Loving is stronger than death, muses W.: what do you think that means? Do you have any idea? With love, for Rosenzweig, W. explains, you leave behind the natural order, the boundaries of self and ego. Immanence is broken: that's what it means to love. Love is stronger than death, stronger than solitude, stronger than autonomy: that's what Rosenzweig says, it's very moving.
Are we capable of love?, W. muses. Is he? Am I? – 'Have you ever been love with anyone, I mean, really in love?' W. doubts it. I read too many gossip magazines, for one thing. Love's not based on fantasy, as I seem to think. It's an ethical act. – 'But you're not capable of that, are you?' I'm fundamentally a fantasiser, says W., and know nothing about the living reality of other human beings.
Everything is about speech for Rosenzweig, W. says we pass by the refugees who gather in the sun at the bottom of the street. It's about being addressed, and addressing the other, the neighbour in turn. The commandment to love your neighbour is, for Rosenzweig, identical to that of loving God.
But this means the word 'you' should terrify us, W. says. It terrifies him. It implies a pained awareness of imperfection and terrible guilt. W. feels it, he says: he always feels guilty before the other person, even me. He should give me the food from his mouth, he says, as we eat pain au chocolats. - 'Do you want some?', he says, opening his mouth. Should he feed me like a baby bird?
Of course, by speech, what Rosenzweig really has in mind is the liturgy of the synagogue, W. says. Speech, for him is collective, and it is lived as Judaism, in the Jewish liturgy. That's how God is witnessed, and the neighbour. Likewise, if God speaks to us, it is only through the Bible.
Broken immanence: that should be the name of our new intellectual movement, W. says, or of an 80s pop band similar to Flock of Seagulls. The Broken immanentists: is that who we are? But to have a movement, you have to have ideas, to stand for something. What is it we stand for?
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