the Sefer as a challenge to Reception Theories

Abstract

The talmudic sages granted the legal status of sefer (book) to five texts: the Torah, tefillin , the get , the mezuzah , and the Scroll of Esther. These texts share two features: they have a ritualistic format and use, and they are the only sacred texts that demonstrate mise en abyme —the trait of literary self-containing. These two traits turn the rabbinic book into a radical case of “open work”: the sefer consists of both textual signs and the actual body of an empirical reader; its pragmatic level is not bracketed out in favor of the semiotic one. I argue that Deleuze’s reception theory best accounts for the sefer .