497 the Bohemian King Vladislaus
II authorized the city council to expel the Jews from the city and
territory of Eger whenever the city wanted to. This must have
happened before 1542 (probably already in 1502).63 In the 17th and
18th centuries only one or two Jews lived in Eger. A community only
formed again after 1848.64
63 Demandt, Judenpolitik, p. 17.

64 Seibt, ‘Eger,’ GJ III.1, p. 274.
Conflicting Authorities:
Rabbis, Physicians, Lay Leaders and
the Question of Burial
Cornelia Aust
When the German-Jewish author Stefan Heym passed away and was
then buried at the Jewish cemetery in Berlin Weißensee at the end of
2001, a conflict between the Berlin Jewish community and Heym’s
wife broke out over his tombstone. Heym, who returned from the
United States to East Germany around 1950, never considered himself
a religious Jew, nor was he a member of the Jewish community,
although he was drawn increasingly to his Jewish roots toward the
end of his life. When he drew up his last will in 1981, he wished to be
buried at the Jewish cemetery in Berlin Weißensee, where his parents
are buried as well. He stipulated that only his name and the dates of
his birth and death should be engraved in his tombstone. His wish,
however, conflicted with the regulations of the Jewish community
in Berlin from 1999. These stipulated that each tombstone had to
contain the Star of David as well as the Hebrew abbreviations ‫פ"נ‬
for “here is buried” and ‫“ – תנצב"ה‬May his soul be bound in the
bundle of life.” Only after a long debate did the community allow
for a tombstone according to Heym’s wishes.1 This recent example
points to the importance of ceremonial procedures regarding death
1 Stefan Strauss, Marlies Emmerich, ‘Der Stein des Anstoßes,’ in: Berliner
Zeitung, Decenber 14, 2002. Marlies Emmerich, Petra Ahne, ‘Einigung im Streit
um Heym-Grabstein,’ in: Berliner Zeitung, February 20, 2003.
88 Cornelia Aust
and how contested the related symbols and ceremonies often are.
Such debates are not tied to any specific historical period. The turn
from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, however, may have
seen extraordinarily strong debates around the care for the dead, the
forms of burial, and the aesthetics of cemeteries.
In a sociological sense, death takes a central role in all societies
as a borderline situation, similar to birth, the transition to adulthood,
or marriage, though it is probably the most profound one. Although,
or perhaps because, death forms the end of human life, no general
definition exists in different cultures on death. The definition of dying
and death is imparted culturally and forms the result of processes of
communication. The transitional rituals connected to death serve to
weaken the dangers of changing the regular social order.2 Whatever
the rituals are that surround death and burial, they cannot be escaped
or rejected by individual members of a society. This is probably one
reason why rituals and customs became so contested in periods of
transition. And they are therefore an excellent example to examine
overlapping and conflicting authorities within Jewish society – in
this case in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Central and Eastern
Europe.
Much has been written about changing attitudes toward death
and the changing rituals that go along with this not only central
but inescapable rite of passage. Despite much legitimate critique
of Philip Ariès, he clearly pointed to some of the central changes
in the attitudes toward dying and death in Europe at the transition
from the early modern to the modern period.3 Especially for the
2 The theory of rites of passage was originally developed by Arnold van Gennep.
The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960 [Original:
Les rites de passage, 1909], 3, 13. See also: Klaus Feldmann. Sterben und Tod.
Sozialwissenschaftliche Theorien und Forschungsergebnisse. Opladen: Leske
und Budrich, 1997, 7-9.
3 Philippe Ariès. The Hour of Our Death. New York: Knopf, 1981, 602-614.
[Original: L’homme devant la mort, Paris 1978]. For a critique of his work see
for example: Alexander Patschovsky. ‘Tod im Mittelalter. Eine Einführung,’ in:
Arno Borst (ed.), Tod im Mittelalter. Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz,
Conflicting Authorities 89
period between the sixteenth and eighteenth century, Ariès describes

profound changes marked by an increase of scientific knowledge that
seemingly led to human triumph over nature, but equally evoked
new fears – most powerfully the fear of “apparent death.” Moreover,
spatial shifts moved Christian cemeteries from the churchyard to
outside the city gates along with a number of other aesthetic changes
that increasingly removed death from the view of the living.4
Along the same lines, fierce debates erupted among Jews in
Central Europe regarding practices concerning death – the time of
burial, the organization of it, and its aesthetic components – by the
last quarter of the eighteenth century. Without going into all details,
I want to provide some insights into these debates and subsequent
changes from the perspective of the different authorities involved.
Three groups were central in this, though there is not always a
clear-cut distinction: first, rabbis as authorities regarding all religious
ceremonies and actually most areas of life; secondly, physicians who
traditionally enjoyed a high standing in the community; and thirdly,
the new authorities that arose in early modern Jewish communities –
its lay leaders, mostly wealthy merchants. Moreover, all three groups
interacted with the non-Jewish authorities, who sought to gain control
over all matters related to burials in general,5 and to retain their
authority over the Jewish communities in particular. Keeping these
1993, 9-24, here 9.

Hans-Henning Kortüm. Menschen und Mentalitäten. Einführung in
Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996, 257-259,
266.
4 Ariès. The Hour of Our Death, 315-321, 396-401. For similar considerations see:
John McManners. Death and the Enlightenment. Changing Attitudes to Death
among Christians and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-century France. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1981, 2, 319. Joachim Whaley, ‘Symbolism for the
Survivors. The Disposal of the Dead in Hamburg in the Late Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries,’ in: Joachim Whaley (ed.). Mirrors of Mortality. Studies
in the Social History of Death. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982, 80-105.
5 Norbert Fischer. Geschichte des Todes in der Neuzeit, Erfurt: Sutton, 2001,
28.
90 Cornelia Aust
three – sometimes overlapping – groups in mind, I will examine

three fields of conflict around the burial ceremony: first, the dispute
about the continuation or discontinuation of what was called by
contemporaries “the early burial,” which shows conflicts between
rabbinical and medical authorities. Then I will discuss challenges
toward one of the strongholds of rabbinical and lay authorities, the
Hevra Kadisha, which held the monopoly for organizing burials.
Moreover, I will briefly point to the central role of aesthetic changes
of the burial ceremony.
The fear of being buried alive and the debate about the adequate
time of burial was not limited to Jewish society. Since the 1740s,
physicians all over Europe debated reliable signs of death and the
dangers of premature burial. Still, Edgar Allen Poe’s mid-nineteenth
century horror short story, “The Premature Burial,” reflected the
deeply rooted fear of being buried alive.6 Within Jewish history,
the story is usually told as one of fierce conflict between maskilim,
Jewish enlighteners, and traditionalists, first between Moses
Mendelssohn and the traditionalist Jacob Emden. In 1772 the duke
of Mecklenburg (in northern Germany) stipulated that Jews, who
traditionally buried their dead as soon as possible, had to obey a
three-day waiting time for any burial. It is important to note here
that most eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century legislation all over
Europe stipulated merely a delay of one day. In Schwerin, the Jewish
community requested two opinions, one from Mendelssohn and one
from Emden. The latter defended the current custom of immediate
burial, while Mendelssohn drafted two letters. Asking the duke to
abstain from interfering with the rabbis’ authority, he argued in a
letter to the community against the early burial. In his reasoning,
he stayed within traditional rabbinical discourse.7 Fifteen years later,
6 See for example: Marc Alexander. ‘ “The Rigid Embrace of the Narrow House.”
Premature Burial & the Signs of Death,’ in: The Hastings Center Report, 10,3
(1980), 25-31.
7 See on the burial debate in general: Daniel Krochmalnik. ‘Scheintod und
Emanzipation. Der Beerdigungsstreit in seinem historischen Kontext,’ in:
when his letter was published in the “Berlinische Monatsschrift,” the

Jewish physician Marcus Herz reacted with his pamphlet “Über die
frühe Beerdigung der Juden” (About the early burial of the Jews).8
He provided medical and philosophical argumentation against early
burial and deemed rabbinical arguments irrelevant to the question.
The conflict that evolved between the traditional establishment
– rabbis as well as lay-leaders – and the maskilim about the time
of burial is often described as a clash between reformists and
traditionalists within Jewish society. This, however, was not a purely
Jewish discourse even if figures like Marcus Herz tried to cast it in
such a light by claiming, for example, that the surrounding societies
– “our civilized and enlightened neighboring peoples” (“unsere
gesitteten und aufgeklärten Nebenvölker”)9 – long abstained from the
custom of immediate burial (or for that matter from burying without
coffin, etc.). This is far from true. Only by the end of the eighteenth
century did legislation begin to regulate the delay of burials and
medical examinations, while the first mortuaries in German states
were opened in the 1790s. Equally, in many Catholic communities,
the dead were carried to the cemetery on a bier and buried in a shroud
still at the end of the eighteenth century.10 Only slowly, physicians
and the state assumed the power of naming and authority over dead
and burial.
In Jewish society, one may describe an internal debate that
evolved parallel to the discourse in general European society, but also
included a component in which Gentile authorities increased their
power over the internal governing bodies of Jewish communities by
interfering in the otherwise autonomous administration of the internal
affairs of the Jewish communities (to different degrees). The internal
Trumah 6 (1997), 107-149. Moshe Samet. ‘Halanat metim. Le-toldot ha-pulmus

al kvi’at zman ha-mavet,’ in: Asufot 4 (1989), 413-465.
8 Marcus Herz. Über die frühe Beerdigung der Juden, second edition, Berlin,
1788.
9 Ibid., 52.
10 Fischer, Geschichte des Todes, 24.
92 Cornelia Aust
discourse between religious and medical authorities within Jewish

society often had recourse to the opinion of the Gentile authorities
and population. Unlike in the Christian environment, however, the
two cannot be neatly distinguished, and Jewish physicians did not
have to secure their professional status, as was the case in Christian
society. Traditionally, Jewish physicians enjoyed a high social and
professional status within early modern Jewish society, as David
Ruderman has pointed out, and they often served their communities
like rabbis, were cultural intermediaries between high and low
culture as well as between Jewish and non-Jewish life, and more
often than not were the same person, experienced in both Jewish
law and medicine.11 As in the aforementioned case of Marcus Herz,
who acted as a physician and tried to devalue rabbinical discourse
in his work written in German, it may seem that with the birth of
the Haskalah, medical authority became divorced from religious
authority. The picture, however, is more complicated, as the internal
Jewish discourse in Hebrew is often overlooked.
In 1798, ten years after Marcus Herz’s German work, Herz
Marcus Schlesinger [not related to Marcus Herz] from Frankfurt/
Oder published a Hebrew book entitled She’elat Hakham, the term
for consulting a scholar about annulment of a vow.12 Originating
from a family of successful textile merchants, Schlesinger had
studied medicine at the university in Frankfurt/Oder after he was
initially trained at an Altona yeshiva under the tutelage of his uncle.
After practising medicine in Warsaw for four years, he returned to
Frankfurt/Oder, where he was appointed physician for the communal
hekdesh, but surely also practiced privately.13 In his book, She’elat
11 David B. Ruderman, ‘The History of Invention: Doctors, Medicine, and Jewish

Culture,’ in: Rabbi William Cutter (ed.). Healing and the Jewish Imagination.
Spiritual and Practical Perspectives on Judaism and Health. Woodstock, Vt.:
Jewish Lights Publishing, 2007, 195-206, here: 196-197.
12 Naphtali Herz ben Mori Katz. She’elat Hakham, Frankfurt/Oder, 1797.
13 Cornelia Aust. Commercial Cosmopolitans. Networks of Jewish Merchants
between Warsaw and Amsterdam, 1750-1820, Ph.D. Thesis, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2010, 283-284.
Hakham, he agreed with the main points of Marcus Herz’s work

about the necessity of delaying burials. He, however, did not follow
the more radical path of the younger generation of maskilim. Although
Herz Marcus Schlesinger was knowledgeable in German and later
published in German on general medical topics, he thought there
was good reason to publish in Hebrew concerning the question of
early burial:
And the wise physicians of our people cried out in particular about a
usual custom of our people not to lay down any dead without burial.
And they discussed it extensively. However, because they spoke in a
suspicious manner and in the language of foreigners, nobody listened.
Instead of speaking calmly and in a pleasant language that makes the
ear listen, they sharpened their tongues like a sword. Thereby they
did not achieve anything.14
Though not made explicit, this can well be read as a critique of

Marcus Herz’s 1788 publication – specifically, the usage of German
and the complete dismissal of rabbinical argumentation. Herz
Marcus Schlesinger’s book, in contrast, contained a proper haskamah
(approbation) by the communal rabbi Judah Leib Margolioth, a native
of Galicia and a forerunner of the Haskalah in Eastern Europe. In
addition, Margolioth volunteered his own detailed rejection of early
burial to Schlesinger’s book. The book itself consists of two parts;
the first retains the style of a rabbinical discourse and displays the
author’s knowledge of Jewish tradition. The second part offers a
medical perspective on the issue of early burial, including discussions
of the constitution of the human body, blood circulation, and signs
of death. Schlesinger insists on the clear proof provided by nature
and experience for the delay of burials, but regrets that the sages
of his day did not speak up on the topic. Thus, he combines both
rabbinical reasoning along the lines of Mendelssohn, and – more
importantly – medical reasoning. He stresses that the sages of the
14 Katz. She’elat Hakham, 4.

94 Cornelia Aust
Talmud already listened to the physicians in cases that fell under the
latter’s expertise.
This example demonstrates that the discussion cannot be cast as a
dispute between traditional rabbis, on the one hand, and enlightened
physicians or maskilim, on the other. Likewise, David Ruderman
has shown that in a similar though much less known debate about
smallpox inoculation no simple dichotomy between progressive and
conservative, scientific and traditional, secular and religious can be
detected.15
Thus, to understand why the burial debate was so fierce one needs
to see it in a wider context. In the early burial debate, it was not only
– and maybe not even primarily – the authority of the rabbis that was
threatened, but that of the Hevra Kadisha, the burial society, and its
(lay) leaders. Unlike what is sometimes assumed, the Hevra Kadisha
was not a timeless institution belonging to every Jewish community.
Only from the second half of the sixteenth century onward did burial
societies begin to emerge as the central institution responsible for
taking care of the dying and the dead within Jewish communities in
Central and Eastern Europe.16 The emergence of these burial societies
fell in a period that was characterized by communal cohesion, on the
one hand, and an increased codification of Jewish law and ritual, on
the other hand.17 These new societies can be characterized by their
social exclusiveness (members were carefully selected), the high social
status of these members, and a strongly hierarchical system within
the Hevra Kadisha. A large degree of social control applied not only
15 David B. Ruderman. ‘Some Jewish Responses to Smallpox Prevention in the

Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: A New Perspective on the
Modernization of European Jewry,’ in: Aleph: Historical Studies in Science &
Judaism 2 (2002), 111-144.
16 Sylvie-Anne Goldberg. Crossing the Jabbok. Illness and Death in Ashkenazi
Judaism in Sixteenth-through Nineteenth-Century Prague. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1996. Elliott Horowitz. ‘The Jews of Europe and the Moment
of Death in Medieval and Modern Times,’ in: Judaism 44 (1995), 271-281.
17 David B. Ruderman. Early Modern Jewry. A New Cultural History. Princeton,
Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010, 93-100.
to the members of the burial societies – gambling, shaving, or strife

among members of the Hevra Kadisha were strongly prohibited – but
to the community in general. Their influence, however, was not only
based on the importance of their task and the social position of its
members, but was a broad consensus shared by members of Jewish
society regarding rituals and customs surrounding burial.
In Central Europe, however, the second half of the eighteenth
century saw an increasing decline of the burial society’s authority
internally as well as externally. In the pinkas of the Berlin Hevra
Kadisha it was noted that members increasingly neglected their duties.
In 1751, for example, it reads: “Since the members neglect their duty
in the case of death it has been decided that every member has to
give notice of his absence in a timely fashion and pay 6 groschen
every time. Whoever comes to the cemetery after dressing has to
pay a fine of half a thaler.”18 Moreover, all members were forced
to attach a bell to their door to make sure the shamash was able to
inform them about any case of death. From the 1770s onward, the
problems within the burial society grew worse.
It became increasingly difficult not only to obligate members
to show up for their duties during burial but to fill all positions
within the society. Gaba’im complained that their tasks took too
much of their time and money. This complaint points to the fact
that changing economic conditions together with the constant growth
of the Berlin Jewish community made it difficult for the gaba’im
to meet their temporal and financial obligations. However, the
increased difficulties also suggest a changed attitude toward death
and burial in general, as the main complaints were related to neglect
18 Pinkas der Heiligen Bruderschaft der Nächstenliebe und der Totengräber und
der Krankenbesucher (1675-1827), Berlin, in: Central Archives for the History
of the Jewish People (CAHJP), Jerusalem, sign. 256/III/4, 24v. For the following
description of the changes within the Berlin burial society see: Cornelia Aust.
Kontinuität und Wandel in den jüdischen Gemeinden Berlins und Warschaus
im Übergang vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert: Ein kontrastierender Vergleich
am Beispiel der Beerdigungsbruderschaften (Chewrot Kadischa), M.A. Thesis
(Freie Universität Berlin), Berlin, 2003, 77-90.
96 Cornelia Aust
of accompanying the burial itself and all tasks related to it (especially

the digging of the grave), despite heavy fines. To solve the problem,
the requirements for membership in the Hevra Kadisha were eased,
but eventually the society had to resort to paid coffin bearers by the
1790s.
Together with the fierce disagreement regarding early burial that
increased in the 1780s and 1790s, the authority of the Hevra Kadisha
and its lay leaders was seriously endangered. For a short period, the
societies in Berlin and elsewhere still retained their sole authority
over the Jewish cemetery and thus over burial procedure, as Herz
Marcus Schlesinger confirms. In his aforementioned book, he relates
his worries about his father’s death in 1786. He had passed away
unexpectedly a few hours after midnight and was buried the same
day around noon. A few years later, Schlesinger – the communal
physician after all – relates that he urged the members of the
Frankfurt/Oder burial society to postpone the burial of a man who
had died shortly after noon on a Friday in winter. Due to the short
winter days, the physician, who was not present in the hour of death,
urged the burial society to postpone the burial until after Shabbat –
with no success.19
Eventually, it was the newly founded “Societies of Friends” (in
Berlin and Koenigsberg) and the New Burial Society (in Breslau)
at the end of the eighteenth century that began to create a serious
challenge to the Hevrot Kadisha in these towns.20 They were initiated
by young members of the Jewish community who were close to ideas
of the Haskalah, and they emerged because of the dispute about early
burial. Although the burial society sought to retain its authority over
the cemetery as long as possible, they allowed members of the newly
founded “Society of Friends” in Berlin to delay burials by two or
three days on the condition that no member of the Hevra Kadisha
19 Herz. She’elat Hakham, 4v-5.

20 On the Society of Friends in Berlin see Sebastian Panwitz, Die Gesellschaft
der Freunde (1792-1935). Berliner Juden zwischen Aufklärung und Hochfinanz.
Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2007.
could be forced to bury them and, thus, the task was to be fulfilled
by the poor (and therefore paid) members of the society. One can
assume that this measure was rarely taken, as the Hevra Kadisha
had already agreed in the late 1780s to delay burials for 24 hours, a
time span that was sufficient for most reform-oriented Jews as well
as the state authorities.
Other changes favored by the members of the new “Society of
Friends,” however, seemed to be much harder to implement – that is
a new aesthetic form of burial including the purchase of a hearse or
the usage of a coffin (aron – 4 wooden planks). In 1808 the “Society
of Friends” achieved at least a much more pleasing procedure – in
their eyes. “As is the custom, all bodies of the members of the
Society of Friends, their wives and children, are to be carried to
the cemetery. However, one should hire twelve bearers, who are to
wear black coats and should carry the body in turns on a bier.”21
The traditional Hevra Kadisha demonstrated its established authority
over cemetery and burial by accompanying the funeral procession
with one gab’ai, who collected charity for the poor. The aesthetic
appearance of the burial – the use of a coffin and a hearse, the calm
appearance of the mourners, a straight way to the cemetery, forgoing
the collection of charity on the way or the tearing of cloth – were
central to the reformers and were introduced all over Central Europe
over time. But regarding the Hevra Kadisha, the communities in
the German lands did not see any radical change. Unlike in Berlin,
Breslau, and Koenigsberg – the centers of the Haskalah – alternative
burial societies did not challenge the authority of the traditional Hevra
Kadisha; but state and inner-communal pressure slowly transformed
the traditional Hevrot into modern bourgeois societies (Vereine). These
were voluntary associations and usually acted in accordance with the
community. The ordinances of these nineteenth-century bourgeois
societies, while admitting the weaknesses and faults of the traditional
Hevrot, emphasized their long tradition in the respective community.
21 Ludwig Lesser. Chronik der Gesellschaft der Freunde in Berlin, zur Feier ihres
funfzigjährigen Jubiläums. Berlin. 1842, 47-48.
98 Cornelia Aust
The revised bylaws of the Hamburg Hevra Kadisha, for example,

note in 1899 in Hebrew (!): “It was the custom in Israel already in
the most ancient times to create societies that performed benign and
charitable deeds for the living and the dead without any entitlement
to gratitude. Here as well, it never lacked men and women, who
always fulfilled these holy duties. […] [For this] the community of
Hamburg created the necessary ordinances. They were changed and
written down repeatedly. The core of the matter, however, remained
unchanged. The spirit and the meaning remained always the same
and will remain this way until the redemption approaches.”22
A different interplay between the traditional communal lay leaders,
reformers, and state authorities appeared in Eastern Europe. There a
continued consensus on rituals and customs of burial as well as the
state politics, which sought to weaken the influence of the kahal
(or diminish it to the sole task of tax collections), helped the Hevra
Kadisha to flourish in the nineteenth century. Many burial societies
took over numerous tasks of the community. In Vilna, for example,
the Hevra Kadisha gave to the poor, paid wet nurses for orphans, and
organized the distribution of food and money before Pessach. This
was paid for by donations of its members as well as by the income
from the kosher meat tax, which went directly to the Hevra Kadisha.23
When the kahal was officially abolished in Congress Poland in 1822
and in Russia in 1844, it is apparent that the burial societies took
over the communal administration in many communities.24
22 Salomon Goldschmidt. Geschichte der Beerdigungs-Brüderschaft der Deutsch-

Israelitischen Gemeinde in Hamburg. Festschrift zur Jahrhundertfeier ihrer
Neugründung im Jahre 5572/1812, Urgründung 5430/1670. Hamburg, 1912,
49-50.
23 Mordechai Zalkin, ‘Who Wields the Power? The Kahal and Chevrot in Vilna
at the Beginning of the 19th Century,’ in: Izraelis Lempertas (ed.). The Gaon of
Vilnius and the Annals of Jewish Culture. Vilnius: Vilnius University Publishing
House, 1988, 354-360.
24 On the abolition of the kahal see Isaac Levitats. The Jewish Community in
Russia 1772-1844, New York, 1943 [reprint 1970], 40. François Guesnet.
Polnische Juden im 19. Jahrhundert. Lebensbedingungen, Rechtsnormen und
That the consensus on the existence of the Hevra Kadisha was

shared by reform-oriented members of the Jewish communities as
well has been shown in detail by Francois Guesnet.25 When, for
example, the graduate of the rabbinical school in Warsaw, Jakob
Teichfeld, criticized a burial procedure in an 1876 letter to the liberal
Polish-Jewish paper “Izraelita”, he primarily complained about the
form of the burial. Teichfeld criticized neither the pure existence of
the Hevra Kadisha in the Polish town Koło, although it officially
was abolished in 1822, nor the fact that the deceased merchant was
buried the day following his death, which was prohibited according
to the Civil Code (Kodeks Cywilny) of 1825. Rather he was appalled
by the aesthetic form of the burial, the ritual washing in the house of
the deceased, and the lack of a hearse. Thus, he notes “there exists
only a highly kosher vehicle, […] which has to be as shabby as
possible and is drawn by only one horse, which is consumptive and
lame of foot.” The corpse is lying on a bier and only covered with
“a torn piece of rag,” while the coachman has to walk along.26 The
brief comparative glance to Eastern Europe shows how different the
interplay between the authorities (Jewish and non-Jewish) involved
in matters of burial could look, depending on the political as well
as social circumstances. The state’s attempts to weaken the kahal
(not the societies) and the weakness of the bourgeoisie (and thus the
lack of bourgeois societies) helped to retain the power of the Hevra
Kadisha, while reformers all over Eastern Europe were primarily
concerned with the aesthetic appearance of the burial.
These three brief sketches related to burial procedures in eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century Central and Eastern Europe were intended to
show how the weight of the different authorities involved changed
over time. Of course, each of these three topics – the question of
early burial, the structure and role of the Hevra Kadisha, and the
Organisation im Wandel. Köln: Böhlau, 1998, 223. Azriel Shochat. ‘Ha-haganah

be-kehilot Rusia ‘im bitul ha-‘kahal,’ Zion 44 (1977): 143-233.
25 Guesnet. Polnische Juden im 19. Jahrhundert, 305-325.
26 Ibid., 307-310.
100 Cornelia Aust
aesthetic aspects of the burial provide material for a paper on its

own. However, I aimed at showing that the conflict over all aspects
of burial cannot be easily categorized as rabbis vs. physicians or
traditionalists vs. reformers. The assumption of authority was a highly
complex field, in which the influence of the state, the structure of
the surrounding society, as well as changing attitudes toward death
within Jewish society played a major role.
“Blessed are the Peace Makers”:
An Ecclesiastical Definition of
Authority in the Early Islamic Period
Uriel Simonsohn
Ms. Dam. Patr. 8/11, currently held in the library of the Patriarchate
of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Damascus, was completed in AD
1204. In addition to a rich corpus of ecclesiastical regulations and
opinions issued by the early Church Fathers and West Syrian leaders,
the manuscript includes an intriguing and rather exceptional document
bearing the title “A Discourse concerning Ecclesiastical Leadership”
(‫)ܬܘܒ ܫܪܒܐ ܡܛܠ ܡܕܒܪܢܘܬܐ ܥܕܬܢܝܬܐ ܡܛܠ ܫܝܢܐ‬. What appears to be at
the center of this text, as already noted by Arthur Vööbus, was a strong
concern over matters of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. As such, the text
stands in close affinity to an earlier chain of ecclesiastical legislations
that targeted the efforts of ecclesiastical figures to undermine the
authority of West Syrian patriarchs and other church officials, by
frequently appealing for the intervention of non-ecclesiastical
authorities, most notably Muslim officials, in church affairs. West
Syrian canon laws, from as early as the late eighth century, attest
to the harsh approach ecclesiastical leaders adopted toward their
contenders, threatening them with excommunication and equating
their actions with no less than treason to divine rule. Yet in contrast
to the tone and contents of canon laws, the text under discussion
represents a different ecclesiastical tactic, striving to appease those
who sought sedition by calling upon ecclesiastical leaders to adopt
102 Uriel Simonsohn
measures of pragmatism and flexibility towards their opponents. In

addition to what appears to be a rather unique ecclesiastical line of
reasoning on the part of the West Syrian leadership, the text also
exhibits a highly complex form of argumentation which draws upon
numerous historical precedents. The following discussion is an
attempt to uncover some of the historical context in which a text that
was meant to promote cohesion and peace within ecclesiastical ranks
was promulgated. In my analysis I will focus both on the rhetorical
aspects of the text and the historical question at hand, namely
political dissent within the West Syrian Church in the early Islamic
period.
The history of the West Syrian Church (also known as the Jacobite
or Syrian Orthodox Church) should be traced back to the Christological
disagreements of the fifth century. The theological controversies on
the subject of the human and divine natures of Christ dominated the
ecumenical councils of Ephesus (AD 431) and Chalcedon (AD 451).
The council of Ephesus saw the climax of the controversy between
the Diophysites, who adhered to the doctrine of two natures in Christ;
and the Miaphysites, those in the Roman Empire who opposed this
interpretation and argued for a single nature. Twenty years later, at
Chalcedon, a failed attempt to reconcile Miaphysite factions resulted
in a second blow to Roman aspirations for ecclesiastical unity. By
now, the adherents of a Miaphysite Christology had begun to adopt
sectarian features.1 These developments eventually gave rise to the
formation of local Miaphysite churches, a process that reached its
height in the sixth century, following the policies of hostile emperors
1 For a detailed account of the sources and outcomes of these theological

disputes, see Baum, Wilhelm and Dietmar W. Winkler. The Church of the East:
A Concise History. London: Routledge, 2003; Frend, W. H. C. The Rise of the
Monophysite Movement: Chapters in the History of the Church in the Fifth and
Sixth Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972. Scholars tend
nowadays to opt for the term “Miaphysite,” meaning “one nature,” rather than
“Monophysite,” meaning “single nature.” While the latter stresses the singular
ity of Christ’s nature, the former stresses the unity of divine and human in that
nature.
“Blessed are the Peace Makers” 103
– most notably, those of Justinian (r. 527-565). While it was this

history of doctrinal divisions that set the ground for the formation
of independent ecclesiastical hierarchies, founded upon an anti-
Chalcedonian Miaphysite Christology, it is commonly acknowledged
that what gave way to the rise of Miaphysite churches was the
withdrawal of Rome from the vast territories that had fallen under
Islamic rule by the end of the first half of the seventh century.2 For
Near Eastern Christians, perhaps the most remarkable effect of the
Arab conquest was the withdrawal of their past sovereigns. By the end
of the first half of the seventh century, the subjects of the Sasanian
and Eastern Roman Empires were under Arab rule. Yet despite the
political drama, well attested in contemporaneous narratives, much of
the social setting in general and of the ecclesiastical organization of
the Eastern Churches in particular remained intact, unaffected by the
turbulence of warfare in the first centuries of Islamic rule.3 Indeed, the
image is one of a general continuity in communal structures, cultural
affiliations, doctrinal divisions, and administrative patterns. Left to
their own devices (or given the freedom to regain their authority),
ecclesiastical leaders under Islam continued to assert their control
over their clergy, churches, monasteries, and schools. Thus patriarchs
were able to retain their positions; but instead of paying tribute to the
Roman or Persian governments, they paid it to an Islamic caliphate.
2 On the history of Near Eastern Christianity following the Islamic conquest, see
Dagron, Gilbert, Pierre Riché et André Vauchez (eds.). Histoire du Christian
isme: Des origines ànos jours, IV: Evêques, moines et empereurs (610-1054).
Paris: Desclée, 1993; Ducellier, Alain. Chrétiens d’Orient et Islam au Moyen
Age: VIIe-XVe siècle. Paris: A. Colin, 1996; Morony, Michael. Iraq after the
Muslim Conquest. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984, chap. 12;
Palmer, Andrew. Sebastian P. Brock, and Robert Hoyland (eds.). The Seventh
Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,
1993.
3 For a survey of seventh-century narratives depicting to Islamic takeover, see
Hoyland, Robert. Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of
Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam. Princeton, N.J.:
Darwin, 1997, parts 2a-b.
104 Uriel Simonsohn
At the top of the local ecclesiastical organization, the bishop retained

his dual role as spiritual guide and administrator.
The West Syrian Church had a pronounced regional character.
Formally under the authority of their patriarch in Antioch, West Syrian
congregations were scattered over a bipartite territory: a western part
that corresponded to the patriarchate of Antioch under Rome; and an
eastern part corresponding to the region that had been held by the
church under Sasanian rule. This partition persisted under Islamic
rule in the form of the dual jurisdiction of a patriarch who resided in
the monasteries of upper Mesopotamia and a metropolitan in Takrīt.
Yet while the withdrawal of the Eastern Roman Empire could be
interpreted as a moment of relief for anti-Chalcedonian factions, it
did entail a significant measure of social adaptation on the part of
Christian elites. The extant evidence attests to the endeavors of these
elites to renegotiate their social ranks vis-à-vis their new overlords.4
The pattern was an old one. Similar attempts to those made by
Christian leaders, particularly ecclesiastical, to win the support of
the Muslim authorities in “internal” Christian disputes are known to
have been initiated under Roman and Sasanian rules. Quite often,
state authorities were called upon by one or both of the disputing
parties.5
4 As recently pointed out by Arietta Papaconstantinou, the favorable attitude

toward the Muslims, expressed in the letters of Išō‘yahb III (fl. ca. 650-659),
should be read in the context of “bids of recognition and legitimacy between
rival religious groups.” See Papaconstantinou, Arietta. ‘Between Umma and
Dhimma: The Christians of the Middle East under the Umayyads.’ Annales
Islamologiques 42 (2008): 138-139.
5 Under late Roman rule extensive cajoling on the part of monastic leaders is
recorded, for instance in hagiographic treatises such as Life of Mar Saba by
Cyril of Scythopolis (d. c. 559) and the Life of Peter the Iberian by John Rufus
(d. early sixth century); see Horn, Cornelia B. and Robert R. Phenix, The Lives
of Peter the Iberian, Theodosius of Jerusalem, and the Monk Romanus. Atlanta,
Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008; Schwartz, E. Kyrillos von Skythopolis.
Leipzig: JC Hinrichs, 1939. The continuity in these patterns under Sasanian
and Islamic rule is convincingly illustrated in Payne, Richard. ‘Persecuting
Heresy in Early Islamic Iraq: The Catholicos Ishoyahb III and the Elites of
The survival of Christian communal life under the guidance and

economy of ecclesiastical leaders provides only a partial idea as to
the composition of Eastern Christian elites in this period. Alongside
ecclesiastical leaders, local lay and monastic figures continued to
constitute a significant factor as well. Monasteries – an important
element in the lives of rural communities – were situated on the
plains between population centers and the wilderness. While rural
communities provided a means of livelihood and, at times, new
recruits for the monasteries, the monks supplied spiritual guidance
and social leadership.6 Although lay elites did not survive the Islamic
conquest everywhere, their presence is well attested and should have
thus constituted an additional source of social authority.7 What seems
remarkable about Christian life under Islamic rule is the highly
independent nature of a variety of social forces, both ecclesiastical
and non-ecclesiastic, which had open access to the Muslim
authorities. Yet reliance on state support had its price. The fact that
Nisibis.’ In The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, Andrew Cain, Noel

Lenski (eds.), 397-409. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010. For the early Islamic
period, see for example the dispute between the Jacobites and Maronites held
before caliph Mu‘āwīya, recorded in the Maronite Chronicle and discussed in
Papaconstantinou. Between Umma and Dhimma: 133-136. Echoes of the dispute
in the background to the election of the East Syrian catholicos Ónanišō‘ II (d.
780) are found in the introduction to the acts of the electing synod; see Chabot,
J.B. (ed, and trans.) Synodicon Orientale ou recueil de synodes nestoriens.
Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1902, 245-50 (Syr.)/515-21 (Fr.). The rivals of
the catholicos sought to undermine his election through the charge that it was
achieved through Islamic interference. In Syriac hagiographies, see Robinson,
Chase. Empire and Elites after the Muslim Conquest: The Transformation of
Northern Mesopotamia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 15-16.
6 Brown, Peter. The Rise of Western Christendom. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell,
2003, 174, 186, 273, 287, 306-7; Palmer, Andrew. Monk and Mason on the
Tigris Frontier: The Early History of ður ‘Abdin. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990, 77, 107.
7 See Simonsohn, Uriel. ‘The Christians Whose Force is Hard: Non-Ecclesiastical
Judicial Authorities in the Early Islamic Period.’ Journal of the Economic and
Social History of the Orient 53/4 (2010): 579-620.
106 Uriel Simonsohn
ecclesiastical appointments were confirmed by Muslim authorities

had direct implications over the type of relations formed between the
churches and the caliphate. Once appointed, the head of the church
had to secure good relations with the Islamic government, thereby
becoming more and more dependent on the whim of Muslim rulers.8
The appointment of dhimmī leaders was to become an exchange of
benefits between Muslim and non-Muslim confessional leaders, a
heavy burden for spiritual leaders, whose authority was “won at the
expense of his pride as a Christian.”9 A chapter from the Life of
Theodotus, bishop of the Mesopotamian town of Amidā (d. 698),
portrays the relations that the West Syrian bishop maintained with
the Arab rulers.10 The story mentions the bishop as someone who had
been entrusted by the Muslims to supervise legal affairs pertaining
to local Christians.11 Whether fictional or authentic, this eighth-
century narrative confirms contemporary procedures, according to
which Muslim leaders would sanction the authority of non-Muslim
communal heads. Such arrangements may have cast a shadow over
the spiritual standing of ecclesiastical officials, who worked hard to
compensate for their weaknesses by stressing the managerial side of
their office. Thus, it has been suggested that hagiographies composed
8 Eddé, Anne-Marie, Françoise Micheau et Christophe Picard (eds.). Communautés

chrétiennes en pays d’Islam, du début du VIIe siècle au milieu du XIe siècle.
Paris: SEDES, 1997, 127.
9 Palmer, Monk and Mason, 182; for allusions to this in Syriac hagiographies from
eighth- and ninth-century al-Jazīra, see Robinson, Empire and Elites, 15-16. Cf.
the ‘Abbasid practice of granting government officials titles in recognition of
their services as part of an exchange of political benefits, in Rustow, Marina.
Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008, 77.
10 On Theodotus, see Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 156-160. An edition of the Life of
Theodotus edited by Andrew Palmer from the Syriac ms., no. 12/17 of the
Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate at Damascus, is forthcoming; see Andrew Palmer.
‘Āmīd in the Seventh-Century Syriac Life of Theodūtē.’ In The Encounter of
Eastern Christianity with Early Islam, Emmanouela Grypeou, Mark Swanson,
and David Thomas (eds.), 111, n. 1. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
11 Ibid., 112.
around the mid-eighth century reflect a transition in which the saint’s

supernatural qualities and ascetic reputation were marginalized with
respect to his managerial traits.
Formally speaking, ecclesiastical leaders drew their legitimacy
from their official role as administrators of the church. Nonetheless,
the history of the ecclesiastical office in the pre-Islamic period, as
a focal point of authority within the Christianizing Roman Empire,
and its formal endorsement by Sasanian governments, allow us to
perceive church leaders beyond their institutional capacity, as a
social stratum aspiring for dominance in both temporal and spiritual
realms.12 A useful illustration of this point is the fifth-century bishop,
Synesius of Cyrene (modern-day Libya). As a member of one of the
leading local families in the late fourth to early fifth century, Synesius
took charge of military operations and administrative offices.13 He
was able to do so by virtue of his high social ranking and land
ownership. His later election to the office of bishop of Ptolemais in
411 does not change the basic fact of the matter: Synesius’s career
was that of a local aristocrat who had assumed civil responsibilities
at a moment of administrative change.14 Nonetheless, the social
landscape of the Eastern Roman and the Sasanian empires was
anything but monolithic. Under both governments, there was a great
diversity of elite figures who drew their authority from a variety of
sources, including imperial sanction, religious affiliation, social rank,
and interpersonal relationships. Alongside ecclesiastical officials we
find a variety of institutions and individuals, both in urban and rural
centers, who held some form or other of social authority.
Thus an understanding of ecclesiastical authority, despite its
institutional configuration, can be advanced by considering the
12 See Payne, Richard. ‘Christianity and Iranian society in late antiquity, ca. 500-
700 CE.’ Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2010; Rapp, Claudia. ‘The Elite
Status of Bishops in Late Antiquity in Ecclesiastical, Spiritual, and Social
Contexts.’ Arethusa 33/3 (2000): 379-399.
13 Liebeschuetz, J. H. W. G. Barbarians and Bishops: Army, Church, and State in
the Age of Arcadius and Chrysostom. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990, 231.
14 Ibid., 232.
108 Uriel Simonsohn
activities of ecclesiastics as members of an elite group in their

own right. As such, they functioned as an interest group for whom
social control and social cohesion were meant not only to serve an
ideological outlook but also social standing.15 Accordingly, it is not
only the institutional and social qualities of ecclesiastical leadership
that needs attention but also the multifaceted nature of its social roles.
Beyond their aforementioned spiritual and political prerogatives,
church leaders also operated as legal authorities, on both legislative
and judicial levels, and as guardians of ecclesiastical finances and
land properties. It is in this context of its spiritual, political, legal,
and economic affairs that the church was part of a complex matrix of
social ties of groups and institutions with whom it often collaborated.
However, as we shall see, collaboration could have been replaced by
competition, a fact which locates the endeavors of church leaders
to sustain power within a broader map of social networks, each one
drawing its power from overlapping or alternative social resources.16
Unlike government-empowered institutions, ecclesiastical
organizations under Islamic rule did not possess practical measures
for enforcing control, consequently relying, for the most part, on
a highly elaborated claim of authority which had to be made by
means of persuasion. Thus as an elite group bereft of effective means
of enforcement, ecclesiastical leaders were inclined to ground their
authority in ideological terms. Ecclesiastical authority is seen here as
that of “right” (the rule of an elite stratum without a political base)
15 On elites as institutions, see Marcus, George E. ‘Elite Communities and

Institutional Orders,’ in Elites: Ethnographic Issues, idem (ed.), 16. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1983. On religious institutions as social
groups, see Silber, Ilana Friedrich. Virtuosity, Charisma, and Social Order: A
Comparative Sociological Study of Monasticism in Theravada Buddhism and
Medieval Catholicism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, 3.
16 On the assessment of religious institutions as a set of relational structures
and the overlapping of networks of power, see Mann, Michael. The Sources
of Social Power: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1986-1993, vol. 1, 1-4, 18; Silber, Virtuosity,
Charisma, and Social Order, 12.
rather than of “might” (a power-based leadership).17 Whereas the

latter resorts to force, the former resorts to persuasion. Thus in his
effort to sustain power, an ideological leader often tends to present
himself as an authority rather then in authority.18
Though the ecclesiastical authorities under discussion were
undoubtedly in authority, it is their spiritual capacity as mediators
between the divine and temporal which clearly lent them a quality
of ideological expertise, a social capital of which they demanded
exclusive possession. We find ecclesiastical leaders voicing demands
of this sort when their authority was defied. One of the better
known examples of threat to ecclesiastical leadership was related
to the question of judicial authority.19 Legal regulations and canon
laws issued in synodical assemblies attest to the judicial crisis of the
Eastern Churches under early Islamic rule. They speak of Christians
outside the ecclesiastical hierarchy who posed a challenge to church
authority, presiding as adjudicators in matters over which the church
claimed exclusive jurisdiction. Both the issues under dispute between
ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical figures and the contents of
ecclesiastical exhortations to remain within the fold of the church
suggest a conflict over social power. Yet perhaps an even greater
threat to ecclesiastical power was posed by those who sought Muslim
intervention in ecclesiastical affairs. Rather than offering an alternative
form of authority to that of the church, sectarian circles within the
church itself sought to beat the ecclesiastical leadership at its own
game. In 806 the Muslim caliph Harūn al-Rashīd (d. 809) received a
petition from a group of Christian clergy of the West Syrian church.
17 Gellner, Ernest. Plough, Sword and Book: The Structure of Human History.
London: University of Chicago Press, 1988, 18, 146; Lenski, Gerhard E. Power
and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1984, 52-6; Satlow, Michael L. ‘Texts of Terror: Rabbinic
Texts, Speech Acts, and the Control of Mores.’ Association of Jewish Studies
Review 21/2 (1996): 275.
18 See “epistemic authority,” in Lincoln, Bruce. Authority: Construction and
Corrosion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, 4.
19 See Simonsohn, ‘The Christians Whose Force is Hard.’
110 Uriel Simonsohn
The petitioners wished to inform the caliph that the head of their
church, Qūryaqūs of Takrīt (d. 817), was no less than the enemy of
the caliph and of all Muslims: “He has built churches in the lands
of the Romans, exchanged letters with the Romans and refuses to
remain in your place, for when you come to the East he goes to the
West.”20 The alleged background to this petition, it appears, was a
disagreement within the church about liturgical matters pertaining to
the celebration of the Eucharist. Qūryaqūs, on his part, had tried to
stir the waves of dispute by excommunicating his adversaries, thus
prompting them to take recourse to the Muslim authorities.21
Petitioning the caliph would have severely endangered the
patriarch’s position, since he was an appointee of the Muslim
government. Similar affairs were the cause of a relatively extensive
legislative endeavor on the part of ecclesiastical leaders who spoke
harshly against those from within their flock who approached worldly
or secular authorities in an attempt to lift ecclesiastical anathemas.
Thus the introduction to the proceedings of a synod of the West
Syrian church convened in 794 mentions certain believers to whom
the “laws and commandments had a long time since become obscure”
and it is for this reason that “various tribulations and sufferings of
every kind have come upon us from foreign people.”22 Canon 27 of
the same synod exhorts the believers to remain within the fold of the
church and refrain from taking recourse to worldly leaders: “None of
the worldlings (i.e., secular authorities) has authority to speak among
the priests about ecclesiastical affairs; if anyone has a judgment (i.e.,
lawsuit) or a say (i.e., complaint), this should be brought before the
bishop of the town.”23 Canon 14 of another synod, held by Qūryaqūs
20 Michael the Syrian. Chronique de Michel le Syrien: Patriarche jacobite

d’Antioche (1166-1199), edited and translated by J.B. Chabot. Paris: Ernest
Leroux, 1899-1910, vol. 4, 489 (Syr)/vol. 3, 19-20 (Fr).
21 See ibid., 487/17-18.
22 Vööbus, Arthur. The Synodicon in the West Syrian Tradition (CSCO 367-68,
375-76 Scr. Syri. 161-64). Louvain: Secrétariat du CSCO, 1975-76, vol. 375, 8
(Syr.)/376, 9 (Eng.).
23 Ibid., 13/14, no. 27.
in 812 or 813, was probably issued in direct response to the petition

that was submitted to Harūn al-Rashīd:
If anyone from among the clergy shall seek refuge with the worldly
authorities regarding those matters which are agitated among
themselves, may it be regarding the altar or church, despising the
sentence of the holy church, he does not have permission to serve or
an altar to approach for three months. And he is to practice nezirūtā
(chastity) for one month. Under the same sentence shall be placed he
who makes a factious meeting and tears asunder the altar and hinders
the service or the sacrifice.24
The patriarch who succeeded Qūryaqūs in 817, Dionysius of Tell-

Ma•rē (d. 845), appears to have confronted similar challenges as
those of his predecessors. He began by issuing already at his electing-
synod a canon prohibiting making the Eucharist formula an object of
strife. The introduction to the list of canons issued in 817 refers to
the problem explicitly: “The rigidity of the neck and the contempt of
the people who nearly all have been [thus] because of the laxity of
the present time and because they have conversed with those outside
and have been carried off and have been corrupted and deceived…
.”25 Canon number 4 of the same synod casts further light on the
historical context:
If a presbyter or a deacon or a believing man or a believing woman,
while excommunicated by the bishop, on the account of any matter
considered as a transgression of the law, seeks refuge with these
worldly authorities, or with other men from among other nations,
those who are outside the fold of the church, or with someone
from among the leaders of the Christians, so that through one of all
these methods, by the pleading before these various [persons], the
bishop may be compelled to loosen the law of God and a sentence
which was legitimately decreed. ... [H]e who dares to do anything
24 Ibid., 21/23, no. 14.

25 Ibid., 28/31.
112 Uriel Simonsohn
like this so that he transgresses, this holy synod has determined

that he shall be excluded totally from mingling with Christians and
from participation in the holy mysteries and from the exchange of
greeting and receiving with the believers….and the Son of God will
not pardon him neither in this world nor in the future one, [for he
is] as one who has become a traitor to the piety and the law of the
Christians.26
The canon speaks of low-rank clergy, namely presbyters or deacons,

who turn to external authorities. The explanatory clause, “while
excommunicated,” alludes to the background of these actions and
of course corresponds with what we know about petitions that were
made to caliphs by those who had been excommunicated by their
church; it was through this appeal that they were hoping to be taken
back.
We should also note the forceful language employed in the canon
regarding the fate of a person who takes such recourse: “He will
be excluded totally from mingling with Christians,” “the son of
God will not pardon them,” “[for he is] as one who has become a
traitor.” Yet as strong as the language here might seem, it in fact
reveals the relative weakness of the ecclesiastical authorities, whose
means of enforcement came down to their religious prerogative to
excommunicate offensive members of their community. Though we
should not underestimate the impact of such threats, we should also
acknowledge their limited effect. This appears to be evident in the
case of Dionysius’ rival patriarch, Abiram, whose brother, Simeon, in
823 handed the caliph al-Ma’mūn (d. 833) with a document purported
to be a diploma signed by the fourth caliph ‘Alī (d. 661) in support
of Abiram’s claim to the patriarchal throne.27
Disputes within the church, contentions over ecclesiastical offices,
and sectarian inclinations on the part of recalcitrant clergy are at
the background of numerous synodical regulations that were issued
26 Ibid., 29/32, no. 4.

27 Chronique de Michel le Syrien, vol. 4, 510 (Syr)/vol. 3, 57 (Fr).
by West Syrian ecclesiastical leaders in the early Islamic period. In

many instances disagreements within the church resulted in an appeal
to the Muslim authorities. Of course, appeals to authorities outside
the church had their precedents under both the Late Roman and
Sasanian Empires. Yet what had rendered the position of the churches
under Islamic rule so delicate was the fact that unlike their Iranian
and Roman predecessors, the Muslims never gave formal sanction
to ecclesiastical decisions.28 In contrast to their relations with pre-
Islamic governments, ecclesiastical leaders had to find new means by
which they could enforce their decisions vis-à-vis their communities.
It is in light of these shortcomings that we find ecclesiastical leaders
resorting to a variety of rhetorical vehicles in their attempt to secure
communal institutions in general and their offices in particular.
Initially forming a significant part, if not the majority, of the
population, the Syriac-speaking Christians of Mesopotamia and the
Fertile Crescent were descendants of native as well as Greek cultural
traditions. Since they sat at a cultural crossroads and experienced
frequent changes of political authority, the cultural diversity of these
people seems hardly surprising.29 Cultural vehicles such as poetry,
chronicles, hagiography, and architecture were put to work as a
28 See Villagomez, Cynthia and Michael Morony. ‘Ecclesiastical Wealth in the

East Syrian Church from Late Antiquity to Early Islam,’ In After Bardaisan:
Studies on Continuity and Change in Syriac Christianity in Honour of Professor
Han J. W. Drijvers, G. J. Reinink and A. C. Klugkist (eds.), 314-315. Louvain:
Peeters, 1999, where the writers argue that “the theory of double sanction, both
ecclesiastical and secular, for the canon law of the East Syrian Church under the
Sasanians does not appear to have continued under the Muslims. The Muslim
government was not legally expected to enforce ecclesiastical decisions,” see
also Morony. Iraq after the Muslim Conquest, 367.
29 On the Eastern Christian cultural and intellectual world of late antiquity, see
Murray, Robert. Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac
Tradition. London: Cambridge University Press, 1975. See also Brown. The
Rise of Western Christendom, chap. 12; Sebastian Brock (ed.). The Hidden
Pearl: The Syrian Orthodox Church and Its Ancient Aramaic Heritage. Rome:
Trans World Film Italia, 2001; Palmer. The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian
Chronicles.
114 Uriel Simonsohn
means of transmitting a “Christian message.”30 This message was

often conveyed through the intellectual endeavors of monks in the
outskirts of lay settlements. Thus the merging of pious and cultural
enterprises served to enhance loyalty to the church and to local
identities. Here, confessional cohesion was often promoted through
a discourse that was intended to evoke in its audience emotions of
fear and rage toward the other, the outsider – and also to advance,
through a “symbolic separatism,” the notion of a religious community
and its place in the world.31 Such a message also provided religious
elites with the legitimacy to govern the lives of their coreligionists.
I would like to propose reading the text “A Discourse concerning
Ecclesiastical Leadership” in this context, as a document which was
designed to address ecclesiastical concerns at the height of internal
controversies. Yet in contrast to the harsh tones characteristic of West
Syrian synodical protocols, the discourse under discussion presents
a different approach by which the ecclesiastical leadership sought
to maintain communal unity and its office. This is particularly
remarkable in light of the fact that the discourse appears in the very
same codex which contains synodical records.32 The manuscript of
30 Brown. The Rise of Western Christendom, 168.

31 See Boyarin, Daniel. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003, 1-11; Cohen, Raymond.
‘Language and Conflict Resolution: The Limits of English.’ International
Studies Review 3/1 (2001): 26; Morony, Michael. ‘History and Identity in the
Syrian Churches.’ In Redefining Christian Identity: Cultural Interaction in the
Middle East since the Rise of Islam, Jan J. van Ginkel, Murre van den Berg, and
T. M. van Lint (eds.), 14. Louvain: Peeters, 2004; Papaconstantinou. Between
Umma and Dhimma, 150; Wansbrough, John. The Sectarian Milieu: Content
and Composition of Islamic Salvation History. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1978, 98.
32 The codex, Ms. Dam. Patr. 8/11, is one among a collection of manuscripts from
the monastery of Mār Óanāyā or Deir Za‘farān in the region of ðūr ‘Abdīn,
currently preserved in the library of the patriarchate of the Syrian Orthodox
Church in Damascus; see Vööbus, Arthur. Syrische kanonessammlungen: ein
beitrag zur quellenkunde 1 – Westsyrische originalurkunden (CSCO 307, 317,
Subs. 35, 38). Louvain: Peeters, 1970, vol. 307, A, 5; for an edition of the
the codex is furnished with a colophon which dates its completion

to the year 1204, thus providing us with a terminus ad quem.33 The
upper margin of the folio on which the text begins bears an ascription
of the text to Mār Mikha‚ēl Rabā, suggesting the author may be the
renowned West Syrian patriarch and historian, Michael the Syrian (d.
1199). The style of the handwriting, however, suggests a later hand.
With the aid of a second, though later, manuscript which contains
this text and bears a marginal note referring to the consecration of
the aforementioned Abiram in 846, Arthur Vööbus proposed to date
the text to the time of Dionysius of Tell-Ma•rē, i.e., the first half of
the ninth century.34 Nonetheless, the limited information we possess
about our text does not allow conclusive dating. What seems rather
certain is that we are dealing with a text written by a West Syrian
ecclesiastical authority no later than 1204 in the context of ongoing
internal disputes within the church. The upper margin of the text
contains a statement, again presumably of a later hand, “that two
fathers should not have one (and the same) seat.”35 The occasion on
which this text was to be read is unclear, yet there can be little doubt
about its addressee, an ecclesiastical leader, most likely a bishop,
to whom the writer calls, “O excellent one among the leaders and
renowned for virtues.”36 As we shall see, the text exhibits a systematic
treatment of the question dealt with in canon law – the problem of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction in a situation where a counter ecclesiastical
authority has been set up.
The text should be read, then, along with other literary endeavors
that were designed to enhance the communal setting of the West
Syrian Church and to sustain the offices of its leadership. As such it
manuscript, see Vööbus, Synodicon, vol. 375, 167-180 (Syr)/376, 173-185

(Eng).
33 Vööbus, Arthur. ‘Discovery of a Treatise about the Ecclesiastical Administration
Ascribed to Michael the Syrian: A Unique Document in the Literary Genre of
Canon Law.’ Church History 47/1 (Mar., 1978): 24.
34 Ibid., 26.
35 Vööbus, Synodicon, vol. 376, 174, n. 1.
36 Ibid., vol. 375, 167 (Syr)/376, 174 (Eng).
116 Uriel Simonsohn
was meant to function as yet another rhetorical measure in the hands

of an institution which lacked practical means to enforce its ideology.
An analysis of the text, its objective and contents, should be made
in the context of its rhetorical features, as a form of persuasion that
was both in style and substance familiar to its audience. In order
to reach a maximum effect its message was transmitted through a
rich vocabulary and idiomatic expressions that were charged with
historical and theological meanings.37 The author of the discourse
does not hide his agenda and begins by stating his ultimate objective
to establish unity within the church: “Those, indeed, who seek for
peace and make it are truly children of God and the beatitude is
given to them dominically as the unerring word of the Lord says:
“Blessed are those who make peace because they will be called the
sons of God’” (Matt, 5:9).38 Shortly after, the background of our
text becomes evident: “If it should happen that two metropolitans
are appointed for one eparchy [an ecclesiastical province], which of
them ought to serve and which to stay away from the service?”39 The
question is met with a resolute position: “We say that it is not right
that there should be two metropolitans in one eparchy,” a statement
which is then legally grounded on the twelfth canon issued in the
fourth ecumenical council, better known as the Council of Chalcedon
of 451, where it is stated, among other things, that “men hurry from
the ecclesiastical law to the civil rulers and through the decree of
the king which is called an imperial decree [is obtained that] for one
eparchy there should be two … Therefore this synod has determined
that from now on, no one of the bishops should dare to do anything
like this….”40 The reality in which those who sought to challenge
ecclesiastical authority appealed to authorities outside the church can
37 Burke, Kenneth. The Rhetoric of Religion. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961, v;

see also Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1991, 39; White, Hayden. ‘The Value of Narrativity
in the Representation of Reality.’ Critical Inquiry 7/1 (Autumn, 1980): 5-27.
38 Vööbus. Synodicon, vol. 375, 167 (Syr.)/376, 174 (Eng.).
39 Ibid., vol. 375, 168 (Syr.)/376, 174 (Eng.).
40 Ibid.
only be deduced from reference to the fifth-century canon. This is

especially noteworthy if we consider the fact that a pattern according
to which members of the church sought to advance their goals by
appealing to Muslim leaders is clearly attested in our sources. This
line is carried on when the discourse moves to establish ecclesiastical
administrative arrangements based on the late Roman precedent: “The
towns … which formerly had been honored through imperial letters
shall have the honor of metropolis in name, and the bishops who lead
the church in them, keeping that which is right [only] for the town
which in truth is the metropolis.”41
Then again, we find further indication that the dispute at hand
was the result of internal confrontations within the church rather than
inter-denominational rivalry, as it is not on account of “heresy nor
schism in the faith,” but only when there is “disagreement in opinion
or about the management of office and the question of eparchies, or
of the love for rulership” which give rise to “quarrel and division
in the church.”42 It is on such occasions, the author of the discourse
would have his readers convinced, that peaceful measures need be
taken in order to achieve unity and harmony within the community.
This principle point is followed by an extensive rhetorical elaboration
throughout, in which the author provides a list of historical precedents
as proof for the utility of such an approach. The listed examples
display historical moments where the imperial church witnessed both
theological and political controversies that threatened to undermine
the unity to which it aspired. In all cases, the writer speaks of the
preference of bold, even heroic, ecclesiastical leaders for unity and
peace over rivalry with and animosity towards those who challenged
their authority.
“History emerges in an unintended shape as a result of practices
directed to immediate, practical ends.”43 Grounding ideology on
41 Ibid., 168(Syr.)/ 175 (Eng.).

42 Ibid., 169(Syr.)/ 175 (Eng.).
43 Douglas, Mary. How Institutions Think. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University
Press, 1986, 69.
118 Uriel Simonsohn
historical precedent was not an exceptional method, to say the least.

Late antique literati are known to have addressed their contemporaries
with an image of their past as they sought to evoke notions of
social solidarity and political order.44 The advent of Christianity was
accompanied by an extensive effort on the part of its proponents to
validate its message.45 The historiographic enterprises of Eusebius of
Caesarea (d. c. 337-340) and his successors are a case in point, as they
blended their historiographic narratives with theological traditions.46
With time, Christian historiography took on a crucial role as a source
for marking identity. The past was solicited for consolidating communal
identities and demarcating communal boundaries; a unique past was
44 See Ibid., 45; Brown, Peter. Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards
a Christian Empire. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992, 126;
Sizgorich, Thomas. ‘Not Easily Were Stones Joined by the Strongest Bonds
Pulled Asunder: Religious Violence and Imperial Order in the Later Roman
World.’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 15/1 (2007): 77.
45 On the fixation of early Christian and late Roman historians with chronological
dating and the use of their works for uncovering the principle of providential
economy in human history, see for example Adler, William. Time Immemorial:
Archaic History and its Sources in Christian Chronography from Julius Africanus
to George Syncellus. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, 1989,
2-4, 19; Beaucamp, Joëlle, R.-Cl. Bondoux, J. Lefort, Marie-France Rouan,
et Irène Sorlin. ‘Temps et Histoire. I: Le prologue de la Chronique pascale.’
Travaux et mémoires 7 (1979): 223-301; Cameron, Averil. Christianity and the
Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse. Berkeley, Cal.:
University of California Press 1991, 116; Chestnut, Glenn F. The First Christian
Histories: Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret and Evagrius. Macon, Ga.:
Mercer University Press, 1986, 4, 6; Croke, Brian. ‘The Origins of the Christian
World Chronicle.’ In History and Historians in Late Antiquity, Brian Croke
and A.M. Emmett (eds.), 116-31. Sydney: Pergamon Press, 1983; Momigliano,
Arnaldo. ‘Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century AD.’ In
The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, idem
(ed.), 79-99. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.
46 Adler. Time Immemorial, 74. Chestnut. The First Christian Histories, 2, 6; Croke.
‘The Origins of the Christian World Chronicle,’ 116; Witakowski, Witold. The
Syriac Chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel Mahre: A Study in the History of
Historiography. Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1987, 71.
shared by those within the community and expropriated from those

outside of it.47 This tradition was carried on by later generations of
Near Eastern historians of diverse religious backgrounds, who sought
to anchor their narratives in an ancient past that was not only to
imbue their communities with a “respectable antiquity” but served
as a means of consolidating group solidarities and institutions.48 Thus
experiences were recruited as guiding principles, and as such they
would often have less to say about the past than about the present.49
The past was to play a normative role, providing “criteria, implicit
or explicit, by which contemporary models of action” were to be
shaped.50 As such, historiographic narratives, constituting a form of
rhetoric, were converted by those who were short of coercive power
into a power rhetoric “in political terms” for purposes of social
control.51
From a literary perspective, then, our text can be classified within
the broad range of historiographic narratives with which church
leaders endeavored to confront the reality of their time. A few
examples will help to illustrate this point:
47 Cameron. Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 49; idem. ‘New Themes
and Styles in Greek Literature, Seventh-Eighth Centuries.’ In The Byzantine
and Early Islamic Near East: Problems in the Literary Source Material, Averil
Cameron and Lawrence I. Conrad (eds.), 94. Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press.
1992; van Ginkel, Jan J. ‘Making History: Michael the Syrian and his Sixth-
Century Sources.’ In Symposium Syriacum VII, René Lavenant (ed.), 352-353.
Orientalia Christiana Analecta 256; Rome: Pontificio Instituto Orientale, 1998;
Witakowski, Witold. ‘The Chronicle of Eusebius: Its Type and Continuation
in Syriac Historiography.’ Aram 11-12 (1999-2000): 21; Sizgorich. Not Easily
Were Stones Joined by the Strongest Bonds Pulled Asunder: 997-998.
48 Croke. ‘The Origins of the Christian World Chronicle,’ 100.
49 See Said, Edward W. ‘Invention, Memory, and Place.’ Critical Inquiry 26/2
(Winter, 2000): 176, 182.
50 Knapp, Steven. ‘Collective Memory and the Actual Past.’ Representations 26
(1989): 123.
51 Cameron. Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 123.
120 Uriel Simonsohn
For Socrates narrates in the Ecclesiastical History regarding Damasus

the patriarch of Rome in this way, that after the death of Liberius,
Damasus received the ordination for the episcopacy of Rome. …
When it was time for the election of a bishop, Ursinus, a deacon
of the church of Rome, contrived also to become the bishop….
So he went and connived to arrange a gathering against the church
and he convinced some of the bishops who did not understand [the
situation] that they should secretly lay hands upon him. …. When
this happened, there arose a division among the people and they
fought against each other and sowed sedition, not because of faith or
some heresies, but only for this reason: who should take over the seat
of the bishop. … The same famous and true author (i.e., Socrates)
says that when two patriarchs were appointed over Rome, the last
one was stopped from the service so that the upheaval and division
of the people would stop and peace [rule] among them.52
Socrates Scholasticus (d. c. fifth century), the historian of the late

Roman church and author of the Historia Ecclesiastica, reports the
incident following the appointment of Damasus (d. 384) as bishop
of Rome, once Ursinus (d. 381), a contender to the office, succeeded
in gathering support for his own appointment.53 Thus, for the sake
of restoring peace and unity, Ursinus was stopped and removed from
office. Similar was the case, the author of our text tells us, at the
time of emperor Theodosius the Great (d. 395). In the synod of One
Hundred and Fifty (i.e., the Synod of Constantinople in 381) it was
decided that of the two bishops who were appointed as patriarchs of
Constantinople, the “one who was the last was to be driven away
and hindered from the service of the high priesthood.”54 Our author
goes on, citing the Historia Ecclesiastica by John of Ephesus (d.
c. 586), to refer to the rivalry in 535 between the two bishops of
52 Vööbus. Synodicon, vol. 375, 168-9 (Syr.)/376, 175-6 (Eng.).

53 Schaff, Phillip and Henry Wace. Socrates and Sozomenus Ecclesiastical Histories
(Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers). Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers,
1994, ser. 2, vol. 2, ch. 29.
54 Vööbus. Synodicon, vol. 375, 170 (Syr.)/376, 177 (Eng.).
Alexandria after the death of Timothy III (d. 535) – Theodosius (d.
566) and Gainas (d. unknown). Once again, division arose among the
believers “and many blows and many killings were performed….”
Consequently, the emperor forced Gainas off the throne and restored
peace.55
These few examples, however, serve merely as an introduction to
the next part in the text, where the author seeks to establish guiding
principles for occurrences such as those he had just listed:
When, indeed, all these things happen, the wise father and leaders of
the church have devised it [thusly]: to leave behind the canon and the
strictness which is in […] of the priesthood and to seek refuge in the
leadership because leadership makes peace and unites those who are
divided and strengthens the sick […] and it is much better than the
accuracy which causes tumults and divisions.
At this point, our author turns to citing an unknown commentary of

John Chrysostom (d. 407) on the epistle of St. Paul to the Collossians,
where he stresses God’s diverse forms of revelation to humankind,
often lowering himself for conveying his message.56 Paul too “used
to speak and act providently and manifoldly for the advantage and
salvation of his hearers … by this manifold manner of proceeding he
gained many bringing them to God.”57 And in the same manner “also
the holy fathers and careful shepherds employed for the sake of peace
of the holy church … they received the heretical bishops for the sake
of uniting schismatics ….58 Thus, citing Severus (d. 518), patriarch of
Antioch and one of the founding fathers of the West Syrian Church,
our author mentions Meletius (d. 381), who was appointed by the
Arians as bishop of Antioch, whereupon the believers were divided
into two camps. In response, the “orthodox bishops” acknowledged
55 Ibid., 171(Syr.)/177(Eng.).
56 Ibid., 173(Syr.)/179(Eng.).
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid., 174(Syr.)/180(Eng.).
122 Uriel Simonsohn
.Meletius as patriarch of Antioch for the sake of unity and peace.59

The remainder of the text goes on providing similar examples from
the times of emperor Constantius II (d. 361), the Council of Ephesus
(431), emperor Justinian (d. 565), and Severus of Antioch. The survey
ends with Dionysius: “The patriarch of Antioch, he who has fallen
asleep, and this one of our day, accepted many bishops … because
of the honor of peace and the unity of believers.”60 As noted above,
there is reason to identify this Dionysius as Dionysius of Tell-Ma•rē,
based on the reading of another manuscript which next to this last
paragraph bears a marginal note that Abiram was consecrated in 846,
i.e., a year after the death of Dionysius of Tell-Ma•rē.61
The discourse ends with a final decree, calling upon contemporary
church leaders to follow the example of the early fathers:
[I]n their footsteps also we must walk and employ the same leadership
in order that quarrel and division may be done away in the holy
church and that there may be rule, tranquility, and peace; that the
believers may be united with each other … and they shall be one body,
worthy and unanimous, and deserving to be for the head, for Christ.62
Calling upon ecclesiastical leaders to walk in the footsteps of their

predecessors in order to prevent division and strife within the church,
the author of our discourse exhibits his objectives in the most explicit
fashion. These, as already suggested, should be read and understood
in the context of the ongoing quarrels experienced by the West Syrian
Church from the moment it began taking form as an independent
ecclesiastical organization in the late sixth century. This can be further
acknowledged through an analysis of the medium and contents of the
present text from a literary perspective. Insight into the sources of
59 Ibid.; cf. Brooks, E.W. The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, Patriarch
of Antioch, in the Syriac Version of Athanasius of Nisibis. London: Williams and
Norgate, 1902-1904, 114, 156.
60 Vööbus, Synodicon, vol. 375, 179 (Syr.)/376, 184 (Eng.).
61 See ibid., n. 76; also supra, p. 13, nn. 33-34.
62 Vööbus. Synodicon, vol. 375, 179 (Syr.)/376, 184-5 (Eng.).
ecclesiastical power in general and that of the West Syrian Church in

particular, as one which was bereft of practical means for sustaining
its social authority, can be obtained by observing the grounds on
which our author presented himself as an authority (rather than in
authority), the symbolic and rhetorical features of his discourse, and
its hoped-for effects.63
It seems reasonable enough to assume that the author of our
discourse served in some kind of formal ecclesiastical capacity,
most likely a high ranking official, if not a bishop. Yet beyond the
obvious legitimacy that such a writer was able to claim on account
of his office, the scheme of his text suggests that his target audience
was one that held texts with such esteem as to conduct its norms
and values in accordance with their literary contents.64 It is in this
context that the author’s literary skills, familiarity with past events
in ecclesiastical history, and firm acquaintance with both theological
and legal principles, as they were set down by the early Church
Fathers, are fully exploited for the sake of argumentation. This
highly functional quality of the discourse betrays an assumption
that an aspired social action could be intelligible to those who were
prepared to be guided by narratives that constituted the foundations
of their communal identification.65 The effects, then, that were hoped
to be gained through this text could be located by decoding some
of the “rich points” it contains.66 “Unity,” “peace,” and “leadership”
exemplify a terminology that was likely to have been at the center
of the moral consensus stemming from the Gospel’s prescription:
“Blessed are those who make peace because they will be called
63 See Lincoln. Authority: Construction and Corrosion, 2.

64 See Satlow. Texts of Terror: 275.
65 See Cohen. ‘Language and Conflict Resolution:’ 26; Mink, Louis O. ‘Narrative
Form as a Cognitive Instrument.’ In The Writing of History: Literary Form
and Historical Understanding, Robert H. Canary and Henry Kozicki (eds.),
130-132. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978; Somers, Margaret R.
‘The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach.’
Theory and Society 23/5 (Oct., 1994): 624.
66 On “rich points,” see Cohen. ‘Language and Conflict Resolution:’ 30.
124 Uriel Simonsohn
the sons of God” (Matt. 5:9). Once linked with the question of
ecclesiastical authority, a theology of this kind would place the author
of our discourse a step ahead of potential critics, as he was seeking
to achieve social goals which were in clear accord with the values
of a Christian-centered culture.67
Grounding ecclesiastical authority and communal unity on the
model set forth by the early Church Fathers and the history of the
late Roman empire was designed to bolster social commitments. Put
differently, the discourse under discussion can be seen as an attempt
at constructing social solidarity through spiritual relations, an effort
which is particularly noteworthy in the absence of “concrete (power
and instrumental) obligations.”68 Despite their practical character,
articulated in a manner which was meant to formalize normative
behavior in its most explicit sense, ecclesiastical legal regulations
could be seen as another form of discourse that was aimed at instilling
a sense of communal organization. An illustration can be gathered
from the introduction to the acts of the aforementioned West Syrian
synod, held by Patriarch Qūryaqūs of Takrīt in 794:
When we found that these laws and commandments had for a long
time become obscure in the minds of the believers and have become
as [a thing] unknown to them, we see that it is [for this reason that]
various tribulations and sufferings of every kind have come upon us
from foreign people. On that account, we have been estranged from
the relationship to the Father who is in heaven, whenever we trod
underfoot the laws and commandments that had been set by him. We,
poor and sinners, thought ... there was nothing that would remove
... the various sufferings by the barbarian nations, unless we took
recourse to the divine law.69
67 Lincoln. Authority: Construction and Corrosion, 9; Mann. The Sources of Social

Power, vol. 2, 21.
68 Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. and Luis Roniger. Patrons, Clients and Friends:
Interpersonal Relations and the Structure of Trust in Society. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984, 295.
69 Vööbus. Synodicon, vol. 375, 8 (Syr)/376, 9 (Eng).
Here believers are exhorted to resort to the ecclesiastical system

of order that is founded upon a set of laws and commandments,
neglect of which has been the source of upheavals caused by the rule
of foreign nations. The passage may ring a bell for those familiar
with the contents of historiographic texts from the period subsequent
to the Arab conquest. Indeed, numerous studies have compellingly
highlighted the inclination of Syriac authors to attribute contemporary
hardships to the sinful actions of their coreligionists or doctrinal
contenders.70 A stylistic and functional affinity between legal and
narratives texts should allow us to view our discourse in its literary
context, as yet another means of persuasion utilized by ideological
elites for advancing their social agendas.71
The flip side of ecclesiastical calls for unity and loyalty can be
seen as a social reality in which cooperation and solidarity had given
way to rejection and mistrust. The brief historical survey with which
I began my discussion suggests that under Islamic rule West Syrian
ecclesiastical leaders were faced with an ongoing challenge to their
authority. Yet in contrast to the strong language that we find in the
70 See Drijvers, Han J.W. ‘The Gospel of the Twelve Apostles: A Syriac Apocalypse
from the Early Islamic Period.’ In The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East:
Papers of the First Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam, Averil Cameron
and Lawrence I. Conrad (eds.), 189-213. Princeton, N.J.: Darwin, 1992; idem.
‘The Testament of Our Lord: Jacob of Edessa’s Response to Islam.’ Aram 6
(1994): 104-114; van Ginkel, Jan J. The End is Near! Some Remarks on the
Relationship between Historiography, ‘Eschatology, and Apocalyptic Literature
in the West-Syrian Tradition.’ In Syriac Polemics: Studies in Honour of Gerrit
Jan Reinink, Wout J. van Bekkum, Han J.W. Drijvers, and Alex C. Kluglist
(eds.), 205-218. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 170; Louvain: Peeters, 2007;
Martinez, Francisco Javier. ‘The Apocalyptic Genre in Syriac: The World of
Pseudo-Methodius.’ In IV Symposium Syriacum, 1984: Literary Genres in Syriac
Literature, Han J.W. Drijvers, R. Lavenant, C. Molenberg, and G. J. Reinink
(eds.), 337-352. Rome: Pont. Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1987; Morony.
‘History and Identity in the Syrian Churches.’
71 On elite use of legislation as means of sustaining social power and its literary
character, see Bourdieu. Language and Symbolic Power, 42; Lenski. Power and
Privilege, 52-3.
126 Uriel Simonsohn
protocols of synodical assemblies, our discourse exhibits an appeasing

approach, urging that those who sought to undermine the authority of
the proclaimed shepherds of the Christian community be embraced.
Ernest Gellner has observed that under certain circumstances, “when
two opponents are fairly evenly matched or uncertain of the outcome
of the conflict, they may abstain from attacking each other.”72
According to Mary Douglas, “solidarity involves individuals being
ready to suffer on behalf of the larger group…. Whether there is a
commitment to authority or a hatred of tyranny or something between
the extremes, the social bond itself is taken to be something above
question.”73 Be it merely a tactical reasoning or a commitment to the
greater ideal of unity, it would not seem unreasonable to assume that
the replacement of rejection with acceptance was driven by a dread
of the alternative, namely the breakdown of ecclesiastical power and,
consequently, of Christian communities into factions of competing
loyalties.74 We can only speculate which of the two approaches
held the upper hand. Yet be that as it may, the existence of such
a text, exhorting church leaders to implement unity as best as they
could, even at the expense of doctrinal accuracy and personal pride,
suggests a highly pragmatic political raison d’être. The churches
under Islamic rule, devoid of state support, immersed in inter-
denominational disputes, and deprived of much, if not most of their
economic assets, were gasping for air. They could not afford further
division and therefore had to be extra careful in their dealings with
their own coreligionists.
Framing processes, social scientists tell us, involve, among other
things, the articulation and accenting or amplification of elements
of events, experiences, and existing beliefs and values, most of
which are associated with existing ideologies.75 These ideologies
72 Gellner. Plough, Sword and Book, 149.

73 Douglas. How Institutions Think, 1.
74 Cf. Brown. Power and Persuasion, 125.
75 See Benford, Robert D. and David Snow. ‘Ideology, Frame Resonance, and
Participant Mobilization.’ International Social Movement Research 1/1 (1988):
constitute cultural resources that can be tapped and exploited

for the purpose of constructing collective action frames, and thus
facilitate framing processes. Hence, quite often, ideologies generate
a remedial discourse in the event of competing or conflicting beliefs
which threaten the group’s coherence and increase the prospect of its
schism or factionalization. The discourse on ecclesiastical leadership
that has been at the center of this discussion represents, to my mind,
such a remedial discourse. It was composed in Syriac somewhere
between the ninth and late twelfth centuries by a member of the West
Syrian Church in response to what appears to have been a pattern of
sectarian behaviors on the part of rebellious clergymen, who sought
to undermine the position of their ecclesiastical leaders. Drawing on
the sayings of the early fathers and past events from the history of
the church of the later Roman Empire, the writer of our discourse
exhibits an eclectic capability to gather elements of socio-cultural
weight in his attempt to sustain the ecclesiastical frame of his time.
In other words, by grounding an ideology of unity and harmony
on a primordial Christian heritage of humility and pragmatism,
ecclesiastical leaders were urged to achieve unity at almost any cost.
A focus of social movement in modern scholarship has been the
question of relationships between changes in the structure of political
opportunities, especially changes in the institutional structure and/or
informal relations of a political system, and the mobilization of that
social movement. An open question with which this discussion must
end is a call for further investigation: does a discourse on ecclesiastical
leadership that underscores values of unity through reconciliation, in
opposition to the rejection and ostracism that had been called for in
ecclesiastical legislations, reflect a change in the history of the West
Syrian Church? If it does, what were the institutional and socio-
political contours of this change?
197-217; idem. ‘Framing Processes and social Movements: An Overview and

Assessment.’ Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 611-639.
Like Jonah's Gourd:
Meditations on Scriptural Authority
and the Medieval Author
Yehoshua Granat
As an ultimate, undisputed source of religious authority, the Bible

was omnipresent in both Jewish and Christian cultures during the
Middle Ages. At the same time, biblical texts, notwithstanding their
absolutely authoritative status, were subject to many-faceted creativity
in every realm of intellectual life, creativity which constantly modified
and even transformed their presence and representation.
In his well known “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T.S.
Eliot argued that:
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His
significance, his appreciation, is the appreciation of his relation to
the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set
him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.1
Following these comments, it is indeed self evident that medieval
* I would like to thank Prof. Antonio Paolucci and Dr Rosanna Di Pinto of the
Vatican Musems, Mrs. Rachel Laufer of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and Mr
David Sofer (London) for their invaluable assistance in reproducing the images
accompanying this article.
1 Eliot 1950, p. 4.
Like Jonah’s Gourd 129
literary texts, as a rule, abound with explicit as well as implicit

references to biblical sources, and hence should be appreciated and
comprehended against the relevant biblical background. Concerning
Eliot’s reference to “the dead poets and artists” of the past, though,
one may be inclined to note that the presence of Scripture in medieval
culture was essentially not a “dead” one. Despite its archaic nature,
the biblical canon was conceived in the Middle Ages to be eternally
and continuously alive: no less alive, and in a way much more so,
than the freshest contemporary work. Its authority granted it an
inexhaustible potential for inducing creativity in the present.
This paper focuses on a particular biblical passage, Jonah 4,
6-11, which is the concluding episode of the Book of Jonah, a book
described by Martin Buber as “an epic paradigm of the prophetic
nature and task.”2 Following Jonah’s own prophetic declaration
that the great city of Nineveh is to be demolished for its sins, the
Ninevites respond in sweeping, collective repentance (Jonah 3, 5-9),
in view of which God decides to save the city after all (3, 10). Jonah
seems to realize this turn of events, which deeply displeases him (4,
1-4). He goes out of the city and makes himself a booth, to dwell
in it “till he might see what would become of the city” (4, 5). Then
God “prepares” a certain plant – qiqayon (‫יקיוֹ ן‬ ָ ‫ ) ִק‬according to the
Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible, usually translated into English
as “a gourd” – under which the prophet finds a most enjoyable shade
(4, 6). However, it is just for a very short while that Jonah’s joy lasts,
as God then “prepares” first a worm (4, 7), which causes the gourd
to wither, and consequently a “vehement east wind” (4, 8), making
Jonah suffer intolerably with the heat in the following day. The
prophet expresses his anguish to God (4, 9), who responds with the
resonant rhetorical question that closes the whole book (4, 10-11):
“Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not laboured,
neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a
night: And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are
more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between
2 Buber 1949, p. 104.

130 Yehoshua Granat
their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?”
By examining a few instances of this episode’s afterlife in
various texts and images, dating roughly from the fourth to the
fifteenth centuries, we shall try to characterize some modes of the
representation and recreation of Scripture in medieval contexts.
2
The following strophes are taken from a liturgical poem (piyyut)
by Shelomo Ibn Gabirol, one of the greatest creators of medieval
Hebrew poetry in the Iberian peninsula, translated into English by
Raphael Loewe:
Thou that art man, thou caitliff all forlorn,
Ope wide thine eyes! Whence cam’st thou, hither borne,
And whither hence must go? Like Jonah’s gourd
Fruit of a single night, and gone by morn3.
Before discussing the meaning of these lines, it is worthwhile to
analyze the way in which our Biblical passage is interwoven into
them. Here, in Loewe’s translation, it is through a direct, explicit
reference within the framework of a simile. “Man,” the subject
of this strophe, is described as being “like Jonah’s gourd…” The
episode from the Book of Jonah is thus brought to mind through a
straightforward literary allusion.
When turning to Ibn Gabirol’s Hebrew original, though, one fails
to see any such an allusion; the name of our prophet is not mentioned
there at all:
ָ ֶ‫ ּ ְפ ַקח ֵעינ‬/ ,‫ָה ָא ָדם ַה ִּנ ְכ ֶאה‬
‫יך וּ ְר ֵאה‬
‫ וְ ָאנָ ה מוֹ ָצ ֶא ָך‬/ ‫ֵמ ַאיִ ן ּבוֹ ֶא ָך‬
‫ נִ ְמ ׁ ַשל ְּכמוֹ ִק ָיקיוֹ ן‬/ ,‫ ָענִ י וְ ֶא ְביוֹ ן‬,‫ִק ְ ּצ ָך‬
4
‫ וְ ַעד ּב ֶֹקר לֹא ָחיָ ה‬/ ‫ליְ ָלה ָהיָ ה‬-‫ן‬
ַ ‫ׁ ֶש ִּב‬
3 Loewe 1989, p. 89.

4 E.g., Loewe 1989, p. 91.
A literal English rendering of the last four lines may be: “your end,
Oh poor one / may be compared to qiqayon (a gourd) / which over
night came into being / and by the morning was not alive.” In Israel
Zangwill’s English translation of this Ibn Gabirol poem, no reference
to Jonah is made at this point:
To what may be compared thy lot?
Thou art, O weak and wretched wight,
The gourd that shot up in the night
And in the morning it was not. 5
Loewe took the liberty, then, to make an explicit reference to the
biblical prophet in his English translation, whereas such a reference
does not exist in the Hebrew original. This liberty can, however, be
justified. Indeed, the Hebrew poem does refer to the biblical “Jonah’s
gourd,” and this reference, though entirely implicit, is as clear as
it can be. It is not only the word qiqayon (‫יקיוֹ ן‬ ָ ‫ ) ִק‬in the poem, the
only Biblical occurrence of which is in the Book of Jonah. More
importantly, Ibn Gabirol’s line ‫ליְ ָלה ָהיָ ה‬-‫ן‬ ַ ‫“( ׁ ֶש ִּב‬which over night
came into being”) – is an exact citation from Jonah 4, 10 (‫ַא ָּתה‬
‫ליְ ָלה‬-‫ן‬
ַ ‫ליְ ָלה ָהיָ ה ִוּב‬-‫ן‬ ָ ‫ֲׁשר ל‬
ַ ‫ע ַמ ְל ָּת ּבוֹ וְ לֹא ִגדַּ ְל ּתוֹ ׁ ֶש ִּב‬-‫ֹא‬ ָ ‫ה ִ ּק‬-‫ל‬
ֶ ‫יקיוֹ ן א‬ ַ ‫ַח ְס ָּת ַע‬
‫) ָא ָבד‬, whereas the last words of this verse are paraphrased in the
subsequent line (‫)וְ ַעד ּב ֶֹקר לֹא ָחיָ ה‬. A highly significant literary device
is here in action: the biblical “insert,” the essence of which is making
a specific scriptural text present within a medieval Hebrew poem
merely by inserting into the poem a discernible segment of that text
– discernible, that is, to the presupposed reader of medieval Hebrew,
assumed to be well versed in the Hebrew Bible. The inter-textual
effect thus achieved was beautifully described by Loewe, through a
suggestive musical metaphor:
In short, when the medieval or the traditionally-minded Hebrew poet

uses a biblical quotation, he is not indulging in a piece of mere
5 Selected Religious Poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol, tr. by Israel Zangwill [1923],
p. 61.
132 Yehoshua Granat
literary virtuosity. Rather, he is setting out to achieve the effect that

the composer aims at when, instead of using a simple note, he draws
on the full depth and subtlety of a chord.6
Loewe may actually have decided to mention “Jonah’s gourd” just

in order to create in his translation a comparable affect to that of
the implicit biblical quote, or insert, of the Hebrew original. Indeed,
the Hebrew biblical canon had a uniquely authoritative status in
rabbinic and medieval Jewish culture. Its masoretic text was so firmly
crystallized and so widely memorized that it took just three or four
words cited from a scriptural verse to invoke instantly the verse, its
contents and (relevant) context in the reader’s mind.
Despite adhering to the exact wording of the scriptural verse
transplanted into the medieval text, its significance could be reshaped
in flexible, creative manners within the new context. Sometimes
reshaping of this kind can be comical or grotesque, mainly in a
secular context; but it can also be subtle, as it is indeed here. Ibn
Gabirol’s poem presents the qiqayon episode as a symbol, or rather a
“fable” expressing human transience. Man’s life is as short and feeble
as the gourd, which came up over Jonah in a night, and perished in
a night. This view of Jonah’s gourd as a symbol of the universal
“human condition” is Ibn Gabirol’s rather than the Book of Jonah’s.
In the biblical book, Jonah’s grief over the gourd is the basis of
God’s a fortiori argument, explaining his decision not to destroy a
thriving metropolis: “Thou hast had pity on the gourd... And should
not I spare Nineveh, that great city…?” According to the biblical
“equation,” then, the gourd is comparable to Nineveh, though on a
much smaller scale, of course: a “living habitat” that despite all its
faults does have a significant value which needs to be recognized
and cherished. Taken out of the original narrative context, the gourd
episode becomes in Ibn Gabirol’s poem a fable of a somewhat
different moral, stressing the feebleness of earthly human existence,
which makes one realize the pressing need to repent, to mend one’s
6 Loewe 2010, p. 427.

ways, in view of the forthcoming divine judgment. This is surely

in accordance with this poem’s liturgical setting – Yom Kippur, the
Day of Atonement. The Book of Jonah itself is liturgically recited
as a haftarah on that day (Babylonian Talmud, Megillah, 31a), and
special piyyutim cycles paraphrasing it were composed in medieval
Spain for Yom Kippur, all accentuating the value of repentance.
The gourd is imbued with a symbolical or metaphorical significance

already in the Book of Jonah. But this significance becomes clear
only after its rise and fall as an element of the story, as the plant that
had grown up over the prophet and made him so glad. Can one say,
then, what that plant was like? Or at least what kind of a plant it was
exactly? No answer to such basic questions is provided by the bare
biblical account, which presents to its reader only the unparalleled
name qiqayon (‫יקיוֹ ן‬ָ ‫) ִק‬, nothing added, not even a single adjective.
The botanical identification of Jonah’s qiqayon was much discussed
and debated over the centuries, the main contenders being the gourd
(which became standard in English), ivy (the Vulgate version, as
will be mentioned below), and the Castor-oil plant (ricinus, the
qiqayon of Modern Hebrew). A concise and erudite survey of this
exegetical problem is presented in an article by B. P. Robinson.7
Though suggesting in his summary that “the gourd has perhaps the
stronger case,” eventually Robinson states: “I am not sure, however,
that the author had in mind a specific type of plant or tree at all.”8
This conclusion is in line with Abraham Ibn Ezra’s straightforward
agnostic comment regarding the qiqayon in his commentary to Jonah
4, 6: ‫“( ואין דרך לדעת מהו‬And there is no way of knowing what it
is”). 9
7 Robinson 1985.
8 Ibid., p. 402.
9 Levine 1976, p. ??.
134 Yehoshua Granat
An insightful, well known passage from Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis

attributes to Hebrew Bible narrative “externalization of only so much
of the phenomena as is necessary for the purpose of the narrative, all
else left in obscurity; the decisive points of the narrative alone are
emphasized, what lies between is nonexistent (das Dazwischenliegende
ist wesenlos); time and place are undefined and call for interpretation
(unbestimmt und deutung bedürftig); thoughts and feeling remain
unexpressed, are only suggested by the silence and the fragmentary
speeches; the whole, permeated with the most unrelieved suspense and
directed toward a single goal […] remains mysterious and ‘fraught
with background’ (rästelvoll und hintergründig).”10 These observations
can indeed be aptly applied to the Biblical account of Jonah’s story
in general. Thus, for example, it neither explains the prophet’s
motivation and state of mind in his sudden flight to Tarshish (Jonah
1, 1-2), nor does it depict his extraordinary experience inside the
belly of the fish, which is reported in a strikingly succinct manner by
half a biblical verse (Jonah 2, 1b: “And Jonah was in the belly of the
fish three days and three nights”). The gourd episode is no exception
in this regard. The aim of the Biblical text is “not to bewitch the
senses,” since it is not oriented toward “realism” but toward “truth,”
in the moral, religious sense. Somewhat paradoxically, then, the very
lack of concrete, sensual details in the biblical narrative sharpens its
“claim to absolute authority.”11
However, at certain points of the reception history and
interpretation of Scripture, questions relating to concrete realia of
scriptural texts could become significant and even raise issues of
religious authority. An interesting case in point is a polemic which
took place in the fourth century over the Latin translation of Jonah’s
qiqayon. In his comprehensive work, known as the Vulgate, the
Church Father Jerome famously produced a new Latin translation
of the Bible canon. This translation was based on fresh readings in
the original texts of the Hebrew Bible, in accordance with Jerome’s
10 Auerbach 1953, pp. 13-14.

11 Auerbach 1953, pp. 16-17.
doctrine of Hebraica Veritas: “truth of the Hebrew,” that is, the

Hebrew Biblical text. Jerome’s Vulgate, which eventually became the
authoritative biblical text in the medieval West, had to face some
initial objections. One point that Jerome was criticized for was his
translation of the qiqayon in Jonah 4, 6, being hedera (ivy) rather
than cucurbita (gourd), as in the Old Latin version of the Bible.12
Rufin, Jerome’s contemporary rival, fiercely criticized him for this,
as well as for other alterations to the Latin Biblical texts familiar to
the wide Christian public:
And the entire Church on earth, either those who are still in the
body, or those who have proceeded to the Lord… whoever sang
in the church of the Lord the hymn of the three boys, all of them
were mistaken and sang a falsehood. Now then, after four hundred
years, the truth on the Law, which had been paid dearly, comes to us
from the Synagogue. After the world had become old and everything
comes to an end, let us write even on the tombs of the ancients, so
that they themselves, who have read a different version, know that
Jonah did not have the shadow of a gourd, but of an ivy. 13
The argumentation in Rufin’s sarcastic attack on Jerome’s translation

is noteworthy here. He does not defend the older translation for
greater accuracy, eloquence or the like, but highlights the fact that it
is so deeply rooted in Christian liturgical practice and customs. This
is the source of its authority. That Jerome dared to suggest changes
to the Biblical text used for so many generations in the Church is
therefore pretentious and even blasphemous, especially as “the new
truth on the Law” (legis veritas) comes to the Christians “from the
Synagogue” (de Synagoga procedit). One can detect here a clear
hint at Jerome’s doctrine of Hebraica Veritas, at his reliance on the
authority of the Hebrew text of the Bible as well as on the knowledge
of Jewish scholars with whom he consulted. Interestingly, Rufin’s
reference to “whoever sang in the church of the Lord the hymn of
12 See: Rebenich 1993, pp. 58-60; Bazzana 2010.

13 Rebenich 1993, p. 74, n. 78; Bazzana 2010, p. 312.
136 Yehoshua Granat
the three boys” might be linked to his mention of Jonah in the next
sentence, as the three boys (Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah: Book of
Daniel, Chapter 1) are mentioned just next to Jonah as examples of
divine providence in early Christian liturgical texts. Rufin explicitly
refers to the Vulgate’s identification of Jonah’s qiqayon as ivy,
rather than as gourd, as in the old Latin Bible, and he sarcastically
claims that now we need to write “on the tombs of the ancients”
(in sepulchris veterum) in order to awake the dead, so to speak, and
inform them about this vital change from the biblical book as they
knew it. It has been pointed out that the background of this macabre
statement is the early Christian custom of depicting scenes from the
Book of Jonah on Sarcophagi (stone coffins).14 In some of these,
such as the beautiful third-century Jonah Sarcophagus in the Museo
Pio Cristiano in Rome (#119),15 gourd-like fruits, hanging from the
branches of the plant under which a naked Jonah is lying, are indeed
easily detectable. Even more conspicuous here are the thriving foliage
and notably large leaves, wider then Jonah’s head (Fig. 1).
The visual representation of biblical scenes involves the addition
of such concrete details, lacking in the original. Such additions
reflect an urge to “fill in” lacunae within the scriptural text itself,
so that it becomes a fuller, more realistic story, beyond being just
a vehicle carrying an abstract religious “truth.” In turn, these added
details were frequently perceived as an integral part of the biblical
account.
An interesting Jewish textual parallel to early Christian visual

representations of Jonah under his gourd can be found in an early
medieval Hebrew homiletic work known as the Midrash of Jonah’s
Repentance (‫)מדרש תשובת יונה‬. Jonah is described as naked, as all
14 Rebenich 1993, p. 74, n. 78.

15 See, e.g., Snyder 1985, pp. 45-49.
his clothes (and body hair) were destroyed in the steaming belly of
the fish, and hence in great agony. Then God makes the qiqayon
grow over Jonah’s head overnight, and in the morning it becomes
covered with 276 leaves, each leaf measuring more than a span.16 The
precise number of leaves calls for attention. Based on the technique
of Gematria, the use of letters as numerals, it is the sum of the letters
of the Hebrew word ‫יקיוֹ ן‬ ָ ‫( ִק‬qiqayon). This is an illuminating case in
which the adherence to the authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible
is manipulated by the aforementioned urge to “fill in” lacunae of
concrete details absent from the scriptural text, as if the homilist tried
to “squeeze” the bare text to the utmost so that it does provide us
with a concrete answer to the question of how the qiqayon actually
looked, a question answered, as we saw, in the Jonah scenes of early
Christian art. Attributing exceptionally rich foliage to Jonah’s gourd
is quite understandable, as it perfectly matches Jonah’s exceeding
gladness in the gourd and its shade. Still, the reference to the number
of the leaves and especially to the considerable width of each of
them may reflect a familiarity with a tradition echoed also in early
Christian art.
In two similar illustrated Haggadot created in Germany around the
fifteenth century, the so-called Second Nuremberg Haggadah and the
Yahuda Haggadah, there occurs a noteworthy variant of this tradition.17
Both of these Haggadot contain a depiction of Jonah sitting under
a tree which has only one leaf, albeit a gigantic one, about as long
as his whole body. In both manuscripts the same Hebrew couplet
accompanies the scene (as happens with the other illustrations). The
couplet is: ‫ לא ראיתי דמיון‬/ ‫[ עלה הקקיון‬To this leaf of qiqayon / I
saw no comparison]. Beyond merely adding a textual dimension to
the striking visual feature, this couplet seems to capture the prophet’s
own voice as perspective. The “I” here is uttered by Jonah, looking
at the leaf above him, and in the Nuremberg Haggadah his hand,
accordingly, is pointing at the leaf, perhaps even touching it (Fig. 2).
16 Kadari 2002, p. 77.

17 Kogman-Appel 2001.
138 Yehoshua Granat
Even though this is, evidently, only a very short and marginal text,
one can still feel here an urge to imagine the Biblical hero’s subjective
view and experience, which in the Biblical text are hinted at only
briefly and from the outside perspective of the narrator. A comparable
urge is evident in the beautifully elaborate passage dedicated to this
scene in Patience, the Middle English alliterative poem dedicated to
the Jonah story:
While God in His grace caused to grow from that soil
The loveliest woodbine over him that a man ever knew.
When the Lord sent the dawning day,
Then the man awoke under the woodbine,
Looked up at the foliage, that quivered green;
no man ever had such a fine bower of leaves,…
And he constantly laughed as he looked all around the arbour,
And wished it was in his country where he would be living,
On high upon Ephraim or Hermon’s hills:
“Indeed, I never wished to possess a better dwelling”.18
Interestingly, the parallel scene in the Yahuda Haggadah has Jonah

not pointing at the leaf, but instead holding an open book in his arms
(Fig. 3). Which book is that? One would probably be inclined to
suggest the biblical Book of Jonah itself, as it was a rather common
convention in the Middle Ages to depict prophets holding a book or
scroll representing their prophecies.19 There is some irony, though,
in this visual reference to the authority of the biblical text, as the
central element of the scene – the single, gigantic leaf of Jonah’s
qiqayon – is, as we have seen above, not rooted in the biblical text
itself, even though it probably stems from an ancient exegetical
tradition. The dialectics of subjection to authority and creativity vis-
à-vis authority, which often characterize medieval attitudes toward
the Biblical legacy, are illustrated here in a nutshell. This is indeed
the many-faced phenomenon that we have tried to meditate upon
18 See: Andrew and Waldron 2007, p. 203.

19 I am grateful to Prof. Katrin Kogman-Appel for her comments on this point.
through observing some medieval offshoots of Jonah’s gourd.

List of References
Andrew and Waldron 2007 The poems of the Pearl manuscript Pearl,
Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight‎, edited by
Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron. Gateshead: University of
Exeter Press, 2007.
Auerbach 1953 Erich Auerbach. Mimesis, The Representation of
Reality in Western Literature, translated from the German by
Willard R. Trask. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1953.
Bazzana 2010 Giovanni Battista Bazzana. “ ‘Cucurbita super caput
ionae’: Translation and Theology in the old Latin Tradition,”
Vetus Testamentum 60 (2010): 309-322.
Buber 1949 Martin Buber. The Prophetic Faith, translated from the
Hebrew by Carlyle Witton-Davies. New York: Macmillan, 1949.
Eliot 1950 T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot. Selected Essays. New
edition, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950.
Kadari 2002 Tamar Kadari, ‘Midrash Teshuvat Jonah,’ Kobetz Al
Yad: Minora Manuscripta Hebraica 16 (2002): 69-84 (Heb.).
Kogman-Appel 2001 Katrin Kogman-Appel. ‘The iconography of
the biblical cycle of the Second Nuremberg and the Yahudah
Haggadot: tradition and innovation,’ in The Old Testament as
Inspiration in Culture, Jan Heller, Shemaryahu Talmon, Hana
Hlavácková (eds.): 118-131, Trebenice: Mlyn, 2001
Levine 1976 Étan Levine. Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Commentary to the
Minor Prophets, Vatican Manuscript VAT. EBR. 75, Jerusalem
1976.
Loewe 1989 Raphael Loewe. Ibn Gabirol. London: Peter Halban,
1989.
Loewe 2010 Raphael Loewe. Hebrew poems and translations.
Jerusalem: Haberman Institute, 2010.
Rebenich 1993 Stefan Rebenich. “Jerome: The ‘Vir trilinguis’ and
the ‘Hebraica veritas,’ ” Vigiliae Christianae 47 (1993): 50-77.
140 Yehoshua Granat
Robinson 1985 Bernard P. Robinson. ‘Jonah’s ‘qiqayon’ plant,’

Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 97 (1985): 390-
403.
Snyder 1985 Graydon F. Snyder. Ante pacem: Archaeological
Evidence of Church Life before Constantine. Michigan: Mercer
Zangwill 1923 Selected religious poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol,
translated into English verse by Israel Zangwill from a critical
text edited by Israel Davidson. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society of America, 1923.
Figure 1
The Jonah Sarcophagus
(Musei Vaticani – Vatican
Museums, INV. 31448),
Detail.
Figure 2
The Second Nuremberg
Haggada (David Sofer's
Collection, London), Page
41, Detail.
Figure 3
The Yahuda Haggada (The
Israel Museum, Jerusalem,
180/50), Page 40, Detail.
Rage and Authority in S. Auslander's
Foreskin's Lament
Andreas Kraft
This contribution deals with Shalom Auslander’s autobiographical

novel, Foreskin’s Lament. Examining its protagonist’s fear of God’s
wrath through the frame of an authoritative relationship from which
the author cannot free himself, its central concern is the relationship
between rage and God’s authority. It is necessary to differentiate here
between two different forms of rage: one form is a largely unfocussed
and often inappropriate affect; it appears as a wild explosion of
excitement – for example, when you smash your favourite cup. The
second form by contrast is not only more focussed on a particular
person or group, but is ignited by transgressions of moral rules or
unjust behavior. This form of rage, referred to in German as Zorn
(literally translated as anger, enragement, ire or wrath, AK) – in the
following, I shall use the English term “wrath” to distinguish it from
other forms – is thus legitimized in some way, as it is based on a
sense of justice. Simple rage, on the other hand, is merely a bubbling
affect which accompanies a loss of control that is often interpreted
as a form of weakness.
This is why wrath is usually employed to describe godly or
sovereign rage that reacts to the contravention of rules and is
thus legitimate. God in the Old Testament is a good example: His
outbursts are usually cases where the legislative authority of God
Rage and Authority in S. Auslander’s Foreskin’s Lament 143
has been disregarded.1 God legitimizes his authority as a lawmaker

by highlighting that which he has given the chosen people. In light
of God’s legitimate authority, the decision to ignore his rules appears
to be something which deserves to be avenged through godly rage.
Jan Assmann had in mind this particular mechanism of contractual
binding that recognizes authority when he wrote: “It is only by
closing the bonds on Sinai that the relationship of God to Israel takes
on the political form of a contract, creating a basis for godly rage.
This rage is a specifically political affect.”2
Rage and wrath have, as I would like to show, a direct influence
on the status of authority. To illustrate this, I shall draw on Hannah
Arendt’s definition of authority in her essay ‘What is Authority?’: “If
authority is to be defined at all, then, it must be in contradistinction
to both coercion by force and persuasion through arguments.”3 Power
is no longer authority when it employs violence. Authority requires
recognition from below and voluntary obedience.4 Likewise, authority
is not present when social behavior is achieved through discussion and
argument; authority does not argue; it is obeyed without question.
Rage contains a potential for violence which becomes significant
when the authority flies into rage. There are at least two forms of
violence which are an integral part of rage: 1. Rage often accompanies
1 Kari Latvus. ‘God, Anger and Ideology: The Anger of God in Joshua and Judges
in Relation to Deuteronomy and the Priestly Writings.’ Journal for the Study of
the Old Testament, Supplement Series 279. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
1998.
2 German: “Erst als durch den Bundesschluss am Sinai die Beziehung Gottes zu
Israel die politische Form des Vertrages angenommen hatte, entsteht der Boden
für den Zorn Gottes.” Jan Assmann. Herrschaft und Heil: Politische Theologie
in Ägypten, Israel und Europa. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag,
2003, 54.
3 Hannah Arendt. ‘What is Authority?’ In: Hannah Arendt. Between Past and
Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought. New York: The Viking Press, 1961,
91-141 here: 39.
4 Wolfgang Sofsky und Rainer Paris. Figurationen sozialer Macht: Autorität –
Stellvertretung – Koalition. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1994, 24 and 31-32.
144 Andreas Kraft
a diffuse impulse to remove the obstacle which provoked the affect.

Although the aggression often appears unfocussed, we can see that
rage presents an unrealized form of “displacing violence.”5 2. The
other form can be described as autotelic violence, which aims at
the annihilation or damaging of an object,6 but the raging individual
rarely translates this aggressive impulse into reality. As a general
rule, this form of violence is accompanied by pleasurable sensations,
or in the famous words of Homer’s Iliad: rage “is far sweeter than
slow-dripping honey.”7 However, the aggressive impulse, rarely
acted out – except for hitting the table with the fist, for example
– is usually channelled into verbal violence.8 When an authority
flies into a blind rage because of a person, this undermines the
authoritative relationship between them: a raging authority is one
whose authority is under threat, as they now exercise power through
violence.
This is different in cases where the authority is wrathful: the
godly or sovereign wrath is mostly expressed through real, focussed
violence. Authority is, according to Sofsky/Paris, always connected to
values.9 The recognition of an authority is always the recognition of
particular values. Authorities are representatives of the morals of the
group, and those who recognize this authority subordinate themselves
to the dictatorship of these morals. The wrathful authority that
employs violence does not undermine their authoritative position. On
the contrary, they protect the morals of the group, which are the very
foundation of their authority. In this way, they actually strengthen
5 This is admittedly a rather unsatisfying translation of the German term

“lozierende Gewalt” which derives from the Latin word “locare” = to place. See
Jan Philipp Reemtsma. Vertrauen und Gewalt: Ein Versuch über eine besondere
Konstellation der Moderne. Hamburg: Patheon Verlag, 2009, 108-112.
6 In German: “autotelische Gewalt,” Reemtsma, 116-124.
7 Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Anchor Press/
Doubleday Garden City, 1974, Book Eighteen, 439.
8 Timothy Jay. Why we Curse: A Neuro-Social Theory of Speech. Philadelphia/
Amsterdam: John Benjamin, 2000, 55-60.
9 Sofsky/Paris, 27.
their authority. As the authority, they are empowered to put sanctions

in place and exert violence and, through this, to protect the values
that form the basis of these morals. The authoritative relationship only
collapses when those dominated by the authority no longer recognize
these values. In this moment, wrath is nothing more than violence,
a symptom of a dissolving relationship based on acknowledgement
or recognition.
This differentiation between rage and wrath allows a more precise
description of the dynamic at the heart of Shalom Auslander’s
memoirs.
Auslander introduces a male figure as the central authority in his life

on the very first page of his memoir:
When I was a child, my parents and teachers told me about a man
who was very strong. (…) It was important to keep the man happy.
When we obeyed what the man had commanded, the man liked us.
He liked us so much that he killed anyone who didn’t like us. But
when we didn’t obey what he had commanded, he didn’t like us. He
hated us. Some days he hated us so much, he killed us; other days,
he let other people kill us. We call these days “Holidays.”10
God is depicted here by the child-self as a human being, whose

authority is legitimized by his power expressed through wrath. In the
beginning, the protagonist’s father is described in a similarly naive
fashion: for the four-year-old Shalom his father appeared to be the
epitome of an accomplished carpenter. [35] Over the next few years,
however, this image shifts and the omnipotent father is transformed
into an enraged, heavy-drinking tyrant who terrorizes his kin with his
uncontrollable temper. His outbursts also seriously impair his work
as a craftsman: “… he built them with less and less patience and
more and more fury. The wood seemed terrified of him now, tense,
like livestock before a slaughter.” [39] When the father is working in
10 Shalom Auslander. Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir. New York: Riverhead Books,

2007, 1.
146 Andreas Kraft
the garage, everyone can hear him: “Terrifying sounds of destruction

rose up from the garage – hammers striking nails, pine splintering,
heavy oak being thrown to the floor and cursed. A lumber Holocaust.
– Never again, the maple moaned – Never again.” [41] This father
is not only ill-tempered, but also violent, particularly towards his
eldest son. He even threatens his children with severe physical
reprisals if they disobey his orders – should they enter the garage
in his absence, he has promised to break their arms. Later in his
book, Auslander describes the family dynamic, in which the irascible
father is the center of all the injurious emotional bonds between the
family members: “my brother hated my mother and resented me; my
mother loathed my brother and doted on me and my sister; my sister
hated my brother and defended my mother; I envied my brother and
pitied my mother; my father hated us all.” [243] But even if the
father seems to dominate the Auslander family dynamic, this role
is quickly marginalized in his son’s memoirs: the protagonist has to
work out his conflict with God as the heavenly Father and authority
and not with his ill-tempered pater familias. The latter, who cannot
curb his fits of rage and who is prone to violence, does not appear in
this text as an authority figure: his rage undermines any authoritative
position in the family. Shocked to learn the parallels between his
heavenly and earthly father, Shalom exclaims: “There’s another one?
In heaven? That’s God? Did he stumble around in His underwear?
How big was his fist? (…) If someone hit you with a fist as big as a
house, you’d probably die, right, I mean, if God ever got drunk …”
[25] However, even if the heavenly father in Shalom’s text appears to
be a moody tyrant who is driven by primitive rage, the protagonist’s
persistent bad conscience illustrates that we are dealing with the
fear of wrath. Conscience is the psychic instance which signals the
recognition of values on which the relationship between God and
Shalom is based.
In the following, I would like to explore further how the protagonist
rebelled against the laws of his godly father, fearing his wrath.
Throughout this struggle of the young “delinquent” which oscillates
between transgression, feelings of guilt, and a longing for atonement,
God always commands an authoritative power which Shalom, the

renegade, tacitly acknowledges.
Career as Delinquent
In the very beginning of Shalom’s career as a “delinquent,” he

attempts to deploy God’s power for his own objectives: the vengeful
God should kill his biological father. When one of his friend’s fathers
passes away, his first reaction is envy: “Some kids have all the
luck.” [14] After remembering that until the thirteenth birthday the
sins of the sons are ascribed to the father, he is convinced that his
friend’s transgression killed his father. This thought awakens ideas
about how he could dispose of his own, violent father. “Blessed is
Hashem was right – all of a sudden I had two ways I could make
everything better. I could win the blessing bee for my mother, and
I could sin so much Hashem would have to kill my father.” [14-15]
On the Sabbath, he begins his “murderous” sin-fest by consuming
a drumstick with milk, followed by some autoerotic activities. [15]
This coincides with the time that he commends studying the blessing-
practice, obligatory for observant Jews before food. This blessing
practice is now paradoxically entwined with his practice of sinning:
“I spent the next week sinning and blessing and blessing and sinning,
alternately praising God and defying Him as much as one eight-
year-old possibly could.” [16] Cursing, which is another form of sin
he commits frequently, takes the form of a prayer: “before going to
sleep, I sat on the edge of my bed and carefully recited ‘shit,’ ‘fuck,’
and ‘ass’ a dozen times each.” [17] And as another example of his
paradoxical form of new spiritual training: “Cornflakes? Ho-adamah.
Potato knish? Mezonos. Root beer. Is it a root? Is it beer? Fuck. Shit.
Ass. Bitch. I tossed and turned, I blessed and cursed, and fell, finally,
into a uncomfortable sleep.” [17-18] At this stage, he remains in
full accordance with the commandments of the Halacha and with the
authority of his Father in Heaven. However, only a short time later,
148 Andreas Kraft
his sinning shifts from a strategic usage of commandments to a real

transgression of divine rules.
It starts with the consumption of non-kosher food which grows,
at first, into a bad habit and then develops into a proper addiction:
“I tried to convince myself it was just a phase. I can stop at any
time.” [86] Around this time, he also becomes involved in some petty
thievery; he steals sweets in a shopping center. He considers these
offenses not primarily as criminal acts committed against society,
but as breaches of religious laws. Consequently, they are followed
by feelings of repentance and remorse: in these moments, he fears
the rage of God as the punishment for his sins. “I was sick. I was
diseased. I was a criminal. I was a Sodomite, an Amorite, a Hittite, a
Sinite, a Givite. I was Cain, I was Esau. I was Lot’s wife. I wondered
what was taking God so long to punish me, to throw me under a
bus with a pocket full of Slim Jims …” [88] And: “I ran to the
bathroom and forced my fingers down my throat (…). Afterward I
went back to my bedroom, beat myself in the stomach with my fists,
and rocked back and forth on the edge of the bed, holding a bag of
Cheez Doodles I desperately, desperately did not want to eat.” [88]
His behavior, which is torn between craving sinful pleasures and his
burning conscience, is oriented at God’s authority and his religious
norms. The moral downward spiral, in which Shalom is trapped,
continues when he finds pornographic magazines in the woods which
he believes have been sent by God to test him: “It was the hand of
God and I knew it – if He could speak to Moses from a bush that
was on fire but was never consumed, was it too much to imagine
that He could speak to me from a pile of pornography that was never
exhausted?” [95]
From these examples, we can see that a certain pattern emerges
from his moral dilemmas: he interprets the situation by comparing it
with stories from the Bible. In the case of the pornographic material,
he compares himself to Abraham, who was expected to sacrifice his
son, Isaac: “Pornography was my Isaac, and I failed.” [96] Instead
of destroying the magazines, that is sacrificing them right away, he
“studied them like Torah” [95] after he helped his mother with the Yom
Kippur preparation. Only after sinning, in a moment of repentance, is

he able to burn the magazines: “a hardcore XXX sin offering to the
Lord. I am going to destroy the wicked city of Sodom, God said to
Abraham.” [96] “Please, I begged God. – Test me again. Double or
nothing.” [97] This pattern of sin, repentance and then attempting to
appease God by sacrificing the sinful material repeats itself several
times: after destroying his own pornographic material, he does the
same with his brother’s magazines and, later, with his father’s and
then with his mother’s sex toys. After realizing that even his parents
have something which might be called a sexual double life, Shalom
is convinced that his whole family is a sinful Sodom that God should
destroy in his wrath.
As the memoir develops, the eleven-year-old boy’s attitudes to God

retrospectively appear to be influenced by the idea that the divine rules
are questionable, even if they are legally binding. Shalom is fascinated
and attracted by the sinful life which the shopping center represents:
it was “a two-story brick-faced self-contained city of Sodom” [125]
where he “wanted to live.” At fourteen, this development culminates
in a new way of addressing his Father in Heaven: “My relationship
with God had begun to change. I was tired of the endless spiritual
scorecard manipulation, and I imagined God was tired of it, too,
tired of the tedious, disingenuous algebra of penance and sin, and I
began to speak with Him as if He were, well, real.” [159] He begins
to conceive of God engaged in a dialogue about his sins and the
potential punishment they will bring. Increasingly, he vents his own
anger and frustration:
I scowled, I called Him names, I gave him the finger. My sentiments

may have been a bit more disgruntled and a bit less reverent than
those of my forefathers, but they still seemed more respectful to me
than the grovelling adjuration of the believers around me; at least I
was giving Him credit for being able to deal with a little criticism
now and then. [160]
150 Andreas Kraft
This expression of his own temper does not indicate that he is able to
emancipate himself from God’s authority during this phase. Instead, he
is wracked with guilt: “By sixteen I was hitting bottom, emotionally,
criminally, and gastronomically. The guilt was overwhelming.”
[161]
These guilty feelings which mark his career as a juvenile delinquent

and sinner make clear that he is still under God’s control, despite his
attempts to rebel against Him. The dreaded wrath of God appears
righteous to the sinner; it is an expression of legitimate authority.
This fear of God’s wrath continues to mark the author as an adult.
Breaking Free from Authority?

Drafting a letter to his son, Shalom returns to his image of God:
“I know, it doesn’t make sense. I know I shouldn't believe it. I
know, and I know, and I know, but I just can’t seem to get this
Character out of my head. I’ve tried to forget, I’ve tried to reframe
Him, to rewrite Him, to move on. I read Sam Harris. I read Richard
Dawkins. It all makes sense, but none of it helps.” [199] The God
he is struggling with – one might even say: who haunts him – is
out of reason’s reach: therefore, all attempts to free the self by using
rational means are doomed to failure, because this authority cannot
be delegitimized there. This place beyond reason could also be
called the superego. During his formative years, the phantasmagoria
of God’s authority became engraved in his soul like a tattoo which
could not be easily removed. According to psychoanalysis, during
a toddler’s development, the parents are internalized as authorities
and they create the part of the superego, that “internalised voice,”11
that rules the self through threats of punishment. The wrath of God,
which threatens punishment for all transgressions, takes on the
11 Michael Jacobs. The Presenting Past: The Core of Psychodynamic Counselling

and Therapy. Third Edition, Maldenhead/Berkshire: Open University Press,
2006, 114.
superego role for the protagonist. Initially, the problem appears to

be that Shalom does not want to escape God’s authority and His
laws. However, later in the text it becomes clear that it is not just
about levelling authority: during a longer stay in a yeshiva in Israel,
the rebellious Shalom surprisingly becomes a devout Jew for a short
spell. He explains this brief metamorphosis as follows: “I was loved.
My rabbis welcomed me into their families. There were rules, of
course, but I understood those rules, and when I didn’t, there was
a rule book I could consult.” [226] The problem thus appears not
to be with authority and strict rules, but with the absence of love
and recognition. It is only when he meets Orli, his future wife, that
his life takes a turn for the better. He immediately realizes: “This
was the closest I’d ever come to finding someone who might love
and accept me for who I was.” [249] In a letter to his son, Shalom
writes: “I spent twelve years trying to eke out some place for myself,
trying to build a family where I was loved for who I was, and not
hated for what I wasn’t.” [200] His rebellious fight against the rules
of his Father in Heaven was thus simultaneously a fight against the
social norms of a religious world which only accepted individuals
who adhere to strict religious rules. The psychoanalyst M. Jacobs
describes this as follows:
There is a type of faith that has strong connections with the authority
theme, seen for example in belief in a rigidly authoritarian doctrinal
or political system, in inflexible moral thinking, and in the control
of belief system through dogmatism. (...) Such strongly authoritarian
thinking also includes severe criticism of those who do not believe,
or those who appear to act immorally, and that criticism is sometimes
expressed in sadistic ideas about, and threats of, eternal punishment.
It is far from unconditional love.12
The vengeful judgement of God mirrors the damnation of the sinful

individual in religious society. In this climate, the dysfunctional
12 Jacobs, 121.
152 Andreas Kraft
Auslander family could not provide the acknowledgement and love

that a child needs for development. At the end of the memoir, after
the birth of his son, Shalom describes his new and better life: “I had
distanced myself from a destructive family while managing somehow
to build a loving one around myself at the same time.” [304] As
the yeshiva episode shows, this form of recognition is even possible
under the conditions of an authoritative relationship. The power of
the authority can offer the subordinate security and recognition.13 In
his work on youthful delinquency, the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott
has shown that antisocial behavior and crimes such as those pursued
by the protagonist can be perceived as an expression of an authority’s
lack of control. What is significant here is that the authority must be
associated with love and recognition during the youth’s development.14
Neither the circumstances in the Auslander family nor in the Jewish
community were able to achieve this. However, in the short yeshiva
episode, the protagonist is not able to come to the conclusion that
authority can also be associated with love and recognition and that
this could be a possible solution for his problem. Instead, his image of
the foreskin becomes a symbol for a long-desired radical dethroning
of the godly, fatherly authority.
Being a Foreskin
Shalom uses the “foreskin” as a metaphor for his identity, which

is formed by separating from Judaism: “I was beginning to feel a
13 “The powers which make an authority a judge make it possible for him also
to give reassurance.” Richard Sennett. Authority. London: Secker & Warburg,
155.
14 Donald Woods Winnicott. ‘Some Psychological Aspects of Juvenile Delinquency.’
In: Donald Woods Winnicott. Deprivation and Delinquency. Edited by Claire
Winnicott, Ray Sheperd, and Madeleine Davis. London and New York: Tavistock
Publications, 1984, 111-120, and Donald Woods Winnicott. ‘The Antisocial
Tendency.’ In: Donald Woods Winnicott. Deprivation and Delinquency, ibid.,
120-131.
bit like a foreskin myself. (…) Cut off from my past, uncertain of
my future, bloodied, beaten, tossed away. I wondered if there was a
place where the foreskins could go, a place where they could live
together, peacefully, loved, wanted, a nation of the foreskins, by
the foreskins, for the foreskins.” [153] Shalom Auslander is, as a
“foreskin,” separated or cut off from traditional Judaism. At the same
time, however, this identity is formed ex negativo by its lost Jewish
identity. Furthermore, it is of significance that this foreskin-quote
formulates the ideal of a community as a place where people live
together not only in peace, but also in love. This new family has
its place among new friends: “I think they’re all foreskins. Jack’s a
foreskin; his mother brutalized him, cast him off, cut him repeatedly.
Alisha is a foreskin, and her husband, Will, is, too. So am I. So is
Orli. A little foreskin nation, trying their best to start over, build up,
move on.” [306]
This sense of identification with the foreskin is not just an

interpretation of the self as bloody “rubbish” that was cast off
by the father; on a more symbolic level, it represents an attempt
to understand the self outside of the “social body of fathers.” The
identification with the foreskin as the abject is an expression of the
desire to escape the authority which the non-de-pere exerts over the
son. According to Kristeva, circumcision subordinates the son to his
father’s laws by separating him from the mother: “I agree that it
concerns an alliance with the God of the chosen people; but what
the male is separated from, the other that circumcision carves out on
his very sex, is the other sex, impure, defiled.”15 Or, in the words of
Diane Jonte-Pace: “(...) a Kristevan reading identifies circumcision
as a marker dividing the abject from the symbolic. Circumcision
identifies the male infant as part of a male patrilineage, born first
into abjection from the biological body of the mother, reborn out of
abjection by means of the social body of fathers and their symbolic
15 Julia Kristeva. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon

S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982, 100.
154 Andreas Kraft
actions.”16 Strictly speaking, the identification with the foreskin is

not an attempt to disempower the father in an oedipal struggle; it is
more an attempt to escape the father’s authority by identifying with
the mother as abject. This identification rejects the fatherly authority,
that symbolic order which structures the world of the child, in favour
of an alternative form of existence. The abject represents the pre-
oedipal phase in which the infant feels itself to be merged with the
mother in a primary narcissistic fantasy. For Winnicott, the central
experience which a child achieves is the experience of “being.”
Identity can only grow out of this experience that “I am.” He says:
“In the growth of the human baby (...) this that I am calling the
object-relating of the pure female element establishes what is perhaps
the simplest of all experiences, the experience of being.”17 As the
abject, the foreskin symbolically represents this “I am” experience
which Winnicott describes as a female element.
Résumé
Auslander’s memoir charts the story of an individual’s attempt to free

himself from the threat of the wrath of God. The protagonist’s central
problem is, however, the fact that he cannot release himself from this
authoritative relationship. His relationship to his biological father,
who is constantly placed in parallel to the wrathful God, appears to
be dominated more by violence than authority. Even if the precarious
familial situation appears to be the root cause of the protagonist’s
suffering, the struggle for authority and recognition takes place on
the symbolic level of an internalized image of God. The identity
16 Diane Jonte-Pace. Speaking the Unspeakable: Religion, Misogyny, and the

Uncanny Mother in Freud’s Cultural Texts. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London:
University of California Press, 2001, 113-114.
17 Donald Woods Winnicott. Playing and Reality. With a New Preface by F.
Robert Rodman, North Carolina State University. Reprint, London and New
York: Routledge Classics, 2005, 108.
which the protagonist chooses symbolically as an adult is a return

to the feminine which was cast off through circumcision. This is a
different way of reading Winnicott’s “female element” – that is, the
experience of being which precedes the advent of paternal authority as
something accepted and complete. This symbolic identity is a radical
counter-pole to Jewish identity, which is sealed through circumcision.
However, the son is not even able to escape his father through this
symbolic identity; just as the abject, the biological mother, always
remains present ex negativo through the scar of circumcision, the
identity as foreskin is overshadowed by the presence of the father
and his law. This dilemma appears to be the main conflict in this
book.
Literature
Arendt, Hannah. ‘What is Authority?’ In: Hannah Arendt. Between

Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought. New York:
The Viking Press, 1961, 91-141.
Assmann, Jan. Herrschaft und Heil: Politische Theologie in Ägypten,
Israel und Europa. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag,
2003.
Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Anchor
Press/Doubleday Garden City, 1974.
Jacobs, Michael. The Presenting Past: The Core of Psychodynamic
Counselling and Therapy. Third Edition, Maldenhead/Berkshire:
Open University Press, 2006.
Jay, Timothy. Why We Curse: A Neuro-Social Theory of Speech.
Philadelphia/Amsterdam: John Benjamin, 2000.
Jonte-Pace, Diane. Speaking the Unspeakable: Religion, Misogyny,
and the Uncanny Mother in Freud’s Cultural Texts. Berkeley, Los
Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2001.
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated
by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
156 Andreas Kraft
Latvus, Kari. ‘God, Anger and Ideology: The Anger of God in Joshua
and Judges in Relation to Deuteronomy and the Priestly Writings.’
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series
279. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998.
Reemtsma, Jan Philipp. Vertrauen und Gewalt: Ein Versuch über
eine besondere Konstellation der Moderne. Hamburg: Patheon
Verlag, 2009.
Sennett, Richard. Authority. London: Secker & Warburg, 1980.
Sofsky, Wolfgang und Rainer Paris. Figurationen sozialer Macht:
Autorität – Stellvertretung – Koalition. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp
1994.
Winnicott, Donald Woods. ‘Some Psychological Aspects of Juvenile
Delinquency.’ In: Donald Woods Winnicott. Deprivation and
Delinquency. Edited by Claire Winnicott, Ray Shepherd, and
Madeleine Davis. London and New York: Tavistock Publications,
1984, 111-120.
Winnicott, Donald Woods. ‘The Antisocial Tendency.’ In: Donald
Woods Winnicott. Deprivation and Delinquency. Edited by Claire
Winnicott, Ray Shepherd, and Madeleine Davis. London and New
York: Tavistock Publications, 1984, 120-131.
Winnicott, Donald Woods. Playing and Reality. With a New Preface
by F. Robert Rodman, North Carolina State University. Reprint,
London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2005.
"So you just flow with it":
The inclusive second person as
a discourse strategy in “soldiers’
testimonies” from the occupied
Palestinian territories1
Eitan Grossman
.‫יש מלא מקומות‬

‫ וואלה נפץ‬,‫ באותה שנייה זה נראה לך הגיוני‬.‫ לא הבנתי מה האינטרס של זה‬.‫כן‬
.‫ ואתה כביכול מחרים נפצים‬,‫ אז אתה רץ ואתה בודק‬.‫ כי זה אולי כמו ירייה‬,‫וזה‬
‫עזרת כשהחרמת נפצים לילדים? בזה זה ייפסק? אז באמת עשינו חיפוש על שני‬
.‫ילדים‬
?‫איפה תפסתם אותם‬
.‫באמצע הקסבה תפסנו שני ילדים‬
?‫ראיתם אותם זורקים‬
‫ יכול להיות שהם‬.‫ פשוט ראינו אותם עוברים שם‬,‫ לא ראינו אותם זורקים‬.‫ לא‬,‫ לא‬,‫לא‬
1 This is a lightly edited version of a talk given in the workshop “Meditations

on Authority.” Examples are cited in the original Hebrew and with an English
translation, which is either that given by Breaking the Silence, my own, or a
mix of the two. The titles cited are those given by the editors of Breaking the
Silence. I have cited relatively extensive chunks of text, in order to provide as
much context as possible. I would like to thank Michal Marmorstein, Stéphane
Polis, Sibylle Schmidt, Mati Senkman, Yael Sternhell and Roi Wagner for
their insightful comments. I would also like to thank the many linguists who
responded to a query posted on the LINGTYP mailing list.
‫‪158 Eitan Grossman‬‬
‫רצו‪ ,‬אני לא זוכר מה אבל אני זוכר שעצרנו אותם לעשות עליהם חיפוש‪ .‬אחד מהם היה‬
‫ילד ממש קטן‪.‬‬
‫כמה קטן?‬
‫אולי ארבע־חמש‪ .‬הוא היה ילד ממש קטן‪ .‬והיה לידו את אח שלו‪ ...‬ילד קטן‪ ,‬ילד בגן‬
‫או כיתה א‘ אפילו‪ ...‬ואתה עושה עליו חיפוש‪ .‬הוא ועל אח שלו‪ ,‬שהוא היה קצת יותר‬
‫גדול ממנו‪ .‬כמובן שאתה לא מכוון עליו את הנשק ואתה כאילו גורם לו לא לפחד‪ .‬אבל‬
‫זה עוד התמודדות שלי‪ ,‬עוד התמודדות קשה עם חברון‪ .‬אתה פתאום עושה חיפוש על‬
‫ילד קטן‪ .‬זה לא יאומן‪ .‬עשיתי עליו את החיפוש והזדעזעתי‪ .‬הרגשתי כל כך‪ ,‬אני יכול‬
‫להגיד את זה‪ ,‬הרגשתי לא מוסרי באותו רגע‪ ,‬הרגשתי כל כך לא אנושי‪ .‬אז נכון‪ ,‬הנשק‬
‫לא מכוון אליו‪ ,‬ואתה לא מאיים עליו‪ ,‬אתה לא צועק‪ .‬אתה כולה עושה לו חיפוש‪ .‬אומר‬
‫לו‪ :‬תעמוד ככה‪ ,‬ואתה בודק אותו‪.‬‬
‫מה זה ככה? עם הידיים?‬
‫כן‪ ,‬עם הידיים על הקיר‪ .‬הוא עומד ואתה בודק אותו ואתה לא מאמין שאתה עושה את‬
‫זה‪ .‬אתה באותו רגע חושב על זה ולא חושב על זה‪ .‬אבל אחרי זה אתה אומר לעצמך‪:‬‬
‫למען השם‪ ,‬בדקתי ילד עכשיו‪ .‬עד לפני שאמרת לי עכשיו את הקטע הזה‪ ,‬עד לפני‬
‫עכשיו‪ ,‬השיחה הזאת שאנחנו עושים‪ ,‬בוא נגיד שזה נשכח‪ .‬זה נשאר בצד‪ .‬מדי פעם‬
‫כשעולה לי הנושא של חברון אז אני נזכר בזה‪ ,‬אבל לא עשיתי עם זה משהו‪ .‬הזדעזעתי‬
‫אבל זה חזר כזה לצד‪ .‬לא התייחסתי לזה‪ .‬אולי גם אין יותר מדי מה לעשות עם זה‪,‬‬
‫לספר את זה למישהו‪ .‬אבל אתה מסתכל על זה וזה לא יאומן‪ .‬אתה אומר לעצמך‪:‬‬
‫אפשר לשים לזה סוף? זה משהו שאפשר לשים לזה סוף? אני לא יודע‪ .‬זה כואב לי‬
‫כי כמו שאמרתי מקודם‪ ,‬אני איש של חינוך‪ .‬אני עבדתי עם נוער‪ ,‬אני עבדתי עם‬
‫ילדים‪ .‬אתה פתאום מדמיין שזה כמו ילד שאתה עבדת איתו בכיתה‪ ,‬שאתה ישבת לידו‬
‫בחשבון‪ .‬כזה ילד‪ ,‬בגובה הזה‪ ,‬בגיל הזה‪ ,‬אתה עושה עליו חיפוש‪ .‬וזה לא אנושי‪ .‬כי‬
‫שוטר כאן בתל אביב לא ייקח ילד בגיל כזה ויעשה עליו חיפוש‪ ,‬אלא אם כן קרה‪ ,‬אתה‬
‫יודע‪ ,‬מקרה חמור של רצח‪ ,‬סכין או לא יודע‪ ,‬סמים או דברים כאלה‪.‬‬
‫‪There are plenty of places like that.‬‬

‫‪Yes. I didn’t understand what the point of it was. At the moment is seemed‬‬
‫‪logical, wow – a firecracker, maybe because it sounds like a gunshot. Then‬‬
‫‪you run and check and confiscate firecrackers as it were. Did that help‬‬
‫‪things, confiscating firecrackers from children? Is that what would end‬‬
‫‪things? So we really conducted a search on two children.‬‬
‫?‪Where did you catch them‬‬
‫‪In the middle of the casbah.‬‬
‫?‪You actually saw them throwing‬‬
“So you just flow with it” 159
No, no. We didn’t see them throwing. We just saw them passing by there.
They may have been running, but I do remember stopping them for a search.
One of them was really a little kid.
How little?
Maybe 4-5 years old. He was a really small child. And his brother was
with him... A little kid, in kindergarten or first grade even... And you search
him. Him and his brother, just a little bit older. Of course you don’t point
your gun at him, so as not to frighten him. But that’s another confrontation
I have to face, with Hebron. Suddenly you’re searching a little boy. It’s
unbelievable. I did this search on him and was shocked. I felt so... I can’t
say it. I felt so immoral at the time, so inhuman. So yeah, the gun was not
pointed at him, and you’re not threatening him, not yelling. Just conducting
a search. Telling him: stand like this, and checking him.
What’s “like this"? Hands out?
Yes, spreadeagle against the wall. He stands and you’re checking him and
you can’t believe you’re doing this. At the moment you’re not really thinking
about it. But afterwards, you realize: For God’s sake, I just searched a child.
Until you brought up this case, just earlier, this talk we’re having, let’s say
it was forgotten. Left aside. Occasionally when Hebron comes up I recall it.
But I didn’t actually do anything about it. I’d be shocked and then shove it
off to the side again. Maybe there’s not too much I can do about it, tell it to
someone. But you look at it and it’s incredible. You tell yourself: can there
be an end to this? Is this something we can put an end to? I don’t know. It
hurts me, as I said. I’m an educator. I’ve worked with youth, with children.
Suddenly you imagine it’s like a kid you worked with in a classroom, sat
next to him in an arithmetic class. Just this small, same age, and you’re
searching him. It’s inhuman. A policeman here in Tel Aviv wouldn’t take a
kid that age and conduct a search on him. Unless, you know, it was a real
severe case – murder, knife, I don’t know, drugs, stuff like that.
1. Introduction
This paper deals with a range of uses of the second person in modern
colloquial Hebrew, based on a corpus of “solders’ testimonies.” The
160 Eitan Grossman
first part of the paper will call into question the categorization of
these texts as testimonies given by soldiers, while the second part
will deal with the ways in which the second person constitutes a
discourse strategy employed by speakers to navigate problems of
agency and accountability in the course of narrating events in which
they participated. The main point I would like to make here – and
the main contribution of this paper – is the insight that the so-called
“impersonal second person” is in fact highly personal, and can be
used to index the speaker in the course of narrating events in which
he or she participated.
I would like to stress that this paper is but a tentative exploration
of some preliminary issues.
2. The corpus
The corpus on which this study is based is Occupying the Territories:

Soldiers’ Testimonials 2000-2010 and Breaking the Silence: Women
Soldiers’ Testimonies, both published by the non-governmental
organization Breaking the Silence (Shovrim Shtika in Hebrew).2
Part of one of these testimonies is given above, in order to give
the reader a sense of the nature of the text we are dealing with.
These testimonies are an excellent corpus for the study of colloquial
Hebrew, since they are only minimally edited (in terms of language),
and are pretty much as close to “spoken” Hebrew as one can get in
a written medium. While the language of these texts is representative
2 This is an ongoing project, with a constantly updated website (http://www.

breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database) in English and Hebrew. In the
months since I conducted most of the research for this paper, some serious
changes have taken place. For example, some of the interviewees have waived
their anonymity. Furthermore, the database of testimonies has grown considerably.
I have based this study on the printed volumes of testimonies alone; any future
study would have to take into account the mass of new materials, especially the
videotaped oral testimonies, many of which are now available online.
of typical colloquial speech, the situation in which the texts were

gathered is somewhat special, sociologically speaking, and the subject
matter of the texts is fairly restricted.
In terms of situation, these testimonies are small, focused, dialogue
interactions, in which an interviewer asks questions and makes
comments to initiate and regulate the testimony of the interviewee.
Even when an interviewee talks at length, in a kind of quasi-
monologue, the fundamentally dialogic character of the interview is
maintained, as the interviewees often address the interviewers in a
variety of ways, ranging from discourse markers such as ata yodea,
“you know”, to explicit questions and comments, including requests
for the interviewer to regulate the flow of the interview:
‫ אז ירינו לעבר פנס שהאיר‬,‫ באתי לספר לך שבאותו ערב חבר שלי ירה‬.‫פוצצנו רכב‬
.)2000 ,‫ חברון‬,‫(צנחנים‬
"We blew up a car. I was about to tell you that that evening a friend of mine
fired, then we shot at a lamp that was lit” (I shot at an ambulance with a
heavy machine gun. Paratroopers, Hebron, 2000).
‫ אתם תשמעו אותו‬,‫ אז אם לא‬.‫אני בטוח ששמעתם את המונח “פורים שמח “מתישהו‬
. )2004 ,‫ גוש עציון‬,‫ תותחנים‬.‫(לייצר לכפר חוסר שינה‬
"I’m sure you’ve heard the term ‘Happy Purim’ sometime. If not, you will
hear it” (To produce sleeplessness for the village. Artillery, Gush Etzion,
2004).
.‫ אמצעי לפיזור הפגנות‬,‫אז הסבירו לנו קצת על לא יודע איך קוראים לזה‬
.‫אלפ”ה‬
‫ על הדף זה נקרא לוחם‬.‫ מזה אתה מבין שלא הייתי מי יודע מה לוחם‬.‫ לא יודע‬.‫קיי‬.‫או‬
‫ או לחלל הבטן‬,‫אבל לא הייתי מורעל או משהו כזה (תכוונו לעיניים שזה יוציא עין‬
.)2000 ,‫ קלקיליה‬,‫ תותחנים‬.‫שזה ייכנס‬
So they explained to us a bit about, I don’t know what they are called, riot
control agents.
RCA.
OK. I don’t know. From that you understand that I wasn’t such a great
combat soldier. On paper I’m a combat soldier, but I wasn’t brainwashed or
162 Eitan Grossman
anything (Aim for the eyes so that it will put out an eye, or at the stomach
so that it will enter. Artillery, Qalqilya, 2000).
?‫ושמה מלמדים וידוא הריגה בקורס‬

.]…[ ‫כן בטח‬
?‫אתה יודע שצה”ל מכחיש את זה‬
.‫ בטח שכן‬.‫מה קרה לך? בטח‬
?‫” וידוא הריגה‬..‫ טה‬..‫בקורס חלק מהתכנים היו עכשיו מסתערים “טה‬
.‫ בטח‬,‫ וידוא הריגה‬.‫בקיפול‬
.‫קיי‬.‫או‬
.)2001 ,‫ נפת רמאללה‬,‫ הנדסה‬.‫ מה אתה לא? לא? (הרגנו שוטרים לא חמושים‬.‫כן‬
And do they teach you verifying a kill in that course?
Yes, of course. […]
You know that the IDF denies it?
What’s with you? Of course. Of course.
Was some of the content of the course “now charge, ‘bang...bang...’
verify the killing?”
On the pack-up. Verification of killings, of course.
OK.
Yes. Why, you don’t? No? (We killed unarmed policemen, Engineering
Corps, Ramallah District, 2001).
‫ אתה יודע מה זה? האקדח הזה‬,‫יש את האקדח הזה שיורה את הכדורים הקטנים האלה‬
‫ הפלסטיקיים האלה שממש כואבים (שוברות‬,‫שיורה את הכדורי אוויר האלה הקטנטנים‬
).‫ חברון‬,‫ סחלב‬,‫ סמלת‬,49 ‫ עדות‬,‫שתיקה‬
"There’s this pistol that shoots these little bullets, you know what it is? This
pistol that shoots these air pellets, the plastic ones that really hurt” (Women
Soldiers’ Testimonies, T49, Sergeant, Sahlav, Hebron).
.‫ זו סוגיה נשגבת ממני‬.‫לא צריך להיות בשטחים‬/‫אני לא מדבר על צריך להיות בשטחים‬
,‫ אבל … אני מאבד את עצמי קצת‬.‫אם היתה לי תשובה כנראה הייתי היום ראש ממשלה‬
,‫ רצועת עזה‬,‫ גולני‬.‫ משהו כזה‬,12-15 ‫ הוא היה בן‬.‫תשאל איזו שאלה מכוונת (יריתי בו‬
.)2003-2006
“I’m not talking about ‘it’s necessary to be in the territories/it’s not necessary
to be in the territories.’ That’s beyond me. I’m losing myself a little, ask a
leading question” (I shot him. He was 12-15 years old, something like that.
Golani, Gaza Strip, 2003-2006).
Before moving on, however, I would like to point out that the texts
in this collection are called “soldiers’ testimonies,” but both “soldier”
and “testimony” are problematic terms here.
3. Are the interviewees soldiers?
In many cases, the interviewees are not soldiers at the time of the
interview, but for several reasons they are positioned as soldiers: first,
they are being interviewed about – and by virtue of – their military
service. Second, many Israelis, usually Jewish men, continue to serve
as reservists for decades after their active service, and some of the
interviews may deal with their participation in events as reservists.
One might also comment on the blurry distinction between citizen
and soldier – or the civilian and the military – in Israeli society, but
I will not pursue this line of questioning further. I will use the term
“soldier” in scare quotes from now on, to reflect the categorization
of Breaking the Silence.
Positioning the interviewees as “soldiers” creates a gap of both
time and consciousness between the “soldiers” – the narrating
I – and their earlier selves – the narrated I. This distance is also
often represented as a moral distance,3 as we see in the following
examples.
‫ אני … לא‬.‫ אין לך את המודעות‬,‫ זאת אומרת‬.‫לא הבנתי שאני עושה משהו לא בסדר‬
‫ רק בשלב‬.‫ אבל אתה לא יודע כמה גרוע מה שאתה עושה‬,‫ זה ישמע אידיוטי‬.‫יודע‬
,‫ אולי אחרי שאתה מפקד אתה מתחיל להתאפס קצת‬,‫ אולי אחרי שנתיים‬,‫מאוחר יותר‬
‫ אבל ראיתי את חבר‬...‫ אני לא אומר שאני זה ש‬.‫ אתה מתחיל להבין מה עשית‬.‫להתבגר‬
3 Sibylle Schmidt has pointed out to me that positioning the interviewees as

soldiers does not only create a gap, it also forces the interviewees to bridge the
gap, identifying with their former selves.
164 Eitan Grossman
,‫ ולא … אמרתי וואי וואי‬.‫ארבעים‬-‫שלי מצמיד אותם לקיר וזה אנשים בני שלושים‬
‫ (אתה יכול‬.‫ איזו מציאות מסריחה זו וזהו‬,‫ אמרתי‬.‫אבל זה לא הדליק לי נורה אדומה‬
.)2002 ,‫ שכם‬,‫ צנחנים‬.‫ אף אחד לא ישאל אותך כלום‬:‫לעשות מה שבא לך‬
“I didn’t grasp that I was doing something wrong. That is, you don’t have
the awareness. I … dunno. It will sound idiotic, but you don’t know how
bad what you’re doing is. Only later, maybe after two years, maybe after
you [become] a commander, you begin to get a grip, a little, to mature. You
begin to understand what you’ve done. I don’t say that I’m … but I saw my
friend push them up against a wall and this is 30, 40-year-old people. And
no... I said ‘man oh man,’ but it didn’t ring any warning bells. I said ‘What
a stinking reality this is,’ and that’s it” (You can do whatever you feel like:
no one will ask you anything. Paratrooper, Nablus, 2002).
?‫מה חשבת על זה שהופכים למישהו את הארון בפראות כזאת‬

,‫ לא … אתה מגיע אחרי מסלול וזה‬...‫ שאנחנו‬,‫ או שהם‬,‫היה לי בראש שהם מחבלים‬
‫ מסלול ואז אתה נכנס וזאת המשימה‬,‫ מכניסים אותך לטירונות‬,‫אחרי כאילו י"ב‬
‫ אתה חושב שזה מאוד … שאתה לא יודע מה‬.‫הראשונה שלך ואתה נכנס לבית‬
‫ אתה‬,‫ כל רגע‬.‫ שאולי הוא מחביא איזה נשק‬,‫ שאתה מציל את המדינה כרגע‬--
‫ אתה לא באמת‬.‫ מחבלים או משהו‬,‫בתוך העיר ואז אתה חושב שהם לא יודע מה‬
‫מבין שהם תמימים וכל מה שאכפת להם זה לגדל את הילדים ולהביא אוכל‬
.‫הביתה‬
?‫מתי אתה מבין את זה‬
‫יום ואני מבין‬-‫אני מבין את זה כשאני קצין ואני עושה את המשימות האלה יום‬
‫ מסבירים לי בדיוק מה‬,)‫ מח"ט (מפקד חטיבה) ומג"דים (מפקדי גדודים‬,‫שהמפקדים‬
‫ היית‬,‫ הרי בתפקיד שלי במודיעין שדה‬.‫ ואני גם מבין את כל המערכת‬.‫הולך לקרות‬
‫ איך זה‬,‫ את הכל‬,‫בתור קצין חייב להבין את כל המערכת של המודיעין של החטיבה‬
‫דינו‬-‫דן‬-‫ שהוא יכול לעשות אן‬,‫ אתה מבין שזה‬.‫ אתה מבין איך שואבים מידע‬.‫עובד‬
.)2003 ,‫ חברון‬,‫ תותחנים‬.‫על הבתים האלה (נכנסים לעורקים של האוכלוסיה‬
What did you think about the fact that they were wildly dumping out
someone’s closet?
I had it in my head that they were terrorists, or that they, that we...no...you
come after the training track, after like 12th grade, they put you into basic
training, the training track, and then you come and it’s your first mission
and you go into the house. You think it’s very...that you don’t know what
– that you are saving the country, that maybe he’s hiding a weapon. Every
moment you are inside the city you think that they are I don’t know what,
terrorists or something. You don’t really understand that they are innocent
and all they care about is raising their kids and bringing food home.
When do you understand it?
I understand it when I [become] an officer and I do those missions every
day, and I understood that the commanders, the brigade commander, and
the battalion commanders, explain to me exactly what’s going to happen.
And I understood the whole system. My duty in field intelligence, as an
officer you had to understand the whole intelligence system of the brigade,
everything, how it works. You understand how they retrieve information.
You understand that it’s, he could do eeny-meeny-miney-moe on those
houses. (You enter the veins of the population. Artillery Corps, Hebron,
2003).
These examples show that the Breaking the Silence interviews do

not depart from the prominent Israeli discourse of yorim veboxim,
‘shooting and crying,’ in which soldier-citizens get to shoot people,
inter alia, and to have a conscience too.
4. Are they testimonies?
The name given to these texts raises a problem of perspective.

At a descriptive level, these are interviews, and I will use the
relatively neutral terms “interview,” “interviewer,” and “interviewee”
throughout this paper. However, many of the interviews have at
least some elements of a confession situation. Here is Roger Shuy’s
detailed characterization of confession as a speech act, which fits
these interviews quite well in most respects, from the point of view
of the individual interviewee. I have highlighted in bold the features
of confessions that are appropriate to the Breaking the Silence
interviews.
Confessions look backward in time, a fact that, though obvious, brings

with it certain constraints not realized by pre-event or simultaneous speech
166 Eitan Grossman
acts. For one thing, confessions require explicit and factual recall to the
extent that pre-event and simultaneous speech acts do not.
A second distinguishing characteristic of the speech act of confession is that
the confessor believes that what he or she did was wrong according to
a recognized set of norms, that the confessor believes that the person
to whom he or she is confessing also shares these norms, or that the
person to whom the confession is given is in a position of authority over
the confessor and that the confessor is aware that his or her confession
correlates with some type of punishment.
A confession ultimately commits the confessor to the truth of what he or
she says, whether it is ultimately determined to be true. As such, the speech
act of confessing commits fits a category of speech acts called commissives,
which commit the speaker to a certain course of action.[…]
Confessions report things that the confessor has done or thought, and,
as such, are a kind of narrative. They differ from standard narrative,
however, in that confessions imply wrongdoing of some sort for which
guilt and expiation are a desired end. […]
Such revelations can also be quite manipulative in the sense that, by showing
how evil we have been in the past, we are actually making a statement about
how good we are now. […] Perhaps the best-known confession in American
history is the young George Washington’s apocryphal, candid admission to
his father that he had indeed cut down his father’s prized cherry tree. Every
schoolchild hears that the elder Washington immediately forgave his son
for confessing the deed so honestly. One parental moral commonly taught
is that we should always tell the truth. But the concomitant and usually
ignored part of this equation is that, by confessing all, we will receive
instant and complete amnesty (Shuy 1998: 3-5).
One might question the extent to which the term “testimony” is

appropriate for participants in an event who are neither victims
nor bystanders. However, the term “perpetrator testimony,” used in
contemporary studies of testimony, might be a useful way of looking
at the Breaking the Silence interviews. For example, Browning (2003)
and Eaglestone (2011) discuss perpetrator testimony in the context
of the Holocaust. Incidentally, lest the reader think that mentioning
Holocaust studies is over the top or gratuitous, I would like to point

out that some of the interviewees themselves make this connection:
,‫ אתה פתאום חושב על בוא'נה‬,‫ בעיקר ביום השואה‬,‫ ואז פתאום לפעמים אתה חושב‬,‫כן‬
‫ בסופו של דבר התברר שהוא גם לא היה‬.‫ זה בן אדם בסופו של דבר‬,‫עשו את זה לנו‬
‫ אז תפסו אותו או משהו‬,‫ שהוא היה איזה ילד שהסתובב יותר מדי ליד הבסיס‬,‫מחבל‬
.)‫ מבוא דותן‬,‫ נח"ל‬,‫ סמלת‬,63 ‫ עדות‬,‫כזה (שוברות שתיקה‬
Yes, and then sometimes you get to thinking, especially say on Holocaust
Memorial Day, suddenly you’re thinking, hey, these things were done to
us, it’s a human being after all. Eventually as things turned out he was no
terrorist anyway, it was a kid who’d hung around too long near the base,
so he was caught or something (Women Soldiers’ Testimonies T63, Sergeant,
Nahal, Mevo Dotan).
Of course, confession and (perpetrator) testimony are not mutually

exclusive categories, and many of the perpetrator testimonies treated
by scholars are in fact confessions in terms of speech act.
5. Modes of witnessing and epistemic injustice
Whatever the relationship or relationships between confession and

perpetrator testimony, it seems safe to say that the perceived value
of the Breaking the Silence texts – for some people – is not in their
status as confessions, since they are anonymous and the interviewees
are not likely to be punished for their actions. Rather, the interviews
are presented as valuable as testimony about the reality of the
occupation from the point of view of those who are in a putatively
unique position to know about it. In other words, the interviewees
are presented as having a credible epistemic authority.
Of course, there are other people who know about it quite well,
but they do not appear in these testimonies as speaking subjects. First
person – non-anonymous – testimonies related by Palestinian victims
and eyewitnesses are abundant. For example, let’s have a look at the
testimony of Dr. Wisam ’Abu Rajileh, given to Kareem Jubran in
168 Eitan Grossman
Arabic by telephone on January 18, 2009, and published in English

on the Btselem website:4
Testimony: Soldiers shoot and kill Gazan farmer after cease-fire is in place,
Jan. 09
Dr. Wisam ’Abu Rajileh, physician
Since the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip started, we were waiting for the
cease-fire.
My father and his brothers have a five-dunam plot of land, on which they
have citrus orchards, olive groves and hothouses for growing vegetables. The
plot lies east of Khuza’a, about 400 meters from the border with Israel.
This morning [18 January], at around 8:00 A.M., after the Israelis
announced the cease-fire, I went with my father, ‘Abd al-‘Azim Yusef Abu
Rajileh, 56, my mother, M’azuzeh Jaber Abu Rajileh, 56, and my brother,
Maher ‘Abd al-‘Azim Abu Rajileh, 24, to check the state of our plot. When
we got there, we were shocked by the destruction. About thirty houses in
the Najar neighborhood, some 200 meters from our plot, were completely
destroyed. Our land was like a desert. All the trees were uprooted, the
trunks were buried in sand, and the hothouses were ruined. The area looked
as if it had been hit by a tsunami.
After we recovered from the shock, we started dragging the trunks of the
trees out of the sand, so we could at least use the wood for heating. Lots
of residents came to check the state of their plots. There were a few Israeli
army jeeps near the border with Israel, about 400 meters away from us.
They watched us work. Around 10:00 A.M., for no reason at all, the soldiers
began to fire at us. It happened suddenly, and we didn’t know what to do.
The shots made the sand fly into the air.
There was confusion and panic, and everyone began to run. I ran until I
4 http://www.btselem.org/testimonies/20090118_soldiers_shoot_farmer_to_death.
got to a cactus, about 50-60 meters from our plot. The firing continued for
three minutes or so and then stopped.
I looked to see where my parents and brother were. A couple of people told
me that my parents had run towards Khuza’a. I went back to our plot and
found Maher. He was lying on the ground, not moving at all. I picked him
up and saw that the back of his clothes were full of blood. He had been
killed.
I took him to the town. I didn’t dare undress him to see his wound. He was
buried in those clothes.
Dr. Wisam ‘Abd al-‘Azim Abu Rajileh, 33, married with one child, is a
physician and a resident of Khuza’a, in Khan Yunis District, Gaza Strip. His
testimony was given to Kareem Jubran by telephone on 18 Jan. ‘09.
Another, recent example is found in the well-documented and still

uninvestigated killing of Mustafa Tamimi, 28, from the village of
Nabi Saleh in the occcupied West Bank. This testimony was given
by Ibrahim Bornat, artist and activist from Bil’in, who was next to
Tamimi when a soldier shot a tear gas canister directly into his face,
killing him.
Mustafa and I were alone, it was just the two of us, with the rest of the
protesters quite far behind, and we were chasing the jeep and telling it to
leave. We got separated from the rest, because the soldiers threw almost 50
tear gas canisters at once, so the whole protest was pushed back. The tear
gas went over our heads and we got closer to the soldiers, shouting at them
that they had thrown enough.
The jeeps turned around to leave as they were shooting gas behind us.
One jeep, however, lingered and seemed to be waiting for us to get closer.
As we reached the jeep, the soldier opened the door and shot two rounds
of tear gas. I think I saw this soldier’s face, but Mustafa definitely saw and
whoever he is, Mustafa knows best.
Mustafa pushed me down, and one canister that was aimed for me flew
170 Eitan Grossman
over my head. The second one hit Mustafa, but I didn’t know it hit him at
first because I thought “for sure they won’t shoot at us from so close.” I
thought he had just ducked down, and then I thought that maybe he had just
passed out from the gas, because there was gas all around him.
I went to him, laying face down on the road, and I turned him over and
pulled the cloth off his face.
What I can say about it, it is worse than words can say. The whole half
of his face was blown off, and his eye was hanging out, and I tried to push
his eye back up. I could see pieces of the inside of his head, and there
was a pool of blood gathering under him. His whole body was trembling.
It started from his feet, then up to his arms, then it reached his chest, and
then his head, and then a gasp came out and I’m sure at that moment he
died. He gasped, and let out a bunch of air, and I knew at that moment his
soul had left. I have seen many people, not a few, die in front of me, and
I know death. Maybe later on they revived his heart, but I knew that his
soul had left.
I ran back to get people, because we were far away, but there was no
ambulance around, so the people around gathered him and put him in a
servee [a communal taxi] and tried to leave. The soldiers stopped the servee
and tried to arrest Mustafa, but when they saw that he was on the brink of
death, they began to act as if they were humanitarian, to revive his heart.
But what is “humanitarian,” to shoot someone to kill, and then to try to
help him? These were the same soldiers from the jeep that shot him. They
shot him, then say they want to help him. What they really did is prevent
him from leaving.
The body lay on the ground for half an hour. They wanted Mustafa’s
ID, and they also wanted the ID of his mother, of another family member,
and of Bassem Tamimi’s wife, because these people wanted to go out with
him too... They were doing some kind of medical treatment while he was
lying on the ground, but this was no hospital, and what he needed was to
be taken to a hospital. He should have been flown out in that moment. There
is nothing you can do for him on the street there.5
5 http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/topics/news/3976-eyewitness-
describes-mustafa-tamimis-last-moments.
The bountiful existence of “other” testimonies about the goings-on

in the occupied territories would seem to indicate that the matter
of epistemic authority is not the sole or even main interest of the
“soldiers’ testimonies” in Breaking the Silence. To put it bluntly:
for the Jewish Israeli public – and possibly for others as well –
the “soldiers’ testimonies” are “better” than those of Palestinians or
others. This situation is a clear example of what Miranda Fricker
calls testimonial injustice, “when prejudice causes a hearer to give
a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word” (2007:1).6 I will
return to this matter shortly.
Here I would like to mention the work of Andrea Frisch (2003).
Frisch argues that the modern Western concept of “eyewitness” is
based on attributing epistemic authority to an individual who was
present at an event and testifies from and about his or her own
experience. In this conception, the epistemic authority of the witness
is a function of his or her proximity to the event. However, there
are other modes of testimony, such as what Frisch calls “ethical
witnessing,” in which the authority of a witness derives from his or
her stature in a community, or ability to speak for others. She gives
the example of a medieval adultery case:
“Accused of adultery, Fredegonde has three bishops and three hundred
lords of her court swear that they believed her newborn child to be
legitimate” (Jean Danty, in Frisch 2003).
Of course, these witnesses do not testify to their first-hand
experiential knowledge of the circumstances of the conception of
Fredegonde’s child. Rather, their authority derives from their stature
in the community and their willingness to testify to their belief.
According to Frisch, this form of witnessing is not “a monologic
discourse of first-person experiential knowledge,” but rather a
dialogic form of witnessing. In fact, the medieval ethical witness
was a second person, who “neither gave an autobiographical account
of his own experiences in potential isolation from other persons,
6 I would like to thank Sibylle Schmidt for bringing the work of Miranda Fricker
to my attention.
172 Eitan Grossman
as might the accused; neither was he in the position to synthesize

all of the evidence in order to reach a verdict, as was the judge.
He gave testimony that necessarily bore on another party (no one
was considered a witness on his own behalf) in the presence of that
party.” Frisch criticizes the over-emphasis on epistemically-oriented
testimony, which elides the profoundly social nature of testimony,
and hence its ethical dimension;7 she proposes to consider the
witness “as a quintessentially second person – not so much a subject
as an intersubject” (53). Moreover, Frisch highlights the performative
dimension of testimony, its power to establish social facts.
The conception of the witness as intersubject is taken up by
Eaglestone (2011), who proposes four characteristics of perpetrator
testimony, the second of which is
“the splitting between the narrator and the perpetrator. In texts by survivors,
even ones that focus especially on the self-destroying nature of the trauma,
the sense that the past victim is the present narrator is stressed. However,
in these accounts, the past perpetrator is split from the present. Where the
narrator is an investigator (legal or appointed), the split is enacted in the
form of the writing – it is a ‘second person’ testimony. Where the narrator is
the perpetrator in a forced confession, the split is enacted by - as Browning
says – mendacity and pleading” (2011: 128).
The Breaking the Silence interviewers and interviewees collaborate

to construct coherent narratives, with the interviewers taking the part
of the “investigator,” the second person, the second witness. In other
words, the source of authority is essentially intersubjective. Unlike
(some) other perpetrator testimonies, however, the interviewer and
interviewee are not in an antagonistic relationship. On the contrary,
the main characteristic of their relationship is solidarity. Even more
striking, the interviewer recognizes the interviewee as a witness, and
7 Reading the proofs, this phrase strikes me as taken from another author, but I
can’t remember if that’s the case or who it might have been. My apologies to
the plagiarized author, especially if he or she is imaginary.
vouches for him or her. In turn, the interviewee frequently appeals

to the interviewer to authorize his or her evidence, as seen in the
above examples.
Moving beyond the individual interview situation, however, we note
that there is an additional layer of testimony-constructing. Breaking
the Silence, as an organization, has presented – broken up, edited,
packaged, and marketed – these interviews as testimonies, whose
authority derives from the status of the interviewees as participants
(rather than eyewitnesses, for the most part). By making and editing
the interviews the way they did, and presenting them as testimonies,
the editors have turned those perpetrator reports into something that
we are willing to regard as a credible epistemic source.
However, at another level, their authority derives from their status
as “soldiers,” a sociological category of (Jewish) Israeli society that
is traditionally valued as positive. They are considered to have a
privileged epistemic perspective on the occupation, a perspective that
other participants – Palestinians, settlers, human rights workers and
activists – do not have and cannot have.8 But more importantly, they
have a unique “ethical” (i.e., social) authority. Soldiers, for much of
the Israeli public, are the ultimate non-Other. In fact, Otherness is
often measured in Israeli society, at least partially, by army service.
The very poor, the disabled, Arabs, and the ultra-Orthodox are
perceived as not serving in the army, and as Others: whether this is
a causal relationship or a correlative one is a question we will leave
alone here. In short, the “soldiers” of Breaking the Silence give an
Israeli audience more for its money: one gets both epistemic and
Frischean ethical authority in a single situation. Moreover, the ethical
authority of the interviewees is augmented by the fact that they have
8 When discussing the topic of this paper with acquaintances, nearly everyone
said the same thing: “If we didn’t have these testimonies, we would never know
about the protocols for opening fire!” I think this is factually wrong, but it is
also revealing: it tells us that Israelis, even those that oppose the occupation
of the Palestinian territories, privilege other Israelis – especially soldiers – as
uniquely authoritative witnesses, certainly better than, say, Palestinians or anti-
occupation activists.
174 Eitan Grossman
“broken the silence,” having come forth to testify. We should note

here that Fricker’s notion of “testimonial injustice” does not only
work to deflate the credibility of some speakers; it also inflates the
credibility of others.9
From a linguistic point of view, we are dealing with two distinct
types of evidentiality, the linguistic marking of the nature of evidence
for a given statement. Some languages encode degrees of evidentiality
by morphological means, distinguishing between different evidential
sources (e.g., visual, non-visual sensory, inference, hearsay, and so on).
What is interesting about the case of the Breaking the Silence corpus
is that evidentiality is not a function of the source of knowledge,
but rather of the intersubjective dynamic between interviewer and
interviewee, on the one hand, and the exploitation of the sociological
category of “soldier” by Breaking the Silence, on the other.10
Do the Breaking the Silence interviews “establish social facts”?
Obviously, this question does not have a single answer. One might
argue that they establish “the moral soldier-citizen” as a real category
of Israeli society, for example. However, in the analysis pursued
here, it seems that they attempt to establish – and give flesh to –
the very existence of the Israeli occupation in a way that is difficult
to controvert, by exploiting institutionalized testimonial injustice.
Nonetheless, they do not attempt to subvert this testimonial injustice
by valorizing “other” kinds or sources of testimony.
In the process of transforming interviews into testimony, and
civilians into soldiers, Breaking the Silence avoids explicitly
problematizing the nature of the “soldiers” and their “testimony.”
One way to problematize these texts is to look at the language of the
interviewees in the specific context of being interviewed: how do the
9 Sibylle Schmidt (p.c.) notes: “However, this goes against another old juridicial
rule – that the confession of perpetrators should not be taken as evidence,
because it is not trustworthy. In this case, being a soldier (and a perpetrator)
does not seem to diminish credibility and authority, but increase it, which is
amazing.”
10 I would like to thank Stéphane Polis (p.c.) for his remarks on this matter.
linguistic choices of interviewees serve as symptoms of discursive

strategies? How do the interviewers construct linguistic events that
involve them as participants? For the rest of this paper, I will focus
on the grammatical category of person (as in “first person,” “second
person,” and so on) and an aspect of its role in the interviewee’s
construction of events – and of their selves as participants in these
events.
6. A brief comment on the category of person
We have to make a distinction between discourse roles, such as speaker

and addressee, and grammatical person. We need this distinction
because person markers, whether pronouns or verbal inflections, do
not have a one-to-one relationship with discourse roles. If we take
a so-called first person plural marker, such as English we, we can
see that it can index a fairly wide range of discourse roles, taking
into account combinations of the speaker, the addressee, and neither
speaker nor addressee, here encoded as 1, 2, and 3.
"Mismatches” (Siewierska 2004: 215; 1 = speaker, 2 = addressee,

3 = other)
a. 1 We are not interested in the possibility of defeat
(Queen Victoria on the Boer War, 1899).
b. 2 We want to eat our din dins now (carer talking
to patient).
c. 3 We had wet panties again on the playground
(Mother talking about child).
d. 1+1 We solemnly swear…
e. 1+2 Shall we book for just the two of us then?
f. 1+3 We will join you the moment Dik arrives.
g. 1+3+3 We are underpaid and overworked…
h. 2+2+2 We will hear in this presentation…
i. 3+3 We won the First World War.
176 Eitan Grossman
As such, it is not surprising that the second person is not limited

to indexing the discourse role of the addressee. I will focus on a
spectrum of uses that linguists have called “generic” or “impersonal”
second person. According to Anna Siewierska,
[…] the second-person singular […] when used impersonally, includes
both speaker and addressee among the set of potential referents. While
the speaker is included among the set of referents, the emphasis is on the
addressee, who is directly invited to imagine himself in the situation or
event expressed by the speaker and thus share in the world-view being
presented or entertained.
Siewierska continues:
The second-person singular is an appropriate impersonalizing strategy only

in the case of neutral or inoffensive situations or events which the addressee
can imagine himself being involved in. In some languages, for instance
Godie and Mundani, it is therefore restricted to procedural discourse. In
others, for example Polish and Hungarian, it is primarily a feature of
discourse among friends or intimates (Siewierska 2004: 212).
A forthcoming study of the “generic” second person in English,

German and Dutch proposes a “semantic map” of generic human
reference.11 The authors show that English you expresses a range of
meanings or functions: 1. specific hearer singular, 2. specific hearer
plural, 3. generic inclusive, and 4. generic inclusive conditional.
Dutch je and German du cover 1, 3, and 4, but not 2. In many
languages,12 meanings associated with generic human reference can
11 I would like to thank Johan van der Auwera and Volker Gast for sharing their
still unpublished work with me.
12 Siewierska observes that this phenomenon is “a common means of
impersonalization throughout Europe,” noting the Germanic, Romance, and
Slavonic languages, as well as Hungarian, Estonian, Komi, Turkish and Abkhaz.
Outside of Europe, she finds it in Godie, Gulf Arabic, Hindi, Kashmiri, Koromfe,
Koyra Chin, Kudish, Mandarin, Marathi, Mauwake, Maybrat, Macushi, Modern
Hebrew, Mundani, Nkore-Kiga and Tuvaluan (2004: 215). An informal question
be encoded by a second person expression (independent pronoun,

affix, etc.), but to the best of my knowledge, a serious typological
survey has not yet been undertaken.
It turns out that it is necessary to add another meaning to this
semantic map, namely, the use of the second person to narrate
events in which the speaker has taken part, or acts committed by the
speaker. As a point of departure, let’s take a look at a few English
examples.
Prison narrative
Here is how it is: you are both alone in his cell. You’ve slipped out a
knife (eight to ten-inch blade, double-edged). You’re holding it beside
your leg so he can’t see it. The enemy is chattering away about
something. You see his eyes: green-blue, liquid. He thinks you’re his
fool: he trusts you. You see the spot. It’s a target between the second
and third button on his shirt. As you calmly talk and smile, you move
your left foot to the side to step across his right-side body length. A
light pivot towards him with your right shoulder and the world turns
upside-down: you have sunk the knife to its hilt into the middle of
his chest. Slowly he begins to struggle for his life. As he sinks you
have to kill him fast or get caught. He will say “‘Why?” or “No!”
Nothing else. You can feel his life trembling through the knife in
your hand. It almost overcomes you, the gentleness of the feeling at
the center of a coarse act of murder. You go to the floor with him
to finish him. It is like cutting hot butter, no resistance at all. They
always whisper one thing at the end: “Please.” (Abbott 1991: 76-77,
cited in O’Connor 1994: 51-52).
posed to the subscribers of the LINGTYP list turned up a number of other

languages (listed here with the name of the linguist who responded): Adyghe
(Yuri Lander), Arabic (Steve Hewitt), Russian (in proverbs, Moshe Taube),
colloquial Finnish (Liisa Berghäll), Mordvin (Bernhard Wälchli), South Efate
(Nick Thieberger), Mandarin (Randy LaPolla), Lithuanian (Arturas Judzentis),
Kabardian (Peter Arkadiev), Pichi (Kofi Yakpo), Georgian (Irine Melikishvili). I
would like to thank all those who responded, some of whom provided examples
from the relevant languages.
178 Eitan Grossman
Prison narrative (O’Connor 1994: 51-52)

101 because the fear still there
102 and there’s a feeling that’s there.
103 it cannot be described
104 because the knife. is very cold and … you know
105 it was like you could feel it through the skin partly
106 but you couldn’t do nothing about it right. you know.
A workplace narrative
The presses are awfully close together and there are no stools, you
have to stand. There’s an awful ringing in your ears from the noise
of the presses, but I used to hum tunes to the rhythm – I used to hum
the “Miserere.” … If you made a misstep on the pedal, you were
liable to lose a finger – I always had some kind of a cut. When an
accident happens nobody ever tells about it and sometimes you don’t
know definitely till a week later – but I could always tell if something
had happened as soon as I came into the room…. People often don’t
use the safety devices because they can work faster without them.
Then your chest would get cut up from the trimmings – mine was all
red. And the oil gives you an itch – your arms get itchy and you just
about go crazy – they gave you some white stuff to put on it, but it
didn’t do any good.
– Anonymous telegraph company typist, in Edmund Wilson, “Detroit
Motors,” 1931.
These examples demonstrate that Siewierska’s second point about

the appropriateness of this “impersonalizing strategy” is inaccurate.
In a little while, we will also revisit Siewierska’s comment about
“procedural discourse,” and whether the term “impersonal” is
appropriate here.
A point that linguists have not made is that this “impersonalizing
strategy” is part of the repertoire of linguistic means by which
speakers navigate the problem of agency: passive voice, plural forms,
agentless nominal forms and impersonal expressions are all linguistic
strategies that can be deployed to reduce the agency of the individual
speaker. This is not trivial: the construction of a narrative minimally

involves the construction of events, which have participants, and
typically, agents. Narratives of the sort we are dealing with here,
confessions and testimonies, are “sites of highly agentive discourse,”
to appropriate Patricia O’Connor’s apt description of prisoners’
stories. Agency is especially at stake because it is deeply implicated
in matters of responsibility, accountability, and guilt.
But let’s go back to the so-called “impersonal” second person in
Breaking the Silence. The first point is how frequent it is; many of
the texts are saturated with it. By way of comparison, in a collection
of superficially similar testimonies about the two Israeli operations
in Lebanon, collected and edited by Ilana Hammerman and Irit Gal
(2002), it occurs extremely infrequently.
The second, and more important point, is that it is not at all
impersonal, which Dwight Bolinger (1979: 205) has already pointed
out for “impersonal you” in English: “The deeper we go into
impersonal you, the more personal it seems.”
In fact, it is intensely personal: the interviewees use this form to
relate events in which they have participated and acts which they
have committed:
‫ אתה יודע מה זה? האקדח הזה‬,‫יש את האקדח הזה שיורה את הכדורים הקטנים האלה‬
‫ הפלסטיקיים האלה שממש כואבים?זה היה‬,‫שיורה את הכדורי אוויר האלה הקטנטנים‬
.‫ תשיג לי אקדח כזה‬:‫ לדרוך לו נשק על הפרצוף ולהגיד לו‬,‫ברמה של לקרוא לילד‬
‫ ברמה של אתה נותן לו‬.‫ הם היו קונים לנו בכיף את האקדחים האלה‬.‫אפילו לא לבקש‬
‫ כדורים‬100-‫ השקיות של ה‬.‫ שקל והילד כולו מבסוט שהוא קונה לך אקדח כזה‬15
‫ מלא אקדחים‬,‫ היו לנו מלא אקדחים כאלה בפלוגה‬.‫בשלושה שקלים זה היה עולה לנו‬
‫ כי הרבה מהם (מהחיילים) היו‬,‫ וזה היה די מפגר מצד הילדים לקנות את זה‬.‫כאלה‬
‫ טאק יורה על ילד‬,‫ אתה יושב בשמירה וטאק יורה על ילד‬.‫יורים את זה על הילדים‬
.)‫ חברון‬,‫ סחלב‬,‫ סמלת‬.49 ‫ עדות‬,‫(שוברות שתיקה‬
There’s this toy pistol that shoots these tiny pellets, right? It shoots these
plastic pellets that really hurt you? Soldiers would call a kid over, cock a
weapon in his face and say: get me that kind of pistol. Not even ask, order
him. The kids would get us these pistols. You’d give the kid 15 shekels and
he’d be happy and get you such a gun. Bags of 100 pellets would cost us
180 Eitan Grossman
3 shekels. We had plenty of these pistols in the company, lots. And it was
pretty idiotic of the kids to buy them for us, because many of the soldiers
would then use them on the kids. You’d sit on guard duty and – pop –
shoot a kid, pop – shoot a kid (Women Soldiers’ Testimonies, T49, Sergeant,
Sachlav, Hebron).
‫ והיא סיפרה איזה סיפור שהיא ביקשה תעודת‬.‫זה היה גם כשהייתי יחסית וותיקה כבר‬
,‫ ואז הוא תקף אותה והיא איכשהו כאילו ממש ניסתה לברוח‬,‫זהות והוא לא הסכים לתת‬
‫ אתה‬,‫ ואתה מסתכל ואתה רואה ערבי‬.‫ משהו כזה‬,‫ואז היא הסתובבה וירתה לו בבטן‬
.‫ הוא מחזיק את התעודת זהות ביד‬,‫ יש לו תעודת זהות ביד‬,‫רואה שנורה מטווח אפס‬
‫ משהו בסיפור שלך קצת עקום (שוברות‬,‫ זה לא יכול להיות‬,‫ תשמעי‬:‫ואתה אומר לה‬
‫ חברון‬,‫ סחלב‬,‫ סמלת‬,22 ‫ עדות‬,‫שתיקה‬
This all happened when I was already there for quite a while. And she told
some story about her asking him for his ID and he wouldn’t show it, and
then he attacked her and somehow she tried to get away and turned around
and shot him in the belly, something of that sort. You look and see an Arab
who’s been shot at point-blank range and he’s holding his ID. And you say
to her: Listen, this is impossible. Your story just doesn’t add up (Women
Soldiers’ Testimonies, T22, Sergeant, Sachlav, Hebron).
We should recall some basic facts about the specific situation of the
interviews: the interviews are conducted by members of a group who
as individuals also participated in similar events, so the “impersonal
you” encodes an appeal to the interviewer as someone who shares
the interviewee’s experiences and norms. Moreover, it seems that
in some cases the interviewer and the interviewee are acquainted.
Finally, the interviewer is an active participant in constructing the
interview, pushing it towards testimony, so to speak. As such, the
so-called “impersonal” second person can be seen, at least in part,
as a strategy for establishing solidarity.
Regarding English you in the stabbing stories cited in part
above, Patricia O’Connor has proposed that “impersonal you” has
interpersonal functions, such as distancing the speaker from the act
that he or she has committed, while involving the addressee, drawing
him closer, inviting him or her to “imagine himself in the situation
or event expressed by the speaker and thus share in the world-view

being presented or entertained,” as Siewierska has it. However,
O’Connor further proposes that you has another function, “engaging,
even addressing the self, when the switch occurs from I to you.
Thus, the speaker is using an intrapersonal you as well, a you that
is not only another person or even any person outside himself, but
an other version of himself, the self of the autobiographical past in
the storyworld recreated in the narrative” (O’Connor 1994: 64-65). I
think that this claim is corroborated, in the case of the Breaking the
Silence interviews, by the distance between the speaking subject of
the interviews and the actors of the narratives. As I have said before,
this distance is often represented as one of time, consciousness, and
moral stance, creating an opposition between an earlier and a later
self. This distance is used by the interviewees to construct, with the
help of the interviewers, a narrative of testimony as opposed to a
narrative of responsibility, accountability, and guilt.
However, it is also corroborated by the simple fact that the
interviewees use the second person intrapersonally:
,‫ כמו עכשיו‬.‫ אם הייתי יכולה להגיד משהו‬:‫ אמרתי כאילו‬,‫ראיתי את הפנים של הילדים‬
‫ את אפילו לא יכולה להגיד‬:‫שעכשיו הסתובבתי בחברון וראיתי את הילדים ואמרתי‬
,‫ הם חושבים שאת האויב‬,‫ הם לא רוצים לראות אותך‬,‫ הם שונאים אותך‬.‫להם כלום‬
‫ עדות‬,‫ אין לך מה להגיד להם איזה משהו (שוברות שתיקה‬.‫ואת אפילו נטולת מלים‬
.)‫ חברון‬,‫ משמר הגבול‬,‫ סמלת‬,24
“I saw the faces of those kids. I thought to myself: If I could just say
something. Like now, when I walk around in Hebron and saw the kids I
said, you can’t even say anything to them. They hate you, they don’t want
to see you, they think you’re the enemy, and you are wordless. You have
nothing to tell them” (Women Soldiers’ Testimonies T24, Sergeant, Border
Patrol, Hebron).
I propose that it is this very intrapersonal function that permits the

speaker-indexing function of the second person.
One reading of the “impersonal you” is that it encodes generic or
recurrent events and situations. I think that this is a superficial reading,
182 Eitan Grossman
because it misses out on the insight that the “impersonal you” is a

discursive strategy – one out of many – deployed by the interviewees
to narrate concrete, specific events. What the “impersonal you” does,
in this context, is to represent these events as belonging to a larger
class of events that happen to take place. Like the use of “impersonal
tu” in Montreal French, impersonal you “embeds [the speaker] in a
much wider class of people by assuming that it is only incidentally
his experience, but in fact could be or would be anybody’s” (Laberge
1980: 79). As such, we can get rid of “impersonal” in scare quotes
and call this form the “inclusive second person,” which indexes the
speaker in such a way that the addressee is called upon to represent
a group, real or imagined, as sharing a norm with the speaker.
Inclusive second person is not limited to “procedural discourse,” as
Siewierska has reported for some languages; rather, it is a linguistic
means for proceduralizing events, even cognitive and emotional ones,
as you can see in the following examples from the corpus.
‫ אני זוכרת‬.‫ אתה לא מבין באיזה צד אתה‬,‫ ואתה ָשם‬.‫ואז כאילו ברור שיהיה בלגן אחרי זה‬
‫ ואני‬,‫ אני חיילת יהודייה ישראלית‬.‫ שתה לא מבין באיזה צד אתה‬,‫שבחברון זה הכי מוזר‬
,‫ ליד הבית המוצב‬,‫ אבל אני נמצאת פה‬,‫אמורה להיות נגד הערבים כי הם האויבים שלי‬
‫ שהיהודים לא בסדר […] בגלל החארות האלה אנחנו פה‬,‫ואני חושבת שהם לא בסדר‬
‫ שאתה כועס על העם שלך שהוא‬,‫ שוב‬,‫ מצד אחד יש את זה‬.‫ שיילכו‬,‫ שיעופו כבר‬,‫בכלל‬
‫ כי הם הורגים את‬,‫ מצד שני אתה גם שונא גם את הערבים‬.‫ על היהודים שהם פה‬,‫פה‬
.‫החברים שלך והם עושים לך בעיות‬
.‫אז אתה שונא את כולם‬
‫ עכשיו אני שונא‬:‫ אתה אומר את מה שעולה באותו רגע‬,‫ ואז נראה לי אתה לא חושב‬.‫כן‬
‫ ועכשיו אני‬,‫ ואחרי זה אני שונא את זה אז אני אקלל אותו‬,‫את זה אז אני אקלל אותו‬
).‫ חברון‬,‫ נח"ל‬,‫ סמלת‬23 ‫ עדות‬,‫שונא אותו אז אני אירק עליו (שוברות שתיקה‬
And obviously this would lead to a major mess. And you can’t figure out
whose side you’re on. I’m a Jewish Israeli soldier, and I’m supposed to be
against the Arabs who are my enemies, but I’m here next to the house at
the outpost, and I think that they’re wrong. That the Jews are wrong […]
these shits are the reason we’re here in the first place, wish they’d get out
of here already. On the one hand you are angry at your own people for
being here, at the Jews who live here. On the other hand you also hate the
Arabs because they kill your buddies and give you a hard time.
So you end up hating everyone?
Yes. And you don’t really think, you just say whatever comes into your
mind right then: I hate this guy so I’ll swear at him, and then I hate that
one so I’ll swear at him, and now I hate him so I’ll spit at him.
(Women Soldiers’ Testimonies, T23, Sergeant, Nahal, Hebron).
It is by turning concrete events into “procedures” that the interviewees

reduce their own individual agency – and thereby, I suggest, attempt
to reduce their accountability.
I will not give a full grammatical description of the inclusive
second person here. Doing so would involve investigating its
grammatical scope, its function in relation to all other person
markers, its interaction with tense, aspect, voice, gender, discourse
markers, deixis, and other parameters. Most important, I think, are
its syntagmatic features: when, in the linear chain of speech, does the
speaker shift into or out of the inclusive second person? This is well
beyond the scope of the present paper, which is supposed to focus
on issues of authority. But I would like to very briefly mention two
additional issues before concluding: the first is related to gender, the
second to narrative point of view.
7. Gender and the inclusive second person
In Hebrew, third and second person pronouns distinguish gender.

Second person singular masculine is ata, feminine is at. The inclusive
second person marker is, however, invariably ata, even when used by
female speakers. From a structural point of view, this is an indication
that ata is not the second person singular masculine marker, but a
pronominal element in its own right.
‫ כשאתה עד למשהו‬.‫ אז איך יצאתי מזה? יש את הרגשות אשמה שאין מה לעשות‬,‫ושוב‬

‫ אז גם אם עד מחר אני אגיד לעצמי שלא יכלתי‬,‫שאתה יודע שהוא דפוק והוא לא נכון‬
‫‪184 Eitan Grossman‬‬
‫לעשות כלום‪ ,‬וזה באלפי סיטואציות‪ ,‬גם שלא קשורות להתעללות‪ .‬כי מצד אחד התעללו‬
‫באוכלוסיה הפלסטינית ונקמו בהם על כל העוולות שהם עשו לנו‪ ,‬ומצד שני זרקו זין‬
‫בשמירות‪ .‬אם אתה כל כך רוצה להגן על הארץ אז תעשה את העבודה‪ .‬בין להרביץ‬
‫לפלסטיני לזה אז תשמור גם‪ ,‬אל תלך לישון ואל תחתוך לאכול חומוס (שוברות שתיקה‪,‬‬
‫עדות ‪ 50‬סמ"ר‪ ,‬מג"ב‪ ,‬כללי)‪.‬‬
‫‪Again, how did I come away from all this? There are the guilty feelings about‬‬
‫‪not being able to do anything. That you’re witnessing something you know‬‬
‫‪is wrong, and even if I keep repeating there was nothing I could do about‬‬
‫‪it, and this is in thousands of situations, not even necessarily harassment,‬‬
‫‪because on the one hand the Palestinian population suffered harassment and‬‬
‫‪revenge for everything they had done to us, and on the other hand guard‬‬
‫‪duty was really neglected. If you honestly want to defend your country, then‬‬
‫‪do the job. Between beating up Palestinians you better do your guard duty‬‬
‫’‪properly. Don’t go off to sleep or split to go eat hummus (Women Soldiers‬‬
‫‪Testimonies, T50, First Sergeant, Border Patrol, General).‬‬
‫אני זוכרת שיצאתי מחברון והרגשתי חנוקה כבר‪.‬‬

‫למה?‬
‫אתה חנוק כי אתה כבר לא יכול‪ ,‬כי יש לך מצד אחד יש את אלה‪ ,‬אתה‪ ,‬כאילו‪ ,‬את‬
‫היהודים שבשבילם אתה נמצא שם‪ ,‬בשבילם אתה שומר‪ .‬אני זוכרת שפעם ראשונה‬
‫שראיתי את תל רומידה‪ ,‬וזה כלום כשאתה חושב על זה‪ .‬כשאני הייתי שם זה היה‬
‫קרוואנים ושקי חול‪ .‬בדיוק כשעליתי וראיתי‪ ,‬הייתי בהלם שהם בכלל גרים‪ ,‬היהודים‬
‫גרים בתנאים כאלה עם כל‪ ,‬אז זה היה כולם‪-‬כולם פלסטינים מסביבם‪ ,‬כשאנחנו נמצאים‬
‫שם בשביל לעשות את זה‪ ,‬בשביל לשמור עליהם‪ .‬שזה מצד אחד‪ ,‬זה אנשים שזורקים‬
‫עליך את הביצים‪ ,‬את העגבניות‪ ,‬שמקללים את החיים שלך ואת האמ‪-‬אמא שלך‪ .‬ובצד‬
‫השני יש לך את האוכלוסיה שאתה כאילו נולדת אויב שלהם‪ .‬אתה אמור לשנוא אותם‬
‫ואתה אמור איכשהו לנווט בין זה לבין זה‪ .‬אז גם המפקדים‪ ,‬אף אחד במג"ב חברון לא‬
‫באמת רצה להיות שם‪ .‬אף אחד לא‪ .‬לא משנה עם מי היית מדבר‪ .‬המ"פים רק חיפשו‬
‫דרכים להתקדם ולהגיע למקומות אחרים‪ ,‬לא רצו להיות שם‪ .‬אף אחד לא רצה להיות‬
‫שם‪ .‬אז איך אתה יכול לבקש ממ"פ כזה או ממ"מ כזה להעביר משהו לחיילים? (שוברות‬
‫שתיקה‪ ,‬עדות ‪ 83‬סמלת‪ ,‬מג"ב‪ ,‬חברון)‪.‬‬
‫‪I remember coming out of Hebron feeling suffocated.‬‬

‫?‪Why‬‬
‫‪You suffocate because you can’t take it any longer. On the one hand‬‬
you’ve got these, the Jews because of whom you’re there, protecting them.
I remember the first time I saw Tel Rumeida, and it’s nothing when you
come to think of it. The Jews live there in such conditions, completely
surrounded with Palestinians, and we’re there to do it, to watch over them.
So on the one hand these are the people who throw eggs and tomatoes
at you, curse you and your mother and all, and on the other hand you’ve
got that population and you’re supposedly destined to be their enemy.
You’re supposed to hate them and you’re somehow expected to navigate
between the two. The commanders, too, no one in Hebron Border Patrol
really wanted to be there. No matter whom you talked to. The company-
commanders only sought chances for promotion and getting re-assigned
elsewhere, they didn’t want to be there. No one wanted to be there. So
how could you ask some company-commander or platoon-commander to
discuss this with his soldiers? (Women Soldiers' Testimonies T83, Sergeant,
Border Patrol, Hebron).
There are clear examples from outside the corpus, in which female
speakers use ata to refer to states and activities that superficially
pertain to women alone, such as being a mother:
‫הורית ואין לך כסף לבייביסיטר בשביל שתוכל ללכת לעבודה בשקט‬-‫כשאתה אמא חד‬
2-3 ‫ אני הייתי מובטלת הרבה זמן ואולי חתמתי אבטלה‬.‫אתה באמת תעדיף את זה‬
13
.‫פעמים בכל הזמן הזה‬
When you’re a single mother and you don’t have the money for a babysitter
so you can go to work, you really will prefer it. I was unemployed a long
time and I maybe signed for the dole 2-3 times the whole time.
8. Narrative point of view and the inclusive second person
An important key to understanding the nature of the function of

inclusive second person is found in cases when it does not index the
13 http://hwzone.co.il/community/index.php?topic=151153.260.
186 Eitan Grossman
point of the view of the speaker or her identification group. Let’s

look at the following examples:
?‫ראית מקרים שאנשים עשו את הצרכים במכנסיים‬

.‫כן‬
?‫למה‬
‫ בעיקר אם זה מול‬.‫ מכות רצח ואיומים וצעקות שאתה פשוט נכנס לפחד‬,‫מכות בעיקר‬
‫ וצועקים ומאיימים ומפחידים אז אתה מפחד גם על הילדים (גרמתי לו‬,‫הילדים שלך‬
.)2003 ,‫ ואדי ערה‬,‫ משמר הגבול‬.‫לחרבן במכנסיים‬
You saw situations where people went to the bathroom in their pants?
Yes.
Why?
From being beaten, for the most part. Being beaten to death, and threatened,
and screamed at, you are just terrified. Especially if it’s in front of your
kids, they yell and threaten and scare them, so you also fear for the kids (I
made him shit in his pants. Border Patrol, Wadi Ara, 2003).
‫ מאיפה‬.‫ סבבה סיכון בטחוני אבל הם אנשים והם צריכים לחיות‬.‫אמרו לי סיכון בטחוני‬
‫הם מביאים את האוכל? איך אתה יכול להרוויח כסף לאוכל כשאתה בעוצר? (איך עושים‬
.)2002-2003 ,‫ חברון‬,‫כל כך הרבה עוצר וחושבים שאנשים יכולים לחיות? מנהל אזרחי‬
They said to me, “security risk.” Great, security risk, but they are people,
and they need to live. Where do they get food from? How can you make
money to eat when you are under a curfew? (How can you have so much
curfew and expect people to live? Civil Administration, Hebron, 2002-
2003).
‫ כי זה משהו ממש‬.‫ רק אל תכניסו את הכלב‬,‫ אני אפתח לכם את כל האוטו‬:‫אמרו‬

‫ לא היינו בודקים את זה על הבן‬,‫ אבל לא אנשים‬.)‫טמא אצלם (אצל המוסלמים‬
‫ זה‬.‫ מה זה כולה אוטו‬.‫ זה כולה אוטו‬,‫ בכל זאת‬.‫ היינו בודקים רכוש שלו‬,‫אדם עצמו‬
‫ והיינו משתדלים כמה שפחות ללכלך ודברים כאלה‬.‫ זה לא עלייך‬,‫ זה לא אתה‬,‫רכב‬
,‫ סמלת‬60 ‫ עדות‬,‫ זה בדיקה שאתה צריך לעשות (שוברות שתיקה‬,‫ בכל זאת‬.‫ברכב‬
.)‫ חברון‬,‫סחלב‬
They said, I’ll open up the whole car for you, just don’t bring the dog in.
Because they (Muslims) see it as a really unclean animal. But we wouldn’t
use dogs on the people themselves, we’d just check their belongings. After
all, it’s just a car, what’s a car? I mean, just the vehicle. Not your person,
it’s not about you. And we’d try not to dirty up stuff, if possible, inside the
car. Still, it’s an inspection you have to carry out. (...) (Women Soldiers’
Testimonies, T 60, Sergeant, Sahlav, Hebron).
In these examples, the “inclusive second person” is used to index the

point of view of Palestinians, who are neither the speaker nor the
addressee in the interview situation, but rather a “third person.”
‫ אתה רואה‬.‫ כי זה שינה את התפיסה שלי‬,‫אמרתי תודה לאל שיצא לי להיות שם‬
‫ כמה‬,‫ ובחורים צעירים ולא צעירים ואתה‬,‫ילדים קטנים ואתה רואה אבות ואימהות‬
‫ אתה לומד להסתכל לאנשים‬.‫ לא ידעתי את זה לפני זה‬-- ‫שזה נשמע מתבקש ובנאלי‬
‫ יכולתי‬,‫ במקום אחר‬,‫ אתה מבין? אני לא חושבת שבשירות אחר‬,‫האלה בעיניים והם לך‬
,‫להשתנות ככה בדעות שלי ולראות ולפתוח את האופקים שלי ולראות מה באמת קורה‬
‫ יש להם‬,‫ יש להם סמל‬,‫ יש להם דרכון‬,‫ זאת אומרת‬.‫כמה להיות פלסטיני זה דבר מורכב‬
?‫ למה אני שם‬,‫ אז מה אנחנו עושים שם? זאת אומרת‬- ‫ יש להם הכל‬,‫צבעים של דגל‬
,‫ התחושה‬,‫ למה אני הייתי צריכה להעביר אותם חזרה? זאת אומרת‬,‫אני לא פסלטינית‬
‫ אני באה ושולטת‬,‫ הנה‬:‫ היתה תחושה של‬,‫ בתוך האולמות שלהם‬,‫הנוכחות שלי שמה‬
‫… כשאתה קולט שאתה אמור להושיב אישה או גבר צעירים‬.‫ מפה אני שוטרת‬,‫עליכם‬
,‫ על מה? (שוברות שתיקה‬,‫ ואחר כך לבוא ולשחרר אותם‬,‫חמש שעות סתם על ספסל‬
.)‫ גשר אלנבי‬,‫ מג"ב‬,‫ סמלת‬,7 ‫עדות‬
But with time, I counted my blessings for being out there, it changed my
conception of things. You see little children, you see fathers and mothers,
and young and not-so-young men and you, as banal and obvious as it
sounds – I didn’t realize this before - you learn to look these people in the
eye and they look at you, see? I don’t think serving anywhere else would
have changed my views so much and opened my mind to see what really
happens, how complicated it really is to be Palestinian. I mean, they have
a passport, an emblem, national colors and flag, they have it all – so what
are we doing there? I mean, why am I there? I am not Palestinian, why
should I be letting them in and out? I mean, the feeling, my presence there
in those halls, was like: here I am, dominating you, from here on out I’m
the policewoman in charge... When you realize you’re supposed to seat
a young woman or man just like that on a bench for five hours straight,
188 Eitan Grossman
and then release them, for what? (Women Soldiers’ Testimonies, T7, Border
Patrol, Allenby Bridge).
‫ זאת אומרת אני מדברת‬,‫ לא שזה כל כך מעניין אותם‬,‫אז כל אחד בטוח בדברים אחרים‬
‫ מבית לחם‬,‫ אני סתם זורקת‬,‫ אז נניח שאתה בא עכשיו‬.‫על החיילים עצמם במחסום‬
‫ יכול להיות שבטור הזה החייל שאליו תגיע לבידוק יעביר אותך‬.‫ואתה רוצה לעבור‬
‫ויכול להיות שהחייל שבזה לא יעביר אותך בגלל שזה שמע דבר אחד וזה שמע דבר‬
‫ ואתה מרגיש שכל … אתה נאלץ‬.‫ הם יושבים אחד ליד השני אבל אין שום תקשורת‬.‫אחר‬
‫ על מה אתה בעצם‬,‫ להסביר לו שהוא לא יכול לעבור‬,‫אחר כך להתווכח עם בן אדם‬
?‫ מה המנוף שלך בוויכוח הזה אם זה שלידך סותר אותך לחלוטין‬,‫מתווכח? זאת אומרת‬
‫ שאתה רוצה שתהיה לך איזשהי‬,‫אתה מרגיש שכל מה שאתה נלחם בשבילו לכאורה‬
‫ למעשה אין לזה‬,‫תחושה של שליחות לאומית או מטרה בעצם זה שאתה נמצא שם‬
‫ כי שום דבר לא מבוסס על איזשהי התרעה שאתה כן יכול‬.‫ אין לזה שום בסיס‬,‫רגליים‬
.)‫ מסחום קלנדיה‬,‫ התקו"ה‬,’‫ סמלת במיל‬18 ‫לסמוך עליה (עדות‬
So everyone is certain of different things, not that they really care, I mean
I’m talking about the soldiers at the checkpoint, themselves. So say you’re
coming from Bethlehem, and you want to cross the checkpoint. Possibly
the soldier checking your line will let you through, and the soldier checking
the other line will not because the one heard one thing, and the other
heard a different instruction. They sit next to each other but there’s no
communication between them, and you feel that... you have to argue with the
person, explain to him that he cannot cross over, and what are you arguing
about, actually? I mean, what is your point in this argument if the guy next
to you contradicts you? You feel that everything you’re fighting for, as it
were, that you want to have some sense of national mission or purpose in
the mere fact that you’re there, doesn’t really hold water. Nothing is based
on any kind of alert that you can rely on. (Women Soldiers’ Testimonies
T18, Sergeant (res.), Hatikva, Qalandiya Checkpoint).
In these examples, the second person shifts among the “inclusive” use
to indexing the point of view of Palestinians, the “other” participants
in the events related, the point of view of the other soldiers at the
checkpoint, and the point of view the speaker. We could mention
the narratological notion of focalization (roughly, “who sees” in
a narrative, whose vision is privileged), but this would lead us to

matters of reliability, and back to veracity. I would like instead to
emphasize another aspect of this phenomenon – which is rare in
these texts, all the more notably so given the massive frequency of
the inclusive second person: here the inclusive second person is used
to invite empathy with another participant in the narrated events, a
participant who is neither the speaker nor someone potentially in the
speaker’s identification group.
This, I think, highlights the ethical potential of language in
confessions and testimony. This ethical potential was not lost on
Patricia O’Connor in her study of stabbing narratives. O’Connor
did not obey the normal rules of academic discourse, ending her
article with some implications of her study, such as “such discursive
practices allow for an inmate to construct a self in the context of
narration for a non-criminal audience. I propose that giving an inmate
the opportunity to position himself agentively in his own past can
have an impact on the formation of a future self, perhaps a self more
modeled on a positive construction” (66).
In the case of Breaking the Silence, I think that the broader political
implications of the published testimonies – as a thematically organized
collection of parts of anonymous interviews about “the occupation,”
deployed in a specific political discourse – have overshadowed
the basically ethical nature of perpetrator testimony. This ethical
dimension has several aspects: the ethics of gathering confessions
and packaging them into testimony; the ethics of participating in a
discourse founded on institutionalized epistemic injustice; the ethics
of permitting perpetrators to construct narratives in which their agency
and responsibility is reduced; the ethics of recognizing a perpetrator
as witness and vouching for him or her; and so on. I think that this
ethical aspect can only be reached by going back to the individual
interviews, with their specific interviewers and interviewees, their
institutional and personal loyalties and commitments. This would
involve examining how they cooperate to construct narratives, and
how these narratives are transformed into testimony, but I will leave
this for a future study.
190 Eitan Grossman
Concluding remarks
In this paper, I have tried to demonstrate that the so-called

“impersonal” second person in colloquial Modern Hebrew can be
used to index the speaker in a way that reduces his or her agency
– and thereby, accountability – in constructing events in which the
speaker participated. It is probable that this function depends on the
pre-existence of an “inclusive second person” function, in which both
the speaker and addressee are indexed by the second person. It is also
suggested that the possibility of indexing the speaker is dependent on
the intrapersonal function, in which the speaker addresses himself or
herself in an internal dialogue. If this is the case, it would challenge
Elizabeth Traugott’s diachronic conception of subjectivization,14
in which objective meanings give rise to subjective ones, which
in turn give rise to intersubjective ones. The development of a
speaker-indexing function out of a speaker+addressee function goes
rather from intersubjective to subjective, and as such, is “counter-
directional.”
An additional function, namely, the use of the second person to
invite empathy with a non-speaker, non-addressee, who is outside the
speaker-addressee orbit, was identified.
I would like to conclude by saying a word about reading the
Breaking the Silence volumes. I have focused here on the speech
situation of the interviews themselves, but we encounter Breaking the
Silence as a written text, and a fairly harrowing one at that. Reading
the inclusive second person turns the interviewer in the written text
into a synecdoche of the reader. This, I think, implicates the reader in
the very same matters of responsibility and accountability with which
the interviewees are preoccupied.
14 As presented in, e.g., Traugott & Dasher (2002).

References
Abbott, John Henry. In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison.
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Bolinger, Dwight. ‘To catch a metaphor: you as norm.’ American
Speech 1979; 54/3: 194-209.
Browning, Christopher R.. Collected Memories: Holocaust History
and Postwar Testimony. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
2003.
Eaglestone, Robert. ‘Reading perpetrator testimony,’ in The Future
of Memory. Richard Crownshaw, Jane Kilby & Anthony Rowland
(eds.), 123-134. New York: Berghahn Books, 2011.
Fricker, Miranda. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of
Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Frisch, Andrea. ‘The ethics of testimony: A genealogical perspective.’
Discourse 2003; 25 (1-2): 36-54.
Hammerman, Illana & Gal, Irit. From Beirut to Jenin: Lebanon War
1982/2002 [in Hebrew]. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2002.
Laberge, Suzanne. ‘The changing distribution of indefinite pronouns
in discourse.’ In Language Use and the Uses of language. Roger
W. Shuy & Anna Shnukal (eds.), 76-87. Washington, D.C.:
Georgetown University Press, 1980.
O’Connor, Patricia E. ‘You could feel it through the skin: Agency
and positioning in prisoners’ stabbing stories.’ Text 1994; 14/1:
45-75.
Siewierska, Anna. Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004.
Shuy, Roger. The Language of Confession, Interrogation, and
Deception. Thousand Oaks, London & New Delhi: Sage
Publications, 1998.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Dasher, Richard R. Regularity in Semantic
Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Chaos, Conflict, Control:
Modes of Authority in Israeli Soldiers’
Testimonies about the Occupation
Yael A. Sternhell
The Israeli non-profit organization “Breaking the Silence” (Shovrim

Shtika) was founded in 2004 by a group of sixty-five IDF veterans
who were stationed in the Palestinian city of Hebron during their
military service. Home to 175,000 Palestinians and 850 Jews, Hebron
is a uniquely charged and volatile meeting point between the two
peoples. Securing the Jewish settlement in the city requires Israel to
keep large military and police forces and to employ a wide variety of
stringent policies and repressive means. As a result, Hebron is where
some of the occupation’s worst abuses take place.
After their discharge from the army, these young men and women
decided to set about the task of exposing the Israeli public to what
they had witnessed as soldiers. That was, and still is, no small
challenge. The occupation of the Palestinian territories has all but
disappeared from Israel’s public sphere in recent years. Following
the collapse of peace talks in 2000 and the outbreak of the Second
Intifada, the attitude of most media outlets and their audiences has
taken a decidedly negative turn towards the Palestinian people. There
is little reporting, and little discussion, of what goes on beyond the
Green Line. “Breaking the Silence” is trying to restore to Israeli
consciousness the reality of the occupied territories through lectures,
guided tours, exhibitions and, perhaps most importantly, through the
publication of soldiers’ testimonies.
Chaos, Conflict, Control 193
Over the years “Breaking the Silence” members have interviewed

more than 700 veterans from nearly every unit serving in the occupied
territories. In 2010, the organization published its most comprehensive
compilation to date, a 347-page collection of interviews with veterans,
divided into four parts, each dedicated to a different aspect of the
day-to-day realities of the occupation: “prevention,” “separation,”
“fabric of life,” and “law enforcement.” In September 2012, an
English version of the collection was published by Metropolitan
Books, under the title Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies
from the Occupied Territories, 2000-2012.1
This compilation of testimonies is obviously plagued by some
glaring problems and disadvantages. It was published by an
organization whose explicit agenda is to expose the conditions of
the Israeli occupation by encouraging former soldiers and officers to
describe their personal experiences while serving in the territories;
all testimonials have been edited; we know next to nothing about
the people conducting the interviews. Furthermore, the testimonies
suffer from all the usual problems of oral histories. We do not have
the means to verify what soldiers are saying, nor do we know what
they are repressing, ignoring, or forgetting; we cannot determine
with any certainty what their motivations are for coming forth and
how these motivations affect the stories they tell. We know precious
little about their backgrounds and beliefs, and have no real way of
assessing their credibility. These are nameless, faceless characters,
telling partial stories about highly stressful, dangerous, and confusing
situations they once faced. Therefore, we must exercise extreme
1 The original collection in Hebrew includes forty testimonials that were eliminated
from the Metropolitan Books edition. However, they had been translated into
English and appeared in the original English edition of the collection compiled
and distributed by Breaking the Silence under the title Occupation of the
Territories: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies 2000-2010 (Jerusalem, 2011). Hereafter
I will refer to the Metropolitan Books edition when possible and in those cases
when the testimonials quoted in Hebrew do not appear in this edition, I will
quote from Occupation of the Territories.
194 Yael A. Sternhell
caution and skepticism when using their words.2

Yet use them we must. Oral interviews are an indispensable source
for writing contemporary history.3 We cannot afford to relinquish
this resource, nor should we. Every single type of primary source
historians use is deeply flawed. Some of the most evocative and
informative diaries scholars rely on were written with publication
in mind, if not revised entirely before reaching the public sphere.
We recognize the fact that soldiers writing from war or travelers
writing from the road are aware that their letters would be passed
around and read out loud. Politicians write with history in mind,
while government bureaucrats consider their superiors’ responses
and create a paper trail to suit their goals. Newspapers, political
pamphlets, petitions, reports, photographs – all types of sources are
created by flesh and blood historical actors, all of whom are biased,
forgetful, unreliable, or dishonest.
In that sense, the ex-soldiers speaking in this volume are no better
and no worse than any author, witness, or interviewee who has left
us an account of his or her endeavors. Perhaps the fact that they are
living among us makes their imperfections as sources immediately
2 The growing field of oral history has produced several important works of
criticism and genre analysis. Among them are Ronald T. Grele, ‘On Using Oral
History Collections: An Introduction.’ Journal of American History 74 (Sept.
1987), 570-578; Paul Thompson. The Voice of the Past: Oral History, 3rd ed.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2000; Alessandro, Portelli. The Death of
Luigi Trastulli, and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History. Albany,
N.Y.: SUNY University Press, 1990. For a classic critique of a particularly
popular oral history source, the 2,194 interviews conducted with former
American slaves in the 1930s, see John W. Blassingame, ‘Using the Testimony
of Ex-slaves: Approaches and Problems.’ The Journal of Southern History 41
(Nov. 1975), 473-492..
3 The Vietnam War, to take just one example, produced a considerable body of
oral histories, which has contributed immensely to research on that war. Two
notable compilations are Mark Baker ed. NAM: The Vietnam War in in the
Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There. New York: Morrow, 1981;
Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War. New York: Ballantine
Books, 1985.
and acutely noticeable. But it should not make us less inclined to

treat their narratives as history and to learn from what they have to
say about the complicated reality of Israel’s continued presence in
the territories conquered during the Six Day War. This compilation,
an oral history of the Israeli occupation during the last decade, is
an invaluable primary source for the study of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. It can be tremendously useful for non-specialists who wish
to fill the void created by the media’s disengagement with the topic,
as well as for scholars looking to undertake a systematic analysis of
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the first years of the twenty-first
century.
Authority is omnipresent in this volume of soldiers’ testimonies
about their service in the Palestinian territories. Indeed, the very
essence of the occupation is Israel’s all-encompassing authority over
the lives of millions of Palestinians subject to its direct and indirect
rule. Israel controls public spaces as well as private homes, roads
as well as fields, water, food, electricity and gas, labor, education,
commerce, and health. It determines whether a man will go to work
and whether his son will go to school; whether a woman will be
able to get to a delivery room and whether her daughter will be able
to attend university. While the occupation is not present at every
moment in every place, Israel’s multiple security forces possess a
nearly absolute power to shape virtually every aspect of human life
in the territories. In the daily lives of most Palestinians, the meaning
of the occupation is in some ways the total permeability of their
entire being to Israeli authority in all its shapes and forms.
Hence this volume offers many different ways of approaching
questions of authority. We will focus on one dimension: the workings
of authority in Israeli military units serving in the occupied territories.
It is a constantly reoccurring theme throughout this collection, and
one which has broader implications for our understanding of the
overall power structure that forms the essence of Israeli rule over
the Palestinian people.
What can we learn about the exercise of authority in those military
units which actually execute the occupation? The first and foremost
feature emerging from the interviews is the decentralized and localized

nature of the orders, policies, and decisions that shape day-to-day
interaction between the Palestinian population and the occupation
forces. More often than not, senior officers are entirely absent from
the process of decision-making. Low ranking commanders have
exclusive authority over their units’ operations, which effectively
means that they hold unlimited powers over the lives and property of
Palestinians. Our first example comes from a testimonial of a former
paratrooper serving in Nablus in 2002.
“We left with the squad commander to patrol in an APC. We
patrolled in the APC in one of the neighborhoods, I think it was
Jabal Shimali in Nablus. And then in the middle of the patrol, my
team commander decided that every car that we see is potentially
a suspicious car bomb. He decided this in the middle of the patrol,
it just popped up in his head, I don’t know, out of boredom, out of
whatever, and we had to neutralize the threat, and therefore we had
to put a machine gun burst in every car we passed. And that’s what
we did. We drove on the road, through an entire neighborhood in
Nablus, every car that was parked, we shot a MAG burst in. Like
this, car by car, rat-tat-tat, like that. An entire road, entire roads, cars.
I remember that I really enjoyed it because I got to shoot the MAG,
but my thought after, it just shows you how much some person, in the
middle of a city, shooting the MAG at cars, just because some squad
commander decided, because that’s what he felt at that moment. I
don’t think he did it because it was fun, I think he really believed
that we were inspecting suspicious cars. But, just because, we didn’t
get an order to do it, it was something he made up. Everyone, every
officer, does what he thinks is right. Or every commander. Total
anarchy. Of course no one checked us. We asked for permission to
fire, yes, before and after, but of course we got it.”4
‫ פטרלנו בנגמ"ש באחת‬.‫"יצאנו עם המפק"צ (מפקד צוות) לפטרול בנגמ"ש‬

,‫ באמצע הפטרול‬,‫ ואז‬.‫ נראה לי לי בג’בל שימאלי שבשכם‬,‫השכונות‬
4 Occupation of the Territories, 98-99.

‫המפק"צ שלי החליט שכל מכונית שאנחנו רואים זה בפוטנציה מכונית תופת‬
‫ אני לא‬,‫ זה משהו שעלה לו בראש‬,‫ הוא החליט את זה באמצע הסיור‬.‫חשודה‬
‫ כל‬,‫ ולכן‬,‫ ואנחנו צריכים לנטרל את האיום‬,‫ מתוך זה‬,‫ מתוך שעמום‬,‫יודע‬
‫ נסענו‬.‫ וזה מה שעשינו‬.)‫מכונית שנעבור אנחנו נתקע בה צרור מא"ג (מקלע‬
,‫ ככה‬.‫ דפקנו בה צרור מא"ג‬,‫ כל מכונית שחנתה‬,‫ שכונה שלמה בשכם‬,‫רחוב‬
‫ ואני‬.‫ מכוניות‬,‫ רחובות שלמים‬,‫ רחוב שלם‬.‫ ככה‬,‫טר‬-‫טר‬-‫ טר‬,‫מכונית מכונית‬
‫ זה‬,‫ אבל במחשבה לאחור‬,‫זוכר שדי נהניתי כי יצא לי לפרק (לירות) במא"ג‬
,‫ יורים במא"ג על מכוניות‬,‫ באמצע עיר‬,‫רק מראה לך עד כמה סתם בן אדם‬
‫ אני לא‬.‫ כי זה מה שנראה לו נכון באותו רגע‬,‫סתם כי מפק"צ החליט‬
‫ אני חושב שהוא באמת האמין בזה שאנחנו‬,‫חושב שהוא עשה את זה לכיף‬
‫ זה משהו‬,‫ לא קיבלנו שום פקודה לזה‬,‫ סתם‬,‫ אבל‬.‫בודקים מכוניות חשודות‬
‫ אנרכיה‬.‫ או כל מפקד‬.‫ כטוב בעיניו יעשה‬,‫ כל קצין‬,‫ כל אחד‬.‫שהוא המציא‬
‫ לפני‬,‫ כן‬,‫ ביקשנו אישור לירי‬.‫ אף אחד כמובן לא בדק אותנו‬.‫מוחלטת‬
5
".‫ אבל כמובן שקיבלנו אותו‬,‫ואחרי‬
Several key elements in the IDF’s mode of operation are present

in this statement: the hegemony of a junior officer, probably a
lieutenant or second lieutenant, over the deadly force of his men and
their arms; the ad hoc nature of operational decisions, taken on the
spot without proper consideration or consultation; and the devastating
effects of such actions on the civilian population living in the path
of the soldiers’ march. Senior officers are nowhere to be found, firm
and clear orders are nowhere to be seen. The directives of this young
officer go unchecked and unsupervised.
A soldier who served with the elite commando unit Shaldag,
described a practice known as “straw widow” (Almanat Kash) in
which soldiers take over a civilian home clandestinely, lock the
family in one room under guard, and use the space as a staging area
for targeting and shooting suspects on the streets and roofs of the
neighborhood. What does the word “suspect” mean in this context?
5 ‫ מיכאל‬:‫ עורכים‬,2000-2010 ‫ עדויות חייילם‬:‫ כיבוש השטחים‬,‫ארגון שוברים שתיקה‬

.80 '‫ עמ‬.2010 ,‫ ירושלים‬.‫ לוי ספקטור‬,‫ עודד נעמן‬,‫ ינאי ישראלי‬,‫ אביחי שרון‬,‫מנקין‬
.‫להלן כיבוש השטחים‬
According to this soldier, a suspect is anyone seen carrying arms, or

bending over and tinkering with any kind of object on the floor, or
standing on a rooftop and appearing as if they might be observing
Israeli movements. At this point the interviewer tries to understand
how the soldiers tell apart terrorists from innocent civilians and who
is in charge of authorizing the shooting of the people identified as
suspects. The soldier responds that a brigade commander was the one
who initially issued orders, yet while operations were in motion it
was a lieutenant who bore sole responsibility for orders:
“[t]his business is very open-ended, and given to the judgment of
the platoon commander on the ground.”6
7
.‫עסק מאוד פרוץ ומאוד נתון לשיקול דעתו של המ"מ בשטח‬
These comments are repeated throughout this volume time and again,
as former soldiers explain how decisions are made on the ground:
who decides when to open fire, who decides how much explosive to
use when demolishing a house in the midst of a dense and crowded
urban neighborhood, who decides which civilians will be detained,
arrested, wounded, or killed. Authority in the occupied territories is
the business of junior officers.
Often, the person who directs operations is not even an officer,
but a squad commander or a sergeant. The crucial role of veteran
soldiers (Pazamnikim) in determining the course of IDF conduct in the
territories is a predominant theme in this collection. Often, it seems
that this privileged subset of rank and file soldiers holds more sway
over army units than the officers assigned to command them. This
is particularly true at the checkpoints scattered across the territories.
Checkpoints are in some sense the quintessential sites of Israeli
domination in the territories. It is virtually impossible to overstate
their impact on Palestinian reality. The very ability of civilians to lead
normal lives – to work, study, receive health care, conduct business,
6 Occupation of the Territories, 137.

7 .111 '‫ עמ‬,‫כיבוש השטחים‬
maintain relations with kith and kin, to have some semblance of

personal autonomy – depends on the good will and efficiency of the
soldiers operating the checkpoints. Yet these sensitive and charged
sites of contact between Israelis and Palestinians are frequently left
in the hands of common soldiers, whose sole distinction is the length
of time they have spent in the army. One veteran who served in the
artillery in 2002 testified:
I was in charge of the Shaked checkpoint near Jenin for four

months.
You were a squad commander?

Because I was a veteran in my battery. There was a shortage of
commanders, so the veteran soldiers were assigned to command the
checkpoint.8
.‫פיקדתי על מחסום שקד ליד ג'נין במשך ארבעה חודשים‬

?)‫היית מ"כ (מפקד‬
‫ היה בעיות עם‬.)‫מתוקף זה שהייתי חייל ותיק בסוללה (פלוגת תותחנים‬
‫ חיילים‬,‫מפקדים אז את התפקיד של המפקדי מחסום הביאו דווקא לחיילים‬
9
.‫ותיקים‬
At other checkpoints, neither experienced soldiers nor junior officers

seem to exert much influence on some soldiers. One former Nahal
soldier who served in the Kalandia checkpoint near Ramallah gave
the following account:
We used rubber bullets, stun grenades, teargas. Really the Wild West.
No one knows, no one hears anything. No supervision.
There was no hierarchy of a commander giving orders?

Nothing.
8 Our Harsh Logic, 157.

Every soldier does whatever he wants?

Yeah. It’s the yeshiva students’ favorite spot, that Wild West, because
they know that they can do whatever they want, beat people up as
much as they want, just go wild. I remember many times when we’d
detain people just for the hell of it, because someone started pushing
at the checkpoint, or someone tried to go around it. Handcuff him,
sit him by the concrete slabs, dry him out there the whole day. On
principle, “Don’t mess with my checkpoint.”
It was up to each soldier’s judgment?

That whole checkpoint is the Wild West. Everyone does what ever
he wants.10
,‫ אשכרה מערב פרוע‬.‫ רימוני גז‬,‫ רימוני הלם חופשי‬,‫"שימוש בכדורי גומי‬
.‫ שום פיקוח‬,‫ לא שומע‬,‫אף אחד לא יודע‬
?‫לא היה שום היררכיה של מפקד שנותן פקודה לעשות משהו‬
.‫שום דבר‬
?‫כל חייל עושה מה שבא לו‬
‫ כי הם יודעים‬,‫ המערב הפרוע שם‬,‫ זה האזור האהוב על הביינישים‬.‫כן‬
‫ פשוט‬,‫ להכות כמה שהם רוצים‬,‫ששם הם יכולים לעשות מה שהם רוצים‬
‫ כי‬,‫ ככה‬,‫ אני זוכר הרבה מקרים שהיינו מייבשים חבר’ה סתם‬.‫להשתולל שם‬
,‫ אזיקון על הידיים‬.‫ או שהוא ניסה לעקוף את המחסום‬,‫הוא דחף במחסום‬
‫ "אל‬:‫ על הפרינציפ‬.‫ מייבשים אותו יום שלם שם‬,‫ מתחת לבטונדה‬,‫שב פה‬
."‫תעשה לי בלגן במחסום‬
?‫לפי שיקול דעת של כל חייל‬
11
".‫ כל אחד עושה מה שבראש שלו‬,‫כל המחסום הזה מערב פרוע‬
Regardless of the rank, qualifications, or experience of the persons

commanding checkpoints, what is easily discernible in the soldiers’
narratives is that clear, defined orders directing how to manage the
movement of people either do not exist or are not made available to
10 Our Harsh Logic, 132-133.

11 .149-148 '‫ עמ‬,‫כיבוש השטחים‬
the soldiers. If we are to believe what these veterans tell us, the IDF
makes little effort to exercise its authority over soldiers serving in
checkpoints through systematic policies or centralized control. The
same soldier who commanded the Shaked checkpoint near Jenin
described the training he received before assuming his post:
It’s a pretty short briefing about the designated area given by the
battalion and the company commanders. What the threats are, the
mode of action, and a kind of five- minute practice we performed in
the Golan Heights so we could see what a checkpoint is supposed to
look like, what we’re supposed to do, before we go out on the front.
A short lecture from the battalion commander that the Palestinians
aren’t our enemy, that we’re there to carry out ongoing security
activity, that we’re there to prevent terrorism, a talk about the purity
of arms and its importance. All in all it was pretty useless. Both
operationally and from a humanitarian perspective, things were left
pretty much to our own discretion. What ended up happening was
that each soldier in fact determined what his checkpoint would look
like from a humane point of view.12
‫ מה אופן‬,‫ מה האיומים‬,‫תדריך די קצר של המג"ד והמ"פ על הגזרה בעצם‬

‫ מן תרגול כזה של חמש דקות שעשינו ברמת הגולן של איך אמור‬,‫העבודה‬
.)‫ לפני שעלינו לקו (תעסוקה מבצעית‬,‫ מה אמורים לעשות‬,‫להראות מחסום‬
‫ שאנחנו עושים‬,‫הרצאה קצרה עם המג"ד על זה שפלסטינים הם לא אויבים‬
‫ וטוהר הנשק והחשיבות‬,‫ שאנחנו אמורים לסכל טרור‬,‫פעילות בטחון שוטף‬
‫ גם מבחינה מקצועית וגם מבחינה הומניטרית‬.‫ בסך הכל די חפיף‬.‫ זהו‬.‫שלו‬
‫ מה שיצא שכל חייל בעצם‬.‫ כטוב בעינינו‬,‫השאירו אותנו די לשיקול דעתנו‬
13
".‫החליט איך המחסום שלו ייראה מבחינה אנושית‬
Another soldier, who served in the Ramallah area during 2001-2002

painted a similar picture:

No, it’s all very much up to individual interpretation. The briefing

didn’t go into detail. They tell you, “Okay, if there are humanitarian
cases, they can go through.” What exactly are humanitarian cases?
It’s very much up to the interpretation of the person in charge of
the checkpoint at that moment. The guys at the next checkpoint, they
started calling me “UN guy” all the time, because I’d let people
through who they thought shouldn’t go through. They’d say, “What
the hell?” They, like, it’s really not organized who can go and who
can’t. It was totally . . . It could be based on what’s going on with
the guy in charge of the checkpoint, with his girlfriend back home, or
how long he’s been on the base. Really, it’s up to the guy’s personal
issues at that moment. It’s not, it’s not like someone comes and tells
you what to do, no one’s coordinating it, not the operations room.
There’s no procedure where you get on the radio to the operations
room, and ask, “Okay, there’s a guy right here . . . Can he go? Not
go?” Sometimes you do that. Sometimes whoever was in the field
decided. It was all a very big mess.14
:‫ אומרים לך‬,‫ התדריך הוא לא מגיע לרמה‬.‫הכל מאד נתון לפרשנות אישית‬
‫ מה זה בדיוק מקרים‬."‫ אז לאפשר לעבור‬,‫ אם יש מקרים הומניטריים‬,‫"אוקיי‬
‫הומניטריים? זה מאד נתון לפרשנות של הבן אדם שמפקד על המחסום‬
‫ כי‬,‫ התחילו לקרוא לי האו"מניק‬,‫ החבר’ה מהמחסום הבא‬,‫ שמה‬.‫באותו רגע‬
.‫כל הזמן הייתי מעביר להם אנשים שהם החליטו שהם לא צריכים לעבור‬
‫ זה ממש לא היה איזה עניין מסודר‬,‫ הם כאילו‬."?‫ "מה פתאום‬:‫הם אמרו‬
‫זה היה יכול להיות לפי מה קורה‬...‫ זה לגמרי היה‬.‫מי עובר ומי לא עובר‬
‫לבן אדם שמפקד על המחסום או שלא מפקד על המחסום עם החברה שלו‬
‫ ממש לפי העניין האישי‬.‫ או כמה זמן הוא סגר (נשאר בבסיס) עכשיו‬,‫בבית‬
‫ זה כמובן לא מגיע לרמה שכאילו בן אדם‬,‫ זה אין‬.‫של הבן אדם באותו רגע‬
‫ אין נוהל (של) לעלות‬.‫ לא החמ"ל‬,‫ אין מישהו שמרכז את זה‬,‫שעובר אתה‬
."?‫האם הוא עובר? לא עובר‬...‫ יש בן אדם כזה‬.‫קיי‬.‫ או‬:‫ לבקש‬,‫מול החמ"ל‬

-‫ זה הכל היה מאד‬.‫ מי שבשטח מחליט‬,‫ לפעמים‬.‫לפעמים עושים את זה‬

15
.‫מאד ברדק‬
While several of the soldiers testifying are reservists who arrived

in the territories with some life experience and a better sense of
perspective, most of the men and women performing occupation-
related service are soldiers in the regular army or officers who
have signed on for another year or two. For these young men and
women, the absence of well-regulated channels of authority can
have particularly deleterious effects. Veterans often comment on the
absurdity of placing 20-, 21-, 22-year-olds in positions of absolute
control over life and death situations, and on the toll this has taken
on them personally. One Nahal veteran, who served in the Shaked
checkpoint in 2005, recalled:
“These improvised checkpoints bring out the worst in you…Sometimes

I felt totally out of control there. As a young commander you’re
scared and all your crap comes out, see? Because if you’re a young
commander and not in control, you don’t want your soldiers to feel
that you’re not in control, you don’t want to feel out of control, so
you resort to means that you don’t ordinarily want to use, see? Later
you give it a thought.”16
‫אני לפעמים הרגשתי‬...‫המחסומים המאולתרים האלה מוציאים ממך את הכי‬

,‫ בתור מפקד צעיר אתה מפחד ואז יוצא לך כל החרא‬.‫שם חוסר שליטה‬
‫ אתה לא רוצה‬,‫אתה מבין? כי ברגע שאתה מפקד צעיר שאתה מאבד שליטה‬
‫ אז‬,‫ אתה לא רוצה להרגיש חסר שליטה‬,‫שהחיילים ירגישו חוסר שליטה‬
‫ אתה‬,‫אתה משתמש באמצעים שאתה לא רוצה להשתמש בהם בדרך כלל‬
17
.‫מבין? אחרי זה אתה חושב על זה‬

Nor was this veteran alone in his sense of helplessness and confusion
in the face of the occupation’s psychological strains:
“I had a friend who served as a sergeant in Reihan, a religious

fellow. He was there at the checkpoint for the last four months of his
military service, had also been in Hebron, a super-moral guy, I never
met anyone like that. He really got screwed up there, he couldn’t take
it any longer. I remember he said that to some general there on a
visit, a very senior officer: ‘I can’t do this. You’re placing way too
much responsibility on the shoulders of a twenty to twenty-one-year-
old kid. I can’t do this. I really can’t. I cannot determine who is to be
let through and who isn’t.’ He was a checkpoint commander. He said:
‘I cannot do this, let me go, I’m losing it, I just can’t do it.’ Why?
Because I think there’s a lot of gray area there, it’s not all black
and white. Again, there’s no choice, but that’s how it is, gray. And
letting a twenty-one-year-old cope with this gray zone, that does no
good at all. If you’re humane, you get screwed. If you’re inhumane,
you screw them [the Palestinians]. Someone gets screwed either way,
you see? No matter what happens, someone gets screwed, one of the
sides, no matter what. Because of that gray area, because of ‘your
discretion.’” 18
‫ היה שם במחסום‬.‫ בחור דתי‬,‫ הוא היה סמל במחסום ריחן‬,‫היה לי איזה חבר‬
,‫ גם היה בחברון‬,‫ בחור דתי‬,‫בארבעה חודשים האחרונים של השירות שלו‬
‫ הוא לא‬,‫ הוא באמת נדפק שם‬.‫מוסרי בצורה שלא ראיתי דבר כזה בחיים‬
‫ לאיזה‬,‫ אני זוכר שהוא אמר את זה לאיזה אלוף שביקר שם‬.‫יכל יותר‬
‫עשרים ואחת‬-‫ אתם נותנים לילד בן עשרים‬,‫ "אני לא יכול‬:‫מפקד בכיר מאד‬
‫ אני‬,‫ אני לא יכול‬,‫ אני לא מסוגל לעשות את זה‬.‫אחריות יותר מדי גדולה‬
:‫ הוא אמר‬.‫" הוא היה מפקד מחסום‬.‫ מי לא עובר‬,‫לא יכול להחליט מי עובר‬
,‫ אני מתחרפן מזה‬,‫ תעזבו אותי‬,‫ לא יכול‬,‫"אני לא מסוגל לעשות את זה‬
.‫ זה לא שחור ולבן‬,‫" כי למה? לדעתי כי יש שם הרבה אפור‬.‫אני לא מצליח‬
‫ ולתת לילד בן עשרים ואחד‬.‫ יש אפור‬,‫ אבל זה המצב‬,‫ אין ברירה‬,‫ועוד פעם‬

‫ כי אם אתה‬.‫ זה לא יוצר דברים טובים לעולם‬,‫להתמודד עם האפור הזה‬

‫ מישהו‬.‫ אז זה דופק אותם‬,‫ אם אתה לא הומני‬.‫הומני אז זה דופק אותך‬
,‫ אחד מהצדדים נדפק‬.‫ מישהו נדפק‬,‫ אתה מבין? לא משנה מה קורה‬,‫נדפק‬
19
."‫ בגלל ה"לשיקולכם‬,‫ בגלל האפור הזה‬.‫לא משנה מה יהיה‬
Granted, this soldier in particular is trying to explain to himself and

to others his conduct during the two months he spent commanding a
tiny cohort of tired, anxious soldiers facing a crowd of impatient and
potentially hostile Palestinians desperate to get to work. In hindsight,
this former soldier is hardly proud of what happened in that “stinking
concrete shack” (betonada masriha). But regardless of his rather
explicit desire to placate his conscience by noting the detrimental
effects of the soldiers’ youth on their ability to face the moral
ambiguities inherent in the occupation, he is making an important
point, and one which comes up repeatedly throughout the volume.
It would be perhaps easy to stop here and determine that one
conclusion we can draw from this compilation is that the occupied
territories are indeed a Middle Eastern Wild West, where structures
of authority are ineffective and diffuse, and where privates, sergeants,
and lieutenants act at their own discretion, creating procedures
and policies in motion, shaping the conflict according to random
circumstances and personal desires. Yet things are not that simple.
In those instances where we do learn that officers commanding
regiments, battalions, and brigades are in fact personally involved in
directing operations, issuing orders, and providing close supervision
of their subordinates, the same sense of lawlessness, carelessness,
and arbitrariness comes across equally strongy. Take, for example,
this testimony by a former paratrooper, who served in Hebron in
2000, at the outset of the Second Intifada:
We would shoot at the water tanks, we would shoot into windows, no

reason…you know, sniping at a target, as a joke.
19 .200-199 '‫ עמ‬,‫כיבוש השטחים‬

This was all during, like, October?

It was at the beginning, right at the beginning, the first weeks, you
know. Just shooting as a joke. Everyone was shooting so no one
knew I was shooting too. Everyone fires!
There was no supervision over who was shooting, when they shot?
Where they were shooting?
There was supervision, but there isn’t a commander at every post. At
most of the posts there are no commanders, so wherever there are
no commanders, you do what you want, get it?
And where there are commanders?

They navigated the fire, but it was also very random. I was at the
heavy machine gun post. There was a sector battalion commander
with me sometimes, the battalion commander of the border police in
the sector, who was totally crazy. He was sick in the head. He would
go to me, ‘Shoot there, shoot there, shoot there.’ And I unleash in all
directions without discretion.20
,‫ צליפה למטרה‬,‫אתה יודע‬...‫ סתם‬,‫ היינו יורים בחלונות‬,‫היינו יורים בדודים‬

.‫בקטע של צחוקים‬
?‫זה הכל עדיין בתקופת אוקטובר כאילו‬
‫ סתם יורים‬.‫ אתה יודע‬,‫ בשבועות הראשונים‬,‫ ממש בהתחלה‬,‫זה היה בהתחלה‬
.‫ כולם יורים אז אף אחד לא יודע שגם אני יורה‬.‫ כאילו‬,‫בקטע של צחוקים‬
!‫כולם יורים‬
?‫ לאן יורים‬,‫ מתי יורים‬,‫לא הייתה בקרה על מי יורה‬
,‫ ברוב העמדות אין מפקדים‬.‫הייתה בקרה אבל לא בכל עמדה יש לך מפקד‬
?‫ אתה מבין‬,‫ עושים מה שרוצים‬,‫אז איפה שאין מפקדים‬
?‫ואיפה שיש מפקדים‬
‫ הייתי‬.‫ אבל גם זה מאד רנדומלי‬,‫אז הם ניווטו את מי שיורה כביכול‬
‫ המג"ד של‬,‫ לפעמים‬,‫ היה איתי המג"ד (מפקד גדוד) גזרה‬.‫בעמדת מק"כ‬
‫ הוא היה עושה‬.‫ הוא היה חולה נפש‬.‫ שהיה מטורף לגמרי‬,‫כוח מג"ב בגזרה‬

‫ ואני מפרק לכל הכיוונים בלי‬."‫ תירה שמה‬,‫ תירה שמה‬,‫לי "תירה שמה‬
21
.‫קשר לכלום‬
Or, to take another example, a soldier who served with the engineer
corps in Gaza in 2002-3:
[T]hey come with a Givati force in Gaza, they go in with the battalion
commander, they find someone there who isn’t connected to anything,
a house that’s not at the location they received, a different house.
And of course in every home in Bet Lahiya, outside of the house,
there are pictures of Shahids so he says to him: ‘What’s this?’ And
then he decides to take him with us and he’s barefoot. They walk
three kilometers from his house to the border and he’s barefoot. He
asked the battalion commander if he could put shoes on, sandals, he
asked him in Hebrew and he goes to him: ‘No!’ He started bleeding
on the way.
How fast were you walking?

The pace of soldiers with shoes. I didn’t measure it, but we walked
the pace of soldiers with shoes, and he started bleeding on the way
because you walk on thorns and clumps of ground, etc., and he’s
limping in the back and each time one of the soldiers kicks him so
that he’ll move already because he’s not keeping up the pace.22
‫ מוצאים שם מישהו‬,‫ נכנסים עם המג"ד‬,‫באים עם כוח של גבעתי בעזה‬

‫ כמובן‬.‫ בבית אחר‬,‫ בכלל בבית לא באיתור (בית) שקבלו‬,‫שלא קשור לכלום‬
‫שבכל בית בבית להיא יש מחוץ לבית תמונות של שאהידים אז הוא אומר‬
‫ הולכים כשלושה‬.‫ ואז מחליט לקחת אותו אתנו והוא יחף‬."?‫ "מה זה‬:‫לו‬
‫ הוא בקש מהמג"ד לשים‬.‫קילומטרים הליכה מהבית עד לגבול והוא יחף‬
‫ הוא התחיל‬."!‫ "לא‬:‫ הוא דיבר עברית והוא עושה לו‬,‫ לשים כפכפים‬,‫נעליים‬
.‫לדמם בדרך‬

?‫באיזה מהירות הלכתם‬

‫ אבל הלכנו במהירות של חיילים‬,‫ לא מדדתי‬,‫במהירות של חיילים עם נעליים‬
’‫ והוא התחיל לדמם בדרך כי הולכים על קוצים ועל רגבים וכו‬,‫עם נעליים‬
‫והוא צולע מאחור וכל פעם אחד החיילים בועט בו שיזוז כבר כי הוא לא‬
23
.‫עומד בקצב‬
While both soldiers use the same phrase in Hebrew signifying the
random, arbitrary, and directionless nature of their actions, in both
cases the incidents they describe are in fact directed by well-informed,
experienced, and mature officers.
The most striking example comes from a former paratrooper who
served in Nablus in 2007 and had a chance to receive orders directly
from the very officer commanding the IDF forces serving in the West
Bank:
We had a talk with a division commander when we got to the Shomron

Central Brigade. He said, “You’re not ranked by arrests – you’re
ranked by the number of people you kill.”
Who said that to you?
The division commander. Above the brigade commander, the most

important man.
Which division commander, of the West Bank?
The division commander of . . . I don’t even know how it’s divided.

Probably the West Bank.24
‫ אתם נמדדים בכמות האנשים‬,‫ "אתם לא נמדדים במעצרים‬:‫האוגדונר אמר‬

."‫שאתם הורגים‬
?‫"מי אמר לכם את זה‬

,‫ האדם הכי חשוב‬,)‫ מעל מח"ט (מפקד חטיבה‬.‫האוגדונר‬

?‫איזה אוגדונר של איו"ש‬
25
‫ כנראה של איו"ש‬.‫לא יודע אפילו איך זה מחולק‬...‫אוגדונר של‬
What these examples show is that the presence of senior officers

does not necessarily ensure stricter orders or greater attention to the
lives and liberties of Palestinian civilians. It bears mentioning that
this most certainly is not universally the case: some soldiers tell
of officers who act decisively against unnecessary abuses, holding
subordinates accountable for offenses and meting out punishments
to those who deserve them. Yet the fact that some regimental,
brigade, and battalion commanders also partake in different kinds
of rampant behavior suggests that the problem is, in fact, larger and
more complex than a broken chain of command or the absence of
clear orders and systematic policies. Perhaps the question that needs
to be asked is whether there are those in the Israeli government and
in the high command of the IDF who are in fact uninterested in
establishing effective modes of authority for the forces operating
in the territories. Perhaps we need to ask what is gained from the
diffuse, capricious nature of the interaction between Israeli soldiers
and the Palestinian citizenry? Whom does it serve? How does it
strengthen the grip of Israel and its army on a hostile and often
belligerent population? One soldier, contemplating this issue, reached
an uncomfortable conclusion. The chaos in the occupied territories
does not result from the absence of clear and open channels for
the transmission of authority. It is, he ventures to say, a calculated
policy:
For those higher up, and I don’t know at what level, but I’m
convinced – and I have many friends who are angry that I say this
– but I’m convinced that the arbitrariness is a strategy. A strategy to
undermine their confidence, their stability, so they won’t know what’s
going to happen tomorrow. I’m convinced of it. I don’t think it’s

some kind of stupidity from someone higher up, I think it’s a policy,
a strategy. I’m convinced.26
‫ יש‬,‫ אבל אני משוכנע‬,‫ לא יודע באיזה רמות זה היה‬,‫אפרופו פיקוד גבוה‬
‫ אבל אני משוכנע‬,‫לי הרבה חברים שמאוד כועסים עלי שאני אומר את זה‬
‫ את‬,‫ שהתפיסה היתה לערער להם את הבטחון‬.‫שהשרירותיות היתה תפיסה‬
‫ אני לא חושב‬.‫ אני משוכנע שזה זה‬.‫ שלא יודעים מה קורה מחר‬,‫היציבות‬
‫ שזאת‬,‫ אני חושב שזאת היתה מדיניות‬,‫שזה איזה טפשות של מישהו למעלה‬
27
.‫ אני ממש משוכנע בזה‬.‫היתה התפיסה‬
While this soldier can only tell of his own limited, personal experience
in the army, scholarship on the occupation supports this observation.
The political scientist Neve Gordon has argued that since the Six Day
War, Israel has employed what he terms an “arbitrary modality of
control,” producing “a form of uncertainty that was used to manage
the population in different ways.” It has been the underlying basis
for numerous policies and practices in the occupied territories, from
the issuing of permits for travel to the overall planning of Jewish
settlement. The laissez faire character of the IDF’s workings, claims
Gordon, is neither an outcome of bureaucratic disarray nor of military
ineptitude. It is a deliberate effort to govern through unpredictability.28
Yael Berda, a sociologist who has investigated one aspect of the
occupation, the system of travel permits, claims that Israel relies
on similar governing mechanisms to those previously employed by
European colonial powers. A central feature of all these regimes,
she argues, is maintaining a permanent state of emergency in which
rules and regulations are kept secret and subject to change, and the
powers that be make constant and deliberate use of exceptions and

28 Neve Gordon, Israel’s Occupation, Berkeley: University of California Press,
2008, 24-25.
special cases.29 Recent work by Ariel Handel on Israeli control over

Palestinian movement determines that “uncertainty is the principal
tool of control in the occupied territories, an incredibly effective
and economical tool. Arbitrariness is present in every aspect of the
Israeli control apparatus: Starting from laws and regulations, through
the instruments (checkpoints, armored vehicles, guard towers,
military posts, settlements, etc.) and ending with those operating the
system, meaning the soldiers, cops, settlers, and judges.”30 While
these scholars and others debate different theoretical models for the
occupation and put forward markedly different analyses of its nature
and its transformation over the years, they concur that the chaotic
and irrational nature of the systems governing Palestinians’ lives is
the willful creation of the Israeli state.
While there are evident links between the systemic studies
conducted by social scientists and the oral histories compiled by
Breaking the Silence, more work is required in order to incorporate the
testimonies in this collection into a more comprehensive investigation
of the army’s operation and command methods. The question is not
merely whether the absence of a well-regulated authority structure is
the result of a specific and intentional policy, but on what level such
policy decisions are made, who is informed of them, and to what
extent such a policy, if it indeed exists, shapes the very essence of
life in the territories. Does system-wide chaos generate its own brand
of order, its own patterns and rules? How do Palestinians trapped
in the vortex of entropy either accommodate to it, resist it, or both?
How has it affected not just day-to-day living in the territories, but
Palestinian culture, society, and institutions? Equally important, we
must try to learn how this reality has impacted the soldiers and junior
officers who effectively manage operations on the ground, and to
what extent it has seeped into Israeli society writ large. Forty-five
29 ‫ הקיבוץ‬.‫ משטר היתרי התנועה בגדה המערבית‬:‫ הבירוקרטיה של הכיבוש‬,‫יעל ברדה‬

.19 '‫ עמ‬,58 ’‫ עמ‬2012 ,‫המאוחד ומכון ואן־ליר‬
30 "‫ אי־ודאות כטכנולוגית שליטה‬:‫ "שליטה במרחב באמצעות המרחב‬,‫אריאל הנדל‬
.102 '‫ עמ‬,2007 ‫ חורף‬,31 ‫תאוריה וביקורת‬
years after its inception, the occupation is emerging as a permanent

part of both Israeli and Palestinian life. We can no longer pretend it
is temporary or fleeting. We must therefore devise tools and strategies
for excavating its hidden mechanisms and indirect influences, and use
them to amplify a scholarly conversation that could fill the discursive
void in the public sphere. Breaking the silence is not only a task for
veterans; it is part of our mission as scholars too.
This volume, the first in the Notebook
Series of the Martin Buber Society
of Fellows, addresses the notion of
authority in a set of multi-disciplinary
and inter-cultural perspectives. The
essays share a meditative quality,
perhaps more accessible than the usual
academic format would allow: a great
mathematician reflects on the kind of
authority mathematical truths can
(and cannot) claim; historians explore
shifting forms of institutional authority
in different historical contexts; a linguist
Meditations
on Authority
probes the authority implicit in the use
of the second person singular in modern
Hebrew oral narratives by soldiers
serving in the territories; a political Edited by David Shulman
scientist offers an unsettling account
of the largely fictive authority implicit
in democratic systems and the role of
science in rationalizing that authority;
and so on. Many of the essays embody or
give voice to the ambivalence endemic
to issues of authority, which habitually
arouses inner protest and resistance
that can become authoritative in their
own right. Wide-ranging, irreverent, and
often highly personal in tone, these essays
reflect the rich conversations and the
sheen of intellection at the Martin Buber
Society of Fellows.
Cover drawing: Eileen Shulman
 

  
www.magnespress.co.il ‫ ש“ח‬98 :‫מחיר מומלץ‬
www.saybrand.co.il :‫עיצוב העטיפה‬ 2013 ,‫ יולי‬:‫מהדורה ראשונה‬

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This volume, the first in the Notebook

Cover drawing: Eileen Shulman

Martin Buber Society of Fellows Notebook Series

The Hebrew University Magnes Press, Jerusalem

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in

“Authority” is one of those words. You can abuse it by casual use,

Hence – given this cloud of unknowing, which I assume I share

If we don’t know what authority is, why do we hate it so passionately?

Listen to the voice of Annamayya, a fifteenth-century Telugu poet

What can I say about my crazy ways?

You speak through me,

What can I say?

You create all these people,

What can I say?

You give this world and the other,

What can I say?1

Here is a statement on authority we could live with: ironic, playful,

Can there exist something like a non-arbitrary authority – some form

Is there a kind of authority that would be immune to rebellion and

Plato nor the New Testament. It is a newer testament – the Gospel

But how many of us can truly live according to such a Gospel?

Even worse, in my experience, than living with an external authority

In talking about authority, the English language provides us with

qualifies as being an epistemic authority in a certain context, if at

certain role models such as athletes or pop musicians.3

epistemic authority for a certain range of utterances by a sufficiently

5 On this field see, e.g., C. A. J. Coady, Testimony: A Philosophical Study. Oxford:

There are different ways to construe the epistemic role of testimony

6 Tyler Burge, ‘Content Preservation,’ Philosophical Review 102 (1993): 457-488,

generally reliable reporter and shown no propensity towards being a

Another condition, emphasized by Elizabeth Fricker, is that the

9 Elizabeth Fricker, ‘Testimony and Epistemic Autonomy,’ in Lackey and Sosa,

general is a social status not reducible to an individual knower.10

10 See, e.g., John Hardwig, ‘Epistemic Dependence,’ The Journal of Philosophy 82

is the exaggerated ascription of epistemic authority to the self, is

13 See Mario Mikulincer and Philipp R. Shaver, ‘The Attachment Behavioral

even quality of Wikipedia’s articles, some 4 million of which

17 Lawrence A. Sanger, ‘The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia,’ Episteme 6 (2009):

The attitude described by Sanger is at least partly understandable. After

18 Kathryn Schulz, ‘This Interview is a Stub: Wikipedia Co-Founder Lawrence

In Feyerabend’s view, one of the grave dangers of leaving science

ceremonies, then this is what the universities will have to teach.”23

Quarterly 12 (1995): 227-246.

(largely baseless) charge that the views of their academic opponents

entitle anyone to commit herself to any given opposing view,

Aronowitz, Stanley. ‘The Politics of the Science Wars.’ Social Text

Burge, Tyler. Content Preservation. Philosophical Review 102 (1993):

University Press, 2001.

Recanati, François. ‘Can We Believe What We Do Not Understand?’

I shall discuss the properties of scientific and political authorities,

necessities of authority and order and the principle of freedom has

1 Yaron Ezrahi and Mordechai Kremnitzer, Israel Towards a Constitutional

and loyalties in election practices during decades of American and

2 Edmund Morgan, Inventing the People, Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England

5 Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France

7 Yaron Ezrahi, The Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of

quantitative, supposedly objective nonpolitical science, the impact

8 Charles E. Lindblom, Inquiry and Change, The Troubled Attempt to Understand

are governed by constant competition and conflicts between multiple

1. Ernst Cassirer entangles us in a symbolic web

“The great thinkers who have defined man as an animal rationale,”

1 Cassirer, Ernst. An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human

system … No longer in a merely physical universe, man lives in