DOI: 10.24308/iass-2014-091

Università di Torino, Italy

Doctor Honoris Causa of New Bulgarian University

volli.ugo@gmail.com

1. Religios signs

Although in the monotheistic faiths God is believed to be eternal, religions[1] live in the time and trough the time. They often remember their own beginning (their first contact with God or revelation), and they usually preview also an end for the world (hence necessarily also for themselves).  In every human societiy they are among the most important factors of culturally shaping time. They are able to extract from the continuity of time different, separated, non-daily (i.e. sacred)[2] moments often coming again with a regular rhythm (every day, every week, every month, every year or even following longer units, as it is the case of the Jewish and later Christian jubilee, which came again every 50 years). Religions produce this way their liturgical cycles, which often mark the rhythm of the entire social life. These recurrent sacred occasions can be classified as holidays or fasts, prayers or meditations, social or individual activities, interdictions or obligations, pilgrimages and retreats. These qualitative distinctions of different kinds of religious activities are very important but not relevant for this paper. What matters here is that all of them are intended to add a real meaning to the usually flat and meaningless human life, breaking the unchanging rhythm of daily activities with the insertion of dense signifying moments, or at least to show this sense, to make it more relevant just in these moments. Therefore they must be meaningful by themselves.

Therefore, the first requirement for a time to become religiously relevant and so to become a “holy-day” is to have meaning. There is no such a thing as a meaningless, random holiday. Using a rather obsolete but effective terminology, one should say that every  religious occasion, just because it is religious, must be a sign, i.e. it must refer to something other than its simple place in the pure chronological series, which appears  from a secular point of view continuous and endless. In general, every holiday refers to Whom is thought as the absolutely Other One in front of the whole world but at the same time appears to religious mind as being its real sense, i.e. God. But, because from a religious point of view everything (even the regular workdays and the void times and the meaningless things) refer to God, holidays must carry some further and more particular significance, hence must refer to some intermediate meaning between world and God: some event, some story, some concept, some duty, some person – of course they must have a religious relevance.  In this precise sense, religious occasions have always a special own content, a meaning different from their mere recurring and from the universal reference to God.

Often, but not always, this meaning has also an etiological value: in these cases the celebration refers to some fact or action which is also the inaugural circumstance for it. We do a peculiar ceremony today, with and that this feature, because the same, or something alike, has been done in the occasion that this ceremony is intended remember. Once upon a time God or some His agent made something; this action must be remembered; we make more or less the same today in order to remember the reason why we do it. The object of the celebration is its institution; memory and meaning merge together.  From a semiotic point of view, this kind of self-reference on the plane of content is very relevant and characteristic. We will see that a similar organization can often be found also for the plane of expression, giving to religious ceremonies a specific semi-simbolic structural arrangement for producing sense in a very effective and contagious way.

Of course such ceremonies are addressed in first place to the Divinity, being part of the cult that must be presented to it (Volli 2012). And this enunciation target is for sure the base for one layer of meaning: every religious act refer in first place to the basic relation between humankind and God and every festival says something about it. But often the religious acts take trace of their institution or their origin, hence they are memories of their own institution – or rather, they are memory devices for the believers. In one date Christians remember the birth of Jesus; in another the Muslim remember Mohammed's escape to Medina; in another one Buddhist believer celebrates the day that the historical Buddha experienced enlightenment. In all these cases, beyond the general meaning ground which is relevant for that religion (in short: submission in Islam, incarnation in Christianity, fusion with the totality in Buddhism) there is a memorial meaning of the specific occasion, a narration about some happening which has also the value of a statement over the same narration: a metanarrative action.

The link between the date and the narration can be arbitrary, as are the majority of the days dedications to saints is in the Catholic calendar (for instance, March 1: St. David of Wales; March 2: St. Agnes of Bohenia; March 3: St. Katherine Drexel; March. 4 : St Kasimir, etc.). Or its indexical character can be marked, a time continuity can be claimed – doesn't matter to us if true or not, mythical or historical. The point is the self-referring motivation given for the ceremony. For instance, in the blessing for the Jewish festival of Chanukah, this clause is included: (be You blessed, o Lord) “for the miracles you did to our fathers in those days in this time [bayamim ahem, bezman hazeh]”. Today is the time when, in the past, something special happened. There is a clear, declared, intended oxymoron in this phrase: now is then, then is now, identity beyond the time is what matter, everyone taking part to the celebration finds himself (herself) in the position of being as those who were present to the original event. It is explicitly stated during the Passover celebration: everyone here must consider himself or herself as taking part in the events we remember today. The cyclical nature of the ritual marks a very concrete but symbolic “eternal return of the same”, that is its meaning. For this reason this time is special (sacred) and we, the believers, have to remember it again and again, because its religious teaching but also just in order not to lose this indexical link, to live our “now” as “then” and make the “then” to keep acting and meaning.

The same idea, with a reverted temporal index, can be read in the Jesus' prescription during the Last Supper, as narrated by Luke 22:19 “do this in my memory”. This “this” became the mass and in the Christian liturgy has no more special timing, apart the celebration of Good Friday. It recurs always, because all the time is demanding this basic memory. But the interesting thing for us here is the link between doing (re-doing, re-enacting) and remembering (and then knowing, believing, making the religious message live). Remembering here is renewing the paradox (or the miracle, if you believe in it) of something becoming other than itself, while maintaining the same appearance: the bread is body, the wine is blood, because now is then.

The religious ceremony becomes this way twofold: an act of cult and a pedagogic process. Of course, at least since the French Revolution there are “civil holidays” based on the same arrangement, with the obvious difference that worship is not offered to God but to a political more or less abstract entity. In France, July 14 is a holiday because in that day the Bastille was taken, and it remembers this event, renewing at the same time the civil pact of the Republic which was founded with that revolutionary action and what followed to it. The same happens in Italy with the April 25, the date of the Liberation of Milano from nazi-fascist rule at the end of wold war two; it is usually called, through an interesting synecdoche, the “Liberation of Italy”. Or in the United States, with the Fourth of July which remembers, with some chronological imprecision, the date of adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which is the programmatic text or the political ground for the identity of the United States: it is the day when the USA celebrates itself through the document of its foundation.

Often the liturgy takes on itself this pedagogic task in explicit way. Cult and pedagogy aren't separated. Mostly, the structure of the ceremonies mixes intimately re-enactment and narration. What happened and gave origin to the celebration is narrated, and in the same time an analogy beyond time is performed. This re-enacting is in itself pedagogic because something as the original experience should be perceived; but it has also the power of giving an internal iconic signification of the event. The reflexive meaning is embodied in a reflexive expression. This effect is something similar to what Umberto Eco (1976) following Ekman and Friesen (1969), calls “intrinsically coded acts” or “intrinsically coded signs” (which are “not iconic signs” but “a sort of concrete experience” albeit a partial one, “capable of being used as a sign of itself” as the hobby horse done with a broomstick in children's plays studied by Gombrich 1951).

In the Christian tradition, Eucharesty is clearly an intrinsically coded sign, as are also the processions where the Passion is re-enacted by some believer carrying the Cross and enduring lashes in the path: he build with his own body an iconic sign of the last path of Jesus but also lives in himself the experience of his suffering, taking part in it according a sort of indexical way. More or less the same is performed by the Shiite Muslim during the festival of Ashura, commemorating the bloody death of Imām al-Husayn ibn Ali by inflicting bloody wounds on their bodies. Two suffering meet here again beyond space and time. The Jewish Shabbat contains an intrinsically coded signification: God's rest after the Creation is remembered by the believers through a mandatory rest; more exactly what must be avoided during this day are all the “creative” acts or melakhot. The same word is used in the Torah (Genesis 2:1–3) for speaking of the God's acts of creation and later (Exodus 31:1–11)  for the forbidden actions of Shabbat. The same happens in the festival of Hanukkah which commemorates the miracle of the Temple sacred oil lamp extending its light for a week, well beyond the regular lifespan of the little fuel bottle saved from the defilement performed by Greek soldiers, by lighting ritual lamps exactly for a week. Fire commemorates fire.

Usually the intrinsically coded signs are simply classified as “symbols” (not in the perceian meaning of this term as defining arbitrary signs but in the most daily and diffused one of “deeply motivated signs”). But it is useful to distinguish between the two types of signs: not all the symbols are intrinsically coded signs, for instance the cross or communist “hammer and sickle” in general are not. Often intrinsically coded signs are used in games, theater, art performance, historical commemorations, expression of sentiments and religion; they can be invented for the occasion and thus can not have the “deeply rooted” character of symbols.

In the religious case, intrinsically coded religious signs are mostly completed and explained by other metalinguistic signs, often by some verbal expression able to convey a theological and pedagogical meaning. In a religious ceremony one acts (or sees others acting) and explains (or rather says aloud a fixed verbal text or often listen to such an explanation). What is important here is a semiotic structure where the addressee at enunciation level is strongly invited to suture himself or herself to some actor of the narrative (enunciated) level by making or suffering or simply having in front “the same” that was in the narration[3]

This complex mixing of experience and narration, implicit re-enacting and explicit pedagogy, life and text, is very characteristic of religious practice and challenges a semiotic description.

2. Passover seder

One of the Jewish festival where this complex religious discourse is clearer is Passover and specially its “seder”. The word seder means “order”, “disposition” and refers to a ritual dinner which is the main and more characteristic expression of the festival. Passover remembers the liberation of the Jewish people from the Egyptian slavery, which is narrated in the Book of Exodus. It is a collective memory, nevertheless it is celebrated in private form as a dinner. But this dinner has a strong ritual character and is ruled by a very precise structure in a (complex) foreword and fifteen proceedings, consisting in reciting some benedictions, performing some gestures, singing some hymns, narrating the story, eating some special meaningful food as unlevened bread (“matzot”, wich is “the same” eaten by the flying Jews, unlevened because they were obliged to leave in a hurry – hence an intrinsically coded object) or a pink sauce made with different fruits (“haroset”, which has “the same colour” of the mortar used by the Jews for building Egyptians monuments during their slavery, thus an iconic object) etc.

It is impossible here even to begin analyzing this complex ritual structure, with all its interconnected pedagogic and enunciation/suture effects. It is important to say that it is codified in a written (and often also illustrated) text, called “Haggadah”(i.e. narration, with a clear antonomiasia)[4]. There is also a number of textualized objects, as dishes and table accessories which resume and make figurative some aspects of the Haggadah. And it is worth stressing that this is the only Jewish traditional text which is often enriched with drawings and illustrations. The ceremony's goal is very explicitly a pedagogic one. Everyone in very generation, is explicitly written in The Haggadah,  must consider himself or herself as personally taking part in the story narrated by the text. This means that the participation to the ritual dinner must be felt as equivalent to the involvement in the facts to be recalled. The historical abyss of some dozen of centuries is to be bridged through the ritual, an unity must be established beyond time and space.

In order to get this result, different semiotic devices are used. There is a narration, where the most relevant facts are told; this narration is richly commented using a strange (for us) iperbolic rhetoric of numbers and repetitions; but there are many intrinsically coded acts. The most important and mandatory is eating unleavened bread, “bread of affliction”, which is presented as the same bread eaten by the sons of Israel while flying Egypt. The first sentence of the Haggadah states: “This is poor man's bread; the bread our forefathers ate when they were enslaved in Egypt“ Of course, it is not the same bread, that would be impossible; but it is a bread with the same “poor” character (unleavened, unsalted etc.) and for this proprieties it becomes a sign for itself.

This same bread is used also for a number of different “symbolic” preparations; for instance it is eaten together with bitter herbs, signifying (through the sense of taste) the “bitterness” of the slavery condition; but in another point of the seder it is eaten with a pink sweet sauce called “haroset” that remembers (through the sense of sight and a partially iconic signification) to the Jews slavery. The wine is drunk as often used in the Jewish ceremonies as an element of consecration, but at a certain point some drops are dropped into a dish, one for each of the "plagues" of Egypt; and then their red color becomes relevant to, reminiscent of the blood. Almost every element of the seder is on the same time directly signified and quoted, described and acted, explained and used: it is overdetermined in Freud (1901) sense.

Another important feature, which acts on the discursive level, is a systematic use of metalinguistic enunciation. For instance, at the beginning of the rite, the younger person on the table must ask some fixed questions, written on the Haggadah and sung with a traditional melody:

Why is this night different from all other nights?

On all other nights we eat leavened products and matzah, and on this night only matzah.

On all other nights we eat all vegetables, and on this night only bitter herbs.

On all other nights, we don't dip our food even once, and on this night we dip twice.

On all other nights we eat sitting or reclining, and on this night we only recline.

These questions are those one must ask, after all, mainly by a kid who has no experience of this ceremony. The text embodies the predictable reactions of whom does not know its meaning. Or rather, the causality of the seder rules can be seen also in the reverse direction: what is actually performed (or will be, because some of the oddities for whom an explanation is asked were not yet performed until this point), is there just in order to induce such questions. Again: the young participant, being instructed to ask these questions, is obliged to note “the difference”. The pedagogic device works on him or her through his or her participation. The seder features are self-qualified as odd in order to be remarked and asked for a meaning. More: the simulation of some questions is intended to authorize and encourage more real questions. The recitation of a pedagogy should trigger a real pedagogic process, wich is esemplified in another point of the Haggadah:

It is told of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua and RabbiEla zar the son of Azarya , and Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon were reclining at the seder service in B’nei Berak, and had spent the whole night telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt, until their pupils came and said to them: “Our masters, it is time to recite the morning Shema!”

One is charged to pretend to be curious in order to arouse real curiosity. Pedagogy and metapedagogy simply melt together in a semiotic self-reference of the text.

This is by no means a case. There is another point where a similar effect is looked for. It is a passage where a typology of young diners is given

The Torah speaks of four children: One is wise, one is wicked, one is simple and one does not know how to ask.

The wise one, what does he say? “What are the testimonies, the statutes and the laws which the L-rd, our G-d, has commanded you?” You, in turn, shall instruct him in the laws of Passover, [up to] `one is not to eat any dessert after the Passover-lamb.'

The wicked one, what does he say? “What is this service to you?!” He says `to you,' but not to him! By thus excluding himself from the community he has denied that which is fundamental. You, therefore, blunt his teeth and say to him: “It is because of this that the L-rd did for me when I left Egypt”; ’for me’ – but not for him! If he had been there, he would not have been redeemed!"

The simpleton, what does he say? “What is this?" Thus you shall say to him: “With a strong hand the L-rd took us out of Egypt, from the house of slaves.”

As for the one who does not know how to ask, you must initiate him, as it is said: “You shall tell your child on that day, ‘It is because of this that the L-rd did for me when I left Egypt’.“

This typology proposes a very interesting semiotic square[5] of the Seder audience, which is also the public or the passive subject of the pedagogical operation – always the young, the new generation to whom the meaning must be transmitted, here interpreted with the pivotal thematic role of the son. The problem is if and how the “children” are able and willing to take the correct enunciation position of receiver of the tradition: someone who takes the message, saves it and transmits it in turn to the next generation.

The sources for the questions and the answers are in different passages of the Torah, but, of course, they are not arranged in order to make a typology. It is interesting the fact that the better (the “wise”) and the worst (the “wicked”) of the children pose essentially the same question: what the ceremony represents and what are its rules. But the first one uses more details and attributes the institution of the ceremony to God. The real point here is about membership. Inclusion and transmission are always among the goals of religious practices. Here they are made explicit through the prevision of the participants’ possible reactions.

As Umberto Eco (1979: 54) stated every ext is "a lazy machine that demands the bold cooperation of the reader to fill in a whole series of gaps"; but exactly for this reason, “A text is a product whose interpretive fate must be part of its generative mechanism: Generate a text means carry out a strategy which includes forecasts of the moves of others – as indeed in every strategy.” This is true of every text, but more so for pedagogic, intrinsically coded, “suture” texts, as often the religious ones are. 

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