The Suffering [M]other: Refigurations of Mary in Twentieth Century Jewish Thought

Abstract: Previous scholarship has studied the figuration of Jesus of Nazareth as the suffering “other” in twentieth century Jewish thought (Hoffman 2007, Stahl 2012). Following the maternal turn (Benjamin 2018), I look to read how Jewish authors read Jesus’ grieving mother Mary as a site of loss, grief, and survival in the context of the Holocaust. Reading with Benjamin, Fackenheim (1968), and Levinas (1982), I assess the figuration of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in three pieces of twentieth century Jewish cultural and intellectual production: Anna Margolin’s 1929 Mary cycle, the anonymous poem “To the Mother of Our Generation” (“Tsu der mamen fun undzer dur”) from the Ringelblum archives, and Marc Chagall’s 1976 “Descent from the Cross” (“La descente de croix”). With attention to the movement of grief, gender, and embodiment, I argue that in contrast to the figuration of Jesus as suffering “other” and victim, in twentieth century Jewish thought, Mary emerges as a symbol of the suffering survivor.