Coralie Camilli Interview | Alex Gilbert #264.2

Coralie Camilli, substitute philosophy professor at the Military Health School (ESA) and French boxing champion, published L’art du combat (Puf) in 2020, Jours de grâce et de violence (Vérone éditions), and Insulaires (Puf) in 2023.

Brotherhood in judaism (Part 2)

… And it continues! Jacob has a son, Joseph. According to the biblical account, Joseph is the favorite son of his father, Jacob/Israel. This paternal preference, symbolized by a tunic given to him at 17 years old, arouses the jealousy of Joseph’s half-brothers. One day, while Joseph is sent to join his brothers who are tending the flock, they plot against him. The eldest, Reuben, does not want Joseph to be killed. Instead, he is stripped and thrown into a pit. Judah suggests selling Joseph to a caravan of Ishmaelite merchants. But Midianite traders passing by pull Joseph out of the cistern and sell him for twenty pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites, who take him to Egypt. His brothers use the tunic and lamb’s blood to make their father, Jacob, believe that Joseph has died. Jacob is inconsolable. And it is no accident that Joseph’s story takes place at this point in the biblical narrative.

Joseph’s story serves to build the ethnic belonging of the collective of Israel—that is, the national identity—despite successive failures. It pertains to the space where the cultural and the biological typically overlap, the concrete foundation that gave substance to the otherwise hollow forms of citizenship. Typically, this is the most pragmatic foundation: the people of a place are automatically citizens of the state, extending across all the space delimited by borders. Membership in the collective is both based on self-identity (commanded by the territory, where all who are born are nationals) and on the rejection of the other, beyond its borders.

This “natural” nationality is based on the principle of identity: there is no gap, no void; everything is full. The emptiness is outside. This is the classical structure of sovereignty.

Such a “natural” nationality is based on the principle of identity: there is no gap, no emptiness, everything is full. The void is outside. This is the classic structure of sovereignty. Where the history of the failure of Joseph’s brotherhood becomes interesting is that its essential articulations suggest something entirely different: Joseph, whose very name signifies “that which is added”, represents the experience and the problem of Israel to assemble itself, to form a people, to construct its multiplicity, and to give it meaning. Born “in excess,” Joseph is destined to disappear endlessly and reappear again; his surplus (also symbolized in the biblical text by his dreams of sovereignty) generates a surplus of hatred. This rejection of the Josephic principle of sovereignty leads to Joseph’s expulsion from the brotherhood of the tribes. But it is from his reintegration that the most concrete survival of the people will depend, when faced with famine. Joseph, sold abroad and expelled from the tribal land, allows the clan of brothers to better possess the original land.

But he will always be missing, the land will dry up to the point of famine, and without consciously realizing it, the people will go in search of him and eventually regroup around him, in a position of total dependence—Joseph, who is now in a royal position on foreign land. A failed murder, or rather a reintegration of surplus? The fratricidal murder can be seen as a failed concealment. Objectively, Joseph remains hidden at the bottom of a well by his brothers, although there was debate (marhloquèt) about whether it was better to kill him or not. He is thus hidden and not assassinated. The concealment of Joseph by his brothers creates the collectivity of Israel, but also keeps it in a state of incompletion, in an expectation where the future is suspended and where the desire for this collectivity is projected.

This concealment is a hiding of the one within the multiple that is being forged, and which will incessantly strive to rejoin him. Like the divine, Joseph is the one who is preserved within the multiple. This unity emerges as an addition to the multiple, as the absolute one through which the multiple is conceived and founded—the one (hidden) that underlies the very possibility of the manifested multiple. With Joseph, brotherhood becomes the vector of a constitutive trial for the entity of Israel.
Thus, we transition from the fraternal model to the institutional model.

The transition from a transmission between brothers—which fails—to a transmission between masters and disciples, which is advocated, occurs during the period of the “zougot” pairs, couples of masters who studied together. For example, Yossi Ben Yoézer of Tzéreda and Yossef Ben Yochanan of Jerusalem, Ben Tabï and Shimon Ben Shetach, Shemaya and Avtalyon, Hillel and Shammai. This period is more fruitful than the purely horizontal relationship, but it still retains a fraternal rivalry, which is expressed through the opposition of schools, notably the two study houses of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. However, following the fraternal stories mentioned above, the people of Israel attempt to put an end to violence, and it is through the study of the Torah that the question arises again, albeit in different terms: henceforth, since the horizontal relationship between brothers has always resulted in failure, hopes of establishing an exemplary relational model are transferred to the vertical relationship between master and disciple.

This importance of intellectual transmission and the values it conveys is expressed by the famous formula: “Talmud Torah keneged kulam”: “The study of Torah surpasses all other commandments.”

According to the Talmud (Eruvin 54b), the transmission from the Written Law to the Oral Law took place as follows: “Moses would enter his tent; Aaron would follow and sit opposite him (the disciple must always face his master and see him, comments Rashi). Moses would then teach him the Written Law, i.e., the exact formulation of the text, and then the oral commentaries. Then Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron’s two sons, would enter. Aaron would rise and sit to Moses’ left. The two sons would sit opposite Moses and Aaron, and Moses would repeat the same teaching for the first time. Then the seventy elders would enter (…). The elders, facing Moses, would hear the teaching, which he repeated for the second time. The delegates of the people would then enter (…). The delegates, facing Moses, would hear the teaching that Moses repeated for the third time. Thus, Aaron heard the teaching four times, his sons three times, the elders twice, and the delegates once. Then, Moses would leave. Aaron would then teach the lesson: his sons would have heard it four times, the elders three times, and the delegates twice. And so forth, until all had heard it four times. Then, the delegates would return to the people and teach it in turn. The text of the Written Law was then transcribed on parchments, and the Oral Law was memorized through assiduous repetition.”

This text is instructive: it reveals that Moses taught his brother Aaron as a master teaches his disciple. For teaching to pass on, for transmission to occur, it is necessary to transform the relationship of brotherhood into a relationship of mastery, which presupposes an initial inequality: Moses possesses knowledge before his brother Aaron, and the latter needs Moses to learn.

For the rest of the article (Part 3), click here