Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Acknowledgments -- Table of Contents -- Frequently Used Abbreviations -- New English translations of works by Gershom Scholem -- Other works -- Preface -- Bibliography -- Works keyed to abbreviations -- Other reference -- Section One: Lament and Consolation -- Eikhah and the Stance of Lamentation -- Bibliography -- Ein Menachem: On Lament and Consolation -- 1 The question of consolation -- 2 Theodicy and consolation -- 3 Consolation in Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy -- 4 Ein Menachem: Lamentation, consolation -- Bibliography -- Works keyed to abbreviations -- Other references -- Section Two: Lament and Gender -- Bodies Performing in Ruins: The Lamenting Mother in Ancient Hebrew Texts -- 1 Death, language, and the body -- 2 Reading Lamentations -- 3 Lamenting gender -- 4 Lamenting goddess -- Bibliography -- Works keyed to abbreviations -- Other references -- Women's Oral Laments: Corpus and Text - The Body in the Text -- 1 Rituals and concepts in the "death space" of Yemenite Jewish communities -- 1.1 The Conduct of Death in Yemen -- 1.2 Yemenite women in the "death space" -- 2 The textual corpus -- 2.1 Speaking to and on behalf of the Departed -- 2.2 The presence and absence of the word "death" in laments -- 3 Rebirth of the human body in the lament -- Bibliography -- Section Three: The Linguistic Form of Lament -- Bemerkungen zur Klage -- 1 Klagen -- 2 Ausdruck -- 3 Klage keine Negation -- 4 Klage und Antwort -- Literatur -- Abkürzungen -- Weiterführende Literatur -- "Incline thine ear unto me, and hear my speech": Scholem, Benjamin, and Cohen on Lament -- 1 Scholem and Benjamin on lament and pure language -- 2 Cohen reading Kant -- 3 Cohen's "Die Lyrik der Psalmen" -- 4 Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Books keyed to abbreviations -- Other references.

Section Four: Silence and Lament -- The Unfallen Silence: Kinah and the Other Origin of Language -- 1 The revolution of silence -- 2 The tragic counter-revelation -- 3 Words in the image of silence -- Bibliography -- Works keyed to abbreviations -- Other references -- The Silent Syllable: On Franz Rosenzweig's Translation of Yehuda Halevi's Liturgical Poems -- 1 -- 2 -- 3 -- 4 -- 5 -- 6 -- 7 -- 8 -- Bibliography -- Silence, Solitude, and Suicide: Gershom Scholem's Paradoxical Theory of Lamentation -- Bibliography -- Works keyed to abbreviations -- Other references -- Section Five: The Poetry of Lament -- The Role of Lamentation for Scholem's Theory of Poetry and Language -- 1 The smuggling of poetry into the œuvre of a historian of Kabbalah -- 2a Kabbalist linguistic theory: on the end of Kabbalah in poetry -- 2b Excursus on Benjamin's and Scholem's Theories of Language -- 3 The emergence of poetry from lament - Scholem's poetology -- 4 Translation of dirges and critique of translation -- 5 The problem of a language for our time -- Bibliography -- Books keyed to abbreviations -- Other references -- The Ghost of the Poet: Lament in Walter Benjamin's Early Poetry, Theory, and Translation -- Bibliography -- Works keyed to abbreviations -- Other references -- Words and Corpses: Celan's "Tenebrae" between Gadamer and Scholem -- Bibliography -- Works keyed to abbreviations -- Other references -- "Movement of Language" and Transience: Lament, Mourning, and the Tradition of Elegy in Early Scholem -- 1 Loss and immortality: The classical model of the elegy -- 2 Radical presence and fragmentation: Deflective traditions of elegy -- 3 Eschatology and politics of lament: Scholem's reading of elegy into lament -- 4 The lamenting voice: Writing as inscribing oneself into tradition -- Bibliography -- Works keyed to abbreviations -- Other references.

Section Six: Mourning, Ruin and Lament -- Paradoxes of Lament: Benjamin and Hamlet -- 1 Lamenting lament -- 2 Post-mortem Hamlet -- Bibliography -- Works keyed to abbreviations -- Other references -- The Tradition in Ruins: Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem on Language and Lament -- 1 Lament and the medium of language in Benjamin -- 2 The Romantic medium and "knowledge mysticism" -- 3 The medium of history and tradition -- 4 From the inexpressible into language: Primordial destruction in Scholem's "On Lament" -- 5 The transmissible ruin -- 6 Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Works keyed to abbreviations -- Other references -- Section Seven: Translations of Gershom Scholem's Texts on Lament -- Translators' Introduction -- 1 Scholem's "work of mourning": Conception and contextualization -- 2 Lament and language -- 3 Lament and translation -- 4 The English translations -- On Lament and Lamentation -- Job's Lament -- Translation of Job Chapter 3: Job's Lament -- Ezekiel Chapter 19: A Lamentation for Israel's Last Princes -- Translation of Ezekiel Chapter 19: A Lamentation for Israel's Last Princes -- A Medieval Lamentation -- Translation of Sha'ali Serufa: A Medieval Lamentation -- Scholem's postscript in the manuscript version -- Notes on Contributors.