T.Mudd

Abstract

For ten years now, I've been reading and re-reading six particular pages of the Babylonian Talmud, which confront some confounding questions of messianism. I'm not a scholar of Talmud; I really have no business digging around in this foundational tome of rabbinic Judaism. And yet, these six pages persist in their invitation – again and again – to consider catastrophe, caesura, mourning, and morning joe via dialogue, debate, parable, mathematical calculation, geopolitical commentary, conspiracy theory, and seemingly dadaist non-sequitur. T.MUDD is a performance investigation with new music that moves back and forth between these varying Talmudic registers and modes of address in the hopes of moving us just a little bit closer to (or perhaps way further away from) answering the persistent questions: Just what are we waiting for? And what should we do while we wait – for the end without end?

Notes

1 What’s the Talmud? Well, there’s the Old Testament Bible. Then there’s the Mishnah, which is a collection of oral laws that serve as a kind of extended elaboration on the Bible. And the Talmud is an expansive interpretation of or elaboration on the Mishnah’s sixty-three tractates, eventually compiled by a series of editors in exile in Babylonia in about the seventh century CE.

2 Black Coffee, from the soundtrack for the film Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960), recorded on Verve by Ella Fitzgerald. Spotify:

3 The eleventh and final chapter of Talmudic tractate Sanhedrin contains a six-page discussion of messiah (96b to 99a). Somewhat surprisingly, these pages are the only prolonged engagement with messiah in the Talmud’s 5,422 pages. And like most Talmud pages, these six bring together a range of interpretive texts, debates, teachings, stories, ethical investigations, philosophical enquiries, bits of folklore, riddles, equations and a healthy dose of (mostly) mystical Dada composed in exile.

4 If you are not a German speaker, perhaps you will permit unmeaning to brew. If not, some translation help does arrive in Section X. 5 Music composed by Daniel Kluger. Sheet music can be found on pages 80–1.

5 Music composed by Daniel Kluger. Sheet music can be found on pages 80–1.

6 Also from that six-page section of Talmudic tractate Sanhedrin.

7 Music composed by Stew. Sheet music can be found on pages 82–5.

8 In a translation by Pierre Joris.

9 A version of which also appears in Talmudic tractate Sanhedrin. And which Kafka must surely have read, no?

10 Macchiato for the Sake by The Big Passport (2017). Soundcloud:

11 This text-based iteration of a muddy work that took on a variety of performance forms along the way owes extra special thanks to: Elad Lapidot, Dennis Johannßen, Lauren Mancia, Isa Spector, Linda Mancini, Matthew Korahais, Daniel Kluger, Stew, Tina Petereit, Jenny Seastone, Ben Gassman, Ronit Muszkatblit, Liel Leibovitz and David Herskovits.