Being for Myself Alone

Marcus Moseley is Associate Professor of German and Jewish Studies at Northwestern University and has taught Hebrew and Yiddish Literature at New York University, Harvard University, and Johns Hopkins University.

"This is one of the most ambitious and accomplished first books I have read in some time. Marcus Moseley correctly assesses the importance of the emergence of the autobiography as a prime--though neglected--cultural index of the modernization of the Jews of Eastern Europe, and he conducts a thorough investigation of the presuppositions and implications of this assessment. . . . Throughout, one is aware of the presence of a guiding critical intelligence of a high order. . . . The book is illuminating for the reader interested in either Jewish studies or modern cultural history."—Arnold Band, University of California, Los Angeles "Marcus Moseley's Being for Myself Alone is truly engrossing. The erudition, the astonishing range of material examined and the unusual intensity of the argument combine to make the reading of this book a rare intellectual pleasure. At one level, it is novelistic, introducing us to a remarkable number of fascinating and often bizarre individuals; while at another, it is an extended and highly sophisticated scholarly essay on the theory of autobiography. What a rewarding work this is for anybody interested in the history and culture of the Jews over the last few centuries, particularly in Eastern Europe."—Jonathan Frankel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem "Marcus Moseley's study of the emergence of the autobiographical genre among Jews is a sprawling, original, and enormously erudite tour of three centuries of literary and intellectual history the impact of Being for Myself Alone on the study of Jewish autobiography can scarcely be overstated. Marcus Moseley makes a vast cultural landscape come alive, transforming not just what we are able to see, but how we see it." - Biography

• CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS... 1. AUTOBIOGRAPHY: THE ELUSIVE SUBJECT...7 Generic Dilemmas...7 Rousseau's Confessions as Autobiographical Paradigm ...11 The "Children of Jean Jacques" in Jewish Eastern Europe...19 In and Around the Self: The Critical Discourse...24 2. INTERTEXTUAL RELATIONS: JEWISH AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ENCOUNTERS...58 Autobiography as "Text"/Autobiography as "Discourse"...58 Symptoms of Transition: The Crystallization of Autobiographical Discourse...62 Cross-Cultural Fashionings of the Sel...66 Arrested Development: The Constitution of a Jewish Autobiographical Field...70 III. AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS READING...100 The "Tradition Model for the Study of Jewish Autobiography...100 Sephardic Origins I: Valley and Vision: Abraham Yagel's Gei hizzayon...114 Sephardic Origins II: "Un coup de des n'abolira jamais le hasard": Yehudah Aryeh Modena's Hayyei yehudah...135 Early-Modern Autobiography in Ashkenaz I: Scrolls of Lamentation and Lament...179 Early Modern Autobiography in Ashkenaz II: The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln...187 The Function of the First Person in Pre-Modern Jewish Narrative: An Overview...208 IV. PRE-MODERN JEWISH AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE RADICAL HERMENEUTICS OF MICHAH YOSEF BERDICHEVSKY...283 Worlds within Worlds...283 The Voice of the Individual and the Burden of Inheritance: Berdichevsky's Autobiographical Counter-Tradition...301 The Crystallization of an Autobiographical Hermeneutic...307 Michah Yosef Berdichevsky Before the Speculum of Bin Gorion: The Collected Works as Encylopaedia...347 From Re-Collection to Recollection: The Great Memory of Bin-Gorion...354 Miriam: The Summing Up...361 V. JEWISH AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITING AT THE TIME OF ROUSSEAU...413 Synchronicities...413 Jacob Emden's Megillat sefer...415 Nathan of Nemirov's Yemei maharnat...438 VI. DOMESTICATING ROUSSEAU: MORDECHAI AARON GUENZBERG'S AVIEZER...473 "I am not the father of this book, rather its mother, for in pain did I bear it"...473 The Conception of the Child...484 Generation and Gender: Discourses on Power...492 Autobiographies in Dialogue: From Aviezer to Hatt'ot ne'urim...506 VII. RAMIFICATIONS OF THE SELF: CULTURAL LANDSCAPES OF JEWISH AUTOBIOGRAPHY...531 Autobiography against Autobiography: Traditionalist Versions of the Self...531 The Semiotics of Autobiographical Behaviour...565 Buried Autobiographies...574 Summons to Autobiography/Response...589 Matrices of the Jewish Autobiographical Self...596 "Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future,/And time future contained in time past."...610 Notes to Chapter XX BIBLIOGRAPHY...656 Index