Midrash and Myth

While I think those of you who've commented on midrash understand what midrash is supposed to do, you're still having trouble articulating exactly how it does it, though Aidan's comments were definitely on the right track. What the midrashim in Exodus Rabbah and in the Passover Haggadah do is make the past story of the Exodus present! They do so in several ways. By "updating" the details of the stories and adding conversations between the characters in more contemporary idioms, or even by speaking directly to the reader in rhetorical questions and imperatives, it makes the story seem less archaic; it kind of collapses the gap in time between the Passover then and the Passover now.

Or as Marguerite put it,
"The idea of time is broken down into ‘Time-Past, Time Now, and Time to Come. At first glance one would think that they were three very distinct in separate times, but the Midrash and the sacred myth can take something that happened in Time Past and relate it to something in Time to come."

The Haggadah, by having its participants not only retell the story but re-enact it by eating the symbolic foods - matzah, bitter herb, wine - that convey parts of the story - the joy of redemption, the bitterness of slavery - in sensual, affective, immediate experiences, gets them virtually to hear and to "taste" the story of the Exodus, internalize it in a very real, more than merely cognitive way. A myth like this is felt to be "really real" because it is not just passively heard, but actively, aggressively experienced and reinforced on a variety of sensory levels.

Also, the particular strategy of the petichta (proem) style midrash on Ex. 1:1 about Jacob and his sons, emphasizes the paradigmatic and recurring patterns of the Israelites' story, namely, the "fathers are a sign for the children" creative historiographic strategy of the midrash. The interlocking chain of midrashim go through the generations showing how each new generation re-enacts what its parents did. The present readers of the midrash intuitively recognize themselves as the latest link in the chain of the recurring pattern of God's interaction with the Jewish people. That sense that we're acting out the same paradigmatic old story is another important, distinctive quality of myth.

I'd like to go so far as to say that if it weren't for the midrashic interpretations and ritual performances of the Exodus story, it would be just an interesting story of antiquarian interest, but not the powerful sacred myth of the Jewish people. As I said at the beginning of the course, it's what people do with a text that makes it a sacred scripture, not necessarily anything inherent in its form. If the Torah contains the sacred myths of the Jewish people, it seems that it requires something like the process of midrash to activate their potential as myths, that is, their symbolic power, experientially self-evident truth and relevance in the life of the community.