Le théâtre juif : un objet anthropologique?" study day, June 28

Scientific event organized by Inalco research centers PLIDAM - Plurality of Languages and Identities: Didactics, Acquisition, Mediations and CERMOM - Centre de Recherches Moyen-Orient Méditerranée and supported by École doctorale 265 Langues, littératures et sociétés du monde (Inalco).

Tuesday, June 28, 2022 - 9:30am-6:00pm - Maison de la recherche - Salon Suzanne Borel
Inalco, 2, rue de Lille - 75007 Paris

Jewish theater: an anthropological object?

Jewish Theatre as an Object of Anthropological Study

Organization: Alexandru Bumbas (PLIDAM) and Anamarija Vargovic (CERMOM)

For centuries, theater (in all its aesthetic declinations) has asserted itself as a form of cultural expression, both in the West and in the East. In the so-called "Western" world, theater is present, despite suspicions (or even proscriptions) of a philosophical (Plato, Republic III, 394 and X, 604-6) and theological (Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book III, 3) nature, and theatrical production is abundant. The link between theater and society - mixing hatred and fascination - has given rise to various fields of socio-anthropological reflection. In 1956, Erving Goffman postulated "the staging of social life", that is, a theory through which he operationalized the notion of theater in favor of an interpretation of human life as stage performance and acting.

Within Judaism, theater is the subject of contradictory stances, and this, under the backdrop of a dearth of textual witnesses, from antiquity through to the Italian Renaissance precisely. The condemnation of theater in Judaism is attested only late, in the Talmud of Jerusalem Avoda Zara (18b9, 16, 18), in a baraith probably dating from the first centuries of the Christian era: "Our masters taught: it is forbidden to go to the theater and the circus because idolatrous sacrifices are made there: words of Rabbi Meir. "

Notwithstanding the tension aroused by the gap between practice and normativity with regard to theatrical performance within Judaism, as far back as antiquity, theater is well present among Jews. In addition to a few mentions in the Letter of Aristaeus, in Philo and in inscriptions, we know that a Jewish playwright in exile in Alexandria wrote a play in Greek in 200 BC entitled L'Exagôgué, of which only a few fragments have survived. The play, known as a tragedy, takes up the episode of the biblical Exodus.

Centuries later - although no continuity can be asserted - Yehuda Sommo, a Jewish scholar living in Mantua, at the height of the Italian Renaissance, wrote a first play in Hebrew (Eloquente comédie du mariage-farce), as well as a first treatise on theatrical aesthetics (Four dialogues in matters of theatrical representation). The latter, written in Italian, constitutes both a polemical "dialogue" with Aristotle's Poetics and a reassessment of the origins of theater, which he claimed were biblical and Kabbalistic. For Yehuda Sommo, the question of the body (and its scenic potential) takes precedence over the theatrical text (as dramaturgy) and thus affirms a new history of theater linked to Judaism, all the more so as these plays are biblically and Talmudically inspired.

The Jewish-Italian influence will be decisive for further developments in dramatic writing, and the poetic forms of the Italian language will condition the evolution of the metrics of the Hebrew language. At the same time, interest flourished in translating various poetic works into Hebrew, including dramatic writing and rewriting. An example of this kind of dual influence can be seen in Dutch authors such as David Franco Mendes, who was influenced by Moshe Haïm Luzzatto, French theater and Viennese oratorio at the same time as he was rewriting the drama of Athalie.

In all these cases, the relationship to the Hebrew language remains fundamental, for the question - sometimes implicit, though well highlighted in writings that accompany literary production (for example, Moshe Haïm Luzzatto's treatise Leshon Limmudim on the laws of Hebrew poetry) is whether Hebrew, as a language, can also be a vehicle for secular literature.

In view of these textual witnesses and these authors who figure as founders, how can we think of theater within Judaism? As an anthropological object working on the construction and affirmation of a Jewishness apprehended according to its relationship to the theater? In other words, can theater be conceived as a media of the Jewish subject? Is it (also) a polemical object prompting a rereading of Aristotle's Poetics in the light of the postulate of the Hebraic (and religious) origins of theater? Is there a detectable Jewish aesthetic thought of theater since Ezekiel the Tragic, taking into account works subsequent to him (biblical adaptations, Purimspiel, Yiddish theater, Judeo-Spanish theater, memorial theater, contemporary Israeli theater, Jewish theater in non-Hebrew languages)? Can Jewish theater be considered independently of its links with the Bible? In what forms? What about the historical and biblical subjects found in most authors?

Scientific committee:
Frosa BOUCHEREAU-PEJOSKA - PR (PLIDAM)
Elisa CARANDINA - MCF (CERMOM)
Alessandro GUETTA - PR (CERMOM)
Zeljko JOVANOVIC - MCF (CERMOM)
Madalina VARTEJANU-JOUBERT - MCF/HDR (PLIDAM)