著者
赤尾 光春
出版者
北海道大学スラブ研究センター
雑誌
スラヴ研究 (ISSN:05626579)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.50, pp.65-106, 2003

The breeze of liberalization, which began in the second half of the 1980s in the former Communist bloc countries, has brought about the rivival of Jewish pilgrimages to the gravesites of Hasidic leaders. The pilgrimage made by the Breslover Hasidim to Uman (Uman') stands out among others. The Breslover Hasidim are one of the Hasidic sects that regard Rabbi Nachman of Braslav (1772-1810) as its spiritual leader. Their pilgrimage to Uman on the Jewish New Year has an ongoing tradition of some two hundred years. Today this ordinary Ukrainian city has become one of the biggest pilgrimage centers outside Israel, attracting more than 10,000 Jewish pilgrims annually. This article deals with the spatial and ideological issues reflected in the historical process of the pilgrimage. After a brief survey of the general background of saints' sanctuaries in Jewish culture, ideological issues concerning of the pilgrimage inherent in the life and teaching of Rabbi Nachman, will be examined. In 1802 Rabbi Nachman settled in Bratslav, where he founded his Hasidic movement. After he became aware of his fatal illness, the forcus of his teaching shifted to the perpetuation of his spiritual heritage. This is expressed in his unusual concern for his burial place. Uman is located near his disciples' dwelling places. It was chosen for his burial for two ideological reasons. First, he considered it his last mission to lead the spiritual struggle against the Jewish enlighteners living there. The second reason is related to the rectification souls of the martyrs, who were brutally murdered in Uman in the notorious pogrom in 1786. Paradoxically, the town became the ideal place that attracted the complete devotion of this greatest tzaddik (righteous man) of his generation so conscious of his divine mission. Not only did Rabbi Nachman express a strong desire for his followers to visit his grave, but he also gave them clear instructions as to the procedure and the reward for their devotion. The ten chapters of Psalms called "Tikun ha-Klali" and "Kibuts" ("the Gathering"), which had initially developed separately, were later to be interwoven into the pilgrimage to Uman. The simplified form of prayer present in the former seems to have opened up the potential for a more voluntary mass pilgrimage. In the latter, by extending the universal Hasidic tradition after the master's death, the obligatory aspect of a sect's tradition was retained. The paradoxical nature of Nachman's choice of Uman can be grasped in a more meaningful way by examining his teaching on the Land of Israel. According to his theology, the holiness of Israel can be extended beyond its boundaries and the tzaddik's residential place is seen as the equivalent to Israel. Thus, he succeeded symbolically in turning this marginal place into a center equivalent in its holiness to the Holy Land. The following chapters will depict the history of the Kibuts, dividing it into three major historical periods: 1) the period of establishment (1811-1917); 2) the period of dispersion (1917-1985); and 3) the period of revival (1985-present). The charisma of Rabbi Nachman was so great that his Hasidim have never elected any successor as is the practice in other Hasidic dynasties. The pilgrimage to Uman has played an important role in the continuity and solidarity of the group. Initially, Rabbi Nathan, the favorite desciple of Nachman, played a crucial role in diffusing Nachman's teachings and institutionalizing the Kibuts. By the end of the 19th century, the teaching of Rabbi Nachman spread to Poland and the pilgrimage to Uman reached the peak of its popularity. The outbreak of World War I and the October Revolution with its aftermath made pilgrimage to Uman extremely difficult. The new socio-political conditions caused many a Hasidim abroad to give up any idea of a pilgrimage, while the new reality stimulated the Hasidim's imagination and generated a more adventurous spirit. On the other hand, the Hasidim who remained in the Soviet Union, preserved the Kibuts under incredibly difficult circumstances. In this way the Soviet reality generated various alternatives for the Hasidim both inside and outside the country without extinguishing their hopes completely. During the last decade, this period of revival has fundamentally changed the nature of the pilgrimage. No longer forbidden, the authorities have made the pilgrimage legal. Second, accessibility to Uman has transformed the pilgrimage into a quasi-tourist mass event. Finally, the scale and publicity of the revived pilgrimage has generated a "contested landscape" between the Jewish pilgrims and their local gentile hosts. Paradoxically enough, the unstable nature of the pilgrimage to Uman was revealed when the revived tradition seemed to have built a firm foundation for further development. Serious antagonism concerning the place of worship (Uman or Jerusalem?) developed between the central Ashkenazi Hasidim and a marginal group called the "Nachnachim." Although the focal point of their disagreement concerned whether or not the grave should be transferred to Jerusalem, this difference seems to concern their attitudes and sentiments toward the place of the burial and their struggle for control over the master's grave. While the former group has always considered Uman an unpararelled sacred place and has tried to preserve its old tradition, the latter group has attempted to popularize Nachman's cult in Israel. Although Uman has won the battle for its holiness, the dispute revealed the essential uncertainty of Jewish sacred places outside Israel. Uman is inseparably bound to the collective memory of the Breslover Hasidim and it has always been considered more of a sacred place than any other in Diaspora. However, this centrality of Uman as a sacred place is essentially ambiguous. These facts underscore the unstable relationship between Jewish people and their places of residence in Diaspora. Thus the phenomenon of the pilgrimage to Uman serves as a thought-provoking example, which makes us contemplate the unique spatial identities of Jewish people in general.
著者
相沢 直樹
出版者
北海道大学スラブ研究センター
雑誌
スラヴ研究 (ISSN:05626579)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.37, pp.43-83, 1990
著者
奥 彩子
出版者
北海道大学スラブ研究センター
雑誌
スラヴ研究 (ISSN:05626579)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.50, pp.1-31, 2003

Hourglass (1972) is the last book of the autobiographical trilogy of Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš (1935-1989). This novel is based on a real letter that Kiš's father wrote to his sister Olga on April 5th 1942. Kiš puts it in the last chapter of the novel as "Letter or Contents." Though the letter (which is full of complaints and grudges against relatives) illustrates the agony of the Jews in those times, for the son it is a precious "document" of his father who disappeared in Auschwitz. The novel Hourglass reconstructs the father's psychology and his acts, attempting to recreate his world. Examining the structure of the novel, its technical aspects and the hero, this paper focuses on how Hourglass fulfills the task of modern novels, which is, according to Milan Kundera, to present a new cognition of human existence. This paper starts by pointing out the differences between Halics and the other two books from the trilogy, Garden, Ashes (1965) and Early Sorrows (1969). The trilogy shares the same background -- Hungary and Vojvodina (a northern area in the former Yugoslavia) during World War II. In contrast to the first two books, where the main character is a boy named Andy, Hourglass has only one protagonist, E.S., who is that boy's father. The most important difference is the divergence of the narratives' viewpoint. In Hourglass, "objective narration" becomes an aim of the novel, as the narrator disappears. The paper further discusses some autobiographical facts about the author. The novel, which consists of 67 segments, is built upon four chapters "Travel Scenes" (20 segments), "Notes of a Madman" (34 segments), "Criminal Investigation" (9 segments), "A Witness Interrogated" (2 segments), as well as the two segments "Prologue" and "Letter or Contents." It is evident that this novel is a variation of a poetic form "Glosa," and that "Notes of a Madman" could be considered as a leitmotiv with its substitution of letters for chapters. Furthermore, by examining a chronology of "Letter or Contents" and the text, it turns out that all the events took place in the hero's consciousness during the single night of April 4th to April 5th, 1942. The number of the segments of text is equal to the Bible's 66 books, suggesting that the book could be considered as "a Holy Book". All the chapters could be read as if they had been written from the hero's viewpoint. In other words, the whole story is made up of E. S.'s experiences or delusions. Even the third person narration in "Prologue" and "Travel Scenes" expresses E. S.'s internal images. Furthermore, the paper emphasises that in Hourglass, the story is subdivided in order to reject the reader's empathy. This style could be described as "disnarrative." The paper also examines a number of techniques used for the segmentation: exaggeration of details, usage of images, enumeration, and recursive structure. The text of the "Novel in a Novel" suggests that the novel Hourglass is based upon an original recursive structure. The character of the hero is analyzed, especially from the perspective of his religion. The fact that he is a Jew is not presented at the beginning but emerges thoughout the story. E. S. is not an Orthodox Jew, nor has he completely assimilated into European society. In Hourglass, at the moment he reveals his Star of David, he accepts himself as a Jew, thus becoming subject to forced labour, only to face an even more horrible experience, the Massacre of Novi Sad. Under severe political and social pressure, through agony, hallucination, and a crisis of self-division, E. S. deepens his speculation concerning God, Humanity, and Nature. E. S.'s "real self" becomes a complete existence at the moment his own internal religion harmonizes with the appearance of God. In the last segment of the text, E. S. tries to accept his death with a calm equanimity, just as Noah accepted the destiny of the world and the human race. In the conclusion, the paper discusses Hourglass as the book of the world. Kiš describes his father's book Guidebook in his short autobiography as a "literal heritage," and in Garden, Ashes as "a Holy Book" or "Apocrypha." As a starting point when writing Hourglass, Kiš used the idea of a book as a metaphore for the world, which has a fertile tradition in European literature. To escape the deluge of the Pannonian Sea, E. S., as Noah himself, tries to load the ark with human beings, flora and fauna, all creatures and their experiences. In other words, at night, under the oil lamp, hearing the waves of history, with a pen, by writing letters, he tries to create a book or an ark, which carries the whole world. Hourglass is a true novel which is the reproduction of Noah's attempt to recreate the world and human beings, by the act of writing about one era and the world, through recording one man's entire experiences and emotions, without missing any details. Id est, Hourglass is the book of the world. For this recreation, Kiš concentrates on such structural aspects of the novel of such as the arrangement of chapters, disnarration, fragmentation of timeflow, etc. But the book could have never been written without the symbiosis of Kiš's and his father Eduard's character - E. S. Through this figure, Kiš finally reaches his aim - objective narration. Hourglass fulfills the task of modern novels, telling us that the book, as a metaphor for the world, even now can become an ark for the regenesis of all creatures, who resist death with all their might.