Exchange with Dr. Rotenberg about His Submission for "The Library of Jewish Law and Ethics" (1985)
Dear Professor Lamm, According to your suggestion, I am hereby enclosing a tentative Table of Contents, a short preface, and two pages of my book: Re-biographing: The Midrash and Psychotherapeutic Narrativism. In the proposed book, I attempt to extend the theory of dialogue and continuity which follows from my analysis of the Hasidic Ethic, by showing that it is the Midrashic system which explains Jewish survival and progress. It thus demonstrates how, contrary to an unchangeable “original-sin”-based Oedipal psychology, one’s “I” (past failure) may enter into a therapeutic dialogue with one’s “thou” (future) through a “teshuva”-anchored reinterpretation of one’s past.I hope that you will find the manuscript suitable for the series on Law and Ethics, although it does not deal directly with Jewish Law.Sincerely yours,PINCHAS ROTENBERGMR/nren.