The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious

Many JOFA members have had the privilege of hearing Avivah Zornberg give her remarkable “parashat hashavua” shiurim in Jerusalem. While her two earlier books focus on Genesis and Exodus, here Zornberg takes twelve biblical narratives, and examines midrashic and Hasidic readings of these narratives, drawing on a wealth of literary and psychoanalytic sources ranging from Henry James, Kierkergaard, Julia Kristeva, Yeats, Emerson, Walter Benjamin, and of course Freud to explore the relation between consciousness and unconsciousness. She offers fascinating insights on the relationship between religion and psychoanalysis. There are chapters specifically focused on biblical women – Rebekah, Ruth and Esther – but the whole book is worth careful study. In talking about Abraham and the significance of his leaving the familiar and starting on his journey, Zornberg quotes and discusses the amazing midrashic analogy in Bereshit Rabbah comparing our forefather with a young woman urged to forget her past and move confidently forward as she starts a new life in marriage, based on the line in Psalms 45:11: “Listen daughter and see, and incline your ear, forget your own people and your father’s house.” Beautifully and poetically written, this volume is not an easy read but one that perceptively suggests profound possibilities in understanding the biblical narrative. As Zornberg concludes the book, “This is the Torah, that like its teacher, can never be fully known, that is always discontinuous, of which we ask, ‘Who are you?’ and rejoice in the silence that animates its response.”