The Jewish Writer As Shaman Word from: Mordy

In today's German Jewish Intellectuals class we discussed Jewish Shamanism. The topic sounds weird, but the evolution in the conversation flowed naturally. Walter Benjamin in "Task of the Translator," the introduction to his reading of Baudelaire's Tableaux parisiens, writes, "The task of the translator consists in finding that intended effect [Intention] upon the language into which he is translating." His distinction is pure language, a form of meta-languages that exists outside the realm of words.

Chronologically, he wrote "Task of the Translator" long after he began his conversations with Scholem about Kabbalah. I don't think it is a stretch to compare Benjamin's pure language with the words of creation that stand apart from spoken/written expression. Kabbalah says that words keep the world in existence, and that without them, everything would cease to be. You can see how this is a hop, skip and jump away from declaring that the purpose of the writer is to call into existence this spiritual energy of language. Making the modern writer, as Benjamin indeed suggests elsewhere, a Shaman.

Jewish Shamanism is not a new concept, but we see an emergence of it that resists the historical trends of Judaism. On a simplistic level, Rabbinical Judaism has always been a hyper-intellectual denial of Shamanism. If a Rabbi leads a community, what room is there for a mystical evoker of God? Pop Kabbalah, the type practiced by Madonna, is a cultural urge to manifest the Jewish Shaman. At one point, that role was fulfilled by the Navi. Chassidic Rebbes have at different times embraced the role.

If this read into Walter Benjamin is correct though, the Jewish Shamans of today are the writers. Once the storyteller lost responsibility to the masses, he gained the ability to rebuke them, much like the Navi. Benjamin writes earlier in "Task of the Translator" that "Art... posits man's physical and spiritual existence, but in none of its works is it concerned with his response. No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener." It is not for their sake that the writer writes, but for His.

Personally, faced with this radical recast of writing, and the role of Mimaamakim writers specifically, I started contemplating how best to get in touch with the Godly in my writing. I could wear my tefillin while I write, but there are divisions between the holy and mundane that I am afraid to cross. Can one make a blessing over writing? Are my fears of sacrilege unwarranted? After all, Benjamin says that my very writing is sublime expression of divinity. I am the one who calls it mundane.

Any thoughts?