Language:
English
Year of publication:
2008
Titel der Quelle:
Literature and Theology
Angaben zur Quelle:
22,2 (2008) 180-194
Keywords:
Bible. Criticism, interpretation, etc.
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
Abstract:
Reflects on two problems pertaining to Psalm 137: why the psalmist calls Babylon, at whose waters he is sitting, "there" and not "here"; and why the exiles refuse to sing the Lord's song on their captors' request. Compares the situation of the psalmist and the exiles to that of Simon Srebnik, a survivor of the Chełmno death camp, who sang for the Nazis' amusement "while his heart wept", as is shown in Claude Lanzmann's documentary "Shoah". Such a comparison can help one to understand and to interpret properly the psalmist's predicament. The psalmist, who is stuck in Babylon, could reject this place as "here" or could lose a habitual center of his world. The exiles to Babylon also had various motives to reject singing: because it was trivialization of the Lord's song, because it was a betrayal of the integrity of weeping, and because it could traumatize the singers. Srebnik, in the Nazi camp, overstepped all these caveats - he agreed to sing, which emphasized his sense of humiliation and the catastrophe of the Holocaust.
DOI:
10.1093/litthe/frn008
URL:
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