Discussion+Questions+Week+4

__terms__
 * Haim Hazaz, //The End of Days//**
 * Ashkenaz:** medieval Hebrew term for Germany
 * Cohen:** a Jew who is descended from Aaron the biblical high priest, and so given certain honors and obligations in traditional Judaism
 * Eretz Yisrael:** the Land of Israel
 * Korach:** led a rebellion against Moses in the Bible (cf. Numbers 16)


 * 1) How do Yost, Oleck, and Breinle respond to the messianic expectation?
 * 2) What does Yost mean when he says: “The God who saved us from Antiochus [2nd century BCE persecutor of the Jews] and the wicked Titus [1st c. CE Roman emperor] will save us from the Messiah” (22).
 * 3) How would you characterize Yuzpa? What does redemption mean for this character?
 * 4) Explain the exchange on page 34:

**YUTA** Can sin bring the Messiah? **YUZPA** When it negates all that exists and all accepted notions and breaks down boundaries to clear the way for redemption! To descend to the depths — that is the doctrine of redemption!

5. What positions do the Rabbi and Yuzpa represent in their conflict in Act 2? What is the nature of their disagreement? Who is presented as more sympathetic? 6. What is Yuzpa’s critique of “Diaspora”—that is, of traditional Jewish existence, its social and ideological structures, its response to persecution and powerlessness? 7. Where does the play appear to be commenting upon specifically Jewish revolutionary change such as Zionism, and where does it appear to speak more generally to the dynamics of modern revolutionary ideologies of any sort? 8. What is the function of the paupers in the play? 9. How does the doctrine of the two messiahs appear in the play?

__terms__
 * Isaac Bashevis Singer,** //**Satan in Goray**//
 * Anan and the Karaites:** early medieval Jewish split-off group that rejected rabbinic authority
 * bathhouse**: in traditional Judaism women are required to undergo ritual immersion in water following the end of their period before they may resume sexual relations with their husbands
 * council of the Four Lands:** the main institution of Polish Jewish autonomy in the 16th and 17th centuries, essentially a kind of Jewish state within the Polish crown.
 * deserted wives:** in traditional Jewish law a woman needs a legal bill of divorce in order to remarry, meaning that a grass widow is sometimes prohibited from remarrying without definitive proof of her husband’s death.
 * dybbuk:** in Jewish folklore, a dead spirit that possesses the living; a poltergeist
 * Elul**: early autumn
 * pilpul**: pyrotechnic sort of Talmudic dialectical logic that emerged in 16th-century Poland; its opponents charged that it favored displayes cleverness over substance
 * priest**: in reference to Jews, a Cohen (see Haim Hazaz notes above)
 * ritual slaughterer:** in a traditional Jewish community, his task is to slaughter animals for consumption according to Jewish dietary law (the animal may not be sick, it must be killed as quickly and painlessly as possible, only certain parts of the animal may be eaten, the meat must be salted to remove blood, etc.).
 * Rosh Hashana**: the Jewish New Year, takes place in fall
 * Samuel and Eli**: cf. I Samuel 1.
 * Sephardim**: Jews of Spanish descent, as opposed to Ashkenazim (Jews of northern or east European descent)


 * 1) The narrator repeatedly emphasizes Goray’s isolation. How important is the town’s isolation to the events of the novel and the experience of reading it?
 * 2) How does the novel position us, the readers, in relation to the supernatural? Are we meant to believe the statements concerning supernatural events?
 * 3) How would you characterize the different relationships of the following characters toward Sabbatianism: Mordecai Joseph, Itche Mates, Gedaliya?
 * 4) What is the effect of the shift in narrative technique in the final two chapters? How and where else does Singer use formal or non-novelistic genres of discourse?
 * 5) How does the novel portray butchers, ritual slaughtering of animals and meat consumption?
 * 6) What is the reason for the dybbuk’s punishment? How might that resonate for contemporary readers?
 * 7) Rechele’s torments: why does the novel linger so long over them?
 * 8) What do you make of the “moral” of the last page? Is it the moral of the novel as well as the didactic/sensationalist chronicle?
 * 9) We have read three different literary portrayals of the effect of the Sabbatian fervor on small central or east European towns. What does Hazaz add to Wasserman’s account? What does Singer add to the other two?
 * 10) Compare the role of non-Jews in each of the three “Sabbatian” texts we’ve read.