Responsa Literature: partial replies to scattered letters
J. R. Carpenter
Abstract: The term “responsa literature” refers to all written rulings made by rabbis under Jewish law, in response to questions submitted to them in writing, throughout the post-Talmudic period. Initially, the great distances that separated Diaspora Jewry from the scholars of Babylon necessitated this type of question and response law making. Montréal poet Anne Carson has written: “People in exile write so many letters.” She speaks of Ovid who, nightly, “puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing.” I was, in effect, born in exile. A first generation Canadian, I spent much of my early life writing letters to my grandmother, trying to piece together a story for her of who I was and to elicit from her some idea of where I had come from. She rarely wrote back. When she died I found that she had saved my letters, stuffed in no apparent order, into books and piles and drawers. I have since become fascinated with collections of letters. In this paper, I will draw on letters, literature and historical sources to discuss ways in which contemporary forms of diaspora, as may result from divorce, emigration, or economic migration, alter family narratives. I will explore some of the ways in which media and communication technologies have forever altered the responsa form. Letter writing has re-emerged, in the form of email. Does the immediacy of this question and response mode of communicating bring us any closer to piecing together an idea of who we are and where we come from?
Presentation Friday May 6, 2005
Call Session 2, 5 – 6:30
Room 56-167, MIT
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