Light and counterlight: the mimetic dialogue between Hagadah and Haskalah in the narrative of Heinrich Heine’s the rabbi of bacherach

Abstract

On the Jewish situation as it was perceived by H. Heine in his historical period – that is, on the fragmentation of the social, cultural and religious unity which had endured in Jewish communities until mid 18th and 19th centuries –
this article envisages working on social components such as the emancipation and gentrification of the Jewish communities in Western Europe, when opposed to the general feeling of "decadence" of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. The Rabbi of Bacherach, fragment of a novel written by H. Heine in 1840, tells of the legendary Rabbi Abraham and his commune on the banks of the
Rhine. In this article, I propose that it is the Rabbi the one to promote the symbolic rising between brutality and culture, being therefore active in H. Heine's personal
project of promoting the acculturation and emancipation of the Eastern Jewish communities. My intention is to analyze the possible ways in which certain passages of the book symbolically mimic such an emancipation process.