 previous article in this issue | next article in this issue  |
Preview first page |
Document Details : Title: Tractate Shabbat and the Phenomenology of Play Author(s): DICKMANN, Iddo Menashe Journal: Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses Volume: 99 Issue: 3 Date: 2023 Pages: 487-516 DOI: 10.2143/ETL.99.3.3292102 Abstract : I will investigate the rabbinic discourse regarding the prohibition of Hotzaah (transferring objects between private and public domains on Shabbat), invoking Gadamer’s phenomenology of play and Heidegger’s interrelated phenomenology of equipment. Scholars have argued that this prohibition is unique on the grounds that it is inferred from the manna episode (Exodus 16), where Shabbat consists of spatio-temporal segregation rather than cessation of labour. I will redefine such segregation in terms of play, 'a closed world without transition to the world of aims' (Gadamer), hence a micro-world in the service of no normative purpose. However, this status, according to Gadamer (with a parallel in Heidegger), entails an 'oscillation' principle according to which the micro-world, brought about by excluding the macro one, paradoxically exists in a perpetual exchange with the latter. I will use this dialectic of segregation and oscillation to interpret the overall structure of Tractate Shabbat and the reception of Hotzaah in halakhic and Hasidic literature. Finally, I will attempt to detect its stamp in Origen’s reflections regarding Hotzaah in connection with his doctrine of Trinity. |
|
