Here is the reason you may see this aged Jew mix
dissent into the discourse of the hermeneutics
of suspicions Eward Said’s disciples weave
for westerners. Denial hardly is naïve,
but based on an immunity to Fleurs
du Mal, a malady that this emeritus physician’s
spiritual antibodies all resist, on Paul Ricoeur’s
hermeneutics casting settler colonialist suspicions,
as does the Book of Numbers on herwomeneutics
of the sotah, foreplaying Molly Bloom’s
climactic enthusiasm, and how anti-Zionistic professors mix
cockamamie cocktails in historical classrooms.
In “ Jewish Studies against the Jews,” May 2024, Andrew Koss writes in https://ideas.tikvah.org/mosaic/essays/jewish-studies-against-the-jews :
As America’s universities catch fire and its Jewish students grow more fearful, the field most likely to have something to say has remained silent—or worse. How did it go wrong?
For the past several weeks, national and even international attention has been locked on the chaos brought to American college campuses by anti-Israel demonstrations that have become increasingly bold in flouting the authorities, harassing fellow students, and echoing Hamas slogans. Less attention has been paid to the professors who teach those students, yet no small number of professors have gotten involved, sometimes to comfort Jewish students, far more often to join the protesters or to complain about efforts to restore order.
Middle East-studies departments have been well represented, almost exclusively in the anti-Israel camp, but Jewish-studies faculty have largely sat out of the conversation. Some may find this strange. At a time of crisis for the Jewish people, and especially for Jewish university students, it would seem that those who have dedicated their lives to studying Jewish history, Jewish culture, and Jewish religion would have the most to contribute….
The neologism “herwomeneutics of suspicion” in the last verse of this poem implies that Molly Bloom’s soliloquy with which James Joyce concludes Ulysses, might be regarded as Molly’s response to her husband’s “herwomeneutics of suspicion,” a link towards which I had previously suggested in “Molly Bloom and her Jealous Jewish Husband, Leopold” which the Jewish Journal has previously published.
https://jewishjournal.com/spiritual/poetry/382117/molly-bloom-and-her-jealous-jewish-husband-leopold/
Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.
