Hear It, Say It, Do It, Feel It: Total Devotion through Torah in Rabbinic Parables

In my paper I will focus on selected mini-narratives or parables from Sifre Devarim, the prominent surviving classical rabbinic interpretation to the Biblical book of Deuteronomy, dated to 3rd century Palestine, and the embedded ideals of devotion therein. This text emphasizes Torah study and observance as the ultimate form of worship (SD 41 and elsewhere). However, the practical meaning of Torah study and observance unfolds through narrative parables about the relationship between the deity and the devotees as an emotional relationship. Various statements refer to material qualities of the text such as its oral pronunciation and sound, most likely referring to the recitation of the Shema, or its materiality as scripture, especially in direct contact with the body, most likely referring to the ritual of tefillin (Shanks Alexander 2011). These practices must be considered as a background to parables such as in SD 43 and in SD 45, where the Torah is represented by material elements put on the body, especially on its upper part. The emphasis on material Torah worship is better understood considering the contemporary social circumstances, in which only a tiny portion of the Jewish Palestinian population has been literate (Hezser 2001, 2019). Emotionally, such rituals were associated with protection of the marked, dedicated subject by a superior force, represented in the narrative as a loving patriarch. The absence of these rituals, on the other hand, is at least implicitly associated with the severe punishment of abandonment, exposing the helpless subject to great danger. Thus, resembling neighboring cultures, the construction of religious devotion has been based primarily on the emotions of hope and fear (Chaniotis 2013). In accordance with affective narratology (Hogan 2011, 2016) The parables construct this emotional system by means of simulation, through identification with the figure whose point of view is given in the story, usually the subject.