Synopsis
"Moses and Monotheism", Freud's last major book and the only one specifically devoted to a Jewish theme, has proved to be one of the most controversial and enigmatic works in the Freudian canon. Among other things, Freud claims in the book that Moses was an Egyptian, that he derived the notion of monotheism from Egyptian concepts, and that after he introduced monotheism to the Jews he was killed by them. Since these historical and ethnographic assumptions have been generally rejected by biblical scholars, anthropologists, and historians of religion, the book has increasingly been approached psychoanalytically, as a psychological document of Freud's inner life - of his allegedly unresolved Oedipal complex and ambivalence over his Jewish identity. In "Freud's Moses" an historian of the Jews brings a new perspective to this puzzling work. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi argues that while attempts to psychoanalyze Freud's text may be potentially fruitful, they must be preceded by a genuine effort to understand what Freud consciously wanted to convey to his readers. Using both historical and philological analysis, Yerushalmi offers new insights into Freud's intentions in writing "Moses and Monotheism". He presents the work as Freud's psychoanalytic history of the Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish psyche - his attempt, under the shadow of Nazism, to discover what has made the Jews what they are. In the process Yerushalmi's exploration of Freud's last work provides a reappraisal of Freud's feelings toward anti-Semitism and the gentile world, his ambivalence about psychoanalysis as a "Jewish" science, his relationship to his father, and above all a new appreciation of the depth and intensity of Freud's identity as a "godless Jew".
Reviews
Delivered as a series of lectures at Columbia, Yale, Smith, and in Paris, this eloquent, scholarly, and perceptive study explores the significance of Moses and Monotheism, Freud's last major work, written in 1934 when the impending Holocaust led him to reflect on his own Jewish identity and on psychoanalysis as a ``Jewish science.'' Yerushalmi (Professor and Director, Center for Israel and Jewish Studies/Columbia) treats Moses and Monotheism as a historical as well as a psychological document, tracing its origins to a 1822 text by Ernst Sellin, the first to claim that Moses was an Egyptian who gave monotheism to the Jews, rescued them, and in turn was slain by them in retaliation against the strict regulations he imposed on them. The murder of the father, the repression, guilt, and rehabilitation or return became part of the Jewish character, according to Freud--an inherited characteristic. In the last chapter, a dramatic monologue with Freud, Yerushalmi applies the theory to Freud himself, a secular Jew, with Freud as Moses and his father as the god who gave him a sacred text, a personally inscribed Bible with the implied mandate that he accept his Jewish heritage. In ``deferred obedience,'' he writes Moses and Monotheism and, identifying with an Egyptian rather than a Jewish Moses, expiates his guilt for rejecting his father. The text in turn becomes the ``Torah'' to the psychoanalytic movement in its ``diaspora'' following WW II. In the end, however, being a Jew to Freud was ``something miraculous'' and ``inaccessible to any analysis.'' A stimulating study (including Freud's original manuscript and unpublished letters to his father, all in German) that has ranging implications for students of Judaism, religion, Freud, and the psychoanalytic movement. Cautious, penetrating, well- focused, it raises many interesting and original questions. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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