The King Is in the Field: Essays in Modern Jewish Political Thought 9781512824179

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The King Is in the Field

JEWISH CULTURE AND CONTEXTS Published in association with the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania

Series Editors: Shaul Magid Francesca Trivellato Steven Weitzman A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

THE KING IS IN THE FIELD Essays in Modern Jewish Po­liti­cal Thought

Edited by Julie E. Cooper and Samuel Hayim Brody

u n i v e r s i t y o f p e n n s y lva n i a p r e s s philadelphia

 Copyright © 2023 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 https://­w ww​.­pennpress​.­org/ Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca on acid-­free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-5128-2409-4 eBook ISBN: 978-1-5128-2417-9 A Cataloging-in-Publication record is available from the Library of Congress

Contents

Introduction. The Study of Jewish Politics and the Politics of Jewish Studies Julie E. Cooper and Samuel Hayim Brody

1

PART I. MALCHUYOT (REGIMES) Chapter 1. Dignity and Dugri: The Abiding Appeal of Sovereignty Without Institutions Irene Tucker

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Chapter 2. Halakhah from the Bench? A New Perspective on the Use of Jewish Law in Israel’s Supreme Court Arye Edrei

54

Chapter 3. Fleshpots in the Promised Land: On the Possibility of Zionism Without Negating the Exile Meirav Jones

77

Chapter 4. Communal Organ­ization in the Diaspora Michael Walzer

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PART II. ZICHRONOT (REMEMBRANCES) Chapter 5. R. Ḥayyim Ṿital’s Po­liti­cal Imagination: Localizing the Dream Messianism of Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot Assaf Tamari

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vi Contents

Chapter 6. “Jewish Philosophy” and the Politics of German-­Jewish Thought Between the World Wars Philipp von Wussow

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Chapter 7. Empire of Charity: The Politics of American Jewish Philanthropy in Interwar Poland Rebecca Kobrin

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Chapter 8. Jewish and Other Zionisms: Reflections on Race, Ethnocentrism, and Nationalism Shaul Magid

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PART III. SHOFAROT (BLASTS) Chapter 9. W ­ omen of the Wall, T ­ emple Mount Activism, and the Dilemmas of Jewish Feminism in an Occupied Space Lihi Ben Shitrit Chapter 10. A Theological Critique of the Po­liti­cal Menachem Lorberbaum

201 223

Chapter 11. Love, Judgment, and Antisemitism: The Case of Alice Walker Vincent Lloyd

239

Notes

257

List of Contributors

301

Index

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Acknowl­edgments

313

Introduction

The Study of Jewish Politics and the Politics of Jewish Studies Julie E. Cooper and Samuel Hayim Brody

When Jews and Judaism appear in twenty-­first ­century public discourse, the context is often po­liti­cal. ­W hether it’s the president of the United States claiming that Jewish American voting patterns demonstrate “­great disloyalty,” an election in the UK being rocked by accusations of pervasive antisemitism, or the continuing strug­gle over the State of Israel’s policies ­toward the Palestinians, politics is arguably the primary lens through which Jewish ­matters are perceived.1 From a con­temporary standpoint, then, it may be difficult to remember the time not long ago when many assumed that a history of statelessness had consigned the Jews to an apo­liti­cal existence. Writing in the mid-­t wentieth ­century, in the wake of the mass murder of Eu­ro­pean Jewry and the establishment of the State of Israel, Hannah Arendt notoriously claimed that the Jews, having been stateless for millennia, “had no po­liti­cal tradition or experience. . . . ​It has been one of the most unfortunate facts in the history of the Jewish ­people that only its enemies, and almost never its friends, understood that the Jewish question was a po­liti­cal one.” She described “specifically Jewish po­liti­cal enthusiasm” as consisting of ­little more than a “dim cloud of general philanthropy and universalism,” and saw Jewish communal leaders as ­little more than babes in the woods, vulnerable to the machinations of savvier operators.2 Arendt was always a controversial writer. In this case, however, she struck a universal nerve. Scholars around the world sought to refute her and to vindicate the “po­liti­cal judgment of the Jew.”3 Throughout ­these postwar conversations, historical claims

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about the relationships of Jews to politics ­were thoroughly charged by con­ temporary po­liti­cal concerns, just as ­these concerns ­were informed by changing understandings of the past. When Arendt complained about the Jews’ supposed failures of po­liti­cal judgment, she voiced a then-­common interpretation of Jewish history. For Arendt and many of her peers, as the historian Ismar Schorsch points out, the Nazi extermination of Eu­ro­pean Jewry appeared to confirm a widespread conception that “in the diaspora Jews ­were destined to remain the passive victims of historical circumstances beyond their control.”4 In the same period, advocates of the triumphant Zionist proj­ect wanted to make their case that, for the first time in two millennia, Jews had returned to politics on their own terms, a claim that perfectly complemented the notion of a passive and apo­liti­cal Jewish diaspora. Fi­nally, American Jewish communities remained in need of a positive way to describe Jewish participation in a multifaith liberal democracy, one that would not simply recapitulate Eu­ro­pean ­mistakes. In ­these circumstances, even the most evenhanded scholarly attempt to pre­sent an image of the Jews’ relationship to politics could not help but run afoul of some significant constituency. Note that the debate which Arendt sparked was not about specific policy issues or ideologies but turned on the very applicability of foundational po­liti­cal concepts to Jewish experience. Again, doubts about ­whether Jews could be said to have participated in politics stemmed largely from their history of dispersion. According to influential modern definitions, politics is an activity that occurs at the state level. In the mid-­t wentieth c­ entury, scholars ­were fiercely divided regarding ­whether Jews have historically engaged in politics, displayed po­liti­cal wisdom, or penned works of po­liti­cal thought. Our interest is in this metadebate: Are the Jews “po­liti­cal” in any meaningful sense? As we ­will see, the stakes of this debate are high. From a practical standpoint, judgments regarding the degree of po­liti­cal agency pos­si­ble in diaspora informed scholars’ stances on pressing controversies surrounding Zionism, diasporism, and liberalism. From a theoretical standpoint, ­these historical judgments provided ammunition for defenders and critics of received po­liti­cal concepts. Ideally, then, the study of Jewish po­liti­cal thought promises to both inform Jewish (and non-­Jewish) public opinion and to re­ orient the discipline of po­liti­cal theory by expanding received conceptions of what counts as “po­liti­cal.” ­Today, the very aspects of Jewish history that ­were once seen as disqualifying can provide critical resources for scholars determined to imagine politics beyond the state form.



Introduction

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Excavating a Tradition, Establishing a Field Given per­sis­tent doubts about the extent of Jewish po­liti­cal agency, it is perhaps not surprising that, prior to 1980, “Jewish po­liti­cal thought” did not exist as a dedicated field of study.5 In historical perspective, the contributors to this volume are part of a novel endeavor. Although historians have long studied the Jews’ fraught negotiations with ruling powers, as well as the ideological movements (e.g., Zionism, Bundism, liberalism) that reshaped Jewish life at the turn of the twentieth ­century, they did not propose the establishment of a discrete scholarly field.6 Moreover, the question of w ­ hether Jews constitute a religion or a nation is arguably the central controversy of modern Jewish thought—­ with obvious implications for po­liti­cal theory.7 Yet, prior to the 1980s, ­there was no subdivision within academic Jewish studies dedicated to po­liti­cal thought, akin to “modern Jewish thought” or “medieval Jewish history.” Nor did American po­liti­cal scientists study the Jews (or, for that ­matter, any other non-­Western traditions of po­liti­cal thought).8 As this volume attests, ­today it is relatively uncontroversial to dedicate a fellowship year to the study of “Jewish po­liti­cal thought,” yet not long ago, the category did not exist as an organ­izing rubric that could support a diverse research agenda. It was only once ­these doubts about the Jews’ “po­liti­calness” could be assuaged—if not entirely overcome—­that a proper academic field could emerge. The first initiatives ­toward the establishment of a “field,” with all that entails—­conferences, journals, course offerings, research institutes—­were premised on the claim that ­there exists a Jewish po­liti­cal “tradition.” The first programmatic call to study this tradition, penned by Daniel Elazar, appeared in 1980, and the 1990s and early 2000s witnessed three large-­scale collaborative proj­ects dedicated to the tradition’s recovery: the Jewish Po­liti­ cal Studies Review, The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition anthologies, and the Hebraic Po­liti­cal Studies journal.9 Identifying the scholarly influences that allowed ­these proj­ects’ sponsors to assert the existence of a Jewish po­liti­cal tradition is relatively straightforward. Although not always cited by name, Simon Dubnow (1860–1941) arguably provides the historiographical inspiration for the entire enterprise. The intellectual architect of the autonomist movement within diaspora nationalism, Dubnow famously crafted a master narrative that ascribed cultural and po­liti­cal in­de­pen­dence to diasporic Jews. In Dubnow’s rendition the demise of the ancient Hebrew state did not mark the Jews’ exit from history and politics. Rather, in ­every generation and in ­every

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region, Dubnow claimed, the Jews constituted an autonomous po­liti­cal community (even while subject to gentile rulers).10 Dubnow’s classification of the kahal (the semiautonomous community of the medieval and early modern periods) as a polity, rather than a religious congregation, provides the historical basis for claims regarding an unbroken tradition of po­liti­cal action. Similarly, claims for unbroken traditions of po­liti­cal thought would be inconceivable without the contributions of scholars who showcased the sophistication of rabbinic po­liti­cal reasoning.11 With the establishment of the State of Israel, the challenge of reviving once-­dormant areas of traditional Jewish law, or halakhah, such as the laws of war, strengthened the perception that the rabbinic corpus contained a trea­sury of po­liti­cal reflection.12 Building on prior work that celebrated the po­liti­cal agency of diasporic Jews and the vitality of rabbinic discourse, scholars insisted that ­there is a Jewish po­liti­cal tradition worthy of sustained study. It is harder to venture a definitive explanation for why t­ hese strands came together at this precise juncture. The founding initiatives all cite the establishment of the State of Israel as a point of departure, and all the leading scholars profess Zionist convictions. As David Hartman writes in the foreword to The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition: “The rebirth of Israel provides the Jewish ­people with a public arena where they themselves must take charge, drawing on the strength of their tradition to give a direction to po­liti­cal life and a content to po­liti­cal aspiration.”13 But why did the tradition’s recovery become imperative some thirty years ­after the founding of the state? Elazar’s proj­ect debuted in a stormy period within Israeli politics, marked by the end of the ­Labor Party’s hegemony in 1977 and the First Lebanon War in 1982. It is tempting to read The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition as a testament to the optimism that prevailed in the early years of the Oslo pro­cess (1993), when it was not unreasonable to believe that furnishing traditional prooftexts might convince Israelis to embrace liberal democracy. Yet the field’s enabling conditions ­were so­cio­log­i­cal as much as historical, tied to the emergence of a scholarly cohort equally at home in Western philosophy and the rabbinic tradition. The leading figures ­behind The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition anthologies, the Jewish Po­liti­cal Studies Review and related proj­ects, and Hebraic Po­liti­cal Studies share striking commonalities. The founding scholars w ­ ere all Jewish men—­many of them native En­glish speakers with yeshivah backgrounds who, by virtue of their bicultural upbringing, ­were conversant in both American and Israeli norms. In this sense, the proj­ects are built on diasporic networks, Zionist convictions notwithstanding.



Introduction

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What, beyond the investment in building institutional infrastructures, characterizes ­these early initiatives? As befits work that consciously strives to chart a new research agenda, ­there is an aspiration ­toward comprehensiveness. In Daniel Elazar’s words, “The Jewish po­liti­cal dialogue began with the emergence of the Jewish ­people as a body politic over 3200 years ago. . . . ​ It has continued ever since.”14 Elazar’s claim to tradition rests on the evidence of this vast time span. The proper object of study, in Elazar’s view, is Jewish po­liti­cal be­hav­ior, specifically the princi­ples guiding the design of communal institutions. Having surveyed Jewish history from the patriarchs to the State of Israel and the American Jewish Congress, Elazar claims to have identified a single template that structures the entirety of Jewish po­ liti­cal experience. In all times and places, Elazar contends, Jews have governed themselves according to a set of biblically derived covenantal princi­ples. ­W hether as a ­matter of conscious decision or subliminal influence, Jews have hewed to an orga­nizational blueprint that is theocratic, republican, federal, and egalitarian—­ele­ments of which recur “in one form or another in ­every period of Jewish history.”15 In short, Elazar claims that Jews have always done politics in more or less the same way. Elazar’s insistence on transhistorical constants strains scholarly credulity. Yet the internal tensions that result from Elazar’s dogged pursuit of continuity are symptomatic of the methodological and po­liti­cal dilemmas that confronted many of the field’s found­ers. In his determination to locate covenantal models “in ­every period of Jewish history,” Elazar echoes Dubnow, who refused to privilege the biblical state over the medieval kahal. To attest the tradition’s existence, Elazar must affirm diasporic po­liti­cal practices. At the same time, however, Elazar clearly views the establishment of the State of Israel as a watershed moment, “the renewal of full Jewish po­liti­cal life.”16 As this formulation suggests, Elazar is not prepared to level all distinctions between the State of Israel and diasporic institutions, whose po­liti­cal status is now rendered “partial.” This retreat from the proj­ect’s Dubnovian under­ pinnings is consistent with Elazar’s belief that the Land of Israel is “the only place where complete Jewish individual and collective self-­f ulfillment is pos­ si­ble.”17 ­Here we see that the field’s found­ers w ­ ere torn between their Zionist convictions and the “diasporism” implicit in the methodologies they employed to establish an unbroken tradition. The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition anthologies (three of a projected four have been published) exhibit consummate scholarship and vast erudition. The volumes bring together texts from the Bible to the modern period, or­ga­nized

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according to thematic rubrics (the first three volumes are subtitled Authority, Membership, and Community, respectively) and paired with con­temporary commentary. Like Elazar’s work, the volumes are comprehensive in scope and seek to establish the canon for a burgeoning field. Moreover, like Elazar, the editors delineate the field’s mandate in terms of a “tradition”—in this case, a tradition of po­liti­cal thought. In their editorial vision, however, Michael Walzer (also a contributor to this volume) and his team of coeditors (including another of our contributors, Menachem Lorberbaum) display a far more sophisticated approach to the constituents of tradition and its potential po­liti­cal uses. ­Because the tradition’s bound­aries are set with reference to the criterion of “intertextuality,” its contents are diverse and contentious.18 ­Here “tradition” means an ongoing conversation that participants enter from multiple, often opposing, standpoints. The editors locate the tradition’s con­temporary po­liti­ cal import in this dialogical ethos, which they pre­sent as a useful resource for enhancing pluralism and democracy in the State of Israel. Reconstructing debates that unfolded over generations, in multiple literary genres, the anthologies challenge readers to expand their definition of the po­liti­cal to include sources that might other­wise be classified as “legalistic,” “theological,” or “scholastic.” For example, the medieval Karaite exegete Elijah Basyatchi’s critique of midrashic interpretation is included in volume 1 (Authority), since it bears on the legitimacy of rabbinic authority.19 A text of this kind bears scant resemblance to the classics studied in the American po­liti­cal theory curriculum, nor is it readily assimilable to received po­liti­cal categories. Yet the editors nevertheless encounter some of the same dilemmas surrounding the po­liti­cal standing of diasporic institutions that bedev­iled Elazar. Walzer opens the introduction to the first volume by anticipating the skepticism of readers educated in Western traditions—­where “the association of politics with the state is pervasive”—­regarding the existence of a Jewish po­liti­cal tradition.20 Against t­ hose who insist that statelessness consigned the Jews to an apo­liti­cal condition, Walzer contends that “politics is pervasive, with or without state sovereignty.”21 ­Here Walzer adopts an emphatically Dubnovian stance, refusing to grant the state conceptual priority. Walzer and his colleagues go even further, celebrating the kahal—­“the polis of exilic Jewry”—as “the miracle of Jewish politics.”22 When one examines the third volume of The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition (Community), however, one finds a more qualified approach to the kahal’s classification as a polity. While rejecting Arendt’s categorical dismissal of Jewish po­liti­cal judgment, the editors



Introduction

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are nevertheless at pains to stress limitations on diasporic po­liti­cal agency.23 “­Because of the circumstances of the exile, ­there never was a sovereign kahal. No community of Jews in the diaspora was ever in control of its fate in the way that the citizens of Athens ­were.”24 As a ­matter of historical fact, this assertion is certainly true. Its authority over Jews notwithstanding, the kahal remained subordinate to the state. The point is not to deny the manifest limits to Jewish power and in­de­pen­dence, but to question ­whether acknowledging the sober realities of diasporic history requires one to classify Jewish institutions as less than fully po­liti­cal, and therefore not subject to analy­sis via the categories of po­liti­cal thought. (Nor, in this more pessimistic view, could diasporic history serve as a resource for such thought.) At times, even when laudatory, the editors treat the kahal as an imperfect approximation to the real ­thing: “We also mean to celebrate a remarkable po­ liti­cal achievement that has hardly been recognized in the past: the members and leaders of the diaspora kehillot [pl. of kahal] managed to sustain a common life without sovereignty, without territory, without the authority and agency provided by a state.”25 ­Here the editors entrench the state’s paradigmatic status, thereby limiting the theoretical interest and import of texts written ­under conditions of statelessness. Even at their most enthusiastic, the editors seem unsure as to ­whether Jewish traditions can generate alternative po­liti­cal standards. Beyond sovereignty itself, other concerns at the forefront of con­temporary po­liti­cal theory find their way into The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition. ­These include the place of religion in the public square, religious pluralism, and the role of the social critic. The anthological structure of The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition foregrounds such ­matters by transforming selected sets of passages into prooftexts of “the Jewish po­liti­cal tradition,” sometimes through robust editorial commentary but just as often simply through categorization and architectonic (i.e., when ancient differences of opinion on marriage between the schools of Hillel and Shammai are classified ­under the subheading “Living with Disagreement” in a chapter titled “Controversy and Dissent”).26 The editors are ­eager to highlight what they consider the pluralism of rabbinic deliberation, in hopes of furnishing traditional warrants for religious pluralism. Unlike early Zionists, who w ­ ere famously drawn to the Bible, Walzer prefers rabbinic lit­er­a­ture, whose worldly, mundane outlook he deems more conducive to demo­cratic po­liti­cal culture. In his single-­authored works, Walzer defends the virtues of rabbinic deliberation against biblical theocracy, which he deems “anti-­political.”27 The mobilization of rabbinic

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debate ­toward po­liti­cal ends exemplifies another of Walzer’s signature themes, that of the “connected critic,” who seeks to improve his or her community by offering pointed criticism, which should not be mistaken for hatred since it comes from a place of love.28 In The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition and related works, Walzer provides Jewish intellectuals with a traditional language with which to frame their connected critique. This volume stands on the shoulders of ­these previous efforts. The recognition of the continuity and pervasiveness of Jewish po­liti­cal activity, even ­under conditions of statelessness and dispersion, is foundational to any study of Jewish po­liti­cal thought. Relying on such insights, we can chart new paths forward, in keeping with con­temporary concerns. Precisely ­because we are untroubled by anxiety about ­whether Jewish thought is properly “po­liti­cal,” we no longer consider it necessary to establish the existence of a singular, continuous (even if multivocal and internally contested) “tradition” as a prerequisite for the field’s legitimacy. Furthermore, we prescind from the task of providing prooftexts to substantiate con­temporary commitments to liberalism, pluralism, and the like, in part ­because we no longer presume that ­either the scholars or the audience for this research are Jewish. The connection among scholar, reader, and material may, but need not, involve the kind of personal investment characteristic of “connected criticism.” At this juncture we can proceed more eclectically, with a methodology guided less by a desire to codify a specific canon and more by an instinct to explore.

Terminology, Translation, Legibility: Provincializing Western Po­liti­cal Theory In Provincializing Eu­rope, Dipesh Chakrabarty declares that “Eu­ro­pean thought is at once both indispensable and inadequate in helping us to think through the experiences of po­liti­cal modernity in non-­Western nations.”29 As a young student growing up in India, Chakrabarty relates, he scarcely questioned the universal validity of the categories—­largely of Eu­ro­pean provenance—­through which he analyzed the world. Marx’s utter ignorance of Indian history notwithstanding, the critical tools that he bequeathed enabled Chakrabarty’s generation to make sense of their own experiences. It was only ­after Chakrabarty traveled to Australia for gradu­ate study that he grasped the provincialism of Eu­ro­pean thought. Confronted with radical differences



Introduction

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between concrete instantiations of abstract universals such as “modernity” and “democracy,” Chakrabarty concludes that “our historical differences actually make a difference.”30 In their global diffusion, Chakrabarty explains, “the universal concepts of po­liti­cal modernity encounter preexisting concepts, categories, institutions, and practices through which they get translated and configured differently,” such that Indian and Australian democracy scarcely resemble each other.31 Although unwilling—­and, on some level, unable—to abandon Western frameworks, Chakrabarty nevertheless insists that Eu­ro­pean instantiations of po­liti­cal modernity are themselves local adaptations. Eu­ro­pean thought is indispensable, then, ­because academics the world over operate within institutions whose framing assumptions derive from Western traditions. At the current juncture, Chakrabarty contends, it is practically impossible to advance campaigns for social justice without invoking “universal” concepts of Eu­ro­pean provenance (e.g., democracy, equality, rights). Eu­ro­pean thought is inadequate to the analy­sis of Indian po­liti­cal experience, however, ­because purportedly universal rubrics occlude the divergent forms that po­liti­cal modernity has taken in socie­ties, for example, in which communion with gods and spirits is a routine occurrence. Alert to the inescapable dilemma that confronts scholars of Indian politics, Chakrabarty proposes to “provincialize” rather than repudiate Eu­rope. To “provincialize,” in this context, means to excavate the “irreducible ele­ments of ­those parochial histories” that linger in “concepts that other­w ise seemed to be meant for all,” and thereby challenge their universalist pretensions.32 From the moment of its inception, the field of Jewish po­liti­cal thought has wrestled with similar dilemmas of terminology, translation, and legibility. Of course, the location of (Ashkenazic) Jewish scholars with re­spect to a hegemonic “West”—in which they figured largely as internal “­others”—is not identical to that of (postcolonial) Indian scholars.33 Yet the scholars who first embarked on the study of Jewish po­liti­cal thought voiced similar doubts regarding the applicability of received categories. How relevant are the concepts of a modern po­liti­cal philosophy that equates po­liti­cal agency with sovereign power to a tradition that developed ­under conditions of statelessness? Uncritical adoption of reigning concepts is liable to yield the conclusion, familiar from mainstream Zionist historiography, that diasporic Jews ­were profoundly “apolitical”—­and, consequently, that ­there is no such t­ hing as “Jewish po­liti­cal thought” between Bar Kokhba and Herzl. Moreover, prior to the nineteenth ­century, Jewish

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thinkers seldom addressed po­liti­cal ­matters via the recognized idioms of Western philosophy. Grappling with the mismatch “between the categories and divisions most appropriate to the tradition and ­those most familiar to students of modern po­liti­cal theory,” Walzer adopts a “compromise” approach that prioritizes traditional categories without sacrificing legibility.34 The editors of The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition de­cided not to group texts ­under familiar rubrics such as “po­liti­cal obligation” or “individual rights,” Walzer explains, “for they would require an artificial and inevitably suspect extraction of texts from their ­legal and doctrinal (as well as their historical) contexts.”35 At the same time, Walzer suggests that even though Jewish writers may have used a dif­fer­ent vocabulary, they have taken up the same kinds of questions that engaged Western po­liti­cal theorists: “questions about obligations and rights figure obliquely in many of their arguments.”36 The determination to move beyond documented historical influence to uncover thematic continuities between Jewish and Western traditions reflects the deferential posture that founding scholars felt it necessary to adopt ­toward established philosophical canons. To reconstruct a Jewish po­liti­cal tradition, scholars searched for passages that “sounded po­liti­cal” to Western ears. Walzer, for example, often notes resemblances between the texts excerpted in The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition and canonical texts, as if to certify the po­liti­cal content of the former. When the rabbis explore questions regarding decision-­ making procedures, Walzer claims, they “reiterate in their own idiom the Greek argument about the one, the few, and the many.”37 The impulse to situate Jewish texts with re­spect to Western canons is especially pronounced in the series’ third volume (Community), as the following examples demonstrate. Although the distinction between enforcement and coercion—­“a conventional one in Western law”—­“ ­doesn’t appear explic­itly in rabbinic lit­er­a­ture, it is equally apparent in Jewish law,” or so the editors contend.38 Consequently, it is scarcely surprising that discussions of coercion in the marketplace and in divorce law “sound very much like the debates about ‘positive freedom’ set off by Jean-­Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract.”39 ­There are differences, of course. “Maimonides ­doesn’t look—as John Locke would ­later do”—­for material signs of tacit consent, searching instead for a moral sign.40 But ­these differences in emphasis only reinforce the notion that Jewish authors, no ­matter how traditional, addressed “many of the central po­liti­cal questions.” 41 Indeed, for Walzer and his coeditors, ­these questions resound across geo­graph­i­cal and temporal bound­a ries, such that one can classify rab-



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binic debates about the synagogue assembly as “a Jewish version of what the con­temporary phi­los­o­pher Jürgen Habermas has called an ‘ideal speech situation.’ ”42 The comparative impulse reflects laudable pedagogical concerns. Walzer and his colleagues hope to illuminate Jewish texts by situating them within a more familiar context. Indeed, “integration” of Jewish texts is one of the proj­ect’s stated goals: “we want to take this body of Jewish thought out of its intellectual ghetto.”43 Yet ­these framing gestures sit in tension with the meticulous work the editors have performed combing the archives for texts liable to seem eccentric, challenging, or obscure to American audiences. For they predicate ­these texts’ theoretical interest on proximity to Western classics, which are tacitly upheld as the po­liti­cal norm. Indeed, the editors risk preempting radical criticisms of, say, social contract theory, that could emerge from the encounter with unfamiliar Jewish texts. In short, ­these “compromise” solutions—­their investment in disciplinary legibility (and their aforementioned doubts about diasporic Jews’ po­liti­cal bona fides)—­prove insufficiently radical. While grappling with similar tensions between recognized conceptual frameworks and local po­liti­cal experience, scholars of Jewish po­ liti­cal thought have been reluctant to pursue the kind of provincialization that Chakrabarty advocates. In this volume we conduct an experiment in the provincialization that previous scholars resisted. To this end we have taken the volume’s conceptual framework from one of the centerpieces of the liturgical tradition: the High Holiday maḥzor (prayerbook). We have chosen to structure the volume around a terminology derived from a Jewish prayer ser­vice in an effort to challenge disciplinary norms that render Jewish texts derivative or deficiently po­liti­cal. Our choice is motivated by a sense that the usual ways of carving up the intellectual terrain do not do justice to the Jewish phenomena in question and risk blunting our critical acumen. Rather than shoehorn Jewish texts into Western frameworks or pursue a compromise approach with an eye ­toward legibility, we hope to uncover the po­liti­cal imagination that animates the lived experience of Jewish traditions of study, prayer, and action. As the editors of The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition acknowledge, “po­liti­ cal theory” was not a genre of Jewish writing, and yet po­liti­cal thought can be found within Jewish texts in other genres. We see liturgy as a site that contains both implicit and explicit statements about the value that Jews throughout the ages have placed on varying configurations of ­human and

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divine power. Furthermore, in liturgy, ­these statements are lived and enacted through bodily choreography, spoken aloud, and ritually repeated in a way that sets them apart from more scholarly texts, such as the Babylonian Talmud. The latter is the special property of the yeshivah (acad­emy) and the bet midrash (study hall), while the liturgy is much closer to being the common possession of Jewry as a ­whole. Our move ­here is si­mul­ta­neously playful and serious, like a rabbinic midrash or petiḥta that grounds an exegetical or theological claim about scripture in a pun or folk etymology.44 Our title, The King Is in the Field, is offered in a similar spirit. Only one of our three sections, Malchuyot (Regimes), deals even nominally with monarchy, and divine monarchy at that. None of our contributors address this classical trope of sovereignty directly; this is, ­after all, a volume on modern Jewish politics. The saying “The king is in the field,” however, is associated with the month of Elul, the last month of the Hebrew calendar and the lead-in to the Days of Awe. It is not itself a holiday, and yet the calendar directs the Jewish ­people to prepare for holidays. The workers continue to ­labor in their own fields, but they are to behave as if the king, normally ensconced in his distant palace, could walk up to them at any moment. The “field” in the saying is of course a meta­phor for all one’s ordinary daily activities, and not just in the sense of an academic “field” of study. (In academic contexts, “the king is in the field” would signify the entrance of politics into disciplines from which it was previously excluded.) Categories normally distinct overlap; the lines between the sacred and the profane are blurred. Such melding is presented as the appropriate preparation for the liturgical high point of the year. Our reliance on categories “internal” to the tradition is not intended to lay claim to greater authenticity, nor is it to deny our manifest debt to Western protocols for the study of politics. Nevertheless, given the “inadequacy” of ­these protocols, we are moved to develop a conceptual framework from Jewish sources. ­Here, we follow Chakrabarty: “The point is not to reject social science categories but to release into the space occupied by par­tic­u­lar Eu­ ro­pean histories sedimented in them other normative and theoretical thought enshrined in other existing life practices and their archives.”45 In other words, we treat Jewish liturgy as a font of “normative and theoretical thought” rather than a mere “case study” amenable to analy­sis via existing tools. Mindful of the West’s “indispensability,” we nevertheless accord priority to provincial Jewish categories, in the hopes that so d­ oing w ­ ill enable us to disclose alternative conceptualizations of po­liti­cal community. ­These, in turn, may serve as resources for further research, including dialogue with nonstatist concep-



Introduction

13

tions of politics in the West, and with the po­liti­cal thinking of other communities marginalized by the West (such as indigenous communities).

­Toward the Development of a Jewish Po­liti­cal Lexicon In a standard volume on po­liti­cal theory, one would expect to find essays or­ga­nized chronologically or thematically (e.g., authority, membership, community). ­These rubrics reflect power­f ul assumptions about the development and proper study of po­liti­cal thought. The task incumbent on scholars of po­liti­cal thought, in this view, is to recapitulate the historical unfolding of traditions and seek out per­sis­tent, cross-­cultural themes. In this volume, by contrast, we have or­ga­nized the volume’s essays ­under three Hebrew headings: Malchuyot (Regimes), Zichronot (Remembrances), and Shofarot (Blasts [of the ram’s horn]). With this alternative orga­nizational scheme, we hope to suggest new ways in which texts can resonate with one another and with their historical and po­liti­cal contexts. Our headings are taken from the additional prayer ser­vice of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year)—­k nown as the musaf ʻAmidah—­and, as we ­will see in what follows, they have already been subject to po­liti­cal appropriation by twentieth-­century intellectuals. What is the musaf ʻAmidah in Jewish liturgy, and in what sense does it express a provincial conceptualization of the po­liti­cal domain? The blowing of the shofar (ram’s horn) constitutes the centerpiece of this ser­vice, which is recited in the after­noon on Rosh Hashanah. During this ser­vice, the shofar is sounded repeatedly, accompanied by the recitation of three sets of ten biblical verses (from the Torah, Prophets, and Writings): one set or­ga­nized around themes of kingship/regimes (malchuyot), one around themes of remembrance (zichronot), and the final set devoted to the shofar itself (shofarot [pl. of shofar]). Scholars of liturgy have long differed regarding ­whether the malchuyot, zichronot, and shofarot rubric was developed in the tannaitic period (ca. second ­century CE), or ­whether it predates the destruction of the ­temple in 70 CE.46 For our purposes, the precise dating is less impor­tant than the fact that the prooftexts cited to attest the prayer’s composition illustrate the entwinement of halakhic decision-­making with po­liti­cal contestation in an imperial context. Indeed, one of the sources cited in nearly ­every academic study of the prayer’s composition highlights the po­liti­cal exigencies driving the rabbinic elaboration of shofar-­blowing practices. In the Jerusalem Talmud,

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Rabbi Yakov bar Aha brings a story in the name of Rabbi Yohanan to explain why the shofar is blown in the after­noon.47 Originally, the story goes, the shofar was blown in the morning.48 However, the Romans mistook the ritual blowing of the horn early in the morning for a call to arms and launched an attack of their own, killing the assembled Jews. To avert such fatal misunderstandings, the rabbis moved the shofar blowing to the after­noon ser­ vice. They reasoned that, if the shofar ­were blown in the after­noon, ­after a full morning of prayer, the Romans would understand that the instrument was sounded in a ritual, rather than a martial, context. Significantly, the rabbinic narrative that explains the ser­vice’s fluid composition showcases both the dynamics and the stakes of translation in an imperial context. A delicate negotiation with the ruling powers is necessary, in this context, ­because the shofar bears a dual resonance, alternately rousing the troops to ­battle and heralding divine revelation. The shofar’s polysemy arguably reflects the intermingling of realms that are often separated in the modern, secular imagination. Yet, in flagging the distinctive po­liti­cal imagination that the shofar has historically encoded, we are not making a naive bid for authenticity. Indeed, the story on which we draw resists sharp distinctions between what is “Jewish” and what is external to the tradition. In a context of po­liti­cal subordination in which misunderstanding is tantamount to death, the rabbis made halakhic decisions for pragmatic, po­liti­cal reasons: to pacify hostile rulers. In other words, the “internal” vocabulary that encodes a rabbinic po­liti­cal imagination is itself po­liti­cal, established through a delicate negotiation with the hegemonic power. The po­liti­cal language that we seek to recover is thus provincial in the literal sense—it was established by subjects in a far-­flung province of the Roman empire—­but it also illustrates the dilemmas of provincialization that Chakrabarty diagnosed. By adopting the liturgy’s taxonomy as an organ­izing framework, we aim to recapitulate the rabbis’ gesture when reconfiguring the prayer sequence for Rosh Hashanah. The rabbinic negotiation with po­liti­cally imposed constraints does not constitute mere capitulation, nor is it identical to a “compromise” approach. The rabbis did not abandon their practice; they continued to blow the shofar, risks notwithstanding. Moreover, to lessen ­these risks, they chose not to issue a clarificatory announcement addressed to the Romans in Latin or Greek. Rather, they revised the sequence of their traditional practice, in hopes that their intentions would be legible to the Romans even while expressed in Hebrew. Inspired by the rabbis, we have chosen not to “speak Greek” but



Introduction

15

rather to affirm a provincial form in full awareness that this is done in dialogue with canonical traditions of Western po­liti­cal thought.49 The time is ripe for such a provincializing gesture, we would argue, since Jewish politics is no longer an exclusively Jewish affair. (Nor is the study of Jewish po­liti­cal thought the exclusive province of scholars who identify as Jewish, as was the case through the 1990s.) As Rebecca Kobrin’s chapter in this volume demonstrates, Jewish po­liti­cal controversies have long engaged non-­Jews. It is scarcely surprising that fierce debate swirled around the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in the Polish press, post–­World War I, given the material consequences of American Jewish philanthropy for Polish Jews’ neighbors. Non-­Jewish engagement with Jewish debates has arguably intensified in the United States, especially as attitudes ­toward Israel became an ideological litmus test post-1967. As Shaul Magid documents, Zionism and the State of Israel have become obligatory reference points for white and Black nationalists located on opposite sides of the American po­ liti­cal spectrum. Reading the work of Alice Walker, Vincent Lloyd argues that affective and po­liti­cal ties to Jewish activists ­shaped Walker’s early views of justice and judgment. One could argue that recourse to provincial Jewish categories is outdated, now that Jewish controversies are part and parcel of mainstream po­liti­cal discourse (which, in the American case, is conducted largely in En­glish). Yet the essays in this volume suggest other­wise. To justify their po­liti­cal demands, Magid argues, Black and white nationalists have learned to speak in Jewish idioms (e.g., “white Zionism”). At the current juncture, the translation pro­cess works in both directions; non-­Jews have ­adopted Jewish terms and concepts, just as Jewish thinkers have framed their arguments with an eye ­toward Western po­liti­cal traditions.50 Again, this dynamic is hardly new. In the above-­cited aggadah, the rabbis presumed that the Romans ­were (or could become) minimally conversant in ­things Jewish. Hence their confidence that, ­were the Romans to observe the Rosh Hashanah prayer ser­vice from the very beginning, they would be able decipher the shofar’s meaning by the time that musaf rolls around. At a moment when “Jewish politics” has assumed an urgency that transcends the (shifting and porous) bound­a ries of the Jewish community, we believe that a more systematic effort of provincialization is required. It is no longer persuasive to contend that Jewish concepts must remain marginal, opaque, or questionably “po­liti­cal” ­unless translated into “Latin” or “Greek.” As an empirical ­matter, the volume demonstrates, intellectuals and activists

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from a variety of backgrounds increasingly frame their po­liti­cal claims through engagement (sometimes admiring, often agonistic) with Jewish movements, terms, and concepts. Consequently, con­temporary scholars of Jewish po­liti­cal thought are relieved of the “burden of proof ” that made it hard for e­ arlier generations to contest prevailing disciplinary norms.

Regimes, Remembrances, and Shofar Blasts A source from the Babylonian Talmud offers the following explanation for the practice of reciting malchuyot, zichronot, and shofarot, which R. Yehuda brings in the name of R. Akiva: “And recite before me on Rosh HaShanah verses that mention kingships, remembrances, and shofarot: Kingships so that you ­will crown me as king over you; Remembrances so that your remembrance ­will rise before me for good; and with what ­will the remembrance rise? It w ­ ill rise with the shofar” (Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 16a).51 Of course, the liturgy’s meaning and significance have been subject to myriad interpretations in contexts rabbinic, academic, and popu­lar. One of the most intriguing glosses cited in Shmuel Yosef Agnon’s Days of Awe anthology suggests that the musaf prayer has long been understood to express a distinctive po­liti­cal vision. “The ­matter of malchuyot, zichronot, and shofarot should be interpreted in accordance with three epochs in Israel: malchuyot represents the first days when he became king in Jeshurun,52 zichronot, that we always remember ­those days, and shofarot, that we await the shofar of the messiah.”53 In this reading, the Rosh Hashanah musaf is an exercise in po­ liti­cal education. The liturgy invites the worshiper to recapitulate the trajectory of Jewish history, the defining events of which involve the loss and anticipated restoration of po­liti­cal in­de­pen­dence. If R. Akiva enjoins h ­ umans to affirm divine sovereignty and accept divine judgment, this commentator recalls the period of Jewish po­liti­cal in­de­pen­dence and gestures ­toward the ultimate redemption, collapsing the distance between mundane and transcendent po­liti­cal regimes. For this commentator, malchuyot, zichronot, and shofarot are keywords in a Jewish po­liti­cal lexicon. A cursory glance through Agnon’s bibliography to locate the author of this provocative commentary yields a surprising discovery. Although the passage reads like a medieval gloss, it was actually written by Agnon himself in the 1930s. As Gershom Scholem relates, “With his caustic sense of humor Agnon included in Days of Awe a number of highly imaginative (and imagi-



Introduction

17

nary) passages culled from his own vineyard, a non­ex­is­tent book, Kol Dodi (‘The Voice of My Beloved’), innocently mentioned in the bibliography as a ‘Manuscript, in possession of the author.’ ”54 Once we learn that the “anonymous” commentary on malchuyot, zichronot, and shofarot is in fact Agnon’s handi­work, it is hard to read the gloss as anything but a Zionist proclamation55—­ although Scholem’s “unmasking” ­here places Agnon in yet another long Jewish tradition, that of pseudepigraphy.56 For our purposes, the precise ideological stance that Agnon imputes to the ser­vice is less significant than the way in which he articulates a po­liti­cal vision in dialogue with t­ hese sources. In the introduction to Days of Awe, Agnon acknowledges that the collected texts have under­gone a translation pro­cess. Agnon rendered Aramaic texts into Hebrew and polished the sages’ occasionally rough language: “Yet, although I have not kept to their style, I have kept their meaning very well indeed,” Agnon promises.57 Yet, as the foregoing reveals, Agnon’s editorial work went beyond cosmetic adjustments required to make rabbinic texts accessible to modern readers. Acquaintances report that Agnon described Kol Dodi as “the voice that I hear in moments of illumination and creation.”58 For Agnon, the act of translation was one of profound identification, in which the discursive conventions of the source material enabled him to generate a po­liti­ cal language responsive to con­temporary predicaments (which, in the introduction to the 1946 edition, he describes as bleak).59 Moreover, by adopting a literary persona, Agnon both indulges and subverts the fetish of authenticity—­ readers conversant in the tradition (who know that the Kol Dodi does not exist) are in on the joke.60 In this episode of literary masquerade, we can see how, writing at a specific juncture and in response to contingent po­liti­cal circumstances, Agnon develops a provincial po­liti­cal idiom from the musaf ser­vice.61 In the following chapters, we orchestrate a parallel encounter with the malchuyot, zichronot, and shofarot verses, to see w ­ hether new po­liti­cal configurations might emerge in response to con­temporary concerns.62 Given our historical location, it is not altogether surprising that many of the volume’s essays criticize, or expressly reject, the Zionist historiography that Agnon draws out of the musaf ser­vice. Yet the point is not to establish the precise ideological leanings of the Rosh Hashanah liturgy but to encourage theoretical creativity by working within and against traditional constraints. How might our analy­sis change if, like Agnon, we adopt liturgical idioms and rabbinic interpretive practices as critical tools? Although we have not gone so far as to don a literary mask, we hope that something of Agnon’s playful spirit shines through in our proposal to treat “regimes,” “remembrances,” and

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“blasts” as po­liti­cal concepts. Again, our aim is not to enshrine ­these terms as the definitive po­liti­cal framework. Instead we examine how the po­liti­cal resonance of the assembled texts changes once they are or­ga­nized according to this provincial triad rather than chronologically or geo­graph­i­cally.

Malchuyot/Regimes The malchuyot verses proclaim divine sovereignty. The poetic composition that prefaces the collection of biblical verses is the ʻAleinu—­a prayer that is recited daily but receives a dramatic twist on Rosh Hashanah through the addition of a regal choreography.63 In many synagogues it is traditional for worshipers to perform a full prostration when reciting the phrase, “And so we bow, acknowledging the supreme sovereign, the Holy One, who is praised.”64 Although the first paragraphs of the ʻAleinu include a blatant, even chauvinistic, assertion of Jewish election (which some con­temporary Jews omit), the prayer concludes with a vision of universal redemption through ac­cep­tance of divine sovereignty. This ambivalent universalism recurs at the conclusion of the malchuyot verses, which anticipate a time when “all that you have made ­will recognize you as their maker, all that you have created ­will understand that you are their creator, and all living beings w ­ ill say: Adonai, the God of Israel, is sovereign, ruling over all.”65 In the chapters of our own malchuyot section, scholars wrestle with two of the conundrums that ­these verses foreground: the translation of divine sovereignty into mundane, this-­worldly institutions, and the possibility of encompassing the concrete particulars of Jewish po­liti­cal history within universal trajectories. The Hebrew root m–­l–­ch constitutes a semantic field around kingship. But just as the ancient Israelites transformed the nexus of divine sovereignty and ­human kingship that they saw around them in Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia, the chapters in this section approach the question of authority from unexpected ­angles. They do not ignore the fundamental issue of who should rule. However, in dif­fer­ent ways, they are more concerned with the question of what rules: with the invisible ­orders that manifest in and through the ­human exercise of power. This issue is quite salient in the prob­lem of law. Is the “rule of law” ever a real, live possibility, or is it always a smokescreen for h ­ uman interests and desires? Many forms of liberalism have wagered that the rule of law is both pos­si­ble and desirable, and many forms of anti-­ and post-­liberalism have



Introduction

19

argued the reverse. The long history of Christian anti-­Judaism casts its shadow over this discussion.66 If we examine what is at stake in ­these polemics against legalism and Judaizing, we find that the under­lying issues are about the strength and role of norms, and the way that they should be embodied in enduring institutions. Jewish po­liti­cal thought takes place both within and beyond this shadow. In Israel, where the ­legal system is a complex mixture of inheritances from the Ottoman and British periods as well as from the selective Zionist appropriation of Jewish sources, the debate is often framed along familiar “church and state” lines.67 Irene Tucker and Arye Edrei, however, approach the issue with dif­fer­ent aims. For Tucker, the fundamental issue is the paradox of constitution itself, and how a polity with no constitution deploys political-­cultural concepts like “dignity” in ways that cut across the religion-­ state divide. Her treatment of the prob­lem of institutionalizing transcendental, preexistent rights weaves together the national and international dimensions, placing Israel in the global horizon of the Universal Declaration of ­Human Rights. Ultimately, Tucker is concerned with the way in which the cultural recognition of the preexistent and transcendental nature of ­human rights, which manifests even in everyday habits and practices like speech patterns (such as the Israeli dugri), both undergirds and threatens the apparent necessity of the state as guarantor of t­ hose rights. Edrei offers a similarly creative reframing of critical debates. Rather than questioning ­whether it is appropriate for Jewish law to shape civil law, Edrei asks ­whether Israeli civil law could have an impact on halakhah itself. Focusing on the ­career of Israeli supreme court justice Menachem Elon, Edrei contends that he went beyond the typical concerns of the Mishpat ʻIvri school, which sought to reinvigorate Jewish ­legal tradition by finding ways to use it to inform Israeli civil law. This aim was more nationalist than religious, constituting halakhic tradition as a popu­lar, spiritual inheritance of the nation. Elon, however, rejected this impulse to bifurcate the religious from the secular, national components of halakhic tradition, not by “theocratically” imposing Jewish law on secular Israelis but by attempting to intervene in halakhic tradition itself, setting himself up as a posek (halakhic decisor). The usual lines separating norm and institution are again traversed by a creative cut across the distinction. Halakhah itself crosses another major boundary between state and corporation: the dichotomy between homeland and exile. The force of the homeland/exile binary derives from the vari­ous associated binaries that issue from

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it, the most impor­tant of which is power/powerlessness. Classical Zionist historiography assumed a ­simple one-­to-­one correlation between homeland and power, and between exile and powerlessness. In response, anti-­Zionist activists have placed a counter-­emphasis on the virtues of diaspora, or even, as the Jewish ­Labor Bund put it, on doikayt (Yiddish for “hereness,” as opposed to the Zionist “there­ness”). Yet the dichotomy is clearly overdrawn on both sides. As Meirav Jones shows, the negation of exile was never necessary to Zionism—­ and, by extension, neither the negation nor the negation of the negation need inform Jewish politics ­today. Drawing a connection between Zionist negation and seventeenth-­and eighteenth-­century liberalism’s negation of the state of nature, Jones reveals the intimate intertwining of Zionist thought with modern Eu­ro­pean po­liti­cal theory. She then taps into poetry for an affective understanding of the longing that shapes Zionist nostalgia, and asks ­whether Jewish yearning for corporate existence could exist without negating nonsovereign forms. In his own chapter, Michael Walzer expresses skepticism about that possibility, but explores it nonetheless, through a treatment of the everyday politics of diaspora communities. In line with his foundational ­earlier work, Walzer lays out a conception of statelessness, concerning himself with the meaning of power and authority in contexts where leaders lack legitimate access to vio­lence for the purpose of coercion. The alternative, communal pressure, is weaker when mea­sured from the vantage point of the state, but this does not mean that it does nothing. As Walzer puts it, using only communal pressure, “money is raised; a Jewish civil ser­vice is recruited; religious ser­vices are provided: ­there are synagogues and ­temples, Jewish hospitals and nursing homes, day care centers and day schools.”68 Tracing the lines of force that produce ­these outcomes, Walzer attempts a po­liti­cal taxonomy of diasporic power. More than some of the other contributors to this volume, Walzer relies on Greek categories; even ­here, however, his perhaps surprising conclusion is that, for Jews, the key to diasporic power extends beyond money and charisma to learning. Transmission of communal narratives, norms, habits, and practices is the sine qua non of Jewish “citizenship” for Walzer. This imperative to remember and to teach leads us to our next section.

Zichronot/Remembrances The zichronot verses testify to the capaciousness of God’s memory, which encompasses all events past and ­f uture. “Nothing is forgotten in your awe-­



Introduction

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inspiring presence, nothing concealed from your gaze.”69 In the section’s introductory poem (attributed to Yose ben Yose, fifth ­century CE), divine remembrance is inextricably linked to divine judgment.70 Judgment is inescapable, ­because God remembers each individual and their deeds, but ­those who do not forget God are unlikely to stumble. The selected biblical verses highlight God’s remembrance of discrete individuals (Noah and the patriarchs) with whom covenantal relationships w ­ ere established, as well as formative incidents (the binding of Isaac). ­These verses underscore themes of covenantal faithfulness, establishing a connection between memory and divine power.71 Jewish studies have long been dominated by history and historians. As a guild, historians are not all equally comfortable with Orwell’s dictum that “who controls the past, controls the ­future.”72 Yet it is clear that how historians describe the past, and even the names given to par­tic­u­lar periods (“­Middle Ages,” “Re­nais­sance,” “Enlightenment”), both reflect and shape con­temporary arrangements of power. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi ignited a long-­running controversy when he claimed that academic history represented a radically dif­fer­ ent constellation of power and knowledge from traditional Jewish memory, a “faith of fallen Jews.”73 At first blush, the zichronot verses would appear to epitomize the static, naive approach to the Jewish past that, on Yerushalmi’s view, modern historiography shatters. (Indeed, the Hebrew words zachor and zicharon [zichronot is the plural] share the same etymological root.) Yet for con­temporary historians unburdened by alienation and “fallenness”—­whether ­because it is no longer presumed that scholars of Jewish history are themselves Jewish,74 or ­because the university no longer functions as a stand-in for the bet midrash (rabbinic study hall)—­Yerushalmi’s distinction is liable to seem overdrawn. Rather than simply constituting “traditional memory,” the zichronot verses display a sophisticated awareness of the link between covenantal promises and con­temporary po­liti­cal judgments. Moreover, once we suspend the presumption of a now-­sundered enchantment, the po­liti­cal dilemma that weighed on Yerushalmi—­can modern historiography replace collective memory as a foundation for Jewish identity?—­loses much of its urgency. At a moment when the assimilationism versus nationalism binary that Yerushalmi inherited no longer exhausts the po­liti­cal valence of Jewish historiography, we are freed to think anew about the ways in which remembrance informs community and the kinds of community that it constitutes. Awareness of the deep link between description of the past and action in the pre­sent pervades the contributions of Assaf Tamari and Philipp von Wussow. For Tamari, the usual historiographic context of Ḥayyim Ṿital, a

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foremost student of the ­g reat kabbalist Isaac Luria, has not captured his unique po­liti­cal imagination. The Safed kabbalists of the sixteenth ­century occupy a distinct place in the landscape of Jewish studies: symbols of a revitalized mystical-­messianic thinking in the wake of the catastrophe of Spanish expulsion, they also call forth ambivalence about the ostensible dangers of po­liti­cal messianism. Focusing on Ṿital’s accounts of his dreams (not usually mined for po­liti­cal resonance), as well as his relationship to the Muslim Ottoman rulers of Palestine, Tamari offers an alternative take on messianism’s po­liti­cal valence, one that escapes the oppositions of Scholem’s “restorative/ apocalyptic” binary. Tamari’s treatment of the “truth” of dreams recovers a dynamic po­liti­cal dimension of the Safed scene, joining local geography to global imaginaries. Von Wussow, by contrast, seeks a new approach to one of the most prominent subfields of con­temporary po­liti­cal theory, the German-­ Jewish intellectuals of the 1920s and 1930s. Von Wussow starts from a recognition that “German-­Jewish philosophy” has become a kind of totemic figure in both the acad­emy and in the culture at large, used and abused for numerous (and conflicting) po­liti­cal purposes. Taking an intellectual-­historical approach, Von Wussow shows how the politics of German-­Jewish “philosophy” and “theory” before the war ­were effaced in a postwar German effort to forge a usable “Jew” to think with. Von Wussow’s intervention into how we remember “German-­Jewish philosophy” keeps a constant eye on the reciprocal relationship between intellectuals in their own context and their repre­sen­ta­tion in ours. The politics of relations between Jews and non-­Jews in history and historiography form the horizon for the contributions of Rebecca Kobrin and Shaul Magid. Kobrin, engaging American Jewish philanthropy in interwar Poland, seeks to demonstrate the manifestly po­liti­cal character of such charity in the context of rising American influence. American Jews may have intended simply to aid their coreligionists (who ­were in many cases their former neighbors), now suffering massive dislocation and poverty in the wake of the First World War and its associated pogroms. In practice, however, they ­were perceived by non-­Jewish Poles as agents of both American empire and a transnational Jewish polity. Kobrin’s discussion, like many ­others in this volume, seeks to expand our conception of what counts as po­liti­cal by challenging the perceived apo­liti­cal status of philanthropy—­and by remembering this past in this way, she also addresses the politics of con­temporary Jewish philanthropy.75 Meanwhile, Shaul Magid addresses the rhe­toric of Zionism as a discourse often perceived as an intramural Jewish affair (albeit



Introduction

23

one with fateful consequences for non-­Jews). Magid inflects Zionism’s Jewishness differently by observing how this rhe­toric has been taken up and deployed by non-­Jews in the United States. In par­tic­u­lar, he notes the fraught connection of Zionism and race in the language of white and Black nationalists from the early twentieth c­ entury to the pre­sent. By incorporating ­these non-­Jewish “Zionisms” into our historical memory, Magid challenges our ability to represent Zionism as a unitary and “Jewish” phenomenon, and calls for us to reevaluate the lines we draw among ethnocentrism, racism, and racialization in our thinking about Judaism and Zionism. As with all the essays in Zichronot, the link between history/memory and power gives rise to a call for action, leading to our final section.

Shofarot/Blasts In the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, the shofar verses evoke the revelation at Sinai, which was accompanied by the sound of the shofar. In the words of the introductory poem (fifth ­century CE), “You revealed yourself in a cloud of glory, to speak to your holy ­people, allowing them to hear your voice from the heavens.”76 The shofar sound announces the penetration of the mundane by the transcendent, both at the beginning of Israel’s history (Sinai) and at the anticipated redemption. Thus the liturgy invokes “the ­great shofar proclaiming our freedom,” which ­will accompany the ingathering of the exiles and the restoration of the ­temple ser­vice.77 At t­ hese moments of rupture, the shofar’s call communicates the commandments and promises that have ­shaped the Jewish po­liti­cal imagination. Yet the shofar also serves more mundane functions in the Hebrew Bible, rousing troops to b­ attle and proclaiming new moons.78 Just as the sound of the shofar links the moment of revelation to that of redemption, con­temporary po­liti­cal theology wrestles with the paradoxes of theocracy and messianism. Gershom Scholem already worried, in his famous letter to Franz Rosenzweig, that his fellow Zionists ­were naive to believe that “the [Hebrew] language has been secularized, and the apocalyptic thorn has been pulled out.” 79 As a scholar of the messianic claimant Shabbetai Zvi, Scholem both admired and feared the power of messianism to disrupt the orderly ­house of the rabbinic commandments. Several de­cades ­later, Scholem’s controversial and disloyal student, Jacob Taubes, extended Scholem’s analy­sis of Zvi to the arch-­messianist of all Jewish history: Paul of Tarsus. For Taubes, the ­whole problematic of twentieth-­century po­liti­cal theology,

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as exemplified by the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, was first signaled by Paul and his belief that the coming of the messiah meant the suspension of Torah law; if “the ­whole palaver” was about to come to an end, ­there would be no need for durable norms or institutions.80 Po­liti­cal theology, renewed in the con­temporary acad­emy, maintains this interest in the dangers of apocalypse. And yet, by emphasizing the subversive power of redemptive hopes, more ordinary facets of revelation can be overlooked. In the aggadic tale cited e­ arlier, it was the mundane meaning of the shofar—­the military meaning—­that called down Roman vio­lence, whereas “prayer” alone was safe, its potent theological charge notwithstanding. Moreover, the fact that the shofar was historically blown during rituals of excommunication, the primary tool by means of which the kahal policed communal bound­aries, suggests that, in the rabbinic imagination, the shofar is entwined with practices of institution building. As the shofarot verses emphasize, the drama of Sinai surrounded the teaching of Torah and mitzvot (commandments); the Exodus itself was a redemption, but not an apocalypse.81 Freedom, ingathering, “joyous occasions”—­ these too are shofarot. For ­these reasons, the shofar’s summons to strug­gle often reveals ­battle lines that are unclear. This is demonstrated by the essays in our own shofarot section, all of which grapple with the call to messianic politics, with the purported risks of this call, and with attempts to mitigate ­these risks (or to challenge the presumption that messianism is in fact risky). The summons, then, is directed not against an obvious ­enemy but rather ­toward the intellectual and spiritual challenges of a complex real­ity—­with what one translation of teruah renders as “the splintered call.”82 Lihi Ben Shitrit provides an example of this splintering through her examination of the contradictions of Jewish feminist politics in the context of occupied East Jerusalem. On the one hand, the liberal Jewish feminists of ­Women of the Wall seek equal access to Jewish holy sites; on the other, this strug­gle for access is weaponized to further the Israeli domination of the ­Temple Mount and to diminish Palestinian claims to the site. Ben Shitrit carefully explores the intricate politics of the Israeli feminist co­ali­tion, while illuminating its counter-­positioning of Palestinian Muslim ­women as antifeminist actors. Through her focus on the “ambiguity of complicity,” Ben Shitrit delineates ways that emancipatory goals must be paired with critical analy­sis if they are to contribute to demo­cratic freedom. The difficult entanglement of liberation and oppression is similarly explored by Menachem Lorberbaum, this time on the theoretical level of the



Introduction

25

theopolitics of Zionism and post-­Zionism. For Lorberbaum, a theological critique of the po­liti­cal is needed to prevent the “ultimate closure” of the moral horizon sought by the state; theology, however, often ends up sanctifying the state instead. This is just as true for Jews as for Christians, necessitating intervention by an alternative, prophetic theology that can interrupt the state’s claim to absolute status. Theology does not automatically supervise and correct politics; it is “just as much in need of deconstruction,” and this requires constant critical reflection. Fi­nally, Vincent Lloyd considers the paradoxes of Black liberation and Christian anti-­Judaism in the work of Alice Walker. Rejecting both incurious condemnation and exculpatory justification of Walker’s antisemitic outbursts, Lloyd examines the ways that Walker was deeply ­shaped by Jewish themes, both in ac­cep­tance and rejection. He also shows how a par­tic­u­lar understanding of all-­expansive Christian love, combined with a New Age rejection of the very concept of judgment (the latter of which is projected onto Jews), leads Walker to view Judaism as oppressive and the strug­gle against it as liberatory. In a far more perceptive discussion than would have been pos­si­ble had he treated Walker’s antisemitism as beneath intellectual analy­sis, Lloyd shows how the general tendency of antisemitism to pre­sent itself as a politics of liberation found its way into the particularities of Walker’s Black and Jewish loves and concerns.

Conclusion Since the climactic events of the mid-­t wentieth ­century, judgments, both popu­lar and scholarly, about the Jews’ po­liti­cal standing have been ­shaped by emergent po­liti­cal developments. As we have argued, the field of Jewish po­liti­cal thought was established in response to con­temporary po­liti­cal concerns, and its contours have been ­shaped by shifting perceptions of what constitutes pressing issues. This volume is no exception to ­these complex, often fraught, negotiations between academic scholarship and its material, historical, and po­liti­cal contexts. The volume’s genesis and execution ­were bracketed by two events widely perceived as realigning global po­liti­cal fault lines. The fellowship year coincided with Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States, and as contributors completed their chapters, the world was para­lyzed by the coronavirus pandemic. As the volume went to press, the crisis mode that reached its apotheosis in the sacking of the US Capitol

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on January 6, 2021, had receded somewhat with the return of noncharismatic leadership as personified in Joe Biden, although the po­liti­cal and ­legal aftershocks of Trump continued to dominate headlines. In Israel, rotating Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid had assembled a diverse and expressly nonideological co­ali­tion, promising technocratic expertise. Yet the government fell ­after less than one year, with the result that Israelis faced their fifth election in the span of less than three years. As the pandemic continued to grind on—­and fears of ecological catastrophe intensified—­hopes for a return to mundane politics w ­ ere repeatedly dampened. It is too soon to divine what ­these events portend for Jewish and world politics, or even, arguably, how their imprint is manifest in the volume’s collected essays. Cognizant of the risks of premature prophecy, we ­will nevertheless venture a few tentative hypotheses about the po­liti­cal currents that run through the volume and hint, in oblique ways, at the broader circumstances of its composition. If The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition volumes w ­ ere conceived at the height of the Oslo peace pro­cess, this volume drops at a moment when the two-­state solution is essentially a dead letter, and consequential realignments in ­Middle Eastern geopolitics have been formalized through the (Trump-­brokered) normalization of relations between Israel and several of the Gulf States. At this transitional moment, when the nation-­state model appears increasingly inadequate to the challenges at hand and, as such, no longer monopolizes Jewish debate, the volume’s essays reflect the thirst for new po­liti­cal paradigms (or, at the very least, new po­liti­cal vocabularies). Moreover, the essays capture the ambivalent longing for a redemptive horizon that took hold as politics assumed an increasingly feverish, existential tenor (in both Israel and the United States). In the grips of the pandemic, many of us find ourselves caught between the desperate desire for a return to “normalcy” and the faint hope that a crisis of this magnitude ­w ill inspire radical forms of po­liti­cal creativity. ­Here, the shofar’s nonapocalyptic meanings resound, as our contributors seek to inject ele­ments of luster (charisma, even) into the kind of mundane institutions, practices, and norms that have long held Jewish communities together, and which also serve as the condition of possibility of any po­liti­cal life shared by Jews and non-­Jews. Perhaps critical self-­reflection, honest dialogue, and analy­ sis rooted in compassion can avert the severity of the decree.

PA R T I Malchuyot (Regimes)

Chapter 1

Dignity and Dugri

The Abiding Appeal of Sovereignty Without Institutions Irene Tucker

While po­liti­cal theorists and ­legal historians may be of many minds as to what—if anything—­the modern, post-­Enlightenment, concept of dignity means, they are virtually unan­i­mous regarding the crucial moments of its genealogy. In 1785, squarely in the midst of the era of Eu­ro­pean demo­cratic revolutions, Immanuel Kant published Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in which he invoked the category of “dignity” to name the characteristic that enabled subjects to act according to a moral law they imposed on themselves. A ­century and a half ­later, the 1948 United Nations’ Universal Declaration of H ­ uman Rights (UDHR) introduced the category of dignity with the goal of imagining a ground for establishing and rendering inviolable the freedom and autonomy of ­human beings that need not depend on the operation of the governmental institutions of specific states: “All ­human beings are born ­free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act ­towards one another in the spirit of brotherhood.” This goal is inextricably linked to the post–­World War II moment with which it is associated: Such institutions had proved themselves to be not only fragile but genocidal in their relations to their own citizenry, as well as incapable of protecting the fundamental rights of the millions of refugees and stateless ­people brought into being by that de­cade’s sustained military conflict. In ­these inflection points we can discern a discursive split within dignity-­ talk, a division intimately linked to the paradox of the concept of dignity

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itself. What the invention of dignity seeks to do is to name and, in naming, to secure the existence of a category whose ­legal, po­liti­cal, and moral force lies in the fact of its in­de­pen­dence and transcendence of any par­tic­u­lar act of naming, or any generative historical act or event. We might say that dignity is the name we now append to the invention of the idea that h ­ uman beings possess unconditional, intrinsic—­uninventable—­value. But even as dignity’s discursive arc registers a recurrent impulse to imagine a moment and act of founding on the basis of transcendent values, it more mundanely identifies the creation and proliferation of two closely related po­liti­cal genres designed to bridge the gap between dignity’s apparently contradictory ele­ments: founding declarations and constitutions that create by describing what is already ­there. If declarations, like dignity, swing between gestures of founding predicated on an embrace of the there­ness of values and ­those based on the historical failure to meet ­those aspirational values, constitutions can be seen to insist on the necessity of per­sis­tent retrospection. Presuming an already established state, constitutions articulate founding values designed to constrain the sorts of acts institutions can perform by repeatedly harking back to the moment when ­those values w ­ ere instantiated. So while declarations and constitutions position themselves on opposite sides of the divide articulated by the concept of dignity—­between transcendent, autonomous values and the imperative to institutionalize ­those values—­they nevertheless look to the disjunction between the two ele­ments for the source of their authority. Dignity’s power, in this accounting, is part and parcel of its fragility, its internal dividedness. In the first part of this essay, I w ­ ill argue that, while dignity’s paradoxical quality has persisted throughout the concept’s modern history and throughout the discourse of ­human rights that is dignity’s most obvious practical instantiation, the internal dividedness of this vision has left space for a less well-­k nown, “shadow” conception of dignity. The contours of this shadow dignity begin to become legible in the form of what analysts have taken to be the UDHR’s own effort to grapple with the conceptual gap at its heart. Article 15 of the UDHR, one of its ­later, largely overlooked provisions, asserts, first, that “every­one has the right to a nationality” and, second, that “no one ­shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor deprived of the right to change his nationality.” S. James Anaya offers what is arguably the more self-­evident accounting of this provision. The “right to a nationality,” in his telling, asserts “the capacity of international law to advance ethnicity or nationality rights claims,” enabling native tribes or­ga­nized in ways distinct



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from existing state structures to lay claim to forms of autonomy beyond the context of classic colonialism.1 But another, less self-­evident reading has also gained a substantial l­egal foothold. According to this reading, “the right to a nationality” ­ought to be seen as articulating a fix for the prob­lem of institutionalizing ­human rights. As Mirna Adjami and Julia Harrington explain, “Although international ­human rights law affirms the premise of the UDHR that ­human rights apply to all individuals regardless of citizenship or national origin, the ­legal relationship between an individual and a state remains an essential prerequisite to the effective enjoyment of the full range of ­human rights.”2 What the “right to a nationality” ensures, in short, is the right to have one’s rights protected and enforced by, instantiated within, a par­tic­u­lar state. According to this reading, the nationality provision is designed to respond to the challenge of making transcendent ­human rights practically meaningful.3 But the fact that the UDHR articulates this vision of particularity as “the right to a nationality” rather than as, say, a right to citizenship in a specific state, suggests the formal ambiguity surrounding dignity’s relation to state sovereignty. Is ­human dignity to be understood as the grounds authorizing state power or a statement of the fundamental gratuitousness of state institutions? Not only does this intertwining challenge accountings that understand the discourses of dignity and ­human rights to be primarily concerned with the po­liti­cal rights of individuals, but it also invites us to see the emergence of modern ­human rights–­centered dignity as part of a longer historical trajectory, one that includes a variety of nonstatist envisionings of national and ethnic autonomy. The most salient moments in this longer trajectory occur several de­ cades ­earlier, in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, in the form of a cluster of related, if not-­quite-­coordinated, po­liti­cal movements known as “minoritarianism.” ­These movements emerged in the aftermath of the collapse of the Austro-­Hungarian Empire, when, animated by the displacement of ethnic populations from newly (re-)drawn national borders, a series of po­liti­cal thinkers and activists began to advocate for a range of nonstatist versions of minority po­liti­cal repre­sen­ta­tion. Although the cases for ­these nonstatist forms of cultural autonomy ­were often advanced in the name of populations of newly displaced Central Eu­ro­pe­ans, the most significant theorists of this new minoritarianism ­were Jews, who drew on longstanding practices of diaspora Jewry in developing the models of minority institutional and cultural autonomy for which they advocated, even as they sought forms of recognition and protection ­earlier Jewish communities had lacked. The

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minoritarian movement’s studied neutrality regarding the need for cultural nationalism to be instantiated in state institutions borrowed many of its princi­ples from cultural Zionists like Ahad Ha’am, but what is of equal interest is the ways this ambivalence can be seen to have ­shaped the conceptions of dignity and the “right to a nationality” articulated in the UDHR. Once we recognize the degree to which this ambivalence ­toward institutions of state animates the modern concept of dignity, we can see the ways competing culturalist and statist conceptions of Jewish autonomy that helped animate interwar Eu­ro­pean minoritarianism continue to shape Israeli politics and culture, even ­after the founding of the State of Israel. The most explicit carry­ing over of this ambivalence can be seen in the decades-­long ­battle over the desirable relationship between legislative and constitutional authority within Israel, a debate that culminated in the 1992 passage of Basic Law: ­Human Dignity and Freedom. This protracted constitutional debate can be seen to reprise one of the defining questions surrounding modern dignity: ­Ought dignity to be understood as the grounding authority of state institutions, one that loses its significance once ­those institutions have been established (the legislative model) or should it be seen to name a version of authority that ­matters insofar as it exists in­de­pen­dently of state institutions, and in that regard operates as a constraint on such power (the constitutional model)? But to limit the analy­sis of dignity’s shaping force within the State of Israel to a discussion of the relative power of its legislative and constitutional-­juridical manifestations would cede the debate to po­liti­cal institutionalization before the case for the existence of an ongoing Israeli suspicion ­toward state sovereignty has been made. It is with an eye ­toward keeping open the possibility of the per­sis­tence of a defining Israeli ambivalence ­toward state institutions that I turn in the second half of this essay to an analy­sis of a characteristic Israeli cultural practice that I contend manifests this desire to embrace forms of collective be­hav­ior that render institutions of state redundant: speaking dugri—­the kind of frank “straight talking” that has come to be seen as a defining quality of “Israeliness.” To understand the ways that dugri-­talk might be seen as an expression of a shared desire for a form of self-­governance that operates in­de­pen­dent of state power, I turn to what is arguably the most granular theorizing of dignity as an expressive practice—­that found in Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. This analytical framework enables us to recognize the theatrical frankness that speaking dugri entails as a practice of self-­description,



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a kind of deliberate defining of one’s subjecthood in terms of chosen and named qualities of commonness that render formal state institutions extraneous. While Kant is most often seen as advancing a vision of dignity in which individuals act as fully autonomous agents, a closer examination of the formal structure of his argument reveals Kant to understand dignity as a practice of self-­governance defined by individuals’ power to define and describe their relations to ­others. To the degree that the frankness of dugri-­ talk has become a defining quality of Israeliness, its centrality as a practice suggests that, although mainstream Zionism offered statism as the solution to millennia of Jewish vulnerability, the very history driving the search for such an outcome carries with it, it seems, a profound skepticism regarding the efficacy of the solution it so relentlessly pursued.

Another Dignity What I am calling “shadow dignity”—­the vision of a collective cultural practice adequate in and of itself to create autonomy—­coalesces into something on the order of an or­ga­nized po­liti­cal movement at a moment rarely figured as part of dignity’s ­grand historical sweep. In the de­cade and a half immediately following the end of World War I, the rapid and often messy redrawing of state bound­a ries in the wake of the collapse of centuries-­old colonial empires introduced the possibility of imagining national rights as existing in­de­pen­dently of formal institutions of state. The not-­quite-­state system most closely associated with this period is, of course, the mandate system, a model of governance in which the newly founded League of Nations charged Eu­ro­pean states, mostly former colonial powers, with the task of assuming temporary “tutelary” administrative control over territories in Asia and Africa whose local populations had been deemed not yet capable of self-­governance. Far less well known are the era’s “Minorities Treaties,” a series of League of Nations Covenant provisions that promised cultural, linguistic, and other group rights, including a range of forms of local sovereignty, to national minority populations dispersed across Eu­rope by the collapse of the Austro-­ Hungarian Empire.4 ­Under the Minorities Treaties a­ dopted in June 1919, ethnic Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Hungarians, and Croats who happened to be on the wrong side of the vari­ous new borders would nonetheless retain rights to vari­ous forms of self-­determination—­the right to run their own

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schools, speak in their own languages, elect representatives to their own “minority” legislative bodies. ­These treaties in par­tic­u­lar, and the League of Nations more generally, envisioned what historian James Loeffler has called “a world in which neither size nor power would determine a p­ eople’s right to national existence.”5 Where the post–­World War II conception of dignity understood individuals to possess ­human rights whose transcendence of any par­tic­u­lar state apparatus stood as self-­evident justification for the instantiation of ­those rights in the form of citizenship in some sovereign state, the Minorities Treaties conceived of nations, not individuals, as the default unit deserving of recognition. ­W hether that recognition was registered in the form of a sovereign state structured around an autonomous geo­graph­i­cal territory or in the form of collective self-­determination was effectively beside the point. To the degree that this kind of neutrality ­toward state institutions can be seen as structuring the two-­pronged quality of dignity’s fix—­the “right to a nationality” provision in the UDHR—­the conceptions of national autonomy developed by the minoritarian movement laid out the logic according to which postwar dignity became legible and gained po­liti­cal force. It comes as ­little surprise that, within the interwar debates over the legitimacy of this concept of a minoritarian “stateless” nationalism, Jews would feature as exemplars. Individual Jews and Jews as representatives of communal movements ­were centrally involved in both the theorizing of minoritarian autonomy and the efforts to advance its prospects on the ground. One of the earliest po­liti­cal thinkers to or­ga­nize in the immediate aftermath of the passage of the early Minorities Treaties in 1919 was Hersch Zvi Lauterpacht, a native of Jewish Galicia who became a leader of the World Union of Jewish Students and a founder of the Council of Jewish Lands; he would ­later go on to draft both the International Bill of ­Human Rights and the Israeli Declaration of In­de­pen­dence. The defining agnosticism ­toward forms of national autonomy characteristic of both the Minorities Treaties and the shadow history of dignity is evident in Lauterpacht’s early ­legal scholarship, as well as in his po­liti­cal organ­izing, which a­ dopted the commitment to internationalism laid out by Polish Zionists in their 1917 Copenhagen manifesto. This document insisted on the coequality of its three demands: (1) the recognition of Palestine as the national home of the Jewish ­People; (2) complete equal rights for Jews in all countries; (3) national autonomy in cultural, social, and po­liti­cal spheres in the countries where Jews live in compact masses and in lands where the Jewish communities seek t­ hose rights.6



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Which brings us back to where we began, the oft-­told story of dignity that begins with the emergence of a discourse of individual ­human rights in the wake of the Second World War. The familiar genealogy of dignity with which I opened, the story of a dignity animated by the paradoxical challenge of putting the force of law ­behind princi­ples whose significance lay in their in­de­pen­dence and autonomy from any institutions of state, is a genealogy with the State of Israel at its aporetic core. Brought into sovereign statehood in the postwar era of ­human rights by way of the resolution of the recently established United Nations, a mere five months before that same organ­ization was to designate the concept of dignity as the foundational concept of the Universal Declaration of ­Human Rights, Israel was conceived by a majority of the new organ­ization’s member states as some amalgam of reparations for the Nazis’ attempted genocide of the Jews and as an instrument for the resettlement of the millions of Eu­ro­pean Jewish refugees displaced by that genocide. But my interest in the Israeli case and its complex relation to dignity goes beyond the fact of its historical location in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War or the obliquely reparative context of its founding. By casting light on dignity’s longer, less familiar discursive arc, an arc that incorporates the history of Eu­ro­pean minoritarianism as a kind of collectivist vision of rights without states, I hope to illuminate structures of continuity between the case for the dignity of self-­description Kant offers as an essential ele­ment of his philosophical system and seemingly remote, spontaneous, and unconsidered practices of Israeli po­liti­cal and popu­lar culture. Insofar as the declaration and constitution should be viewed as dignity’s foundational genres, assuming the task of bridging the gap between the concept’s transcendental and institutionalized ele­ments, the convoluted relation between the two types of expressive forms within Israeli state history testifies to a grappling with dignity’s paradoxical relationship to state authority that persists well beyond the moment and conditions of the state’s founding. As I ­will describe in greater detail in what follows, the collapse of the State of Israel’s efforts to agree on a constitution in the months following its declaration of in­de­pen­dence led the Israeli constituent assembly to ­settle for a piecemeal assembly pro­cess, one in which constitutional provisions would be ­adopted one by one, over time, as they ­were agreed upon. The fact that the first of ­these so-­called super-­legislative “basic laws”—­recognizing, fittingly enough, the ­legal status afforded by ­human “dignity”—­managed to gain the requisite support only in 1992, registered the practical difficulties of institutionalizing putatively transcendent values. But this dilation of the

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“moment” of founding over the span of more than four de­cades also had the effect of opening up space within the Israeli state for the sort of institutionally neutral culturalist vision of po­liti­cal autonomy for which the minoritarian movement had advocated and which the post–­World War II ­human rights discourse subsequently reframed in more individualist terms as dignity. To the degree to which this extended period of indecision introduced the possibility that the putatively preexisting values articulated in the form of constitutions might exist alongside functioning legislative institutions without being instantiated within ­those institutions, it also suggested that shared cultural and social practices might assume a kind of po­liti­cal authority and legibility without being formally encoded by the state. (That most historians of the era attribute the failure to agree on a constitution to an inability of the relevant parties to reach consensus regarding the par­tic­u­lar authority to be granted to Jewish halakhic law within the Israeli state serves to underscore this historical alignment of constitutionalism and the kind of cultural autonomy articulated by the minoritarian movement.) In this prolonged pro­cess of sorting out the relations between legislative and constitutional authority, as well as in the per­sis­tence of the sort of minoritarian “national-­ cultural autonomy” Lauterpacht and ­others envisioned in their interwar writing and po­liti­cal organ­izing, the Jewish citizens of the State of Israel articulated a surprising ambivalence ­toward citizenship itself.

Forever Founding: The Harari Decision Not to Decide In a foundational paradox that can be seen to haunt the fraught history of constitutionalism—­and, by extension, of dignity—­within Israel, the notion that the new state would be established on a constitution whose provisions would determine and limit the exercise of its sovereignty was announced not once, but twice. Issued on November 29, 1947, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, which partitioned the territory of British Mandatory Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, proclaimed that both states would be governed by constitutions. Just over a half a year ­later, on May 14, 1948, the State of Israel issued its own Declaration of In­de­pen­dence, mandating, among other ­things, that a constituent assembly produce a constitution by October 1 of that same year.7 With the new state embroiled in the regional military conflict that ensued from the Palestinian Arabs’ decision to reject the UN partition plan, Israel’s self-­imposed October 1 deadline



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came and went without a constitution. On January 25, 1949, following a series of fragile and temporary truces, Israel held its first general election, voting into power a constituent assembly whose assigned task was to hammer out the par­tic­u ­lar provisions of the new state’s constitution. Rather than turning its attention to constitution-­building, however, the constituent assembly opted to make its first act the passage of “Transition Law 5709-1949,” a law that reconstituted the constituent assembly itself as a legislative body to be known as the “First Knesset.” It is this foundational ambiguity as to ­whether the Knesset o­ ught to be understood as an institution charged with the task of creating a constitution designed to authorize and limit the sorts of laws that might be made by a legislative body or as the inaugural iteration of that legislative body itself that created what Israeli po­liti­cal theorist Yoav Mehozay has termed “the fluid jurisprudence of the Israeli regime.”8 The immediate solution the newly elected representatives crafted to solve this obvious tension between constitutional conditions of possibility and the existence of ­actual, instantiated lawmaking institutions was to defer making a decision. On June 13, 1950, the Knesset voted to adopt a resolution proposed by Progressive Party member Yizhar Harari. The Harari Decision, as it came to be known, laid out a pro­cess by which the articles of the constitution would be articulated, debated, and ­adopted piecemeal: The First Knesset instructs the Constitutional, Legislative and Judicial Committee to prepare a draft state constitution. The constitution ­will be built chapter by chapter, in such a way that each ­will constitute a separate basic law. The chapters ­shall be brought to the Knesset in the event that the committee completes its work, and all the chapters together s­ hall be combined into the constitution of the state.9 While Harari’s resolution laid claim to being a “decision” and not simply the deferral of one insofar as it articulated the pro­cess by which individually ­adopted “basic laws” might be assembled into a unified constitution, in fact it was notably vague both as to the specific procedure that was to take place as well as to the par­tic­u­lar quality of constitutional authority. The central procedural question left unresolved was the following: Do basic laws have normative superiority over regular laws—­that is, do they function to constrain the sorts of laws the legislature is allowed to pass—­only once they have been assembled into a final constitution, or do they attain the status of “super-­laws” as soon as they are passed? Given that the Transition Law effectively collapsed the constitution-­building constituent assembly and the legislating Knesset into a single body, and the Harari Decision did nothing to sort out their respective duties, it became theoretically pos­si­ble for a given

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Knesset, functioning as a constituent body, to enact by a regular majority a basic law that would restrict the action of a ­f uture (legislative) Knesset, by requiring that such a body assem­ble a “supermajority” to overturn the previous Knesset’s basic law.10 In the quasi-­official version of Israeli constitutional history, the defining evasiveness of the Harari Decision, its paradoxical statement of commitment not to commit, came to a decisive end in 1992. In what then-­Chief Justice Aharon Barak termed the country’s “constitutional revolution,” the Knesset enacted a cluster of basic laws that actually appeared to fulfill the terms of the constitutional promise made, however ambiguously, by the Harari Decision of forty-­t wo years ­earlier. The first of ­these laws, “Basic Law: ­Human Dignity and Freedom,” stipulates that “the life, body or dignity of a person, as a ­human being, is not to be ­limited.”11 In this provision the paradoxical foundationalism of the concept of dignity—it seeks to create at a par­tic­u­lar historical moment a noncontingent and timeless ground for the protection of essential qualities of humanness—is mirrored by the odd liminality of the basic law’s form: A parliamentary body enacts legislation designed to constrain the power of that same parliamentary body to enact legislation. One might observe, quite plausibly, that such is the paradox of consti­ tutionalism, and that the Israeli case is noteworthy only ­because the dilated timeline of Harari’s compromise means that the foundational act of constitution-­making is not circumscribed by a single moment in the past. But while this paradox can be seen to haunt the foundings of constitutional democracies in general, what makes the Israeli case distinct is that the specific provisions of the Basic Law: ­Human Dignity and Freedom operate to build in the conditionality of the basic laws’ power to constrain as a permanent feature, transforming it from a theoretical hiccup into a prominent dynamic of Israeli state sovereignty. Most straightforwardly, the constraints imposed by the basic laws ­were designed to apply to laws passed only ­after the basic laws’ adoption. In a provision known as Shmirat haDinim (Guarding the Laws), added to ensure passage of the Basic Law: ­Human Dignity and Freedom, existing laws could not be retrospectively invalidated, even if they ­were deemed to violate the ­human rights protected by the new basic law. Moreover, the constitution over time articulates the terms of its authority in language that stipulates the limits of that authority. Knesset laws that appear to violate the basic laws can nonetheless be allowed to stand if it can be argued persuasively that the “statute accords with the state’s values, has



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been legislated for a worthy purpose, and does not exceed what is required.”12 In explic­itly invoking the sort of preexisting values dignity is understood both to exemplify and to instantiate, the Basic Law: ­Human Dignity and Freedom effectively builds in institutional groundlessness as a permanent feature of Israeli constitutional authority, creating a state forever in the pro­cess of being founded.

Kant’s Groundwork and the Long Shadow of Dignity The peculiar history of Israel’s Basic Law: ­Human Dignity and Freedom—­ and the procedural form of the basic laws more generally—­has had the effect of transforming the formal paradox of state constitutionalism from a theoretical prob­lem of founding into an essential ele­ment of the practice of Israeli state sovereignty. But while the challenges of constitutionalism can be seen to articulate one quality of dignity’s animating paradox, ­there are some aspects of dignity’s contradictoriness that remain outside constitutionalism’s ambit. Constitutionalism can be seen as dignity’s defining genre inasmuch as it articulates a set of values that are figured as preexisting the state institutions their authority undergirds. What varies from one constitutional example to the next—­and stands as a m ­ atter of po­liti­cal contention as well— is the question of ­whether the autonomous quality of constitutional values is significant only ­until the point that ­those values are realized in the government institutions or ­whether they remain relevant as an alternative site of authority, the sort of transcendent power a judicial branch of government might invoke to constrain the actions of a legislature. But while constitutions may represent the most familiar form through which dignity’s defining autonomy is expressed, they are certainly not the only form. To confine an exploration of dignity’s legacy to the ways in which it has functioned to undergird constitutional authority is to accede to the presumption that dignity ­matters only insofar as it authorizes institutions of state, when much of the po­liti­cal and philosophical force the concept has accrued lies in its claim to autonomy from state authority altogether. Kant introduces the concept of dignity as part of his effort to understand the power and capacity of individuals to create autonomously the moral laws by which they are to be governed. It is in the hope of understanding the dynamics of this noninstitutional tradition of dignity that I turn now to Kant.

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The concept of dignity makes its way into Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals late and with relatively ­little fanfare. While the language of Kant’s formulation bears ­little of the sense of po­liti­cal urgency that would animate the debates over ­human rights and international law almost two centuries ­later, the set of prob­lems he takes up is familiar. Does the authority of law lie in the essential nature of the subjects governed by that law, or is it something imposed from the outside? If it is a ­matter of essential nature, how ­ought such lawfulness be instantiated in a shared world? Can subjects whose lawful actions are the consequences of their essential natures be said to be acting freely? ­Because my interest ­here is less in parsing the intricacies of Kant’s claims than in understanding how his conceptualization of ­human freedom, law, and sovereignty grounds the discourse of dignity that emerges from it, I ­will be focusing my attention on the larger movements of his argument. The central question he asks is this: If the impetus to act lawfully is something ­people carry within themselves rather than something that is forced on them by external institutions ­under threat of punishment, how are we to recognize actions as lawful, and how do we assure that they are both lawful and ­free? His answer: Insofar as h ­ umans—or, more precisely, what he terms “rational creatures”—­impose laws on themselves, the distinction between actions motivated by the internal qualities of the subject and actions imposed by some authority dis­appears. In essence it is ­humans’ capacity to function as the authority driving their own actions that is the defining quality of their humanness. But although the capacity to impose the law on oneself is a defining quality of what it means to be a rational creature, the authority to do so can only be considered an internal quality so long as it is voluntary, chosen freely. Kant devotes the early sections of the Groundwork to formulating a series of tests designed to identify self-­given law as such. In his accounting it is not sufficient that the given be­hav­ior of an individual conform to a law; that be­hav­ior must be done “for the sake of the law”—­that is, ­because the person in question is committed to following the law as a law. Individuals can discover ­whether they are acting “for the sake of the law” they impose on themselves by evaluating their be­hav­ior in advance according to a kind of thought experiment Kant terms a “categorical imperative.” He explains: “­There is . . . ​only one categorical imperative. It is: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time ­will that it should become a universal law.”13 What makes a law a law is that it describes not just one’s own



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be­hav­ior at a given moment but the sort of be­hav­ior that ­ought to be done by all ­people at all times and in all places. Given such a formal understanding of lawfulness, only a single thought experiment is necessary—­Before I act this way, I ­will check with myself and see: Am I willing for every­one to behave the same way I am behaving now and forever more? But if the formalism of his idea of lawfulness means that one test can be used to evaluate all one’s potential be­hav­iors, Kant nonetheless goes on to offer another, slightly dif­fer­ent kind of thought experiment, a sort of theoretical post-­hoc evaluation of the effects of pos­si­ble be­hav­ior. If the categorical imperative invites ­people to speculate about ­whether they would like every­one to behave the way they themselves are considering behaving, what Kant terms “perfect” and “imperfect” duties entail evaluating the effects such universalization would produce. In some of the examples Kant offers, the prospective effects of universalizing be­hav­ior produce logical contradictions. If every­one ­were to commit suicide as a response to moments of sadness, ­there would be no ­people left who might direct themselves according to universal, self-­given law, so it follows that the duty not to commit suicide is a “perfect” duty. In other examples, the effects of universalizing a given be­hav­ior unfold over time, a mixture of cause and effect and logical undoing that Kant terms “imperfect” duty. So when ­people promise to pay back a loan knowing at the moment of promising they have no intention of actually ­doing it, they are, in lying, acting in a way that ­will have the effect of eroding confidence in contracts and promising over time. Once ­there is a general social consensus that contractual commitments are not promises ­people are likely to keep, then individuals are likely to stop entering into contracts, with contracts eventually disappearing as a normative ­legal practice. For Kant, then, the violation of imperfect duties operates not by generating the sort of logical contradiction produced by the failure to adhere to perfect duties but rather by producing a sort of negative feedback loop, a historical dissolution of norms. Given imperfect duties’ emphasis on post-­hoc effects of given action, we might be tempted to conclude that what fundamentally differentiates perfect and imperfect duties is the kind of evidence on which their characterization depends: Perfect duties are discovered formally by way of the unfurling of a logical premise to the point of contradiction or its absence, while imperfect duties are discernible by way of their empirical effects in the world. But this opposition is misleading. Although imperfect duties involve investigating effects that become evident over time, and the pro­cesses of cause and effect in question generally entail the spreading of effects from an individual

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actor to a larger social body—­for example, the loss of social confidence in promising that occurs when specific ­people agree to contracts whose terms they have no intention of fulfilling—it would be inaccurate to characterize the evidence associated with imperfect duties as empirical. The evidence of such “effects” remains entirely theoretical. Both perfect and imperfect duties engage contemplated actions—­the intention to behave a certain way—­and envision the effects of completed action while leaving entirely unexamined and untheorized the pro­cess of realization itself. In offering an argument that sets aside both the steps by which a given individual might choose to act on one contemplated intention as opposed to another, as well as the pro­cess by which a given contemplated action might produce the effects that would render it incoherent and thus un-­universalizable, the Groundwork reveals itself to be as much a symptom of the difficulties surrounding the sort of institutionalization of rights associated with the United Nations/human rights moment as the justification of t­ hose rights. What had appeared to be a granular accounting of the argument for transcendent rights turns out to be a something more on the order of a rhetorical workaround. The solution to the per­sis­tent prob­lem of how to realize moral laws whose authority lies in their transcendence offered ­here turns out to be keeping the pro­cess of realization entirely imaginary. This bracketing of the pro­cess of realization reveals another, less obvious limitation of Kant’s categorical imperative. By effectively setting aside any account of the subject that would make sense of why and how a given person might choose to impose one par­tic­u­lar universalizable law and not another on him-­or herself, the Groundwork implies that subjects’ authorization and protection by the law are predicated on their indistinguishability from one another. The qualities of self that might make sense of the choice of which law to subject oneself to are, in Kant’s understanding, irrelevant to that person’s status as a ­bearer of rights. In this way, Kant’s categorical imperative implicitly predicates a subject’s treatment according to the law—­ including the law subjects give themselves—­with that subject’s sameness as all other conceivable subjects. To the degree to which the pro­cess of “thinking through” at the heart of ­these experiments entails imagining the reverberation of a given be­hav­ior’s consequences to other ­people, sociality can be seen both to be an essential aspect of ­these duties and also to be linked to ­these experiments’ diachronicity, their unfolding over time. But insofar as ­these consequences are to be considered theoretically, without any a­ ctual unfolding or decision to submit oneself to one law rather than another at any



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given moment, the socius invoked is one in which each of its members is understood by logical necessity to be identical to that subject who is imagining why exactly it might not be a good idea for her to commit suicide or to lie. What this model of a socius built around the likeness of the individual subjects does not admit is a conception of equality that is distinct from likeness. A notion of equality is predicated on the possibility of distinguishing between who a person is and what that person chooses to do, between the generation of a law and its application. Only when the same be­hav­iors performed by legibly dif­fer­ent ­people are treated the same way ­under the law can the l­egal actors be said to be “equal.” To understand the implications of this exclusion of equality, not only for Kant’s argument but also, we ­shall see, for the po­liti­cal history of dignity that emerges in its wake, we need to see how this exclusion helps make sense of a rhetorical peculiarity of Kant’s discussion that might other­wise fly below our radar: his invocation of lying as a negative limit case in his analyses of both imperfect and perfect duties. For most of his discussion of the duties imposed by the categorical imperative’s moral law, Kant would appear to choose his examples with the goal of illustrating the distinct natures of perfect and imperfect duties. So while Kant invites us to contemplate the logical contradiction entailed by the universalizing of suicide, we can imagine his making a similar point with a dif­fer­ ent example, such as, say, the prohibition of torture. We are likewise initially likely to understand his invocation of lying along the lines ­we’ve already discussed—as an illustration designed to exemplify the dynamics specific to imperfect duties. But while Kant first introduces lying in the context of his discussion of the pernicious, feedback-­loop effects of lying on the social norms associated with promising and contracting, the argument ­later takes an unexpected turn. Suddenly, lying, rather than functioning as one in a series of potential be­hav­iors made inadmissible by the imaginary reverberation to a socius of identical selves, is revealed to be the action that undoes the subject as a subject, no universalizing necessary. A be­hav­ior initially invoked as a limit case exemplification of imperfect duties turns out, glossed somewhat differently, to be a limit case exemplification of perfect duties as well. Our first impulse might be to suppose that lying to other p­ eople in order to take advantage of them poses a prob­lem ­because it instrumentalizes ­those ­people, envisions them as something other than rational beings capable of imposing on themselves the laws by which they ­will be governed. But in fact, Kant frames his list of types of instrumentalization in strikingly broad terms: “The practical imperative ­will thus be the following: So act that

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you use humanity, in your own person as well as in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.”14 Kant then proceeds to offer a list of modes such instrumentalizing might take in the ser­vice of avoiding them. (“Let us try to see ­whether this can be done.”) The capaciousness of the referentless “this” and the ambiguity of the relations among items of a numbered list combine to suggest that lying is a prob­lem not simply ­because it sets off a pro­cess that leads to the dissolution of social trust or even ­because it turns other ­people, without their consent, into the means to one’s own ends, but ­because lying entails treating oneself as a means to an end. (“Secondly, as far as necessary or owed duty to ­others is concerned, someone who has it in mind to make a lying promise to ­others ­will see at once that he wants to make use of another ­human being merely as a means, who does not at the same time contain in himself the end. . . . ​Thirdly, with regard to contingent [meritorious] duty to oneself it is not enough that the action not conflict with humanity in our person, as an end it itself, it must also harmonize with it.”) Thus while the instrumentalizing of other ­people is certainly a prob­lem, an equally essential difficulty is to be found in what lying does to the liar herself. In lying, Kant insists, we do not merely instrumentalize other ­people; we instrumentalize ourselves. Deceiving other ­people entails presenting oneself to them with a view to how one ­will be seen by them, rather than in terms of how one sees oneself. In so ­doing, lying irreparably severs any link between the subject who directs him-­ or herself to act and the object who is audience to that command, and, in so ­doing forecloses the possibility of ­either subject or object adhering to the self-­imposed universal moral law. Only in a social group built around likeness rather than equality does lying have the power both to set into motion a decline in social trust (its link to imperfect duties) and also to operate as a kind of self-­instrumentalization (its link to perfect duties.) What I am calling self-­instrumentalization entails deliberately acting as a subject to treat oneself as an object—to treat oneself so as to appear differently to other ­people than one appears to oneself. But inasmuch as the social world envisioned by Kant’s categorical imperative is one in which all subjects are understood to be fundamentally like one another, the treating oneself as an object—­with regard to how one appears to ­others—­can be seen as distinct from acting in ways ­toward ­others that ­will ultimately erode social trust only in formal terms, not with regard to the breadth of the circle of the ­people it involves. Put another way, ­lying—or, more precisely, its prohibition—­exemplifies both perfect duties and



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imperfect duties ­because the difference between social deception and self-­ instrumentalization when all ­people are taken to be fundamentally like one another is a descriptive difference rather than one that turns on the preexisting relations of the p­ eople involved. Lying both enacts and names the interchangeability at the heart of this fundamental likeness, and in that way draws this interchangeability of subject and object to the fore. It is within the context of his discussion of the dual nature of lying that Kant first introduces the category of dignity. His formulation of the nature of the concept in this context is telling: “It follows incontestably that ­every rational being must be able to regard himself as an end in himself with reference to all laws to which he may be subject, what­ever they may be, and thus as giving universal laws. For it is just the fitness of his maxims for universal legislation that indicates that he is an end in himself. It also follows that his dignity (his prerogative) over all merely natu­ral beings entails that he must take his maxims from the point of view which regards himself, and hence also e­ very other rational being, as legislative.”15 In naming, and hence transforming, the constitutive quality of rational creatures’ selfhood—­their power of self-­command according to universal laws—­from a ­matter of formal law, a structure of unfulfilled action, into a positive attribute of the self, dignity reconceives the relation between the potential and fulfilled (and fulfillable) law as something like a quality of selfhood. A self possessing such a quality can exist in a continuous and unchanging way, and in this way can be seen to function as a bridge between the subject constituted by the categorical imperative—­a subject contemplating the validity of his or her not-­yet-­realized intentions—­and the subject constituted by perfect duties, one who contemplates the effects of acts he or she has yet to do. It turns selfhood into a practice of self-­accounting, the description of a point-­of-­view from which one views oneself. Where the liar is someone who is willing to describe herself to ­others, and be seen differently from the ways in which she would describe herself to herself, the dignified person is someone who remains true to herself, describing herself to ­others in the same way she describes herself to herself. Dignity’s capaciousness undoes any meaningful distinctions among the promised, the not-­yet-­done, and the completed, absorbing them into an ongoing quality of selfhood. One of the essential prob­lems of the categorical imperative was that, in toggling back and forth between a rational subject’s contemplated action and the imagining of that action universalized, it offered no account of the motivation by which a given individual might choose at any given moment to act according to one

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universal law as opposed to another. By reframing the self-­over-­time not as a pro­cess but rather as a positive quality, Kant’s dignity would seem to circumvent the prob­lem of motivation, of particularity. But if we look more closely at his discussion, we ­will notice that Kant offers not just one account of dignity but two. He explains: “It also follows that his dignity (his prerogative) over all merely natu­ral beings entails that he must take his maxims from the point of view which regards himself, and hence also ­every other rational being, as legislative.” This second version of dignity aligns with the vision of imperfect duties as lying’s negation. In emphasizing dignity’s legislative force, this second model of dignity would appear designed to work around the prob­lem of designating the authority by which the categorical imperative’s universal, but unrealized, laws might come to be institutionalized. This dignity is “legislative” insofar as it extends the maxims of universal law “from the point of view which regards himself ” to “­every other rational being.” But insofar as this extending legislation outward is figured as the defining quality of the dignified subject rather than a punctual act, the prob­lem of institutionalization, and the question of source of the authority by which such institutionalization might take place, dis­appears. The dignified rational subject and the institutions that would ensure the universal laws’ universalization are rendered entirely interchangeable. Kant’s two invocations of lying can thus be seen both to illuminate the conceptual work done by the two dif­fer­ent glosses of dignity and also to lay bare their conceptual and po­liti­cal vulnerabilities. The legislative version of dignity offers a solution to the prob­lem of realizing laws whose authority is posited to exist in­de­pen­dent of any par­tic­u­lar realization, a prob­lem, as we have seen, that dogged both the Groundwork and the United Nations’ efforts to institutionalize the princi­ples of dignity articulated (though not in­ ven­ted) in the Universal Declaration of ­Human Rights. The self-­continuous subject solves the prob­lem of institutionalization by describing an individual whose extension through time enables it to function as a justification for the existence of institutions that are likewise defined by their extension through time. According to this model, institutions ­ought to exist insofar as they are like ­people, but this justification only holds true so long as all ­people, and all institutions, are understood to be essentially interchangeable with one another. By contrast, the alternative gloss of dignity envisions a subject not as the authorizing grounds for the institutions that ­will extend legislation to other, identical rational subject-­citizens, but rather as a form of subjecthood that renders institutions unnecessary and superfluous. If the



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movement of Kant’s argument from the contemplation of intentions to the contemplation of potential effects sought to manage the challenges of realizing transcendent rights by rendering the topic altogether invisible, the bridging provided by dignity solves the prob­lem by envisioning, like Lauterpacht and the minoritarians, an identity whose positive qualities stand as justifications for their own sustenance. To act with dignity is to conform to a version of lawfulness that allows one to be oneself, uninterrupted, always and forever. In this context, what emerges as dignity’s defining rhetorical practice is not simply truth-­telling but a par­tic­u­lar kind of truth-­telling: truth-­telling as an act of self-­description, an accounting and definition of the self. Where Kant saw the dangers of false promising to ­others to lie in the linked effects it set into motion, a gradual of erosion of social trust that promised fi­nally to unravel the plausibility of promising altogether by revealing ­people as instruments of the ­will of ­others, the self-­objectification at the heart of this other, less institutional version of lying does not simply erode the dignity of the self but renders it incoherent from the get-go. Such lying undoes the very premise of the dignity of the subject insofar as it dissolves the capaciousness of the self, the self-­identical continuity that allows the subject to enfold within him-­ or herself (nearly) all pos­si­ble descriptions. To lie is to produce an unbridgeable gap between who one is as a subject and who one is as seen from the outside, and in that sense to create a version of oneself that is illegible to oneself at any given moment. What ­matters is less the par­tic­u­lar content of a given self-­description than the general fact of its rhetorical operation. But ­because self-­description falls something short of agency, less a discrete act than an articulation and embrace of the way one already is, both self-­description and the dignity it invokes are endowed with the moral force of living one’s life with integrity.

Dugri’s Self-­Authorizing Subject If the UDHR served to ensconce dignity deeply, if not immediately or transparently, within Israel’s strangely intertwined ­legal and legislative system, Kant’s vision of subjects whose dignity lies in their power to set the terms of their own legibility can be seen to have made its way into Israeli culture in the form of the iconic practice known as “speaking dugri.” In insisting on the value of self-­consistency and turning that self-­consistency into a deliberate

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cultural practice, speaking dugri can be seen as an expression of the culturalist, noninstitutional version of dignity. Rather than a second-­order cultural effect, the appearance of the dynamics of dignity in noninstitutional forms like dugri bespeaks the degree to which the Israeli embrace of dignity articulates the per­sis­tence of fundamental neutrality t­ oward state institutions first articulated by the interwar Eu­ro­pean minoritarian movement, and ­later manifested negatively in the prolonged and still not fully resolved Israeli constitutional debate. Where the birth of Israeli state sovereignty out of a moment of Anglo-­European benevolence—­and collective contrition—­left Israeli state institutions haunted by the vulnerability of their moment of founding as well as the foundational incoherence of the human-­rights vision of dignity undergirding that founding, dugri offered the promise, perhaps fantastical, that the subculture of native-­born Jewish Israelis (sabras) of Eu­ro­pean descent might stand as the source of their own authority as subjects, that they themselves might ground the rules, if not quite the laws, by which they ­were to live. For a social convention so closely identified with a par­tic­u­lar culture, the Israeli practice of speaking dugri has a surprisingly sidelong history. As Tamar Katriel explains in Talking Straight: Dugri Speech in Israeli Sabra Culture, the word dugri originated from the Turkish language and was subsequently borrowed by spoken colloquial Arabic before being ­adopted, with significant semantic alterations, by the newly created modern Hebrew.16 In both the Turkish and the Arabic, dugri is used to mean “direct” in both literal and meta­phorical senses: a road or line could be dugri, while a dugri person is someone honorable and honest, and the dugri is the truth such ­people tell. In this context, the primary relation is referential, the link between word and ­thing: The person who speaks dugri is one whose account of the world or a par­tic­u­lar set of events can be trusted, a reliable narrator of the ways ­things are. When, in the 1930s and 1940s, the term dugri was taken up by the self-­ styled halutzim—­recently arrived “pioneers” drawn from the Eastern Eu­ro­ pean Zionist youth groups—­the term immediately took on a dif­fer­ent cast. While the immediate appeal of the adoption of the Arabic term was that it enabled the newly arrived immigrants to demonstrate both their quasi-­native relation to their new land and their negation of the linguistic habits of a diasporic past, the variety of the sorts of self-­invention the term was ­imagined to signal and to enable meant that the preexisting usage could hardly be



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a­ dopted as is. While dugri in Arabic had indicated a speaker’s true accounting of the external world, the Hebrew repurposing signaled not the truth of the description being offered but the sincerity, straightforwardness, and spontaneity of the person presenting the account, a willingness to speak his or her truth. In its slide from adjective to adverb, speaking dugri became an occasion for speakers to signal their assertiveness, and in so ­doing to register not only their having cast off the abjection thought to be characteristic of Jewish life in the diaspora but also their rejection of interest and investment in linguistic ambiguity, in the kind of Talmudic pilpul argumentation long acknowledged as a cultural response to centuries of Jewish po­liti­cal disempowerment. ­Under the new dispensation signaled by speaking dugri, one’s identity was revealed by one’s manner of speech rather than what one chose to say. The Hebrew adaptation operated to draw attention to the speaker, not the object being spoken about, by way of a paradoxically theatrical act of transparency: self-­description as ritual. In a striking embrace of Kant’s dignifying self-­description, ­those new Israelis, sabras, not only spoke directly but very often announced their intention to do so—­“I’m ­going to tell you dugri!” is a typical framing gesture—­such that the announcement itself became part of the practice, an advance warning of the unfettered truth-­telling to follow meant at once to mitigate its bluntness and to signal the speaker’s and listener’s mutual acknowl­edgment of their shared expressive enterprise. For Kant, to possess dignity was to see oneself as an ongoing subject from a stable and continuous point of view, to see oneself being oneself. Dugri can be seen as the ritualization of this imperative: to speak dugri in this new Hebrew-­language context was to describe and perform one’s sincerity: not simply to be oneself, but to show oneself being oneself. In describing the qualities that define themselves, dugri speakers insist on their capacity to authorize their own autonomy, their capacity to possess ­these qualities and not ­others. But just as dignity only functioned to bridge the gap that opened up in the institutional model of self-­given law between conceiving of potential intentions and conceiving of potential effects so long as the bridging, self-­continuous subject could be seen as a metonym for all other subjects, dugri has come to m ­ atter as a sincerity every­one possessed, a characteristically Israeli version of frankness. As a practice to be performed, fidelity to oneself turns out, strangely enough, to be a cultural norm as well, a noninstitutional ground of commonness.

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Framed within Kant’s model of dignity as the power of self-­description, the practice of speaking dugri evokes both the appeal of the Eu­ro­pean minoritarian movement that was its orga­nizational precursor and, ultimately, that movement’s vulnerability. While both dugri and minoritarianism ­imagined a version of collective self-­description that allowed it to escape the pitfalls of a moment of human-­rights “authorized” institutional founding, much as Kant’s dignity posited a socius in which all subjects ­were identical with one another, the cultural force of the frank self-­assertion announced by the act of speaking dugri rests on the fact of dugri’s Israeliness, not its idiosyncrasy. What the concept of dignity accomplished for Kant was to transform the following of law from an act of authority rational subjects imposed on themselves or on other subjects identical to them into a positive attribute of selfhood, a par­tic­u­lar quality shared in common by all—­the condition of being oneself over time. Speaking dugri, like Kant’s vision of a dignified truth-­telling that announces the speaker’s commitment to being true to herself, circumvents the challenge of realizing transcendent h ­ uman rights in ­actual, local institutions by rendering consistency as not just a precondition for selfhood but a positive attribute of the self. But it does so by insisting that the selfhood performed is like every­one ­else’s, a pointedly Israeli individuality that, when all is said and done, admits of no individuals. It is this—an autonomous culture with no need, or place, for individuals—­ that is Israeli dignity’s most lasting, and dangerous, legacy.

Coda: The Nation-­State Law and the End of Dignity To trace the contours of the debate over the 2018 Nation-­State Law is to encounter, in large mea­sure, a debate over the nature of self-­description, the significance of the act of saying what one already knows to be the case. What is perhaps most striking about the confrontation between advocates of the bill and ­those who insisted, with ­great alarm, that the proposed law marked the most significant departure from the values articulated by Israel’s 1948 Declaration of In­de­pen­dence and the 1992 Basic Law: ­Human Dignity and Freedom, is the degree to which the accounts of the bill proffered by partisans on both sides diverged from one another. Of the twenty-­t wo provisions of the new law, passed on July 19, 2018, by a narrow majority of the Knesset, approximately four are noteworthy as explicit (or strategically vague) efforts



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to alter the status quo, in ways that pointedly marginalize the populations of Druze and Palestinian citizens of Israel. The bill’s fourth section, “Language,” demotes Arabic from coequal status with Hebrew as one of the two official languages of the state to some ill-­defined “special status,” while the announcement that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel” would appear designed preemptively to remove from the negotiating ­table one of the most contentious points of disagreement between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. Most controversial of all is the law’s third provision, which announces, “The right to exercise national self-­ determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish ­people.” The Nation-­State Law described by its supporters is notably dif­fer­ent in its emphasis. By this account, the law describes what is already known, and in that regard hardly merits the po­liti­cal controversy it has generated. In an essay tellingly entitled, “Every­thing ­You’ve Heard About the Nation-­State Bill Is Wrong,” American-­Israeli journalist David Hazony defends the law on the grounds that “the new legislation is made up of mostly symbolic declarations that reaffirm the symbolism, calendar, and meaning of ‘the Jewish State.’ ”17 Indeed, much of the Nation-­State Law reads like a not especially imaginatively written Wikipedia entry. ­Under the section headed “The Symbols of the State,” the law announces that “the name of the state is ‘Israel’ ”; “The state flag is white with two blue stripes near the edges and a blue Star of David in the center”; “The state emblem is a seven-­branched menorah with olive leaves on both sides and the word ‘Israel’ beneath it”; “The state anthem is ‘Hatikvah.’ ” “Details regarding state symbols ­will be determined by the law,” the section concludes, vaguely. So ­ought we to lament a vision of the Nation-­State Law that, in its pointed demotion of the Arabic language and writing away of the disputed status of Jerusalem, would appear to depart from the founding princi­ples of the State of Israel, however dilated the founding and however imperfectly realized ­those princi­ples might be? Or ­shall we follow Hazony’s lead in seeing outrage over the law’s passage as much ado about nothing, a largely symbolic tussle over the reaffirmation of what is, a mere description of the self-­evident? In suggesting that, in posing the opposition this way, we are asking the wrong questions, I do not mean, or do not only mean, to be saying that the manifestly discriminatory nature of the Nation-­State Law is so obvious as to be beyond debate. For all the precision with which they are curated, what is perhaps most noteworthy about the two glosses of the

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Nation-­State Law offered by its supporters and its detractors is the degree to which they reinforce one another. And, I want to suggest, it is in the fact of this mutual reinforcement, this point of overlap, that we can recognize Israel’s Nation-­State Law as the logical culmination of the princi­ple of dignity on which the State of Israel was founded, informally, in 1948, and refounded, formally, in 1992. In the vision of dignity anatomized by Kant and enacted as Israeli dugri-­ talk, it was the practice of self-­description, the insistence that being who one was over time counted as a kind of lawfulness that would render a­ ctual institutions of law enforcement redundant, that promised to make dis­appear the prob­lem of how to make transcendent rights enforceable. To possess dignity, in this accounting, is not simply to command the authority to choose one’s essential qualities of being and sustain ­those qualities over time, but also to describe oneself as possessing that authority, since it is only by way of this self-­accounting that the subject with dignity can be experienced as a continuous self. It is this doubled quality of the self-­description—­“I’m the sort of person who is ­going to tell you, dugri!”—­that transforms “being oneself ” from a precondition for action and value into a cultural practice and value in and of itself, a practice that extends beyond the self and becomes the basis for a broader solidarity: “We Israelis are the sort of ­people who say exactly what we think!—in Hebrew!” But being oneself over time only got to count as a form of lawfulness, I argued, so long as all subjects ­were taken as identical to one another. What is remarkable about the affirmation of the self-­evident gloss of the Nation-­ State Law in this context is the striking absence of ­people from the descriptions laid out. Blue and white flags with Stars of David exist without ­people to watch, or wave, or turn their backs to them. Hebrew not only displaces Arabic as an officially coequal language of the State of Israel, but, to the degree that the law’s rhe­toric renders all speakers superfluous, it eliminates any vision of citizenship in which individuals might have a rationale for choosing to speak in one language and not another. In this regard, the provisions of the law that work to rescind recognition of the cultural and national specificity of Palestinian citizens of Israel and ­those that describe national qualities so self-­evident that they require no citizen-­subjects to make them meaningful turn out not to be in tension but, rather, to be entirely of a piece with one another. Insofar as ­these apparently anodyne provisions embrace dignity’s essential descriptive logic by offering qualities absent citizen-­ subjects, the Nation-­State Law can be seen not to depart from the spirit of



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the Basic Law: ­Human Dignity and Freedom but rather, in articulating dignity’s logic, to reveal the concept’s po­liti­cal and moral fragility. In embracing the fantasy that is dignity, that describing what is renders superfluous the building of institutions and the passing of laws—­indeed the very existence of individual citizens—­the Israeli Knesset lays out the terms of its own irrelevance. Im tirzu, ain zo agada. If you wish it, it is no fantasy.

Chapter 2

Halakhah from the Bench?

A New Perspective on the Use of Jewish Law in Israel’s Supreme Court Arye Edrei

Introduction: Law as National Identity In this essay, I wish to propose that the use of Jewish Law in Israeli law not only impacts Israeli law but might also have significance for Jewish Law itself.1 Since the abolition of Jewish autonomy at the end of the eigh­teenth ­century, Jewish Law has had no active arena in which to function as a ­legal system, causing it to atrophy. In this essay, I ­will investigate ­whether we can view an Israeli court ruling that solves a con­temporary prob­lem by using Jewish sources as an alternative arena for halakhic deliberation. Alternatively, can we at least speak of the ongoing influence of this approach on Jewish Law itself. This study suggests a new reading of a central debate in Israeli law and politics that has raged since the early days of the state regarding ­whether Jewish Law is a source of importance for the Israeli judicial system. It also takes a small step in reviving the debate on the role of the State of Israel and its institutions in the development of all aspects of Jewish culture. Of course, this last question considers the Israeli court as an institution deriving its authority from the state and not from a religious norm. My modest contribution ­toward a comprehensive investigation of ­these major questions focuses on an analy­sis of Justice Menachem Elon’s court rulings.2 I would like to demonstrate that his rulings can be read as an attempt to advance the development of the halakhah from within the court of the



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state. Although this suggestion deviates from the traditional ways in which the Mishpat ʻIvri venture has been perceived, it is an addition rather than a negation, as I ­will immediately explain. The basic claim of the Mishpat ʻIvri school of thought was that parts of Jewish Law reflect a unique national culture that can be isolated from its religious aspect and should therefore be ­adopted and cultivated as part of a developing national Jewish identity. The term Mishpat ʻIvri—­which was coined on the founding of the movement in Moscow in 1918—­was in itself a revolutionary concept that reflected a desire to diverge from the traditional halakhah while still viewing its civil and public ­legal sections as expressions of national values. This idea echoes the Cultural Zionist perspective that a primary goal of Jewish nationalism was to revitalize Jewish culture, which in their view had experienced a crisis. National Jewish Law was viewed as fertile ground for the Zionist cultural revolution: secular nationalism that preserves a connection to Jewish culture and heritage, granting them con­ temporary relevance. The centrality of ­legal thinking in halakhic deliberation and in the traditional Jewish curriculum, and consequently the existence of a relatively rich and developed ­legal lit­er­a­ture, ­were prob­ably the catalysts prompting Cultural Zionist jurists to focus on the law. At the basis of this approach was the historical-­sociological ­legal theory, an approach to jurisprudence prevalent in Germany during this period. According to this doctrine the law is not a product of the sovereign but derives from “below” and expresses the unique values of the ­people in its current developing status. Thus the proponents of Mishpat ʻIvri viewed their enterprise as au­then­tic Zionist activism, a pro­cess of restoring and revitalizing the Jewish spirit which had atrophied in the Diaspora.3 This idea has been actively debated since the establishment of the state. Supporters believed that this Jewish cultural legacy should be integrated into the culture of the nascent state. They claimed that Talmudic and halakhic lit­er­a­ture could be adapted to con­temporary real­ity and that Jewish ­legal culture could become an integral part of Israeli law. A not insignificant number of Israeli judges have made use of Mishpat ʻIvri, yielding a ­limited but in­ter­est­ing result. Mishpat ʻIvri has been utilized in a number of ways. At times ­legal doctrine and at times ­legal princi­ple have been suggested to shed light on the interpretation of the law, or to suggest the right direction for the court. In all of ­these cases, the judges sought to integrate ideas from Jewish Law ­because they believed that, on the merits, ­these concepts ­were most appropriate for con­temporary Israeli law.4

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In contrast, opposition to Mishpat ʻIvri within the Israeli ­legal system—­ both in the Supreme Court and in academia—­has been based on a variety of rationales and has taken on a dif­fer­ent character in dif­fer­ent periods. Some held that it reflected Diaspora values, an archaic law that was not suitable for modern society. ­Others saw the halakhah, as it views itself, as religious law that does not allow for the separation of the subject ­matter of Mishpat ʻIvri from the religion and its values. The judges’ lack of knowledge of Jewish Law was also an influential ­factor. Yet the con­temporary opposition to Jewish Law should perhaps be viewed on a broader level as a reflection of the growing aspiration in Israeli society, primarily among the elite, to adopt a universalistic worldview in place of particularistic Jewish culture.5 In light of ­these debates, research on the use of Jewish Law in Israel has focused, so far, on its contribution to the Israeli ­legal system. The proponents of the incorporation of Jewish Law have highlighted its significance for defining the Israeli ­legal system’s national identity, and also its potential contribution as a source for comparative ­legal analy­sis. Without underestimating ­these approaches and their capacity to explain the application of Jewish Law within the Israeli courts, I wish to focus in this essay on the relationship between the two ­legal systems from a quite dif­fer­ent ­angle. I suggest that, in this interaction, Israeli law not only is subject to the influence of Jewish Law but also may serve as an arena for the flourishing and development of the halakhah itself. As indicated previously, I ­w ill demonstrate my argument primarily through an analy­sis of the judicial decisions of Justice Menachem Elon. As ­will be further elucidated, Elon’s background as one of the most prominent ­legal scholars in the field of Mishpat ʻIvri prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1977, as well as his commitment to Mishpat ʻIvri and the systematic and rich use of it in his rulings, makes him the ideal subject to examine in this study. However, the suggested approach is not ­limited to Justice Elon, and it may also shed light on vari­ous points of contact between Jewish Law and Israeli law, and highlight their significance.

The Israeli Court as a Bet Midrash—­A Jewish Study Hall From a theoretical perspective it can be argued that any use of a ­legal source or pre­ce­dent involves its interpretation as an inherent part of the pro­cess of rethinking its application in a new context. The greater the extent to which the judge is more creative and innovative when turning for inspiration to an



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external ­legal source, and does not simply “cite” the source, the stronger the argument that its use involves a new interpretation. As I ­will demonstrate, Elon was uniquely creative in his use and interpretation of Jewish Law sources in his rulings. My question is ­whether Elon—by offering a creative interpretation or by applying a source in a new way or to new circumstances—­created a new source relevant only to Israeli Law or also to the Jewish ­legal culture itself. I believe that analyzing Elon’s rulings strongly supports the second thesis: that by introducing creative interpretation of halakhic sources into the Israeli ­legal system, Elon contributed to the development of the halakhah as well. When suggesting an innovative interpretation to halakhic sources, Elon noted time ­after time that he is not a posek (halakhic adjudicator). Yet the question w ­ hether Elon viewed himself as a posek is not relevant for the purpose of this chapter. I do not intend, nor do I believe it necessary, to decide ­whether Elon acted consciously to influence the halakhic world. I am interested in his rulings and their meaning more than in his intentions.

* * * In the introduction to the first edition of his magnum opus, Jewish Law (Ha-­ Mishpat ha-­ʻIvri), Elon addressed the fundamental methodological questions that arise in the use of Jewish Law in state courts: “The primary method of reviving Jewish Law and restoring it to practical life is through its renewal by incorporation into the ­legal system of the Jewish State. Only in this way ­will Jewish Law again be able to grapple with con­temporary prob­lems and thereby attain vigor and creativity.”6 How could Elon’s desire to revive and to “attain vigor and creativity” for Jewish Law be accomplished? Simply through its use? Or perhaps by new interpretations that he might suggest? Elon thought about ­these issues from the beginning of his c­ areer as a scholar, ideologue, and primary spokesperson for the integration of Jewish Law in Israeli law, long before he became a judge. His primary opponent in the debate over ­these ideas was Izhak Englard, also a professor of law at the Hebrew University and learned in Jewish Law, who was also ultimately appointed to the Supreme Court. While Englard agreed that halakhah has always been reinterpreted and revitalized by the sages, and that it changes through interface with real­ity, he argued that its interpretation is entrusted exclusively to sages who fear God and approach the work of halakhic decision-­making with a sense of responsibility to the integrity of the

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halakhah. He thus viewed Elon’s approach as a desecration and secularization of the halakhah.7 In response, Elon agreed that halakhic ruling is indeed entrusted to halakhic institutions; yet, he argued: “Since when ­were the study, research, and per­for­mance of Jewish Law confined exclusively to the halakhic authorities? . . . ​[When] a judicial decision incorporates a princi­ple of Jewish Law, it does not do so in order to add another rule to the religious obligations mandated by the Shulhan Arukh; it does so in order to integrate a concept taken from Jewish Law into the l­egal system of the state.”8 Elon essentially defined the Supreme Court of Israel as a bet midrash (study hall) for Torah study, placing it on a continuum with batei midrash and rabbinic courts throughout the generations. This approach sharpens the argument of secularization raised by Englard. In Englard’s opinion, an institution that has no sense of obligation to the Torah, or a sense of religious commitment, cannot contribute to its development. More impor­tant than the bet midrash argument was Elon’s claim that the Israeli courts could play a critical role in providing the halakhah with a singular forum in which to deal with practical issues that it would other­wise not encounter. Even if on the surface Elon describes this encounter as lacking influence on halakhic norms, by placing the Supreme Court in the chain of Torah learning and halakhic interpretation, Elon in essence was placing Israeli society within the Jewish cultural continuum, and blurring the bound­aries between the Israeli real­ity and the generations-­old Jewish tradition. This relationship works in two directions, bringing Jewish Law into Israeli law and allowing Israeli l­egal deliberations to impact Jewish Law. Throughout his work, Elon reiterated the conception of the court as an arena for Mishpat ʻIvri to encounter con­temporary issues. His last ruling as a judge dealt with the request of a m ­ other to allow euthanasia for her d­ aughter, who was in a vegetative state. He widely surveyed the relevant halachic sources and then wrote as follows: “Jewish thought throughout the generations, including even the halakhic system itself . . . ​is replete with differing views and contradictory approaches. . . . ​Out of this vast and rich trea­sure, the researcher must extract the ample material to be applied so as to meet the needs of his time.”9 We see that Elon selected, consciously and openly, what to take from the Jewish sources, and when to utilize them. He argued that this was the approach of ­every halakhic authority in all times. In other words, he speaks ­here about the traditional halakhic authority but also about himself, or any other judge who issues a ­legal ruling based on the values of Mishpat ʻIvri.



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The judge must act in the same manner as the halakhic authority, selecting from the vast tradition the sources most relevant to con­temporary society in Israel. The se­lections of the judge, Elon continued, do not remain within Israeli law but develop the worlds of halakhah and Jewish thought: “They themselves are added to the store­houses of Jewish thought and Jewish heritage.”10 Even though Elon refrained from explic­itly giving halakhic meaning to his decisions that drew on Jewish sources, the reader of this court ruling senses the lack of distinction between a classical halakhic authority and the writer, who functions within the same framework and methodology and views his own exegetical se­lections as part of “the store­houses of Jewish thought.” While in his explicit comments Elon expressed a minimalist approach regarding the halakhic significance of his exegesis, I ­will try to demonstrate that, in many instances, he essentially ­adopted (­whether consciously or unconsciously) a more radical approach that views the rulings of the Supreme Court as ­actual halakhic rulings.

The Israeli Court as a Jewish Law Court: The Status of ­Women The rabbinical courts in Israel and the chief rabbinate are state institutions that function by virtue of a law that defines their jurisdiction. ­These courts have exclusive jurisdiction in certain areas of ­family law and personal status, such as marriage and divorce, and parallel jurisdiction with the civil courts in other areas such as child support and custody, or property and financial arrangements during divorce. In the areas of their jurisdiction, rabbinical courts are required by the state law to “function according to halakhah,” and at the same time, as state institutions they are subject to the supervision of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that it does not substantively oversee the halakhic decisions of the rabbinical courts but only examines ­whether they acted within their jurisdiction. In any case where conflict arises between rabbinic bodies and other governmental bodies or civil courts, the rabbinate usually claims that it functioned according to halakhah. In what follows I w ­ ill analyze several of Justice Elon’s rulings on such conflicts. I ­will demonstrate that, in all of them, he critiqued the rabbinical court or the rabbinate not on the basis that it overreached Israeli law or its jurisdiction, but on the basis of its halakhic argument. In all of ­these cases, Elon argued that the rabbinate should have ­adopted an alternative halakhic stance.

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In the case of Nagar v. Nagar, the rabbinical court ruled that, in the event of disagreement between divorced parents, it is the ­father’s right to choose the type of education his ­children receive. The civil court revoked the decision of the rabbinical court, claiming that the case was not in their jurisdiction. In the appeal to the Supreme Court, Justice Elon ruled that the rabbinical court had not overreached its jurisdiction, and that the case should therefore be referred to the Supreme Rabbinical Court of Appeals. However, Elon proceeded to examine the argument of the rabbinical court based on its merits, even though he had already de­cided that he had no jurisdiction to do so and that the case should be referred back to the rabbinical court. The status of his words was therefore even less than an obiter dictum. “From a halakhic standpoint,” he concluded, “the rabbinical court had erred.” The rabbinical court ruled that only the ­father has the right to determine the ­children’s education based on the halakhic concept that only the ­father is obligated to learn and therefore to teach Torah. Elon argued that the halakhah has changed on this point, and that ­today, ­women are obligated to learn Torah, too. He cited a broad range of halakhic sources—­from the Hafetz Hayim (d. 1933) ­until our time—­that establish that ­today ­women are allowed, and even obligated, to learn Torah. He thus concluded: “In our days, when such a significant shift has occurred . . . ​it seems that the necessary conclusion must be that the obligation to teach a child Torah is equally placed on the ­mother and the ­father, based on the fundamental halakhic princi­ple that one who is obligated to learn—is obligated to teach.”11 Elon concluded his ruling saying that he was convinced that this would be the conclusion of the High Rabbinical Court of Appeal. From the Supreme Court, Elon conducted a ­battle over the halakhic position of the rabbinical court, utilizing methods of halakhic debate and relying exclusively on halakhic sources. He referred the rabbis’ attention to sources that seemed impor­tant to him and suggested how to interpret them. In simpler words, Elon clearly communicated to the rabbinical court his opinion regarding the updated halakhic position on the issue u ­ nder discussion. The court ruled that the case be referred for an appeal to the Supreme Rabbinical Court in whose jurisdiction it falls, and that could clearly have been the end of the ruling. Yet Justice Elon, calling on his knowledge of the halakhic sources, went on to address the case from the perspective of the rabbinical court, and armed it with what he thought should be the proper halakhic approach. It is clear that ­there are many halakhic positions that would oppose the suggested change, but Elon chose not to cite them. In ef-



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fect he implored the rabbinate to adopt a par­tic­u­lar halakhic approach that appeared to him to be most appropriate for the Israeli real­ity.

* * * A similar example of halakhic intervention can be found in the Leah Shakdiel ruling. Ms. Shakdiel wanted to serve on the local religious council—­a bureaucratic body that is responsible for administrating bud­gets and other administrative tasks related to religious ser­v ices. Her request was denied based on the chief rabbinate’s position that prohibits ­women from serving on religious councils. ­There was no argument over the fact that religious councils must function according to halakhic guidelines, and that the Chief Rabbinic Council is the highest authorized body in the State of Israel in setting appropriate halakhic guidelines. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court embarked on a study to determine the proper halakhic position. The ruling was written using the style and methodology of classical halakhic writings. Elon concluded that while the position of the chief rabbinate indeed represented the majority opinion of the classical halakhic authorities, ­there are minority opinions that should be considered and that in the con­temporary Israeli real­ ity should be ­adopted. He extensively surveyed the halakhic polemic that took place during the 1920s regarding ­women’s rights to vote and to be elected to serve on the yishuv institutions. He did not ignore the fact that the majority of the halakhic authorities, including Rabbi Kook, prohibited ­women’s vote, but he analyzed in depth the approaches of the halakhic authorities who permitted it, and the positions of ­later authorities that can be read as permissive. His main argument was that social real­ity had effected a change in halakhah, in spite of the contradictory positions of a majority of the halakhic authorities in the recent past: “Time has wrought changes to resolve the issue contrary to their opinion: In all the observant communities, without exception . . . ​­women participate in all the elections for the state institutions and organs.”12 ­Here too Elon did not claim that the rabbinate went beyond its jurisdiction or that it transgressed the state law, nor did he even say that it can be argued strongly that they erred in halakhic terms. Rather, his argument against the rabbinate was that they ­were not willing to be partners in changing the halakhah. Since a number of authorities, although in the minority, had come to a dif­fer­ent conclusion than the rabbinate, and since real­ity demonstrates that a majority of halakhic observers have ­adopted that minority

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opinion since the issue came to the fore in the 1920s, it is appropriate to say that the halakhah has changed, and thus the rabbinate must be attentive to all ­these voices. This last argument reflects two impor­tant jurisprudential arguments about the halakhah: One, that the minority opinion is part of halakhah and should at times be a­ dopted; and two, that the halakhah not only is determined by studying the formal expert opinions of halakhic authorities but also stems from the practices of the community which it regulates. Therefore, the community’s customs and habits serve as a prism through which the halakhah should be interpreted, and this is the very principal of interpretation that Elon used to determine the appropriate halakhic stance. The fact that the court delved into halakhic discourse and ruled contrary to the position of the chief rabbinate turned it into a forum for a change in the halakhic status of ­women. It should also be noted that the court explic­ itly attempted to prevent a schism between Israeli law and the halakhah by adopting a progressive position. Between the lines Elon reproached the rabbinate for being detached from con­temporary real­ity, and for their failure to recognize that social change is relevant to halakhic decision-­making. In his eyes the role of any judge, including a rabbinical judge, is to examine the social real­ity and common societal beliefs. This examination should lead him to the ­legal decision that ­will best correlate with real­ity. The rabbinical judges did not like this decision but nevertheless complied with it; despite the fact that, prior to the court decision, they had banned ­women from serving on local religious councils, they subsequently allowed it.13

The Israeli Court as an Arena for Creating Jewish Constitutional Law I ­will now bring further support for my argument by examining constitutional and administrative cases. Despite the fact that for generations Jewish Law had not functioned in the real­ity of a sovereign Jewish state but only in the real­ity of communities living within external po­liti­cal frameworks, Elon advocated for the existence of a public law in halakhah for the state real­ity. His argument seems like an attempt to accommodate Mishpat ʻIvri to the prevalent real­ity of a Jewish nation-­state, which incorporates a Jewish majority alongside dif­fer­ent minorities. This pro­cess defines the courts in Israel as a natu­ral continuation of the courts of the autonomous Jewish communities that existed before the Emancipation. They are a continuation not only ­because they deal



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with public law but ­because they similarly take on themselves the creativity required to accommodate the community law to the current needs of the state. I believe that ­these rulings reflect Elon’s desire to preserve Jewish Law as a living system, and his sense of responsibility to adjust it to a state real­ity. In what follows, I ­will analyze a number of rulings from among the many rulings that Elon issued in this spirit, in the hope of successfully clarifying my argument.

* * * Prior to Elon’s tenure, the court made use of Mishpat ʻIvri primarily in private law, largely ­because of the rich Talmudic discourse in this area. Elon instigated a change in direction by drawing on Mishpat ʻIvri also in public, administrative, and constitutional law. In general we can say that in ­these fields Elon did not make use of Jewish Law sources in order to answer an open question but rather to support a ruling, to prove that ­there is not necessarily a big rift between the two systems, and to assert that the fundamental rules of public law may be also stem from the halakhic world. Public law was also a priority in Elon’s research agenda before he became a judge. I ­will try to demonstrate in what follows that his use of Jewish Law in this area was generally designed to comment on Jewish Law itself. Before turning to case analy­sis, it is impor­tant to illustrate how Elon’s ­earlier academic ventures constituted the platform to broaden the use of Jewish Law into the new realms of public law, as discussed in this chapter. Elon saw ­great importance in embedding the use of Mishpat ʻIvri specifically in public law and dedicated much of his research to this topic. He studied the laws of Diaspora Jewish communities developed between the tenth ­century and the Emancipation, claiming that they represent part of the halakhah. In his opinion Jewish Law is not only the laws found in the codes of Jewish Law and in the Talmud and its commentaries but also the takkanot, or ­legal enactments, created in the dispersed Jewish communities to or­ga­nize and govern their socie­ties in all aspects of public law. Both as a scholar and as a judge, Elon paid much attention to the responsa lit­er­a­ture, the repository of ­these laws, which he viewed as the case law of Jewish Law. He saw the laws of Jewish communities as the basis for his claim that Jewish Law could be viewed not just as a theoretical study relegated to batei midrash but also as a vital and functional system that could be updated by applying Jewish communal law to the “Laws of State,” as public law for the State of Israel. A ­ fter

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considering a ­limited number of rulings, I ­will return to examine his fundamental argument. Minority Rights (Naiman v. Central Elections Committee)

Meir Kahane and his po­liti­cal party turned to the Supreme Court to appeal the Central Election Committee’s decision to ban the party from ­running in Knesset elections ­because of its racist platform. The court accepted the appeal, ruling that the Central Election Committee does not have the authority to disqualify a party based on its platform, except for extreme positions on very specific issues. Nevertheless, the justices expressed contempt for the racist positions of Kahane’s party and emphasized that if the committee or the court had the authority to exclude a party based on its platform, they would easily disqualify this party. Elon added a lengthy polemic asserting that “the most unbearable and severe issue in the platform of this party . . . ​is that [they] support their claims with the Torah of Israel and world of halakhah.”14 The attitude of halakhah to minorities was at the heart of his argument. In fact the ruling served as a forum for a ­battle over the halakhah’s values, and even a platform for creating halakhah. A well-­established method used by halakhic authorities in circumstances lacking rules is to extrapolate rules from overarching princi­ples and apply them to the concrete case at hand. The posek (decisor) ­will usually choose princi­ples that lead to the conclusion that he views as correct based on the fundamental approaches of the halakhah. Indeed in this case, Elon did not cite halakhic rules, which are practically non­ex­is­tent in this context, did not relate to classical halakhic sources, and did not quote con­temporary halakhic authorities. Rather, he referred to overarching princi­ples and to fundamental halakhic values—­such as “the image of God,” “love your neighbor as yourself,” and the prohibition against rejoicing at the demise of your ­enemy—­which from his perspective reflect the values of equality and love of one’s fellow man to which Jewish tradition is faithful. He also referred to the halakhic status of the resident alien (ger toshav) and cited from the writings of R. Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook, who believed that natu­ral morality is included in halakhah. This led Elon to the conclusion that, contrary to Kahane’s claim, his positions ­toward the Arabs in Israel ­were in sharp contradiction to the spirit and values of Jewish Law. Elon did not argue on an ideological basis alone but rather wrote a normative text that states what is forbidden and what is permitted. His conclusion is that the ideas Kahane wished to promote are halakhically prohibited,



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and therefore his claim that he is acting according to Jewish Law should be rejected. We can state without exaggeration that Elon’s ruling in this case constitutes an internal halakhic text relating to the attitude of Jewish tradition t­ oward minorities. Since his argument was not necessary for the ruling from the perspective of Israeli law, was not based on Israeli law sources but solely on Jewish Law sources, and used argumentation methods that are utilized in Jewish Law discourse, it may be argued that in real­ity it was addressed to Kahane’s followers, and in general to the rabbinic and religious society outside the court, to undermine Kahane’s halakhic justification in their eyes. Objectively, the court ruling written by Justice Elon can be seen as a halakhic text—it establishes a halakhic norm, and it utilizes halakhic methods. The Integrity of Public Officials (Kahane v. Speaker of Knesset)

Elon took a similar approach in another ruling involving Kahane which dealt with the obligation of elected officials to act with integrity. At the beginning of his or her term in office, ­every Knesset member must swear “to be faithful to the State of Israel and to faithfully fulfill his or her duty in the Knesset.” Kahane, immediately ­after accepting the oath, added: “And so ­shall I observe Thy law continually forever and ever.”15 He subsequently explained that his intention was to declare that his primary allegiance was to the Divine law. The speaker of the Knesset, Shlomo Hillel, demanded that Kahane repeat his oath. Kahane refused and petitioned the Supreme Court. The petition was dismissed on the grounds that the petitioner lacked “clean hands” (i.e., integrity), granting the court the authority to reject the petition out of hand. Elon affirmed the decision, adding that, according to Jewish Law, an elected official is obligated to conduct himself with the same degree of integrity demanded of a judge: “The petitioner is an elected official and a public servant, and we have an accepted rule that ‘the degree of integrity demanded of community leaders who are appointed to deal with the needs of the public or individuals’ is that which is demanded of judges who sit on the court.”16 The source of the “accepted rule” cited by Elon is a responsum of R. Yisrael Isserlin (1390–1460). Thus, Elon moved between Israeli law and Mishpat ʻIvri seamlessly, blurring both the normative and the institutional bound­a ries between the systems. R. Yisrael Isserlin addressed a question that was referred to him by the community of Regensburg regarding the appointment of a par­tic­u­lar person

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to a community leadership position. That person had once sworn falsely, but ­later the community reconciled with him by virtue of a compromise. R. Yisrael vociferously opposed the appointment, claiming that an elected official has the obligation to conduct himself with integrity to the same degree demanded of a judge, and that the community does not have the authority to compromise on a “divine law”: “One who swears falsely for monetary gain is worse than a thief or a robber . . . ​and when community leaders sit to supervise the dealings of the community and of individuals, they function in place of the court. . . . ​You can ­settle your portion [= his civil responsibility], but not the portion of the altar [= his religious and moral responsibility].”17 The hidden argument ­behind Kahane’s addition to his oath was that ­there is a fundamental conflict between the laws of the state and the halakhah. In his ruling Elon used internal halakhic reasoning to refute this claim, arguing that the be­hav­ior of the appellant himself—an elected official lacking integrity—­was in conflict with the halakhah. This can certainly be construed as a halakhic argument, directed to the halakhic community and designed to create a new halakhic norm. Using halakhic sources and methods, Elon’s ruling gave con­temporary relevance to a medieval halakhic source by applying it to the issue ­under discussion. Thus the judgments in the Kahane cases are similar to the judgments we saw in the previous section, regarding ­women status, reflecting the active involvement of the court in halakhic debates that occur outside the court. But another impor­tant point ­here is that Elon equated medieval community leaders and con­temporary Israel Knesset members as if this equivalence was self-­evident. This comparison argues that Jewish sources do relate to public and constitutional law. I ­will return to this significant point ­later on. Defendants’ Rights (Sufian v. Military Commander)

Abdallah Sufian, a terrorist from Gaza, was arrested and for security reasons denied the right to meet with counsel. ­Because he did not request to meet with a ­lawyer, he was not informed of the decision to deny this right. In his ruling on Sufian’s petition to the Supreme Court, Elon stressed the importance of the right of counsel and established that ­every ­human right also inherently includes the right to be informed of its existence or, conversely, of its nullification. Elon’s analy­sis of Israeli law in this case was preceded by a discussion of Jewish Law sources. His argument was based on two halakhic rules estab-



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lished in Talmudic lit­er­a­ture—­“open your mouth for the mute” and “open [with arguments] to acquit”: “It is an impor­tant Jewish princi­ple . . . ​[when] a defendant is likely to be deprived of his rights ­because he is in distress, ­either personal or financial, and does not know what argument to put forth to his advantage, the Sages established that when a litigant does not make a claim that would be to his benefit, we—­the court—­a rgue for him: . . . ​it is a situation of ‘open your mouth for the mute.’ ”18 The Talmudic adage relates to the context of a civil monetary dispute in which one of the sides, generally the defendant, is in a weak state and does not know how to argue on his own behalf. Elon drew the conclusion that we have an even greater obligation in a situation where personal freedom is revoked in a criminal case to “open for him” and inform him of his right to counsel or its ­legal revocation. An analy­sis of the ruling reveals ­here as well that it constitutes a new interpretation of the cited Jewish sources. Elon broadened the Talmudic rule on three levels: He transferred it from private law to public law, from the judge to the investigative authorities, and from substantive law to procedural law. While reasonable, this approach represents a broad and significant interpretation that turns the Talmudic rule into an overarching constitutional princi­ple applicable to situations that deviate from the par­ameters established in the Talmud and halakhic lit­er­a­ ture. Elon thus made the law relevant and applied it to the Israeli constitutional real­ity. The Talmud derives the rule from Proverbs 31:8: “Open your mouth for the mute, in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction.” The implications of this adage are a source of controversy in the Talmud and its commentaries. Some commentators limit the rule to specific claims that are common and reasonable, while ­others broaden the par­ameters. Elon cited only two Biblical commentators—­Ralbag and Malbim19—­who did not address or refer to the Talmudic discussion. Ralbag explained as follows: “You should judge the poor and destitute with justice, and do not allow any deficiencies in their rights ­because of their weakness or the strength of their opponent.” Malbim added: “You must open your mouth for the mute who cannot argue on his own behalf and needs you to argue for him.” Although both commentators interpreted the verse in light of the Talmudic rule derived from it, they focused on the rationale ­behind the law and sought the ethical reasoning and aspiration for justice fundamentally embedded in it, a style of exegesis from the genre of ta’amei ha-­mitzvot (seeking the rationale for the commandments). Referring to the rationale ­behind the commandments by

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its nature allows one to more easily broaden the law and interpret it in accordance with a changing real­ity. Elon took a similar approach regarding the Mishnaic rule that, in capital cases, ­trials open with arguments in ­favor of the defendant. He provided a list of Talmudic and post-­Talmudic commentators who derived vari­ous rules from this law in order to expand the rights of defendants. On the basis of this list, Elon concluded that rabbis throughout the generations related to it as a princi­ple and not as a rule, thus permitting con­temporary halakhic authorities to derive rules from this princi­ple. This understanding empowered Elon to derive rules that would be appropriate to the con­temporary po­liti­cal and ­legal real­ity: “This princi­ple . . . ​includes in our times, first and foremost, the right of a defendant in a criminal proceeding to know about the right to ­legal counsel, and the obligation of the authorities to inform the prisoner of that.”20 Elon’s contention was that, according to Jewish Law, the officials had to inform the prisoner of his rights. ­Here, too, Elon’s innovative interpretation of the halakhic sources did not impact on the position of Israeli law on the issue in question but created a new halakhic norm using methods employed by halakhic authorities in previous generations. As we ­will immediately see, Elon believed that only by judging real cases could Jewish Law evolve to relate as needed to ­these areas of law.

“Jewish Laws of State”: Do They Exist? To gain a broader perspective on Justice Elon’s views regarding the development of Jewish public and constitutional law in the State of Israel, I would like to analyze the cultural and ideological contexts within which his worldview was ­shaped, and to clarify the significance that he attributed to the use of Jewish Law in constitutional cases in the Israeli court. One of the central questions that preoccupied religious Zionists from the 1940s onward was the ­matter of reconciling halakhah with the real­ity of Jewish sovereignty. The fact that Jewish Law developed primarily in the Diaspora, a nonstate real­ity, caused many to won­der ­whether the halakhah could serve as the ­legal system for the anticipated state. Many claimed that the application of the halakhah to all areas of public life reflected the very essence of renewed Jewish sovereignty. The implementation of this ideal, they argued, is pos­si­ble, but would require creativity and good ­will on the part of



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halakhic authorities. On the other hand, some argued that the ideal was unrealistic and that the dream should not be pursued. Many of the prominent rabbis of the period dealt intensively with ­these issues from halakhic and ideological perspectives. The debate related to all aspects of po­liti­cal sovereignty—­governance, politics, laws of war, foreign relations, and ­others. It also dealt with the challenge of establishing a halakhically based legislative and judiciary system in a real­ity where, on the one hand, the Jewish community was largely nonobservant, and on the other hand, Jewish Law required that legislators, judges, and witnesses all be halakhically observant. Another impor­tant issue was how such a system would relate to a non-­Jewish minority population. The broader arena of “laws of state” dealt with questions such as Sabbath observance in the public sector, primarily relating to industry, the police, emergency ser­vices, electricity and ­water, and so forth. All of ­these questions ­were irrelevant to a typical Diaspora Jewish community which, as a minority group, did not bear responsibility for ­these areas. ­These issues engaged the thinkers and intelligent­sia of religious Zionism as well as its rabbis. Two prominent personalities who participated in this debate ­were Akiva Ernst Simon and Yeshayahu Leibowitz. In his well-­ known article “Are We Still Jews?” Simon advocated for a compartmentalization between halakhah and the public sphere in the new real­ity. In essence he wished to initiate what he called “Protestant” Judaism—­a Judaism that did not presume to govern all aspects of life and certainly not the public domain. In contrast Leibowitz advocated for the halakhah to create new laws for the public sphere and laws of state. His primary religious vision of the Jewish state was the revival of the halakhah through its extension into new areas that it could not address throughout the centuries of exile, and he viewed the ensuing rabbinic vacillation and fear of innovation as an unpre­ ce­dented desecration of God. The religious kibbutz movement and Eliezer Goldman, a leading thinker of that movement, supported Leibowitz’s position. 21 Rabbis Herzog and Uziel, the chief rabbis of the time, ­adopted a similar position, but expressed themselves in less radical and less “reformist” tones in their arguments vis-­ à-­vis the halakhah. In the rulings that we have seen, it is apparent that Elon not only sided with Leibowitz and the chief rabbis in this debate but also actively tried to contribute to their efforts of accommodating the halakhah to the real­ity of a Jewish state. ­After dealing with ­these issues for years as a scholar, he dealt

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with them in his role as a judge; working from the bench, he went so far as to write and suggest rulings in constitutional and public law based on Jewish sources. In the conclusion of his ruling in the first Kahane case mentioned ­earlier, which found that Kahane’s opinions ­were incompatible with Jewish Law and values, Elon wrote a statement that reveals the context in which Elon viewed his role: “what we have said are some of the ‘Jewish state laws’ in this impor­tant area of minority rights in the Jewish state.” His systematic efforts to incorporate Jewish Law sources in his public law ruling illustrates his aspiration to deal as comprehensively as pos­si­ble with this discipline, to demonstrate the possibility of making Jewish Law for ­these areas, and to give guidance on how to accomplish it. He reinterpreted halakhic sources, transformed princi­ples into rules, and updated norms to meet new realities. His aforementioned statement that “what we have said are some of the ‘Jewish state laws’ ” referred to a ruling that he himself wrote, and he demonstrated to the skeptics his contention that Jewish Law could indeed address all the needs of the public sphere in a sovereign state and suggest ­legal norms based on Jewish texts and Jewish values for current Jewish po­liti­cal realities.

From Community to State: Jewish Communal Law as a Source for State Law As previously stated, one of the innovations in Elon’s rulings was his broad use of responsa lit­er­a­ture, primarily dealing with the administration of medieval Jewish communities. He dealt with this subject extensively as a scholar and as a judge, and made use of relevant responsa lit­er­a­ture in his rulings. This approach is consistent with his search for halakhic sources for laws for government and state. The medieval Jewish community and the public ­legal system that it developed for its orderly administration could be—in Elon’s vision—­very adequate sources for con­temporary public law in the State of Israel. It seems to me that he designed this endeavor not only to enrich the Israeli ­legal system but, more impor­tant, to influence the halakhic discourse. The Zionist movement viewed itself as a revolutionary movement and as a continuation of the Jewish past at the same time. This tension was reflected in the Zionist discourse, from its inception through the first de­cades of the state, regarding ­whether to retain ele­ments from the Jewish past. Ben-­Gurion, as is well known, talked about a return to the Bible—­in­de­pen­dence, power, land, normalcy, as well as the social justice values of the prophets. The Has-



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monean period, with its strug­gle for freedom and in­de­pen­dence, was for Ben-­ Gurion as well as many Zionist intellectuals also a popu­lar point of connection to the past during ­those years. Proponents of ­these views shared a desire to skip over the period of the exile and its cultural products, including the Talmud and rabbinic lit­er­a­ture.22 In his rulings Elon seems to argue directly against ­these popu­lar views. He wanted to bring halakhah back to the discourse as an impor­tant chapter in the continuity of Jewish creativity and as a relevant cultural source for the con­temporary Israeli real­ity. Particularly impor­tant is his argument about the medieval Jewish community as a source for public law in the State of Israel. As a young scholar at the Hebrew University, Elon initiated a monumental proj­ect aimed at indexing the medieval responsa lit­er­a­ture of Spain and North Africa. This proj­ect was designed to constitute “the infrastructure and foundation for the revitalized discipline of Jewish public-­administrative law.”23 His research proj­ect sought to make the sources accessible, but it is notable that his declared intention was that this be applied research, ultimately designed to renew the application of halakhah to public law. In a public lecture shortly before his appointment as a judge in November 1977, Elon said: “Renewed Jewish in­de­pen­dence is a continuation not only of the Hasmonean period, but also of Jewish autonomy that existed for generation upon generation in the diasporas of Spain, North Africa, Poland, and Lithuania, where the Jews established a state within a state. . . . ​This would restore connectedness and roots which are anchored in historical continuity, the Jewish po­liti­cal tradition from all of its periods and manifestations.”24 And a number of years ­later, already a Supreme Court justice, he wrote in a ruling: “Administrative law enjoyed a large degree of development and widespread productivity with the rise and strengthening of the Jewish community beginning in the tenth ­century onward. The Jewish community in vari­ous diasporas enjoyed broad internal administrative and judicial autonomy, and by virtue of its diverse public administration in a variety of public and administrative areas, a long list of princi­ples developed and ­were created in the field of Jewish administrative law.”25 The po­liti­cal tradition that is not found in the Talmud exists in medieval Jewish communities. This lit­er­a­ture was undeniably neglected for a number of reasons. First, traditional Jewish communal life was cut off with the termination of Jewish communal autonomy that accompanied the Jewish Emancipation in Western Eu­rope, and ­later on in Eastern Eu­rope. Second, this lit­er­a­ture—­responsa lit­er­a­ture and community rec­ords—is not part of the

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traditional Jewish educational curriculum that included mainly the Bible and the Talmud. Already at the beginning of his academic ­career, Elon aspired to return this neglected lit­er­a­ture to public awareness and to rehabilitate among ­legal scholars and judges a consciousness of an or­ga­nized Jewish community with a normative public law. ­Toward that end, he published many articles on the subject and initiated the proj­ect of indexing the responsa lit­er­a­ture. He viewed the community, particularly the Sephardic community, as the best source in the annals of halakhic lit­er­a­ture from which norms for communal organ­ization—­and by implication, laws of state—­can be derived.26 Elon’s research dealt with communal edicts, and it seems quite clear that he was searching for relevant pre­ce­dents for administering the state. ­These sources required updating and conceptualization, which is what Elon often did in his rulings. He took ­great liberty in choosing sources that ­were compatible with accepted societal values, and thus created a high degree of congruence between Jewish Law and Israeli law. At the same time, he was prepared to propose new interpretations of halakhic sources so that they would be relevant to the new real­ity of a sovereign state. The judgment is an illustration of how it is pos­si­ble to decide on an ­actual question in the field of public law according to the sources of halakhah. Elon sought to return to the world of halakhah the consciousness that t­ here is a Jewish po­liti­cal tradition that was cut off, and at the same time to establish roots for Israeli politics. As I indicated previously, Elon’s rulings ­were creative, examining or interpreting sources anew and reshaping an old norm for a new real­ity. In addition, however, he had another strategic goal—to create an awareness of the continuity of heritage between the elected officials of the Jewish community and the Knesset members in the State of Israel. The ideological argument that emerges from this connection challenges the aspiration to disengage from the period of Jewish exile by asserting the importance of that period for Israeli law.

* * * The Israeli ­legal system inherited common law from the mandatory government, and it continued to maintain its dominance in Israel ­until the end of the 1970s. Elon cited the Jewish responsa lit­er­a­ture as proof that Mishpat ʻIvri functions according to the approach of En­glish common law, in which the law develops through pre­ce­dents. This overcame the absence of a legislative body, providing a clear and recognized mechanism for developing the law and accommodating it to a changing real­ity. Certainly, Elon did not suggest



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that common law influenced Jewish Law or vice versa, but he pointed out the similarities between them. He explained the ­legal institutions of the Talmud, and of Mishpat ʻIvri in general, and their methods of developing the law by comparison with En­glish common law. In his introduction to Digest of the Responsa Lit­er­a­ture, Elon repeated his fundamental argument regarding the essence and importance of the responsa lit­er­a­ture, which he viewed as parallel to All E ­ ngland Law Reports. When he sat on the bench, he encouraged the Israeli court to divert its attention from En­glish law to pre­ce­ dents in Jewish responsa lit­er­a­ture. In Mishpat ʻIvri, as in En­glish common law, the essential creativity derives from real life as opposed to the abstract discussions in the bet midrash or the codices. Both systems developed as case law in which the interpretation, the comparison between cases, and the progression from case to case constitute the central tools for development of the law. They represent judge-­made law, which explains the added significance of responsa lit­er­a­ture. ­Until Emancipation and the consequent loss of communal autonomy, the vast majority of responsa ­were dedicated to private and public law: issues found in the Hoshen Mishpat and Even Ha-­Ezer sections of Shulchan Aruch, and to ­matters of the community and the public sector that are practically not discussed in the codices. From the time that Jewish communities lost their autonomy and their ­legal jurisdiction, a majority of the responsa lit­er­a­ture has dealt with ritual ­matters generally found in the Yoreh De’ah and Orach Hayim sections of Shulchan Aruch, which are devoted to religious and ritual law. Elon viewed the establishment of the State of Israel as an opportunity to return Jewish Law to its original splendor, to adjudicating ­matters of both personal and public law. Reviving the study of responsa lit­er­a­ture was designed to promote this ideal. The rulings that he wrote constitute an impressive corpus that attempts in a serious and systematic fashion to rule all areas of private and public law according to the halakhah. This experiment of necessity required innovations and ground-­breaking exegesis of the halakhah. As such, this corpus is significant not just in the context of Israeli law but also in the world of the halakhah itself. Elon’s creative interpretation is based on an argument which recurs in each ruling—at times explic­itly and at times implicitly—­that the administrative law of the Jewish community was created by the community and its sages ­because administrative law practically did not exist in Talmudic lit­er­a­ ture. The community had the authority to establish its own law. The hidden message was that the State of Israel—­and the court as one of its institutions—­

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inherited not only the laws of the medieval community but also its authority and creativity. In real­ity, this collection of rulings constitutes a significant effort to create a ­legal system for the state within the halakhah. It was a serious attempt to upgrade Jewish communal norms into state norms in the central areas of public life in a modern state.

Epilogue To what extent should or can Jewish Law be part of the Israeli ­legal system? This question has preoccupied Israeli law since its inception. Supporters and scholars of Mishpat ʻIvri viewed it as a source of influence on Israeli law, culturally enriching it with references to the significant ­legal texts from the Jewish past. Through the use of Jewish Law, its supporters have sought to propose cultural continuity between Israeli law and the Jewish culture of the ­Middle Ages. Abandoning this connection, it is claimed, places Israel on a rickety and rootless cultural infrastructure. The strug­gle for incorporating Jewish Law, according to this view, is part of a general ideology that views the preservation of cultural continuity with the Jewish world as a central challenge and mission of Zionism and the State of Israel. In this chapter, I have suggested an additional perspective to the significance of the use of Jewish Law in Israeli law. I have argued that, by using Jewish Law, Israeli courts can be viewed as an arena and opportunity for the halakhah itself to flourish and develop. The basis for my suggestion is twofold: One is the claim that ­there is no preservation without development, and thus a strug­gle for cultural preservation inevitably involves a strug­gle for its development. And second is the claim that any use or application of a ­legal source in a new case proposes, ipso facto, a new interpretation of that source. Menachem Elon, the scholar and the judge, is known for his long advocacy for the use of Jewish Law in Israeli law. I have tried to propose a new reading of his rulings that views them as innovations in Jewish Law. In each of the judgments discussed in this chapter, a new argument was suggested, a normative argument or a new interpretation that did not arise in this manner anywhere in the lit­er­a­ture of Jewish Law that preceded it. While comparing the current real­ity to the Jewish courts in exile, Elon repeatedly claimed that halakhah was able to develop in the Diaspora due to its autonomous judicial structure, while ­today, in the absence of judicial institutions, it cannot develop. This is not merely a claim about the balance between pres-



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ervation of a heritage and its development but a claim that Jewish Law can develop only when it confronts real-­life prob­lems, and that it cannot be preserved and developed in books alone. In other words, Jewish Law needs the arena of Israeli courts to develop. The court is a unique arena, dif­fer­ent in essence from the bet midrash, from academic discussion, and even from the considerations of the halakhic authority. Courts engage with con­temporary ­legal issues stemming from a range of fields. They must answer a concrete question, an acute question that was not addressed previously, as opposed to a researcher who answers a hy­ po­thet­i­cal question. This fact has significant implications that distinguish judicial reasoning from other contexts where the law or the halakhah find expression. The court is an arena in which conflicting interests must be de­ cided. The decision must persuasively demonstrate that it is just and applicable, and that it conforms both to the law and to the moral and po­liti­cal social mood. Such a decision must take into account all of ­these considerations, and be applicable and enforceable. Of course, my argument raises difficulties and calls for further theoretical and empirical research. Did Elon’s rulings indeed create something new in the world of halakhah? Do innovative interpretations proposed by the Israeli court, or the se­lection of specific Jewish ­legal sources, have any meaning in the world of halakhah? Can we ­really speak of Israeli law as an arena in which pro­cesses of Jewish Law take place, and if so, what are ­these pro­cesses, and how can they be defined from the internal point of view of halakhah? On a certain level, the answer is clear and ­simple: Israeli courts derive their authority from the state and not from the halakhah, and therefore the rulings produced in ­these courts do not enjoy any normative status in terms of halakhah. Elon himself claimed that his rulings are interpretive texts that belong to halakhic lit­er­a­ture and culture but are not halakhic rulings in the full normative sense. Torah study, he claimed, was never ­limited in any way to a certain group of ­people. According to this view, Elon carried out in his rulings a kind of halakhic “research” that would be considered as historical sources of subsequent rulings w ­ ere they ­adopted by the authorities or the community. Very impor­tant in my view is the fact that, in each of the judgments we have seen, Elon conducted two parallel discourses. In addition to the internal discourse with his fellow judges, he conducted a dialogue with representatives of the halakhic community. In all the rulings we have analyzed, Elon ­didn’t tell his colleagues that “it is worthwhile to adopt the position of Jewish Law that says so and so,” but instead communicated to the representatives of the

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halakhic community that “this is what Jewish Law says.” In some cases we have seen, he suggested a new halakhic norm in the area of constitutional law (“the laws of the state”) and sought to integrate his opinion into the rabbinic discourse. In other cases his message to the halakhic community was that the way they represent the position of Jewish Law is wrong. In certain cases he was addressing the chief rabbinate or the rabbinical court, and in other cases the parties who argued in the name of the halakhah, or to public opinion that based itself on a certain halakhic position. We should bear in mind the rule of recognition, which proposes that the validity of a norm in halakhah is not dependent on an institution but on the extent to which the community accepts the rule. The determination is retrospective, based on ­whether the community views it as a halakhic source. Therefore, the answer to our question regarding the impact of Justice Elon on the halakhic corpus seems to lie in the ­f uture: ­Will the halakhic community and its authorities grant significance to t­ hese rulings?

Chapter 3

Fleshpots in the Promised Land On the Possibility of Zionism Without Negating the Exile Meirav Jones

Negation and the Lachrymose In 1928 the historian Salo W. Baron urged Jews to reconsider a fundamental premise that, in his view, Zionism and Wissenschaft shared: that Judaism had emerged in the nineteenth ­century from the dark ages, and that possibilities for Jewish life ­after Emancipation—­whether as individuals ­free to leave Jewish nationhood ­behind or as members of a Jewish nation ­free to shape its own po­liti­cal life—­were vastly superior to the possibilities that existed previously.1 On Baron’s reading, both Zionism and Wissenschaft rejected exilic Judaism, seeking to leave the “old Jew” ­behind in ­favor of a superior “new Jew” who was better protected in the world. Since Baron’s time, however, it has been Zionism that has dramatically played out the narrative of the “new Jew” and the idea of pro­gress known as “negation of the exile.” It was in the modern state of Israel that the tsabar was in­ven­ted, the “melting pot” was government policy, and Jews w ­ ere “absorbed” into their new society. While Baron’s essay was highly influential—­particularly in the United States, where “neo-­Baronianism” has been said to have taken Baron’s dissent from the lachrymose approach to Jewish history further than the author intended 2—­there is an aspect of the essay that is often overlooked. Baron wrote that negation of the exile was not necessary for e­ ither of the influential movements which ­adopted it, and that in his time, the 1920s, ­there ­were

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thinkers within Zionism and Reform Judaism who sought to build their movements without devaluing the past. “It should be pointed out at once that this conception of modern Jewish history is indispensable neither to Reform nor to Zionism. Indeed, each has begun to shift its ground. Particularly among the younger intellectual leaders of national Judaism one discovers a note of romantic longing ­towards the Jewish ghetto, its life, and its culture. In lit­er­a­ture, the revival of Chassidism, at least as a cultural force, in the writings of Martin Buber, Peretz, Berdichevsky and ­others, represents the new tendency.”3 In this chapter I ask what Baron was celebrating when he saw some Zionist voices shifting their ground away from negating the exile, questioning the model. ­Today, when negating the exile is hegemonic within Zionism, is it still pos­si­ble to reimagine the possibility of a Zionism that does not negate the exile? What would be the po­liti­cal impact of such a reimagining? In what follows I tie Zionism’s negation of exile to its ac­cep­tance of modern state politics in which the sovereign becomes the only po­liti­cally relevant expression of group identity, and explore the extent to which, when it ­adopted modern state politics, Zionism aligned itself with a form of state that rejected exilic and stateless aspects of Jewish experience. Might rethinking Zionism along the lines Baron suggested in 1928 open up possibilities for thinking beyond some of the limitations of modern sovereignty in our time? Can reclaiming exile aid in rethinking the relationship between group identity, the state, and exclusive territorial claims? How might reincorporating exile affect Zionist discourse and particularly its approach to its ­others: Palestinians, non-­Zionist Jews, Jews outside Israel, and Jews of dif­fer­ent ethnicities? Before exploring ­these questions through the history of ideas, a clarification of terms is in order, as neither of the main concepts I am working with—­Z ionism and “negation of the exile”—is singularly understood in scholarship or in common parlance. My approach to ­these concepts is to try and grasp them as they ­were accessible in and leading up to the 1920s and as Baron used them, such that negating the exile could have been understood as not essential to Zionism. By Zionism, I mean simply the striving for a Jewish home in the modern world, ­whether to provide Jews a place of refuge or a cultural center.4 Zionism appears in Baron’s essay as the approach to the prob­lem of Jewish existence in Eu­rope that favored distinctly Jewish politics over assimilation into Eu­ro­pean nations, such that Zionism was in contradistinction to Emancipation. I do not, by Zionism, mean work ­toward a par­tic­u­lar form of state



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or of politics that the Jewish homeland could or should take. Through the 1940s Zionism was conceived as containing multiple possibilities. As late as 1942 Hannah Arendt uses “Zionism” as a synonym for “Jewish politics,” turning not to anti-­Zionists but to “dissident Zionists” in her plea for an alternative to Ben-­Gurion and Chaim Weizmann.5 As for “negation of the exile,” ­these words have been placed together to describe a variety of phenomena. Eliezer Schweid, for example, described a spectrum of “negators of exile,” from ­those such as Yosef Haim Brenner, who expressed disgust at what Jews had become in Eu­rope and at their petty concerns, to Ahad Ha’am, whose negation of the exile was the understanding that the path offered to Jews in nineteenth-­century Eu­rope threatened Judaism’s survival and crushed its soul.6 Ahad Ha’am himself wrote that all Jews negate the exile, for even ­those who claim not to negate the exile in fact do, as they too recognize the problematic nature of being a sheep among wolves. They too ­w ill go to the Land of Israel ­a fter the Messiah comes, claimed Ahad Ha’am.7 To Ahad Ha’am and in his understanding, negation of the exile was thus essential not only to Zionism but to Jews as Jews; it was part of the Jewish condition. ­Here I ­will narrow “negation of the exile” to Baron’s usage, as a position that casts a dark shadow over Jewish history, taking a lachrymose perspective and denying any positive meaning to nonsovereign existence. Thus understood, negating the exile means rejecting Jewish life in the centuries between the destruction of the Second ­Temple and the rise of Emancipation and Zionism in the late nineteenth c­ entury as inferior and irrelevant, except insofar as it leads to its own supersession. The premise that Jews could not live—or that Judaism would not survive—­under the conditions that developed in modern Eu­rope is thus insufficient for negating the exile. Rather, negation demands the structuring of Jewish memory so as to portray Jewish life between the end of Jewish power in ancient times and the resumption of Jewish power in the twentieth ­century as poor, petty, harsh, and weak, with the role of statehood being to supersede this history and transform the Jew into what he was not.8 “We have no inheritance . . . ​what they bequeathed—­rabbinic lit­er­a­ture—we would have been better off had it not been left to us,” wrote Brenner.9 While Zionists have historically subscribed to significantly more nuanced positions, the only history mentioned in Israel’s Declaration of In­de­pen­dence is a history of suffering and longing,10 and negation in this strong sense played into the founding ethos of the state, such as when Ben-­Gurion and ­others presented the state as continuing not exilic Jewish life but biblical times.11

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In asking how we might ­today imagine a Zionism (or a Jewish politics) that does not negate the exile, I hope to contribute to reinvigorating Jewish po­liti­cal thought in pre­sent times. Specifically, I hope to participate in recapturing some of what was lost, according to Baron but also more generally, when negation of the exile became fundamental to Zionism. ­There was a par­ tic­u­lar aspect of diasporic Jewish history that Baron thought could and should be valued, even in Jewish politics, that is in­ter­est­ing to consider ­today: the way the Jews lived in the ­Middle Ages, at a time when the state was “largely built on the corporations.”12 It was ­under corporatism, rather than with the modern rise of fascism, nationalism, and Sovietism, that Baron considered the Jews to have enjoyed relative prosperity. At the same time ­there was a longing that Baron found some Zionists to have shared, not necessarily for corporatism but for Diaspora life—­a longing for Eu­rope that may be read as a sense of exile from within the land of Israel—­and he hung hopes on this sense of longing that emerged from the writings of the Third Aliyah.13 In what follows, I ­will first look at how the modern state in the seventeenth ­century, and the Zionist ac­cep­tance of the modern state form in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively laid the groundwork for the negation of exile in the sense that Baron describes. Sovereignty theorists and Zionists came to pre­sent the absence of sovereignty as poor, petty, harsh, and weak. I ­will then inquire into the nonsovereign understanding of politics that Baron finds Zionism could have pursued had it not submitted to the presumptions of sovereignty theorists but rather followed Jewish po­liti­cal experience, particularly of corporate politics. I ­will also explore the sentiments Baron found among certain Zionist authors of his time and the promise he found in their longing for diaspora. Fi­nally, I ­will ask about the pos­si­ble effects of incorporating corporatism on one hand, and longing on the other, into Zionist thought. I ­will ask ­whether ­these ele­ments can help us look beyond some of the trappings of Zionism in our time, and particularly its inability to accommodate positive Jewish diasporic experience, diverse Jewish approaches to land, and Palestinian experience related to the land in its worldview.

The Modern State and Negation of Exile The modern state, from its earliest beginnings as an idea in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was presented by the thinkers who conceived and promoted it as the only path to peaceful ­human life, with the alternative



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being death. This outlook is most memorably captured in the writing of Thomas Hobbes, who presented the all-­encompassing sovereign state as the only way to overcome the state of nature, in which life is “nasty, brutish, and short.”14 Yet Hobbes was not alone in presenting the modern state as the only po­liti­ cal form capable of protecting life and creating satisfactory conditions for industry. Early modern theorists generally closed the door on forms of politics practiced in centuries past by arguing strongly for the need for a single power over church and state and censuring the dualism of Catholic politics with its emperors and popes. It was modern sovereignty—­a new form of state in which a single po­liti­cal body held the highest power to command all ­matters within in a bordered territory—­which was to overcome the chaos that emerged ­after the downfall of the Corpus Christianum and resolve the wars of religion that followed the rise of Protestantism. To achieve peace, the sovereign would be the only po­liti­cally relevant expression of group identity; it was they who would decide religion within bordered territory, and they who would represent the state beyond this territory. While Jews ­were not the focus of their works, it is remarkable that po­ liti­cal theorists at the dawn of modernity, including Jean Bodin, Thomas Hobbes, Hugo Grotius, James Harrington, and o­ thers, recognized the Jews of their time as a ­people to be accounted for po­liti­cally, and considered Jews in terms of the modern state. While in Catholic Eu­rope the Jew was ­either an exception to the greater ­legal and po­liti­cal system or part of a group like other groups without formal systematic unity among them, in modern po­ liti­cal thought ­there would be no exceptions from the system of territorially distinct and internally unified states.15 As I ­will elaborate, po­liti­cal theorists treated Jews as belonging to another church lacking state infrastructure, whereas Muslims ­were recognized as related to the territory of “the Turk.”16 This approach to Jews first appears in the work of Jean Bodin, considered the first theorist of modern sovereignty. As he ­imagined distinct Catholic and Reformed states to end the bloodshed caused by the wars of religion in his time, he wrote of “the ­great poverty of the Jews . . . ​who in no place of the world may possess any lands . . . ​[and] are thus unable to defend their religion and liberty.”17 Bodin, who leaned on Jewish sources and Hebrew terms throughout his theoretical work on the claim that Hebrew terms describe the natures of ­things, particularly po­liti­cal ­things,18 and who found the Jewish sovereign entity in antiquity as an exemplary model, effectively stated that Jews of his own time would need to hold land if they w ­ ere to survive as a fr ­ ee p­ eople of

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an in­de­pen­dent religion. Bodin also contended that, in their insistence on “strange religion,” Jews in Christian states brought hatred on themselves;19 hardly a peaceful image, and certainly a problematic image of adherents to a religion from which Bodin himself gleaned po­liti­cal wisdom. But it was the Jews without land who ­were a prob­lem for Bodin, not the Jews who had once held sovereignty and who had preserved their po­liti­cal wisdom in their language and interpretive tradition. Following Bodin, Thomas Hobbes found that the Jews constituted a prob­lem for the Christian sovereign, as Judaism was inconsistent with civil religion to such an extent that it was the only religion forbidden in the Roman commonwealth.20 Like Bodin, Hobbes also reconstructed a model for his understanding of sovereignty by returning to the time when the Jews ­were a sovereign ­people (he focuses on when God was chosen by the Jews as sovereign), 21 finding the value of Jewish wisdom to be wisdom about sovereignty, and the long period in which the Jews lacked sovereignty as a mark of their unsustainability as a ­people. The theoretical discussion of the Jews in modern sovereignty theory culminated five years ­after the publication of Hobbes’s Leviathan in ­England. At precisely the time that Oliver ­Cromwell was consulting on the re­ introduction of the Jews to ­England, republican theorist James Harrington published his major work, Oceana.22 In the introduction to that work, Harrington proposed that the Jews—­experienced in m ­ atters of state from their distant past yet problematic for modern Christian states to accommodate—­ should be given a portion of land (Ireland!) “for them and their heirs in perpetuity,” to live u ­ nder their own laws and institutions.23 To Harrington, “to receive the Jews ­after any other manner into a commonwealth ­were to maim it,”24 echoing the concern Hobbes had about diversity within the po­liti­cal body. Benedict de Spinoza also famously found that the Jews could once again claim sovereignty if they insisted on their difference, coming full circle as the Chinese had done, shifting away from and back into sovereignty.25 While I have fleshed out this discussion elsewhere,26 ­here I emphasize the extent to which formative po­liti­cal thinkers of the modern world considered statelessness as dark and unsustainable for any ­people. The redeeming feature of the Jews, according to ­these theorists, was that they had once held sovereignty and could do so again. ­There is a paradox ­here, as Bodin, Hobbes, and Harrington all turned to rabbinic lit­er­a­ture—­a product of Diaspora Jewish life—­for po­liti­cal wisdom.27 Yet what po­liti­cal theorists sought in rabbinic lit­er­a­ture was not an understanding of the rabbinic world or of Jewish ­legal



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discourse but, rather, wisdom regarding the Hebrew republic, or Jewish sovereign state, which the rabbis ­were understood as having preserved. Theorists read rabbinic lit­er­a­ture to better understand the Sanhedrin as a model court; the Jewish ­legal system as a system of state law; and tithes and other Jewish customs as centralized systems of justice.28 The rabbis—­although writing at a time when Jews lacked sovereignty and addressing ­legal princi­ples to a nonsovereign p­ eople—­were read as expounding sovereign politics. The approach to the Jews as sovereign in the past and possibly again sovereign in the ­f uture, but unsustainable in the absence of land, was famously stated by Spinoza and persisted into Enlightenment po­liti­cal thought. Deep into the French Enlightenment, Jean-­Jacques Rousseau gave a character in Emile the following line: “I ­shall never believe that I have seriously heard the arguments of the Jews ­until they have a ­free state, schools, and universities. Only then w ­ ill we be able to know what they have to say.”29 France eventually offered Jews equal rights as individuals while denying them collective rights,30 but what we hear in Rousseau is the collective that could not speak for itself, which continued to exist as a significant “other” without voice. It was from within Enlightenment France that Herzl would come to the conclusion that indeed—as Bodin, Harrington, and Rousseau suggested before him—­statelessness could not sustain Jewish life, and Jews required a state.

Zionism and the Modern State: Re­sis­tance and Ac­cep­tance A generally untold aspect of Zionism is that before subscribing to the idea of a Jewish state on the Eu­ro­pean model, early Zionists registered some of the most significant alternatives to Westphalian sovereignty in modern po­ liti­cal thought. Rather than seeking a modern nation-­state for the Jews or a sovereign state striving for homogeneity through the image of a “new Jew,” a number of early Zionist thinkers initially sought to protect the Jews through po­liti­cal means that would build on Jewish historical experience and on diasporic life, rather than negate or deny it. One such early thinker was Leon Pinsker, whose Autoemancipation! is usually read as promoting the practical solution of a Jewish nation-­state, and as breaking from Pinsker’s ­earlier proj­ect of seeking rights for the Jews in their place of residence. But as Dimitry Shumsky has demonstrated, ­there was no

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sharp break in Pinsker’s thought: Throughout, Pinsker theorized multinational citizenship that would be achieved by the separation of “nation” from “land.”31 In Shumsky’s account, many early Zionists, including Jabotinsky, ­were citizens of multinational empires and ­were initially suspicious of a po­liti­ cal entity such as the nation-­state that strove for homogeneity. Shumsky offers Pinsker’s idea of Jewish politics as an application of Enlightenment—­even Kantian—­political thought. Rather than having Jews moving to a new homeland en masse, Pinsker sought the Jewish homeland as a place where Jews could provide hospitality to ­others, just as they would receive hospitality from ­others. A Jewish homeland would add a home to the Jews who ­were not at home, normalizing the Jewish Diaspora. Just as ­there ­were Germans in Germany and Germans who resided outside Germany, ­there would be Jews in their homeland and Jews dispersed. At no point was the vision for a homogenous state but rather for a po­liti­cal world with more open borders and hospitality to all and from all. This drew on the Jews’ experience and particularly on Pinsker’s sense of the needs of Jews for secure conditions, ­after his ­earlier attempts to secure rights for Jews in the absence of land had failed.32 Shumsky’s work is part of a general rethinking of Zionism and the alternatives to Westphalian sovereignty that ­were preferred by early Zionists.33 In the terms of this chapter, this work contributes to the effort to imagine the possibility of a Zionism that does not negate the exile, in that it pre­ sents early Zionists as initially having refrained from choosing a form of state that rejected statelessness as worthless existence and Diaspora life as catastrophe. Rather, some Zionist thinkers initially sought to harness the Diaspora experience and to preserve aspects of it, while reluctantly conceding the impossibility of Jewish life in Eu­rope in the absence of land, u ­ nder the conditions that had developed in Eu­rope by the nineteenth c­ entury. Theodor Herzl himself presented the state as a last resort. He wrote: “we have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national communities in which we live, seeking only to preserve the faith of our ­fathers. It is not permitted us. In vain are we loyal patriots, sometimes superloyal.”34 Herzl also mourned the loss of home associated with moving to a new land, even a land for the Jews, and he seeks to the extent pos­si­ble to enable Jews to bring their diverse local heritages with them to Palestine: Our cradles we ­shall carry with us—­they hold our ­f uture, rosy and smiling. Our beloved graves we must abandon—­a nd I think this



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abandonment w ­ ill cost us more than any other sacrifice. But it must be so. . . . ​35 When we journey out of Egypt again we s­ hall not leave the fleshpots ­behind. . . . ​­Every man ­will find his customs again in the local groups, but they ­will be better, more beautiful, and more agreeable than before.36 It is in­ter­est­ing ­here that Herzl attributes value to the fleshpots of Egypt. He appreciates the sustenance Jews received in the Diaspora and seeks ways to translate their acquired experience into the Jewish ­f uture; not to overcome the past but to carry it to the new land. Herzl does ultimately see a new society being created. Yet he foresees its development as gradual, without a traumatic break from the past. He writes about the transition: “­Every group ­will have its Rabbi, travelling with his congregation. Local groups ­w ill afterwards form voluntarily about their Rabbi, and each locality ­will have its spiritual leader.”37 Thus, while in The Jewish State Herzl endorses the establishment of a sovereign territorial entity, the terms “territorial” and “sovereign” w ­ ere portrayed as necessary rather than as expressing an ideal vision. Jews had tried to assimilate into Eu­ro­pean society, but this was denied to them, and Herzl insisted that when they did create a state, Jews should take their nonsovereign experience with them, neither abruptly abandoning nor negating it. For Herzl’s ideal, we might look to the “New Society” he describes in Altneuland, where we have his clearest statements about the value of Jewish experience before the state. What we find in this work is a vision for a technologically advanced society, very much “of the times,” bringing pro­gress to an old land. But the society does not itself revolutionize.38 It takes ­things from the past and from outside the new land and adapts them to the pre­sent and to the new society. The ­people of the new society who bring their baggage with them—­national, religious, and ideological. Altneuland is cautious about the baggage Jews would be bringing from Eu­ rope. Its vision is not of an exclusively Jewish nation-­state, and its author seeks to learn the lessons of a Eu­rope that could not accommodate the Jews: Anyone who wishes to assimilate to the new society may do so. At the same time, the chauvinistic nationalism that drove the Jews from Eu­rope ­isn’t naively envisioned as overcome in Herzl’s “new society.” Herzl expects it to exist among Jews, and to challenge the proj­ect itself. The arguments of chauvinistic Jewish

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nationalism are engaged, and its defenders are taken seriously. The “fleshpots” brought from Eu­rope are not only riches but also challenges. The clearest expression of this is in the set of po­liti­cal speeches delivered when David Litwak, the positive ideological leader in the book, arrives with his guests at Neudorf (“New Village”). ­There, Rabbi Geyer, representing the nationalist (Jewish exclusivist) religious opposition, is the popu­lar leader who has promoted the belief that only Jews should be allowed to be members of the new society. The winning argument against Geyer is that the building of the society was not achieved by Jews alone, but with the wisdom of the nations and with the assistance and partnership of non-­Jews. Geyer, the speaker tells us, was anti-­Zionist before the state was established, wishing to attain the “true Zion.” His nationalist ideas now appear as a transition he made, but he is still the ­enemy within and still undermining the proj­ect in Altneuland: The true builders of the new society did not strive for a par­tic­u­lar po­liti­cal form, but rather sought to meet the immediate needs of society through gradual change, utilizing tools obtained in the past by Jews rather than by ­those who rejected them. In the final pages of the work, we find the following lesson learned by Friedrich, the Jew who accompanies the non-­Jewish traveler to Palestine and takes in the experience of the Jews building the new society as an outsider: Something Dr. Marcus said lately about the coexistence of ­things has been ­running through my mind. Old institutions need not go ­under at one blow in order that new ones may be born. Not ­every son is posthumous. Parents usually live along with their ­children for many years. It follows that an old social order need not break up ­because a new one is on the way. Having seen ­here a new order composed of none but old institutions, I have come to believe neither in the complete destruction nor the complete renewal of a social order. I believe—­how ­shall I put it?—in a gradual reconstruction of society. And I believe that such a reconstruction never comes about through systematic planning, but as the need arises. Necessity is the builder. We decide to alter a floor, a staircase, a wall, to install electricity or ­water supply only as the need arises, or when some new invention wins its way. The ­house as a ­whole remains what it was. So I can imagine the continued existence of the old state even if new features have been added.39



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Herzl h ­ ere brings his readers a classic conservative vision of gradual change. This image is remarkable as it appears in Altneuland, usually considered a utopian work.40 Rather than erasing the past, Herzl’s intention was to preserve the Jews within a building that would change only what was necessary; which would preserve the way the Jews had lived. What the Jews have in the new society is not an exclusivist nation-­state but rather a voluntary organ­ization; a society of citizens.41 Their newspapers are both cooperatives and private bodies, workers are u ­ nionized, and in general society is built on corporate structures, with the new society the primary corporation.42 The strands of Zionist thought that promoted continuity rather than negating what came before ­were downplayed and ultimately abandoned in the early twentieth ­century (and subsequently in the state itself). ­There ­were a number of contributing ­factors, and among ­these was the fact that the international community was able to imagine Jews in the terms of modern sovereignty for much the same reasons that seventeenth-­century Eu­ro­pean thinkers ­imagined Jews in ­these terms: ­because of their own sense that the Jews would never fully incorporate into other states. In February 1897, Die Welt, the Zionist newspaper edited by Herzl, published an interview with Prince Dimitrie Sturdza, former prime minister of Romania, that included the following statement: “I consider Dr. Herzl’s idea to be excellent; in fact I may say the one and valuable way of solving the Jewish question. . . . ​The Jews are the one ­people who, living in foreign countries, do not assimilate with the inhabitants as ­others do.” 43 The significance of this quote is twofold. First, the former prime minister of Romania speaks of the Jews as though he ­were quoting James Harrington, giving voice to the undesirability of Jews in modern states, with this implying the need for a separate Jewish state. Second, the fact that this was published in Die Welt marks the Zionist ac­cep­tance of this narrative as supportive. Also considered an achievement of Zionist diplomacy was the Rus­sian support for po­liti­cal Zionism on the claim “the Rus­sian State is bound to desire homogeneity of its population,” 44 which was consistent with the internal cohesion modern sovereignty championed. While Rus­sia was comfortable with Herzl’s proposal for territorial separation of the Jews, it was extremely both­ered by Ahad Ha’am’s cultural Zionism, or indeed by anything other than resolving Jewish difference by radical separation from the Jews.45 The development of a distinct Jewish cultural identity within Rus­ sian borders was considered a threat to stability. The Zionist proj­ect thus

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gained support only when it was framed in terms of Westphalian territorial separation. Herzl’s last major diplomatic success in his lifetime was with the En­ glish, where again he garnered support for a Jewish state in Palestine, partly predicated on the undesirability of Jewish incorporation into E ­ ngland. In correspondence, Herzl explained his request for land controlled by ­England for settling the Jews in a variety of terms. He began: “The stimulus for the British government to occupy itself with this question is supplied by the immigration to the East End of London. True, this is still no calamity worth mentioning, and I hope it ­will never become one to the extent that ­England would have to break with the glorious princi­ple of ­free asylum. But the fact that a Royal Commission was appointed for the ­matter ­will make it sufficiently plausible in the eyes of the world if the British government considers itself impelled to open up a special territory for the Jews, who are oppressed everywhere and thus gravitate to E ­ ngland.” 46 He then turned to the humanitarian needs of “hard-­pressed Jews,” alongside the extent to which Jewish habitation would increase the “wealth of a country” both in ­human and financial terms. Herzl also claimed that Jews would show solidarity to ­England not only from Palestine but from all over the world, including where they are power­f ul. Fi­nally, Herzl presented concrete commercial arguments to the effect that the Jews in Palestine would increase ­England’s selling power. His arguments recall, once again, Harrington’s seventeenth-­century analy­sis: Rather than accept large numbers of Jewish refugees from Eastern Eu­rope, ­England should set aside land for the Jews and their heirs in perpetuity. ­These diplomatic efforts, expressed in the terms of modern sovereignty and its inherent rejection of statelessness and even specifically Jewish statelessness, ultimately secured the promise of a Jewish state in Palestine. The partition plan voted on by the United Nations in 1947, which had been half a ­century in the making, and the ac­cep­tance of partition by Zionist leadership, was the ac­cep­tance of a form of sovereignty that negated exile. How Jewish sovereignty on the Westphalian model played out, with the development of the new Jew, and much of Israeli history and its po­liti­cal theology, is the subject of most studies of the negation of the exile ­today. Yet as a po­ liti­cal theorist grappling with the crisis of sovereignty in t­ oday’s diverse and global world, alongside the ills of sovereignty in an increasingly nationalist Jewish state, I am interested in Baron’s recognition of a moment when it seemed Zionism did not have to adopt the form of state that rejected state-



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lessness and exilic life—­and indeed rejected Jewish existence—as worthless. What was it that Baron and the Zionist thinkers he championed thought could be carried through from premodern Jewish life to the modern? If ­today, as Herzl feared, the modern state of Israel reflects the chauvinist nationalism of Eu­rope that is again on the rise in this crisis of sovereignty, are ­there Zionist roads not taken and that might be returned to ­today, as we navigate the needs of an interdependent and in this sense post-­sovereign world? In the next section we ­will explore ele­ments of what Baron saw, and what this might contribute to our thinking.

Zionism Re­imagined Through Corporatism and Longing ­ here are two ele­ments that Baron touched on in his essay as signifying alT ternatives to the negation of the exile within Zionism and reform. The first of ­these is structural. One assumption of negation is that the forms of state offered in the Enlightenment on one hand and nationalism on the other both offered better opportunities and better protection for the Jews than ­earlier corporate forms. Baron controversially argues that Jews ­were not better off ­under Enlightenment conditions than they had been u ­ nder medieval corporatism, and he does consider a Jewish nation-­state as the solution. He encourages Jews to reclaim corporatism as a po­liti­cal form ­because of its values, which are inherently dif­fer­ent from the values of nationalism and Enlightenment. The second ele­ment is not structural but emotional. Baron finds hope in the fact that Zionist authors in his time conveyed a sense of longing for exile in their works, and a sense of loss. In this Baron finds hope that Zionism might reconsider its premise of a dark past overcome by a bright pre­sent, and realize positive value in the Jewish past. ­Here I take both ­these ele­ments—­structural and emotional; corporatism and longing—­and ask what they could each contribute to reconceptualizing Zionism, and particularly to imagining a form of Zionism that is able to account for the Diaspora Jew outside the land and the non-­Jews living within the land in our time. Before turning to Baron’s structural suggestion, I note the irony involved in looking at corporatism as an opening ­toward alternative Zionist thought. Corporations in the twenty-­first ­century indeed undercut sovereignty and challenge the Westphalian order with the extent to which they function outside the po­liti­cal radar of the world of sovereign states, and it would be unusual

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for a po­liti­cal theorist to suggest that corporatism could be part of a solution rather than an expression of a prob­lem. Jacob Levy, in his work Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom, finds that current po­liti­cal theory and economic theory alike take one of two perspectives, the state or the individual, with intermediate organ­izations being underaddressed.47 Levy himself addresses precisely this issue, theorizing a form of state that is liberal-­pluralist. His concern is mostly with corporations that are inward-­looking rather than concerned with representing groups or states to external actors, so that he looks at religious organ­izations rather than trade ­unions and commercial corporations, but he notes that dif­fer­ent types of corporations are historically related. ­Here I suggest that if we are able to reimagine po­liti­cal society as comprised of corporations understood as Levy understands them, as intermediary bodies, this might help us theorize governance in ­today’s world, where corporations play an underappreciated role in politics. Through reincorporating corporatism, as Baron suggested, Jewish po­liti­cal thought and even an old-­new idea of Zionism could ultimately contribute to such thinking. Baron pre­sents corporatism as a feature of politics in what he calls the Jewish M ­ iddle Ages, spanning from the sixteenth to the nineteenth ­century. In this period the Jewish community was one of a number of recognized corporations in Eu­ro­pean society, and its redeeming feature was its autonomy. According to Baron, the Jewish community at that time had more jurisdiction over its members than the modern federal, state, and municipal governments combined. Education, administration of justice between Jew and Jew, taxation for communal and state purposes, health, markets, and public order ­were all within the jurisdiction of the community-­corporation. Additionally, the Jewish community was the fountainhead of social work of a quality generally superior to that outside Jewry. The Jewish self-­governing bodies issued special regulations and saw to their execution through their own officials. Through use of the cherem, Jewish courts commonly imposed the w ­ ill of the community on individuals, leaving the person against whom the cherem had been issued lost.48 Baron’s ultimate claim was that the Jews benefited to such a degree from corporatism that the ghetto was established by the Jews before it was made compulsory by gentiles; t­ here ­were locks on the inside before ­there ­were locks on the outside. Jews sought ­after their own streets before they ­were forced to live together.49 On Baron’s reading, corporatism also offered Jews physical protections. While it seems counterintuitive to describe the Inquisition as a period in which



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the Jews ­were protected, he argues that they ­were relatively immune. Even conversos, treated as apostates and burned, ­were met with the standard treatment of the Inquisition, as all apostates—­gentile, Jewish, or heretical—­were burned.50 Alongside relative safety, Baron looks at population increase, which was relatively high among Jews, and at economic security. ­There ­were impoverished Jews, but Jews w ­ ere no more impoverished nor in greater relative numbers than non-­Jewish peasants. While the Jews certainly had no po­liti­cal rights in the Jewish M ­ iddle Ages, neither did anyone except nobles and clergy. In line with my discussion in the previous two sections, Baron found that, structurally, Emancipation was dictated more by the needs of the modern state than by the needs of the Jews themselves. When the modern state came into being and set out to destroy the medieval corporations and estates and to build a new citizenship, it could no longer suffer the existence of autonomous corporations. This meant that po­liti­cally, culturally, and socially the Jew was to be absorbed into the dominant national group, or other­wise— as we saw early modern po­liti­cal thinkers imagining Jewish states—­Jews would need their own dominant national group. Even if we ­were to set aside Baron’s controversial claims on the relevant protections corporatism offered Jews and remain with his insights on the fact that the modern state sought homogeneity whereas corporatism allowed for diversity with self-­government, we can see that imagining corporatism of this kind is in line with how federal states and ­those who imagine federations and confederations are pushing the limits of sovereignty ­today, and the way that some multicultural socie­ties have historically dealt with diversity through federal structures. Canada is a good example, with provinces understood as representing nations in a multinational and polyethnic state.51 Canada is also a limit case for at least two reasons relevant ­here. The first is the problematic constitutionalism that ties the provinces together.52 The second is the fact that religion—­a key aspect of diversity—is generally understood by the Supreme Court in Protestant terms, as individual, private, and an expression of choice. As such, religion is not considered as a marker of group identity, which multiculturalism may demand, and corporate structures could potentially accommodate.53 With regards to Israel-­Palestine, both expansionist religious Zionism and two-­state solution advocates ­today promote relative homogeneity within a territorial unit, differing on the question of borders and the number of nonmembers subjected. Yet ­there are movements within the land that are exploring possibilities beyond the two-­state solution that would allow for both

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self-­determination and cohabitation. While Baron ­stopped far short of providing a federal, confederal, or binational vision of Jewish politics, his claim that corporatism—­the form of politics that allowed the Jews to be a nation within a nation—­was the form of politics that most benefited the Jews historically may have relevance for imagining this po­liti­cal space. While Jews may have been unique in Christian Eu­rope as a nation within nations, in ­today’s Western multicultural socie­t ies that recognize multiple nations on the land and encourage immigration, as we saw in the example of Canada, ­there may be more of a need than ever before to imagine po­liti­cal entities that peacefully bring together smaller groups with some degree of self-­rule together on shared land. In Israel-­Palestine, thinking through this could support grassroots movements with a view of Eu­ro­pean Jewish history that encourages a scaling back of po­liti­cal ambition without sacrificing security. This could both relate to the historical memory of Jews in Arab lands who lived within empire, and serve as a test case for rethinking the structures of pluralist society beyond Israel-­Palestine as well. The other ele­ment Baron touches on is longing, which was not part of any structural po­liti­cal vision. What Baron found among thinkers such as Buber, Peretz, and even Berdichevsky was more of an emotional than a structural correction, no less impor­tant to the shaping of the Zionist imagination than his structural proposal, yet often overlooked in work that addresses Baron’s thought. If we look to the poetry of the Third Aliyah, con­temporary with Baron’s work, we find ­there a sense of longing—­even of exile—­that accompanied the Zionist experience in the Land of Israel and that developed partly in reaction to the idealist Zionist poetry of the previous aliyah.54 Like corporatism, which connects the Jews in their historical and con­temporary consciousness to other nations and groups on the land, the longing voiced in the writings of the Third Aliyah connects the Jews to exiles past and pre­ sent through an acknowl­edgment of the loss that came with Zionism. Uri Zvi Greenberg’s Hebrew poem “The Necessity,” which contains the oft-­quoted phrase, “We ­were forced to despise that which we loved,” may be the best illustration of the sense of longing that Third Aliyah poets conveyed to their readers.55 In the poem, Greenberg takes readers through a full sensory experience of the village he was forced to leave, and which he loved. The smells, textures, rituals, sounds, and colors are conveyed in the text. Yet Greenberg is first denied the privilege of fully taking part, and eventually forced to leave. Even as he leaves, his love for his former homeland deep-



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ens. He gains a stronger appreciation for the place and even its ­people as they become memories. The reader can smell the village burning ­behind him as he leaves, and the fading of the sweet smells that came before. It is as though the author and the exile need to imagine the impossibility of continuing life in the village and not turn back. Greenberg’s Yiddish poem “Baim Schloss” (At the Close) reinforces this interpretation. It reads, “I do not believe in our continued existence in Slavic lands. I do not believe in the possibility of preservation of our uniqueness in Eu­rope at all.”56 The prob­lem is again the Eu­ro­pean inability to accommodate Jewish difference. The longing for Christian Eu­rope we find in Greenberg’s Hebrew poetry, however, is accompanied neither by resentment nor with happiness for having overcome the past. Yohai Oppenheimer, who revisited the longing of Third Aliyah poetry, takes the first line of Greenberg’s poem in its title and finds that Third Aliyah poets such as Greenberg looked back not in melancholy but in mourning.57 They differed from negators of the exile in the strong sense in three ways, according to Oppenheimer. First, they considered themselves to be continuing their parents’ paths. Second, they portrayed themselves as connected to the lands and cultures left ­behind, and attributed value to the past as we say in Greenberg’s poem. Third, they preserved, in their art, a personal and collective relationship to diasporic life. An example of the latter is the rendering of Yiddish lit­er­a­ture into Hebrew. Another example of melancholic poetry that longs for the past is Abraham Shlonski’s poem “Lech Lecha,” which is a guilty admission of leaving one’s ­family history, one’s ancestors’ graves, to fulfill the command of the hour. Tears are shed for what has been left ­behind.58 It is in­ter­est­ing to consider the correlation between this poem and Herzl’s understanding that the graves would have to be left ­behind. The graves ­were not only the dead. They ­were one’s connection to the past; one’s ­family. The title of Shlonski’s poem “Lech Lecha” reflects Abraham’s journey from his own birthplace in the Bible, and relates to Jewish historical cultural expressions of exile and expulsion from centuries past. It is remarkable that, from within Palestine, Shlonski seems to have tapped into the experience of exile associated with previous generations of diasporic Jews. Estori ha-­Parhi, a physician and geographer expelled from France in the early twelfth ­century, wrote: “In the midst of my studies they expelled me from my ­father’s ­house and from my native land [me’eretz molad’ti].” He wrote that he had no repose ­until he arrived in Eretz Ha’Zvi. Another con­temporary poet wrote of having been expelled from Eretz Ha’Zvi, referring to France.59 Yosef Hayim

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Yerushalmi described the sense of home and of homeland that Jewish Diaspora communities felt throughout the ­Middle Ages, with this always being most clear at the moment of expulsion. Their experience was of Abraham’s being told to leave his ­father’s home and his homeland—of Lech Lecha—­ leaving not of their own ­will, but from necessity. We find similar themes in Shlonski’s poem. That this longing for home could persist in the Land of Israel very much runs against the superseding of Jewish history that found so much expression in Zionism, and connects this Zionist poetry back to the value Jews historically found in their diasporic homes. . Baron placed his hopes in the possibility of a ­f uture Zionism that would not cast a dark shadow over Jewish history. ­These hopes rested partly on the longing of Jews in the Land of Israel who missed and mourned their Diaspora past and preserved a connection to this past. Uri Zvi Greenberg—­who himself had left religion—­expressed a surprising and intense affinity with the ultra-­Orthodox who continue to live as they did in exile in the land of Israel, in the poem “Ehai, Yehudei Hapeot” (“My B ­ rothers, Jews of Payot [Side-­ locks]”).60 Rather than feeling resentment for ­those who brought exile with them to the Land of Israel, Greenberg, in the moment of truth, had a need for ­these Jews to symbolize his own sense of loss and to connect him to a lost home.61 This Zionist memory, and the bridge it creates both with the past and with Jews who retain an exilic consciousness, suggest the possibility of a Zionism that does not negate the exile. It is in line with Herzl’s reluctance about leaving the graves ­behind, and his desire that we should “not leave the fleshpots ­behind.” But it does not only relate to the Jewish experience of expulsion from biblical times and throughout history; it also relates to the religious idea of exile, to the waiting for Messiah and the state of the world ­until he comes. The “Jews of Payot” ­were not only living in the Land of Israel as though they ­were in exile, they lived everywhere in exile, waiting for messianic times. The longing for Diaspora Jewish life which makes the homecoming to Zion less complete, acknowledging a lost home too, brings even the secular longing for the Diaspora close to the theological idea of exile. The poem ends with the words “the sanctified home of the Jewish ­father, / which is at this time of slaughter, the only home in the world.”62 This reads as more than a homage to the theological experience of exile; it is Greenberg’s identification with this sense of exile. Of all the effects that incorporating longing into Zionism could have on Jewish po­liti­cal thought, the most impor­tant is certainly the affinities longing creates between secular and religious Jews, between Jews who left



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Eu­rope and Jews who left Arab lands, between Jews and Palestinians driven out of their homes, and even between Jewish settlers on the land and Bedouin settlers on the land. “Who am I without Exile?” asked Mahmoud Darwish, for whom longing for the land has become part of his identity.63 Indeed, exile has been a formative feature of Palestinian memory and identity since the founding of the State of Israel and before. “Who am I without Exile?” asks Amnon Raz-­K rakotzkin, a Jew in the Land of Israel, for whom exile—­ not only the loss of Eu­rope but also the theological imperfection of the current state of the world—is salient within his Jewish identity.64 Longing for a place one knew as home is an aspect of ­human experience that can be related to by Jews in the Land of Israel—as part of Jewish memory from Abraham to the loss of home experienced by modern Eu­ro­pean Jews—and this longing can persist in Zionism, adding a layer of complexity to Jewish identity and a richness to Jewish memory in the state. Certainly, in the official history of Zionism and even in the Declaration of In­de­pen­dence of the State of Israel, ­there was an end—­a teleology—to all expulsions and the sentiment that Jews had arrived home. But Jews had also left home, and if we reincorporate the true and legitimate ­human sentiments of loss associated with leaving home, any home, ­there are ways in which Zionist thought could grow and develop which have other­wise been cut off. ­These may even be of use to us ­today.

A Zionism That Does Not Negate the Exile? The question of ­whether ­there could be a Zionism that does not negate the exile ­today is a broad question about the limits of con­temporary po­liti­cal thought. It asks ­whether we can imagine a po­liti­cal form in which the all-­ encompassing sovereign state that strives for homogeneity within its borders for its own protection might be modified without modern politics being abandoned. Can we imagine a state that appreciates statelessness as valuable? Can ­there be a modern politics for Jews that takes their protection seriously, does not dismiss Jewish nonstate politics, or nonsovereign politics as worthless, and rather harnesses Jewish nonsovereign experience to think about po­ liti­cal forms and content in ­today’s world? We have seen that, to Salo  W. Baron in 1928, the answer to ­whether ­there could be a Zionism that ­doesn’t negate the exile was “yes.” Baron argued that the corporatism of the Jewish ­Middle Ages—­not the all-­encompassing

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modern state—­had best protected the Jews po­liti­cally. At the same time, he found some Zionists of his time willing to look positively at their prestate existence, and even to long for it as one longs for home. In this final section I ­will ask about the pos­si­ble effects of appropriating corporatism on one hand, and longing on the other, into Zionist thought ­today. Can ­these ele­ ments can help us look beyond some of the trappings of Zionism in our time, particularly its inability to incorporate positive diasporic Jewish experience, and Palestinian experience related to the land, in its worldview? My questions come at an in­ter­est­ing time in Zionist historiography. As Arie Dubnov and Itamar Ben Ami noted, unlike in the past when the “Jewish” aspect of the “Jewish state” was interrogated, ­today the “state” aspect of the “Jewish state” is being interrogated.65 This is in a greater po­liti­cal context in which the state itself is being interrogated. On one hand, we could observe that, with the Eu­ro­pean Union and global issues such as climate change, borders are increasingly permeable, while on the other hand, we have seen border walls erected and borders fortified in response to globalization. Although the demand for the “homogeneity of [our] population” rings immoral, governments throughout the world are nevertheless taking steps to ­counter diversity. The questions of borders and of diversity are directly related to the question of the relevance of the modern state model; of Westphalian sovereignty, which strives for diversity within a ­limited territory and which defines friends within and enemies without. With the two-­state solution seeming unlikely at this moment in Israel-­ Palestine, the rethinking of what ­limited statehood might mean takes place in a greater context, and rethinking po­liti­cal structures in the region may have greater import. If corporatism and longing, for example, are or should be aspects of how Zionism is being rethought, this may have implications for the greater rethinking of the state in our time. And indeed, corporatism and longing can be found, to some extent, in vari­ous po­liti­cal efforts that are looking beyond the two-­state solution for Israel-­Palestine, which rests on Westphalian premises. While a two-­state solution is premised on the understanding that diversity ­will be set on dif­fer­ent sides of a state border, expulsion and exile ­will create relative homogeneity, and internal cohesion is a positive vision, corporatism suggests a structure in which the state becomes the enabler of relatively autonomous communities on the land identified as orga­nizational units. Corporations are not necessarily territorially aligned, yet they are recognized as distinct groups with par­tic­u­lar governing



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norms, rights, and responsibilities. Thinkers who have written about binationalism, as well as po­liti­cal movements such as “Land for All” (formerly known as “Two States One Homeland”), could benefit from exposure to the positive Jewish experience of corporatism. Aside from Israeli and Palestinian communities, corporate structures could incorporate Jewish diversity as a goal, which is strikingly dif­fer­ent from the “unity” so often promoted in con­temporary Israel. Adopting ele­ments of corporatism may also be a more realistic way for theorists to approach ­today’s global real­ity with migration of p­ eople and ideas, and with financial and business corporations, as well as vari­ous NGOs, constantly undercutting the bound­a ries set by Westphalian sovereignty. ­W hether or not such po­liti­cal theory as it relates to the Jews would be considered Zionist is an open question. Certainly, in Baron’s definition of Zionism this could hold, and renewing the discussion of what Zionism is from this perspective could reinvigorate Jewish po­liti­cal thought. Turning now to longing: Longing would connect Jews in the land who share a common painful experience of leaving home. Such longing could potentially connect Israeli Jews with Diaspora Jews, and Jews in Israel with Palestinians. The idea that a sense of common experience could be created in the Land of Israel is certainly radical in the pre­sent climate, yet ­there are ways in which longing, reintroduced to Zionism, could create—­a nd is to some extent already creating—­language for this possibility. Such language not only relates the Jewish and Palestinian experiences as marked by loss of home, but also allows ­those opposed to West Bank settlements to sympathize with the pain caused by homes lost in past abandonments of settlements and in i­magined ­f uture peace settlements. It would further allow for theological connections, even across religions and certainly among religious and secular Jews. Finding terms that can be shared by dif­fer­ent po­liti­cal camps is a constant challenge. Yet the themes of home and leaving home are ­human and common. It is a Jewish experience from Abraham to our times, which complexifies life on the land, relates Zionism back to Jewish memory, and makes crucial connections.

* * * When structural and emotional ele­ments—­corporatism and longing—­a re brought together, what emerges is potentially quite power­f ul: the possibility for a new po­liti­cal imagination that accommodates diverse groups as

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diverse groups within a single land, combined with an emotional ele­ment of longing that relates to lost homes and the incompleteness of any homecoming. ­These ele­ments already exist in vari­ous groups on the land, as diverse as settlers, Hassidic Jews, Palestinians, and leftist activists. They usually ­a ren’t identified with Zionism, but I propose that, inspired by Baron, we reimagine a Zionism that ­doesn’t negate the exile, and in the pro­cess that we provide openings ­toward addressing some of the difficulties of modern sovereignty in the twenty-­first c­ entury.

Chapter 4

Communal Organ­ization in the Diaspora Michael Walzer

Statelessness Ever since the fall of the Second Commonwealth, the organ­ization of Jewish communities in the Diaspora has been one long experiment or, better, a series of experiments, in sustaining a common life without state power. To explain the difficulty of the experiments and the fact that they are, at best, only partially successful, we need to focus for a moment on that phrase “without state power.” Five dif­fer­ent ­things are absent from Jewish life in the Diaspora. First, we do not have the power to raise an army or a police force for self-­defense. ­There are medieval discussions about guard duty—­scholars w ­ ere exempt, and the exemption was sometimes questioned—so Jewish communities had some defenders but nothing like what a state provides.1 Second, we do not have law enforcement capacities—­above all, the power to punish. ­There have been times when Jewish courts administered corporal punishment or handed criminals over to gentile rulers for corporal punishment, but this was never a secure right of the Diaspora communities, and ­today we do not even claim such a right. Third, we do not have the power to tax or exempt from taxation—­except, again, with the support of gentile rulers or, nowadays, of demo­cratic states. (­Here in the United States, synagogues are exempt from taxation but barred from receiving public funds.) Fourth, we are not able to establish or police the bound­aries of our community—to decide who is a Jew. And fifth, we do not have the power to establish a system of compulsory education or to require knowledge of the Hebrew language. We have compensated for ­these absent

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powers with dif­fer­ent forms of communal pressure, from public shaming to complete ostracism. Some of ­these forms are still employed, very much as they ­were a thousand years ago. Communal pressure is sometimes effective, but I want to stress its weakness relative to state power. This weakness manifests itself differently, for obvious reasons, before and ­after Emancipation. In the centuries before, Jewish communities ­were tightly or­ga­nized and often able to mobilize resources, shape a common life, and provide a considerable range of communal services—­ including schools, at least for boys.2 Their members faced a stark alternative: They could leave the Jewish communities only by abandoning Judaism. They could not just drift away; ­there was no secular or neutral space to drift into. Spinoza was the first Jew to carve out a space of that kind for himself, and it was only centuries ­later that secular space was available for any Jew who wanted to move t­ here.3 So, most often, Jews in the traditional communities stayed where they ­were, and then ­were subject to the prevailing forms of social and religious discipline. This made the communities very strong internally. But social and religious discipline had no effect externally, where the communities ­were frighteningly weak, vulnerable to extortion, vio­lence, mass expulsion, and forced conversion. ­After Emancipation, at least in demo­cratic states, ­these latter dangers ­were eliminated or greatly reduced, but the tight organ­ization of the communities was lost. Diaspora Jewry is less cohesive ­today; Jews as a group no longer have anything like the common life of the kahal; fund­rais­ing is a hard business; communal welfare and educational ser­vices are much more difficult to sustain; and conversion ­under duress has been replaced by a general drift of men and ­women from the center to the peripheries of Jewish life, sometimes the distant peripheries—­and beyond. Life at the center is dense and lively, but it is harder and harder for core activists and believers to connect with the drifters. We can think of state power in the modern world as the mechanism by which po­liti­cal leaders and engaged citizens reach out to the mass of men and w ­ omen who are mostly disengaged, busy with their private affairs, to or­ ga­nize them, tax and conscript them, and provide them with some version of education, welfare, and security. Without state power, the reaching out is problematic; the connections between center and periphery are weak. Jewish life ­after Emancipation is largely a ­matter of voluntary association. In Eu­rope, features of an older corporatism survive. But the United States is a voluntarist paradise, the country where civil society is most highly developed, and so it is the place where communal success and failure depend



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most clearly on the fr ­ ee choice of individual Jews. Given fr ­ ee choice, all communities are endlessly fissiparous; they divide and multiply. In the Jewish world, this has meant the rise of denominationalism and congregationalism and an extraordinary proliferation of committees, socie­ties, congresses, and assemblies. Denominations and congregations are often described as Protestant inventions that we imitate, but in fact the absence of state power forced the Jews, long before the Protestant reformation, even when we still obeyed a single law, to make our peace with a plurality of organ­izations—­kehillot and hevrot, for example, inside the larger kahal. Emancipation has greatly increased the fragmentation of our orga­nizational life, but it d­ idn’t disrupt an original unity. And yet, despite the fragments, despite the divisions and multiplications, despite the weakness of Jewish communities in the United States, American Jewry has a moral center, a core of committed men and ­women—­and, to some extent, the center holds. Money is raised; a Jewish civil ser­vice is recruited; religious ser­vices are provided: ­there are synagogues and ­temples, Jewish hospitals and nursing homes, day care centers and day schools, self-­defense organ­izations, cultural socie­ties, institutes for adult education, and a multitude of philanthropic socie­ties affiliated with or in addition to the federations. In the last years before Emancipation, the Jewish kahal was denounced as a “state within a state”—­a threat to the modern versions of citizenship and sovereignty. ­Today we constitute a society within the state—­and we are certainly no threat to the United States. So, what kind of society is this? Who rules in this society? How demo­cratic are we? How autonomous are we within the larger demo­cratic polity? And what is it that holds us together?

Autonomy Simon Dubnow was the ­great theorist of Jewish autonomy in the Diaspora, so I ­will begin with his challenge to American Jews. In the “Letters on Old and New Judaism,” published in St. Petersburg between 1897 and 1906, he argues for a very strong version of autonomy for the Jews considered as a national rather than a religious community.4 He wanted Jewish cultural, educational, and welfare institutions to be funded by the modern state, which would pass on a substantial portion of the taxes collected from its Jewish citizens. His model was the Council of the Four Lands, which governed Polish and Lithuanian Jewry for some two centuries, from the mid-1500s to the mid-1700s.

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Actually, though, he wanted to reverse the ancient pattern of Jewish autonomy, which the council maintained. One of its central purposes was to collect taxes for the Polish state; Dubnow would have the state collect taxes for the Jews. He understood, however, that it would be very difficult to get governments in Central and Eastern Eu­rope to recognize and fund what he called Jewish “self-­administration.” So, more modestly, he suggested that the Jews should try “to widen perceptibly the . . . ​activities of the communities . . . ​ on the basis of existing laws guaranteeing freedom of association.” And this widening, he wrote, “is especially pos­si­ble in countries in which the princi­ ple prevails that the government does not interfere in the private lives of its citizens, and where . . . ​exaggerated concentrations of power do not exist. In such countries, especially in the United States of Amer­i­ca, Jews could enjoy even now a large mea­sure of self-­administration” (my emphasis).5 So we could and, as I’ve said, to some l­imited extent, we are in fact administering our common life. But Dubnow assumed that ­there was a single communal “self,” which ­wasn’t true in nineteenth-­century Eu­rope and certainly ­isn’t true in the United States ­today—in part ­because of “the laws guaranteeing freedom of association.” ­There are many Jewish “selves,” or, better, we are a society of many socie­ties, much as the United States, as the Jewish pluralist Horace Kallen wrote, is a “nation of nationalities.” The only serious attempt to create a version of Jewish autonomy in Amer­i­ca was the Kehillah experiment in New York City in the early twentieth ­century.6 This was an effort, begun in 1908, to construct something like a Jewish government or quasigovernment, bringing together all the Jewish organ­izations in the city and then all the individual Jews. But ­there ­were already some three thousand Jewish organ­izations of all sorts in New York, and bringing them together was an impossible task (like herding the proverbial cats); the Kehillah never included more than one-­ third of them. The experiment produced some successes, notably in Jewish education (the first textbooks and a “progressive” day school), but collapsed in 1922 ­after only fourteen years. It failed to create a body of Jewish citizens committed to its structures and activities and ready to pay for them. Still, most of ­those three thousand organ­izations, and the thousands more across the country, ­were and are loosely bound together by a common Jewishness, even if they ­a ren’t able to fashion a collective “autonomy.” They revolve around the center; some like nearby planets, ­others like distant asteroids. All of them, disunited as they are, constitute a Jewish world, about which we can ask the po­liti­cal questions I have already listed.



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It should not be surprising that I have posed t­ hese questions in the language of state politics. The idea of statelessness is parasitic on the idea of the state. We know what’s absent from our stateless condition ­because of our experience in Jewish and gentile—­mostly gentile—­states. ­There are also t­ hings that are pre­sent in our statelessness, which we similarly understand in statelike ways. This was true in the “old days,” and it is true ­today. Consider the old days first: Even though it never achieved a fully po­liti­cal form, the kahal was a kind of Jewish polis—­our stateless version of the Greek city-­state. And in the kahal, the debates about who should rule focused on the po­liti­cal alternatives first discussed in ancient Greece: the one, the few, and the many.7 The “one” was the adam ḥashuv, the impor­tant person, a local rabbi who had attained the status of a sage, whose ­legal rulings ­were authoritative. Wherever such a figure was recognized, he had an effective veto over decisions of the kahal—or, better, most rabbinic writers, but not all of them, insisted on this veto power (which was also, often, theirs). The “few” had a double existence—­first as the learned, then as the wealthy. The rule of the few could be meritocratic or plutocratic; most often in medieval times it was some combination of the two, produced by the intermarriage of rabbinic and merchant families. Classically, ­these ­were marriages between a merchant d­ aughter and a young, presumably brilliant, Talmud scholar. But ­there ­were other versions, for merchant sons sometimes found brides among the ­daughters of rabbinic dynasties. The result was a highly effective oligarchy. The “many” might mean the lesser tax payers and property ­owners or, more inclusively, all adult male Jews. Neither of ­these groups ever actually ruled in the ­Middle Ages, but they sometimes had a voice in communal decision-­making, The Jewish invention of democracy, which I learned about in Sunday school, has no historical foundation. Medieval Jewish writers did indeed believe in the importance of consent and in the rule of the majority, but they distinguished the “majority of substance” from the “majority of numbers,” and it was the first of ­these, the wealthy “few” and not the impoverished “many,” which actually controlled communal life. The members of the Council of the Four Lands ­were elected by between 5 and 10 ­percent of Jewish male ­house­holders.8 I want now to consider ­these same three groups in modern times and ask how they rule (if and when they rule), and what kind of Jewish society, and what degree of autonomy, dif­fer­ent rulers produce.

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The Impor­tant Person The rule of “one” depends on the community’s commitment to halakhah—­ and then on the power of a few learned men not only to master the foundational halakhic texts but also to convince other ­people of their mastery. Since ­there never was a Jewish pope or anything like a set of bishops, the sages had no ecclesiastical legitimacy; they ­were sustained by the aura of Torah knowledge that they somehow produced and that ­others recognized: the charisma of learning. ­Those of us who are not committed to live “­under the commandments”—­the g­ reat majority of American Jews—­don’t need authoritative sages. Even when we re­spect their learning, we are not ­going to obey their rulings. But in the Orthodox world, ­there are con­temporary examples of the adam ḥashuv—­figures like Moshe Feinstein have played exactly that role. The rule of “one” is commonly associated with monarchy, but ­these Jewish sages are more like chief justices than kings, though sometimes they take on executive as well judicial functions. Mostly, they are very power­ful judges—­ who depend more on the force of their arguments than on the authority of their courts—­and the society they lead is not just a community of faith (in the Protestant sense) but something much more extensive: a rule of law. The subjects of this rule are also subject, of course, to the Talmudic maxim dina d’malkhuta dina (the law of the kingdom is law) and therefore to all the laws of the secular state. Still, Jews living halakhic lives obey a lot of other laws, and by that obedience constitute themselves as members of a semiautonomous society. The adam ḥashuv is obviously not a demo­cratic figure, but since his rule is a way of recognizing the central importance of learning in Judaism, his claim to rule, in princi­ple at least, is widely transferable—­though not yet transferable, in the Orthodox community, to ­women. Remember Moses’s outburst, “Would God that all the Lord’s ­people ­were prophets!” (Numbers 11:29). We might well wish that all Jews ­were scholars and sages. In practice, however, organ­ization and effort are required to produce even a single sage. And so it was a feature of Jewish life for many centuries that some person in e­ very community was paid to study Torah (despite the Talmudic ruling that Torah learning should never be a source of income), to teach it, and to respond to questions about how Jews o­ ught to live in the world. As I have said, paying for scholars of this sort, who are also halakhic judges, is no longer a communal



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necessity for most Jews. But ­there are good reasons to sustain the recognition of halakhic learning. Some de­cades ago, Solomon Freehof, a Reform rabbi in Pittsburgh, launched a campaign to revive the lit­er­a­ture of halakhic “questions and answers” in the Reform world. He wrote books about the history of this lit­er­a­ ture, and he wrote many responsa of his own.9 I am sure he realized that plebian Pittsburgh was not the ideal base for an adam ḥashuv. But he did the best he could, and he had some impact on Reform Judaism—in my view, not enough. We still need learned men and ­women (the addition of ­women is crucial) who reflect on the ­legal doctrines of the Jewish ­people and make arguments about all the difficult issues of con­temporary life. I ­don’t mean arguments about new food products and kashrut or about using elevators on Shabbat or about what constitutes or ­doesn’t constitute an eruv—­the Orthodox community ­will provide ­those decisions for its own members—­but rather about the new biotechnologies, the use and abuse of our natu­ral resources, the conduct of war, child ­labor, gender equality, our engagement with the “­others,” and so on.10 The Catholic bishops have set a useful example with their encyclicals on nuclear deterrence and economic justice, and ­there are a few Jewish writers who have attempted similar statements. Scholars at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem have published a number of such statements, and ­here in Amer­i­ca, the po­liti­cal b­ attles for Black civil rights and gender equality have led some rabbis, chiefly from the Reform and Conservative movements, to engage with ­these issues from a Jewish perspective, referring in what they write to Jewish texts and traditions. I suggest that we call ­these writings responsa, and encourage their production. Obviously, they are not, they ­can’t be, authoritative rulings. They represent something new, a speculative halakhah, and we need more, and more widely circulated, examples of this sort of t­ hing. Some of the responsa might be written by committees, but they would draw their force from the wisdom, and the reputation for wisdom, of “impor­tant persons,” individual scholars and rabbis—­hachamim for our time. And they would provide con­temporary texts for the rest of us to study and argue about. The more ­people ­were studying and arguing, the more the focus of Jewish politics would shift from the “one” and the “few” to the “many.”

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Oligarchs The rule of the “few,” in the past and still ­today, is the most common Jewish government, where the “few” are composed, as in medieval times, of persons possessing some combination of lay wealth and religious merit (I w ­ ill add another ele­ment to this combination in what follows). The wealthy few play dominant roles in state politics, of course, though in demo­cratic states it is pos­si­ble to mobilize the power of the “many” against them: numbers against riches. In stateless communities, wealth is pretty much unbeatable—­a nd this was even more true in the extremely vulnerable communities of pre-­ Emancipation Jewry. For wealthy men and ­women had the resources that the community needed, but ­couldn’t coercively seize, to meet extraordinary levies from gentile rulers, to bribe officials, to ransom captives, and so on. The power the wealthy exercised came in exchange for the money they provided. At least that was the rationale for their hierarchical position; in the latter days of the kahal, they ­were often accused of using their power to extort money from Jews who had much less of it than they did. ­There ­were no procedures, however, like ­those provided by the demo­cratic state, for organ­izing the extorted against the extorters—­which is why spokesmen for the poorer Jews, like Shimon ben Wolf (Wolfowicz) of Vilna, argued, in the revolutionary year 1789, for the transfer of civil powers from the kahal to the Polish state.11 Once a transfer of that sort has been achieved, the power of wealthy Jews over the material life of the Jewish poor is diminished. But their po­liti­cal importance in the community is not; they still provide a Diaspora version of security. I have always believed that the large role that wealthy Jews play in American po­liti­cal campaigns derives in part from the long Jewish history of vulnerability: campaign contributions are the demo­cratic form of protection money. They are something ­else, too, of course, for Jews are ideologically as well as ethnically engaged in American politics: We have ideas as well as interests. Still, it is a ­matter of real importance in ­every Diaspora community that ­there be Jews with access to government officials, and the more it is true that wealth provides access, the more impor­tant wealthy Jews ­will be in the larger Jewish world—­where many of us worry that we may one day need them, even though we would rather not. But the wealthy ­can’t and ­shouldn’t rule alone. They still need the legitimation provided by learned men and ­women, and major Jewish organ­



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izations commonly include such ­people on their staffs—­consider the role that Milton Himmelfarb played for many years in the American Jewish Committee. And rabbis continue to figure among Jewish leaders both locally and nationally, even though they are less likely than in the past to marry their ­children to the ­children of the rich—­a sign, I suppose, of an overall decline in their communal standing. But they still play leading roles in collective Jewish decision-­making (not only among the Orthodox—­consider the recent debates about homo­sexuality and gay marriage among Conservative Jews), and they are often the public face of the community, especially in its dealings with other religious groups. ­There is another set of men and ­women that is involved and has always been involved in decision-­making, whose role I ­will illustrate with a story about how social pressure and communal discipline work at the local level. I grew up in a ­middle American town, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which had a Jewish community of some 350 families, or­ga­nized in three congregations (Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform), and in a number of national organ­ izations like Hadassah and B’nei Brith. The local United Jewish Appeal brought every­one together. ­After my bar mitzvah, my parents took me to its annual dinner, where the ­whole community turned out. ­There was a fiery and emotional speaker from New York (the year was 1948), and then pledge cards ­were passed around. The cards ­were filled out at the ­table, tucked into an envelope, and passed up to the head ­table where Sam Cohen (not his a­ ctual name) sat. Cohen owned a furniture store in town and knew every­body’s business—­who had a kid in college, or a sick relative, or a store that was failing or d­ oing especially well. He would look at the card, and if he thought the pledge ­wasn’t large enough, he would tear the card in half and pass it down the ­table. That is how money was raised by a community that (ostensibly) ­didn’t have the power to tax. But—my point ­here—­Sam Cohen was not the richest businessman in town; it was commitment and energy that brought him to the head ­table. In fact, all the congregations and all the organ­izations in Johnstown ­were run by committed and energetic p­ eople—­many of them well-­to-do, but not necessarily the most well-­to-­do—­along with a very few trained professionals, the rabbis chief among them. The community they or­ga­nized was not subject to a rule of law (­there was no bet din in Johnstown), but it was much more than a community of faith; it was also an ethnic community and a ­little welfare society, with its own means of meeting the needs of its members. The very rich had a power­f ul influence on all social and welfare activities in town, but

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they shared their power with the learned and the committed. I doubt that stateless communities can work in any other way.

The Demos The “many” ­don’t rule. Par­tic­u­lar congregations may be more or less demo­ cratic. They have a fixed membership, and their members are invited to vote on bud­getary questions and on the choice of a new rabbi—­though most often they follow the advice of the finance and search committees, which are run by the usual “few.” We can and should aim at higher levels of participation, but it would prob­ably be wise to start with study, welfare provision, and fund­rais­ ing rather than with politics. The larger Jewish community, locally and nationally, cannot vote on any po­liti­cal issues ­because it is institutionally divided and ­doesn’t have clear bound­aries. Without state power, ­there is no way of determining who is a Jew and who is entitled to vote. Anyway, it ­isn’t only the extension of the suffrage that makes for demo­ cratic politics, but also conscription, taxation, welfare, and public education—­ all of which give ordinary men and ­women a stake in the state and, therefore, a reason to demand the right to vote and to or­ga­nize themselves for po­liti­cal action. Of course, the resulting organ­izations, American ­unions, parties, and movements, are also most often controlled by the “few,” in accordance with Robert Michels’s “iron law of oligarchy.” Jewish organ­izations are even more subject to the iron law, despite the claim of the historian Yehezkel Kaufmann who famously argued that the iron laws of history ­were not written for the Jewish ­people. Certainly it is worth some effort to overturn the law of oligarchy, and local successes may be pos­si­ble. But the general rule is that only states can be fully demo­cratic; it is only in states (and in the subdivisions of states: provinces and cities) that “the p­ eople” can be identified and mobilized. Partial mobilizations are pos­si­ble within an organ­ization, among its members, but not in anything like our Diaspora communities. We say that states are legitimated by the consent of their members; by contrast, Jewish communities are legitimated by their fidelity to a par­tic­u­lar conception of Jewishness. And the value of the conception d­ oesn’t depend on the number of Jews who are attracted to it.



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Center and Periphery Still, we are definitely interested in our numbers, and it is a prob­lem that, ­because the spreading periphery has no border and ­because it overlaps with other peripheries of other centers, we have no reliable way of counting the Jewish “many.” What we should prob­ably be counting are not Jews simply but dues-­paying Jews: the number of ­people who contribute not only to the federations but also to all the congregations and organ­izations that constitute the Jewish world in the United States. ­These ­people vote with their money, and by ­doing that they make pos­si­ble, and also help to shape, the religious, educational, and welfare ser­vices that the community provides not only to the dues-­payers but also, willingly, to free-­riders. Fund­rais­ing is one of the most impor­tant Jewish activities. Though ­there is much criticism of American Jewry on this point, I ­don’t think ­there is anything wrong with the importance that Jewish giving has for Jewish identity. The importance is nothing new: Countless medieval responsa deal with tzedakah, a word that suggests both voluntariness and obligation, charity and justice. The arguments in the responsa lit­er­a­ture are about how much to give and for what purposes; about the roles of the kahal and the dif­fer­ent “holy socie­ties” (for burying the dead, visiting the sick, providing dowries, hiring teachers, and funding poor students); about the relative force of a donor’s intentions and the priorities of the community; about the efforts of some rich and power­f ul Jews to escape their obligations; and about the praiseworthy gifts of some ­others. The “charity collectors” ­were impor­ tant officials of the old kehillot, and they are still, rightly, impor­tant ­today. But the ser­vices that our giving makes pos­si­ble, and the civil servants who administer ­these ser­vices, are even more impor­tant: This is how the center holds the periphery. So we might try to count the ­people receiving ­those services—­the sum total of men, ­women, and ­children who at some point in their lives “need” a rabbi (if only for a bat mitzvah, say, or a marriage, or a funeral) or a teacher or an Anti-­Defamation League ­lawyer or a synagogue (if only for High Holy Day ser­vices) or a social center or a Zionist organ­ization or a day school or a nursing home or a Jewish ­women’s group or a veteran’s association or a singles’ club. ­These are the passive “many”— we hardly know who they are. How can we strengthen their ties to the center and to the active and ruling “few”?

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Life-­c ycle ser­vices and holiday ser­vices are the most obvious bonds. The inability of secular Jewishness in, say, its Bundist and Zionist versions, to reproduce itself in successive Diaspora generations has a lot to do with the failure to construct plausible substitutes for t­ hese two. Hanukkah and Pesach reinvented as cele­brations of religious freedom and national liberation are very nice (I was raised on them), but they are not enough. I suspect that the power of the religious tradition cannot be replaced: Kol Nidre, to take the obvious example, certainly cannot be replaced—­though, given the ­actual words of that extraordinary prayer, ­there is no reason to think that religious belief explains its emotional pull. Similarly, Simchat Torah, joy in the Torah, ­doesn’t specify how we should interpret the Torah or even what it includes. It does assume, however, that we have a Torah—­a text or a set of texts to which we are committed. The same commitment, I think, explains why it is not pos­ si­ble to replace such life-­c ycle markers as becoming a bar or bat mitzvah, marrying ­under the chuppah, and saying Kaddish for the dead. It would be foolish to deny the emotional power of ­these ancient rituals and ceremonies; they are crucial to our collective survival. Insofar as peripheral Jews are connected to the center, this is prob­ably what connects them. The emotional power of Jewish rituals and ceremonies has many sources: a desire to belong, a sense of identity, a yearning for spirituality, even religious belief. In the long run, however, the power of holidays and life-­c ycle ceremonies over our emotions ­isn’t a ­matter of emotion alone: All the sources have a deeper root. They depend on our understanding of the meaning of the ceremonies and their place in the Jewish tradition; they depend on our Jewish knowledge, on our commitment to (some version of) Torah. Or better, without that knowledge and that commitment, emotional need, identity, spirituality, and belief ­will produce only kitsch—do in fact produce only kitsch—­and kitsch ­won’t hold us long. We all know this to be true; that’s why ­there is so much anxious talk about education, and the lack of it, among American Jews. I am all in ­favor of anxious talk; it sometimes leads to resolute action. But the prob­lem ­isn’t merely educational—as if we can solve it by producing better Hebrew schools, or more day schools, or livelier textbooks, or a larger number of trained teachers. All that is certainly worth ­doing, though it ­will still leave us far short of a compulsory system. In the absence of compulsion, what we need to drive the educational pro­cess is a much greater re­spect for learning than exists ­today in the Jewish world. I have already argued that giving up the strictness of halakhic observance should not mean giving up the importance of



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l­egal learning. I want to argue now that a wider sense of what needs to be learned and a higher regard for ­those who are prepared to study—to engage intellectually with the tradition, to learn Hebrew, to argue about texts, practices, and institutions—­a re necessary to animate and energize the orga­ nizational structures of Jewish life and to sustain the peripheral connections. ­Here in the Diaspora, we ­can’t count on demo­cratic politics with its participatory ethos, its frequent urgency and excitement, and its citizenly pride. We need the learning of the few to inspire the learning of the many—­for learning is the key not only to religious but also to communal (social and po­liti­ cal) participation.

Learning ­ here is a biblical teaching about popu­lar learning that makes it sound easT ier than it is. The lines are familiar: “Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, ‘Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?’ No, the t­ hing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it” (Deuteronomy 30:11–14). The rabbis of the Talmudic age seized upon the line “It is not in the heavens” to justify their own interpretive mono­poly, but the passage is ­really a radical denial of any claim to authority. The Israelites w ­ on’t need another Moses, nor anyone like him; all of them can know the law—in fact, they already know it, for it is in their hearts. The focus of the biblical writer is on observance, not on interpretation—­which means, not on the kinds of arguments that have been central to the tradition. One might almost say that the Deuteronomic text is an anti-­intellectual argument. But intellectuality is a central feature of exilic life. We can see how it replaces po­liti­cal power and po­liti­cal savvy in the rabbinic stories of biblical kings and warriors who are said to be engaged in ­legal study and debate. ­These are fictional descriptions of biblical figures that illuminate the real­ity of life in exile. Kings can act without justifying their decisions, but in the absence of sovereign power, the rabbis had to make arguments—­and the better (the more learned) their arguments, the greater the reach of their decisions.

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That kind of learning has less value ­today, though a certain way of arguing, which prob­ably derives from the Talmud, is still recognizable among con­ temporary Jews. In line with the general character of American life, the balance of the old partnership of learning and wealth has shifted decisively ­toward wealth. Money talks loudly in the American Jewish world, and fundraisers report one “princely” gift ­after another. I am all for that—­the more princely gifts the better—­but we need to think about what ­will go on in the named buildings and the endowed organ­izations. One kind of Jewish learning is clearly on the rise: Across the American academic world, programs in Jewish studies are prospering. Visit the annual meetings of the Association for Jewish Studies and you ­will see that we are in the midst of a Jewish re­nais­sance. The display of new books is especially remarkable, even if most of them are written by professors for professors. That is the way knowledge is first produced in con­temporary life and letters, and we can hope for wider dissemination as a secondary pro­cess. Much of the new knowledge is historical in character: We are getting, a l­ittle belatedly, Jewish history from the bottom up—­and so we are learning about the exclusion of ­women from public life and about the few ­women who broke through, about the forgotten poor, and about Jews from little-­k nown or remote places. But ­there is, it seems to me, much too ­little writing about ideas, doctrines, and arguments that might be relevant to Jewish life ­today. Let me give just a few examples. Even in the Reform movement, ­little is known about the early history of Reform, when rabbis wrote elaborate and learned responsa in defense of their innovations; few of the crucial texts are translated. The controversy among Orthodox German Jews, between Samson Raphael Hirsch and Seligmann Baer Bamberger, over secession from the larger community, is not discussed among Orthodox Jews ­today, though they are in many ways the heirs of the secessionists.12 The major texts of the Rus­ sian enlightenment, the Haskalah, have never been brought out in English—­ though many of us think of ourselves as enlightened Jews and might learn from them. Ahad Ha’am’s argument with Simon Dubnow, Martin Buber’s argument with Hermann Cohen, about the relative value of Zion and the Diaspora—­one would think that ­these would be central texts in an age that has reproduced the old dualism of Babylon and Palestine, but they are not common or easy references in our own discussions. But I d­ on’t want to write only about reprinting and rereading old texts—­ though that’s something that Jews have always done; it’s what makes,



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sustains, and extends a tradition. ­There are also con­temporary arguments that we need to join. In Israel ­today, for example, ­there is a strong revisionist critique of a central Zionist goal: “the negation of the galut.”13 But ­here in the galut articulate defenders of diasporic Judaism have only recently made an appearance, and engagement with them has barely begun.14 Is Israel or the Diaspora the more likely home of an au­then­tic Judaism? ­Will the Talmud of the exile once again outshine the Talmud of the homeland? ­Will po­liti­cal sovereignty and territorial rootedness produce a glorious efflorescence of Jewish culture? Or ­will that efflorescence be peculiarly Israeli, with ­little resonance in the Jewish diaspora? ­These are impor­tant and, I would think, engaging questions, but they are overwhelmed ­today by arguments that draw all the air in the room—­ about Israeli politics, the occupation, and the settlements; about secularism and religious zeal in Israel ­today; and about the extent and character of US support for Israel. I know how urgent all this is; ­these are issues we ­can’t and ­shouldn’t try to avoid. They engage us as Jews, often against other Jews; the arguments are fierce. I long for my side to win; but no one can pretend that ­these arguments advance Jewish learning or enhance Jewish culture in the Diaspora or in Israel. Still, some of ­these issues can be engaged in a dif­fer­ent way, without the shouting. In Israel ­today, for example, the Talmudic classification of wars, mitzvah and reshut, commanded and optional, is being challenged and revised. Can optional wars (wars of choice—­a term Prime Minister Menachem Begin used to describe the Lebanon War of 1982) still be justified as the rabbis justified them? What does the tradition have to say about prevention and preemption? ­Shouldn’t ­there be a class of prohibited wars? ­These questions are certainly not foreign to American po­liti­cal life, but how many American rabbis, Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform, could preach a sermon on what Jewish scholars have said (and failed to say) about military ethics?15 Nor is the Israeli debate about religion and state, civil marriage, religious education, the exemption of yeshivah students from military ser­vice, and much more, without parallels in the countries of the Jewish Diaspora. ­These are issues on which the tradition has much to say, and we need to learn from it and then continue the arguments (without shouting). The case is the same with questions relating to welfare and distributive justice generally. What should we make of the old priorities—in rescuing captives, for example: ­women before men (­because of the danger of rape) and rabbis and

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sages before ordinary Jews? And what about the maxim that welfare should be directed first of all to the local poor? Does any of this help us in thinking about Israel’s welfare state—or our own? The first Jews to arrive in New York (then New Amsterdam) promised Peter Stuyvesant that they would care for their own poor. That was what Jews did in the old kehillot, not always effectively. But ­doing it at all was only pos­si­ble in communities on the scale of the kehillot. Once ­there ­were hundreds of thousands and then millions of American Jews, the funds we could raise in the old ways w ­ ere nowhere near sufficient for the needs of poor, sick, unemployed, or aged Jews. We became dependent, along with every­one ­else, on the welfare state, and it is to our credit, I think, that Jews played a major role in the early debates about the extent of welfare ser­vices and the taxes necessary to pay for them.16 The debates go on, but we are less involved as Jews in ­these latter days, and many of us have forgotten the commitments that made Jewish communal life pos­si­ble in the past. How should t­ hose commitments be understood now, when we are citizens of demo­cratic states? All this should be included when we talk about Torah learning t­oday. This is our Torah, and we need to turn it and turn it to make sure that we h ­ aven’t left anything out. Who should be the students and teachers of this extended Torah? Once again, we need to think in statelike terms: Modern demo­cratic states produce a fairly large class of men and ­women whom we call “public intellectuals.” The adjective suggests that ­these intellectuals work in the public sphere (which means, not only in the acad­emy) and address questions that the public, the p­ eople, have to resolve and ­will resolve, one way or another. In the Jewish communities of the Diaspora, in contrast to the State of Israel, ­there is no coherent po­liti­cal public—as I have said, the “many” d­ on’t rule. But American Jews do have a public life, or a life of many publics, that gather within the larger civil society. And so we need public intellectuals even in our statelessness, even in the absence of a Jewish democracy. We need men and ­women who are critically engaged with the ­whole of Jewish history, culture, law, and religion—­and who write and talk about the issues confronting Israeli and Diaspora Jewry and invite other ­people to join them. They ­will, in the beginning at least, be part of the “few” rather than the “many,” but if they honor the maxim from Pirkei Avot about not separating themselves from the community (II:5), they can sustain a connection not only to central but also to peripheral Jews. What does it mean not to separate yourself? The phrase assumes membership as the natu­ral condition and, certainly, most of us are born into the



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Jewish community; separation is an act of the ­will (drifting away is prob­ably a more passive pro­cess, though I know of some ­eager drifters). Oddly, ­here in the Diaspora, joining the community and refusing to drift are also acts of the ­will. So learned Jews and all of us who hope to become learned Jews have to engage with Jewish life in the places where we live, join Jewish organ­ izations, and work and talk within them. It is a ­simple truth about life in the Diaspora, where statelessness is still the Jewish condition, that we must be the ­People of the Book if we are to be a ­people at all. We have, as I’ve already said, hundreds of socie­ties and associations, but our only republic is a republic of letters. It is only when we engage with the tradition, however critical the engagement, that we are Jewish citizens in the fullest sense, active participants in shaping the ­f uture of our communities. And the excitement and creativity of even a small number of engaged citizens ­will spread outward from the center they build. I have never believed in “filter down” economics, but I do believe in a culture “spread out” from and by a kind of elite, a Jewishly learned religious and secular intelligent­sia. The best way to hold the periphery is to make the center bright. We once hoped, and still hope, to be a “light unto the nations,” but we first need to be a light unto our own nation—­and learning is our light.

PA R T I I Zichronot (Remembrances)

Chapter 5

R. Ḥayyim Ṿital’s Po­liti­cal Imagination Localizing the Dream Messianism of Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot Assaf Tamari

In his writings, R. Ḥayyim Ṿital (1542–1620), the eminent kabbalist and foremost disciple of R. Isaac Luria (1534–1572), described an encounter with an anonymous palil, a Muslim cleric, perhaps a local qadi, on a Jerusalem morning in 1578/79, brought about by a peculiar dream: An impor­tant palil who had rented his ­house to me also came to see me. He came early in the morning, riding on his ­horse, and told me: This ­whole night I could not sleep ­because of the marvelous dream I had this night. I have come to see if ­there is any change in my ­house. I saw [in my dream] that I entered [the ­house] and saw in it many couches of silk, silver, and gold. All the walls ­were built of precious stones and pearls, sparkling like the sun and out of the southern wall ­there flowed a spring of fresh ­water which provided ­water for the ­whole world, even for the gentiles.1 At the core of the depiction of this meeting, we find a twofold contrast: first, the under­lying inferiority of the Jewish rabbi vis-­à-­vis the Muslim’s position—­a landlord on h ­ orse­back, characteristics that represent (both literally and meta­phor­ically) the superiority of the Muslim and of Islam in this relationship.2 The second contrast lies in the gap between the dream world and real­ity. The dream in this narrative may reflect the ­f uture state, an ideal,

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the way real­ity ­ought to be; but it may just as well reflect how the world actually functions, exposing the gulf between the hidden inward real­ity and the revealed external one. ­Either way it is clear that the second contrast functions as the key to the first, that is, the one concerned with the relations between the two religions. ­There is, however, an additional contrast emerging from this text: the contrast between an abundance brought about through the merit of the Jewish rabbi, providing living ­water for “the ­whole world, even for the gentiles,” and the almost blunt provinciality of the setting in which this wondrous event tran­spired—­a small and ­humble Jerusalem residence. That is to say, a gap between the universal, all-­embracing dimension of the dream, its metaphysical bearings, and the downright earthly backdrop of its revelation, a divide that seems to underlie the landlord’s own emotional visit to his property. This meeting is recounted in Ṿital’s Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot (Book of Visions), an exceptional composition in many re­spects, “one of the most curious and revealing documents we possess.”3 This work is essentially a collection of events, visions, and dreams that Ṿital himself experienced or dreamed, and that ­others dreamed about him. It is concerned primarily with Ṿital’s intense and ambivalent lifelong interest in his own spiritual state, the virtue of his soul, his wisdom, and his intellectual attainments, and especially with his messianic vocation.4 Within the framework of this chronological “documentation,” which spanned the course of his life, ­there are numerous descriptions of meetings, his own and ­others’, in real life and in dreams, with vari­ous Muslim figures who are frequently designated by the term pelilim. Some of ­these figures are anonymous, while ­others are identifiable and even high-­ranking, such as Kuyucu Murat Paşa, the ­grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire in the first de­cade of the seventeenth ­century, who met Ṿital in one of the latter’s Damascene dreams.5 ­These encounters are fraught with pronounced interreligious tension. Their objective is almost always to illustrate Ṿital’s spiritual superiority over Muslims and over Islam, as well as his redemptive potential. They are therefore easily linked to the numerous messianic visions found in this work, in which Ṿital appears as a key figure at the very moment of redemption. ­These visions often revolve around the ­Temple Mount, its purification or rebuilding, and include motifs characteristic of Jewish redemption lit­er­a­ture, such as the ingathering of the Jewish Diaspora, the return of the Ten Lost Tribes,



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Judgment Day, the exacting of vengeance on the nations, as well as images of kingship, army victories, and the like.6 Muslims, Christians, generals of gentile armies, and even Muhammad and ‘Isa ibn Maryam (i.e., Jesus of Nazareth) all play central roles in t­ hese visions. The following essay is devoted to Ṿital’s relations with and ­toward the Muslim world, as they arise from this composition. The essay poses two questions. First, how should we approach the content of this book of visions as a form of po­liti­cal thought? Second, how might we analyze the book’s po­liti­cal bearing? As we ­shall see, ­these questions are especially pressing when considering the ambivalent stance of modern, especially Zionist, historiography ­toward the po­liti­cal “value” of messianism. In what follows, I try to suggest a framework that allows us to transcend a simplistic—­yet still very common—­ binary opposition between a po­liti­cal apocalyptic messianism, which takes part in the “real” world, and a “spiritual” one, understood as depoliticized or even depoliticizing. Rather than considering the redemptive dreams of Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot as a “retreat” to myth, I propose to analyze them as a creative form of po­liti­cal imagination. ­These dreams both express and shape Ṿital’s understanding of the con­temporary state of Jewish life as a minority (within Muslim-­Ottoman and global contexts), as well as his vision for change. The essay demonstrates this claim by exploring the book in two complementary trajectories: First, I ground Ṿital’s real and dream encounters with ­those pelilim in their concrete localities (in the spaces shared by Jews and Muslims in Safed, Jerusalem, and Damascus), underscoring the importance of the Ottoman context, both local and wide, to the formation of the composition’s po­liti­cal imaginary. Second, by analyzing the content of ­these visions, I show that they offer a framing of redemption quite dif­fer­ent from that prevalent in early sixteenth-­century Jewish messianism. By considering the distinctions between Islam and Chris­tian­ity in the composition, we can differentiate two distinct horizons of the long-­awaited po­liti­cal transformation. One, connected with Chris­tian­ity, involves a warlike, violent strug­gle by which the defeat of the “nations” is fantasized. The other, affiliated with Islam, envisages an “internal recognition” by Muslims of Judaism as the true faith. Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot’s accounts of Muslims and Islam, I contend, may thus be interpreted as a highly sensitive act of translation of the po­liti­cal limitations and aspirations of Jews in the periphery of the Ottoman Empire. Well attuned to con­temporary trends within the variegated Muslim society, Ṿital deftly

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navigates between the immediate—­shared—­locale and the all-­encompassing redemptive vision.

Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot in the Jewish Messianic Backdrop of the Sixteenth ­Century Few figures are more strongly identified with the unique Safedian re­nais­ sance of the sixteenth ­century than Ṿital.7 Ṿital is known first and foremost as the primary redactor of Lurianic Kabbalah—­and, as such, his contribution to the configuration and articulation of this Kabbalah is beyond mea­ sure.8 Yet the scope and variety of Ṿital’s non-­Lurianic writing, including Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot, reveal him to be a figure of notable intellectual curiosity, unconfined by the bound­a ries of Kabbalah and rooted in the broad intellectual world of Eastern Mediterranean Judaism of the period.9 Unlike most of his other non-­Lurianic writings, Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot has attracted scholarly attention due to its significance to Lurianic messianism. Luria and Ṿital’s messianic self-­perception achieved scholarly prominence following what can be called “the personal shift” in Lurianic scholarship, identified primarily with Yehuda Liebes. According to Liebes, the “personal messianic myth” was the “true religious interest” of the Lurianic fellowship.10 It is no won­der, then, that the personal ele­ments of Ṿital’s messianism, his profound misgivings regarding his ability to realize his calling, and even the psychological makeup of the dreamer, are at the center of scholarship surrounding Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot. Yet almost no attention has been paid to the dialogue that Ṿital conducts with con­temporary discourses regarding the nature of redemption. Much has been written about the intense, varied, and fervent messianic fermentation among Spanish and Portuguese exiles as well as Italian Jews (mostly Ashkenazi) during the first half of the sixteenth ­century.11 While this phenomenon was certainly nourished by internal Jewish trends, it was also part of a broader global trend of “interlinked millenarian po­liti­cal movements,” from Portugal (and the New World) to the Mughal Empire and beyond. This trend, as Sanjay Subrahmanyam has stressed, both expressed the far-­reaching geopo­liti­cal changes of the early modern period and played a major role in their configuration.12 In the Jewish context this awakening was felt in the messianic propaganda of a variety of figures, such as R. Asher Lemmlein and R. Joseph ibn Shraga in Italy, and especially R. Abraham Halevi, “the head of the apoca-



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lyptic Kabbalists,”13 a Spanish-­born kabbalist active primarily in Jerusalem during the first de­cades of the sixteenth ­century.14 Their activity was not ­limited to highly detailed eschatological calculations but also included complex and rich descriptions of po­liti­cal pro­cesses that would lead to the imminent redemption. As Moti Benmelech puts it, their works display a profound affinity “between history and the messianic pro­cess, which infused the religious, po­liti­cal, geo­graph­i­cal, and cultural events of this period with both revealed and hidden messianic meaning.”15 Aside from its literary expression, this awakening also found expression in ­actual historical events and deeds, in the framework of the well-­k nown ­matter of David ha-­Reuveni and Shlomo Molcho. As Benmelech has demonstrated, the two attempted to foment a war between Chris­tian­ity and Islam using pragmatic po­liti­cal means. Their plan culminated in Molcho’s well-­known encounter with Emperor Charles V in Regensburg in 1532, which ultimately did not achieve Molcho’s desired outcome but instead brought about his own death as a martyr. Molcho tried to realize this historical messianism as “Messiah, son of Joseph,” a “historical messiah” whose “arena for activity was worldly rather than heavenly,” and whose primary mission was to instigate pro­cesses that would transpire “within history, thereby preparing the setting for the appearance” of “Messiah, son of David,” and the spiritual messianic age.16 Although this figure acts both to prime the p­ eople for revelation in the sphere of social and spiritual perfection and to “re-­a rrange the relations between Israel and the Nations,” the latter proj­ect is at the heart of Molcho’s interests (as well as Benmelech’s).17 The impression that emerges from Benmelech’s work is that this entry into the course of history (phrased at times in almost proto-­Zionist terms) is the kernel of Molcho’s historical significance. Messianic activity focused on “spiritual mending” and its assessment as a historical ­factor are marginalized in this work.18 I emphasize this point ­because, to a ­great extent, the messianic discourse typical of Ṿital’s Safed is more in line with this latter “spiritual” category. Safedians show slight interest in con­temporary geopolitics, nor do they typically address the messianic interpretation of po­liti­cal pro­cesses.19 Without delving into the complex and varied picture of the redemptive pro­cesses in Lurianic Kabbalah itself, we can say that redemption is situated ­there conceptually and terminologically on an entirely dif­fer­ent plane. The Lurianic discourse of redemption is primarily concerned with topics such as the rehabilitation of the divine partzufim (countenances) or the gathering of the scattered sparks of holiness, to name but two loci.20 The

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arena of its “messianic activism” fluctuates—to use Benmelech’s terms—­ between the heavenly and a worldly plane embodied in the activity of a small kabbalistic circle. In short, it has nothing to do with imperial courts.21 Where, then, is Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot situated within this framing? Undoubtedly, ­there are numerous points of continuity between this work and the messianic aspects arising from Ṿital’s Lurianic writings.22 But equally evident is its divergence from the Lurianic discourse, especially in the near complete absence of fundamental Lurianic terminology. In many re­spects its redemptive discourse is much closer to the messianic writings of the early sixteenth ­century and to the language of the classic redemption-­focused midrash. How, then, should Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot be understood within a framework that places “spiritual” rectification—­of the individual, society, or the Godhead itself—­and “po­liti­cal/historical” activity as opposite poles?

Messianism and Po­liti­cal Imagination The under­lying question, hence, concerns the po­liti­cal meaning of Jewish “messianism”—­with all the ambiguity of this term—in early modernity. The question becomes more pressing when one remembers that, unlike mashiaḥ (messiah), meshiḥiyut (messianism) is not a term found in premodern Jewish lit­er­a­ture, but is rather a modern conceptualization, premised on the German Messianismus. Moreover, the tension surrounding the po­liti­cal conceptualization of messianism manifested in Benmelech’s analy­sis is clearly rooted in the deep ambivalence ­toward messianism in Zionist historiography and modern Jewish thought more generally. Amnon Raz-­Krakotzkin has demonstrated how “the dialectic of redemption was a fixed ele­ment defining Zionist discourse, conspicuously expressed in its historiography.” On the one hand, “Zionist thought relied on messianic imagery, and on a view of the pre­sent as an expression of a historical redemption.” On the other hand, “and inseparably, one of the foundations of mainstream Zionism’s self-­definition was a distinction and detachment of Zionism from messianism. This distinction served as the basis for the view of Zionism as a modern national movement that . . . ​renounces the expectation of divine intervention.”23 In Zionist historiographical accounts of messianism’s po­liti­cal meaning, such as ­those of the “Jerusalem school,” this ambivalence was often expressed as the gap between the redemptive objective—­which was deemed just—­and



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the means used to accomplish it, which ­were seen as misguided and futile. As Hayyim Hillel Ben-­Sasson put it: “Our messianic movements should not be judged according to the efforts put into them, but according to the results gained.”24 The implication was clear: Zionism overcomes the “objective inability” to redeem. Thus, although ­earlier messianic movements are clearly positioned in continuity with the Zionist proj­ect, they are also strongly differentiated from it by their supposed fruitlessness. To be sure, the “po­liti­cal” is no less a disputed and ambiguous term in current discussions than is “messianism.” Yet, by considering Sefer ha-­ Ḥezyonot’s dreams—­and the images, notions and hopes arising from them— as an articulation of a “po­liti­cal language” or “po­liti­cal imagination,” we can evaluate the po­liti­cal import of early modern Jewish messianic discourses, beyond the ­limited perspective of modern (Zionist) historiography.25 Analyzing Ṿital’s dreams in ­these terms allows us to avoid their separation from the social, po­liti­cal, and historical spheres. Moreover, we can see how dreams contribute to the shaping of social real­ity and its repertoire of active po­liti­cal possibilities. Imagination has a long and complex history in po­liti­cal theory, especially since the early modern period.26 A fundamental suspicion ­toward imagination, as the antipode of the rational, colors much of this history. Yet scholars have increasingly recognized the vast importance of stories, both conscious and unconscious, in shaping the po­liti­cal arena. Current uses of the notion of po­liti­cal imagination, however, are to a ­great extent derived from so­cio­log­i­cal discussions of the “social imaginary.” John Thompson defines po­liti­cal imagination as “the creative and symbolic dimension of the social world, the dimension through which ­human beings create their ways of living together and their ways of representing their collective life.”27 For the issue at hand, what is impor­tant is the stress on imagination as a creative ­factor in the social sphere. As Yaron Ezrahi aptly puts it, “since popu­ lar imaginaries shape the po­liti­cal order and direct its politics,” rather than clinging to an opposition between (rational) politics versus imagination, we should perceive imagining as a substantial po­liti­cal activity that participates in the constitution of the social realm.28 Imagination—­like ideology29—is thus a very “real” ­thing, far from an “illusion.” Like ideology, the imaginary “operates through language,” the “medium of social action,” and is thus “partially constitutive of what, in our socie­ties, ‘is real.’ ”30 The “truth value” of the ­imagined calls on us to reevaluate the status of dream knowledge in Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot. Eli Yassif described the

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Safedian dream realm as a space in which “the [­actual] place is relocated from the margins to the center of the narrative structure . . . ​becoming a mythical space. . . . ​The binary juxtaposition between the ­actual place and the mythical-­fantastic realm is the source of the principal existential tension in Safed’s legends.”31 Yet, following our discussion of po­liti­cal imagination, the identification of Ṿital’s dream realm as “mythical-­fantastic” risks its depoliticization, its detachment from the concrete hopes for and demands of the local and the social.32 Moreover, the dream’s truth value, its epistemological status, must be evaluated in the context of contemporaneous attitudes. ­Here I follow Nurith Inbar’s recent impor­tant study on Ṿital’s perception of dreams.33 Inbar explains that Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot’s dream narratives “mark a notion that sees dreams as a force breaking the barriers of time and place, and hence as a site of meeting between worlds. Dream narratives exemplify the reciprocal nature of dream and real­ity as a cultural option, the possibility to communicate and move between worlds.”34 Rather than a retreat to myth, then, dreams offer up a possibility of connection, a vehicle for mutual communication and of instruction. ­These notions are well rooted in the ­great importance attributed to dreams—­including po­liti­cal ones—in the Muslim tradition and even more particularly in early modern Damascus and Galilee.35 Reading ­these dreams as po­liti­cal imaginary therefore offers a way to go beyond the binary opposition between the po­liti­cal and the eschatological, between a historically involved messianism and redemptive visions detached from the world. It allows us to analyze their contribution to the formation of a po­liti­cal language, and consider how this language imagines power relations—­pre­sent and hoped for—in the world.

Who Are the Pelilim Ṿital Meets? Let us return, then, to Ṿital’s accounts in Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot of the encounters he and ­those around him had with Islamic religious figures (pelilim) while living in Jerusalem and Damascus. We should not be surprised by the intimacy (with all of its ambivalence) reflected in ­these meetings. Jews ­were highly integrated into local life in the Ottoman Empire (including Safed and Jerusalem), as illustrated by a plethora of sources.36 This dynamic was not ­limited to economic life—it is apparent in interreligious relations as well, at times in contexts of tension and at o­ thers of mutual re­spect.



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Who, then, ­were ­these pelilim whom Ṿital met? The term palil is not especially common. In early modern Jewish writing (especially in an Islamic context), the name palil refers primarily to the qadi, the Islamic religious judge.37 Yet Jewish encounters with qadis ­were not ­limited to the court or to ­legal proceedings.38 In Jerusalem, for example, the building of the shari’a council, located next to the ­Temple Mount, was much more than the place of the shari’a court—it hosted an extensive and transethnic range of activity. As such, it presented the primary point of social and economic contact for the city’s residents.39 However, Ṿital himself appears flexible in his employment of the term palil, using it to designate other types of Muslim scholars, ‘ulema, who did not necessarily hold a qadi position. In Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot, the term palil may particularly refer to two other religious figures: the local mufti (jurisconsult), and the local shaykh.40 Both functioned as authority figures in their communities to whom religious questions ­were brought—­ and, consequently, they had extensive contact with the locals, which extended beyond strictly religious ­matters.41 Indeed this characterization matches one of Ṿital’s accounts of a visit with one of the pelilim in Damascus, in which the palil’s home was crowded with ­people young and old, and Ṿital asked a young boy for permission to enter and speak with the palil.42 In any case, it is evident that Ṿital conversed with authoritative religious figures from the local Islamic community (at least as he estimated them). On occasion t­ hese encounters also involved exchanges of medical knowledge. Ṿital practiced medicine throughout most of his life and composed a weighty tome of ­recipes.43 Indeed, the reason for his visit with the aforementioned palil in Damascus was the latter’s expertise “in remedies for ­people injured by demons, and I wanted to examine his wisdom.” ­These encounters thus attest a clear willingness among Jews to obtain knowledge from ­these figures.44 In ­these cases and ­others, one never feels a boundary was crossed in any substantial way. ­These encounters appear to have been a ­matter of course—­although they ­were not without ambivalence.45

“Debating with an Impor­tant Palil Through an Interpreter” In his Jerusalem years, Ṿital was not an anonymous figure in the Jewish community, and in all probability he was also known to the local authorities. Evidence indicates that he occupied some public position, perhaps even

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functioned as the community’s rabbi for a few years.46 The Ḥida (R. Ḥayyim Yosef David Azulai, 1724–1806) recounts an in­ter­est­ing story, originating among “Jerusalem’s elders,” about Ṿital’s departure from the city.47 According to this story, the city’s notorious governor at the time, Khadawardi Bey (known by the name Abu Sayfayn),48 threatened Ṿital with death if he refused to open the source of the Giḥon spring, which had been blocked by King Hezekiah during the war with Sennacherib.49 This anecdote demonstrates the strong affinity between the real-­world interreligious politics in Jerusalem and the messianic po­liti­cal imagination of Ṿital and ­those in his circle. The move to Jerusalem, we should emphasize, carried with it a profound messianic meaning for Ṿital which had developed over years and resounded in his understanding of his life in Jerusalem.50 The Ḥida further recounts how Luria scolded his disciple in a dream for his escape from the city: “For this minister was a reincarnation of Sennacherib . . . and you have a spark of King Hezekiah in you, and it was a befitting hour to rectify and open the Giḥon spring.51 . . . ​And this would have been the beginning of the redemption.”52 ­Here Ṿital’s ­mistake in his dealings with the ruler of the city is understood as an impediment to the possibility of redemption. Indeed, the confrontation between Ṿital and Abu Sayfayn is glossed as a manifestation of metaphysical dimensions that reach far beyond the immediate context. However, ­these dimensions need not distance us from the historical and concrete real­ity of Jerusalem. They do not make this a “fantastical story” or “mythical saga.”53 Rather, the metaphysical dimensions anchor us to the concrete po­liti­cal circumstances. Abu Sayfayn, as noted, was not a fictional character but a governor known for his antagonistic conduct ­toward the Jewish community, which he financially exploited. His hostility found its strongest expression in the conflicts surrounding the “Nahmanides synagogue” and the Jews’ right to make pilgrimage to the gravesite of the prophet Samuel,54 events that reverberated in Ṿital’s dreams and sermons from the period.55 If Ṿital served as a figure of rabbinical authority within the community, then it is highly likely he experienced some friction with the local Muslim authorities—­including the sanjak-­bey.56 Hence the Ḥida’s anecdote offers a win­dow onto the way ­these ­actual relations ­were ­imagined within the community, and to the meaning allocated to Ṿital’s place in the community. Furthermore, our assumption that Ṿital was known (at least potentially) to the Muslim religious establishment in the city, especially considering the life-­fabric of the city, shared by Jews and Muslims on the one hand, but



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charged with religious tension on the other, provides historical plausibility and context to the frequent appearance of pelilim in Ṿital’s life. This is especially true of the initial period of his residence in the city (1578–79). Granted, the content of ­these encounters (as recorded in Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot) was undoubtedly structured according to Ṿital’s agendas. Yet it is certainly conceivable that vari­ous Muslim clerics took an interest in him on his arrival, and ­there is no reason to suspect this as fictitious. The strength of ­these connections is most evident in Ṿital’s account of an instance in which he was “debating with an impor­tant palil through an interpreter and he entreated me that I should endeavor to learn Arabic so that he should not have to hear my words through an interpreter, and I agreed to do so.”57 The next morning, however, Ṿital received a dream message from Luria warning him to “be very careful for his soul and not learn Arabic, ­because Heaven does not want him to learn this language. Heaven forbid, that he should come to some danger through direct disputation with them, without an interpreter.” Although Ṿital concludes that he must be cautious and restrain ­these encounters, his story nevertheless attests to the strength of ­these relations, notwithstanding the fundamental ambivalence—­even sense of danger—­that was bound up with them.58

“For They Are Yours Henceforth”: The ­Temple Mount as a Trust in the Hands of Islam I propose to view the content of ­these meetings—­the po­liti­cal imagination that emerges from them—as a product of the intersection between Ṿital’s messianic expectations and the texture of the concrete and symbolic relationships that existed in the shared Jerusalem space. I am especially interested in the charged encounters between Ṿital as an authoritative Jewish cleric and the pelilim. The implications of this intersection arise clearly in a pivotal dream from that same year (1578–79), concerned with the ­Temple Mount: A Jewish ­woman who used to fast throughout her life told me: In a dream last night I saw Shaykh Abd al-­Nabi’, the greatest palil in Jerusalem, who had died this year ­after he had taken [the grave of] the prophet Samuel for the Muslims from the Jews. He said to me [i.e., Ṿital]: Take t­ hese keys from my hands, which are the keys of the ­Temple. For ­until now we have had dominion over it, but now

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that you have come, the dominion over the ­Temple has already been given to you. Therefore, ­here are the keys. Take them, for they are yours henceforth. I took them and went with many Jews and we built the ­Temple, purified it, and offered the obligatory sacrifices.59 Even though the entire meeting takes place in the pious ­woman’s dream,60 its content is founded on solid po­liti­cal ground. Shaykh Abd al-­Nabi’ is not an ­imagined character, but most likely Shaykh ʿabd al-­Nabī al-­Kanānī—­the mufti of Jerusalem, mentioned in con­temporary local court rec­ords.61 The motif of the keys is also not coincidental. It relies on both a longstanding midrashic tradition regarding the keys of the ­Temple62 and early modern historical real­ity. Sixteenth-­century Jerusalem was a city filled with locked gates and keys, and pilgrims had to know who held them. Jewish pilgrims ­were often dependent on a Muslim holding the keys.63 The same is true of the well-­documented conflict surrounding the gravesite of Samuel the prophet, which, as mentioned ­earlier, was a very meaningful event in the life of the community. Nor is the content and structure of this po­liti­cal fantasy especially fantastical. It is essentially a structure of reversed equivalence: He who took from the Jews, thereby expressing their current subordinate status in the power dynamic, w ­ ill give back to the Jews, thereby conveying the depth of the aspired transformation. Indeed, this reversal resonates with the contrast between the ­horse upon which Ṿital’s landlord rode, and the content of his dream. Even so, the prophet Samuel’s gravesite is hardly equivalent to the ­Temple Mount. The centrality of the T ­ emple in the Jewish eschatological tradition hardly requires explanation. Suffice to recall one of the canonical pronouncements in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah: “King Messiah ­will arise and restore the kingdom of David to its former state and original sovereignty. He ­will rebuild the sanctuary and gather the dispersed of Israel. All the ancient laws ­will be reinstituted in his days; sacrifices ­will again be offered.”64 The extent to which the ending of the dream evokes this formula is easily observable. Within the Jewish messianic climate of the sixteenth ­century, Ṿital is unexceptional in this regard.65 Moreover, as Elhanan Reiner has demonstrated, the “Holy Basin” (the geo­graph­i­cal area including the holy sites around the ­Temple Mount) was the center for Jewish pilgrimage and worship in Jerusalem ever since late antiquity, including Ṿital’s time.66 The traditions surrounding the construction of the Al-­Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock illustrate the centrality of the Holy Basin—­and the



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­ emple Mount in particular—to interreligious rivalry and polemic throughout T the ­Middle Ages. Theophanes the Confessor, the eighth-­century Byzantine historian, relates that ʿUmar ibn Al-­Khattāb repeatedly attempted to establish the mosque to no avail, ­until the Jews explained: The structure would not stand ­until crosses ­were dismantled on the Mount of Olives. Theophanes concludes: “For this reason the Christ-­haters tore down many crosses.”67 However, in the dream ­under discussion, the Jews do not function as the preservers of tradition. Rather, Islam holds the ­Temple as a trust merely ­until the time of its redemption—­that is, ­until the day of Ṿital’s arrival, when the keys to the ­Temple Mount would be granted to him. Once again, the idea that the nations temporarily hold the Land of Israel ­until redemption is not an innovation. The idea is key to the biblical notion of the return to Zion. Moreover, in the very same years, Christian travelers documented the Jews’ expectation to replace the Muslims as the “lords of the land, poor as they are ­today” with the coming of the Messiah.68 Yet in the Jerusalem dream the rebuilding of the ­Temple and restored control of the ­Temple Mount are the outcomes of an Islamic self-­perception as guardians of the ­Temple on behalf of the Jews. The heart of the ­matter is the description of the moment of redemptive transition, of the transfer of control over the ­Temple Mount, not as the outcome of a strug­gle but as a shift in consciousness originating within Islam itself.69

“[He] Vanquished All the Christians Who W ­ ere ­There”: Between Chris­tian­ity and Islam To appreciate the full meaning of this messianic imaginary of Islam in Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot, we must consider the fundamental difference between Muslims and Christians, arising from the dreams in the book.70 In the encounters and dreams discussed thus far, the distinct status of the Christians was expressed primarily by their absence. Indeed, to the best of my knowledge, ­there is not a single encounter with a person identified as a Christian in the entire work. Let us then turn to another vision of redemption, illuminating this divergence, which appears much ­earlier in Ṿital’s life.71 In this dream, dated to 1561/62 in Safed: “The Messiah was standing before me, blowing the shofar, and myriads of Israelites ­were gathering around him.” The Messiah then exclaims: “Come with me and see the revenge for the destruction of the ­Temple. We went ­there and he did ­battle ­there and vanquished all the

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Christians who ­were ­there. And he entered the ­Temple and killed ­those who ­were inside as well. He commanded all the Jews and said to them: My ­brothers, purify yourselves and our ­Temple from the impurity of the blood of ­these uncircumcised corpses and the impurity of the idolatries within it. We ­will purify and build the ­Temple on its foundation and the High Priest ­will offer the daily sacrifice.”72 This description sharply diverges from the dreams we have discussed thus far. To a large extent it is a much more traditional account of redemption. The eschatological war on the nations is a very old and central trope, even found among the Messiah’s tasks in Maimonides’ canonization.73 ­These wars and the role of the Messiah, son of Joseph, within them are also some of the key ele­ments of the early sixteenth-­century Jewish messianism discussed ­earlier.74 In Ṿital’s dream, however, the war is not against the nations as a ­whole but rather against “all the Christians who ­were” at the ­Temple. The purification is “from the impurity of the blood of ­these uncircumcised corpses,” a characterization indicating Christians specifically. As David Tamar noted many years ago, this is a surprising image, given the fact that “in place of the ­Temple, mosques of circumcised Muslims ­were established, not churches.” 75 The explanation, he adds, is “Ṿital’s hatred of Chris­tian­ity” which, in comparison with his antipathy ­toward Islam, “was far greater and more profound, both theologically and metaphysically.”76 In this re­spect, Ṿital’s vision is once again characteristic of the messianism of Halevi and Molcho, which was rooted in profound hostility ­toward Chris­tian­ity, and which frequently featured the destruction of Rome as the culmination of the redemptive pro­cess.77 Yet in Ṿital’s dream the Ishmaelites are entirely absent, while Halevi and Molcho’s redemptive narrative is founded on an interpretation of the con­temporary strug­gle between Islam (in the form of the Ottoman Empire) and Chris­tian­ity (especially in the form of the Roman Empire and Portugal) as “a religious-­eschatological strug­gle” bound to lead to the apocalypse.78 In ­these visions Islam is marginal in comparison with Chris­tian­ity, and can even be described as merely instrumental in the strug­gle against Rome and Samael (being the metaphysical manifestation of Chris­tian­ity). While this depiction may disclose an ambivalent attitude ­toward Islam, Muslims are nevertheless not absent from their vision of the eschatological war.79 Interestingly, throughout the ­century we find that Jerusalem Jews imagine the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as the object of catastrophe, rather



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than the Muslim structures on the ­Temple Mount.80 We may even say that the absence of Muslims from the vio­lence depicted in Ṿital’s dream reflects the extent to which Ṿital was typical of Ottoman Jews, who ­were perceived by the Christians of the Empire, for example, as “supporters of the Ottomans and their loyal allies.”81 The vio­lence directed at the Christians in the dream highlights its divergence from the fantasy embodied in the dream about the delivering of the keys, in which vio­lence is entirely non­ex­is­tent.82 To be clear: This trajectory should not be understood to be an idealization of the attitude t­ oward Islam. In a dream of Joseph, Ṿital’s son, Muslims react to the arrival of the Messiah, marching at the head of a ­great army, by saying: “The kingdom of Ishmael has undoubtedly already fallen and Israel reigns, and they w ­ ere ­silent.”83 The Jewish joy in the reversal of positions is explicit, and yet, instead of war and strife, we find a quiet transition—­one of ac­cep­tance and recognition of change, much like the dream of the ­Temple Mount.

“What Religion S ­ hall We Adopt?”: “True Religion” and Its Ottoman Context Thus far we have seen that, with regard to Islam, and in stark contradistinction to Chris­tian­ity, Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot’s dreams focus their hopes for a change in world power relations on Islamic recognition of Judaism’s superiority, and more particularly on an internal and comprehensive one. I have argued that this imaginary is linked to the shared life fabric of Jews and Muslims in the Ottoman Empire in the period—­both the general interreligious dynamics and Ṿital’s own encounters with Muslim ‘ulema. In the pre­ sent section, I wish to touch briefly on an additional pos­si­ble context for this emphasis on recognition, arising from one Damascene dream, which I have explicated in a separate study.84 This extraordinary dream of 1612, the latest dream in the book, is presented as the dream of “the palil Sa’ad al-­Din dgl, the impurity of all the Islamic nation.”85 This curiously designated palil dreams that he is “sitting alone in a desolate desert,” where he meets first “Muhammad, the prophet of the Muslims . . . ​dressed in rags and torn clothes, and his face smeared with ink,” and then “ ‘Isa, the son of Miriam . . . ​completely covered in excrement.” When the palil asks them why they are in such a degraded condition, Muhammad answers: “­Because I misled such a ­g reat nation and my

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time, which was a thousand years, has passed and my religion, which is empty and meaningless, has been abrogated.” Jesus confesses similarly to have “misled the Christian nation with a false religion [that] has been abrogated.” Subsequently, Muhammad, Jesus, and the dreaming palil are captured and held by six mysterious figures, perhaps alluding to angels.86 The apex of the dream, however, occurs when “a multitude of Ishmaelites” comes before ­these figures and asks: “In whom s­ hall we believe and what religion ­shall we adopt?” They respond: “Raise your eyes to the distance and see the nation of the Jews in their multitude, headed by an old man . . . ​named Akiva. Enter his true religion.” When the Muslim masses find out that Akiva has passed away, they return and demand: “Give us a religion!” and are immediately referred to his replacement, unnamed, but quite clearly indicating Ṿital, who “is now the head of the Jews that you have seen.” The dream narrative ends with the poor palil tossing in his bed ­until “his ­mother saw him in anguish and woke him from his sleep.”87 ­There is much to be said about this dream, which is in a few significant re­spects exceptional even within the book. ­Here I w ­ ill limit myself to a few points impor­tant for the pre­sent discussion. In the context of the search for the one true religion, the joint appearance of Muhammed and Jesus is undoubtedly nourished by the famous Maimonidean notion of ­these false prophets as paving the way for the messianic epoch, in which all ­will worship God together in the true mono­the­istic fashion.88 Maimonides asserts that “when the king the Messiah ­will arise truly . . . ​they ­will immediately repent and know that their forefathers lived in a lie, and their prophets and forefathers have deceived them.”89 Yet ­here the pro­cess is inverted: It is not the Messiah’s success that brings about this turn of events; rather, it is the Muslims’ own downfall and acknowl­edgment of the ­mistakes of Muhammad and Jesus which drive the Muslims (and only them, as the Christians are absent) to search for a true religion. This difference in the narrative sequence, I suggest, can be better accounted for if we follow the impor­tant lead offered by Muhammad’s account of the reasons for his fallen state: “and my time, which was a thousand years, has passed.” This chronological detail situates the narrative in the context of a contemporaneous and fervent Islamic millenarian mood—­specifically, the expectations leading up to the Hijri millennium (1591–92).90 In the Ottoman Empire, ­these expectations manifested primarily as a state proj­ect of sorts, involving the fashioning of Suleiman the Magnificent as a messianic



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figure during the first half of the sixteenth ­century.91 However, they ­were certainly not ­limited to this context. The ­century knew a plethora of millenary rebellions, and multiple figures ­were identified as Mahdi, the redeemer in the Islamic eschatological tradition.92 This tradition provides an alternative key to the joint appearance of Muhammad and Jesus in the dream. ‘Isa plays a central role in the Muslim apocalypse, alongside the Mahdi (representing the prophet’s lineage). In most accounts, he is destined to slay the Muslim version of the Antichrist, known as al-­dajjal, the deceiver.93 The latter may well have found his place in our dream as well. Recall the description of the palil at the beginning of the dream: “Sa’ad al-­Din dgl, the impurity of all the Islamic nation.” In his edition, Morris Faierstein suggested dgl (read usually in Hebrew as degel, i.e., flag or standard) to refer to the word “liar” in Arabic. But why not go one step further and equate it with the third character in the Islamic eschatological triangle? This pos­si­ble interpretation becomes even more in­ter­est­ing in light of a probable identification of the palil Sa’ad al-­Din as Hoca Sadeddin Efendi (1536–99), one of the most power­f ul figures in the empire. In his final years, he served as Shaykh-­al-­Islām, the most se­nior religious figure of the empire: “the impurity of all the Islamic nation.”94 This identification and its contexts remain conjectural. Even so ­these conjectures can shed impor­ tant light on the context of the conversion fantasy at the heart of the dream. Tijana Krstic has convincingly demonstrated that Islamic millenarianism was profoundly related to the aspiration for a universal religion to which all ­people would convert in the messianic era. The issue of the “true religion” and the identity of the redeemer was central to the activity of a variety of figures in the Islamicate world, from Moriscos in Spain and North Africa, who ­imagined a return of Muhammad himself, to Muslim clerics in Anatolia, who viewed Jesus as superior to Muhammad.95 Krstic also noted the profound affinity between millenarianism and the “Sunnitization” of the empire and the growing identification of Sunni orthodoxy with po­liti­cal loyalty.96 Inasmuch as the millenarian impetus was appropriated for the benefit of imperial objectives, the Ottoman establishment tended to repress other local messianic contenders, mainly among the Sufi and Shiite. As Nir Shafir has recently shown, “heresy became a central concept in shaping the Ottoman body politic.”97 Viewed from this perspective, Sa’ad al-­Din’s dream and its conversion fantasy become a sophisticated Jewish adaptation of the millenarian discourse of the time. Ṿital seems to enlist a counter-­narrative—­

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Sufi perhaps—­for his own needs, charging the Ottoman se­nior religious authority (who becomes Al-­Dajjal) with heresy. The uniqueness of this (inverted) adaptation of the Ottoman fantasy of universal religion is con­spic­u­ous when compared to another dream in Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot from the same period, which has attracted scholarly attention ­because of its affinity with Molcho’s visions.98 In this dream, Ṿital succeeds in extracting an Excalibur-­like sword, which had been affixed in Rome since the world’s creation. The Roman emperor threatens to kill him, but in response to Ṿital’s accusation that “you are all being led astray by your religion . . . ​for ­there are no true teachings except for the teachings of Moses alone,” the emperor responds: “­Because I know all this, I sent [my men] to seek you, since I knew that no one is wiser and more understanding of the true wisdom and I want you to tell me secrets of the Torah and some of the names of the Lord, your God, since I already recognize the truth. . . . ​I then imparted some of this wisdom to him.”99 As Benmelech illustrated, this scene is nearly identical to Molcho’s meeting with the emperor (as Ṿital knew it)—­that is, a Jewish attempt to influence the emperor by conveying to him “some of this wisdom”—­but the power relations are, at least for the moment, maintained. In Sa’ad al-­Din’s dream, however, the reversal is complete, since its basis is the Muslims’ search for the true religion in light of their disappointment with their own prophets and religious establishment.

Dream Generals and Real Serpents: Back to the Local We began our discussion with a palil’s visit to the apartment Ṿital rented in Jerusalem, ­after it had been revealed in the palil’s dream as providing the entire world with life-­giving ­water. This short anecdote already raised questions regarding the locale of the “po­liti­cal” occurrence. In the concluding section, I wish to return to this question, through one last dream of Ṿital’s that is set in Jerusalem. Rather than being directed ­toward the redemptive moment, this dream instead concerns current events that require Ṿital’s urgent intervention. A plague in Egypt prompted some of the community to flee to Jerusalem, and Ṿital “arose at midnight and went over to the win­dow of my attic, close to the ­Temple, to pray to God with weeping concerning the plague, that it should not come to Jerusalem.”100 Ṿital dozes off and in his dream:



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The general of the gentile army and a large legion of men ­were marching on Jerusalem, to sack it. I stood up and said to him in a loud voice: Beware, do not attack this city. He said to me: Who are you that I should listen to your words? ­People who ­were ­there said to him: Know that he is an impor­tant person and close to the kingship. He raised his hand and struck me on the nape of the neck. . . . ​ I awoke and my neck was still bent, as if this ­really happened while I was awake. While I was astonished at the vision, a large, cold serpent began to wrap itself around my leg. I arose quickly and lit the candle, and saw the serpent enter a crack in the wall near me,101 and then continued studying Torah u ­ ntil morning.102 The threat of the plague is equated in the dream with the “general of the gentile army”—­a designation reserved in this book for Christians (especially as the Muslims rule Jerusalem and thus cannot besiege it). The general, in his turn, is identified with the serpent—­one of the primary symbols in the Kabbalah for the metaphysical forces of evil—­winding itself around Ṿital’s leg, in the spirit of the old messianic motif.103 Although not stated explic­itly, it is implied that Ṿital succeeded in averting the threat. Ṿital’s annulment through prayer of the decree that threatened his community is not of interest in and of itself. ­After all, this is a well-­ established practice at least since Moses, and a power ascribed to vari­ous prominent Jewish figures throughout the generations. As Uri Safrai has demonstrated, the ability to “issue decrees according to his ­will”104 through prayer is ascribed to Ṿital a number of times during his Damascene period. It is connected more broadly to the idea that “it is not pos­si­ble for the supernal realms to benefit except through the prayers of tsaddikim in this world.”105 This notion is essential to Lurianic Kabbalah and to its (ambivalent) stance on the possibility of truly effective action, as well as to its understanding of the arena in which such an action might be carried out—­that is, through kabbalistic activity.106 ­Here, however, I wish to highlight the way that Ṿital’s dream imagination conflates protecting the community from the plague with the ­battle against the gentiles’ general, an image seemingly belonging to a dif­fer­ent sphere, and then goes on to identify both with the serpent incident—­ which occurs while Ṿital is wide awake. A modern interpretation of the dream would view it as a ­mental expression of occurrences in Ṿital’s real­ity—­a serpent in an attic and a threat of a plague—­woven together with additional motifs with which Ṿital is

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preoccupied.107 The dream then might be reduced to two distinct forms of secularized and natu­ral explanations: the ­actual serpent arousing the dream on the one side, and Ṿital’s “psyche” on the other. Yet an alternative interpretation is pos­si­ble, following Inbar’s aforementioned analy­sis of Ṿital’s perception of dreams, emphasizing the fluidity between the dream world and the real world.108 Such an interpretation would take seriously the continuity between the dream, as the setting for the “historical-­political” event of removing the threat, and Ṿital’s attic, where the serpent, meta­phorical and ­actual at the same time, tried to defeat Ṿital and was chased away. The local, domestic site and the site of the dream, which functions as the public sphere, are thus merged. The strug­gle and its determination take place exactly in this blurred sphere between the ­actual serpent and its translation/embodiment in the dream realm.

Conclusion In conclusion, we can generalize a twofold trajectory in Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot. On the one hand, the text traces a movement from the local to the general: Ṿital incorporates his localities, the concrete encounters, events, and p­ eople of his everyday experience, as well as millenarian expectations and ideas that surround him, into the production of his broad po­liti­cal imagination—­more specifically, his conceptualization of interreligious relations, both in the pre­ sent and in the longed-­for f­ uture. On the other hand, the essay si­mul­ta­neously traces a movement back to the local: The dreams in this work continuously draw his imagination back into the personal and communal sphere, to his ­house, and his neighbors. This dimension is expressed beautifully in the Damascene dream of a certain R. Elijah Amiel, in which Ṿital “wishes to gather all the tsaddiḳim and go to the ­Temple.” All the figures revered by the Safedians are indeed gathered, from Adam and the Patriarchs, through the sages of the Mishnah, and all the way to Ṿital’s kabbalist contemporaries, the living and dead marching together. And yet, upon their arrival at the ­Temple, instead of an unfolding scene of redemption, the encounter revolves entirely around Ṿital’s conflict with R. Jacob Abulafia, a Damascene communal leader who opposed Ṿital and scorned him. The ­Temple thereby reverts back to the trivial concerns of the community, to Ṿital’s social and concrete surroundings.109



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This framing demonstrates some of the fundamental differences between the po­liti­cal imagination of Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot and that of the Jewish messianism of the first half of the sixteenth ­century, with its Iberian-­Italian orientation. ­These differences can first be observed in the disparate conceptions of the moment of redemption and the pro­cess leading up to it: the vision of a geopo­ liti­cal interreligious war, founded on an intimate knowledge of global politics, and culminating in the annihilation of the nations (in Iberian-­Italian traditions), versus the fantasy of the inversion of the power dynamics via internal Muslim recognition of Judaism’s superiority and truth (in Ṿital). The difference, however, also has to do with the local nature of Ṿital’s thought, with the diverse scales that he employs si­mul­ta­neously, with his imaginative ability to move back and forth between the mundane and trivial to the global and the abstract. Ṿital seamlessly links the firsthand experience of a Jew living a “small” life to the greatest and most ambitious hopes. This difference, fi­nally, has profound implications for the modes of action derived from one’s po­liti­cal imaginary, and the arenas within which ­these visions may be realized. How are we to understand this difference? Can it be boiled down, as suggested by Benmelech, to the relation between “po­liti­cal messianism,” which aims to pave the way to redemption by historical-­political means, and ­either “magical” messianism or one focused on “spiritual rectification” (tiḳḳun), understood as depoliticized? Benmelech goes even further and postulates that Ṿital was jealous of the active messianic figures, but “never gathered together enough courage required to fulfill” their mission, since he “feared death.”110 In this essay, I have tried to demonstrate another way to interpret ­these disparities: to view them as delineating two divergent strategies that a powerless minority used to imagine the po­liti­cal sphere and its limitations, the limits of one’s own power. Each strategy involves an intensive but distinct use of po­liti­cal imagination. Ṿital’s approach to imagining life in the Ottoman Empire—as well as pos­si­ble po­liti­cal ­f utures—is not, according to this perspective, a departure from “real life” for a “mythical” realm. Ṿital lived in an age of widespread tensions in the empire between religious plurality and confessional inclinations. In his dreams and visions, Ṿital puts forth an imaginary of a Jewish-­Muslim cohabitation, in which the Jews are certainly not foregoing their deep aspirations of change but nevertheless refrain from imagining this change as a global war. Why should we perceive this imaginary as more distant from real­ity and from politics than an adventure in the

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imperial court? As we have seen, it is certainly no less rooted in con­ temporary understandings of the nature of social and religious change. Nor is it a vision insensitive to the local fabric of Jewish life in Ottoman Palestine and Syria. Moreover, as I suggested, it is a vision of the interreligious relations rooted in—­even stemming from—­this locality. Its distancing—in the spirit of Zionist historiography—to the realm of ahistorical fantasy comes with the price of negating as depoliticized and passive a po­liti­cal interpretation of current social life and its pos­si­ble ­f utures. Ṿital can thus be understood as engaging in a sensitive work of translating the concrete po­liti­cal real­ity in which he lives, a po­liti­cal hermeneutics that—if we accept the importance of the imaginary in shaping the social—­should not be undervalued. It is an act of translation that does not give up the imagining of change but which at the same time reflects the power limitations of a community located in the po­liti­cal and geo­graph­i­cal margins of the Ottoman Empire. Ṿital thus chooses to imagine the relations with his surrounding world from within the delicate fabric of life in the shared spaces of Safed, Jerusalem, or Damascus—­with all of the ambivalence with which it is bound up. ­These dreams become the medium through which he can debate, despite the danger, with “an impor­tant palil.”

Chapter 6

“Jewish Philosophy” and the Politics of German-­Jewish Thought Between the World Wars Philipp von Wussow

Current debates on Jewish po­liti­cal thought often involve far-­reaching po­liti­cal claims about German-­Jewish philosophy of the 1920s and 1930s—­ for example, claims about the roads not taken, the radicalism, and the apoliti­ cal nature of Weimar-­era philosophical thought.1 At times, German-­Jewish philosophy between the world wars appears to function like a projection screen for all sorts of issues in con­temporary Jewish po­liti­cal thought. The downside to this appropriation is that the original prob­lems and fault lines of German-­Jewish philosophy in this period become less clear than ever. In this situation it seems helpful to recall some basic facts of German-­Jewish philosophy in the twentieth ­century—­its philosophical proj­ect, its understanding of Judaism, and its po­liti­cal ramifications. To be sure, German-­Jewish philosophy is not a homogeneous story. Linear modes of explanation are all too soon faced with the ­great variety of contexts of investigation and debate. Rather than providing a homogeneous and comprehensive account of German-­Jewish philosophy, one must instead study a wide network of writings, explanations, and perceptions. But despite the infinite variety of “Jewish philosophies,” one cannot help but recognize a few recurring patterns in the foundations, thematic concerns, and desires. Broadly speaking, ­there are two dif­fer­ent traditions of German-­Jewish philosophizing in this period: Jewish philosophies in the narrower sense, which

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remained connected to the fundamental prob­lem of the relation between Judaism and philosophy (exemplified by Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and their disciples and defectors), and the so-­called contributions to the Eu­ ro­pean scientific and cultural proj­ect of “theory,” which are notoriously difficult to situate in the Jewish context (exemplified by Edmund Husserl, Georg Simmel, and the Frankfurt School). The basic distinction between the two strands was well established in German-­Jewish thought before World War II, although ­u nder dif­fer­ent names. For example, Julius Guttmann referred to the “philosophy of Judaism” as opposed to “the contribution of Jewish thinkers to the philosophic ­labors of the Eu­ro­pean nations.”2 While the distinction was nearly forgotten ­after the Holocaust, it occasionally became vis­i­ble in the de­cades ­after 1945. When Theodor W. Adorno read Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, he reported back to Scholem in 1949 that he had thoroughly ­adopted it as his own “to the extent pos­si­ble for someone who does not speak Hebrew.”3 The expression is clearly meta­phorical, for the book was written in En­glish, not in Hebrew. Not speaking Hebrew references Adorno’s lack of familiarity with the Jewish contexts in which Scholem’s book is situated. The correspondence between the two navigates the fundamental difference between the kabbalist and the Freudo-­Marxist theorist, despite the commonality of being Jewish (and their common interest in preserving the legacy of Walter Benjamin). Historians of German-­Jewish thought occasionally remembered the old distinction between the two strands, such as Hans Liebeschütz in his polemical 1970 juxtaposition of Franz Rosenzweig, the archetype of a genuine Jewish phi­los­o­pher striving for a philosophical renewal of Judaism as “a force of life,” and Georg Simmel as the epitome of a “Jewish phi­los­o­pher without any Jewish content.”4 As this essay seeks to demonstrate, the analytic separation and functional coordination of the two strands is still helpful for understanding the course of German-­Jewish philosophy between the world wars. First, it clarifies what we talk about when we speak of “German-­Jewish philosophy” (including its problematic status as philosophy). Second, it helps to avoid certain misrepre­sen­ta­tions of the latter’s po­liti­cal dimension. Both traditions had a metapo­liti­cal strand, and both ­were replete with po­liti­cal ramifications even beyond the po­liti­cal writings in the narrower sense. The task is to locate the strategic points where ­these ramifications become vis­i­ble. However, the difference between the two strands does not correspond to a po­liti­cal divide, at least not in terms of po­liti­cal affiliations. The politics of German-­Jewish phi-



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losophy regulated the precise relationship between Jewish life and life in a non-­Jewish society. In other words, the difference between the two strands pertains to the respective understanding of the place of Judaism in modernity: The po­liti­cal question of German-­Jewish philosophy in the narrower sense was how to be Jews and phi­los­o­phers. Jewish philosophy sought to strike a balance between the demands of Jewish life and the demand to be a member of the non-­Jewish majority society.5 The other strand in German-­ Jewish thought entailed an act of conversion from Judaism to a new belief. At least virtually, its proponents ­were members of a ­f uture world society, in which the outer signs of Jewish difference would no longer be vis­i­ble. Despite the analytic separation of the two strands, they also have a lot in common. Both reflect the inner dialectic of German Jewry before the catastrophe, although the lines of their responses and their misconceptions may vary. And both strands ran into severe internal prob­lems. Furthermore, their difference does not correspond to a divide in philosophical lineages: Thinkers on both sides ­were pupils of neo-­Kantianism and phenomenology, the two major schools of German philosophy in the early twentieth c­ entury.

The Invention of Twentieth-­Century “Jewish Philosophy” The diffusion of Jewish philosophy in the twentieth c­ entury is a consequence of the paradox of “Jewish philosophy” from its beginning—­a unique historical phenomenon for which ­there is no equivalent in German, French, or Catholic philosophy. To begin with, none of the figures of twentieth-­century Jewish thought ever described themselves as “Jewish phi­los­o­phers.” Perhaps ­there are no “Jewish phi­los­o­phers” in Guttmann’s strict sense in modern thought. The term was in­ven­ted in the context of nineteenth-­century Wissenschaft des Judentums to describe the medieval Jewish tradition. To be sure, medieval “Jewish philosophy” was meant to provide a role model for German Jewry, but first and foremost the quest was purely historical. Medieval Jewish phi­los­o­phers as understood by the Wissenschaft des Judentums ­were Aristotelians, rationalists, and concerned with the question of how philosophy (the search for truth solely led by ­human reason) could be reconciled with the law (which was given by fact of revelation). It was in this sense that the term “Jewish philosophy” was first used in 1818 by Leopold Zunz.6 Salomon Munk wrote in 1849 regarding the expulsion of the Jews from Spain: “The history of ‘Jewish philosophy’ (if one may even use this

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term) is in fact closed now.”7 Isaac Husik, the ­great historian of medieval Jewish philosophy, wrote in 1916: “­There are Jews now and t­ here are phi­los­ o­phers, but ­there are no Jewish phi­los­o­phers and ­there is no Jewish philosophy.”8 According to Husik, even medieval Jewish philosophy could exist only ­because medieval thinkers ­were naïve. In the ultimate version of this topos, coined de­cades ­later by Friedrich Niewöhner, the paradox runs as follows: “Once ­there was a ‘Jewish philosophy’—­but the term ­didn’t exist. . . . ​­Today ­there is the term ‘Jewish philosophy’—­but the ­matter for which the term was coined no longer exists.”9 Initially, then, the term “Jewish philosophy” always and only referred to medieval thought. What led twentieth-­century thinkers to expand the term, using it to describe works written during their own time? ­There is no better witness to this pro­cess than Hermann Cohen, the main (and perhaps the only) contender for the title of a twentieth-­century “Jewish phi­los­o­pher” in Guttmann’s sense. In a 1904 article, Cohen referred to the prob­lem of Jewish philosophy as a continuous task. He argued for a “shift in the center of gravity” of scholarly work on Jewish philosophy “from history to systematics.” He was convinced that “the further development and continuity of Judaism is dependent on its philosophical foundation,” and this foundation needed to keep up with the general ethical and cultural development. But this scholarly task was not only an internal Jewish m ­ atter. Cohen also wanted to point out the “cultural value” (Kulturwert) of Judaism in order to “force [erzwingen] the re­spect of the Christian world.”10 He needed to show that the Jews, too, did have a philosophy. Such a Jewish philosophy was the highest pos­si­ble cultural achievement of Judaism. If this achievement would be accepted as the Jewish contribution to Eu­ro­pean culture, then the admission of the Jews into Eu­ro­pean majority socie­ties could no longer be denied. Following this line of argument, “Jewish philosophy” in the twentieth ­century started as a po­liti­cal proj­ect to facilitate Jewish assimilation. Cohen made ­these claims to support his practical demand for the establishment of a number of chairs for Jewish ethics and philosophy of religion at the Jewish theological seminaries in Germany. In 1919 one of t­ hese chairs, at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, was endowed to Julius Guttmann. Starting from Kant and Schleiermacher, Guttmann’s major works on Jewish philosophy outline a history of Jewish religious consciousness.11 A major innovation, particularly in his Philosophie des Judentums (1933), concerns the expansion of the historical task. The core of his proj­ect was still in medieval Jewish thought, but he expanded the historical scope to



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the period from biblical antiquity to modernity—­namely, to Hermann Cohen. Cohen seemed unmistakably close to Guttmann’s own proj­ect: “In his work the tendency to base Judaism philosophically on the ethico-­theological ideas of Kant . . . ​fi­nally found its systematic realization.”12 But Guttmann also sharply noticed Cohen’s tendency to dissolve the living God of Judaism into “an idea”: “Although he introduces into the idea of God the living substance of the religious imagination, and no longer holds back from speaking of God as a person, the methodological bases of this thought restrain him from the possibility of interpreting God as a Real­ity. . . . ​In his wonderfully religious structure, ­there remains an unbridgeable gap between the content of religion and the philosophic creation of concepts.”13 Leo Strauss, in his Philosophy and Law (1935), interpreted t­ hese lines as a “signpost,” for “Cohen is by no means the only one marked by the inability to ‘conceive of God as a real­ ity.’ ”14 He argued that the same prob­lem applied to Guttmann himself. The subsequent argument between Guttmann and Strauss explicated the ­great tension in the notion of modern “Jewish philosophy,” but also a fundamental agreement regarding the principal task and prob­lem. Guttmann was painstakingly correct: It is Cohen who marks the beginning of “Jewish philosophy” in the twentieth ­century, but he also seemed to mark an end point. A systematic phi­los­o­pher and a Jew passionately devoted to Jewish life and learning, he became the touchstone of “Jewish philosophy” in the twentieth c­ entury, to be carefully protected against all l­ater transpositions and distortions.15 ­After Cohen, Jewish philosophizing withdrew from the universities to the seminaries of Jewish learning, such as the Freie Jüdische Lehrhaus and the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (where Cohen taught ­after his departure from Marburg). Henceforth it largely remained separated from German academic philosophy. ­Those who remained in German academia w ­ ere phi­los­o­phers of Jewish origin, but rarely “Jewish phi­los­o­phers.” The ambiguous history of the term “Jewish philosophy” may induce us to bid farewell to this category. But we must not be pedantic, and historical concepts are rarely unambiguous. Perhaps, then, the impossibility of a “Jewish philosophy” in the strictest sense is the best guide to twentieth-­century German-­Jewish philosophy. In the fullest sense of the term, a Jewish phi­los­o­ pher would be a Jew and a phi­los­o­pher. This conjunction expresses an irresolvable tension between the two highest pursuits—­a tension between the word of God based on revelation, and the word of man based on the use of reason. Both pose a claim to universality, but both can exist only in conjunction with

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each other. Jewish philosophy, then, is a discourse on the reconcilability of Judaism and philosophy in view of its principal irreconcilability. We are ­little inclined ­today to recognize such claims to universality, as we start from a multitude of religions and philosophies. But despite their origins in par­tic­u­lar traditions and belongings, religion as well as philosophy are essentially universalistic according to their own premises. The best example for this peculiar blend of universalism and particularism is Hermann Cohen’s Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism—­a universal religion of reason “created” not by coincidence out of the sources of Judaism, and hence not a mere philosophy of Judaism according to its own claim.16 The topical question of how a par­tic­u­lar tradition can be universal has nowhere ­else been posed more thoroughly than in German-­Jewish philosophy. According to some voices in the German-­Jewish philosophical discourse, the secret is in the tension between the two ele­ments, neither of which can be reduced to the other: Judaism and philosophy, revelation and reason, Jerusalem and Athens.17 This life in the irresolvable tension also safeguards that neither of the two ele­ments can claim to be the sole ­bearer of truth. Such a tension stands in a double opposition to theocracies, in which all secular life is swallowed up by theology, and to thoroughly secular socie­ties, in which “revelations” emanate solely from the forms of ­human culture. ­Later advancements in Jewish philosophy that sought to build on the German-­Jewish model—in the United States, Israel, and elsewhere—­often found themselves leaning more strongly ­toward one side or another.

“Theory” If “Jewish philosophy” thus understood was at its core a discourse on the tension between, and pos­si­ble reconciliation of, philosophy and Judaism, then the proponents of “theory” are often distinguished by the fact that they ­were no longer concerned with the prob­lem of this relation. Much of the history of “theory” in modern Jewish thought can be best described as a series of attempts to evade the prob­lem—up to the point where Judaism makes a forceful reentry, as in a Freudian return of the repressed.18 The term “theory” is rather unfamiliar in the context of modern Jewish thought, but it is neither an academic everyday word nor an artificial technical term. It fills a void in the study of modern Jewish thought, for the phenom-



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enon it refers to has seemingly lacked the proper designation. Most of all, it provides a conceptual framework to describe ­those Jewish scholars and intellectuals who understood their work essentially as a contribution to the Eu­ro­pean proj­ect of science and culture in the early twentieth ­century. The respective personnel ­either have slipped through the net of Jewish intellectual history or ­were turned into the protagonists of a post-­Jewish counter-­canon of Jewishness. “Theory” describes both the scientific explanations and the g­ rand narratives (­grands récits) of the ­future that are based on a theory. Theory thus understood was a major tool to convert Jews into members of a ­future world society. T ­ here have been many categories from the beginning of the enterprise that sought to describe a correlation or even causality between theory and Judaism. ­These categories feed on the notion that, in some way or another, Judaism is a hidden source of the theoretical enterprise. The turn to theory can be understood as a consequence of social exclusion, as a heritage of traditional Jewish learning, a compensation for metaphysical homelessness, or an expression of Jewish self-­hatred. But most of all, it can be turned into a specific vantage point, such as in Georg Simmel’s so­cio­log­i­cal category of the “stranger,” who by virtue of his outsider position gains a special kind of epistemic objectivity.19 The counter-­canon of Jewishness often comes with genealogical efforts, such as in Hannah Arendt’s “hidden tradition” of Jewish pariahs like Heinrich Heine, Bernard Lazare, or Charlie Chaplin, in Isaac Deutscher’s “non-­ Jewish Jew,” who rejects normative Judaism and thereby remains true to the Jewish revolutionary heritage,20 or in George Steiner’s “Meta-­Rabbis,” who transpose the techniques of traditional Jewish learning onto the secular text of modernity.21 All ­these efforts are situated in highly specific theoretical and historical contexts and should not be dismissed too easily. But nor should one pass over the fact that the respective categories also have become ste­reo­t ypes that respond to a widespread confusion about philosophy and Judaism. In the end they are all part of the same epistemological prob­lem of conceptualizing “Jewish philosophy” in the twentieth ­century, and not its solution: One cannot work with such ste­reo­t ypes, and one cannot work without them. The categories to describe the relationship between philosophy and Judaism are painfully inaccurate, but they cannot simply be replaced by accurate ones. All the major terms are fundamentally ambiguous in at least one major re­spect:

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They all need to stipulate some sort of correlation between the ­great works of the mind and the Jewish origin or belonging of their creators, but ­there is no clear princi­ple to substantiate this correlation. Hannah Arendt ran into this prob­lem when—­shortly before the publication of her essay “The Jew as Pariah”—­she learned that Charlie Chaplin was not even Jewish. She famously added a footnote that would allow her to both save face (­after all, she had fallen for a projection of Jewishness) and to hold on to her theory. As she argued, Chaplin may not have been Jewish, but he nevertheless symbolized Jewish traits and be­hav­iors: “Even if not himself a Jew, he has epitomized in an artistic form a character born of the Jewish pariah mentality.”22 Faced with this possibility, we are no longer surprised by the question of ­whether ­there may be Jewish non-­Jews—­namely, ­whether a figure such as Jean-­Paul Sartre belongs to the Jewish canon.23 Other acts of inclusiveness refer to Friedrich Nietz­sche and even Heidegger.24 But at this point we have clearly lost our way. The infinite expansion of “Jewishness” is part of the prob­lem of how to conceptualize “Jewish philosophy,” and not its solution. Despite their widespread indifference to Judaism—­often complemented by a general repudiation of religion—­many phi­los­o­phers of Jewish origin who belonged to the enterprise of theory had strong opinions on Jewish ­matters. At the very least, they had been drawn into ­these ­matters by way of antisemitic prejudice against their works. A somewhat typical albeit by no means univocal reaction—­which became formative for the theoretical enterprise—­ was to opt for the dissolution of Judaism and the erasure of all vis­i­ble markers of Jewishness. And the preferential means to facilitate this dissolution was to provide an all-­encompassing theory. The basic operation is that religious or in some way religiously impregnated concepts are being transposed into social concepts. This semantic transposition was designed to erase all traces of origin and tradition. As indicated, the term “theory” designates not only the explanatory modes of science but also the ­great narratives of the ­f uture that ­were based on a theory. As Edmund Husserl explained in retrospect, the overarching goal of the entire proj­ect of modern science had been to provide “an infinite, and yet—in spite of its infinity—­self-­enclosed, coherent systematic theory which, proceeding from axiomatic concepts and propositions, permits the deductively univocal construction of any conceivable shape which can be drawn in space.”25 The promise of theory is the mating of infinitude and systematic coherence. It is defined by its ideal completeness, despite its princi-



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pal openness to “any conceivable shape” that may be drawn in the ­f uture. For the sake of its ideal completeness, scientific theory needed to be axiomatic and to proceed in a strictly deductive manner from t­ here. Husserl was in shock when he realized that theoretical viewpoints ­were in “constant change”: Perhaps it was wrong to speak of theories “as objectively valid unities instead of merely as cultural formations?”26 For theory was conceptualized as a universal metalanguage that would render all outer signs of Jewishness invisible. Its completeness and objective validity would safeguard that ­these signs would dis­appear forever. As a ­matter of course, the turn to theory was not in all cases a ­matter of disavowing Judaism, but the correlation between the theoretical desire and the erasure of Judaism helps to decipher some of the greatest works of the time. Husserl did not like the idea that this ­earlier understanding of theory had failed, but ironically he articulated it more thoroughly in his late writings than anyone ­else. And no one ­else showed more clearly how theory was ensnared by the very culture it was meant to found. In other words, he now used the vigor of rigorous science to describe the failure of rigorous science. Husserl’s ­great mission was to provide Eu­ro­pean thought with a foundation it had hitherto lacked, and he did so upon the highest princi­ples of Eu­ro­ pean thought itself. He held on to this idea even in the most profound crisis of science, when Eu­ro­pean thought seemed to have succumbed to skepticism, irrationalism, and mysticism.27 Most impor­tant for him, science had lost its share in the cultural production of meaning, its significance for life (Lebensbedeutsamkeit). As he grimly concluded in one of his numerous drafts on the prob­lem from the mid-1930s: “Philosophy as science, as a serious, rigorous, yes apodictically rigorous science—­the dream is over.”28 Even in the failure and the untimely renewal of his scientific proj­ect, Husserl was exemplary for the course of German-­speaking Jewry, in all of its paradoxes and contradictions. Moreover, he habitually seemed to be always a step ahead of this general course. The setting of the Jewish entry into the German university system at the beginning of the twentieth ­century was replete with paradoxes. Jews ­were often described as innovators and creators of new academic fields, but they also had a strange reputation (especially among antisemites) for lacking originality. They ­were both self-­styled outsiders and found­ers of ­great intellectual movements. They ­were post-­Jewish in all their striving and their belonging, and yet they ­were widely perceived as Jewish. Often this perception referred to alleged Jewish gestures and movements. We are likely to understand this

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t­ oday as an expression of antisemitic mindsets—as a projection—­but it was a ­matter of course for Jewish friends and colleagues as well. And it was tragic, for the outer signs of Jewishness remained vis­i­ble for non-­Jews and Jews alike. Eventually, the continuous visibility of Jewishness marked the limit of the universalistic proj­ect of theory. The greatest example of this largely forgotten history is Georg Simmel, the sociologist and phi­los­o­pher of culture who died shortly before the end of World War I. In retrospect, Simmel was often cited as the high representative of every­ thing that had gone wrong with German Jewry prior to 1933. Gershom Scholem named him as the single figure who represented the failure of the German-­Jewish “symbiosis.” As he quipped in his landmark piece on the failures of the German-­Jewish “dialogue,” “Simmel was indeed a truly symbolic phenomenon for all that of which I speak ­here, ­because he was that phenomenon of a man in whom the substance of Judaism still shows most visibly when the latter had arrived at the pure nadir of complete annihilation.”29 This visibility of Judaism in physiognomic, gestural, and mimic expression is not merely an antisemitic attribution, although antisemitism certainly played a role. As Hans Liebeschütz noted, friends and enemies alike always saw Simmel as a Jew.30 He seemed to embody the paradox of an eminently Jewish thinker without any Jewish content. Martin Buber provided a classical reference for the perception of Simmel’s alleged Jewish gestures. As he told Michael Landmann in 1951: “Without ever having been in close touch with Orthodox Jews, Simmel did have Jewish thought-­forms and hand movements. ‘One could however get from the same premises to the opposite result,’ he could say in his lecture: that is the Talmudic pilpul. He thereby stretched out the palm of his hands.”31 Perhaps Buber’s characterization says more about Buber himself than about Simmel. But he was hardly alone in this re­spect, and this is an integral part of Simmel’s difficult legacy: He was the figure who invited every­one to reveal their own biases about assimilated German Jewry. Simmel rarely wrote about Jewish topics, and when he did, it was in rather negative terms.32 The exception is the famous excursus on the “stranger” in his Sociology (1908). This excursus is an extraordinary document of evading the Jewish question and talking about it at the same time. Simmel’s task was to make the Jewish question invisible by way of so­cio­log­ i­cal theory. The theoretical form provides a twofold abstraction. First, the Jew is turned into the stranger. The purpose of this abstraction is not clear from the outset—­for every­one knew that the stranger was Jewish, and Sim-



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mel gave a brief hint in the text.33 Second, the stranger is turned into a formal social position. For the excursus is part of a larger chapter entitled “Space and the Spatial Ordering of Society,” and Simmel’s entire enterprise was to dissolve the concrete shape of the Jew into a formal social position of strangeness. The stranger is the German Jew in his utmost theoretical abstraction. The model of the stranger was the wandering Jew who was about to ­settle in Germany: “the stranger is not understood ­here as wanderer . . . ​, one who arrives ­today and leaves tomorrow, but as one who comes ­today and stays tomorrow—­the potential wanderer, so to speak, who has not completely overcome the loosening of coming and ­going, though not moving on.”34 Simmel based this claim on current notions of “nomadic residuals” in assimilated Eu­ ro­pean Jewry, which had a long lifespan from the late nineteenth ­century to the heyday of the theories of antisemitism in the early 1940s. Simmel’s figure of the stranger gave this half nomadic, half assimilated character its face. The stranger was an allegory of the assimilated German Jew: He was no longer moving, but potentially he still could move at any given moment. Simmel sought to generalize this inside-­outside position with regard to a peculiar epistemic advantage of the Jews. Perhaps the most striking feature of the stranger is his alleged “objectivity.” As Simmel wrote: “By not being radically committed to individual components or one-­sided tendencies of the group, the stranger ­faces all of them with the special attitude of the ‘objective’ person.”35 The Jew was the archetype of a participant observer—­ not disengaged, as Simmel hastened to add, but nevertheless open and ­free in a way that no autochthonous German could ever be. This notion has been of ­great importance for historians of Jewish sociologists, who argued that being dif­fer­ent, being social outsiders, turned the German Jews into rational observers of the society that repelled them. As the sociologist René König put it: “As opposed to the naïve member of society, the Jew quickly sees through all ­those cultural ­matters of fact that go around in a given society and prevent rational insight. ­After all, he is bound to experience his otherness ­because the ­others constantly reproach him with it. As long as he is subject to discrimination, the Jew is superior to the other members of society, ­because he sees what is par­tic­u­lar about this society by being marked as dif­fer­ent by his environment.”36 ­Needless to say, perhaps, the social position as an insider-­outsider did not make the Jew any more objective and rational than his autochthonous counterpart. More likely his desire to become a full member of society would

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rather obfuscate his objectivity, if ­there ­were such a ­thing in ­matters of social life. The abstraction from the Jew to the stranger and from the stranger to a formal position in the spatial order of society, then, has a clear purpose: It served to render this striving to belong invisible. The invisibility of desire would further the full admission of the Jews into the German social fabric. The obvious logical flaw in this reasoning is that the full admission would also strip them of their objectivity. Simmel’s German Jews ­were caught in a double bind to seek for full admission and to retain their outside status. Simmel died in 1918, just like Hermann Cohen, and in many re­spects their deaths mark the end of an epoch. During the Weimar Republic, the visibility of Jewishness had largely become a ­matter of course, and the matrix of inclusion and exclusion had shifted: Jews ­were fully equal before the law, but antisemitism became stronger than ever. But the theoretical enterprise largely remained intact despite the changes in the historical matrix. Theories functioned as universal metalanguages that ­were to render invisible all markers of origin and par­tic­u­lar belonging. This purpose and this formal structure of the theoretical proj­ect can still be found in Leo Löwenthal’s conversion from a syncretistic Jewish orthodoxy to the Freudo-­Marxist orthodoxy of the Frankfurt School, the pro­cess of which is codified in a series of materialistic articles on German-­Jewish thought written between 1926 and 1932.37 It can be found in the works of Otto Neurath, a core figure of the Vienna Circle, who projected himself as an impartial “expert” on Jewish ­matters in a pseudonymous sociotechnical report on the colonization of Palestine.38 And it can be found in the writings of Theodor W. Adorno, whose task was to rephrase the “contents” of Judaism in a critical theory of society.39 The difficulties always boil down to the question of how the “contents” of Judaism could be preserved in the form of theory. It did not occur to the proponents of theory that ­these “contents” have their own peculiar form, namely, that they are based on revelation, and hence on a tradition of unquestionable authority according to their own claim. They could not imagine a situation in which the superiority of the theoretical form over the original form of religion would no longer be guaranteed from the outset—­ hence the complete lack of an argument in this re­spect. In the end, many of the difficulties of the theoretical enterprise can be traced back to a failed critique of religion, which draws from Marx, Nietz­ sche, and Freud. Religion merely has a narcotic purpose40 and must be overcome to prepare for the arrival of a new man—­the man of communist society, the overman, or the man of unprejudiced science.41 It is far from clear how



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this critique can be saved from itself ­today, but it is certainly useful to acquaint ourselves with pos­si­ble alternatives.

The Philosophy of Judaism We initially seem to be on safer ground when we turn to the other strand of German-­Jewish philosophy in the twentieth ­century, namely, Jewish philosophy in a narrower sense: not just philosophy written by Jews, but rather what Julius Guttmann called the philosophy of Judaism: Since the days of antiquity, Jewish philosophy was essentially a philosophy of Judaism. Even during the ­Middle Ages—­which knew something like a total, all-­embracing culture based on religion—­ philosophy rarely transcended its religious center. This religious orientation constitutes the distinctive character of Jewish philosophy, ­whether it was concerned with using philosophic ideas to establish or justify Jewish doctrines, or with reconciling the contradictions between religious truth and scientific truth. . . . ​Armed with the authority of a super­natural revelation, religion lays claim to an unconditioned truth of its own, and thereby becomes a prob­lem for philosophy.42 Jewish philosophy, then, is defined by Guttmann as “the interpretation and justification of the Jewish religion.”43 This understanding of Jewish philosophy ­faces a number of objections, too. Most of all, it can be argued that ­there are no “Jewish phi­los­o­phers” thus understood in the twentieth ­century, with the pos­si­ble exception of Hermann Cohen. Hence we are faced with the notion of German-­Jewish philosophy without any “Jewish phi­los­o­phers” in the strictest sense as a proper starting point of reflection. But we inevitably must seek to modernize Guttmann’s understanding of Jewish philosophy and make it more flexible, so that it would also include figures like Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Leo Strauss, and Alexander Altmann. German-­Jewish philosophy thus understood is not necessarily religious thought, but it is concerned at least with the prob­lem of how philosophy relates to Judaism. The ­great writings on this prob­lem hold many surprises in their modes of argument and self-­assurance, and often it seems that they form a principal alternative to the ­grand theoretical narratives of Marx, Nietz­sche,

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and Freud. But we should not be blind to the fact that the enterprise ran into severe prob­lems of its own. Even the philosophy of Judaism strug­gled to maintain balance or a tension between the two pursuits. This tension became palpable in Guttmann’s methodological reflections on the task of Jewish philosophy: “In order to determine the relationships between ­these two types of truth, phi­los­o­phers have tried to clarify, from a methodological point of view, the distinctiveness of religion. This is a modern development; ­earlier periods did not attempt to differentiate between the methods of philosophy and religion, but sought to reconcile the contents of their teachings. Philosophy was thus made subservient to religion; and philosophical material borrowed from the outside was treated accordingly.”44 Guttmann started from the notion of “two types of truth,” and he explicated two dif­fer­ent ways of relating them to each other: a modern approach that was primarily concerned with the methodological “distinctiveness” of religion vis-­à-­vis science, and a premodern (“­earlier”) approach that was concerned with the reconciliation of their respective “contents.” Guttmann’s own proj­ect was initially closer to the first approach, but in the course of his work he was increasingly drawn to the second. His philosophy of Judaism is essentially an attempt to reconcile ­these two unequal approaches. Paradoxically, however, this reconciliation leads to a mutual suppression of philosophy and Judaism. Judaism is the subject ­matter and content, while its peculiar form remains irrelevant. Philosophy is relegated to a method: ­There is no freedom of philosophizing beyond its methodological role in “the interpretation and justification of the Jewish religion.” Guttmann’s methodological reflections point to a deeper issue in the historiography of German-­Jewish philosophy, with its methodological uncertainty over the precise way in which Judaism and philosophy relate to each another. Ultimately not even Cohen’s Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism ­really fits the description of a “philosophy of Judaism”: It is a systematic exposition of universal religion that draws on the sources of Judaism, and hence not a philosophy of Judaism proper. Guttmann’s historiographical difficulties became more severe when, for the Hebrew (and subsequent En­glish) version of his book, he sought to integrate Franz Rosenzweig into his account. Rosenzweig marked nothing less than the end of Jewish philosophy as Guttmann knew it: “If it once more arises to continue its work, it ­will develop ­under entirely new conditions.”45 Guttmann sharply described the abyss between Rosenzweig and his pre­de­ces­sors. But he did not see that the new beginning, rather than in the distant ­future, had already been made by Rosenzweig.



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To be sure, Guttmann had good reason to be challenged by Rosenzweig, the ­great proponent of individual “experience” as the starting point of Jewish philosophizing. In his “new theological rationalism,” Rosenzweig’s strategy to keep the two ele­ments of philosophy and theology together remained largely rhetorical. The principal claim is that philosophy and theology need each other—­most of all, that philosophy needs theology for the sake of its systematic integrity, and ultimately of its own scientific character.46 ­These rhetorical figures of mutual need point to the difficulty of creating a stability between the two sides in twentieth-­century Jewish philosophy. But Rosenzweig also provided a new foundation for Judaism, which remained wholly inaccessible to Guttmann. Whereas Guttmann largely remained true to neo-­ Kantianism, Rosenzweig described Judaism in phenomenological categories, basing it on individual experience rather than on a transcendental subject. Traces of this approach can also be found in the works of Alexander Altmann, who hailed from a long rabbinic ­family tradition and needed no “return” to Judaism. As his first published writing, “Metaphysics and Religion” (1930), shows, Altmann was not the typical Rabbinerdoktor. He started from a con­temporary philosophical issue, namely, Max Scheler’s return to metaphysics—­after all, Scheler’s phenomenology was also the subject of his dissertation (Die Grundlagen der Wertethik: Wesen, Wert, Person. Max Schelers Erkenntnis-­und Seinslehre in kritischer Analyse, 1931). The argument in “Metaphysics and Religion” runs as follows: If it is pos­si­ble to return to metaphysics, why should it be impossible to return to religion? Moreover, the return to metaphysics is doomed to fail due to its inner contradictions, but this failure does not affect religion. At last, the return to religion is pos­si­ble only on orthodox premises.47 This foundation of orthodoxy out of the aporias of Eu­ro­pean metaphysics is brilliant, but it comes with a slight hint of epistemic relativism. The full consequence of Rosenzweig’s endeavor was drawn by Leo Strauss in his introduction to Philosophy and Law (1935), which turned the Enlightenment critique of religion against itself. Strauss made the argument in ­favor of religion—­namely, of Orthodox Judaism—­with the opposite intention (to justify the phi­los­o­pher’s atheism before the Jewish tradition); but he made this argument more thoroughly than anyone ­else. As he claimed, the Enlightenment has never addressed the ultimate premise of orthodoxy, namely, “the irrefutable premise that God is omnipotent and His ­will unfathomable. If God is omnipotent, then miracles and revelations in general, and in par­tic­u­lar the Biblical miracles and revelations, are pos­si­ble.” In other words: The

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Enlightenment refutation of orthodoxy has never even been carried out. Orthodoxy rests on the belief that God is omnipotent and unfathomable; this premise cannot be refuted; hence “all individual assertions resting on this premise are unshakable.” 48 The argument has both its strengths and its weaknesses. It is built on the demonstration that the thesis of God’s omnipotence cannot be refuted; but the price of this demonstration is that the thesis cannot be proven to be true. Even if the Enlightenment was wrong in its pretension that it had refuted orthodoxy, that did not make orthodoxy right. All Strauss could do was to refute the refutation, and he took this double refutation to a new level. As he continued, the Enlightenment may have failed to refute orthodoxy, but by attacking it defended itself against the possibility of orthodoxy. Moreover, the Enlightenment arguments against orthodoxy ­were valid only on the premises of modern natu­ral science; ­these arguments collapsed once it was discovered that modern natu­ral science is but a “world-­view” (Ernst Cassirer). As such, it cannot make a coherent argument against the “world-­ view” of creation, miracles, and revelation.49 German-­Jewish philosophy between the world wars is situated in an epistemic moment when the critique of religion as professed by Marx, Nietz­sche, and Freud was no longer ­viable. In this situation, it all of a sudden became pos­si­ble to return to Judaism, and to do so upon the highest princi­ples of philosophy. Returning to religion, however, changes religion from the ground up. Thinkers like Franz Rosenzweig or Martin Buber could not simply return to the law of their ancestors. Inasmuch as they wished to remain phi­los­o­ phers, they needed to articulate the return in terms of German (viz. Eu­ro­ pean) philosophy, even as they often sought to move away from ­there. The task was to reconcile their Jewish belief with their Eu­ro­pean sensibilities and their modes of argument and certainty. The place where this reconciliation would take place was the realm of personal experience. But the reliance on personal experience also made it difficult to account for the real­ity of God, which they sought to articulate with ever-­greater urgency. The philosophy of Judaism, too, is subject to a fatal dialectic. It cannot live without a vital and in some way presupposed or postulated tradition, but such a vital tradition can never be presupposed or postulated by phi­los­ o­phers. Inasmuch as they sought to remain phi­los­o­phers, they could retrieve the contents of Judaism only in the mode of personal experience, but t­ hese contents precede individual experience according to their own claim. This is the prob­lem with the phenomenological foundation of religion: It must seek



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to preserve the objective contents of religion in the mode of subjective experience. How ­these objective contents of religion can be preserved as objective contents remains an open question. The last thinker who did not have ­these prob­lems was Hermann Cohen—­ perhaps the only real example of a “Jewish phi­los­o­pher” in the twentieth ­century, although he ultimately seemed to functionalize the God of the Torah into an idea. Cohen had obtained a Jewish education, but he abandoned his studies at the Jüdisch-­Theologische Seminar in Breslau to excel as a systematic phi­los­o­pher. As is well known, he was the first Jew to obtain a chair of philosophy at a German university. In the following forty years, he wrote two three-­volume systems of philosophy as well as numerous articles on Jewish ­matters, and ­there was an intricate connection between ­these two pursuits. And yet he became a “Jewish phi­los­o­pher” only in his late work, when he turned to the systematic foundation of Judaism. Cohen’s question was: Which place would religion occupy in the system of philosophy? As a staunch neo-­Kantian, he started from a tripartite division of philosophy into logic, ethics, and aesthetics. At first he sought to locate religion in ethics, ­until he realized that religion does not work as a purely ethical ­matter. Then he experimented with the addition of a fourth part of the system—­a move that would extend the pillars of Eu­ro­pean science and culture with regard to Judaism. At last, in the introduction to the Religion of Reason, Cohen briefly rehearsed the systematic question once again, only to abort it once and for all. The argument goes as follows: If religion is a part of ethics, it lacks in­de­pen­dence; if it becomes a systematic part of its own, it limits the validity of ethics as the comprehensive teaching of all ­things ­human. Moreover, religion itself would be in danger if it ­were to become systematically in­de­pen­ dent, namely, that it could “accommodate itself ” (sich einrichten).50 Hence it should rather retain its precarious systematic status than come to rest in the system. This resolute nonsolution of the systematic prob­lem of religion created the basis for a new interpretation of the contents of Judaism in Cohen’s Religion of Reason. Often this interpretation seems rather dubious, but in a way it simply follows the plan of the book to create a universal religion of reason from the sources of Judaism. For once the precarious balance between philosophy and Judaism was nearly successful. Cohen was the only one fully situated in both worlds—­the Jewish world and the world of theory. He was a phi­los­o­pher without disavowing Judaism and a Jew without disavowing philosophy. Cohen was also the last to bridge the institutional difference between Jewish philosophy and German academic philosophy. ­After his death in 1918,

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Jewish philosophy was situated in Jewish institutions such as the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin or the Freie Jüdische Lehrhaus in Frankfurt. Figures such as Ernst Cassirer, on the other hand, fully belonged to academic philosophy. A clear indication was that Cassirer mentioned Judaism in his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms only in the framework of a general theory of myth, whereas he had omitted it entirely in his preliminary writings of the early 1920s. This separation between Jewish philosophy and German academic philosophy during the Weimar Republic, which stood in an uneasy relation to the difference between the two strands in German-­ Jewish philosophy, had a long afterlife in the de­cades ­after World War II and the Holocaust. Most notably, it explains why some of the greatest works of interwar Jewish philosophy never found a philosophical readership beyond their smaller contexts of argument and debate.

“Jewish Philosophy” A ­ fter 1945 ­ fter the Holocaust, the Weimar-­era division between the two strands of A German-­Jewish philosophy was no longer vis­i­ble in the wider perception, although it did not altogether dis­appear. In general, German-­Jewish philosophy was no longer the predominant mode of Jewish philosophizing. It was absorbed partly by machshevet yisrael in Israel and “Jewish thought” in North Amer­i­ca, and partly by German philosophy seeking to come to terms with its own Jewish past. Especially in Germany, the understanding of “Jewish philosophy” was almost exclusively focused on ­those who had been persecuted and exiled by the National Socialists, and who had returned, died, or found new places of work in the meantime. This new focus led to a collapse of the distinction between German-­Jewish philosophy in the narrower sense and philosophy written by Jews in the context of Eu­ro­pean “theory” and science. “Jewish phi­los­o­phers” ­were now an indiscriminate group of thinkers that included Theodor W. Adorno and Hannah Arendt as well as Martin Buber, and Karl Löwith as well as Gershom Scholem. ­There is perhaps no better example for the shift of attention than the case of Löwith, a phi­los­o­pher and convert to Protestantism who had always maintained a critical distance from Judaism and Jewish thought and was turned into a Jew only by the National Socialists. During his years in exile, he was far more concerned with nineteenth-­century philosophy of history. When he spoke of Jewish m ­ atters, he was amused that the Jews w ­ ere so ex-



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ceedingly rational.51 ­After his return to Germany in 1952, he suddenly came to be regarded as a “Jewish phi­los­o­pher.” This was due in part to the administrative procedures of restitution, and in part to the changed perception of Jews in Germany ­after the Holocaust. Jewish philosophy came to be defined by the phi­los­o­pher’s fate of expulsion and exile (and in some cases, death). This perception has had a long afterlife in postwar German thought. Jürgen Habermas, one of the staunchest advocates of German-­Jewish philosophy ­after the Holocaust, still defended Löwith’s inclusion in the Jewish canon in a 2012 conversation: “Each of the émigrés could only return as a Jew ­after 1945. No ­matter what ­else he thought or believed . . . ​­after the Holocaust each of the returnees was defined as a Jew by his po­liti­cal fate.”52 The remark describes well how Jewish phi­los­o­phers w ­ ere perceived in postwar Germany, but it omits the extent to which this perception had been fostered by Habermas’s own writings on Jewish philosophy. An unmistakable sign is that he counted both Adorno and Scholem among the “Jewish phi­los­o­phers,” and even claimed to “continue” the tradition they seemed to represent,53 whereas both Adorno and Scholem themselves ­were more cautious with this affiliation. Their caution is also reflected in the fact that they never referred to Walter Benjamin as a “Jewish phi­los­o­pher.” Their task was to canonize—or “enforce” (durchsetzen), as Adorno quipped—­Benjamin as a phi­los­o­pher.54 This inconspicuous claim, which accompanied their editions of Benjamin’s writings and correspondences, forms an unsaid precondition for his eventual perception as a “Jewish phi­los­o­ pher.” Jewish phi­los­o­phers, thus perceived, transcended the borders of German academic philosophy and Judaism alike. In the meantime, Benjamin has become the role model for this new type of “Jewish phi­los­o­pher,” with his literary versatility, his playful references to the Jewish tradition, and his fate of exile and untimely death. He speaks to a wide range of professional border-­crossers in the academic world ­today.55 The reception of Walter Benjamin also testifies to a certain fetish character of German-­Jewish philosophy. It is this fetishization of German-­Jewish phi­los­o­phers that precedes and prepares the way for the current attributions of vari­ous po­liti­cal teachings to their philosophies. It bids us to come to a better understanding of the original prob­lems of German-­ Jewish philosophy in the twentieth ­century.

Chapter 7

Empire of Charity

The Politics of American Jewish Philanthropy in Interwar Poland Rebecca Kobrin

In 1904 scholar Halford Mackinder argued that whoever controlled Eastern Eu­rope had the geo­graph­i­cal resources to rule the world.1 Indeed, this young geographer’s argument became a power­f ul guide ­behind the United States’ twentieth-­century policy that both geography and ­peoples ­were central to po­liti­cal stability in this region. 2 This notion was constantly deployed and reshaped during the twentieth ­century, also known as “the American ­Century,” as the rising influence of the United States in international geopolitics and world affairs transformed the world. As historian Akira Iriye argues, American influence was spread not only through direct governmental interactions, but also through the dramatic growth of American nongovernmental organ­izations (NGOs) that operated alongside formal state bodies despite proclaiming their activities as apo­liti­cal.3 How did Jews figure into the United States’ expanding po­liti­cal influence in the twentieth ­century, particularly in regions like Eastern Eu­rope? By examining the active role Amer­i­ca’s Jews played in the expansion of American influence in Eastern Eu­rope following the First World War, this chapter uses American Jewish overseas philanthropy in interwar Poland to shed light on the relationship between philanthropy and the practice of Jewish politics. In this moment of rising American international influence, Jews acted through organ­izations like the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, founded in 1914, by throwing themselves into the economic and



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po­liti­cal reconstruction of the region and sending funds, experts and volunteers to rebuild the region from the bottom up.4 Casting their activities as part of a longer tradition of Jewish philanthropic support for their coreligionists in need, Amer­i­ca’s Jews capitalized on their connection to the American polity, prompting Poles to see their activism in po­liti­cal terms rather than as neutral relief. The following discussion departs from other discussions of Jews and twentieth-­century global politics in that it does not address Zionism or the founding of the State of Israel. At its core, this chapter argues for the need to expand what constitutes “politics” in twentieth-­century Jewish history by looking beyond the effort to establish a sovereign state for the Jewish ­people and think about the ways in which American Jews, through their philanthropic organ­izations and distribution of dollars, engaged in state-­building and po­liti­cal debates as they sought to incorporate Jews into the multiethnic Second Polish Republic. Despite the fact that American Jewish philanthropic organ­izations claimed to be apo­liti­cal, ­these organ­izations used their affiliation with the United States and the power of their dollars to force shifts in governance both within the Polish Jewish community and within the broader Second Polish Republic. To be sure, one can find many discussions of Jewish philanthropy in Jewish communal and social history, but rarely does it surface in academic discussions about modern Jewish politics. By considering American Jewish philanthropic work within the realm of Jewish politics, one can clearly see how American Jews must be seen as part of a larger American proj­ect to engage and reshape the new polities of Eastern Eu­rope. The ways in which Amer­i­ca’s Jews used the dollars at their fingertips to force change both within the Jewish community and beyond anticipates how polities like the United States exercised “soft power” diplomacy in the second half of the twentieth ­century. While the term “soft power” is rarely deployed to discuss activism in realms below the nation-­state, American Jewish philanthropists demonstrate the many levels on which soft power can function as American Jews used influence, access to funds, and expertise to reshape local and national politics in the Second Polish Republic.5 Capturing a vision of Jewish philanthropy and its po­liti­cal implications in Eastern Eu­rope are two 1919 headlines commemorating the visit of one American Jew to his former home in Bialystok. “Salvation has arrived,” blared the 1919 headline of Dos naye lebn (The New Life), the most popu­lar Yiddish newspaper in Bialystok, Poland. Salvation came in the ­human form of an American named David Sohn. Sohn, who had immigrated to New York a

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de­cade ­earlier, returned to Poland as the representative of the Bialystoker Relief Committee, a charity organ­ization founded in New York by Jewish émigrés from this Polish city to collect and bring money to Poland to rebuild their former home.6 Sohn’s mission was to distribute more than two hundred thousand dollars in cash to needy individuals and communal institutions. Sohn successfully used the dollars at his disposal to help reor­ga­nize the divided Jewish community and negotiate the release of several Jewish prisoners being held by Rus­sian revolutionary forces.7 While some Jewish leaders ­were outraged by his dealings with the Bolsheviks, overall Sohn saw his mission as to help as many Jews in Bialystok as pos­si­ble, and he thus was painted in messianic hues by the Yiddish press. Bialystok’s Polish press, on the other hand, portrayed him quite differently: Dziennik Białostocki (Bialystok Daily News) referred to him as a Jewish po­liti­cal activist from Amer­i­ca (“działacz Żydowski w Ameryce”) or a delegate of the American Jewish mission (“delegat amerykańskiej zydowskiej misji”), constructing him as a subversive po­liti­cal agent rather than a benevolent, apo­liti­cal relief worker.8 The conflicting images of Sohn—as a redemptive figure on the one hand, or as a subversive po­liti­cal agent on the other—­were echoed throughout Poland as the distribution of funds enmeshed representatives of American Jewish philanthropic organ­izations in the contentious “reconstruction of nations.”9 The First World War created an unpre­ce­dented Jewish welfare crisis in Eastern Eu­rope, with millions dead, homeless, unemployed, and starving.10 With national borders in flux, civil war raging, and Jewish communal resources totally depleted, Jews in this war-­ravaged region turned to compatriots in the United States for help. American Jewry responded to their calls, raising millions, which they sent through organ­izations such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (hereafter JDC) and hundreds of small landsmanshaftn, Jewish hometown associations. As Derek Penslar contends, ­these distribution missions show that the “application of Jewish power” (prior to the establishment of the State of Israel) was primarily economic in nature and was expressed chiefly through Jewish philanthropic organ­ izations.11 While scholars have long commented on American Jews’ overseas philanthropic work, they often relied on their subjects’ description of their activism as apo­liti­cal charity work and rarely looked at the po­liti­cal implications of ­these financial distributions.12 The power of Amer­i­ca’s Jews and their philanthropy in the Second Polish Republic was rooted in the acute poverty of this new polity and the strength of the US dollar.13 In 1921 unemployment was rampant, and the American dollar was worth more than 4,550 Pol-



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ish marks; it would climb to be worth more than 23,000 Polish marks by 1923. As Berlin’s Yiddish newspaper Der Weg commented, it was practically impossible to “find a ­family in Poland or Lithuania that is not being helped in one way or another by relatives overseas.”14 As a result, representatives of American Jewish philanthropies ­were formidable forces, enabling the redevelopment of Jewish communal life in this new East Eu­ro­pean nation. American Jews played a key role in the first transports of American flour, clothing, and aid to Poland ­after the war. Through their distinct rituals of distribution, representatives of American Jewish charities, at times wearing American military uniforms or carry­ing American flags, drew on their connection to Amer­i­ca and its power as they as sought to better the lives of impoverished Jews. As they helped the community rebuild, they encouraged the incorporation of American modes of organ­ization into Polish Jewish institutional life. In recent years scholars have begun to examine the American empire. Yet few have researched Jews’ role, both real and ­imagined, in the expansion of American power. This expansion took place in many ways; as historian Victoria de Grazia contends, and we ­will miss them, if we hold “orthodox definitions [of empire].” American power was solidified in Western Eu­rope, she argues, “by export[ing] its civil society in tandem with . . . ​ [its] economic exports,”15 while in Eastern Europe—of which the Second Polish Republic was the largest polity—­American power was not felt through the acquisition of products no one could afford. Rather it was experienced through the distribution of American aid.

Rethinking Soft Power from Below the Nation-­State American Jews appreciated the opportunity the Second Polish Republic, in theory, offered its new Jewish citizens. Created out the remnants of the failed Habsburg and Tsarist empires, the Second Polish Republic represented a radical new experiment in East Eu­ro­pean Jewish life as a new demo­cratic po­ liti­cal entity where Jews not only ­were citizens but also constituted a key minority voting bloc in a multiethnic East Eu­ro­pean state.16 Through their distribution of funds, and by sending experts to rebuild the community, American Jews demonstrated their understanding of “soft power” as a means to help Jews integrate into the new Polish nation. I draw the term “soft power” from the 1990 work of Harvard po­liti­cal scientist Joseph R. Nye, who coined this term to explore the ability of a country to persuade another country to

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do what it wants without military force. Nye suggested the need for new visions of how “power” operates and is perceived on the ground.17 While the concept of soft power is usually deployed only in relation to nation-­states, I believe that it is also useful for understanding po­liti­cal dynamics operating below the state, as American groups actively pursued programs on the local level to promote the ­great mainstay of twentieth-­century US foreign policy: liberal internationalism.18 Built on Woodrow Wilson’s vision of international cooperation and the need for a global system of stable liberal democracies to prevent war, soft power eschews use of military power and deploys instead trade, foreign aid, and the spread of American values through nongovernmental organ­izations to promote democracy, ethnic self-­determination, ­free trade, and cap­i­tal­ist economic development. In the historical epoch that I study in Poland, as groups strug­gled for power in a newly established multiethnic state, American Jews strategically used the disbursement of millions of philanthropic dollars to promote the formation of fresh alliances and new modes of communal governance. While Polish, Bolshevik, and Ukrainian revolutionary forces ­were deploying military force throughout the region, American Jewish philanthropic volunteers traded American goods to win ­favor and drew on their “expertise” in the American gospel of efficiency and equality to push Jews in Poland to adopt new approaches to their long-­held economic, po­liti­cal, and cultural practices. The Marshall Plan is the prime classic example of American “soft power” as it pumped billions of dollars into Western Eu­rope ­after the Second World War in the form of humanitarian aid—­including food, medical care, and even outright monetary grants—to prevent Western Eu­rope from falling ­under the influence of the Soviet Union. But one can see that, long before the Marshall Plan was even contemplated, American Jewish philanthropists also exercised “soft power” by spending, as one American Jewish organ­ization did for example in 1919, more than 1.3 million US dollars (1.4 billion dollars in current values) on food for Poland. Showing American Jews’ commitment not only to Jews but to all residents of the new Polish republic, Bernard Bogen, representative of the JDC in Eu­rope, wrote to Hugh Gibson, the United States ambassador to Poland: On the invitation of Mr. Herbert Hoover, the head of the United States Food Commission, the Joint distribution Committee contributed one half of the cargo of the steamship “Westward Ho,” which was to consist of food for the needy population of Poland and was



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to be distributed ­under the direct supervision of the American Relief Administration. . . . ​The food of the “Westward Ho” cargo was originally intended to have been distributed to the population without distinction of nationality or religion. But, at the request of the Polish Government, it was fi­nally de­cided to distribute one half to the Poles and one half to the Jews. The distribution is now taking place ­under the auspices of the American Relief Administration and the American Red Cross.19 Working often hand in hand with the State Department and acceding to the requests of the new Polish government, the JDC bought, transported, and handed out white flour and other high-­demand food products as part of an American effort, not a Jewish philanthropic proj­ect.20 Acutely aware of the po­liti­cal context and the precarious situation in which Jews found themselves, the JDC insisted on not giving aid only to Jews, despite the fact that their philanthropic dollars came from the American Jewish community. As the civil war in the region grew more violent between 1919 and 1920, the JDC realized that their initial proj­ect—­“rehabilitation of the Jewish community”—­ could be addressed only once the general chaos caused by the civil war was resolved. As Bernard Bogen reported on the “extent and nature of the prob­ lem in Poland”: To be sure, the prob­lem of Jewish relief In Poland, which involves about two-­thirds of the Jewish relief prob­lem of the world, now assumes larger proportions than ever; it is no longer merely a prob­lem of palliative relief and of immediate mea­sures for the amelioration of suffering. With entire territories now in the throes of ­actual warfare, it is impossible to plan detailed programs for relief and rehabilitation. The material needs of the ­people in the war areas become intensified day by day and it is impossible to calculate the exact extent to which ­these needs ­will develop. ­Under ­these circumstances, and in view of the uncertainty of po­liti­cal and economic developments, it is evident that no comprehensive plan for rehabilitation activities can be launched at this time.21 Realizing that the large-­scale proj­ect of Jewish communal aid and rehabilitation could not succeed in Poland as a result of the civil war tearing apart the larger geopo­liti­cal landscape, the JDC first dedicated itself to enabling

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American Jews to send direct aid to relatives in Poland. Remittances, as scholars have long noted, play a central role in the economies of immigrants’ former homes.22 Particularly a­ fter periods of war or upheaval, they are central to the reconstruction of a region from the bottom up. Appreciating the importance of aid to individual families and the challenges of transferring funds from the US banking system to war-­ravaged Eastern Eu­rope, the JDC also served as the main conduit through which American Jews could transmit dollars to Eastern Eu­rope. Indeed, few chartered American banks would send funds to the region, as they knew few reliable corresponding banks. Thus the JDC provided a mechanism to transfer funds, which was seen as helping to alleviate the general poverty in the Jewish community. As Herbert Lehman, vice chairman of the JDC, noted at its 1921 executive committee meeting: “the Individual remittance work of the JDC . . . ​has grown by leaps and bounds to such an extent that it has swamped our two trea­sur­ ers and the office of the remittance bureau. The committee is increasing its personnel and its quarters, so that it may adequately care for the work of this committee. I think that for the twelve months from May 1, 1920 to May 1, 1921 a sum of not less than $20,000,000 ­will pass through this bureau. This I think is of the greatest importance ­because the more money that is sent this way the less necessity ­there w ­ ill be for palliative relief.”23 The remarkable transfer of twenty million dollars (more than $1.5 billion in 2020 dollar values) over the course of one year fundamentally altered the economic prospects of thousands of Jewish families and was seen by American Jewish leaders as central to the larger national proj­ect concerning the improvement of interethnic relations.24 Indeed, Herbert Lehman articulated this view when he ­imagined the Polish economy functioning like the American economy: namely that dif­fer­ent groups may occupy specific niches in the economy, but if you improve the condition of one group, all groups ­will eventually prosper. On the ground this theoretical vision of economic growth—­ that the rehabilitation of Jewish businesses would trickle down and help all of Poland—­was not shared by Polish Catholics who saw Jews as the only group being given access to credit and resented their special treatment.25 Indeed, the JDC’s self-­help loan program, a type of program often deployed by the United States ­after 1945 to exert its “soft power” and influence foreign governments, angered Polish Catholics the most. Overall the JDC’s allocations to Poland constituted the largest segment of its entire bud­get between 1919 and 1929. Before 1921 allocations concentrated mainly on emergency relief of poverty through the provision of food such as American flour.



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­ fter 1921 the focus shifted to providing childcare and medical care. Its self-­ A proclaimed “greatest accomplishment” was the establishment of hundreds of loan kassas—or cooperative banks—­throughout Poland which enabled Jews to start or expand their businesses. This microfinance program, led by Lehman, tried to spread American ideals of self-­reliance and entrepreneurial ingenuity.26 Lehman believed the redevelopment of the Jewish economy would help Jews integrate into their new home in the Second Polish Republic. Between 1926 and 1932 the JDC extended more than $2,100,000 in credit to Polish Jews through t­ hese loan kassas.27 In addition to the JDC, East Eu­ro­pean Jewish immigrants also used their landsmanshaftn to influence and to reshape the Polish state on the local level. ­These mutual-­aid socie­ties offered financial support, helping immigrant Jews gain a foothold in their new homes as they also kept them intricately tied to Eastern Eu­rope. While by the interwar period, ­there was a network of more than two thousand landsmanshaft associations in New York City alone, claiming approximately half a million members.28 On hearing news of the devastation in their former homes, ­these organ­izations raised millions of dollars and sent “delegates” back to their former homes to deliver the dollars raised and survey what other help was needed. Although the numbers may be a bit exaggerated, in 1920 Hugh Gibson, the American ambassador in Poland, reported that ­there ­were more than 290 landsmanshaft delegates registered with the consulate; they wandered throughout the country, distributing funds while often wearing US military uniforms or operating u ­ nder 29 banners that contained an American flag. Thus while t­ hese organ­izations in the United States emphasized their members’ connection to specific towns in Poland, their emissaries sent back to Poland identified themselves as Americans as they engaged in local po­liti­cal debates and conflicts.

Empire at the Grassroots: The Examples of American Jewish Relief in Brisk and Bialystok The impact of landsmanshaft philanthropy throughout Poland and its po­liti­cal implications for both Jewish communal polities and Polish state-­building was evident to the US State Department. By looking more closely at the roles American Jewish landsmanshaft philanthropists played in Brisk and Bialystok, two cities nestled in the hotly contested region of Polish-­Lithuania, one can see clearly why the US State Department was so concerned. This region and

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t­ hese towns w ­ ere conquered and reconquered numerous times by vari­ous factions fighting in the region between 1914 and 1921. ­These cities varied in size, demographics, and economic structure. Brisk was a trade city with 57,000 residents in which Jews comprised approximately 70 ­percent of the population before the First World War. Bialystok was an industrial city with 105,000 residents in which Jews constituted 65 ­percent of the population. In both ­these cities, the stated goal of landsmanshaft philanthropy was to relieve the economic distress caused by the war, while the under­lying mission was to facilitate Jews’ social integration. The “rituals of distribution” used to distribute funds suggest that American Jews combined their desire to help their coreligionists emerge from this crisis with their vision of themselves as Americans carry­ing on Wilsonian diplomacy. Landsmanshaft emissaries inserted themselves into the ­middle of internal Jewish politics and supported organ­izations that fundamentally altered how Jews encountered the newly established Second Polish Republic. While their dollars forced factions of the Jewish community to work together, they also created an economic chasm between non-­Jewish Poles and Jews, unleashing a complex array of unintended dynamics.30 To be sure, the Catholic Church galvanized many Polish Catholics, some of whom returned to fight for their former home, but fund­rais­ing did not consume Polish Catholics in Amer­i­ca as it did Polish Jews, a fact often lamented by the Polish consulate in New York City.31 Jews from Poland engaged the new Polish state with their dollars, not their military acumen, as they sought to build up a demo­cratic infrastructure in the new Polish state. Brisk

Brisk (also known as Brest-­Litovsk in Rus­sian and Brzesc in Polish) is located on a strategic hill on the Bug River. It endured total devastation during the war. Its Jewish community suffered particularly acutely ­after Rus­sian forces expelled them in 1914. Only eigh­teen hundred families returned ­after the war to a totally decimated city. As a JDC report found, more than 20 ­percent of ­those Jews who fled Brisk died of starvation during the war.32 On Jewish residents’ return to the city ­after 1918, their economic woes reflected ­those of the larger country, where the devastation of the war, the decimation of Polish industry, and the closure of the Rus­sian market in 1920 left close to 80 ­percent of the population unemployed.33 Commerce, trade, and tax collection, Jewish professions before the war, ­were no longer options. When Irma May visited Brisk on behalf of the American Joint Distribution



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Committee in 1920, she described the city as “a picture of misfortune!” “Hundreds are forced [to live] in cellars, anterooms and alleys of the old synagogues,” she reported. “They huddle together like wild beasts, twenty and thirty in one room. . . . ​[It is like] hell on earth.”34 A 1922 report elaborated that “hardly a building stands in the city that is not damaged,” and “­every ­family in town has at least one active case of typhus in their home, as all families have a refugee or refugee ­family living with them.”35 At the outset of the war, when the United States was still neutral, news of the expulsion of Jews from Brisk in 1914 quickly reached Amer­i­ca and prompted former residents of the city, such as Jacob Finkelstein, to take action. A fervent socialist and Bundist, Finkelstein was an active member of the Brisker Branch 286 of the Arbeter Ring and de­cided to form the United Brisker Relief in New York City in 1917. Charged with the mission to aid Brisker Jews, members of the United Brisker Relief raised more than $250,000—­but they often became discouraged by their inability to have their funds reach their intended recipients during the war. While the JDC had arranged methods to transfer funds to Poland, Brisk remained beyond reach. ­After the war, the situation did not drastically improve. United Brisker Relief received an impassioned letter from the Brisker Rav, Yitzhak Zev Soloveitchik, the leading East Eu­ro­pean rabbinic authority and one of the city’s rabbis, describing how “of the 1800 homes in the city, only 800 ­were left and of the 40 shuls, only eight ­were left. Half [of 21,000 Jews in the city] ­were completely pauperized.” He pleaded for “monthly support for each ­family” that was affiliated with his yeshivah—­which he would personally distribute. As Jacob Finkelstein quickly realized, “The relief [from] Amer­i­ca would play an impor­tant role in the rehabilitation of the city.”36 Indeed, it did play a critical role in restoring Jewish life in the city, but in ways that few, including Rabbi Soloveitchik, could have ever anticipated. In 1920 United Brisker Relief sent three representatives with more than $200,000, but they ­were unable to distribute all their funds due to a ­bitter split among Jewish leaders. On the one hand, radical Jewish parties condemned American “imperialist” charitable aid, demanding that philanthropy should be given only to organ­izations that would treat all segments of the population equally, such as public kitchens, schools, and clinics.37 The Brisker Rav, on the other hand, requested that more funds be allocated for individual assistance, b­ ecause respectable Talmudic students who had been impoverished by the war would not go to such venues. In 1920, ­a fter the local JDC representative Borukh Zukerman de­cided to bypass rabbinic leaders such as

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Soloveitchik and set up new welfare organ­izations to distribute money, the community was on the brink of explosion. When Jacob Finkelstein arrived in 1921 with $150,000, he forced a wide spectrum of communal leaders to create a new united relief committee. Even as the Brisker Rav vehemently protested, he had to follow the ­orders of Finkelstein, the socialist, Arbeter Ring president from Staten Island. If any Jewish leader wanted to receive any more money from Amer­i­ca, Finkelstein told them, “all would have to work together with him in a larger effort to rebuild the city.”38 Appreciating the power of his dollars to disrupt traditional authority structures and cement a co­ali­tion among Jews across the po­liti­cal spectrum in Brisk, Finkelstein or­ ga­nized a mass rally at Sarver’s Theatre, the city’s largest public venue, to illustrate Jewish communal unity to local Jews and to their Polish neighbors as well. By successfully contesting the authority of Soloveitchik, who before the war would make requests for relief that would be immediately answered, Finkelstein illustrated the new sources of power in Jewish communal life in Brisk. Rabbinic leaders like Soloveitchik had to face their diminishing power as American donors became central to the maintenance of the community and men like Finkelstein used the dollars at their disposal to openly challenge rabbinic authority. Finkelstein also used his influence and funds to help Mordecai Drachle launch the local Yiddish newspaper, Poleser stime.39 As he distributed funds to individuals, Finkelstein allied himself with the power of his ­adopted home. Distributing funds to ­those in need ­under an American flag, Finkelstein makes clear from his pose and placement in this 1920 photo that he is not merely representing Jewish immigrants in Amer­i­ca but is part of a larger American proj­ect (see figure 7.1). Such a ritual of distribution involving symbols of Amer­i­ca and American power was widespread, and this was not lost on non-­Jews living in the region. Indeed, the use of the American flag to signal the arrival of a JDC emissary figured prominently in the tragic and well-­k nown murders of Israel Friedlaender and Bernard Cantor on July 5, 1920.40 Professor Israel Friedlaender (1876–1920), noted scholar, Zionist, philanthropist, and American Jewish leader, ventured from the Polish-­occupied city of Kamenetz-­Podolsk with Bernard Cantor (1892–1920), rabbi of Flushing, New York’s ­Free Synagogue and a member of the American Joint Distribution’s Committee Overseas unit. Friedlaender and Cantor w ­ ere in the region to survey the destruction, to distribute aid on behalf of the JDC, and to act as po­liti­cal advocates on behalf of the region’s Jews. In the interviews collected from local witnesses

Figure 7.1. Jacob Finkelstein standing at the center u ­ nder the American flags handing out American funds in Brisk, 1921. RG 898 Folder 14: Brisker A ­ lbum, Landsmenshaftn Collection, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

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a­ fter their 1920 murders, the American character of their mission figures prominently. The locals all remembered seeing “the American automobile” coming up the road with “one of its passengers, who sat beside the chauffeur, waving an American flag,” and the men inside wearing American “military uniforms.” 41 Donning such attire and the use of the American national symbols ­were regular practices among JDC operatives in the region, as illustrated by several letters from the American ambassador to Poland addressed to JDC.42 In a region where commander of the Polish army General Jozef Piłsudski, the Ukrainian Directory, the Voluntary (white) army of General Anton Denikin, and the Bolshevik Red army all battled constantly for control and often attacked the local Jewish population, such attire seemed like protective armor. The fact that locals understood Amer­i­ca as the power backing ­these Jewish relief workers had implications for both local Jews and the United States. Jews in Poland ­were seen as being dif­fer­ent from other Second Polish Republic citizens, as they had access to resources unavailable to other ethnic groups; the United States, the new world power, could be seen as favoring one ethnic minority over another, raising questions about its role as a neutral broker for peace. The relationship with American power became central to Jewish philanthropic appeals in interwar Poland. In some ways the Jewish community “looked” more “American,” as organ­izations like the Brisker Relief collected and distributed seventeen bales of American clothing and shoes in September 1921, leaving a distinct American sartorial imprint on Brisk’s Jewish community.43 American funds and charitable donations transformed impoverished Jewish communities, as captured in a fund­rais­ing postcard produced by Brisk’s ­Women’s Organ­ization (Froyen fareyn), which provided support for impoverished ­women who ­were unemployed and who ­were seeking funds to build a new group home. Turning to their American Jewish benefactors, they begged in a fund­rais­ing postcard to “buy bricks” in order “to help build up the colony.”44 Deploying imagery of Brisk as a colony dependent on its motherland in Amer­i­ca, the po­liti­cally savvy Brisk’s ­Women Organ­ization recognized its links to the American empire.45 Bialystok: American Jewish Philanthropy and Polish Jewish Relations

Brisk was far from the only city heavi­ly populated with Jews to see new dynamics unleashed by the distribution of American Jewish relief funds, as similar controversies erupted in Bialystok, a city whose Jewish population



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plummeted from more than 70,000 in 1914 to 37,186 in 1921. ­After the war, most Jewish workers ­were unemployed, and ­those with secure jobs worked only three days a week.46 Thus the JDC and Bialystoker Relief Committee’s distribution of more than five million dollars made a deep po­liti­cal and economic imprint, as it enabled Jewish welfare organ­izations, hospitals, and libraries to expand their ser­vices while their Polish counter­parts closed their doors.47 The integral role played by David Sohn in his distribution of money from the Bialystoker Relief Committee earned him an honorary position on the city’s kehile (elected council). Indeed, they bestowed on him an elaborate pin at a formal ceremony to recognize his courage and contribution to the community. Such attention lavished on émigrés by Jewish communal leaders made a deep impression on ­these American visitors. They ­were not merely generous immigrant donors but also individuals whose charitable acts had transformed them into impor­tant and power­f ul figures in local Polish Jewish communal life. As they doled out financial support, American Jewish immigrants demanded that Polish Jewish organ­izations adopt and incorporate new “more American standards of operation.” 48 Bialystok’s largest Jewish orphanage, Ezras Yesomim, offers an illustrative example. ­After receiving a large grant, its director, Rachel Rachmanowitz, made her institution more “worthy” of American contributions. As a result, in the following year Rachmanowitz divided all her charges by age, established a formal curriculum, and purchased uniforms for the c­ hildren. She also modernized her institution’s annual report. ­These steps illustrated how Ezras Yesomim was an efficient “American style” charity worthy of more American support.49 Dziennik Białostocki, a Polish daily newspaper, railed against local Jews for their reliance on foreign money, and for agreeing to American Jews’ outlandish demands. Eugene Lifshitz, a member of Bialystok’s kehile, was sharply criticized ­after he went to New York to raise money for a new bank for the city that would grant loans to small businesses. While Lifshitz successfully collected $40,000 (over half a million dollars in current dollar values), he failed to contest his American donors’ demands that the bank loan money only to Jews, a stipulation most non-­Jewish residents of Bialystok found outrageous.50 The massive influx of American dollars into the Jewish community of Bialystok clearly illustrates American Jews’ soft power. As Bialystok’s municipal bud­gets attest, Poland’s depressed economy left few municipal funds to support the multitude of organ­izations that upheld civil society in an urban democracy. Many Polish welfare organ­izations, such as the local Red

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Cross, ­were forced to pare down their ser­vices.51 Jewish organ­izations, on the other hand, continued to serve their constituencies and actually expanded their ser­vices, despite diminished municipal funding. The Sholem Aleichem Library (Biblioteka Szołem-­Ałejchema), for example, received a grant of two thousand zlotys in 1927 from the city and only four hundred in 1935 to run its programs.52 Despite this drop in funding, the library actually expanded its collection and started a school program, ­because of the grants it received from American Jews.53 Linas ha-­Tsedek, a medical aid society, similarly used American Jewish funds to extend its ser­vices.54 Malka A. received clothes and shoes from Linas ha-­Tsedek in 1921 ­after visiting the doctor for her annual examination. She remembered vividly that, when she showed up for her first day at the local Polish grade school, she was immediately identified as a Jew ­because, as she recalled, “only Jewish c­ hildren in Bialystok could have new shoes in 1921.”55 ­Children ­were not the only ones to notice the economic gulf created by American Jews’ funds. The government noted how American Jewish donors’ support of the Jewish press in Poland enmeshed them not in relief but in po­ liti­cal situations. ­After the establishment of the Second Polish Republic, Jewish newspapers became the main vehicle through which Jews debated politics and voiced their opinions about the shifting social and po­liti­cal bound­a ries in the region.56 In Bialystok, for example, the editors of the first Jewish-­ sponsored newspaper published ­after the war, Golos Belostoka (The Voice of Bialystok), not only used Rus­sian to demonstrate their opposition to Polish sovereignty and the mandated use of the Polish language, but even demanded a plebiscite to decide ­whether Bialystok should become part of Poland, Lithuania, or Bolshevik Rus­sia based on the princi­ples of ethnic self-­determination.57 Editorialists in Bialystok’s Yiddish daily, Dos naye lebn, also argued unswervingly against Bialystok’s inclusion in the Second Polish Republic, claiming that since Poland had never clearly defined its eastern borders at the Versailles conference, the inclusion of Bialystok in the Second Polish Republic could be viewed as an annexation.58 ­Needless to say, such claims angered local Polish officials, who brought a libel suit against the editorial staff of Dos naye lebn.59 Mounting l­egal costs strained the newspaper’s finances and prompted its editor, Pesach Kaplan, to ask his former neighbors now in the United States for help. Money was sent to defray l­egal expenses. Sohn also contributed articles to Dos naye lebn about current events in the United States so that the newspaper would not have to support correspondents abroad. Sohn continued to provide critical financial support to this paper, influencing how it approached marketing, bud­get management, and staff retention.60



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As the turn of events with Dos naye lebn highlighted to local authorities in Bialystok, American Jewish philanthropy could not be considered nonpartisan relief. Both local and national Polish government officials began carefully to observe all visiting American Jews, as narrated in the police’s secret weekly “situation reports” (used to keep track of revolutionary activity in the city). In a March 1928 report, for example, the police commissar discussed the subversive meetings of agitating Byelorus­sians in the region in the same breath that he described the subversive visit of “Daniel Persky from Joint Distribution Organ­ization in Amer­i­ca,” who distributed money and “talked about Jews in Amer­i­ca.”61 The proliferation of antisemitic rhe­toric in Bialystok’s Polish press, which revolved around Jews’ international entanglements and their proclivity to live off ­others’ hard work, was suggestively linked to American Jewish relief practices. To be sure, antisemitic rhe­toric was prevalent in newspapers throughout Poland during the interwar period. Jews ­were constantly being depicted as living off ­others’ hard work, or as Dziennik Białostocki emphasized, Jews ­were a “foreign ele­ment,” inclined to finding ways to make “easy money,” as they did with overseas philanthropy.62 Local Polish newspapers ­were also replete with unsavory depictions of American Jewish philanthropists. In a regular column, “Help for the Jews,” Dziennik Białostocki disdainfully chronicled the meddlesome, domineering, and controlling activities of American Jewish philanthropists.63 American Jews withheld their donations from a credit ­union ­because they did not feel that Poles’ attitudes ­toward Jews had changed sufficiently.64 Prożektor ran a feature story on Louis Marcus, “a generous and nice visitor from Amer­i­ca” who was “an exceptional American philanthropist” ­because he dispensed funds “regardless of their confession or nationality,” implicitly contrasting him with other American Jewish philanthropists.65 Such a hostile response to American Jewish philanthropists reflects the larger Polish government’s initial reaction to the flood of Jews who arrived ­after the war to distribute money. As Gibson, the American ambassador in Poland, described, “The [Polish] government appears to proceed on the assumption that it is a privilege for foreigners to spend their money on relief in Poland and that foreign relief organ­izations must be prepared to put up with all sorts of affronts, difficulties and delays in return for being allowed the privilege of carry­ing on their charitable activities.”66 The Polish government regularly expressed hostility ­toward t­ hese emissaries, calling them “pests,” or even “agents of Soviet Rus­sia” in police reports. As Poland’s economy grew worse and Piłsudski came to power, the Polish

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government actually began to court American Jews of Polish origin as part of their effort to find ­people to invest in Poland’s capital development. Believing that Jews had more access to capital than non-­Jewish Polish Americans, several Polish officials reached out to the Federation of Polish Jews in Amer­i­ca, sponsoring two group tours of Poland, with the hope that the American Jews would invest in developing Poland’s industry. Unfortunately, the tour took place in the summer of 1929, and ­after the crash of 1929, few Jews could invest in Poland, prompting the Polish government to revert to its former stance. A 1938 Sejm Bud­get Committee expressed the government’s ­great irritation over “the several undesirable instances in which Jews abroad interfered with our economic and social difficulties . . . ​because they believed that our economic strug­gle against the Jewish ­people . . . ​constituted an attack against them as citizens of the [Polish] state.”67

Conclusion American Jewish philanthropic activism in interwar Poland may have been short-­lived, but its impact went far beyond the 1920s. It spawned new methods of affiliation and revolutionary modes of organ­ization throughout Poland that would leave a deep imprint on both internal Jewish communal po­liti­cal organ­ ization in Poland and Jews’ po­liti­cal alliances with other ethnic groups. The dramas that unfolded in places like in Brisk and Bialystok ­were far from exceptional, as the JDC and landsmanshaft representatives tried to mold the new Polish state from the bottom up and interacted with local personalities throughout Poland. While the JDC and other American Jewish landsmanshaftn may have lacked an army, they used the formidable strength of their dollars to introduce some revolutionary changes into the Polish Jewish orga­nizational landscape. Presaging strategies used by the American state l­ater in the c­ entury, ­after the Second World War, American Jewish philanthropic works in interwar Poland advocated for greater democracy in the Jewish community by coaxing Jewish institutions to adopt American standards of efficiency or forcing traditional rabbinic authority to operate more demo­cratically and address the demands of more secular segments of the Jewish community. While the impact of American Jewish philanthropists and their dollars varied by city, in all spaces the po­liti­cal stature accorded to American Jews gave them the opportunity to spread their own cultural agenda. Wilson may have failed to convince the American government to get involved diplomati-



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cally in the politics of rebuilding Eastern Eu­rope; but it is clear that individual nongovernmental organ­izations in Amer­i­ca, like the JDC, the Brisker Relief, and the Bialystoker Relief Committee, ­were seen as assuming the mantle of Wilsonian idealism as they distributed money ­under American flags and while wearing American military uniforms. By inserting themselves into the ­middle of internal Jewish politics and the larger debates of the new Polish nation, American Jewish philanthropists working with the JDC and other American Jewish-­f unded organ­izations fundamentally altered the practice of Jewish politics on the ground in the new Polish state. American Jews and their funds transformed how Polish Jews engaged the Second Polish Republic. As they practiced strategies that would ­later be called “soft power diplomacy” and supported Jewish opposition to the new Polish state, American Jewish relief organ­izations pointed up some of the prob­lems created when money is used to achieve specific po­liti­cal goals. Instead of squarely carving out a space for Jews in this new East Eu­ro­pean state, and showing Polish Jews’ commitment to the proj­ect of ethnic self-­ determination, the emissaries of both landsmanshaftn and the JDC made Poles see Jews as having resources, alliances, and ties to places far beyond the new Polish state. Viewing American Jewish interwar philanthropic activism through the prism of Jewish politics points to new directions for historical research. The presence of American Jews and their organ­izations in prominent areas of Polish Jewish society transformed the landscape of Jewish politics in Poland, as it molded how American power and values ­were ­imagined in what would become known as “the American ­century.”

Chapter 8

Jewish and Other Zionisms

Reflections on Race, Ethnocentrism, and Nationalism Shaul Magid

It is no answer to this evidence of nationality to declare that the Jews are not an absolutely pure race. . . . ​Prob­ably no impor­tant Eu­ro­pean race is as pure. —­Louis Brandeis, “The Jewish Prob­lem: How to Solve It” April 25, 1915

­ hose who work on Zionism as a po­liti­cal movement often engage the T question of its relationship to nationalism, democracy, and Israel’s commitment to a being a “Jewish” state. The 1985 addition to Israel’s Basic Law (amendment 9, clause 7A) that Israel is to be a “Jewish and Demo­cratic” state has vexed po­liti­cal theorists since its inception.1 In addition, the question of Israel’s ethnocentricity, an extension of the “Jewish” component of “Jewish and Demo­cratic,” has led Zionist theorists such as Sammy Smooha to suggest a new category called “ethnic democracy” to enable “Jewish and Demo­cratic” to survive the criticism that such a formulation did not fit into any known form of democracy.2 This has led o­ thers, such as Oren Yiftachel, to ­counter with “ethnocracy,” a nondemo­cratic model that appears as a democracy that he argues best represents Israeli’s po­liti­cal real­ity.3 Under­lying much of this debate is how Jews, and thus “Jewish,” are to be identified; as a race (genos), an ethnic group (ethnos), a ­people (‘am), or a



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nation (le’um). ­Until the 1930s, both Jews and non-­Jews often defined “Jews” in racial terms. ­After the Second World War, that all but dis­appeared, due in large part to the Nazi racialization of Jews to horrific ends, and the language of ethnicity began to dominate. But even the more diffuse term “ethnos” did not erase the racialist characteristics of Jews and the racialist under­pinnings of the “Jewish” state. In what follows I explore that aspect of the Zionist proj­ect by examining how it was envisioned, and ­adopted, by non-­Jews seeking to cultivate a racialist/ethnic national movement of self-­determination in a homeland. The two cases I examine are the Black Zionism of early proponents of resettling American Blacks in Africa, and its more recent iterations in Pan-­Africanism and Black nationalism; and White Zionism, a new phenomenon among con­ temporary white nationalists who fear their loss of hegemony in a quickly diversifying American landscape. I argue that all three “Zionisms”—­Jewish, Black, and White—­are ethnically based and promote the notion of a renewed polity lost in the real or mythic past that can only be maintained by means of ethnic dominance that can include tolerance of other religions or races but never offer equality to them. More to the point, while the racial component of Zionism may be contested by Zionists, it was certainly perceived that way by ­those who ­adopted Zionist thinking for the purposes of their own racial programs. I argue in this essay that the dynamics of Zionist ethnocentrism become clear when viewed through the lens of how Zionism was viewed by ­others. My understanding of the difference between ethnocentrism and racialization is that the former is a social structure and system that has both ­legal and cultural implications, while the latter is more often a social ethos that emerges from the tension between racial identity and questions of authority and privilege. Ethnocentric regimes can be “racialized” and even “racist” depending on how much emphasis the ruling power places on the ethno/racial construction of society and how tolerant it is of a racist ethos that sometimes emerges from such a social construct. It is worth noting at the outset that ­there is something American about “Zion.” The trope of Zion as a marker of promised space to a ­people has long been attractive to ­those on the American continent. Early colonial settlers, escaping religious persecution in Eu­rope and close readers of the Old Testament, often viewed this new land as “Zion,” and even Jewish immigrants to Amer­i­ca sometimes ­adopted the notion of “promised land” to ­these shores.4 And African Americans who w ­ ere brought h ­ ere in chains, once Christianized,

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or Islamized (some ­were already Muslims in Africa), often looked back ­toward Africa as a kind of “Zion,” a lost homeland to which they seek to return, liberated from the forced migration of their ancestors. ­There is a cottage industry in Amer­i­ca of African Americans who return and visit the African continent in search of their roots. The Black church has long integrated the Israelite strug­gle for freedom as their own, and some Black Muslims also viewed Africa as a kind of Zion.5 So t­ here is something American about “Zion” that speaks to a combined notion of promise and exceptionalism, the prospect of freedom and liberation. For white Americans, Zion is this place, its Manifest Destiny, a term coined by James O’­Sullivan in 1845 in reference to the American claim of the entire Oregon Territory. For some Black Americans, Zion is elsewhere; Amer­i­ca is its antithesis. For Jews, Zion can be both, and to some extent therein lies the rub of American Zionism. Louis Brandeis, for example, refused to view Zionism as anything opposed to Americanism. Many other Zionists disagreed. My point is simply to suggest that it is no surprise that Zion is ­adopted by vari­ous other American groups who envision a homeland where they have exceptional status in light of, or despite, ­others who already live t­ here.

Zionism and Its Uses Zionism is a movement of Jewish national revival and self-­determination. It is arguably one of the more successful modern attempts at creating a national collective consciousness out of a diasporic real­ity. This collectivist proj­ect took many—­often contradictory—­forms, from a po­liti­cal push to found a nation-­ state, to a cultural re­nais­sance creating a modern language, and for many, marked a Jewish return to history. For some with strong religious roots, Zionism constituted nothing less than the first signs of redemption.6 For ­others it provided optimal conditions for a utopian socialist experiment where Jews could be exemplars and play a role in the coming Marxist revolution.7 In the early years of Zionism, ­these multiple po­liti­cal, social, and religious/spiritual proj­ects coexisted even as their relationships ­were often tense and even contentious.8 The historical realities of a collapsing Eu­rope, the rise of Nazism, and the increasing need to accommodate Jewish refugees pushed the po­liti­cal aspects of Zionism to the fore. Given the historical real­ity ­after the war, and especially the speed with which the state had to become operational and the refugee crisis addressed,



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the young state’s po­liti­cal and cultural structure become ethnocentric in practice, if not always in princi­ple.9 The phrase “Jewish and Demo­cratic” (added only in 1985) articulated a tension that already existed in the Jewish state’s original formation: the tension between the desire to be a fully functioning democracy and the desire to be a state and a homeland for the Jews. For a beleaguered Jewish populace frustrated with the failure of Emancipation to resolve the perennial prob­lem of persecution in Europe—­arguably the germ of Herzl’s idea of Zionism—­the creation of an ethnocentric nation-­ state seemed like a ­viable solution to maximize collective flourishing and safety. Emerging in the heyday of colonialism, the idea of establishing a state in the M ­ iddle East consisting largely of Eu­ro­pean immigrants with a Western Eu­ro­pean ideology and Jews from Arab counties who suffered ­under vari­ ous forms of persecution, seemed both reasonable and unproblematic to the Eu­ro­pean countries who ­were part of the colonial proj­ect. My inquiry ­here concerns only the ethnocentric nature of such a state, which is a characteristic that has become more contested in recent times but remains somewhat undertheorized. While the Zionist experiment may have been the most successful act of state-­building in the con­temporary politics of ethnocentricity, it was not the only one. In fact, from quite early on, Zionism was not just the exemplar of ethnocentric politics for Jews but it was also used as a model for other attempts to solve the prob­lem of the limits of ethnic self-­determination. H ­ ere I discuss two such examples: (1) the case of Black Zionism, which actually has its roots before the advent of Zionism in the Pan-­African writings of William Blyden (1832–1912) and Martin Delany (1812–1885), and then ­later in W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), and Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998); and (2) White Zionism, a new phenomenon taken up by some in the alt-­right such as Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor, each arguing from the perspective that white Christians are losing, or have lost, their majority status and privilege in Amer­i­ca. Why was Jewish Zionism used as a model for American Blacks and l­ater white Christians, as opposed to other forms of nationalism in Eu­rope? While a definitive answer remains elusive, American Blacks and white Christians each viewed themselves at least to some extent as part of a variously defined “Judeo-­Christian tradition.”10 The story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, from slavery to freedom, occupied the Black church from the time of slavery.11 Likewise, for white Christians the Puritan notion of Amer­i­ca as the new promised land; the ­later notion of Manifest Destiny; and the belief in the fated right of white Christians to conquer Amer­i­ca, and displace, or rule

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over, its indigenous Native American population are deeply rooted in American consciousness.12 In both the Black church and American Christendom, seeing the Jews as descendants of the Israelites remained an operative part of the assertion of a long “Judeo-­Christian” trajectory. Thus one could understand how Jewish nationalism, now modified and geared t­ oward the establishment of a modern nation-­state, could have caught the attention of emancipated Blacks in the nineteenth ­century but also white nationalist Christians, at the beginning of the twenty-­first ­century, who are increasingly anxious about the decline of their majority status in the United States. In what follows, I examine three examples: (1) Israel, especially ­after 1967, (2) Pan-­Africanism, and (3) American White Nationalism. In the latter two cases, power is clearly determined in a racial register.13 In the first case, race is more complex. Nevertheless, it remains true that Black Pan-­Africanists and Black nationalists and current White nationalists understand Zionism in racialist terms. This “racialized” sense of Jewishness as the structure of Israel has proved attractive to ­these groups (who have gone so far as to appropriate the term “Zionism”), even as their attitude ­toward Jews has been ambivalent at best.14 Before turning to ­these examples, a word is in order about the knotty term “race” as it applies to Jews and Zionism.15 The racialization of Jewish identity extends back at least to the race science of late eighteenth-­ and nineteenth-­century Eu­rope, arguably even before.16 During that time it was common to use the language of “race” to define Jews, both among white Eu­ ro­pe­ans and among Eu­ro­pean Jews. In the wake of the Holocaust, as Matthew Frye Jacobson has shown, the international community asserted that Jews ­were not a distinct race but rather part of an undifferentiated Eu­ro­pean (white) ­family. This move, of course, ignores Jews living in Arab lands or Jews of color more generally, not to mention Ethiopian Jews, whose origins remain very much a ­matter of scholarly debate.17 Nevertheless, the whiteness of the Jew became part of common parlance in Eu­rope and beyond—­ not only for non-­Jews but for Jews themselves.18 This whiteness, moreover, ­shaped Jewishness within the American context, as Eric Goldstein notes: Jews’ transition from “racial minority” to part of the white mainstream was slow and freighted with difficulty, not only ­because native-­born whites had a particularly hard time seeing Jews as part of a unified, homogeneous white population, but also ­because whiteness sat uneasily with many central aspects of Jewish identity . . . ​



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in the American context they [Jews] often defined themselves as a distinct “race,” a description that captured their strong emotional connection to Jewish peoplehood. As Jews came ­under increasing scrutiny in American racial discourse, however, they ­were often torn between their commitment to Jewish racial identity and their desire to be seen as stable members of white society.19 In 1967 James Baldwin’s famous essay “Negroes Are Anti-­Semitic ­Because They Are Anti-­White” captured a growing sense of resentment among Blacks living in northern ghettos, where Jewish landlords and storeowners ­were among the two kinds of white ­people they commonly encountered (the other being the police).20 ­Today, Jews are more often defined as an ethnos (ethnicity) rather than a genos (race). Although the racialized nature of Jewishness may have given way to something less defined (ethnos), race remains impor­tant for understanding the ethnocentrism of Zionism. The notion of a biologically determined group (setting aside the problematic notion of biologism in determining race), especially as a po­liti­cal force in con­temporary Israel, is part of what inspired non-­Jews to view the Zionist proj­ect as an exemplary model for articulating and promoting a raciocentric or ethnocentric polity of their own.21 Even if Jews are no longer defined as a race, the notion of biologically determined group dominance (that also includes converts) has not dis­appeared, certainly not in the perception of the non-­Jewish population in Israel. Black Zionists certainly viewed the Zionist proj­ect as a “racial” one, but did Jews? In “Zionism Reconsidered,” Hannah Arendt noted that some Zionists used the German model of nationalism to form their par­tic­u­lar nationalistic views. While she ­doesn’t quite call Zionism “racialist,” ’ she gestures in that direction. Hans Kohn makes note of this in his 1958 essay “Zion and the National Jewish Idea” when he writes, “Hannah Arendt has said, ‘Herzl thought in terms of nationalism inspired by Germans. . . . ​According to the German theory, ­people of common descent or speaking a common language should form one common state. Pan-­Germanism was based on the idea that all persons who ­were of German race, blood, or descent, wherever they lived . . . ​owed their primary loyalty to Germany and should become citizens of the German state, their true homeland.”22 More explic­itly, we find in Morris Cohen’s 1946 essay “Zionism: Tribalism or Liberalism?” the following: “This constant tendency to emphasize the consciousness of race, tragically intensified by the increased persecution in recent years, has thus led newly

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emancipated Jews to adopt the very popu­lar racial philosophy of history. . . . ​ Zionists fundamentally accepted the racial ideology of ­these anti-­Semites, but draw dif­fer­ent conclusions. Instead of the Teuton, it is the Jews that are the pure and superior race. . . . ​Only in Palestine can this spirit find root and only in the Hebrew language its adequate expression.”23 Other Zionists, and proto-­Zionists, such as Moses Hess and Martin Buber, often used “the Jewish race” when discussing Jewish nationalism.24 While the term “race” falls away from “the Jew” ­after the racializing of the Jew by the Nazis, it is never fully erased as a marker of Jewish difference that continues ­today around the question of Jews and whiteness.25 As we ­shall see, Jews, Blacks, and white American Christians each hold themselves to an exceptional status often articulated through the rhe­toric of chosenness—­ from biblical Israel’s divine election to white Amer­i­ca’s Manifest Destiny, to Pan-­Africanist theories of Black superiority based on the notion that Africa is the seat of ­human civilization (as articulated by ­people like Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammad). Nevertheless, this chosenness is not just religious; for example, it is not the Christian who is the beneficiary of Manifest Destiny but the white Christian. When we look at Jewish Zionism through the lenses of Black and White Zionism, we can better see the deep challenges the former poses to American Jews who have accepted their whiteness in part to become an integral part of American society. Such ac­cep­tance was pos­si­ble as long as they could be granted religious freedom, a part of tri-­faith Amer­i­ca (Protestant, Catholic, Jew), inaugurated in the 1930s.26 But this religious freedom, as Tisa Wenger argues, requires a definition of Jewishness that is more religious than ethnic in nature.27 Jews ­were quite aware of this, as is clear already in the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, which stated: “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship ­under the sons of Aaron.”28 Jews ­were able to become beneficiaries of, and full members in, American society ­because of the Protestant ethic of religious freedom, combined with their perceived whiteness.29 Zionism’s ethnic focus, by contrast, has subtly challenged the whiteness of American Jews. Zionism suggested that all Jews are “other,” not simply white members of a Jewish religious guild. Jews ­were first and foremost a ­people, an ethnic/ national collective—in ways that held the potential to destabilize or even undermine their growing march ­toward full integration into (white) Amer­i­ca. In addition, by “nationalizing” Jewishness, Zionism challenged religion as the primary marker of Jewish identity in ways that



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could jeopardize, or at least problematize, both American Jews’ integral and integrated role in American society and the focus on Jewish peoplehood, whose transnational center now becomes the Jewish nation-­state. “While Zionists primarily defined Jews as a nation and aimed at the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine,” as Eric Goldstein notes, “race emerged as an impor­tant part of their ideology.”30 But if this racialization has had complex effects on American Jewish identity, it has also been precisely what made Zionism a model for other American groups.

Pan Africanism and Black Zionism The notion of American Blacks returning to Africa, known as Pan-­Africanism, extends even before the advent of Zionism.31 West Indian–­born Edward Blyden wrote about such a return as a resolution to the emancipation from slavery in the 1850s. Serendipitously, his book on Black migration to Africa, Liberia’s Offering, was published the same year (1862) as Moses Hess’s Rome and Jerusalem, arguably one of the most influential proto-­Zionist books. Blyden’s focus was primarily on the newly founded country of Liberia in 1847.32 Hess set his sights on Palestine. Regarding Hess and Blyden, Hollis Lynch notes that “their books ­were based on similar assumptions and called for a similar solution. They both assumed race not class was primal in ­human existence. . . . ​Each called for the establishment of a ‘nationality’ that would gather up his ­people and provide an opportunity for the flowering of his ­people’s genius.”33 Blyden had no par­tic­u­ lar ideology of Black Nationalism (a movement that came much l­ater). He viewed colonizing Liberia in much the same way that proto-­Zionists in the nineteenth ­century, such as Yehuda Alkalai (1798–1878) and Zvi Hirsch Kalischer (1795– 1874), viewed Jewish immigration to Palestine—as a return to the homeland more than a nationalist proj­ect.34 Blyden published a pamphlet entitled The Jewish Question (underwritten by his Jewish friend from Liverpool, Louis Solomon), in 1898, two years a­ fter the publication of Herzl’s Der Judenstaat, which Blyden read and admired.35 In 1903, a year before Herzl’s death, Blyden noted in a lecture called “West African Prob­lems” that “the sudden and ­wholesale imposition of Eu­ro­pean ideas and methods upon the African has been like the investing of David in Saul’s armor,” while the prospect of Black colonization of Africa “give[s] to the African the fullest opportunity for self-­development and self-­advancement.”36 Blyden viewed Herzl’s Zionism as a model for his idea of a return to Africa,

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coining the term “Ethiopianism” and calling on Blacks to return to Africa to redeem it. In The Jewish Question, he writes, “The Jewish question, in some re­spects, is similar to that which at this moment agitates thousands of descendants of Africa in Amer­i­ca, anxious to return to the land of their ­fathers.”37 Ironically, Herzl, not knowing of Blyden, wrote in his 1902 novel Altneuland, through the character Professor Steineck, “Now that I have lived to see the return of the Jews, I wish I could help to prepare the return of the Negroes. . . . ​ All men should have a homeland.”38 It was thus not only Blyden who saw a connection between the plight of Jews and the plight of Negroes, each of whom sought to reestablish themselves in their homeland. Virginia-­born Martin Delany went further than Blyden, specifically viewing a return to Africa as the solution to the prob­lem of integration ­after slavery. Using a more direct biblical meta­phor to describe his emigration plan, Delany writes in an 1852 essay, “Emigration of the Colored ­People of the United States”: “This we see in the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt to the land of Judea. . . . ​This may be acknowledged; but to advocate the emigration of the colored ­people of the United States from their native homes, is a feature of our history, and at first view, may be considered objectionable, as pernicious to our interests. This objection is once removed, when reflecting on our condition as incontrovertible. . . . ​And we ­shall proceed at once to give the advantages to be derived from emigration, to us as a ­people, in preference to any other policy that we may adopt.”39 In his study of antebellum Black nationalism, Bill McAdoo divides Black nationalist aspirations into two categories: reactionary and revolutionary. The first he calls “Black Zionists,” who deemed slavery irredeemable and thus promoted emigration as the only solution to the prob­lem of Black life. The revolutionary model disagrees and calls for social action in order to radically change American society. McAdoo argues that only the revolutionary nationalists advanced racial equality since the reactionary model had lost hope in that possibility. A compromise position of Black nationalism that sought to return to a homeland to redeem it but also sought to improve conditions in Amer­i­ca reached a wider audience through the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the found­ers of the NAACP. It was Du Bois who first coined the term “Black Zionism” to describe his Pan-­Africanism. Du Bois explic­itly stated that “the African movement must mean to us what the Zionist movement must mean to the Jews, the centralization of race effort and the recognition of a racial front. To help bear the burden of Africa does not mean any lessening of ef-



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fort in our prob­lems at home.”40 By gesturing t­ oward Zionism and then using the term “race,” Du Bois pinpointed what he perceived as the racial component in Zionism and its relevance to American Blacks. Pan-­Africanism for Du Bois could be likened to “Zionism” precisely ­because both shared a racial component as the foundation of their nationalism. Du Bois’s contention that “to help bear the burden of Africa does not mean any lessening of effort in our prob­lems at home” is impor­tant and marks a distinction between Du Bois and other figures who called for a “Black Zionism,” such as Marcus Garvey. Garvey’s “Black Zionism” is founded on a radical anti-­integrationist platform predicated on a “purity of race” theory that shows up again in Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam and Stokely Carmichael (and can be seen in some circles of Zionism as well), although it was largely pre­sent in the Pan-­Africanism of William Blyden de­cades before.41 Whereas Du Bois countered the more overt accommodationism and integrationism of Booker T. Washington, Garvey argued for an anti-­integrationist position42—­ setting the contours for a debate that would continue well into the twentieth ­century and beyond, most famously in the conflicting positions on Black integration of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.43 Garvey advocated for the “New Negro” in the 1920s, around the same time that Zionists ­were calling for the “New Jew.” His program for the “New Negro” openly called for Eu­ro­pean nations to return lands colonized to their proper ­owners. “We strongly condemn the cupidity of ­those nations of the world who, by open aggression and secret schemes, have seized the territories and inexhaustible natu­ral wealth of Africa, and we place on rec­ord our most solemn determination to reclaim the trea­sures and possession of the vast continent of our f­ athers.”44 For Garvey, Pan-­Africanism was an act of liberation and redemption in the material sense; taking back a homeland denied to Blacks.45 Garvey took his “Black Zionism” very seriously. In 1918, ­after he founded his newspaper Negro World, Garvey cabled Lord Balfour and asked him to do for the Blacks what he had just done for the Jews.46 Initially, Jewish reaction to Garvey was quite positive. The Jewish-­Yiddish press in New York City published pro-­Garveyite op-­eds. It called the Garveyite “national anthem,” “Ethiopia, the Land of Our ­Father,” the “Negro Hatikvah.”47 While Garvey, like Herzl, did not think all Blacks, or all Jews, would immigrate to Africa or Palestine, respectively, Garvey does make the argument of owner­ship and racial self-­determination in regard to Africa. In an article in the New York Times on August 3, 1920, for instance, Garvey

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writes: “We do not desire what has belonged to ­others though ­others have sought to deprive us of that which belongs to us. . . . ​If Eu­rope is for Eu­ro­ pe­ans, Africa ­shall be for the black ­peoples of the world.” Perhaps ironically, Garvey’s words in 1920 echo the words of Harry Truman nine years ­earlier, who wrote in a letter to his ­future wife, Bess, in 1911, “I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ­ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia and white men in Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca.”48 Such attitudes, which ­were not uncommon among whites, inform Garvey’s emphasis on the purity of race as well as his polemic against “social equality” and anti-­integrationist ideology, which put him at odds with the position of Du Bois but would be ­later ­adopted by Malcolm X.49 In his own time Garvey’s ideas met with re­sis­tance from fellow Blacks such as A. Philip Randolph, who argued against Garvey’s anti-­integrationism and believed Blacks in Amer­i­ca should be focused on expanding democracy at home and not looking to build empires abroad. Garvey was indeed an imperialist, and the Pan-­African movement in his wake was an imperialist movement, seeking the reconstruction of an African empire, the liberation of land, and a society based on racial homogeneity. In a speech at Madison Square Garden, Garvey said: “We are not seeking social equality. We do not seek intermarriage, nor do we hanker ­after the impossible. We want the right to have a country of our own, and t­ here foster and re-­establish a culture and civilization, exclusively ours.”50 This is one of the reasons, in my view, he found Zionism so amenable. Constructing a Black polity where Black culture could develop outside the influence of white civilization resonates with Zionism’s dual national and cultural proj­ect. The establishment of a Jewish state not only was a po­liti­cal dream for many Zionists but was meant to be, as Ahad Ha’am put it, a “spiritual center” for Jews and Judaism worldwide.51 It was precisely the Jewish tenor of a Jewish state that would enable the true national revival of the Jews. Zionism was, among other t­ hings, a response to assimilation. In a manner similar to how many Zionists felt about the Jewish Diaspora more generally, Garvey felt that t­ here was no f­ uture for Blacks in Amer­ i­ca; racism was too deep to overcome, and Black pride could be cultivated only with a renewed African empire, even if all Blacks did not immigrate ­there. Like Herzl, Garvey did not believe all American Blacks would return to Africa. “Rather,” as Cronon notes, “he believed like many Zionists that once a strong African nation was established Negroes everywhere would automatically gain needed prestige and strength and look to it for protection is necessary.”52



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Garvey’s comments on race w ­ ere unambiguous: “I believe in a pure black race just as how all self-­respecting whites believe in a pure white race, as far as I can tell.”53 And thus he ironically received support from the Ku Klux Klan, who agreed with Garvey—as did Major Earnest Sevier Cox, whose 1923 polemical White Amer­i­ca bemoaned that integration would destroy Amer­i­ca and argued for the separation of the races.54 Just as some Nazis viewed Zionism as a solution to the “Jewish prob­lem” in Eu­rope, some Klansmen supported Garvey’s Pan-­Africanism.55 Garveyism remained popu­lar in Amer­i­ca, including his mostly negative attitude t­ oward whites and Jews, even a­ fter Garvey was deported to Jamaica, where he spent the rest of his life. One example of the continuation of Garveyism can be seen in Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. Nathaniel Deutsch shows the complex way Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad understood the Jew.56 As white, the Jew was part of the unrigh­teous race. Yet Muhammad, especially in his 1967 book How to Eat and Live, had very positive ­things to say about Orthodox Jews who practiced the laws of kashrut and separated themselves from the white majority.57 Deutsch notes, “Muhammad generally treats Judaism as part of his more central critique of Chris­ tian­ity and the white race. According to Muhammad, Jews are whites and therefore dev­ils, implicated in the history of racism against blacks.”58 For Muhammad, the Orthodox Jew and “white” Muslim are two categories that are exceptions to his overall view of Black and white categories. Each has attenuated their whiteness through their beliefs and practices. Hating the Jew ­because he is white—­something Baldwin argued in a dif­fer­ent way, as noted ­earlier—is not the kind of antisemitism Jews normally faced historically. ­After the Six-­Day War in 1967 and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, many Black nationalists came to view Israel as an arm of “white” colonialism oppressing ­people of color (i.e., Palestinians).59 For some Black nationalists, Zionism came to be perceived as an exercise in Jewish whiteness. In the 1960s, moreover, we begin to see Pan-­Africanism as an expression of power in response to the failure of civil rights movement to bring about any substantive change in the lives of many Blacks. This shift is given voice especially by Kwame Ture the militant Black nationalist and leader of SNCC and the Black Power Movement, who changed his name from Stokely Carmichael ­a fter immigrating to Ghana in 1969. In his 1969 essay “Pan-­ Africanism—­Land and Power,” he argues that ­there are two types of oppression: exploitation and colonization. The first is largely economic and is

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not racially based. The second, however, is the pro­cess of destroying a person’s culture, history, identity, and ultimately humanity. This, he argues, is the experience of the Black person in Amer­i­ca. Pan-­Africanism for Ture ­wasn’t simply Black nationalism; it was about the survival of Black identity more generally. Echoing Zionism and certainly Garveyism, he said: “If Black ­people in the States say, ‘where are we from?’ they must wind up in Africa. One must know one’s beginnings, who one is, before one knows where one is g­ oing.” The true engine of power is not rights but land: “We need a land base. . . . ​In the final analy­sis all revolutions are based on land. The best place, it seems to me, and the quickest place that we can attain land is Africa. . . . ​We need a base that can be used for Black liberation, a land that we can say belongs to us.”60 As with much of Zionism, especially cultural Zionism, land and autonomy are not the ends of a pro­cess but the very conditions for national existence. Ture viewed “Black Zionism” as a liberation proj­ect but also one of identity formation. Blacks have to generate an autonomous culture separate from whites in order to have a healthy sense of self and create their own their distinctive cultural heritage. Land (i.e., Africa) gave them the possibility of ­doing that. In addition, just as many Zionists believed that a state (or land) enabled the movement to better fight for the Jews suffering in the Diaspora, so Ture asserted that the acquisition of land would help Blacks to “demonstrate our willingness to fight for our ­people wherever they are oppressed.” ­Here, Ture explic­itly cites Israel as an example: “I believe that ­people basically defend their own kind. . . . ​In the ­Middle East they did it even in 1967 with Israel.”61 It is from an ethnocentric nation-­state (or for some Pan-­Africanists, an autonomous African continent/civilization) that one can successfully maximize one’s influence even beyond its borders to protect one’s ­people through the power achieved in sovereign territory. More than any of the other figures discussed thus far, Ture took Zionism very seriously and spent considerable time studying its history.62 He writes that with a small group he read “a book a month for two years on the Zionist question.”63 While sympathetic to the basic claims of Zionism and Jewish nationalism, he ultimately took a negative view of Zionism by the early 1970s, in large part ­because he viewed it as an arm of white colonialism that oppressed ­people of color. But even in his negative appraisal, one sees his understanding of the need and rationale for such a movement. Ture had attended the mostly white and largely Jewish Bronx Science high school and ­later the all-­Black Howard University, and in his autobiography, Ready for Revolution,



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he rehearses his course of study of Zionist history. Even his assertion of Zionism’s colonialist tendencies, its close alliance with Afrikaner South Africa, and “the racist ideology of the Boers” is based on his study of Zionism.64 In the 1960s Golda Meir stated that she wanted to have nothing whatsoever to do with apartheid South Africa, seeing its ideology as antithetical to Zionism and Israel. But ­after 1967, when Israel’s economic and diplomatic ties with many Black African countries began to wane, Israel turned again to South Africa as a trade partner and seemed to overlook its racist regime. In 1974 Israel reinstated ties with South Africa, including the sale of military arms.65 Ture notes that such an allegiance showed a Zionist tolerance for racism he found offensive.66 In the end Ture’s anti-­Zionism may have been less about its Jewish character and more about his view that Zionism functioned as an appendage of the multinational white colonial empire. But Ture never exhibited the anti-­Jewish attitudes we see in Garvey.67 And even despite his negative appraisal of the Jewish state, he continued to use Zionism as a model for his Black nationalist ideology. Interestingly, this move among Black Americans did not go unnoticed by Jews at the time: Some Jews active during the rise of Black nationalism also compared it to Zionism. For instance, Reform rabbi Allan Levine—­who was a Freedom Rider and had attended the Selma March in 1965—­compared Black militancy with early Zionism, as did Shad Polier, a l­awyer, civil rights activist, and member of the executive board of the American Jewish Congress. Speaking about Ture (who was not viewed positively by most Jews of the time), prominent rabbi and historian Arthur Hertzberg claimed that “Carmichael’s was the most radical kind of Negro Zionism,” and “what Carmichael is asserting is Zionist in more fundamental aspects than the anger it is expressing.”68 Reform rabbi and ardent Zionist Roland Gittelson wrote, “The Black Power advocate is the Negroes’ Zionist. . . . ​Africa is his Israel,” and his colleague Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins even stated that “Black Power is nothing more and nothing less than Negro Zionism.”69 Many Jews in the 1960s—­like Black nationalists before and ­after—­readily saw the similarities between Zionism and Black Power and w ­ ere not afraid to acknowledge them openly.70

Zionism and White Identity This brings us to the case of the “White Zionism” more recently expressed by figures such as Jared Taylor and Richard Spencer. Taylor’s White Identity:

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Racial Consciousness in the 21st ­Century is the most comprehensive case for con­temporary white anti-­integrationism, giving voice to the anxiety of much of white Christian Amer­i­ca about its impending minority status. Taylor’s argument focuses on what he claims is the failure of integration in Amer­i­ca to provide an equal playing field for rights and resources. More impor­tant, Taylor thinks integration is a failure ­because it rubs against the natu­ral inclination to live with one’s own kind. According to Taylor, integration and the cele­bration of diversity have exacerbated and not resolved racial prob­lems in Amer­i­ca.71 Moreover, in a context ­shaped by racial conflict, whites face a par­ tic­u­lar challenge. Taylor views whites as a “race,” but he claims that they have no racial consciousness, in part ­because of their past majority status. In his view, whites do not see themselves racially and thus cannot see the challenge posed to their identity, culture, and peoplehood. As whites approach minority status in Amer­i­ca, white racial identity requires theorizing.72 Often deemed a racist, and in my view rightfully so, Taylor claims to be writing from the precipice where whites are becoming a minority in Amer­ i­ca: “At what point would it be legitimate for whites to act in their own group interests? When they become a minority? When they are no more than 30% of the population? Ten ­percent?”73 In effect, Taylor wants to make whiteness a race, or perhaps more accurately, he wants the white race to develop a racial consciousness. He argues that white Christian Amer­i­ca ­will need that sense of differentiated self to survive in a truly multiethnic, multiracial society where no one “race” dominates. Without that sense, Taylor claims, white Christians ­w ill lack a cohesiveness to survive intact. Sarcastically, Taylor writes: “Whites—­but only whites—­must never take pride in their own ­people. Only whites must pretend they do not associate with ­people like themselves. . . . ​Racial identity comes naturally to all non-­white groups. It comes naturally ­because it is good, normal, and healthy to feel kinship for ­people like oneself. . . . ​For their survival as a distinct ­people with a distinct culture, whites must recognize something all ­others take for granted: that race is a fundamental part of individual and group identity.”74 To support his case, Taylor mentions Israel: “Israel, likewise, is determined to remain a Jewish state ­because Israelis know they cannot have the same Israel with dif­fer­ent ­people. In 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved tough mea­sures to deport illegal immigrants calling them ‘a threat to the character of the country.’ ”75 Taylor calls for white racial identity by arguing against diversity. He understands diversity and integration in an inverse way to Malcolm X but ends



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up in a similar place. For Malcolm X, integration whitens and dilutes the Black. For Taylor, diversity dilutes whiteness ­because it celebrates racial difference and white ­people—­having no discernable racial consciousness—­have no way to c­ ounter the impact diversity would have on white Christian Amer­ i­ca. What whites do have is power, but as a soon-­to-be minority, that ­will diminish, and they ­will have no recourse to reclaim it. Taylor ­couples the antidiversity claim of “wanting to be with one’s own” with a neo–­Manifest Destiny claim that Amer­i­ca was envisioned as a white country, and, as such, whites attained enormous power that is now being undermined by its diminishing majority status. Diversity and integration thus become, for Taylor, un-­American. Similar sentiments have been articulated by popu­lar white nationalist Richard Spencer, who said to the Israeli public in an Israeli TV interview in 2017, “You should support me [that is, my white nationalist program] ­because what you have made in Israel is what I want to make in Amer­i­ca.” Spencer certainly espouses a Manifest Destiny ideology. At a talk at Texas A&M on December 6, 2016, Spencer said, “We conquered this continent [North Amer­ i­ca]. ­W hether it’s nice to say or not, we won and we get to define what Amer­i­ca means and we got to define what this continent means. American, at the end of the day, belongs to white men.”76 As tempting as it might be to dismiss Spencer’s comments as specious, they are not unlike a recent statement by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he said, “Israel is not the country of all its citizens, but the nation-­state of the Jewish ­people.” 77 While the contexts of t­ hese statements are certainly dif­fer­ent—­one a national claim, the other (perhaps) a cultural one—­and I certainly do not claim they are identical in substance, my invocation of Netanyahu ­here points to what they may share: that is, the notion that ­there should be a single race (whites in Amer­i­ca) or ethnic group (Jews in Israel) that gets to determine the nature of a state, including the status of minority groups therein. The unambiguous claim that an ostensibly demo­cratic state actually belongs to a single group is quite striking and thus worth consideration; in this sense, both Spencer and Netanyahu exhibit the anxiety of a majority group that feels its dominant status at risk precisely through the demo­cratic pro­cess. To be sure, this is certainly not the position of all Zionists, and Netanyahu was duly scolded for his comment, even as the 2018 Nation-­State Law passed by the Israeli parliament basically affirms Netanyahu’s comment. It is not uncommon, however, to hear the notion that the Jews, and only Jews,

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get to decide what Israel is—­precisely ­because of the homeland ideology noted ­earlier. Netanyahu got into trou­ble only when he made an overt distinction between Jewish and non-­Jewish citizenship as a ­matter of national policy. What troubled many American Jews about Netanyahu’s statement, however, is precisely what appeals to white nationalists like Taylor and Spencer. Taylor’s desire in White Identity is not simply to instill race consciousness among whites but to reclaim Amer­i­ca as a white Protestant country where whites ­will share this land with o­ thers as long as they (white Christians) retain control of its destiny. And it is ­here, I claim, that Zionism serves as a template for ­people like Taylor and Spencer—­albeit with some impor­tant differences. For example, Taylor and Spencer are not calling for white Christians to leave Amer­i­ca and return to Eu­rope but for ­others to leave Amer­i­ca (or prevent non-­whites from immigrating to Amer­i­ca) to ensure white Christian dominance, or alternatively, that integration and diversity should be curbed to solidify cultural and po­liti­cal white domination. ­Here Manifest Destiny, first used to delegitimize the rights of Native Americans, becomes operative once again: Amer­i­ca is an extension of white Christian civilization that began in the Roman Empire and extended through Eu­ro­pean history. Zionism, of course, is about Jews leaving their place of residence for a new land where they can cultivate their sense of ethnic selfhood. But many Zionists believe the destiny of the Jews is tied to the land, ­whether for messianic or for historical reasons. This is even true for progressive Zionists such as Martin Buber, who states that position quite clearly in his essays on Zionism.78 In this sense, Black Zionism or Pan-­Africanism is structurally similar to Jewish Zionism: It looks to a distant land, a homeland, as the place of its national proj­ect in response to a feeling that Amer­i­ca is too deeply racist to enable Blacks to flourish. And yet even given the differences, and Spencer’s less than positive view of Jews more generally, it is significant that he still sees something in Zionism that coheres with his white nationalist agenda: the creation of an ethnocentric nation-­state as a solution to the prob­lem of the survival of white Christian identity. And h ­ ere is where the Klan can support p­ eople like Garvey, and Spencer can support Zionism. As the Klan and white supremacist Cox supported Garvey’s Pan-­Africanism, Taylor and Spencer like Zionism in part ­because it serves as a solution for one sector of society—­that is, the Jews—­whose whiteness had been called into question, in part by Zionism’s own self-­definition. In his understanding, that would more easily enable Amer­i­ca to be what he thinks Israel already is. In other words, Spencer may



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be suggesting that Jews are not quite white enough to be included in a white Christian ethno-­state but they do have their own ethno-­state to live in.

Zionism, Pro-­Israelism, and American Jews What does this mean for Jews who remain in Amer­i­ca and for Jews in Israel ­today?79 For American Jews, it takes us back to Tisa Wenger’s argument about the criteria of whiteness as a condition for religious freedom in the United States, the foundation on which Jews have become part of tri-­faith Amer­ i­ca. ­After all, what­ever tri-­faith Amer­i­ca may mean structurally, it is white; Black Christians (let alone Muslims) are not part of its original formulation.80 ­Today’s Amer­i­ca is somewhat dif­fer­ent than in the de­cades when tri-­faith Amer­i­ca was being forged. On one level, multiculturalism, a Black president, and increased rates of interracial marriage may have softened some of the sharp edges of racial division, and yet an upsurge in racial vio­lence continues to plague Black Americans and ­people of color. As Jean-­Frederic Schaub notes about race, “The main paradox of racism is that the rejection of the other is a response to the anxiety caused by the gradual erasure of differences between the dominant population and minority groups.”81 Yet Zionism (or perhaps more accurately, pro-­Israelism) arguably still reigns as a primary anchor of Jewish identity among many American Jews, although this may be changing.82 Thus the con­temporary re­sis­tance to “whiteness” among some American Jews perhaps speaks to the anxiety many feel as a result of the success of Zionism’s impact on American Judaism; many Jews ­today do not generally want to be seen primarily as a “religious” collective but a “national” one. This tension potentially, although not necessarily, puts their fidelity to Amer­i­ca in question.83 Zionism frames Jewishness in nationalistic terms, situating Jews as part of another national proj­ect in Israel, even if American Jews choose not to live ­there. And Israel is a nation-­ state that is programmatically and now legally dominated by one ethnic group, that gives individual rights to ­others but does not offer cultural and po­liti­cal power in equal mea­sure. Diaspora Jewish support of Israel is thus, in effect, support of an ethnocentric nation-­state known as a “Jewish” state. Thus far, the status quo has held. American Jews remain Americans in good standing while making their support of a nation-­state they choose not to live in a primary source of their identity. But the tension between a religious affiliation and a national one persists, and I would suggest that it is inextricable

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to the Zionist proj­ect. Precisely what makes Zionism appealing as a model for Black nationalists and white supremacists makes it a double-­edged sword of sorts for American Jews. On the one hand, part of its success lies in the unwillingness to abandon racial particularity, but on the other hand, this claim of racial particularity often does not sit well in a society that is skeptical of ­peoples who resist assimilation.84 This tension was not born from the establishment of the state, nor was it solely the product of its ethnocentric character. One can sense such tension even in Louis Brandeis’s prestate American Zionism that stressed the utter compatibility of Zionism and Americanism. Brandeis was not a “statist” Zionist—­that is, his Zionism was founded not on the establishment of a Jewish nation-­state but on a secular collective identity whose roots lie in the Jewish homeland. Yet the force with which he makes his claim of symmetry between Americanism and Zionism suggests he was aware of the potential conflict of interest. In addition, the tension lies in the extent to which Zionism requires a fashioning of Jewish identity that values nationalism (and race) over religion and fidelity to and support of Israel as a primary form of Jewish legitimacy. In an essay, Zionism and Patriotism, in 1916 Brandeis wrote, “­Every American Jew who aids in advancing the Jewish settlement in Palestine, though he feels that neither he nor his descendants ­will ever live ­there, ­will likewise be a better man and a better American for ­doing so” (my italics).85 ­Today one can certainly still be a Zionist and an American citizen in good standing, and yet the existence of the two is not without potential tension, for example, regarding questions of allegiance. E ­ very time questions of dual allegiance are raised, ­whether legitimate or not, American Jews become ner­vous and defensive, such that one won­ders how much this anxiety occupies the American Jewish subconscious. It is not clear that Brandeis’s comment to American Jews that to be a good American is to be a Zionist is as stable or coherent ­today as it was in 1920.86 And even Brandeis, who argued for Zionism and Americanism, described Jews’ sense of solidarity due to their “common race.” In that lecture, delivered April 25, 1915, Brandeis traffics in “blood” as the common denominator of Jews. “­There has, of course, been some, intermixture of foreign blood in the 3000 years which constitute our historic ­people. But owing to persecution and prejudice . . . ​the percentage of foreign blood in the Jews ­today is very low. Prob­ably no impor­tant Eu­ro­pean race is as pure.”87 Likewise, even ­today, we might won­der how much of older racialized logic still remains within Zionism as it is commonly understood, not least when its ethnocen-



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tric claims are made explicit in ways that make clear the tension with democracy. While American Jewry is engaged in a robust debate about the pre­sent state of Israeli policies regarding the Palestinians, white evangelical Amer­i­ca seems mostly unfazed by the inequities that plague Israeli society. It appears ­today that the Jewish national affiliation of pro-­Israelists is more popu­lar in white Christian Amer­i­ca than the religious affiliation that underwrote tri-­faith Amer­i­ca over almost a ­century ago. And yet as we saw with Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s accusation of Jewish “dual allegiance” with regard to the support of Israel over American interests—­and all the responses for and against her—­ the tension remains. The ethnic versus religious affiliation of American Jews that had dogged Jews since their emancipation in France more than two centuries ago is exacerbated, or at least irritated, when Jewish nationalism in regard to Israel becomes the primary identification of one’s Jewishness in Amer­i­ca. All this needs to be nuanced in light of the murder of eleven Jews in a synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018, by a right-­wing anti-­immigration fanatic. ­There has been much written about Pittsburgh—­and the rise in antisemitic incidents in Amer­i­ca—­its meaning, and what its place ­will be in American Jewish history that I cannot rehearse ­here.88 But through all this—­a nd beyond Pittsburgh—­“racial” antisemitism persists by some in the Black community both ­because of the perceived whiteness of Jews and ­because of Israel’s continued po­liti­cal and cultural domination over its “nonwhite” population (the Palestinian Israelis and the Palestinians). It also persists in the white Christian community, among t­ hose who believe that Jews are not white enough to enable Jews to have a real place at the ­table of white Christian Amer­i­ca. In all ­these cases, both for ­those white Christians who support Israel (Christian Zionists) and ­those who do not (some in the Black community and the progressive American left)—­ Israel remains an ethnocentric (and in their minds racial) nation-­state that is exercising its ethnocentricity in a way that speaks to both sides. Regarding Israel, the ethnocentrism of the state functions in a way that prioritizes one group over ­others. The slippage from racialism to racism depends on the extent to which that prioritization becomes hierarchical and discriminatory, the way power is deployed, claiming superiority that is then implemented through the channels of po­liti­cal and legislative force. As Baldwin wrote about racism in Amer­i­ca, “Racial prejudice is endemic to ­human life. . . . ​Every­body hates every­body. . . . ​It’s about power. . . . ​I ­don’t care ­whether Senator Eastland [of Mississippi] or Barry Goldwater likes me. . . . ​I do care that

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they have the power to keep me out of a home, a job. . . . ​I ­don’t care what they think or feel; I care about their power.”89 This is why the 2018 Nation-­State Law is potentially so dangerous, even though many in Israel argue it ­didn’t introduce anything new. It is not about the ideas as much as the ­legal power and ramifications the idea attains when codified into law. Both Israeli and American Jews who support Israel find themselves having to defend it from both sides, sometimes by arguing against its ethnocentricity (it is a democracy) and sometimes arguing for it (it is a Jewish state). Sometimes by arguing that Jews are white, and sometimes arguing that they are not quite white. In any case, the ways Zionism has been used, ­adopted, and adapted by emancipated Blacks and white Christians open an in­ter­est­ ing win­dow onto the dilemma of race, Jewishness, and nationalism in the twenty-­first ­century. Sometimes seeing the defects, fissures, and challenges of an ideology is best evaluated not by examining its own internal debates but by examining the way ­others viewed it from the outside and used it to cultivate their own ideologies of racial or ethnic po­liti­cal hegemonies.

PA R T I I I Shofarot (Blasts)

Chapter 9

­ omen of the Wall, T W ­ emple Mount Activism, and the Dilemmas of Jewish Feminism in an Occupied Space Lihi Ben Shitrit

On January 31, 2018, Anat Hoffman, the chairman of the feminist ­Women of the Wall (WOW) organ­ization, and MK Yehuda Glick, a longtime activist for Jewish prayer on the ­Temple Mount/Al-­Haram al-­Sharif, spoke on a panel entitled “­Temple Mount or the Kotel? What is this work to you? (Ex. 12:26).”1 The panel interrogated how t­ hese two prominent activists saw the similarities and differences between their respective strug­gles for prayer in the sacred spaces each of them contested—­the Western Wall and the ­Temple Mount/Al-­Haram al-­Sharif.2 In their conversation, Hoffman tried to emphasize the differences between the two issues, while Glick wanted to draw attention to what they shared.3 The two groups they represent employ the language of religious freedom to claim their ­legal right to pray according to their manner on the ­Temple Mount or at the Western Wall, despite objections from other worshipers at the sites (Palestinian Muslims in the first case, ultra-­Orthodox Jews in the second). However, Glick’s activism, and ­Temple Mount activism more broadly, is an extension of the settler movement’s work to solidify the occupation over East Jerusalem. Hoffman’s and WOW activism is grounded in progressive Jewish feminism. The first aims to assert Jewish supremacy and sovereignty over Palestinian spaces and subjects, whereas the latter’s main concern is gender egalitarianism or the idea of equality between men and w ­ omen.

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This chapter asks ­whether the movements are indeed as dif­fer­ent as Hoffman claims, or ­whether they share more than she admits, as Glick argues. The chapter sheds light on the overlap in the discourse, strategy, and actions of feminist and settler activism in the contested sacred spaces of the ­Temple Mount and the Western Wall. It demonstrates that both movements contribute to an ethnonationalist agenda that strengthens exclusionary Jewish sovereignty in a context of occupation. Both construct Jerusalem and the po­liti­cal and ­legal debates over its sacred center as a purely intracommunal Jewish ­matter. For Hoffman as for Glick, the city’s Palestinian residents are not interlocutors or partners in strug­gles for equal civil rights. Instead, they are an external, menacing other whose presence requires Jews to resolve their internal divisions by granting each other (but not Palestinians) greater equality and religious freedom. Yet, even though siding with Glick in this debate, the chapter ends with the question of ­whether and how WOW could better distinguish itself from a settler, ethnonationalist agenda, if its members indeed wish to do so.

Two Strug­gles for Religious Freedom WOW’s strug­gle has revolved around the so called status quo arrangement that was instituted by Israel at the site of the Western Wall ­after the capture of East Jerusalem and the Old City from Jordan in 1967. The Palestinian Magharib neighborhood abutting the wall was demolished, and a large plaza was constructed in its stead. Israel conferred management of the Western Wall site to its ministry of religious affairs, which historically had been u ­ nder the purview of Orthodox parties. As a result, the new arrangement included a separation between men and ­women, with designation of separate prayer areas for each gender (and with the ­women’s section being much smaller). De facto, the area began to function very much like an Orthodox synagogue in which a barrier separates men from ­women, and in which only men lead collective prayer and read from the Torah, while w ­ omen pray silently. The ­Women of the Wall’s official history began in December 1988, during the first international conference for Jewish feminists that took place in Jerusalem. At the initiative of Rivka Haut, an Orthodox feminist activist from Brooklyn and one of the first to or­ga­nize Orthodox ­women’s prayer groups in the United States, about seventy ­women de­cided to hold a collective prayer at the Western Wall on the last day of the conference. The prayer,



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according to WOW’s narrative, was officially a “thanksgiving prayer to the welfare of the state of Israel.”4 Following this momentous event, some of the participants de­cided to form a prayer group that would read collectively from the Torah at the Kotel once a month, on Rosh Chodesh. Facing riots by ultra-­ Orthodox worshipers and the opposition of the Kotel’s administration, which objected to their prayer, WOW’s activism for ­women’s prayer at the Wall proceeded on two fronts. They kept coming to the Kotel monthly to pray but also de­cided to take the ­matter up with the Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ). The ­legal strug­gle, extending from 1989 to 2013 and spanning several levels of courts, with dif­fer­ent rulings, is covered in detail elsewhere.5 Several court rulings rejected WOW’s petitions but instructed the Israeli government to offer an alternative prayer site at the southern part of the Western Wall (known as Robinson’s Arch) for the group. But as the government failed to make pro­gress on an alternative site, WOW kept praying at the Kotel and faced repeated detentions and even arrests.6 A turning point occurred in 2013, when the Jerusalem district court confirmed that the “local custom” in the Western Wall should not be seen simply as the Orthodox status quo but rather should be given a more secular, pluralist, and national interpretation, thus including the practice of WOW alongside the hegemonic Orthodox custom.7 On January 31, 2016, the Israeli government fi­nally approved a plan to expand the site of Robinson’s Arch for WOW prayer. But while this decision enjoyed the official endorsement of WOW and of other progressive Jewish movements (the Reform and Conservative movements), several other parties objected to the plan. ­These included the ultra-­Orthodox parties in the government, who rescinded their original acquiescence to the plan; several found­ers of WOW, who now formed a group called the Original ­Women of the Wall; the archaeological authorities in charge of the Robinson’s Arch area, who objected to the plan due to the harm the massive new construction would cause to the historical site; and the Islamic Waqf, which decried the plan as a unilateral violation by Israel of the status quo at the holy site. Another Jewish movement engaged in contesting the 1967 status quo is the movement for Jewish prayer on the ­Temple Mount. ­After Israel conquered the Old City of Jerusalem, in order to avoid additional turmoil, it immediately handed back the management of the Haram al-­Sharif/Temple Mount site to the Islamic Waqf and established what has been called ever since the “status quo” on the ­Temple Mount. The Haram area would be de facto (if not de jure) a place of worship exclusively for Muslims, while Jews and ­others could visit

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but only as tourists at ­limited hours. This division of space prevented additional conflict and was generally agreed to by religious authorities on both sides. Israel’s chief rabbinate, in accordance with the historical opinion of Orthodox rabbis, determined that it was halakhically forbidden for Jews to pray at the ­Temple Mount. Their rationale, motivated by a mixture of religious and po­liti­cal considerations, was that Jews who ascend to the mount could inadvertently desecrate the holy spaces within it due to halakhic prob­lems of the purity or impurity of Jewish ascenders entering the holiest of places.8 In the 1970s and 1980s, however, radical activists from the Jewish settler movement began to contest this halakhic ruling by arguing for Jewish ascent and prayer on the mount. For them it was imperative to reclaim the holiest of Jewish sites in preparation for the rebuilding of the T ­ emple. But the militant activists for Jewish ascent, prayer, and eventual construction of the ­Temple failed to elicit much support from most Israelis. Their militant and sometimes violent rhe­toric and actions might have alienated mainstream Israeli public opinion. Since 2000, however, a new discourse has been developed by organ­izations such as ­Women for the ­Temple—­a high profile activist group for Jewish prayer on the ­Temple Mount—as well as by Yehuda Glick and Moshe Feiglin. ­These activists have worked to paint the strug­gle in softer and less threatening colors. Instead of the fanatics of the Jewish Under­ground who wanted to blow up the Dome of the Rock, ­these activists say they want to ascend to the mount in the name of religious freedom and closeness to the divine. For ­these activists, WOW’s ­legal and practical success in gaining a foothold for its religious practice in the ­women’s section of the Kotel—­and potentially even in the management of the area, with the plan to expand an egalitarian section at Robinson’s Arch and grant other groups (including WOW and the Conservative and Reform movements) official administrative roles—is a model and a pre­ce­dent for changing the status quo. The parallels ­Temple activists see with WOW lie in the balance between guaranteeing religious freedom and maintaining “public order.” Both groups claim the mantle of equality and religious freedom in the sense that their practice should be considered not a po­liti­cal provocation but rather an expression of faith protected ­under the right to freely exercise one’s religion. Both groups have been confronted with arguments by the police and the state that their practice offends the sensitivities of other worshipers and may lead to the disturbance of public order by provoking violent reactions, and therefore should be ­limited. While both groups have received ­legal recognition from



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the HCJ that their practice does indeed fall ­under the protection of religious freedom, only WOW has been successful in convincing the court that their practice should not be ­limited by the police. In the case of ­Temple Mount activists, appeals to the HCJ from 1967 to the pre­sent to allow Jewish prayer on the Mount have been repeatedly rejected. While the court often upheld Jewish worshipers’ right to pray at the site, it also always upheld the police restriction on Jewish prayer due to its potential to disturb the peace. Judge Aharon Barak wrote, in a decision on such a case in 1993, that “the right of the appellant to pray on the ­Temple Mount is undisputable.9 The dispute is over the implementation of this right in practice. . . . ​W hen the police—­ given its ­limited abilities and power—­cannot guarantee the implementation of religious freedom or the freedom to protest, ­there is no escape from violating t­ hese liberties in order to prevent harming the public interest.”10 HCJ decision 2189/10 from 2010, on the appeal of the Land of Israel Forum against the commander of the Jerusalem district police, captures the court’s consistent position regarding Jewish prayer on the ­Temple Mount since 1967: “Against the right to ascend to the ­Temple Mount and pray ­there, a right that is not absolute, stands the duty of the defendants [the police] to attend to public order and public peace. . . . ​­Under ­these circumstances the court has ruled again and again that the police’s principal position (to the extent that it is grounded among other ­things in a current evaluation of the situation)—­that calls not to permit certain individuals to enter the T ­ emple Mount and pray ­there whenever they want, or to perform religious rituals ­there, due to a reasonable fear of harm to public order or public safety—is not unreasonable.”11 But already in WOW’s first appeal to the HCJ in 1989, one of the judges drew a connection between their case and the plight of the ­Temple Mount activists. Judge Menachem Elon wrote: How is it pos­si­ble that one individual Jew is not allowed to ascend to the ­Temple Mount . . . ​wearing a tallit or holding a prayer book, and that this complete denial of freedom of religious practice is justified by this court ­because of the existence of threat to the public order and rioting; and on the other hand, the denial of prayer of ­women wearing tallit and praying from a Torah [which is clearly introducing a change to the custom of the place] and where ­there is a clear danger of riots, scuffles, and tear gas—as has happened in the past—­and still, we must permit this change in order to prevent

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violating [their] religious freedom! What is the difference between the ­Temple Mount east of the Kotel and the prayer plaza west of the Kotel, which are both sacred places? No Jew, not even one, is allowed according to this court’s rulings to pray on the ­Temple Mount, and this does not violate freedom of religious practice, but the banning of an additional form of prayer [WOW’s], which was never practiced in the Kotel and which the vast majority of worshipers at the site strongly oppose, such a ban is a violation of religious freedom? Given this, it would be proper and correct, in order to avoid a double standard, that the committee that would be established as the head of the court proposed, as well as the court itself when it considers this ­matter again, should discuss the ­whole of religious freedom from both sides of the Western Wall.12 Notwithstanding Judge Elon’s clear linking of the two issues, in the eighties and nineties, ­Temple activists themselves paid ­little attention to ­Women of the Wall. Yet the rising visibility of WOW and their successes, alongside some ­Temple activists’ rhetorical shift to a public emphasis on religious freedom, has generated surprising vocal support for WOW by ­these activists. It is surprising ­because, in terms of doctrine, ­Temple activists have ­little agreement with WOW’s manner of prayer. Yet ­because the two issues are increasingly framed as challenging the status quo in and around the ­Temple Mount area in ­favor of Jewish religious freedom, the WOW case serves as a fruitful pre­ce­dent for the ­Temple agenda. Moreover, WOW’s headway with the government, including the plan to make unilateral Israeli changes in the area to expand an egalitarian prayer section—­plans that the Islamic Waqf, the Palestinian Authority, and Islamic movements in Israel and Palestine vehemently oppose—­help entrench Israeli dominance and hegemony in this space. This plan in fact aligns very well with ­Temple Mount and settler activists’ expansionist agenda of strengthening ethnonationalist Jewish sovereignty in the Old City and East Jerusalem.

Overlaps Between the Movements: Removing Intracommunal Divisions The dialogue between Hoffman and Glick reflected the overlaps between their agendas, rhe­toric, and strategies as well as WOW’s inability to adequately



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untangle this relation. When Hoffman was asked to speak, she stressed how WOW was able to break all barriers between Jews and unite them. “­There are among us in WOW Reform ­women, Masorti ­women, Orthodox,” she said, “and we have ONE text.” She explained that they “fought for years about each word, and we invite some of us not to read every­thing, but we have one text [Orthodox ­women do not read certain part of the text that requires a minyan].” Further, “we also broke the barriers between us [Israeli Jews] and world Jewry. Lastly, we broke another barrier between us and men. ­There are fifty men, and sometimes Yehuda [Glick] is one of them, who come each Rosh Hodesh to support ­Women of the Wall.” 13 In fact, Jewish unity and the potential of the Kotel to bring together Jews of dif­fer­ent genders, denominations, residence (Israeli and Diaspora), and po­liti­cal commitments have been at the heart of WOW’s discourse from its early days. In my study of ­women activists for the ­Temple Mount, I describe how ­women’s activism and the deployment of gender in conflict over contested sacred space contribute to enhancing the centrality of the space and thus strengthens positions that militate against intercommunal compromise. I show how ­women uniquely and intentionally amplify the prob­lem of “indivisibility,” meaning refusal to cede, divide, or equally share sovereignty over a sacred space in intercommunal strug­gles. W ­ omen for the ­Temple activists work to dismantle vari­ous intracommunity, largely Orthodox-­motivated divisions: divisions between men and ­women through spatial segregation and role differentiation, divisions between ­women (married and unmarried, young and old, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, diasporic or native, ­women of dif­fer­ent denominations) through fluid ritual practice, divisions between private and public life, and perhaps most impor­tant, divisions between the religious and the secular in emotional attachment and preoccupation with the site. ­These efforts aim to elevate the centrality of the place in the consciousness of their wider communities, making the potential of ceding it or sharing sovereignty with Palestinians in that space increasingly difficult.14 Like ­Women for the ­Temple, WOW participates in the work to remove intra-­Jewish divisions in a sacred space within a context of occupation, and this has the effect (intended by some in WOW, unintended by o­ thers) of fortifying exclusive Jewish sovereignty in this space and in Jerusalem. In a book written by and about the movement, titled ­Women of the Wall, with contributing chapters from almost all prominent founding activists, this sense of fostering intracommunal unity pervades each page: “The Talmud teaches that when Jews are not united, tragedy results. . . . ​It is not our foreign

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enemies who destroyed us, but our incessant internal conflicts. At a time of denominational and po­liti­cal strife, the ­Women of the Wall are proving that Jews can work and pray together and transcend our differences in a tolerant, even loving way.”15 This Jewish unity is meant to make the Kotel a site that is more open and accessible to all the ­People of Israel (‘am yisrael), when many have been alienated from it by the ultra-­Orthodox mono­poly. Dismantling intra-­Jewish divisions, it constructs the site as a religious-­nationalist symbol that should unite rather than divide Jews of vari­ous religious and po­liti­cal backgrounds. As articulated in their original mission statement, “The Western Wall is Judaism’s most sacred holy site and the principal symbol of Jewish people-­hood and sovereignty.” The connection between the Kotel and Jewish sovereignty raises the question of WOW’s entanglement with a par­tic­u­lar kind of nationalism: the occupation in East Jerusalem and Israel’s imposition of ethnonationalist sovereignty in its management of the city. The first WOW gathering in 1988 was meant to offer a “prayer for the welfare of state of Israel.” In subsequent prayer practice, the group has traditionally ended the prayer with the Israeli national anthem. This was a clear indication that religious practice in this space cannot be separated from nationalism. The preoccupation with the Kotel combines religion and nationalism, and the feminist strug­gle for the holy place is intricately connected to the national proj­ect. The national anthem (Ha-­Tikva) also communicates WOW’s patriotism, their affinity to the Jewish state. The anthem was a power­f ul sign of WOW’s emphasis on the national significance of the Kotel and a very explicit act of asserting sovereignty. Israeli institutions have often used the Kotel as the site of militaristic ethnonationalist spectacle. IDF events for soldiers at the Kotel are a regular occurrence, and it is not unusual on a visit to the Kotel to see a sea of uniformed soldiers holding guns and undergoing official induction ceremonies at the Western Wall plaza. WOW has embraced and participated in the production of the Kotel as a symbol for the nexus of ethnonationalism and militarism. For example, in 2012 WOW re­created the famous picture of the IDF paratroopers who conquered the Western Wall and ­Temple Mount in 1967. In place of the uniformed men with helmets looking rev­er­ent­ly upward in triumphant contemplation and awe of the event, the 2012 recreation, which was taken by the same photographer as the 1967 photo, depicted tallit-­clad WOW activists in the same position holding a Torah scroll and gazing ecstatically to the sky.



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The theme of former and current liberators of sacred space on behalf of the Jewish ­people pervades WOW’s rhe­toric. In July 2017 WOW held a joint press conference with the paratroopers, who, in their words, liberated the Old City and the Western Wall in the war of 1967. The group of veteran paratroopers who came to support WOW’s fight explained that they wanted to join the “modern fight for liberation of the Kotel.”16 They argued that they freed the Western Wall to restore it as the property of the ­people of Israel, men and ­women, religious and secular, and so they object to the mono­poly of one Jewish strand over the space. WOW leaders employed militaristic imagery and an exhortation of unity as ways to preserve the strength of the Jewish ­people against external enemies. Anat Hoffman stated that “the paratroopers and WOW share character traits: determination, courage, and the ability to sacrifice—­one for all and all for one. The joint singing of Ha-­Tikva at the end of the meeting [between WOW and the paratroopers] was one of the most moving that the Kotel has ever known.”17 In 2018, in a letter of support for WOW, Rabbi Gil Nativ, a member of the paratroopers, wrote an op-ed titled “The Liberation of the Kotel—­Then and Now,” again equating the military assertion of Jewish sovereignty over the Old City in 1967 to WOW’s restoration of sovereignty at the site for the Jewish p­ eople as a w ­ hole.18 The entanglement with questions of Jewish nationalism and belonging, and their relations with Jewish sovereignty in an occupied territory, is not a recent phenomenon in WOW’s discourse. It is powerfully reflected in the media policy decision of the International Committee of ­Women of the Wall (ICWOW) in the early days of WOW and the debates around it. As Susan Aranoff, a founding board member of ICWOW, writes already in the late 1980s: Difference of opinions began to emerge about ICWOW’s policy ­toward non-­Jewish media and public relations activity in non-­Jewish arenas. . . . ​­After some intense discussion, which revolved around the power of secular media and the potential damage that negative publicity could do to Israel, a vote was taken that set a policy of barring ICWOW’s contact with the non-­Jewish, or general, media and restricting ourselves to contacts with Jewish media only. WOW, however, did not adopt such a policy. . . . ​The general media are unfriendly to Israel and would seize the opportunity to run a story that showed Israel in a negative light. . . . ​Israel certainly needs to improve its treatment of ­women in the home, in the courts, and at

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work, but I was uncomfortable with the prospect of The New York Times ­running an article about discrimination against w ­ omen in Iran or Af­ghan­i­stan, followed the next day or week by an article about ICWOW and religious discrimination against ­women at the Kotel. . . . ​A perception of a weakening of American Jewish support for Israel could weaken Israel’s position in the American po­liti­cal system. Fi­nally, and more specific to the Kotel issue, a highly publicized Jewish challenge to Israel’s administration of the Kotel could reignite and add credence to challenges to Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem.”19 Although WOW itself did not maintain such a media policy, its concern with not drawing attention to the question of occupation in Jerusalem is more than apparent in its per­sis­tent attempt to pre­sent itself as “apo­liti­ cal” on the question of the Palestinians. WOW’s current official line asserts that “WOW has never taken part in partisan or po­liti­cal activity. Our members and supporters come from the entire po­liti­cal spectrum and from all Jewish denominations, and we do not take a position on issues that do not pertain directly to our right to pray at the Kotel. WOW’s Board members and leaders have dif­fer­ent opinions, dif­fer­ent po­liti­cal perspectives, and a wide array of work and activism backgrounds. ­These differences between us represent our pluralism and make the ­human tapestry of WOW very special.”20 Anat Hoffman, interviewed in the WOW activists’ book, tried to depict the Kotel issue as one that transcends left-­right debates. She said, “Sisterhood is amazing, it can ­really bridge our denominations, language, prob­lems, cultural differences, even across oceans. For example, Barbara Sutick [a WOW member] is a settler, and I am a leftist who opposes such settlements, but we are both ­sisters in ­Women of the Wall. I’m proud of her. She brings ­people from Efrat [a West Bank settlement] with her to daven with us. . . . ​­There is so much in common between the ­others and myself, but the fact that I’m a ­Woman in Black [peace movement] and she is a ­Woman in Green [settler movement]—­that is a small ­thing.”21 The fellowship or sisterhood of Jewish ­women at the Kotel, presented ­here by Hoffman, makes the space appear exterritorial to the Israeli-­Palestinian conflict. It is as if it ­were in an undisputed area or in another spatial realm in which non-­Jews have ­little place or stake and become completely irrelevant, even for so-­called left-­wing activists such as herself. When I spoke about this question of po­liti­cal affiliation with Shira Pruce, WOW’s current spokesperson, she also expressed WOW’s effort to create a so-­called nonpartisan consensus. She explained:



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The support that ­we’ve gotten has ranged the po­liti­cal spectrum, I ­don’t think that this is a right/left issue. In fact, ­there are many ­Temple Mount activists who would say “We support ­Women of the Wall and it’s the same issue”; it’s not the same issue, it’s a dif­fer­ent issue, but I think they do honor the . . . ​the princi­ples in the same way . . . ​in regard to our strug­gle. But I think support ranges in dif­ fer­ent ways. ­There’s the kind of support that Meretz and Avoda’s [­Labor] openly feminist members of the Knesset are ­going to come out with you and stand with you and strug­gle with you and make sure that your rights are upheld, and ­there is Tzipi Livni, who has done her part in the past when she was minister of justice in preventing some pretty damaging regulations to be passed. And Aliza Lavie, who has at times written letters on our behalf . . . ​sometimes she supports us, sometimes [she’s] quieter, so it definitely ranges right to left. . . . ​We ­don’t have a po­liti­cal alliance. Our board is po­ liti­cally diverse, and when we extend invitations for members of Knesset to participate in an action that ­we’re taking or to participate in a prayer that ­we’re ­doing, or we ask them not to participate in a certain ceremony ­because it’s excluding ­women, when we do that we turn to all the members of Knesset. ­There’s never an instance in which we write a letter only to members of Knesset from Meretz, we ­don’t do that. We are nonaffiliated, nonpartisan. In terms of ­Women of the Wall, we always w ­ ill write to all of the female ministers.22 WOW painstakingly tries to distance itself from any “leftist” or anti-­ occupation taint by arguing it is apo­liti­cal, taking no stance on the po­liti­cal question of occupation in East Jerusalem and the Old City, the discrimination against Palestinian residents and their denial of civil rights, or any f­ uture equitable po­liti­cal arrangement in this space with Palestinians. Some members, like Anat Hoffman, are on the left of the spectrum on the question of the occupation, while ­others, like Phyllis Chesler, are more right-­wing. However, the search for “Jewish unity” and grounding WOW’s legitimacy in exclusively Jewish nationalist terms lead even ­those on the left in the group to participate in and amplify the exclusion of Palestinians from the conversation or debate over sacred space in Jerusalem. This is starkly reflected in WOW’s 2016 decision to support the “Kotel deal” proposed by the Israeli government (the expansion of Robinson’s Arch as an alternative site). If praying according to Orthodox custom within the

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­ omen’s section was only a ­limited reconfiguration of the intercommunal w status quo around the Sacred Esplanade in Jerusalem, the new proposal is an expansive unilateral Israeli move against the status quo. It involves massive expansion and construction south of the Western Wall plaza, further surrounding the ­Temple Mount with newly consecrated Jewish sacred sites. This plan explic­itly aims to attract thousands more modern Orthodox, non-­ Orthodox, secular, Israeli, and Diaspora Jews to make the space their own. And all on land that belongs to the Islamic Waqf. This episode almost mirrors the construction of the “Museum of Tolerance” in Jerusalem on the site of a Muslim cemetery and Waqf property, to the dismay of disenfranchised Muslim residents of the city.23 In articulating the logic ­behind the “Kotel deal,” Natan Sharansky, broker of the agreement, saw it as a way to overcome intracommunal divisions in order to strengthen Jewish unity and consequently attachment to the contested space. He wrote about the negotiating partners (the Israeli government, the ultra-­Orthodox, WOW, and the Conservative and Reform movements): Thus if any one group succeeded in fully achieving its aims, a ­great many who disagreed would feel disconnected from one of their ­people’s most power­ful sites—­and with it, perhaps, from the Jewish ­people itself. The Kotel is a singular symbol of Jewish peoplehood: a reflection of our ancient history, an embodiment of our national renewal, and a focus of our religious longings. . . . ​Now that we once again have our own in­de­pen­dent polity, how can all of ­these communities join forces and share a vision of the f­ uture? How w ­ ill we treat finite national resources such as citizenship, public spaces, and symbols? We cannot simply agree to disagree, for ­here in Israel the question is no longer theoretical; ­here our journey becomes concrete. . . . ​When they chose to compromise to reach their historic solution, they chose to continue our national journey together. Instead of pushing for a Pyrrhic victory that would have split our paths, they chose the only pos­si­ble way to preserve the Wall as one symbol for one p­ eople, uniting us with both our revered tradition and all the dif­fer­ent Jewish communities h ­ ere in Israel and around the world.24 This discourse of intracommunal unity and peoplehood in the Kotel is linked ­here explic­itly to arrangements around “citizenship, public spaces, and



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symbols.” When speaking of finding Jewish unity over ­these national public goods, what Sharansky calls “finite national resources” in the Old City of Jerusalem, a territory that is occupied, internationally contested, and where Palestinian residents cannot legally be a part of the conversation, he reveals the ­silent other in this space. Even further, his rhe­toric makes debates over citizenship, public spaces, and symbols in the State of Israel the purview of Jews alone, to the exclusion of both non-­Jewish citizens as well as Jerusalemite Palestinians, who have no citizenship rights. It is not surprising that many staunchly far-­right, pro-­settlement activists and politicians vocally supported the Kotel deal. They too saw in it an opportunity to strengthen Jewish sovereignty over occupied space by drawing in more segments of Jewish communities to feel included in this space. Israel Harel, a well-­k nown settlement movement leader, wrote in an article titled “We Must Liberate the Kotel” that it only makes sense that a “nationalist” government—­meaning the right-­wing ruling co­ali­tion ­under Benjamin Netanyahu with far-­right pro-­settlement parties such as Israel Our Home (Yisrael Beitenu) and the Jewish Home (Habayit Hayehudi)—­has restored the “national site” to its “national meaning,” breaking the exclusionary practices of the ultra-­Orthodox.25 The fight for unity over the Kotel issue, he explained, is part of the fight for Jewish sovereignty. Danny Dayan, former head of the Judea and Samaria Council (Yesha Council—­the administrative representative body of the settlement movement), also supported the plan and, according to interviews with Reform and progressive community leaders in New York, became as a consequence beloved by ­these communities ­a fter he became Israel’s consul general in New York. The president of the Reform movement in the United States, who was initially suspicious of Dayan, told Haaretz that he was “impressed by his knowledge [about the Kotel deal] and the feeling that it ­really mattered to him.” Dayan met with Rabbi Gilad Kariv, the head of the Reform movement in Israel, and with Anat Hoffman and communicated his support when meeting with North American Jewish leadership. The title of the article covering his term as consul was “US Reform Jews Stopped Fearing the Yesha Guy and Started Loving Danny Dayan.”26 High-­profile ­Temple Mount activists, who also advance a settlement agenda and support imposing Jewish sovereignty over not only East Jerusalem but the entire West Bank, have also been vocal supporters of WOW. Former MK Moshe Feiglin expressed support for WOW in Knesset discussions and on right-­w ing ­Temple Mount websites. In a piece titled “The

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Kotel, ­Women of the Wall, ­Temple Mount, and the Link Between Them,” he has argued that, as a national symbol and site, the Kotel should be open to all Jews of vari­ous ritual practices and that halakhic considerations are not an issue ­there. He chided the ultra-­Orthodox for the divisions they sow over the site.27 In another pronouncement he stated, “If in the Knesset discussion at the ­Women’s Advancement Committee they discussed the right of ­Women of the Wall to pray at the Kotel, that is the basis for my right to pray on ­Temple Mount.”28 MK Shuli Mualem of the Jewish Home party made the same link, stating that “if ­Women of the Wall can [pray at the Kotel], then I can as well [pray on the ­Temple Mount].”29 MK Yehuda Glick has also been consistent in his support for what he sees as ­Women of the Wall’s right to religious freedom, calling their actions total devotion and self-­sacrifice (mesirut nefesh).30 WOW as well as the Conservative and Reform movements have seized on the support from ultranationalists. The group’s Facebook page, for example, featured endorsements by MKs Glick and Amir Ohana of the Likud, alongside ­those of feminist MKs.31 They also shared posts by the Reform movement congratulating the far-­right minister of defense Avigdor Lieberman, which read, “Lieberman, we are proud of you! You presented one sane voice that understands that the unity of the Jewish ­people is more impor­ tant than a co­ali­tion seat. . . . ​Together we ­will remind the Jewish ­people that we do not have another land, and that this land is indeed the home of the entire Jewish ­people.” Another stated that “Netanyahu is dividing the Jewish ­people” by reneging on the Kotel deal.32 However it is clear that while WOW representatives acknowledge and appreciate positive statements coming from ­Temple Mount activists, they still feel discomfort with the parallels t­ hese activists draw with WOW, and their use of WOW as a pre­ce­dent for challenging the status quo in the Sacred Esplanade area. Returning to Hoffman and Glick’s conversation, the next section shows the problematic strategy WOW undertakes to argue for the difference between itself and ­Temple Mount advocates. This discursive strategy rests on drawing bound­a ries around the Jewish community as a ­family and presenting the Palestinians as a menacing other whose looming vio­lence is such a threat as to demand curbing of religious freedom for ­Temple activists. ­Because WOW’s own work takes place over an occupied space, the fact of occupation or the disenfranchisement of Palestinian Jerusalemites from civil rights and participation in decision-­making in Jerusalem cannot ground WOW’s cri-



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tique of ­Temple activists. Instead, the potential of Muslim vio­lence, building on tropes of a religious-­f undamentalist Islamic threat, is employed by Hoffman and other WOW members.

Constructing the Palestinian-­Muslim Other Commenting on Hoffman’s description in the joint panel of how WOW wanted to offer a prayer for the State of Israel (lehitpalel leshlom hamedina), Glick said that in 2013 he was removed from the ­Temple Mount ­because he was praying for the State of Israel. “So we have another ­thing in common,” he told her. He explained that he was happy for and supported WOW’s strug­ gle ­because it was one for equality and religious freedom. But he also noted that the Kotel “became a synagogue only 50 years ago and was not always sacred to the Jewish p­ eople. It was a Magharib neighborhood that was wiped out and turned into the Kotel plaza. For the ­Temple Mount,” he said, “no one was evicted, and it has always been holy to the Jewish ­people.” Beyond the history of expropriation and deportation for the existing plaza, the expansionist Kotel deal that WOW advocates has been publicly condemned by the Palestinian religious establishment. The ­grand mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, issued a statement in 2016 arguing that the designated area for the egalitarian plaza was Islamic Waqf property that was “taken by the Israeli occupation in 1967.” He also stated that the plan was “a brutal attack on the Waqf and additional evidence of the Israeli aggression against Muslim holy places, in an attempt to Judaize Jerusalem.”33 The Palestinian minister of Waqf and religious affairs, Youssef Ideiss, called it “another Israeli attempt to change the status quo at the ­Temple Mount” and “Judaicize” the area in and around the Sacred Esplanade.34 The Islamic Movement in Israel, one of the most popu­lar civil society movements among Palestinian citizens of Israel and among Palestinians in Jerusalem, also condemned the plan. Not only the more hardline northern branch of the movement, which was outlawed by Israel in 2015, but also the more accommodationist southern branch expressed objection. The Al-­Aqsa Association, affiliated with the southern branch, issued a statement rejecting the plan as an attack on the Islamic Waqf and the Muslim-­Palestinian presence in Jerusalem. The statement compared the move to other unilateral Israeli changes in the Old City and East Jerusalem which, ­u nder the guise of archeological digs, tourist

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parks, and religious sites, have effectively suppressed Palestinian history and undermined—­through evictions and limitations—­pre­sent Palestinian life in Jerusalem.35 For Hoffman, however, the issue is strictly intra-­Jewish. To mark her distinction from Yehuda Glick and ­Temple activists, Hoffman reiterated two WOW arguments. First, the Kotel issue is only intracommunal, while the ­Temple Mount issue is intercommunal. Second, the conflict at the Kotel, ­because it is “within the ­family” and involves Jews, does not have the same potential for vio­lence. She said, “Our strug­gle is inside the ­family; my ­brother is preventing me from practicing. The strug­gle over the T ­ emple Mount is a strug­gle with the neighbors. . . . ​According to the army and police it could awaken our territorial conflict into an international inter-­religious conflict. We can all pay a heavy price for that. . . . ​I believe in freedom of religion but we have to think about the natu­ral consequences of our action. Without this flammable potential in princi­ple I think it is g­ reat for p­ eople to pray wherever they like. But whoever ignores this huge price is endangering all of us.”36 The first move, the stress on ­family, corresponds to WOW’s emphasis on Jewish unity through inclusion, which I discussed in the previous section. In an open letter to the rabbi of the Kotel in 2015—­following his address to American Jews in which he called WOW ­women “my ­sisters”—­Lesley Sachs, WOW’s executive director, wrote: “Whom in our Jewish ­family do you invite to the Kotel that is holy to all of us? . . . ​Your Kotel is not ­really open to our extended Jewish ­family. . . . ​I ­don’t know how your ­family conducts itself, but in my ­family we ­don’t evict anyone from home, we accept all our ­brothers and ­sisters the way they are, with tolerance and love, despite the difference between us.”37 The discussion over religion and state, public space, contested sacred sites, and occupied areas of Jerusalem is one that is the exclusive purview of the Jewish ­family. The Palestinian Muslim voices who speak out against the occupation’s violations of the status quo are irrelevant and not even acknowledged. Palestinian Jerusalemites do not have Israeli citizenship and therefore cannot have formal repre­sen­ta­tion in parliament. Moreover, many of their civil society organ­izations that address the issue of the ­Temple Mount and its surroundings have been outlawed. Muslim ­women activists (the Murabitat) who have been involved in a nonviolent strug­gle against changes to the status quo have been arrested, their ­houses raided, their ­children intimidated, and their husbands interrogated (with threats that they “control their wives”); they have been issued multiple re-



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straining ­orders banning them from visiting the Sacred Esplanade and at times even the entire Old City.38 Second, WOW concurs with the Israeli police and the HCJ’s estimation that the religious right of ­Temple Mount activists to pray at the mount needs to be curtailed due to its threat to “public order” and public safety. That is, as Hoffman and other WOW activists I interviewed explain, the vio­lence that ­will be unleashed would be too ­great to manage. It is not a principled objection to the unilateral changing of the status quo in the Sacred Esplanade and Kotel area, given that it is ­under occupation according to international law and that its Palestinian residents are disenfranchised. Since WOW itself, by accepting the Kotel deal and demanding an official administrative role in managing the alternative site, has endorsed unilateral expansionist Israeli action, they are left exposed to charges of double standards by ­Temple activists. To uphold a distinction, though, WOW has to argue for a Palestinian Muslim violent menace that is so grave that the rights they demand for themselves should be denied ­Temple activists. It is impor­tant to restate again that WOW activists have diverse opinions on this ­matter. The left-­right co­ali­tion of Jewish ­women it tries to hold together is reflected in the positions of dif­fer­ent members. For example, Hoffman does not shy away from talking about the occupation. In response to Glick, she also mentioned that he is coming as an occupier to the ­Temple Mount. However, not including herself and her actions as agents of occupation betrays an under­lying notion of who she thinks gets to define the contours of occupation. The Palestinians are irrelevant to the negotiation around expansions in the area and changes to the status quo west and south of the Kotel and the Sacred Esplanade. Other, more right-­wing, WOW activists take it a step further. They pre­sent themselves and the State of Israel as beacons of democracy and liberalism in a conflict with another side that, rather than having legitimate grievances, is motivated by irrational, fanatic hate. In the preface to the W ­ omen of the Wall activist book, the editors write: Islamic terrorists have declared war on Amer­i­ca and on the Western world. Western values—­including freedom of religion and ­women’s rights—­a re ­under deadly attack. Vio­lence in Israel is a heartbreaking, daily occurrence. . . . ​Like all nation-­states, Israel is imperfect. Nevertheless, it still remains a lone voice in the ­Middle East for modernity and democracy. . . . ​Now we are all Israelis, targeted for

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suicidal and homicidal terror by ­those who resent our very existence, despise our way of life, and are ready to sacrifice their ­children in God’s name—­the very act that God ­stopped our forefather Abraham from committing, which established an ethical norm. . . . ​ To that end, we dedicate this book and this strug­gle to the State of Israel.39 Palestinian re­sis­tance to the occupation is lumped in with other forms of anti-­Western, Islamic fundamentalism that “despise our way of life” of enlightened feminists and the freedom and democracy Israel offers. The prob­ lem with the marriage of left and right activists in WOW is that even ­those in WOW who might understand Palestinian fears of Israel’s expansionism in Jerusalem and elsewhere—­and its entrenchment of sovereignty over territory without extending citizenship rights to non-­Jews in t­ hese territories—­ fall into the construction of Palestinians as wholly other. This other is irrelevant to the Kotel debate, which is within the Jewish ­family. To maintain their difference from ­Temple Mount activists, WOW has to argue that the wholly other is so menacing that it requires restrictions on freedom of religion on the T ­ emple Mount. Ultra-­Orthodox vio­lence against WOW is a scuffle “within the ­family,” and therefore the police’s historical estimation that WOW activists cause a threat to “public safety” is overblown, according to WOW. In the absence of Palestinian-­Muslim vio­lence, WOW and the Israeli police do not pre­sent a principled argument for why the religious freedom of ­Temple activists should be curtailed. We can see this strange construction of the Palestinian by even more leftist WOW members. For example, when an ultra-­Orthodox MK compared WOW ­women to the Palestinian Muslim Murabitat, a consensus condemning his words as incitement spanned from Benjamin Netanyahu, to Meretz’s Zehava Galon, to WOW’s Hoffman, and to the Reform movement. Hoffman congratulated Netanyahu and the other MKs for distancing themselves from such remarks, and WOW’s official response stated that the ultra-­ Orthodox equate anyone who disagrees on Kotel arrangement with the ­enemy (oyev). Rabbi Kariv of the Reform movement stated that the comparison between the Reform to the Islamic Movement is incitement and hatred within the ­family (sin‘at akhim).40 The Murabitat bear some similarity to WOW to the extent that their participation in intra-­Muslim dynamics, like that of WOW and ­Temple Mount activists, aims to raise the centrality of a contested sacred space within their community, drawing new allies and co­



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ali­tions, with the effect of making the site increasingly indivisible in the intercommunal context. In both cases, ­these are ­women who are involved in a civil society and ­legal ­battle to have access to and sovereignty over a space they hold sacred. Despite the Israeli government’s attempt to brand the Murabitat as terrorist-­affiliated and the decision to outlaw them—­which involves denying access to ­women who have been praying, studying, and teaching in the Al-­Aqsa Mosque premises for years, some since childhood—­ the government has not been able to pre­sent evidence of their involvement with terrorism or incitement to vio­lence.41 However, for WOW the mere comparison between ­these two ­women’s movements is cause for outrage, accusations of incitement, and distancing from this menacing “­enemy.” The participation of WOW in the amplification of a Palestinian-­Muslim security “threat” in the context of occupation and unilateral Israeli expropriation of land, resources, and most relevant to this case, contested holy sites throughout Jerusalem and the West Bank, is jarring for an organ­ization purportedly devoted to promoting equal rights. By rejecting comparisons to ­Temple Mount activists and to the Murabitat, WOW tries to paint its own strug­gle as entirely disconnected from the conflict in Jerusalem. Yet it still takes sides by portraying some (­Temple activists) as ­family members and ­others (religious Palestinian activists) as the “­enemy.”

Religious Feminism and the Occupation By showing the parallels between the settler activism of the ­Temple Mount movement, which explic­itly calls for the solidification of the occupation, and the feminist ­Women of the Wall, I do not want to imply that Jewish feminism has no place in still occupied territories or that WOW’s fight for Jewish religious pluralism and Jewish ­women’s equality is not a worthy undertaking. It is out of appreciation for the spiritual and po­liti­cal commitments of WOW’s impressive activists that I want to offer food for thought in this final section about the possibility of egalitarian feminism in occupied space. While it might seem a redundancy to call something “egalitarian feminism” (­isn’t “egalitarianism” already implied in “feminism?”), a long history of exclusions practiced by first-­and second-­wave feminisms—­whether ­toward Black, third world, LGBT, working-­class, or other ­women—­makes it is fair to say that some feminist practices or organ­izing are more egalitarian than ­others. In the context of Jerusalem, egalitarian feminism would be

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one that supports the premise of basic equal civil rights regardless of sex, religion, race, or ethnicity. Many WOW activists are not consciously and purposefully in the business of promoting Jewish ethnonationalism and exclusive sovereignty in an occupied space. Their foremost agenda is an egalitarian Israel that re­spects ­women’s rights and religious pluralism. Many of them have been involved in organ­izations that address the Israeli-­Palestinian conflict.42 Egalitarian feminism, when operating in an occupied space like the Old City of Jerusalem, would work to disentangle a feminist strug­gle from ethnonationalist agendas that uphold the ­legal, civil, and po­liti­cal supremacy of one group of ­people over another. It would work in opposition to, as opposed to in co­ali­tion with, a far-­right ultranationalist Israeli government and would explic­itly contest, rather than echo or replicate, the meaning of “sovereignty” in Jerusalem. This is not to say that ­every feminist issue in Israel has to address the occupation, or that Jewish ultra-­Orthodox discrimination against ­women does not merit a Jewish feminist strug­gle. But ­there is no escaping the fact that WOW’s fight is in—­even at the center of—an internationally contested occupied territory, where Palestinians do not enjoy the civil rights that Jews (even ­those who are not citizens) enjoy. With its Jewish nationalist discourse, stress on Jewish sovereignty in an occupied space, and agreement to join the Israeli government in the official administration of occupied space through the Kotel deal, WOW serves a supremacist ethnonationalist agenda. How can it move to egalitarian feminism? One easy step is to reject the Kotel deal, due to its implication with massive unilateral Israeli changes to the status quo in a contested sacred space, and to refuse to collaborate in the administration of occupied space. In fact, a group of WOW found­ers and members of the Orthodox feminist organ­ization Kolech have actually rejected the Kotel deal. The dissenters have been ejected from WOW and formed the Original ­Women of the Wall group. Their disagreement stems mainly from their view of the Kotel plaza as a place of historical sanctity that is lacking in the Robinson’s Arch area. They see their relegation to the alternative space as being pushed to the “back of the bus” and removed from access to the truly sacred. They also represent Orthodox ­women who want to pray in a purely ­women’s section, and not in an egalitarian mixed-­sex section that has only a portable mechitzah for occasional use. Although an egalitarian feminism would refuse the Kotel deal ­because of its co­ali­tion with an ultranationalist right-­wing government’s agenda of Jewish



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supremacy in Jerusalem, the fact of refusal, even if for other reasons, is already a step ­toward avoiding ethnonationalist cooptation. Second, an egalitarian feminist agenda in an occupied space would link Jewish feminist strug­gles in that space to the strug­gle of Palestinian ­women and men in occupied East Jerusalem and the Old City. It would publicly condemn the harassment, persecution, and denial of civil, po­liti­cal, and religious rights to Palestinian ­women and men in Jerusalem, and enter co­ali­tions with civil society organ­izations in Jerusalem working on ­these issues, instead of a co­ali­tion with the Israeli government. It would interrogate and offer new, egalitarian, meanings to the concept of Jewish “sovereignty” that it promotes at the Kotel to differentiate itself from and resist the ethnonationalist formulation promoted by the Israeli government. Fi­nally, instead of the beautiful experience for progressive, Diaspora, and secular Jews it says it tries to create at the Kotel, it would stress the complicity, discomfort, and alienation that undemo­cratic dominance and hegemony in that very space provoke alongside the legitimate religious longings and spiritual connection to the site for any egalitarian feminist. Following Fiona Wright’s excellent work on the ethics of complicity, I echo her observation that “rather than suggesting that activism . . . ​can only be ­either colonising or decolonising,43 guilty of furthering colonial power or celebrated for challenging it,” activism in this sacred space of the Old City ­doesn’t require a “purist position.” 44 As she writes, “The idea of making room for negativity and vio­lence in our conceptions of the ethical, for leaving its ambiguities unresolved, offers a way for us to imagine potential forms of engagement and activism that would not require piety or purity in order to be considered legitimate or, simply, necessary. This is the aim of the notion of complicity, and the way it is linked to ethics and responsibility. Complicity points to the entanglements of Jewish Israeli solidarity and dissent with the normative context of their surroundings, and not to an accusation or a judgement of failure.”45 In other words, the form of activism I propose h ­ ere is not one where privileged activists feel impotent or that they “cannot do anything” ­because of their privilege. The point is not to silence WOW into abandoning their strug­ gle but rather to ask if they could align their values with their actions through linking up with other urgent strug­gles against the denial of equal civil rights in the very same space they inhabit. It also asks to incorporate a feeling of “bad taste,” discomfort, and alienation in the experience it offers at the site. Instead of trying to forget its context and deterritorialize the Kotel as if it

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­ ere not at the center of a proj­ect of ethnonationalist disenfranchisement w and domination, this could be front and center in WOW’s prayer practice and activism at the wall. A focus on the ambiguity of complicity and on its conscious use for inclusive egalitarianism could help articulate a clear distinction between the ethnonationalist religious freedom of the ­Temple Mount and settler activism, and the values and meaning of promoting demo­cratic freedom in nondemo­cratic spaces.

Chapter 10

A Theological Critique of the Po­liti­cal Menachem Lorberbaum

The Ontology of the Po­liti­cal To be Jewish is to be theologically-­politically implicated. This belief, held for centuries by Jews and gentiles alike, has caused untold suffering in Jewish history. For nearly two millennia, being Jewish has meant being in exile. The destruction of the Second Commonwealth in the wake of the ­great rebellion of 70 CE, and the subsequent failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 136 CE, deprived Jews of a special underpinning they considered their own and which forges identity and bound­aries. Rabbinic Judaism cultivated structures that enabled the ongoing existence of a collective as exilic. First among them was forging collective existence by instituting the ḳahal, the community congregation. Each specific community was understood to be a local instantiation of a collective that did not enjoy a spatial cohesiveness and thus could only be ­imagined.1 Space remained at most a point of reference. Moreover, space gave way to time as the primary ontological category. Jews did not belong to a place; they belonged to a time.2 The macronarrative of their time framework is bipolar: exile, or galut, and redemption, or geʼulah.3 A Galut-­Gedankens in the form of a phenomenology of galut is thus a necessary component of any po­liti­cal history of Judaism.4 Five points must be emphasized: 1. Galut is first manifested as an epochal term. It is poised on a time axis between a valorous though now bygone past and a ­f uture yet to come, ʻatid la-­vo. Therefore, galut also effects a hiatus in sacred time. The crucial rabbinic characterization of this open-­ended pre­sent is “this time”—­ha-­zeman

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ha-­zeh. This term paradoxically connotes not only the pre­sent as opposed to the g­ reat past and even greater f­ uture on the macro level but also, ostensibly, the individuality of the moment. Ultimately, it is taken to indicate the singular fullness of the moment that determines its own blessing. Thus crucial events of the life cycle and of the yearly cycle of Jewish life occasion the Sheḥeyyanu blessing: “Blessed are You O Lord our God who has given us life and instantiated us and has brought us to this time,” or perhaps, “this moment”—­ha-­zeman ha-­zeh. The par­tic­u­lar moment is isolated from any larger narrative framework and appreciated for its own fullness of being, hence as blessed. ­Grand narrative is thus bracketed, or perhaps put other­wise, historical time is secularized as blessing appears on the micro level as a (fleeting) moment. 2. Galut is fundamental displacement. It is an uprooting from space. It effects an alienation between place and indigeneity: One is never indigenous to one’s place, and one mea­sures one’s self in terms of indigeneity to a place where one no longer is.5 3. Exile is a scattering. It should be noted that a scattering of a ­people is not in itself a diaspora. The latter is a form of existence of a collective that has been displaced and yet retains, despite its loss of geo­graph­i­cal centering, its sense of collectivity. In the Jewish tradition, the politics of exile—­that is, the art of collective management of a displaced collectivity—­was made pos­ si­ble by the institution of the ḳahal. In terms of legitimacy each ḳahal is a local instantiation of the collective, identified as such by each of its members and by any Jew passing through it. 4. Exilic and diasporic existence place the ḳahal, and each individual identified with the collective, in an existential state of vulnerability. This is two dimensional: First, as a subsovereign entity, the ḳahal is both subordinate and exposed to the claim of the sovereign. Second, it is exposed to the antipolitics of populist masses and mobs. Against this background we can evaluate the significance and reach of the Zionist negation of the galut. The Zionist revolution in Jewish life sought to relieve Jews of their theological-­political plight, hence of the burdens and vulnerability of exile, by making them spatial again, by returning to the land. Zionist rhe­toric spoke of returning Jews to history. This meant making them po­liti­cal by founding a Jewish nation-­state and thereby historical subjects rather than objects. But it must be remembered that Jews never left history; they ­were radically temporal. In a certain sense we might say they ­were only historical. Zionism did not make them historical; it tried to revolutionize



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their way of being in history. Jews and Christians agreed that being Jewish was a witnessing but disagreed as to the content of the testimony. Chris­ tian­ity’s essential Catholicism is anchored in the birth of the Messiah and thus in the foretaste of the end of history. The world is its place, and it thus risks being deprived of ­actual eschatological tension.6 The Jews’ being out of place left them only in time with an overabundance of negative eschatological tension. An inapproachable messianic horizon is the condition for a pre­ sent to be considered exile: a constant shifting forward of the redemptive horizon with the pro­cession of time and the receding of the messianic arrival to the ­f uture. The continued negation of the messiah’s nonarrival is, ­under conditions of exile, a power­f ul presencing, a taut eschatological chord. In re­spect of exilic theology, the profound transgression of Zionism was in the movement from time to place. If exile is a condition in which one is never indigenous to one’s place and where one mea­sures one’s self in terms of indigeneity to a place where one no longer is (the sovereign), return to place undercuts exile’s essential displacement. In this re­spect Zionism is part and parcel of the Enlightenment proj­ect. In contradistinction to Christendom, which understood exilic alienation as a profound witness, Western modernity could not accept this alienation. It has ­either annihilated the Jews or has striven to solve the Jewish prob­lem by relieving Jews of exile, by granting them indigeneity. The United States provides the most dramatic example of this proj­ect, in the schema of the immigrant society that accepted groups in their hyphenated existence.7 To be a Jewish American was not to be “tolerated”; it was to be American. Emancipation thus conceived would transform Jewish diasporic existence not primarily by making Jews rights-­bearing citizens but by making Jews feel at home. Zionism too daringly continued this line of thought by addressing not only the civic symptoms of exile but also its ontological condition. It sought to overcome the alienation of exile by setting out to restore indigeneity in the land of Israel. The Fourth Zionist Congress could not accept the Uganda proposal ­because most delegates grasped that the deeper meaning of Herzl’s normalcy was not to make the Jews po­liti­cal, nor to relieve the Jews of their religion, but to relieve them of their theological-­political predicament. Zionism is thus also a thoroughly modern phenomenon. The success of the Zionist endeavor—as well as the nature of the secular Zionist entanglement with the Jewish theological-­political predicament—­ has been subject to fierce debate among Jews for more than a ­century. The obverse reflections of the proj­ect of creating a Jewish nation-­state dramatically inform the tenor of ­these debates. T ­ hese reflections include:

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(a) the destruction of Eu­ro­pean Jewry immediately preceding the founding of the State of Israel, which ended more than a millennium of robust diasporic existence in Eu­rope. The destruction highlights the Janus face of modernity that cannot tolerate Diaspora as a Jewish form of life.8 (b) the dispossession of the Palestinian ­people indigenous to the land and partial military occupation, which are inseparable from the Jewish achievement of po­liti­cal, military, and therefore territorial hegemony. Palestinian nationalism counterpoises the Jewish sense of indigeneity in the Land of Israel as the territory of the State of Israel. (c) the stabilization of a civically ­free and eco­nom­ically wealthy Jewish Diaspora, the largest community of which finds its home in the United States. This means that the creation of the State of Israel is not the end of Jewish diasporic existence. Taken together, ­these three historical developments highlight the specificity of the Zionist proj­ect, and when considered as a moment of theological-­ political transgression, its unique intensification. Assuming po­liti­c al sovereignty means assuming responsibility for one’s predicament even if one is not responsible for its circumstances. Sovereignty is about responsibility, not blame, and no amount of messianic fervor can provide relief from its burdens. Hence post-­Zionism underscores the limits of the proj­ect of statehood.9 This holds not only with regard to what sovereignty can effect for Jews, and its price—in terms of the lives of all affected by it—­but also with regard to the very precariousness of sovereignty in global politics. It takes a more ­humble stance ­toward the Jewish predicament and promotes a sobriety regarding the corrosive effect of power. A theological critique of the State of Israel should not only reflect on the theological-­political predicament (as one could in a pre-­Zionist Jewish existence) but on the manner in which oppression, deprivation of life and rights, and occupation are wrong in themselves and how they are corrosive of the soul. But ­these two points of theological critique, namely of Zionism—of the nature of its legitimacy and of the policies ensuing from the polity—­a re linked. Premodern Jewish theological reflection can help guide us ­here in our own theological thinking. Classic Kabbalah highlighted the rabbinic notion that not only the ­People of Israel but the shekhinah, the Divine presence, is in exile.10 The greatest of Jewish theological insights in the past millennia has been the discovery of exile, of galut, as a metaphysical and theological category. It finds a classic crystallization in the conception of creation as an act of Divine contraction, tzimtzum.11 Creation underscores the



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abyss between Divine otherness and (­human) Being. Creation is the positing of the nondivine. The finitude of our being, its thoroughgoing contingency, and the constant haunting specter of suffering and of alienation are conceived of as the concealment that conditions a revelation of Being as other to the Divine. This ­human condition is the very meaning of exile as a theological category.12 Exile is not only, or even primarily, a historical po­liti­cal category brought about by the events of destruction. It is the theological moment of exile that makes its historical instance pos­si­ble. Thus understood we may add an additional component to the phenomenology of exile: 5. Exile is not the polar opposite of the po­liti­cal. Exile necessitates acute po­liti­cal sagacity to ensure communal and, hence, collective survival ­under conditions of extreme vulnerability.13 In his Mishneh Torah, “Laws Concerning Idolatry,” 10:5–6, Maimonides states: The poor of the gentiles are sustained with the poor of Israel on account of the ways of peace. And the collection from the ends of the field, of gleanings and of forgotten sheaves by the gentile poor is not protested. They are greeted even on their holidays on account of the ways of peace. . . . ​All ­these ­matters pertain only at such time that Israel are exiled among the nations, or [at such time] that the hand of the gentiles overpowers that of Israel. But at such time that the hand of Israel overpowers that of the nations of the world we are forbidden to permit a gentile who worships idols among us.14 This is a harsh politics with a realist bite to it. The curtailing of “the ways of peace” was not shared by other medieval authorities who actually saw this maxim as founding an ethos of shared care.15 Maimonides for his part distinguishes between modalities of power and views a fuller halakhic existence to be one enabled by “the hand of Israel [overpowering] that of the nations of the world.” The bi­polar­ity of his po­liti­cal horizon does not ­here assume a redemptive quality. Indeed, ­later on in the coda to the Mishneh Torah, in the final two chapters of the “Kings and Their Wars,” a sovereign Jewish kingdom that is not messianic is envisaged as a historic possibility.16 For Maimonides even sovereign Jewish politics need not be considered messianic. One need not espouse Maimonides’ vision of politics to appreciate the po­liti­cal character of galut. I do, however, propose to combine the principled

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point concerning the po­liti­cal character of galut with the metaphysical tenor of the concept as developed in the theological tradition of Lurianic Kabbalah: Politics, I would argue, is an ongoing feature of managing the economic character of our existence. A decent society can contribute greatly to the alleviation of poverty and suffering. The state is the single most impor­tant agent of re­distribution. But politics cannot overcome the foundational rifts of ­human Being. Therefore, sovereign power is not in itself, indeed cannot be, a definitive relief of the moment of exile. Ontologically speaking, the metaphysical moment of exile is captured by the distinction between ḳodesh (sacred) and ḥol (saeculum). It is not for the state to overcome the distinction, nor can it. In Hebrew, the word for worship is ʻavodah, or ser­vice, but it also means ­labor or work. Worship is the ­labor of generations to render the ḥol more transparent to ḳodesh, thus elevating it. This disciplined work is integral to rendering this side of creation worthy of reflecting divinity and hopefully of its inhering in a world worthy of being its throne. It requires the humility of endless attention to individual plight and the constant suspicion of the triumphant dazzle of the epic. Galut consciousness is the theopo­liti­cal form of creaturely consciousness.17

Thinking Jewish Politics My ­earlier work explored the rabbinic tradition of secularizing the po­liti­ cal.18 This tradition allows for the legitimacy of the po­liti­cal without recourse to theology and thus encourages the possibility of a nonmessianic Jewish politics. The book argued for a Weberian (and Kantian) grounding of the concept of politics. Secularizing politics was conceived of in terms of the irreducibility of the po­liti­cal with two impor­tant consequences: first, the realist bent of the work that focused on constitutional structure and proposed an understanding of the ḳahal as essentially a polity; and second, the secularization thesis that treated po­liti­cal theology as at times a crucial strategy of legitimation, but not as essential to the po­liti­cal. Taken together both points yielded a foundationalist argument. But this strategy needed revisiting, as the question of the manner in which po­liti­cal theology permeates po­liti­cal life proved per­sis­tent; most especially the tenacity of its hold on ­human po­liti­cal imagination. The question gained urgency especially against the background of messianic intensification in the State of Israel, the deepening rifts in Israeli society (e.g.,



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the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin), ongoing conflicts (two intifadas and recurring low-­scale military conflicts), and the steady erosion of the secular character of the public sphere. Along with all ­these ­were the per­sis­tence of the ­will to sacrifice in both Jewish Israeli and Palestinian socie­ ties, and the valorization of sacrifice, the faith in blood as sealing one’s claim to rights. If the impor­tant theological-­political moment of the early twentieth ­century occurred in Weimar Germany and brought about the disastrous destruction of the Second World War,19 it seems that Jerusalem has turned into the theological-­political hub of the late twentieth and early twenty-­first ­century. Hence, assuming the Weberian conception of the po­liti­cal and the Schmittian analy­sis of po­liti­cal theology taken together as twin pillars of realist politics, I grew to understand that po­liti­cal thinking must yield a conception of politics that affirms the po­liti­cal despite the often intense ­human vio­lence that it involves.20 Leviathan does just that, and I therefore undertook the completion and the editing of the new Hebrew translation of the book.21 Yet it was precisely Hobbes’s notion of a politics without grounding that highlighted the importance of po­liti­cal imagination, of the manner in which legitimacy is ­imagined by subjects.22 Since its inception the modern state has fashioned the legitimacy of its sovereignty, its Archimedean concept, on divinity. This point was forcefully articulated by Hobbes himself in chapter 17 of Leviathan, “Of the C ­ auses, Generation, and Definition of a Common-­ Wealth”: “This is the Generation of that ­great Leviathan, or rather (to speake more rev­er­ent­ly) of that Mortall God, to which wee owe ­under the Imortall God, our peace and defence.”23 Hobbes’s adoption of a theological-­political model of sovereignty is a revolutionary pitch for sovereign supremacy.24 This theological-­political model was henceforth embedded in the Western, and now global, theory of state. The model was highlighted again by Carl Schmitt in Po­liti­cal Theology to facilitate his critique of the modern state. Following Nietz­sche’s unveiling of modern culture’s false pretensions to secularity, Schmitt critiques the modern state’s self-­presentation as secular. Over and against the self-­understanding of the epoch, Schmitt draws attention to the displacement of divinity founding the modern polity, famously arguing that “all significant concepts of the modern state are secularized theological concepts.” This is the case not only ­because of their historical development—in which they ­were transferred from theology to the theory of state, whereby the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver—­but also ­because of their systematic structure.25

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Indeed, both the historical and systemic structural aspects are attested to in the Hobbesian formulation of the theory. As a displacement, po­liti­cal theology is not only po­liti­cally impor­tant, it is of theological significance and consequence, too. If we follow the thematic suggested by Martin Heidegger in his essay on the meaning of Nietz­sche’s statement of the death of God, we can better comprehend this.26 Heidegger emphasized Nietz­sche’s role not only as a cultural critic but, more impor­tant, as an acute articulator of a metaphysical epoch,27 of the manner in which Western metaphysics has come to an end. It is the ontotheological structure in which God was conceived of as the supreme princi­ple of Being and of value that has fi­nally collapsed in modernity, and Nietz­sche is the phi­los­o­pher and prophet of this moment. Not only science has attempted to fill the void of meaning; the po­liti­cal has assumed this redemptive quest as well. Against this background it can be claimed that po­liti­cal theology gains its significance as displacement in direct relation to the waning of the ontotheological model in Western metaphysics and theology. The state has made a pitch for the claim of God, for the ultimate claim and arbitration of meaning, value, and life. The sovereign is not only the supreme subject but also the supreme object of reverence. The modern state’s quest for legitimacy has created a Leviathan whose power cannot be curtailed solely by constitutional means.28 Hence the fundamental importance of a deconstruction of the po­liti­cal and its urgency. I ­will elaborate the concept of deconstruction in a moment, but let me first emphasize that a deconstruction of the po­liti­cal is not equal to its dismissal (nor an ignoring of politics that one can engage in at one’s own risk), but rather to a critical encounter. To the degree that po­liti­cal theology is an essential counterpart to sovereignty as the princi­ple of the po­liti­cal in state form and its legitimacy—­then it is only a theological critique of the po­liti­ cal that can adequately ­counter the idolatrous character of Leviathan, “that Mortall God,” and its perniciousness. Deconstructing the po­liti­cal means a surfacing of the polity’s ontological pretension to presence the absolute and calling it into question. The task of a theological critique of the po­liti­cal is to provide a moral compass from a stance in the world that is not subsumed by Leviathan. The concept of sovereignty is one of ultimate closure. It begins with the needs of practice and is sealed by encapsulating theory, too. Reiner Schürmann argues that “closure signifies the impossibility of a foundational reflection on ­human practice.”29 To deconstruct the po­liti­cal means therefore “taking it



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out of its seemingly natu­ral embeddedness in doctrine and meaningful order” (in our case its theological embeddedness) “and examining it as one site where presencing occurs”30 —­but only one such site; and in this case a self-­ proclaimed idolatrous presencing.31 In the case of the State of Israel, a dramatic displacement of divinity can be found in the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, which have inspired more than any ­others the sanctification of the state. The ontological import of Rabbi Kook’s messianic Zionism seeks to overcome precisely the distinction between closure and the flow of Being. Kook argues that his envisaged State of Israel would be “supreme in the scale of happiness” ­because it is “the foundation of God’s throne in the world. Its entire aim is that ‘God be one and His name one’ (Zechariah 14:9). For this is, truly, the supreme happiness.”32 Three ele­ments are operative in this vision of the polity: (1) It draws on the biblical tradition of Davidic po­liti­cal theology that views the king as God’s son.33 (2) This in turn is interpreted according to kabbalistic theology that sees malkhut, kingship, as the lowest of the Divine emanations, sefirot, impregnated by yesod, foundation, as a constant source of effluence and Divine Being. Kook seeks to reactivate the theological-­political roots of the symbols of the sefirot by placing them once again in po­liti­cal real­ity.34 (3) All this in line with, indeed premised on, a Hegelian understanding of the state as a concretization of the idea.35 The metaphysicalization of the state as part of a historical drama of redemption leads to its conception as the highest moment of concrete Being and of ­human happiness. On this construction politics becomes the highest form of practical theology as it serves to presence the Divine. Kook’s analogy of the state to Davidic po­liti­cal theology is not self-­ evident. The divine covenant with David is first and foremost personal. It is the king’s person that is attributed the status of son of God in eternal covenant, and it follows dynastically as an inheritance to his heirs to the throne as a personal claim, and thus is a counterpart to the personal claim to the kingdom as polity in accordance with monarchic constitution. This structure is ­later developed in Eu­ro­pean Christian monarchies as a doctrine of the king’s two bodies.36 A state, however, is an institution, and its rule exercised by office and not a personal bequeath. Why accord such status to an institution? One condition for it to make sense at all is to reify the institution. This is precisely what the Hegelian philosophy of state provides. But why adopt this theory of state as opposed to ­others—­for example, the republican theory?37 Put other­wise: This par­tic­u­lar messianic po­liti­cal theology is heavi­ly theory-­laden.38

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Moreover, the adoption of a kabbalistic theory of emanation treats the state as a conduit not only of human-­worldly power but of divine power. This is an astounding displacement. What justifies this attribution of occult status to a state? This speculative po­liti­cal theology is metaphysically speaking gratuitous. But more severely it is an attempt at elevating the modern tradition of sanctifying a secular institution to legitimate its own claims over individual identity and life to a full-­blown theology. Theologically speaking, it turns the state into an object of (messianic) faith.39 Rabbi Kook predated the foundation of the State of Israel, but his vision has served at the hands of his followers to fortify the sanctification of the state. A theological critique of the po­liti­cal, however, continues the prophetic tradition in denying divine displacement and denying the sovereign claim to be the final word. A theologically motivated deconstruction of sovereignty is not to be taken as a denial of the po­liti­cal. Rather, it calls attention to the slippage of sovereignty to ultimate closure and to absolute claims. It points to the idolatrous propensity of the sovereign that manifests itself most poignantly in its claims on life and identity; the pragmatics of absolutism are most manifest in the mechanisms of sacrifice and its insatiable demand. A poignant theological critique of this mode of theological-­political construction of the State of Israel was posed by Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Following the IDF’s killing of scores of Palestinian villa­gers in a retaliatory raid on the village of Kibiyeh in October 1953, Leibowitz morally castigated the action. His critique had an impor­tant theological edge to it: ­ here is, however, a specifically Jewish aspect to the Kibiyeh inciT dent, not as a moral prob­lem but an authentically religious one. We must ask ourselves: what produced this generation of youth, which felt no inhibition or inner compunction in performing the atrocity when given the inner urge and external occasion for retaliation? . . . ​ The answer is that the events at Kibiyeh ­were a consequence of applying the religious category of holiness to social, national, and po­ liti­cal values and interests. . . . ​The concept of holiness—­the concept of the absolute which is beyond all categories of ­human thought and evaluation—is transferred to the profane. From a religious point of view only God is holy, and only His imperative is absolute.40 As a social critic with Zionist commitments, Leibowitz forcefully argued that though “country, state and nation impose pressing obligations . . . ​



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they do not, on that account, acquire sanctity.” On the contrary: “They are always subject to judgment and criticism from a higher standpoint.”41 The social critic often appeals to the joint values shared with the target audience, reminding them what they already know. It is the shared enterprise that is raised to consciousness at its best.42 The prophetic enterprise partially overlaps with that of the social critic but at times is engaged in a more thorough overhauling of a value matrix. It seeks at times to adopt a more thoroughgoing reevaluation, what Leibowitz called “judgment and criticism from a higher standpoint.” The power of the deconstructive argument is that it engages in this thoroughgoing reevaluation without assuming that as such it has been afforded a view from nowhere;43 it awakens through radical inversion. Galut consciousness, I argue, affords a vantage point on the corrosive pretensions of sovereignty to messianic immunity of failure and of moral corrosion. Deconstruction, however, is not an end in itself; it is rather conceived of as a tool of the claims of justice. It is integral to the primacy of justice that the claims of justice must be argued for on their own merit and cannot be the derivative of this or that claim of faith. What justifies the negation of the claims of justice of individuals with regard to the distribution of power as a good? Why should the institution of the state precede the claims of individuals? Why is this understood as self-­evident? Why treat a nation as an agent? Why adopt a sacral conception of an institution when the very heart of the rabbinic tradition has for the most part espoused a secular, worldly conception of the polity? Po­liti­cal theology points to the anxiety of legitimacy attendant on modern polities, and the State of Israel is no exception.44 Indeed, it is precisely the specter of the destruction of Eu­ro­pean Jewry that is viewed as the collapse of galut as a life option for Jews. It is a sober reminder that an assertion of galut as an organ­izing concept of religious life can be neither facetious nor flippant.

Eliding the Po­liti­cal: Community and Holy Land A theological critique of politics pits the otherness of divinity against the state’s pretensions to the absolute. This moment is not only a negative theology: It not only questions sovereign legitimacy through constant attenuation, but it has a positive tenor as well. It points to the possibility of the world being other­wise: Tiḳḳun and charity (in the best sense of the word)

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manifest the faith in the essential abundance of otherness, holding it out as a possibility for action. Faith is not an epistemic category, asserting a proposition; it is a manner of being in the world, a manner of engagement that is propelled eschatologically by the constant questioning of presence by the overabundance of Divine otherness. A faith posture is one of believing that ­things can be other­wise. Deconstruction of the po­liti­cal serves justice when it allows the surfacing of po­liti­cal forms of consciousness that sovereignty has an interest in subsuming. It then opens them as live options for collective life and consciousness that are not overtaken by the state. How may space be created for this stance in a world dominated by sovereignty? I would like to sketch two strategies from within the Jewish po­liti­cal tradition. One relates to the foundational role of community in the rabbinic tradition and the other to that of territory, which is already articulated powerfully in the Bible itself.45 1. Forging the community as a fraternal space that eludes that of the state by not being directly subsumed by it. The nation-­state aspires to be the community of communities; this, however, is impossible. A state can be composed of communities and of individuals, but as the institutionalization of power relations it cannot take the place of the fraternity of the community. Justice is the first virtue of state institutions, brotherhood, and charity of community. Care ­will always be eroded to some degree in state structures, while community gives it a chance. Maimonides best captured this ethos when he wrote that “we have never seen nor heard of a ḳahal of Israel that does not have a ḳuppah of tzedaḳah”46— we may render the weekly charity collection (ḳuppah) by the charity box (pushḳah) as a meta­phor for the communal collection of tzedaḳah. Charity is the decent and humane engagement that can temper the quest to dominate. Hence Maimonides’ grades of tzedaḳah:47 The more hidden one’s giving, the more eco­nom­ically inexplicable one’s letting go, the more thoroughgoing the relinquishing of the reins of control and domination as a modality of power. Po­liti­cal agency is fundamental to ­human agency insofar as we are economic; this, however, need not dominate our ethics—­the ḥessed of tzedaḳah points to an alternative stance constantly seeking to elude the claim of the agora. Constitutional structures of the state that would re­spect communal autonomy can better contribute to a decent society than the attempt of the state to subsume the community. The latter cannot escape the manipulation of identity in the guise of fraternity to further the claim to sacrifice.



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2. The concept of the nation-­state requires that sovereignty be exercised over some specific territory, in the form of law. Infringement on this territory is universally recognized as a casus belli. Territory is what defines each nation-­state, securing its position in the community of sovereign states. The concept of territory does not simply arise naturally from the given presence of concrete real estate, however. Rather, it precedes it, enabling raw earth to be parceled out in the first place. The princi­ple of eminent domain demonstrates this; it allows for any par­tic­u­lar parcel of real estate to lose its status as a parcel, rejoining the undifferentiated mass of land. Both internally and externally, territorial integrity is a function of sovereign immanence (perhaps one should refer to the aforementioned expropriation as immanent domain). Territory gives rise, in its turn, to the concept of “naturalization,” likening the pro­cess of becoming a citizen to the primal natu­ral fact of birth. Birth makes one, often irrevocably, a member of a civic community, with civic identity normally amounting to ­little more than a claim about where (and perhaps to whom) one was born. When the nation-­state system becomes globalized, eventually t­ here is no place on earth in which an individual can escape identification with his or her territory or nationality of birth. For such an economy of presence, statelessness is an anomaly, and stateless ­people are almost invisible, effectively unseen. The totalizing nature of the nation-­state system, which reproduces its concepts of territory both internally and externally, cannot accept statelessness as a constant troubling possibility. It must always portray statelessness as a product of its own sovereign decision, w ­ hether in the form of safe haven, safe passage, or extraterritoriality. The mobile, undefined mi­grant must beg at the door; the burden of proof for entry always lies with the mi­ grant herself. The attempt to naturalize naturalization, comparing citizenship to the primal fact of birth, also gives rise to the meta­phors of parenthood, of patrie and motherland, that dominate the emotional register of nation-­state belonging. The very concept of nation as a ­union of territory and citizenship derives from natio, birth, and not only linguistically. Premodern and prestatist ways of seeing and being—­what I am calling “indigeneity”—­a re subjected to a modern schematism that produces the category of citizenship. We can think of territory, then, with all its meta­phorical freight, as the deeper truth within the hyphen in the compound “nation-­state.” Po­liti­cal theologies seek to invest territory with the sacral status of the divine hearth,

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consecrating their own claims to sovereign right as well as their demands that citizens be ready and willing to sacrifice their lives to protect territorial integrity. In this sense, the civil religions of republican states are the functional equivalent of monarchic divine-­right theories. A theological critique of the po­liti­cal must constantly alert us to the fact that states have a tendency to elide the saeculum and absolutize their meta­phors and reifications. The saeculum is informed by certain modes of presencing, which are called into question by divine otherness. A theology sensitive to ­these differences must employ a hermeneutics that can continually distinguish between ḳodesh (sacred) and ḥol (saeculum). The Torah famously denies the ­human claim to owner­ship within the Land of Israel: “The land ­shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me” (KJV Lev. 25:23). ­Here, land owner­ship is defined as a divine, rather than a ­human, prerogative. The “holy” status of the land, moreover, prohibits the subjection of ­human beings living on it. This connection between divine land and ­human justice gives rise to the institutions of the sabbatical and jubilee cycles, which call for periodic reversion to an original position. If the Land of Israel is holy, then it cannot be territory, nor can ­humans acquire it as property. It is this precise connection between sovereign rule and natality that is severed by the stark declamation, “for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.” But ­humans have a tendency to attempt to convert holy land into territory, and for this reason their presence on such land is contingent. In this biblical construal, sacred land cannot be territory, nor can territory be sacred. Attunement to the divine requires us to periodically revert to the original position; it demands that we relinquish the hold of territorial, and thereby sovereign, integrity. According to the Torah, then, sacrality precludes ­human sovereignty. Should one wish to establish civic life within the Land of Israel, the price must be a surrender of holiness itself; the land must be considered part of the secular order, ḥol, saeculum. A secular sovereign is merely a custodian; he, she, or they cannot speak for the holy, nor may the sovereign claim the authority of the holy for lawmaking or war-­making. Refusal to relinquish ­these powers amounts to desecration. Equally impermissible, from a theological point of view, are the attempts of nationalists to anchor their claims to sovereignty in the sacred (however just, unjust, or urgent ­these claims might be on their own terms). The sacred calls into question all the vicissitudes of the po­liti­cal; it does not legitimate or justify them.



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Indigeneity, the relationship between ­people and land that precedes the state and precedes the concept of territory, also inculcates this kind of questioning. The mode of being suggested by indigeneity cannot be subsumed by territoriality; it charts a manner of belonging in space that shatters the very anchoring that territory reworks for the state. The relationship between indigeneity and territory is similar to that between community and polity; community is a mode of collective life oriented around a shared vision of the good that cannot be immediately translated into polity or captured by polity. ­Those who invoke indigeneity to make a claim to territory have forfeited indigeneity’s critical posture and opted for nationalism, a mere subset of identity politics. Of course, this has happened throughout the course of history—­and it must be recognized for what it is. The point is to distinguish the nationalist deployment of “indigeneity” from more au­then­tic deployments that realize the concept’s critical power. Properly understood, indigeneity can reconfigure space away from the nation-­state concept of territory, carving out autonomous zones within the polity. True indigeneity thus pokes holes in territorial integrity, in a way that parcelization does not. Parcelization defines individual property holdings, but communal goods are not holdings. Lest the argument be misunderstood, it must be underlined ­here that a theological critique of politics is not a ­simple call to place religion before or above politics. As an institution, religion is just as much in need of deconstruction as is politics. The posture of faith recommended ­here involves a civic consciousness, including respecting the land as holy. My hope is that such a posture would attenuate the ontological placement of the po­liti­cal. For the theological critic, sovereignty can at most function to attend to the chores of the public good. Thus fractured, structures of sovereignty (e.g., divisions of powers, limitations on government reach, e­ tc.) are better suited to theology’s questioning stance. But in a deeper way, this questioning opens the possibility to consider reconfigurations of space, time, and togetherness, thus challenging the ontological closure that is the foundational equivalent of institutional centralization. Fractured sovereignties would also attenuate the seamless systematicity of the global order, allowing indigenous groups, uprooted ­people, mi­grant laborers, and the stateless in general to rise to presence and visibility. This presence helps focus us on the acuity of pain and suffering, so that the work of tikkun, the rectification of the world and of divinity, the ser­vice cultivated by worship, may begin in earnest. This presence also exposes the true porousness of what the po­liti­cal ontology of sovereignty would like us to see

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as smooth. Theological criticism cultivates the ability to behold the jarring disturbance of suffering and enhance the enveloping of pain. By attenuating the grounding of ­human structures of rule, theological critics make the excluded—­ the sojourner, the ­widow and the orphan—­vis­i­ble, thus contributing to the circumstances of justice and charity.

Reflection The modern Eu­ro­pean Enlightenment embarked on the dramatic and tragic effort to end Jewish galut by confronting Jews with the following question: Are the Jews a religion or a (po­liti­cal) nation? This concern echoes throughout crucial early modern texts, such as Spinoza’s Theological-­Political Treatise, John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration, and Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem. A medieval Jew would not comprehend the categories of this dilemma of republican thinking. ­These categories are not indigenous to Jewish canonical reflection on membership (and in any case, not in this mutually exclusive bifurcation). Eu­rope hoped to confront the Jewish question by rephrasing it and posing it to the Jews themselves. The question to the Jews determined the contours of Jewish existence in modernity, making identity a troubling and constantly elusive category for Jews. The collective resettling of Eu­rope’s Jews in North Amer­i­ca and in Israel as a Jewish nation-­state expresses the reor­ga­ni­za­tion of Jewish existence in light of the Enlightenment proj­ect. ­Those left in Eu­rope ­were for the most part annihilated. Non-­ European, Eastern Jews ­were caught up in the consequences of the Zionist response to the question, and thus t­ hose millennial Jewish communities w ­ ere uprooted to Israel. The attempt to end galut, what­ever the price, has created an existence fundamentally determined by Eu­ro­pean republican concerns. Hence, the most profound exile of modernity is that raised in Ernst Simon’s question: “Are we still Jews?” The task of postmodern Jewish po­liti­cal thinking is to chart the possibilities for Jewish collective prospects. This task cannot begin without confronting this darkest of exiles. It begins by raising the question. Postmodern Jewish politics cannot embark on its critical path without renewing theological reflection.

Chapter 11

Love, Judgment, and Antisemitism The Case of Alice Walker Vincent Lloyd

In the December 13, 2018, edition of the New York Times, the Black American author Alice Walker was asked, “What books are currently on your nightstand?”1 She responded by naming four: Ma­ya Angelou’s memoir Mom & Me & Mom, African American studies professor Daniel Black’s gender-­ bending novel Perfect Peace, Cambodian anti–­sex-­trafficking activist Somaly Mam’s The Road of Lost Innocence, and David Icke’s And the Truth ­Shall Set You ­Free. Elsewhere in the interview, Walker expresses her admiration for Charlotte Brontë (her all-­time favorite novelist), Terry McMillan (author of the last ­great book she read), Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, and Paul Laurence Dunbar (inspirational poets), Gone with the Wind (for Rhett Butler’s “understanding of ­women”), and Gulliver’s Travels (the book that most made her who she is). If she ­were to host a fantasy dinner party, Walker remarks, she would bring together Zora Neale Hurston, Bessie Head, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Very ­little in this interview was surprising. Walker is known for being thoroughly versed in the canon of Black lit­er­a­ture, to which her own writing has entered, and she is also known for the broad range of her influences, including the classics of Eu­ro­pean and American lit­er­a­ture. But one title that Walker mentioned stood out, and it caused a firestorm of controversy. Between the literary classics and new multicultural lit­er­a­ture, Walker includes the conspiracy theorist and antisemite David Icke’s self-­published And the Truth ­Shall Set You ­Free. The book explic­itly takes itself to be building on

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The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; it describes the Talmud as “appallingly racist”; it associates Jews with the slave trade; it suggests far-­right groups are run by the Anti-­Defamation League; and it calls for a public conversation about “alternative information” on the veracity of the Jewish Holocaust. The book mentions the Rothschilds 374 times.2 Commentators decried Walker for her interest in Icke and decried the New York Times for providing a platform for Walker to discuss Icke’s book. Indeed, Walker originally described And the Truth S ­ hall Set You F ­ ree as “a curious person’s dream come true,” and in response to the controversy Walker described the book as “very impor­ tant to humanity’s conversation.”3 She went on to state that she does not read Icke as an antisemite, and she supports his right to share controversial opinions—­just as she shares controversial opinions in her own work. One response to ­these events is to see Walker revealing her true, antisemitic colors. Over the years, she had been accused of antisemitism, and she was the subject of a smaller controversy when she was disinvited from speaking at the University of Michigan b­ ecause of t­ hose accusations.4 But in t­ hose ­earlier cases, Walker’s defenders argued that her criticism of the State of Israel was being mistaken for antisemitism.5 With the Times interview, commentators suggested, the truth was revealed: Walker is, at heart, a genuine antisemite. This reading of Walker’s comments activates a longstanding anxiety about Black antisemitism, an anxiety attached to figures from Marcus Garvey to W. E. B. Du Bois to Jesse Jackson and #BlackLivesMatter activists. In this chapter, I ­will suggest a dif­fer­ent, though certainly not exculpatory, way of reading Walker’s comments. For Walker, judgment itself is suspect. Love without judgment reigns supreme. Jewishness becomes identified with judgment, and in her thought and writing, judgment has been superseded by love. Deficient po­liti­cal and social engagement results when love supersedes judgment. Anything goes. We may resonate more with some ideas or ­people than ­others, but all must, ultimately, be affirmed. Clearly this view slips into a New Age outlook in which every­thing contains a fragment of truth, negativity must be suppressed, and positive energy can heal the world. This chapter tracks how Walker arrives at such a position, having started her literary ­career with strong Jewish affinities. I argue that ­those former affinities structured Walker’s life and writing at a level of content and affect, intertwined. In a sense, Walker began as a Jewish writer, but this was an unstable position for a Black ­woman in the 1960s, and working through and against ­these Jewish affinities motivated her drift ­toward supersessionism. By 2018 Walker can endorse the writing of an antisemite and she can, relatedly, affirm



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that ­every voice should be heard. We witness the values of multiculturalism and feminism drifting in a troubling direction, t­ oward antinomies that mark breaking points—at the moment when, culturally, we are witnessing novel configurations of activism against patriarchy and white supremacy emerging. In this moment, our moment, Walker’s early writings, during what we might call her Jewish phase, offer a valuable literary and po­liti­cal resource. While Walker’s case may seem idiosyncratic, it points to fundamental questions that animate Jewish po­liti­cal thought—­points to them from the edges. Who counts as a Jew? What is the significance of law in modern or multicultural contexts? To what extent does Jewish po­liti­cal thought incorporate frameworks that come from secular or Christian culture, even in its understanding of Judaism? And to what extent are anx­i­eties about Jewish difference animating non-­Jewish po­liti­cal thought, inviting an expansion of what counts as “Jewish”? In short, the claim of this chapter is that we can learn lessons about the canon by turning to the specificity of a liminal figure navigating marginality, lessons that are just as impor­tant as ­those we can learn by turning to exemplary figures or practices treated as obvious authorities.

A Jewish Writer? Alice Walker began writing The Color Purple in 1976. When the novel was published six years ­later, it would bring her lasting fame, a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a 1985 film adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg, featuring Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, and Oprah Winfrey. When asked how she started the novel, Walker responded, “I got a divorce.” She explains, “I r­ eally knew that I could not stay in my marriage and write about t­ hese wild ­women.”6 The artistic imperative was irresistible, and to write the book she felt compelled to write, she would have to act. “I actually loved my husband very much. He’s a very, very good person, but I needed to write the book.”7 Walker left her Jewish husband, whom she loved, to write a novel about the power of love. But it was not only a husband who identified as Jewish whom Walker left: it was a phase of life substantially ­shaped by Jewishness. The summer a­ fter she graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, in 1966, Walker traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, to work for the NAACP ­Legal Defense Fund in their effort to force integration by litigation. ­There she would meet Melvyn Leventhal, a New York University law student also working for the Fund. They ­were assigned to interview sharecroppers in a rural area.

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The local ­hotel would not allow Blacks to take rooms, so Leventhal took a room and Walker sneaked in. They ­were so frightened that the local defenders of segregation would attack them that they stayed up all night. Walker and Leventhal occupied themselves reading the “Song of Solomon” from the ­hotel Bible. Soon ­after, they became a ­couple. Walker moved back to New York to be with Leventhal as he completed his last year at law school, and in 1967 they ­were married, a few months before Loving v. ­Virginia would strike down state antimiscegenation statutes.8 With Leventhal’s studies complete, he and his new wife bought a ­house in Mississippi and set up a home office for Walker—­for the first three years of their marriage, she used the name Alice Leventhal—to write in.9 In 1969 a d­ aughter, Rebecca Leventhal, joined the f­ amily.10 They would be based in Mississippi ­until 1974, when the ­family moved to New York, and they lived in relative isolation. Melvyn Leventhal had become a public figure, leading ­legal challenges to segregation across the state, and for that alone he was a target of intense harassment, with the interracial marriage adding to the venom they faced from segregation’s defenders. While Walker did connect with the renowned Black poet Margaret Walker, who was teaching at Jackson State University, and eventually she would be awarded residential writing fellowships for periods of time out of the state, ­there was ­little by way of artistic community, much less a community of Black w ­ omen writers, in Mississippi at the time. Much of Walker’s life was spent at her home, writing and raising her d­ aughter, and with her husband. Put another way, for ten crucial years of her life as a writer, the closest affective relationship she had, and for some of that time perhaps the only close, daily affective relationship she had with another adult, was with Leventhal—­that is, with a Jewish ­lawyer from Brooklyn who went to a yeshivah. To write the novel that would be hailed as her masterpiece, she felt it necessary to leave this Jewish ­lawyer. Certainly, Walker never converted to Judaism. It does not seem as though Leventhal connected with his own Jewishness, or the Jewish community in Mississippi, in any material way. During their courtship he would send her a note that said, “Shalom: I LOVE YOU,” but beyond such incidentals, no member of the small Leventhal ­family seemed to make much of Melvyn’s Jewish origins at the time.11 And yet Jewish identity was in some ways unavoidable. Antisemitic taunts ­were among the insults Leventhal regularly had hurled at him by segregationists. The marriage precipitated tension with the parents of both husband and wife, none of whom attended the ­couple’s wedding—­a small



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civil ceremony attended by only a few friends. Leventhal had been raised by his working-­class ­mother (his ­father had rejected attempts to build a relationship), but his ­mother sat shiva for him ­after the wedding and demanded that he return the gifts she had given him over the years.12 When Walker introduced Leventhal to her ­mother, who had never met a Jew before, the elder Mrs. Walker’s first words to him ­were, “­You’re one of ­those who killed Christ.”13 At odds with Leventhal’s ­family in New York and Walker’s in Georgia, the new f­ amily’s isolation in Mississippi compounded. Despite all this, or perhaps ­because of it, Leventhal felt a par­tic­u­lar connection to the State of Israel. Walker recalls that during the Six-­Day War she and her husband w ­ ere “frightened,” and at its conclusion they w ­ ere “happy and relieved.” She reflects, “All I considered was the Holocaust.” But as Walker learned more, her concerns for the Palestinians grew—­yet Leventhal would not hear of it: “Any discussion that questioned Israel’s be­hav­ior seemed literally to paralyze his thoughts.” Walker reflects, “I understood his fear, and shared it”—­but she did not allow that fear to have the last word. She talked with a Jewish friend who visited a Palestinian refugee camp: “I thought (in my naïve, ‘positively ste­reo­t ypical’ way) that her action was very Jewish. It showed courage, a sense of humor, an incorrigible one-­worldism, and a faith in her own perception of real­ity. It took—­how you say—­chutzpah.”14

Feeling, Loving, Judging Before turning to Walker’s literary writing from this period, from this Jewish phase, we can see the significance of Walker’s Jewish affinities by reflecting on the role of affect in constituting Jewishness. Sarah Imhoff offers a thoughtful reflection on the complexity of American Jewish identity, where ge­ne­tics, race, ethnicity, and religion are all entangled.15 She uses as a starting point a 2013 Pew survey: When asked about the essential part of being Jewish, most Jewish respondents said remembering the Holocaust, then leading an ethical life. Even having a sense of humor scored higher than observing Jewish law. Imhoff notes the many answers to the question “Who is a Jew?”—­including parents, theology, ge­ne­tics, halakhah, and ethnicity. What if we add to this list, in a place of primacy, affective entanglements?16 The Pew results already hint in this direction. Having a special relationship to the Holocaust (­whether or not one has any familial connection to Eu­rope in the 1930s and 1940s) suggests that a par­tic­u­lar circulation of affect plays a

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role in responding to the who counts question in popu­lar consciousness.17 Certainly affect circulates through institutions and cultural practices, but it need not be reducible to any of ­these. Melvyn Leventhal is treated as dead by his ­mother, is aloof to Jewish community and practice, but still feels a par­tic­u­lar connection to the Holocaust and Israel (conjoined twins in this affective circuitry). If we are to take such an affect-­centered approach seriously, we must attend to the way affect is contagious.18 Contagion implies transmission through proximity rather than through a medium. ­There need not be a synagogue to bring the community together to spread the appropriate ensemble of feelings, though institutions and practices can certainly catalyze that transmission. Putting the point more directly: If Alice Walker lived with and loved a Jewish husband for a de­cade, much of that time isolated together against a hostile world, why not call Alice Walker a Jewish writer? Or at least think of her writings during that period as, in some significant sense, Jewish? Consider how Walker describes her life together with Leventhal, in Mississippi: “I reveled in the ease with which, urging each other on, sometimes in our own voices, more often in a welter of black and white Southern and Brooklyn and Yiddish accents—­which always felt as if our grandparents ­were joking with each other—­we’d crumple over our plates laughing, as tears came to our eyes.”19 Something was blending: cultures? religions? ethnicities? Certainly feelings, and ­these in two senses: first-­order feelings related to objects like Israel and, at a deeper level, affective circuitry, the pathways through which emotions such as guilt, anger, and love flow. It is true that Walker did not “believe” in Judaism (what­ever that could mean), did not “practice” Judaism (what­ever that could mean), did not have biological parents who ­were Jewish, and did not associate with a Jewish community. But she and her husband, in their refusals of Jewishness, ­were reacting against his Jewishness, and of course reacting against Jewishness is an, if not the, essential component of Jewishness—as is all the more evident when we focus on the affective register, where attraction and repulsion, affiliation and disaffiliation always are closely related. Together, in Mississippi, the Leventhals ­were “frightened,” “happy,” and “relieved” as they followed the Six-­Day War. When the writer is frustrated that her husband cannot hear the plight of Palestinians, she responds with immanent critique. She diagnoses the prob­lem as insufficient Jewishness, which is to say Leventhal has defective affective circuitry—­not courageous enough, not humorous enough, not committed enough to seeing rightly. Not having enough chutzpah.20



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If Jewishness is defined by shared affective circuitry, can we distinguish Jew-­haters from self-­hating Jews? ­Wouldn’t they both share in an affective circuitry that we associate with Jewishness? The crucial difference ­here is intimacy. Affective circuitry is shared as intimacy is shared. An abstract object, “the Jew,” may attract strong feelings (like “the immigrant” and other populist tropes). But one acquires the affective circuitry that defines Jewishness by having intimate, affective relationships with other Jews, that is, with other ­people who share that affective circuitry. This defines self-­hating Jews: They are clearly Jews, having acquired the affective circuitry from an upbringing or culture, even as they have negative first-­order affects directed at themselves and other Jews. The Jew-­hater, in contrast, has never acquired the requisite affective circuitry, only one individual affect directed at an abstract object. This distinction ­will be impor­tant to keep in mind when we turn to Walker’s alleged antisemitism. She does not fit neatly into ­either category, Jew-­hatred (on account of her intimacy with Jewishness) or self-­hating Jew (on account of her decisive move beyond Jewishness). Thus the utility of the language of Christian supersessionism, grown out of intimacy with Jewishness and a rejection of that Jewishness. When we are thinking of Jewishness as affect, and affective circuitry, it ­will not be helpful to make a list of Yiddish phrases or references to the Talmud or Jewish literary antecedents. Rather, we are dealing at the level of cultural images as they attract and repulse, as they are owned and disowned. This is how the Holocaust-­Israel pair works, for the Leventhals: They are abstract cultural signs that prompt an affective reaction, and the association of ­these signs with Jewishness originates from non-­Jews as well as from Jews. ­Here, Walker’s ­mother’s unfiltered reaction to Leventhal is useful: Another sign circulating in American culture at the time is the Jew as Christ-­k iller. Identifying that sign points us to ­others: the opposition of Jews to Chris­ tian­ity, the opposition of Jewish legalism to Christian love, the opposition of Jewish particularity to Christian universalism, and so on. T ­ hese ideas operate at the level of culture, not theology; by means of resonance, not reason. A scholar of Jewish or Christian thought would certainly be frustrated by the apparent lack of complexity, or even truth, in ­these images. This is complex terrain. Cultural tropes and ste­reo­t ypes inform, but are not determinative of, self-­perception and structures of feeling. Similarly, streams of Jewish tradition (religious, cultural, po­liti­cal) also inform, without determining, self-­perception and structures of feeling. Sometimes ­these broader cultural tropes and Jewish tradition are aligned; at other times they are

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misaligned. Out of ­these muddy mixtures emerge, in Walker’s writings, a central theme: Jewishness is associated with judgment, felt and practiced, overcome l­ater by unjudgmental love.

Writing Love Walker’s first published writings date from the time she was still an undergraduate student. She had not yet met Leventhal, and her literary voice was not structured around an embrace of ­either judgment or love. The young Walker discovered she was pregnant, contemplated suicide, but fi­nally procured the resources for an abortion from friends and teachers. As she was recovering, she wrote the first poems that would become Once and the first stories that would become In Love and Trou­ble. She soon began her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland. Each of ­these works is smart, careful, artful, with just the right amount of ironic detachment and just the right amount of pathos. They ­were rightfully lauded and brought Walker her first dose of fame as they ­were published in quick succession. In her early writing ­there are depictions of rural, Black, Southern Chris­ tian­ity, and ­there are descriptions of colonial and postcolonial religion in Africa, but ­these are presented on the same plane as all other descriptions: just one more aspect of life. In contrast, Walker’s writing when she is with Leventhal grapples deeply with the limits of Christian tropes as organ­izing frames for her writing—­never rejecting them, never moving beyond them, but also never ignoring them. Walker’s writing, in her Jewish phase, dramatizes a confrontation between Jewish and Christian affective circuitry that is never resolved in her writing—­until she leaves Leventhal and New York and embraces a New Age spirituality of love. Revolutionary Petunias, Walker’s second poetry collection, was published in 1971 and begins with a dedication to George Jackson; to SNCC workers including Bob Moses and Fannie Lou Hamer; and, fi­nally, to her husband, “who daily fights and loves, from a g­ reat heart.”21 This text is written as the civil rights movement (Moses and Hamer) has become Black Power (Jackson), a position Walker can never fully endorse. In one sense her proj­ect is to interrogate how this happened: to fill in the ­human stories of the civil rights movement that pushed that movement to its limits. But at the same time this background reinforces the urgency of questioning Christian love as an organ­izing princi­ple for po­liti­cal action. King was dead, and SNCC was



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in disarray. Yet ­there was still, somehow, power in that older civil rights message. As she puts it in the preface to Revolutionary Petunias, her poems are about, and for, “­those few embattled souls who remain painfully committed to beauty and to love even while facing the firing squad.”22 The collection is structured around Christian themes: first, death and ancestors; then ethical imperatives; then a section called “crucifixions” on suffering; and fi­nally, not resurrection, but “mysteries.” Death is overcome not by achieving new life, or certainty, or anything resembling salvation. It is overcome aesthetically, in ­these poems, by living well, which means living in a way that acknowledges (but does not embrace or fetishize) pain and uncertainty. Suffering and mystery require work. That work requires discipline, represented in the content of some of the poems and in their disciplined construction. Even this broad scheme is not rigid. In the poems on death, ­there is always also life, and with life, suffering and uncertainty. “­Those ­were the days / Of winking at a Funeral / Romance blossomed / In the pews / Love signaled / Through the Hymns / What did we know?”23 Funerals provide the context where elders gather to mourn and where new pleasures become pos­si­ble—or are they? “What did we know?” Funerals ­were an obligation for ­children, she writes, and often the deceased was unknown to the ­children, only vaguely connected with the ­family. Mourning was “not for the dead, but for memories. None of / them sad. But seen from the ­angle of her / death.”24 ­These are memories that are inaccessible: memories indicated by the sadness of the mourners as they approach the deceased, the stories pre­sent but untold on their ­faces. This is not tradition triumphant, passed down from elders, from time immemorial, but tradition broken, passionately pursued, always evasive. In a poem titled “Baptism,” Walker mixes images of pristine beauty and earthiness, not in the ser­vice of earthy spirituality but to complicate both. A child of seven dressed all in white is entering not a pond but a “tiny brooklet.” It is “muddy, gooey with rotting leaves, / a greenish mold floating”—­ yet Walker insists that ­here ­there was “love of God.”25 The poem ends with “God’s mud ruining my snow socks.” Purity tarnished, its promise put in question rather than transformed. In a poem that bridges the initial section on death and ancestors with the section on ethics, Walker opens with the proclamation, “It is too easy not to like / Jesus.”26 This seems to promise wisdom but leads to disorientation. Walker offers no path to wisdom. Instead, her poem reflects in the first person that when she is old no one ­will be able to tell w ­ hether it is “senility or fancy” that motivates her singing about Jesus—­“Just as the old ­women / In my home town / Do now.”27 Sincerely

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held belief is not an option, nor is religious obligation in an overserious sense—­but t­ here is still some sort of obligation, if only attached to inevitability, with what naturally follows in that community. Love does not cause one to sing of Jesus. Nor does law. The explanation is some mysterious space between the two—an opening for h ­ uman judgment. Walker’s ethical poems consist of short imperatives commending uncertainty: “Expect Nothing. Live frugally / On surprise.”28 Another commends taking on life’s contradictions as a comforting shawl. In yet another, titled “Reassurance,” Walker urges, “I must love the questions / themselves.”29 ­These poems follow the religious genre of commandment but without the concrete content. ­There is nothing specific to be done or not done; it is a mode of worldly engagement that Walker commends, of reflection and judgment and reconsideration. What it means to live by ­these precepts is the theme of the next group of poems. It is necessarily a life of contradiction, torn irresolvably, for example, between “the quietly pacifist peaceful” and “men / who shout.”30 The most notable poem in this group, “Judge ­Every One with Perfect Calm,” begins with imagery that is at least Holocaust adjacent, a “train full of bodies” with “tiny wails,” followed by imagery of the American West, the scalping of Indians. The reader is told that the vio­lence offers comfort and confidence to ­those inflicting it. Then comes an ironic imperative to judge “with perfect calm.”31 ­There is a prob­lem with abstraction, with judgment in abstraction, Walker asserts, but the solution is not to turn ­toward love freed of judgment. The solution is to attend to “mysteries,” the theme of her final grouping of poems. Mysteries evoke feelings, attracting and perplexing and arousing awareness and hesitation. This, it seems, is the way to judge: not among abstractions, not with reason, but guided by affective response that sharpens perception, unveiling new mysteries, sharpening perception further, drawing onward, ever onward. The penultimate poem in Revolutionary Petunias, “Beyond What,” elaborates on this dynamic, this refusal of inquiry’s end. T ­ here is to be “no melting. No squeezing / into One,” between lovers or between self and world. Love consists of action motivated by the mystery of each other and world, “to choose, renounce, / this, or that.”32 Judgment, of a sort, returns, together with love, as love. ­After many years’ work, Walker published her second novel, Meridian, in 1976. It covered themes similar to ­those in Revolutionary Petunias, continuing Walker’s exploration of the characters drawn to the civil rights movement, both Black and white—­how they came to the movement broken,



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seeking ­wholeness, and left broken in new ways. Barbara Christian argues that Meridian is intended for use “as a contemplative and analytical tool in our own individual search” for humanity and healing, a search that the characters model.33 While this describes well The Color Purple, Meridian is still committed to the notion that mystery is ultimate, that healing and suffering come in equal proportion, that brokenness is simply the way of the world. The epigraph, from Black Elk, signals this clearly. It could equally evoke the genocide of Indians or the Holocaust: “I can still see the butchered ­women and ­children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something ­else died ­there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A ­people’s dream died ­there.”34 Walker has no intention of resurrecting any ­people’s dream, at least not in a straightforward sense. If imagination is to come back, it is in immanent mystery revealed by telling story upon story upon story rather than imagination directed at otherworldly hopes or this-­worldly revolution, or a revolution of unjudgmental love. The novel revolves around three characters. Meridian is a Black ­woman from the rural South. At first, her world is small. As a teenager, ­after being sexually assaulted in a funeral home and taking up with a boy she does not love, she becomes pregnant and drops out of high school. But she was the smartest student, and Northern white money offers her the opportunity to study in Atlanta, at a thinly fictionalized Spelman College (where Walker studied for two and a half years). The price: Meridian must leave her son to be raised by ­others. She accepts, despite her ­mother’s dis­plea­sure; she becomes involved in the civil rights movement in Atlanta, together with a Black man named Truman, just a ­couple years older than Meridian. For a time they are romantically involved, but then Truman’s interests shift to a Jewish college student who came in from the North, Lynne. Eventually Truman and Lynne marry, have a child, split up, the child dies, and all three search for a sense of purpose as the civil rights movement fades and revolutionary factions flex their rhetorical muscles. Truman and Lynne are adrift, both turning to Meridian for support. Without institutional backing, she leads integration protests in the rural South, traveling from small town to small town, her lifestyle becoming increasingly ascetic at each stop, her health deteriorating—­but never to the point where death approaches. Meridian certainly possesses something resembling sanctity, but it is infelicitous. She does not attract devotees, even as communities tolerate her presence. Her sickliness is not balanced by any evidence of holiness.35 She lives in

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bare rooms with only a sleeping bag, and she surrounds herself with accusatory letters from her ­mother and former friends, a “litany of accusations, written with much viciousness and condemnation.”36 ­These Meridian has evaluated: She has written on them, “Yes, yes. No. Some of the above. No, no. Yes. All of the above.”37 She engages in the game of judgment, of herself, but in ­doing so receives no forgiveness or peace. Her ­whole life she had been unable to commit to the unequivocal. In church, her m ­ other had wanted her to accept Christ and be saved, as her friends ­were, but Meridian could not. At a mandatory college chapel ser­vice, she was asked to share a testimony, but she could not. ­Later, revolutionaries wanted her to commit that she was willing to kill for the cause of freedom, but she could not. She could come close, acknowledging that nonviolence had failed, that vio­lence is endemic to the American state, and that revolution is necessary, but she could not bring herself to commit to take a life. From the time she was a child, Meridian was filled with guilt. She could never articulate or discover the cause of this guilt. This was before she gave up her child to pursue higher education, before she was sexually assaulted at a funeral home, before she left her revolutionary comrades ­because of her inability to commit fully. Guilt: the sense that norms are not being followed, but for Meridian ­these norms ­were opaque. In contrast, for her Christian ­mother, while life was filled with hardships, each hardship had a purpose. Duty must be fulfilled, and duty could be clearly known. Her ­mother desired to be good, to be righ­teous. This was not pursued by means of love, but by means of fulfilling obligations, even as ­these perceived obligations mismatched the world. She went to church faithfully, but it did not bother her that she could not make out the words the preacher was saying. She made prayer pillows constantly, but it did not bother her that they ­were too small to use for kneeling. From Meridian’s incessant guilt to her ­mother’s misguided sense of duty, h ­ ere we have images that arise in the space where Southern and Yiddish and Brooklyn accents mingle. And it is a space of reflection, question, soliciting judgment. It is a space that resists answers that would promise ultimate resolution, that would overcome and still affective tumult. Parallel to the character Meridian, introduced almost halfway through the novel, is Lynne Rabinowitz. Some scholars have argued that Walker’s choice to feature a Jewish character represents an effort to harness emerging interest in white ethnic identities to guide Jews ­toward “a sense of meaning and community.”38 ­Others have argued that Lynne represses her Jewish identity and, through her engagement with Blacks in the novel, she learns how to strug­gle directly with it.39 But it is not clear how much Lynne learns over



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the course of the novel, and it is quite clear that she does nothing to unite a Jewish (or white) community around her. Lynne begins bright and quick-­ talking, a reader of the New York Times. Truman was attracted to ­these features, so dif­fer­ent was she from the Blacks he knew, as well as to “her inability to curb herself, her imagination, her wishes and dreams.” The narrator elaborates, “It came to her, this lack of restraint, which [Truman] so admired at first and had been so refreshed by, ­because she had never been refused the exercise of it.”40 Truman wants purity, virginity, and intellectuality in a mate: ­these qualities he finds in Lynne, at first. As time passes, initial impressions are complicated. As Truman’s interest in Lynne fades, he regrets that he turned away from Meridian. She ­will not have him back, but she allows for his platonic affections to be directed at her. He continues pursuing his fantasy, finding a blonder and thinner ­woman once Lynne puts on weight, but he keeps returning to Meridian. Just as Meridian broke with her ­mother, Lynne’s marriage to a Black man precipitates a break with her parents. Even when Lynne calls with news that their grand­son is dead, her m ­ other ­will not speak to her, and her f­ather responds to the news by saying that his ­daughter, Lynne, is dead, too: “Nu?” 41 As Black nationalism enters the civil rights movement, Lynne is marginalized. When one of Truman’s friends is maimed by a segregationist vigilante, he directs his rage at all whites, including Truman’s wife, Lynne, whom he rapes. Lynne is frozen, aware of the psychodynamics at play and the danger of calling the police. Her distress goes unheard by Truman, and she resigns herself to rape again and again ­until she fi­nally leaves, only to make herself sexually available to newly empowered Black men in New York. “She began to believe the men fucked her from love, not from hatred. For as long as they did not hate her she felt she could live. She could bear the hatred of her own ­father and ­mother, but not the hatred of black men. And when they no longer came to her—­and she did not know why they did not—­she realized she needed them.” 42 Both Lynne and Truman began by aestheticizing the world around them, treating poor Blacks as “Art,” but they both push against and beyond the limits of such aestheticizing. This original ideal was materialized in their child, whom they named “Camera”—­and who died. Then they attempted to realize it in hollow substitutes: Truman making love to blondes, Lynne to anonymous Blacks. They realized, “It was Meridian they both needed.”43 She could offer something like love that promised forgiveness, now with no erotic component. Where Meridian comes to be in but not of Black communities in the rural South, Lynne has no place to go. She disdained Southern Jews

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who clung to their whiteness and their pretentions to sophistication without speaking any Hebrew, focused solely on buying ­houses in the suburbs and sending their ­children to law or medical school. Where The Color Purple leads t­ oward uninhibited sensuality, loving love, Meridian leads ­toward unfulfilling, but tolerable, asceticism. Illusions have been shattered, the promise of happiness upended, and the only ­thing left to do is to learn from each other and the world in a spirit of humility. To observe, and judge, and reconsider. The novel’s last line describes Meridian having “the sentence of bearing the conflict in her own soul which she had imposed on herself,” which now, illusions having been shattered, must “be borne in terror by all the rest of them.” 44 ­There is no par­tic­u­lar vision of Jewish or Black community that Walker commends. Redemption, if ­there is such a ­thing in the narrative, is identified with acknowledging contradiction, conflict in the soul. It requires work, and judgment, and it does not promise happiness. In short, Meridian dramatizes the failure of stories that soothe, that reconcile, that redeem. What remains is opacity and irreducible complication, soliciting attention and judgment, without rest. In stark contrast, Walker calls The Color Purple a “theology,” she dedicates the book “To the Spirit,” and she names its task “examining the journey from the religious back to the spiritual that I spent much of my adult life, prior to writing it, seeking to avoid.”45 Even as a child, Walker reflects, she had spiritual instincts. She preferred communing with nature to listening to Sunday sermons. But only in writing the book could Walker embrace that spirituality, and depict such an embrace in the stories of her protagonist. At the start of the novel, Celie is a “spiritual captive.” By the end, she “breaks ­free into the realization that she, like Nature itself, is a radiant expression of the heretofore perceived as quite distant Divine.” 46 Walker had been forced into religion, to church with her ­family, and then she had rebelled against religion, in her telling. Only now can she find the under­lying truth of religion, that we can each connect with “All That Is,” allowing “a rebirth into strong feelings of Oneness.”47 But this account does not precisely reflect the trajectory of Walker’s life. She had, indeed, been brought along with her ­family to an AME church as a child in rural Georgia; her ­mother was a “­mother of the church.” 48 And Alice had rebelled. But then she lived ten years as the wife of a Jew, before freeing herself from that relationship to pursue her quest for “All That Is” and “Oneness.” To write The Color Purple, in her account, she had to push away her Jewish husband, and all that is associated with Jewishness (for example, she



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moved from New York to California). What she discovered along the way was that “religion”—­the institutions and rules—­concealed “spirituality.” As she was writing The Color Purple, Elaine Pagels published The Gnostic Gospels, and Walker reports that Pagels’s book helped her see the truth hidden under­neath the rotten shell of Chris­tian­ity. Once we learn how to suffer, we ­will stop suffering. The resurrection means that Jesus did, and we can, move beyond our suffering bodies, joyfully. We need to learn to love ourselves and our world rather than love some ­f uture world that is promised to us; then, we can be in heaven right now, on earth.49 This is the true though esoteric message that Jesus preached, not extolling belief in him but teaching belief in self. “I think we should just kidnap Christ and go off with him,” Walker reflects. “I say that having strug­gled for many years trying to deny him, get rid of him, or ignore him, ­because he is a captive of the church.”50 This New Age sensibility, which Walker in and especially since The Color Purple has ­wholeheartedly embraced, does not yet fully describe Walker’s sense of spirituality, and its opposites. The year ­after The Color Purple’s publication, with excitement around her work at a peak, Walker published a collection of her essays with a programmatic preface. ­There she lays out her position as a Black feminist, a “womanist.”51 To be a womanist, one must be “a ­woman who loves other ­women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers ­women’s culture, w ­ omen’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natu­ral counter-­balance of laughter), and ­women’s strength.” Further, a womanist is one who “loves ­music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love.”52 Put simply, the heart of Walker’s intellectual self-­identity is love. Love is perfected through the narrative of The Color Purple, with false loves rejected while ­women’s love of earth and each other is fully embraced. Walker left New York so that she could whole-­heartedly, unequivocally embrace love, so she could love love. Back in New York and Mississippi, with Leventhal, love was inhibited. Then, she ignored or rejected Christ. Now, she could embrace him ­because she understood his message properly: love yourself, love the world, love love. But this passage to enlightenment flowed through an encounter with Leventhal’s Jewishness, which also needed to be rejected—­superseded.

Conclusion When Walker gives visibility and legitimacy to David Icke’s And the Truth ­Shall Set You ­Free in the New York Times, and defends that choice by arguing

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that controversial views can all expand our imagination, her development from Jewish writer to New Age writer, from writer of judgment to writer of love, has been pushed to an extreme. On one hand, dabbling with conspiracy theories is aligned with a broader spiritual left culture, where issues of interest range from the traditionally po­liti­cal to the health-­conscious to pseudo-­science (with debates over vaccines illustrating the slippage among ­these categories). On the other hand, the suspension of judgment, or hesitation to judge, is an issue Walker grapples with as early as Revolutionary Petunias. ­There she associates judgment, understood as an abstract pro­cess, with genocide—of Jews and Native Americans. From The Color Purple onward, judgment is not part of her vocabulary; all judgment has been superseded by love.53 Put another way, in Walker’s writing and thought, judgment moved from impossibly difficult but necessary work, too often simplified by mechanical pro­cesses and abstractions, to necessarily violent work to be entirely avoided. From the perspective of the latter position, all views are authorized, including antisemitic ones; moreover, judgment is associated with Jewishness. While Walker’s New York Times controversy was tumbling about the web, online sleuths uncovered a recent (2017) poem of hers that contains classically antisemitic material. In the poem “It Is Our (Frightful) Duty to Study the Talmud,” Walker rehearses some of her ­earlier reflections on life with Leventhal before turning to her new interest in antisemitic conspiracy theories. She begins by asserting that Leventhal was the first to accuse her of antisemitism, and this caused an emotional rift in their relationship. She had thought he could understand anything, but he could not understand her criticism of Israel. His excessive attachment to Israel motivates her query, in the poem: What could make Leventhal and so many ­others support an “evil” regime? In an essay on antisemitism from the 1980s, Walker simply associates Israel’s be­ hav­ior with imperialism, and she asserts that Black Americans are rightfully suspicious of imperialism.54 In contrast, in her 2017 poem, Walker embraces esotericism. The prob­lem of Israel and Palestine is connected with crime, policing, and imprisonment in Amer­i­ca, and war in general—so we must turn to “our programming,” the religious ideas that formed us, ­whether they be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or “even the Buddhist.” Walker announces that she, herself, in this poem, is called to study Judaism—­given the opening of the poem, the implication is that understanding Judaism properly can help her understand the rift with Leventhal, back in Mississippi of the 1960s. Walker cautions, in the recent poem, that the proper tool for investigation should not be Google. Unfortunately, she suggests in its stead search-



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ing on YouTube for “Talmud.” The poem goes downhill from ­there. If you follow her instructions, you ­will see why: Amazingly, as of this writing, YouTube still populates most of its top search results for “Talmud” with antisemitic conspiracy theories crediting the Talmud with authorizing all the world’s evils as part of a global Jewish conspiracy. Which Walker elaborates in detail, without judgment, in her poem. The Talmud is a text that judges; Walker rejects judgment as a mode of engagement with the world, and she rejects texts that judge.55 In Walker’s writings of the 1970s, judgment was a prob­lem to be worked, an occasion for literary interrogation; in the 2010s, judgment has been superseded. The specifically theological prob­lem of supersessionism has become a cultural prob­lem, and the ostensibly progressive cultural forces that Walker represents end up on the wrong side. Walker’s literary and cultural tastes, ranging in that controversy-­provoking Times interview from Zora Neale Hurston to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, from Gone with the Wind to Orwell’s essays, from Rumi and Taoist poets to Emily Dickinson and Arundhati Roy, reflect the expanded literary canon undergraduate students encounter ­today, ranging the globe, centering female authors, and seriously addressing questions of oppression and vio­lence. ­These are texts addressing “the ­whole of existence,” “a curious person’s dream come true”—­phrases Walker uses to describe her choice of Icke. In Walker’s formulation, valuing diversity and inclusiveness sits together with cultural supersessionism—­with the suspension of judgment and implicit or explicit antisemitism. Walker and her work have come to represent an era of multiculturalism, and multicultural feminism, but that era is coming to an end. Antiracist organ­izing increasingly focuses on structural racism, white supremacy, and the specificity of anti-­Black racism as it persists in the afterlives of slavery; feminist organ­izing increasingly names patriarchy as a per­sis­tent, concealed prob­lem authorizing continuing, widespread vio­lence against ­women that is entangled with capitalism and racism. Diversity and inclusion are terms that are becoming associated with the administrative management of difference rather than with movements for justice.56 Among the motivating ­factors in this shift are the antinomies produced by ideologies of inclusion, such as Black police officers enforcing laws crafted to marginalize Black Americans and female politicians championing policies that hurt millions of poor ­women. Perhaps we can add Walker’s inclusive antisemitism to this list of antinomies. And perhaps, also, we can look back to Walker’s ­earlier work, during her Jewish phase, as a resource for f­ uture po­liti­cal imaginings. In Revolutionary

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Petunias and Meridian, Walker describes models of po­liti­cal engagement and commitment beyond illusion—­beyond easy solutions, beyond hopes for redemption, beyond appeals to all-­embracing love. Rather than reading Walker as an example of Black antisemitism, this would allow us to read some of her writings as part of a dif­fer­ent tradition, one of Black-­Jewish affective alignment motivating transformative social movements. This is a difficult, often tragic tradition—­think Eldridge Cleaver’s letters to his Jewish ­lawyer or Amiri Baraka’s literary formation while married to the poet Hettie Jones, née Cohen—­but it also occasions grappling with difficulty and opacity in times that call for po­liti­cal commitment.57 When Walker is at her best, her writing explores the way that commitment to revolutionary transformation can persist without the belief that all ­will ultimately be well, without some force or story that can assure us that all w ­ ill be well. Her claim, when she is at her best, is that po­liti­cal affect cannot be monotonal, just dif­fer­ent intensities of love, but must instead draw on a rich affective palette that fuels judgment and is judged, interrogating the wisdom of the world while remaining engaged in the world. Is this not an insight of Jewish po­liti­cal thought? When we turn the tradition inside out, put the margin at the center, the result need not be diluting or distorting the tradition. Walker and ­those like her can, instead, bring new insight and energy to the tradition’s core commitments.

Notes

introduction 1. Domenico Montanaro and Tamara Keith, “Trump’s ‘Disloyalty’ Claim About Jewish Demo­crats Shows He ­Doesn’t Get How They Vote,” NPR Morning Edition, August 22, 2019, https://­w w w​. ­n pr​. ­o rg​/­2 019​/­0 8​/­2 2​/­7 53131249​/­t rumps​- ­d isloyalt y​- ­c laim​- ­a bout​- ­j ewish​ -­democrats​-­shows​-­he​-­doesn​-­t​-­get​-­how​-­they​-­vot, accessed July 27, 2020; “A Guide to ­Labour Party Anti-­Semitism Claims,” BBC News, June 26, 2020, https://­w ww​.­bbc​.­com​/­news​/­u k​ -­politics​-­45030552, accessed July 27, 2020. 2. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, 1950), 23, 56, 74. 3. Ismar Schorsch, “On the History of the Po­liti­cal Judgment of the Jew,” in Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture No. 20 (New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1976). 4. Schorsch, “Po­liti­cal Judgment,” 3. 5. For a more comprehensive history of the field, see Julie E. Cooper, “The Turn to Tradition in the Study of Jewish Politics,” Annual Review of Po­liti­cal Science 19 (May 2016): 67– 87. The discussion ­here echoes some of that article’s claims regarding the field’s founding. However, the article focuses on the centrality and critique of sovereignty, in ways that differ from the priorities of this volume. 6. See Ezra Mendelssohn, On Modern Jewish Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 7. See Leora Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2011). 8. In recent years, scholars ­housed in American po­liti­cal science departments have introduced non-­Western traditions of po­liti­cal thought into po­liti­cal theory curricula while wrestling with the methodological conundrums attendant upon cross-­cultural comparisons. Interestingly, the field now known as Comparative Po­liti­cal Theory (CPT) came to prominence in the early 2000s—­the very period that witnessed the publication of the first two volumes of The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition. Yet literally none of the CPT subfield’s founding anthologies or programmatic statements addresses Jewish po­liti­cal thought. The voluminous Oxford Handbook of Comparative Po­liti­cal Theory includes chapters on Chinese, Japa­ nese, Indonesian, African, Ca­rib­bean, Islamic, Indian, Latin American, Eastern Eu­ro­pean, Indigenous, and Filipino po­liti­cal thought—­but nary a mention of Jewish thought. See Leigh K. Jenco, Murad Idris, and Megan C. Thomas, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Po­liti­cal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). It is risky to speculate regarding the reasons for this omission. One suspects, however, that the impresarios of CPT did not see fit to include Jewish po­liti­cal thought ­because they locate the Jews squarely in the

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West, whose hegemony they contest. In this volume we aim to pre­sent a more nuanced approach to the study of noncanonical po­liti­cal thought. We si­mul­ta­neously acknowledge the Jews’ precarious standing as the West’s internal other while “provincializing” Western categories that have long defined what counts as “po­liti­cal” in the (American) acad­emy. With such a move we hope to avoid the apol­o­getic tenor of many pronouncements regarding the Jews’ presumed geographical-­ideological location—­for example, ­either the Jews in­ven­ted Western democracy or Jewish thought represents an emancipatory alternative to Western domination. Moreover, our adoption of Chakrabarty’s concept of “provincialization” is motivated, in part, by a desire to avoid constant comparisons. In many ways the exclusion of Jewish thought from the CPT umbrella is fortunate, as the burden of “comparison” is relieved somewhat—­the import of Jewish texts is not judged solely by their resemblance to or distance from Western norms. 9. Space constraints prevent us from addressing all the works that contributed to the field’s establishment and development. Significant works that we are unable to analyze ­here include: David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History (New York: Schocken Books, 1986); A. Melamed, “Is ­There a Jewish Po­liti­cal Thought? The Medieval Case Reconsidered,” Hebraic Po­liti­cal Studies 1 (2005): 24–56; Alan Mittleman, The Scepter ­Shall Not Depart from Judah: Perspectives on the Per­sis­tence of the Po­liti­cal in Judaism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000); David Novak, Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Po­liti­cal Theory (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2000); and Gordon Schochet, Fania Oz-­Salzberger, and Meirav Jones, eds., Po­liti­cal Hebraism: Judaic Sources in Early Modern Po­liti­cal Thought (Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2008). 10. See Simon Dubnow, Nationalism and History: Essays on Old and New Judaism (New York: Atheneum, 1970). Of course, Dubnow’s position is more complicated than this brief sketch allows. Indeed, Dubnow’s work is not entirely ­free of skepticism regarding the Jews’ po­liti­cal bona fides. See Julie E. Cooper, “In Pursuit of Po­liti­cal Imagination: Reflections on Diasporic Po­liti­cal History,” Theoretical Inquiries in Law 21, no. 2 (2020): 225–284. 11. For one influential example, see Yitzhak Baer, “The Origins of the Organ­ization of the Jewish Community of the ­Middle Ages,” Zion 15 (1950): 1–41 [Hebrew]. 12. Cf. Robert Eisen, Religious Zionism, Jewish Law, and the Morality of War: How Five Rabbis Confronted One of Modern Judaism’s Greatest Challenges (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Alexander Kaye, The Invention of Jewish Theocracy: The Strug­gle for ­Legal Authority in Modern Israel (New York: Oxford, 2020). 13. Michael Walzer, Menachem Lorberbaum, Noam Zohar, and Yair Lorberbaum, eds., The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 1: Authority (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), xiv. See also Daniel Elazar, “Some Preliminary Observations on the Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition,” Tradition 18 (1980): 249–271. 14. Elazar, “Some Preliminary Observations,” 250. 15. Elazar, “Some Preliminary Observations,” 257. 16. Daniel Elazar and Stuart Cohen, The Jewish Polity: Jewish Po­liti­cal Organ­ization from Biblical Times to the Pre­sent (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 2. 17. Elazar and Cohen, The Jewish Polity, 6. 18. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 1, xxii. 19. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 1, 281–282. 20. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 1, xxi. 21. Walzer et al, Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 1, xxi.



Notes to Pages 6–11

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22. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 1, xxx, xxix. 23. See also Walzer’s contribution to this volume. 24. Michael Walzer, Menachem Lorberbaum, Noam J. Zohar, and Madeline Kochen, eds., The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 3: Community (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 3; see also 387. 25. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 3, 5. It is worth noting that while the dichotomy between land and exile is typically mapped onto another between state and statelessness, this is contingent rather than necessary, as Jewish anarchists have frequently argued; for discussion of an impor­tant twentieth-­century exemplar of such argumentation, see Samuel Hayim Brody, Martin Buber’s Theopolitics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018). 26. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 1, 334–339. “Robust editorial commentary” by David Shatz follows, 339–344. 27. Michael Walzer, In God’s Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), xii–­x iii, 212. 28. See Michael Walzer, The Com­pany of Critics: Social Criticism and Po­liti­cal Commitment in the Twentieth ­Century (New York: Basic Books, 2002). 29. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Eu­rope: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2000), 16; see also 6, 22. 30. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Eu­rope, xii. 31. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Eu­rope, xii. 32. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Eu­rope, xiii. 33. For studies that contextualize the efforts of Wissenschaft des Judentums—­the “scientific study of Judaism” developed initially in Germany—­w ith re­spect to insights and concepts drawn from postcolonial thought, see Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Christian Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2004). This framework has recently been brought to modern Jewish thought as well by Robert Erlewine, Judaism and the West: From Hermann Cohen to Joseph Soloveitchik (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), and Stefan Vogt, “The Postcolonial Buber: Orientalism, Subalternity, and Identity Politics in Martin Buber’s Po­liti­cal Thought,” Jewish Social Studies 22 (2016): 161–186. For an analy­sis of the wider German scholarly context of the nineteenth ­century that is pertinent to ­these studies, see Suzanne Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 34. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 1, xxvi–­x xvii. 35. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 1, xxvii. 36. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 1, xxvii. 37. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 3, 388; see also 3. ­Here it is impor­tant to recall that, despite our emphasis on the difficulties inherent in such correlations, “the rabbis” and “Greek thought” are nonetheless far from mutually exclusive categories, as scholars of rabbinics have demonstrated exhaustively. 38. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 3, 451. 39. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 3, 457. 40. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 3, 534. 41. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 3, 3. 42. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 3, 391.

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43. Walzer et al., Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 1, xxiii. 44. A midrash is a rabbinic interpretation of scripture, which can take a wide variety of forms, from ­legal formulae to legends and sagas; a petiḥta is a type of sermon or homily that begins with a verse of the Prophets or Writings and works its way back to the Torah portion of the week. Jewish interpretive and liturgical forms have been the subject of constructive attention in both literary theory and philosophical theology in recent de­cades. For two relevant examples, see Steven Kepnes, Jewish Liturgical Reasoning (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), and Peter Ochs, “Morning Prayer as Redemptive Thinking,” in Liturgy, Time, and the Politics of Redemption, ed. Randi Rashkover and C. C. Pecknold (­Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2006), 50–87. 45. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Eu­rope, 20. 46. For a summary of this debate, see Joseph Heinemann, “The Ancient ‘­Orders of Benedictions’ for New Year and Fasts,” Tarbiz 35 (1976): 258–267 [Hebrew]. Heinemann argues that malchuyot, zichronot, and shofarot ­were freestanding prayers that ­were incorporated into the ʻAmidah prayer ­toward the end of the Second ­Temple period. For the history of the prayer’s composition, see also Sidney  B. Hoenig, “Origins of the Rosh Hashanah Liturgy,” Jewish Quarterly Review 57 (1967): 312–331; Ismar Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1993), 118–119; Norman A. Bloom, “The Rosh Hashanah Prayers—­Historical Perspectives,” Tradition 17, no. 3 (1978): 51–73; Joseph Heinemann, “Malchuyot, Zichronot, and Shofarot,” in Collection for ­Matters of Education and Instruction: The High Holidays, ed. Chayim Chamiel (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organ­ization, 1968), 546–567 [Hebrew]; and Solomon Zeitlin, “The Tefilah, The Shemoneh Esreh: An Historical Study of the First Canonization of the Hebrew Liturgy,” Jewish Quarterly Review 54, no.  3 (1964): 208–249. 47. Jerusalem Talmud, Rosh HaShanah, chapter 4, halachah 8. For parallel passages in rabbinic lit­er­a­t ure, see Meir Bar Ilan, “The Changes in the Liturgy of Rosh Hashana: M. Rosh Hashana 4, 7,” Sidra: A Journal for the Study of Rabbinic Lit­er­a­ture (1997): 25–46 [Hebrew]. Bar Ilan cites a dif­fer­ent kind of po­liti­cal rationale for the placement of the shofar blowing in the after­noon ser­vice: On the assumption that most worshipers arrive late to shul, the rabbis de­cided against blowing the shofar in the morning to an empty ­house. 48. For the (dubious?) historical accuracy of the claim that the shofar was originally blown in the morning, see Bar Ilan, “Changes,” and Heinemann, “Malchuyot.” 49. In a sense, we are inspired to provide a po­liti­cal parallel to Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophical proj­ect of “translating [Jewish learning] into Greek.” In another sense, however, the gesture of provincialization differs, since it does not assume the priority of the audience’s need for such clarifying “translation”; the Tannaim arguably do not “translate into Greek.” See Emmanuel Levinas, “The Translation of the Scripture,” in In the Time of the Nations, trans. Michael B. Smith (New York: Continuum, 2007), 22–42. 50. Of course, Chris­tian­ity in par­tic­u­lar has a long and constitutive history of adopting (some would say “appropriating”) Jewish terms and concepts. The shofar is no exception, including in its double political-­theological meaning, as indicated by its use at the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol. See Sarah Imhoff, “Shofar Blast,” Uncivil Religion, December 29, 2021, https://­uncivilreligion​.­org​/­home​/­the​-­shofar​-­as​-­christian​-­battle​-­cry, accessed August 17, 2022. For a kind of Jewish rejoinder, one could consider the final minutes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, season 11, episode 4, “The Watermelon,” in which Larry David uses a shofar to wake up his neighbors, warding off an angry Klansman. 51. Translation from www​.­sefaria​.­org.



Notes to Pages 16–18

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52. The reference is to Deuteronomy 33:5, one of the biblical verses excerpted in the malchuyot section. 53. Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Yamim Noraim (Tel Aviv: Schocken Publishing House, 1998), 117 [Hebrew]. U ­ nless other­w ise noted, translations from Hebrew are by Julie E. Cooper. 54. Gershom Scholem, “Reflections on S.Y. Agnon,” Commentary 44 (1967): 59–66. Thanks to Giddon Ticotsky for his generous and sagacious guidance through the thickets of Agnon scholarship. 55. Indeed, the first printing of Days of Awe was supposedly distributed to delegates at the Twentieth Zionist Congress in 1938. See https://­he​.­wikipedia​.­org​/­wiki​/­‫)ןונגע(­_​םיארונ­_​םימי‬, accessed August 16, 2022. For the Zionist motivations ­behind Agnon’s anthologizing proj­ ect, see James S. Diamond, “Agnon’s Yamim Noraim: Then and Now,” Conservative Judaism 66, no. 1 (2014): 39–58. See also Dan Laor, S.Y. Agnon: A Biography (Jerusalem: Schoken Publishing House, 1998), 281–288, 381–383 [Hebrew]. 56. For Scholem’s arguably parallel demonstrations about the true authors of the Zohar, see his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1954), 156–243; also his Kabbalah (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), 213–243. 57. S. Y. Agnon, Days of Awe (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), xxxi. See also Agnon’s introduction to the third (1946) Hebrew edition. Agnon, Yamim Noraim, 8: “I did not add anything of my own, except as an artist who, when given silk to make a garment, adds threads of his own.” 58. Haim Be’er, Rooms Full of Books (Jerusalem: Mineged, 2016), 57–59 [Hebrew]. 59. Agnon, Yamim Noraim, 8. 60. Apparently, some ­were taken in by Agnon’s charade. With undisguised glee, Agnon relates that several self-­professed scholars unwittingly cited his own creations, thereby betraying their lack of scholarly rigor (not to mention their lack of originality). See Be’er, Rooms Full of Books, and Haim Be’er, “Kol Dodi,” Devar HaShavua 38, 21.9.84: 14–15 [Hebrew]. Of course, the accusations of plagiarism are especially ironic given that the text from which ­these scholars lifted Agnon’s words is an anthology—­that is, a text in which Agnon himself recycles the words of ­others. For Agnon’s characteristic blurring of the bound­a ries between interpretation/midrash and literary creation, see Yaniv Hagbi, “The Poetics of Plagiarism: Aspects of Plagiarism in Agnon’s Works,” in Studies in Jewish Narrative, vol. 2, ed. Avidov Lipsker and Rela Kushelevsky (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2009), 361–370 [Hebrew]. 61. For the place of “Jewish” genres (pinkas, midrash) in Agnon’s oeuvre, see Dan Miron, “Domesticating a Foreign Genre: Agnon’s Transactions with the Novel,” Prooftexts 7, no. 1 (1987): 1–27. 62. Coincidentally, while this book was in production, the High Holiday liturgy came to serve as the title and theme for another recent book on Jewish politics: Atalia Omer, Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). Omer’s use of the theme focuses more on the idea of the Days of Awe as a liminal space in which existential confrontation, repentance, and renewal takes place: “The Days of Awe unsettle comfort and privilege” (4). 63. For the ʻAleinu prayer, see Heinemann, “Malchuyot,” and Meir Bar Ilan, “The Source of the Aleinu Le’Shabe’ah Prayer,” Daat 43 (1999): 5–24 [Hebrew]. 64. In what follows, all translations from the liturgy are from Mahzor Lev Shalem (New York: Rabbinical Assembly, 2010). 65. Mahzor Lev Shalem, 157.

262

Notes to Pages 19–24

66. For Christian anti-­Judaism as anti-­legalism, see Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Chris­tian­ity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); for a broader argument about ways in which Christian po­liti­cal theology uses Judaism as a figure for error, see David Nirenberg, “ ‘Judaism’ as Po­liti­cal Concept: ­Toward a Critique of Po­liti­cal Theology,” Repre­sen­ta­tions 128, no. 1 (2014): 1–29. 67. See Daniel Statman and Gidon Sapir, Religion and State in Israel: A Philosophical-­ Legal Inquiry (Haifa: University of Haifa Press/Yediot Aharonot/Hemed, 2014) [Hebrew]. 68. Michael Walzer, “Communal Organ­ization in the Diaspora,” in this volume, Chapter 4. 69. Mahzor Lev Shalem, 160. 70. See Mahzor Lev Shalem, 159. 71. See Alona Lisitsa, “Whom to Remember: Sarah or Noah?” in On Wings of Prayer: Sources of Jewish Worship, ed. Nuria Calduch-­Benages, Michael W. Duggan, and Dalia Marx, 273–284 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019). 72. George Orwell, 1984 (New York, Penguin, 1977 [1949]), 248. The full phrase includes “who controls the pre­sent, controls the past,” and Orwell places it in the mouth of the Party torturer O’Brien, who denies the existence of objective real­ity. Thus the slogan is only ambiguously “Orwell’s”; his relationship to it is fraught and fearful. 73. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996); David Myers and Alexander Kaye, eds., The Faith of Fallen Jews: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and the Writing of Jewish History (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2013). 74. As the inclusion of Noah attests, the covenants remembered in the zichronot verses exceed the bounds of the Jewish ­people. 75. On the politics of philanthropy, see Lila Corwin Berman, The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex: The History of a Multibillion-­Dollar Institution (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2020). 76. Mahzor Lev Shalem, 164. 77. Mahzor Lev Shalem, 166. 78. Psalms 81:4–5. 79. “Man glaubt die Sprache verweltlicht zu haben, ihr den apokalyptischen Stachel ausgezogen zu haben.” For the full text of the letter, including the German as well as this translation, see William Cutter, “Ghostly Hebrew, Ghastly Speech: Scholem to Rosenzweig, 1926,” Prooftexts 10, no. 3 (September 1990): 413–433. An alternative translation appears in Gershom Scholem and Ora Wiskind, “On Our Language: A Confession,” History and Memory 2, no. 2 (Winter 1990): 97–99. 80. Jacob Taubes, The Po­liti­cal Theology of Paul, trans. Dana Hollander (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 54. Also see Randi Rashkover and Martin Kavka, eds., Judaism, Liberalism, and Po­liti­cal Theology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014). 81. At least, not for the ­whole world. In the Torah’s account, at least, the Egyptians certainly suffered a terrible decimation. 82. Mahzor Lev Shalem, 137. The translation is loose, but not merely fanciful. Teruah is one of three shofar sounds heard during the ser­vice. The ­others, teki’ah and shevarim, are a single long blast and three short blasts, whereas teruah is nine staccato blasts. According to Michael Strassfeld, the rabbis debated what constituted a teruah: “One opinion is that it should sound like groaning (our shevarim sound); another is that it should sound like sobbing (what we call teru’ah); and a third opinion is that it should sound like both together (our shevarim



Notes to Pages 31–39

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teru’ah).” See Michael Strassfeld, The Jewish Holidays: A Guide and Commentary (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 99.

chapter 1 1. James S. Anaya, “The Capacity of International Law to Advance Ethnic or Nationality Rights Claims,” Iowa Law Review 75 (1989): 837–844. 2. Mirna Adjami and Julia Harrington, “The Scope and Content of Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of ­Human Rights,” Refugee Survey Quarterly 27, no. 3 (2008): 93–109. 3. As Adjami and Harrington acknowledge, the reading they offer of “the right to a nationality” as a right to be a citizen of some par­tic­u­lar state can be seen simply to bump back a level of abstraction the paradox associated with dignity and ­human rights law: While the “right to a nationality” would seem to require that a par­tic­u­lar state provide citizenship to each and ­every person, such nationality rights do not offer any pro­cess for determining which par­tic­u­lar state o­ ught to assume responsibility. 4. James Loeffler, Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and ­Human Rights in the Twentieth ­Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 14. 5. Loeffler, Rooted Cosmopolitans, 5. 6. Carole Fink, Defending the Rights of ­Others: The ­Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 112, quoted in Loeffler, Rooted Cosmopolitans, 11. 7. The constitutional language of the Declaration of In­de­pen­dence is as follows: “We declare that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being to­night, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15 May, 1948), ­until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution which ­shall be ­adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not ­later than the 1st October 1948, the ­People’s Council ­shall act as a Provisional Council of State, and its executive organ, the ­People’s Administration, ­shall be the Provisional Government of the Jewish State, to be called ‘Israel.’ ” Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, 1 Laws of the State of Israel [LSI] 3, 4 (1948), quoted in Gideon Sapir, “Constitutional Revolutions: Israel as a Case-­Study,” International Journal of Law in Context 5 (2009): 355–378. 8. Yoav Mehozay, Between the Rule of Law and States of Emergency: The Fluid Jurisprudence of the Israeli Regime (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2016), 34. 9. Hachlata Harari [Harari Decision], Wikipedia (Hebrew), https://­he​.­w ikipedia​.­org​ /­w iki​/­, accessed June 20, 2018 (translation mine). 10. As Mehozay details at length, this originary ambiguity regarding the relative authority of constitutional and legislative law-­shaping continues to have profound implications for the exercise of institutional power and the safeguarding of individual rights within con­temporary Israel, insofar as it leaves indeterminate the fundamental autonomy of the court system. The question of conditions ­u nder which the Supreme Court is empowered to overturn laws passed by the Knesset is itself the subject of ongoing po­liti­cal and ­legal grappling. 11. Aharon Barak, ­Human Dignity: The Constitutional Value and the Constitutional Right (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 280. 12. Ariel L. Bendor and Michael Sachs, “The Constitutional Status of ­Human Dignity in Germany and Israel,” Israel Law Review 44 (2011): 31.

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Notes to Pages 40–55

13. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 39. 14. Kant, Groundwork, 41. 15. Kant, Groundwork, 56–57. 16. Tamar Katriel, Talking Straight: Dugri Speech in Israeli Sabra Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 17. David Hazony, “Every­thing ­You’ve Heard About Israel’s Nation-­State Bill Is Wrong,” Forward (July 23, 2018), https://­forward​.­com​/­opinion​/­406355​/­everything​-­youve​-­heard​-­about​ -­israels​-­nation​-­state​-­bill​-­is​-­w rong​/­, accessed December 8, 2020.

chapter 2 1. In this chapter I ­will usually use the term “Jewish Law” but also the term Mishpat ʻIvri or halakhah when I believe it ­w ill clarify the context better. 2. Menachem Elon (b. 1923, Dusseldorf; d. 2013, Jerusalem) was a professor of Jewish Law at Hebrew University, where he established the Institute for the Research of Jewish Law. In 1977 he was appointed to the Supreme Court, where he served for sixteen years, including some years as the vice president of the court. As a scholar, Elon viewed research in Jewish Law as applied research designed to assist its integration in Israeli law and transforming it into relevant and con­temporary law. As a justice on the bench, he ­adopted a significant amount of his own research arguments and utilized Jewish Law extensively. Elon studied in yeshivot and was ordained as a rabbi by chief rabbis Herzog and Uziel. He was a jurist who had a comprehensive academic background in Jewish studies. All three of ­these components are evident in all of his writings. 3. Assaf Likhovski, Law and Identity in Mandate Palestine (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Arye Edrei, “Judaism, Jewish Law, and the Jewish State in Israel,” in The Cambridge Companion to Judaism and Law, ed. Christine Hayes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 337–364; Menachem Elon, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Princi­ples, vols. 1–4, trans. B. Auerbach and M. Sykes (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), vol. 4, 1588. 4. Elon, Jewish Law, vol. 4, 1827–1897. Thus, for example, Justice Zilberg suggested adopting the position of Jewish Law on the issue of illegal contracts (Zim v. Mazyar, 17 P.D. 1319 [1963]). Justice Elon recommended interpreting the Defense of Necessity in criminal law to include the defense of any person (Afanjar v. State of Israel, 33[III] P.D. 141 [1979]); En­g lish translation in Menachem Elon, Bernard Auerbach, Daniel D. Chazin, and Melvin Sykes, Jewish Law (Mishpat Ivri): Cases and Materials (New York : M. Bender, 1999), 224. Justice Agranat ruled that ­t here cannot be expropriation without compensation (Tel Aviv Municipality v. Abu Daya 20[IV] P.D. 522 [1966]). Elon opposed active euthanasia in light of the definition of the State of Israel as a Jewish, demo­c ratic state (Shefer v. State of Israel, 48[I] P.D. 87–199 [1993], this decision was translated and printed in En­g lish as New Horizons in Medical Ethics: Decision of the Supreme Court of Israel in the Shefer Case (Jerusalem: Schlesinger Institute for Medical-­Halakhic Research, 1996). Justice Rubenstein proposed giving preference in specific cases to the value of ­human dignity over the value of freedom of speech to prevent journalists from publishing information that might cause severe and unwarranted damage to a person’s reputation (P. v. Ilana Dayan, 67[1] P.D. 667–880 [2014]).



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5. Edrei, “Judaism, Jewish Law, and the Jewish State in Israel,” 349; Menachem Mautner, Law and the Culture of Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 1–74. 6. Elon, Jewish Law, vol. 4, 1914. 7. Yzhak Englard, “Research in Jewish Law: Its Nature and Function,” in Modern Research in Jewish Law, ed. B. S. Jackson (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 21–65; Yzhak Englard, “The Prob­ lem of Jewish Law in a Jewish State,” Israel Law Review 3 (1968): 254–278. 8. Elon, Jewish Law, vol. 4, 1909–1911. 9. Shefer v. State of Israel, 48(I) P.D. 87–199 (1993). 10. Shefer v. State of Israel, 48(I) P.D. 87–199 (1993). 11. Nagar v. Nagar, 38(I) P.D. 365 (1984), 407–408. 12. Shakdiel v. Minister of Religious Affairs, 42(II) P.D. 221 (1988), 264. 13. Another fascinating example is the Bavli case, which dealt with the rabbinical court’s unequal distribution of property between a divorced ­couple. Justice Barak overturned the rabbinical court ruling, establishing that in ­these ­matters the rabbinical court is required to act in accordance with Israeli law and not the halakhah. Elon, who had already retired from the bench, published a fierce article against Barak’s ruling. See Menachem Elon, “­These Statements Are Dicta . . . ​They Are Based on Error, and It Is Appropriate Not to Follow Them: A Critique of the Bavli and Lev Cases,” in Multiculturalism in Demo­cratic and Jewish State, ed. Menachem Mautner, Avi Sagi, and Ronen Shamir (Tel Aviv: Ramot Press, 1998), 361–408 [Hebrew]. See the partial En­glish translation in Elon et al., Jewish Law (Mishpat Ivri): Cases and Materials, 409. His argument was that the rabbinical court ruling was incorrect not ­because it contravened Israeli law but ­because proper halakhic exegesis should have led the rabbis to order an equal division of property between the litigants. Elon dedicated a good portion of his article to showing the rabbinical court how to arrive at an equitable division in accordance with the halakhah. As such, this constitutes another example of Elon instructing the rabbinical court how to develop the halakhah itself. Similarly, he opposed Barak’s ruling ­because he viewed it as an impediment to enabling the rabbinical court to serve as a catalyst for halakhic development: “What the Mishpat ʻIvri system merited in all of the dispersion and the countries to which the Jews w ­ ere exiled—­the implementation of a l­egal system, and the need for it with all of its areas and branches—­the Mishpat ʻIvri system in the in­de­pen­dent Jewish state ­w ill not merit, even in that small and meager corner within the authority of the rabbinical courts [­family law]; it ­w ill no longer exist in light of the Bavli case” (Elon, “­These Statements Are Dicta,” 403). 14. Nieman v. Central Elections Committee 39(II) P.D. 225 (1985), 298; see also Elon, Jewish Law, vol. 4, 1854. 15. Psalms 119:44. 16. Kahane v. Speaker of Knesset 41(II) P.D. 729 (1987), 741. 17. R. Y. Isserlin, Responsa Trumat Ha-­Deshen: Pesakim, 214 (­adopted also by R. Moshe Isserles, Shulhan Arukh: Hosen Mishpat 37:22). 18. Abbdallah Sufian v. Military Commander, Gaza District 47(II) P.D. 843, 851 (1993), trans. in Elon et al., Jewish Law (Mishpat Ivri): Cases and Materials, 589. 19. Rabbi Levi ben Gershon (Ralbag), Provence, 1288–1344, an impor­tant biblical commentator and phi­los­o­pher. Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel (the Malbim), Rus­sia, 1809–1879, one of the ­later noted biblical commentators. 20. Abbdallah Sufian v. Military Commander, Gaza District 47(II) P.D. 843 (1993), 851. 21. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Torah and Commandments in Con­temporary Times (Tel Aviv: Schocken Press, 1954) [Hebrew]; Akiva Ernst Simon, “Are We Still Jews?” reprinted in Akiva

266

Notes to Pages 71–79

Ernst Simon, Are We Still Jews? (Tel Aviv: Hapo’alim Press, 2001), 8–46 [Hebrew]; see also Arye Edrei, “Law, Interpretation, and Ideology: The Renewal of the Jewish Laws of War in the State of Israel,” Cardozo Law Review 28 (October 2006): 187–227; Arye Edrei, “Judaism, Jewish Law, and the Jewish State in Israel”; Yedidia Stern and Yair Sheleg, eds., Jewish Law and Zionism: Halakhic Ramifications of National Sovereignty (Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, 2017) [Hebrew]. 22. Ben-­Gurion denigrated the Diaspora in all its expressions and manifestations, and held that it would be appropriate “to skip over the period of exile by taking a mythical Nachshon style leap to the ancient past of the Jewish ­people in the Land of Canaan” (quoted in David Ohana, Messianism and Mamlachtiut—­Ben-­Gurion and the Intellectuals Between Po­liti­cal Vision and Po­liti­cal Theology [Sdeh Boker: Ben-­Gurion Institute, 2003], 30–31 [Hebrew]). In his statement to the Peel Commission in 1936, he viewed the Bible as the historical, ethical, and ­legal foundation for the return of the Jewish ­people to its land: “The Bible shines of its own light,” he wrote, and was not in need of the interpretations that ­were foisted on it in the Diaspora (David Ben-­Gurion, Biblical Reflections [Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1976], 41, 47–49 [Hebrew]). The biblical period served as a model for the sovereignty of the Jewish ­people in its land, while the period of exile revealed a passive Jewish ­people, lacking sovereignty and creativity. See Anita Shapira, The Bible and Israeli Identity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2006) [Hebrew]. 23. Menachem Elon, ed., Digest of the Responsa Lit­er­a­ture of Spain and North Africa (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1981), 228. 24. Menachem Elon, “Authority and Power in the Jewish Community: A Chapter in Jewish Public Law,” Shenaton Ha-­Mishpat Ha-­ʻIvri 3–4 (1976–1977): 7–34, 34 [Hebrew]. 25. Lugasi v. Minister of Communication, 36(II) P.D. 449 (1981), 467. 26. Menachem Elon, “The Contribution of Spanish Jewry to the World of Jewish Law,” Jewish Po­liti­cal Studies Review 5, nos. 3–4 (Fall 1993): 35–55.

chapter 3 1. Salo Baron, “Ghetto and Emancipation: ­Shall We Revise the Traditional View?” Menorah Journal 14 (1928), reprinted in The Menorah Trea­sury: Harvest of Half a ­Century, ed. Leo W. Schwarz (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1964), 50–63. 2. David Engel, “Crisis and Lachrymosity: On Salo Baron, Neobaronianism, and the Study of Modern Eu­ro­pean Jewish History,” Jewish History 20, nos. 3–4 (2006): 243–264. 3. Baron, “Ghetto and Emancipation,” 62. 4. ­Here I consider cultural Zionism a form of Zionism, even though Ahad Ha’am himself distinguished “Ḥibat Zion” from “Tziyonut.” See Ahad Ha’am, “The State of the Jews and the Jewish Prob­lem” (1897), https://­w ww​.­jewishvirtuallibrary​.­org​/­quot​-­the​-­jewish​-­state​ -­a nd​-­jewish​-­problem​-­quot​-­a had​-­ha​-­a m, accessed June 22, 2019. 5. Hannah Arendt, in “The Crisis of Zionism” (1943), referred to “Jewish politics, in other words Zionism,” of which ­there could be many forms. ­After the convention of the World Zionist Organ­ization in October of 1944, however, she presented a typology of Zionisms, of which she understood revisionism to have been victorious, implying that Zionism was being tragically narrowed down to a par­tic­u­lar unimaginative form. Hannah Arendt, “The Crisis of Zionism” (1943), in Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings, ed. Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 329–337, at 330; Arendt, “Zionism Reconsidered,” in Arendt, The Jewish Writings, 343–374.



Notes to Pages 79–81

267

6. Eliezer Schweid, “Two Approaches to the Idea of ‘Negating the Exile’ in Zionist Ideology,” Zionism 9 (1982–1983) [Hebrew], reprinted as “The Rejection of the Diaspora in Jewish Thought: Two Approaches,” Studies in Zionism 5, no. 1 (1984). 7. Ahad Ha’am, “Shlilat Hagalut,” Hashiloah 20, no. 5 (1907–1908 [5669]) [Hebrew], https://­benyehuda​.­org​/­g inzberg​/­Gnz​_­081​.­html#​_ ­ftn1, accessed June 18, 2019. 8. Yosef Haim Brenner asks, “How can we become that which we are not?” Yosef Haim Brenner, “Evaluating Ourselves in Three Volumes,” Revivim 3 (1914): 64–78 [Hebrew]. 9. Brenner, “Evaluating Ourselves in Three Volumes.” 10. Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel: http://­w ww​.­mfa​.­gov​.­il​/­mfa​ /­foreignpolicy​/­peace​/­g uide​/­pages​/­declaration%20of%20establishment%20of%20state%20 of%20israel​.­a spx, accessed July 19, 2018. 11. This also appears in the Declaration of In­de­pen­dence (see previous note). 12. Baron, “Ghetto and Emancipation,” 51. 13. I acknowledge my indebtedness ­here and throughout to the work of Amnon Raz-­ Krakotzkin, whose most recent reflection on his two-­part essay helped me in thinking about exile as part of Jewish experience within the state of Israel: Amnon Raz-­K rakotzkin, “Exile Within Sovereignty: ­Toward a Critique of Negation of the Exile,” Part 1, Theory and Criticism 4 (1993): 23–55; “Exile Within Sovereignty: ­Toward a Critique of Negation of the Exile,” Part 2, Theory and Criticism 5 (1994): 113–132; Amnon Raz-­K rakotzkin, “Who Am I Without Exile?” Theory and Criticism 50 (2018): 89–102; Raz-­K rakotzkin’s work is on more theological dimensions than I explore ­here, but his work inspired many of my questions. 14. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or, The ­Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common Wealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civil (London, 1651), bk. 1, ch. 13. 15. ­There is no shortage of lit­er­a­ture on the exceptional status of Jews in Christian times. See, for example, David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), and David Nirenberg, Anti-­Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: Norton, 2013). 16. I discuss this in Meirav Jones and Yossi Shain, “Modern Sovereignty and the Non-­ Christian, or Westphalia’s Jewish State,” Review of International Studies 43, no.  5 (2017): 918–938. 17. Jean Bodin, Six Books of the Commonwealth (London, 1606), bk. 3, ch. 8. The translation ­here is my own, based on the Latin edition from 1586 from which the En­glish 1606 text was translated; the En­glish translation of the passage is unclear, leading me to refer to the Latin. The passage reads: “Facit igitur religionis illius antiquissima vetustas ac summa iudaeorum inopia, quibus nusquam terrarum praedia possidere licet, quo minus pro sua religione proque libertate propugnare possint.” Jean Bodin, De Republica Libri Sex (Paris, 1586), bk. 3, ch. 8. The 1606 En­glish translation of the entire passage appears in Jones and Shain, “Modern Sovereignty,” 933. The passage, interestingly, does not appear in Bodin’s 1576 French text but was inserted by the author in the Latin, possibly to participate in con­temporary discussions of the place of the Jews. The French edition ends this section with a discussion of ancient Israel, which appears before this passage in the Latin and En­glish editions. 18. Bodin, Six Books, bk. 1, ch. 3. Hebrew terms are cited extensively in Hebrew typeface in Bodin’s Latin text and its En­glish translation, and this includes the Hebrew terms for sovereignty, law, head of the ­house­hold, and more, to indicate Hebraic insights into the nature of politics as written by God himself. See, for example, bk. 1, ch.8, where in the definition of sovereignty the Hebrew term tomekh shevet (i.e., supporter of the staff ) is brought in Hebrew typeface to indicate the Hebrew capturing of the nature of sovereignty. In bk. 3, ch. 1,

268

Notes to Pages 82–86

the Hebrew word for senator is brought in; in bk. 3, ch. 6, the Hebrew term for master of the ­house­hold is introduced; and so forth. 19. Bodin, Six Books, bk. 3, ch. 7; bk. 4, ch. 7. 20. Hobbes, Leviathan, bk. 1, ch. 12. 21. Hobbes, Leviathan, bk. 2, ch. 26; bk. 3, ch. 35. 22. On ­Cromwell’s consultations on the re­introduction of the Jews to ­England, see David Katz, “En­glish Redemption and Jewish Readmission in 1656,” Journal of Jewish Studies 34, no. 1 (1983): 73–91. 23. James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana (London, 1656), introduction. 24. Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana. 25. Benedict de Spinoza, Theological-­Political Treatise [1670], ed. Jonathan Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 17, 26–28. 26. Jones and Shain, “Modern Sovereignty and the Non-­Christian.” 27. On po­liti­cal Hebraism, see Julie Cooper, “The Turn to Tradition in the Study of Jewish Politics,” Annual Review of Po­liti­cal Science 19, no. 1: 67–87; Meirav Jones, “Introduction,” in Po­liti­cal Hebraism: Judaic Sources in Early Modern Po­liti­cal Thought, ed. Gordon Schochet, Fania Oz Salzberger, and Meirav Jones (Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2008), 1–14. 28. See Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of Eu­ro­ pean Po­liti­cal Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011); Fania Oz Salzberger, “The Jewish Roots of Western Freedom,” Azure 13 (2002): 88–132. 29. Jean-­Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, trans. Alan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), bk. 4, 303–304. 30. Comte de Clermont-­Tennere famously stated as part of his “Speech on Religious Minorities and Questionable Professions” (December 23, 1789), delivered to the French Assembly: “We must refuse every­thing to the Jews as a nation and accord every­thing to Jews as individuals.” Clermont-­Tonnerre, “Speech on Religious Minorities and Questionable Professions” (December 23, 1789), in The French Revolution and ­Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, trans. and ed. Lynn Hunt (Boston: Bedford, 1996), 86–88. This speech can be found online at http://­chnm​.­g mu​.­edu​/­revolution​/­d ​/­2 84​/­, accessed August 29, 2022. 31. Dmitry Shumsky, Beyond the Nation-­State: The Zionist Po­liti­cal Imagination from Pinsker to Ben-­Gurion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 14. Shumsky finds the separation of nation from land as analogous to the separation of church and state in liberal thought, which works with my claim that early Zionist thought sought to contribute to an alternative to Westphalian sovereignty. 32. Shumsky, Beyond the Nation-­State, 24–49. 33. Arie Dubnov and Itamar Ben Ami, “Did Zionist Leaders Actually Aspire ­Toward a Jewish State,” Haaretz, June 1, 2019. 34. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, ed. Jacob M. Alkow (New York: Dover, 1988), 76. Accessible online: https://­w ww​.­g utenberg​.­org​/­fi les​/­25282​/­25282​-­h ​/­25282​-­h​.­htm, accessed June 22, 2019. 35. Herzl, The Jewish State, 123. 36. Herzl, The Jewish State, 135. 37. Herzl, The Jewish State, 125–126. 38. Theodor Herzl, Altneuland, 3:2–3, https://­w ww​.­jewishvirtuallibrary​.­org​/­quot​ -­a ltneuland​-­quot​-­theodor​-­herzl, accessed Feb. 8, 2022. 39. Herzl, Altneuland, 5:6.



Notes to Pages 87–93

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40. Michael Oakeshott critiques the destroying and rebuilding from scratch of the home as a meta­phor in “Rationalism in Politics,” which is similarly his critique of seventeenth-­ century thought—­including po­liti­cal thought—­that sought to erase the foundations laid by previous generations and to start from scratch. In the language of this chapter, Oakeshott critiques the seventeenth-­century negation of that which came before. Coincidentally, he terms what he is critiquing the seventeenth-­century “sovereignty of technique” approach. Michael Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics [1947],” in Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (London: Methuen, 1962), 1–36. 41. The defining feature of a state is an army; the “New Society” has no army, and its protagonist explains that it is not a state. Herzl, Altneuland, 2:3. 42. Herzl, Altneuland, 2:4: “The ­whole merit of our New Society is merely that it fostered the creation and development of the co-­operatives by providing credits, and—­what was even more impor­tant—by educating the masses to make use of them.” 43. Translated in Shlomo Avineri, Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State, trans. Haim Watzman (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2013), 153. 44. Avineri, Theodor Herzl, 223. 45. Avineri, Theodor Herzl, 223. 46. Translated in Avineri, Theodor Herzl, 207. 47. Jacob T. Levy, Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 12–15. 48. Baron, “Ghetto and Emancipation,” 54. 49. Baron, “Ghetto and Emancipation,” 55. 50. David Biale, who lays out in detail the forms of protection Jews ­were able to call on in the ­Middle Ages, considers the persecution of conversos as a sign of the coming of the New World rather than as being part of the Old World, as Baron had it. See Biale, Power and Powerlessness, 64–69; cf. Baron, “Ghetto and Emancipation,” 56. 51. ­Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 52. Alain G. Gagnon and Guy Laforest, “The ­Future of Federalism: Lessons from Canada and Quebec,” International Journal (1993): 470–491. 53. Benjamin Berger, Laws’ Religion: Religious Difference and the Claims of Constitutionalism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 62–104. 54. Tamar Wolf-­Monzon, “Uri Zvi Greenberg and the Pioneers of the Third Aliyah: A Case of Reception,” Prooftexts 29, no. 1 (2009): 31–62 (39ff ). 55. Uri Zvi Greenberg, “The Necessity,” in Uri Zvi Greenberg, Collected Works, vol. 1: Poems Part One, ed. Dan Miron (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1990), 66 [Hebrew]. 56. Translated in Snira L. Klein, “Uri Zvi Greenberg: Poet in Two Languages and Two Worlds,” Shofar 6, no. 2 (1998): 12–15, at 15. 57. Yohai Oppenheimer, “We ­Were Forced to Leave That Which We Had Loved: Exile and Melancholy in the Hebrew Poetry of the 1920s,” Theory & Criticism 42 (2014): 171–202 [Hebrew]. 58. Abraham Shlonski, “Lech Lecha,” in Abraham Shlonski, Six ­Orders of Poetry: All the Poems of Abraham Shlonski, vol. 2 (Bnei-­Brak: Poalim, 2002), 97–124. 59. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, “Exile and Expulsion in Jewish History,” in Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, ed. B.  R. Gampel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 3–22, at 16–17.

270

Notes to Pages 94–112

60. Uri Zvi Greenberg, “My ­Brothers, Jews of Sidelocks,” in Greenberg, Collected Works, vol. 1, 97. 61. This reading, expounded by Oppenheimer, argues with the reading of Anita Shapira, who recognized a re­sis­tance to negating the exile that accompanied Zionism but considered poets, politicians, authors, and educators to have advocated burning bridges. Oppenheimer, “We ­Were Forced to Leave,” 176–177; Anita Shapira, The Sword of the Dove (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1992), 354–355. 62. Uri Zvi Greenberg, “My ­Brothers, Jews of Sidelocks.” My translation. 63. Mahmoud Darwish, “Who Am I Without Exile?” in Darwish, “Who Am I Without Exile?” The Cradle of the Foreign ­Woman: Poetry, ed. Mohammed Hamze Ghan’aim (Tel Aviv: Bavel, 2000), 62–63 [Hebrew]. 64. See note 13. 65. See note 33.

chapter 4 1. An early and shorter version of this chapter was presented at a conference of the American Jewish Committee on May 2, 2006. The word “we” and other first-­person plural pronouns used throughout refer to the hoped-­for ­union between the author and his AJC audience; they are not meant to include or exclude readers of this volume. 2. Michael Walzer et al., The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition: Authority, vol. 3 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). 3. On the creation of secular space, see Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1989), esp. ch. 7. 4. Simon Dubnow, Nationalism and History: Essays on Old and New Judaism, vol. 21 (Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society of Amer­i­ca, 1958). 5. Dubnow, Nationalism and History, 139. 6. Arthur A. Goren, New York Jews and the Quest for Community: The Kehillah Experiment, 1908–1922 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). 7. The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 3, ch. 22, esp. 399–405. 8. The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 3, ch. 22, 430–431. On the Council of the Four Lands, see also Simon Dubnow, History of the Jews in Rus­sia and Poland: From the Earliest Times ­Until the Pre­sent Day, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of Amer­i­ca, 1916), 103–113; 188–197. 9. See, for example, Solomon B. Freehof, The Responsa Lit­er­a­ture (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1955), and A Trea­sury of Responsa (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1963). 10. An arbitrary sample of recent work along ­these lines: Noam J. Zohar, Alternatives in Jewish Bioethics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997); David Novak, Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Po­liti­cal Theory (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2000); David Hartman, Conflicting Visions: Spiritual Possibilities of Modern Israel (New York: Schocken Books, 1990); and the essays in Lawrence H. Schiffman and Joel B. Wolowelsky, War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2007). 11. The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 3, ch. 22, 431–438. 12. For examples, see Michael Walzer, Menachem Lorberbaum, and Noam J. Zohar, The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 1, ch. 7, 365–369 (David Einhorn defending Reform), and 369–



Notes to Pages 113–122

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373 (Samuel Raphael Hirsch defending Orthodox secession). See also the commentary on ­these texts by David Ellenson, 373–378. 13. For useful examples, see Yossi Beilin, His ­Brother’s Keeper: Israel and Diaspora Jewry in the Twenty-­First ­Century (New York: Schocken Books, 2000), and Chaim Gans, A Po­liti­cal Theory for the Jewish P ­ eople (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), ch. 6. 14. But see Julie E. Cooper, “A Diasporic Critique of Diasporism: The Question of Jewish Po­liti­cal Agency,” Po­liti­cal Theory 43, no. 1 (February 2015): 241–269. 15. See my article, “War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition,” and Aviezer Ravitsky’s response, “Prohibited Wars in the Jewish Tradition,” in The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives, ed. Terry Nardin (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1996), 95–127. 16. I. M. Rubinow, “What Do We Owe to Peter Stuyvesant?” in Trends and Issues in Jewish Social Welfare in the United States, 1899–1952: The History of American Jewish Social Welfare, Seen Through the Proceedings and Reports of the National Conference of Jewish Communal Ser­vice, ed. Robert Morris and Michael Freund (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1966), 288–298.

chapter 5 I thank Prof. Hillel Cohen, Prof. Menachem Lorberbaum, Prof. Amnon Raz-­K rakotzkin, Dr. Uri Safrai, and Dr. Nir Shafir for their precious suggestions and comments. This chapter was translated from Hebrew by Levana Chajes. 1. Hayyim Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” in Jewish Mystical Autobiographies: Book of Visions and Book of Secrets, trans. Morris Faierstein (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 113. All translations from the book hereafter are from this edition, with minor modifications. 2. Even though the law prohibiting Jews from riding ­horses was apparently rarely enforced, we know of complaints made by Muslims against Jews riding h ­ orses. See Yaron Ben-­Naeh, Jews in the Realm of the Sultans (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2006), 82–83 [Hebrew]. 3. Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676, ed. Yaacob Dweck and R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2016), 26. 4. See, among many ­others, Faierstein’s introduction to Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 3–31; Eli Yasif, “Rabbi Chaim Vital and the Dream-­Fairytale: Folk Genre as Discourse,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 24–25 (2006): 127–149; David Tamar, “The Messianic Dreams and Visions of R. Hayyim Vital,” Shalem 4 (1984): 211–229 [Hebrew]; J. H. Chajes, “Accounting for the Self: Preliminary Generic-­Historical Reflections on Early Modern Jewish Egodocuments,” Jewish Quarterly Review 95, no. 1 (2005): 1–15; and, recently, Shifra Asulin, “Between Cyclicality and Progression: The Messianic Biography as a Personal Narrative in R. Hayyim Ṿital’s Sefer Ḥezyonot,” Kabbalah 36 (2017): 31–77 [Hebrew]; Uri Safrai, “Intention and Ability in the Lurianic Kabbalah,” Da’at 90 (2020): 323–358 [Hebrew]. 5. Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 99–100. 6. Yehuda Even-­Shmuel, Midrashei Geula: Chapters of Jewish Apocalypse Dating from the Completion of the Babylonian Talmud ­Until the Sixth Millennium (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2017) [Hebrew]. 7. The best account of this re­nais­sance continues to be S. Schechter, “Safed in the Sixteenth ­Century,” in Studies in Judaism: Second Series (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of Amer­i­ca, 1938), 202–306, 317–328. See also Gershom Scholem, “Isaac Luria and His

272

Notes to Pages 122–124

School,” in Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), 244–286; and more recently, Lawrence Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). 8. See Yosef Avivi, Kabbala Luriana, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Ben-­Zvi Institute, 2008) [Hebrew]; Ronit Meroz, “Redemption in the Lurianic Teaching,” PhD diss., Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1988 [Hebrew]. 9. Assaf Tamari, “The Body Discourse of Lurianic Kabbalah,” PhD diss., Ben Gurion University, Beer-­Sheva, 2016, 19–23 [Hebrew]. 10. See mainly Yehuda Liebes, “New Directions in the Study of Kabbalah,” Pe’amim 50 (1992): 161–166 [Hebrew]; and idem, “ ‘ Two Young Roes of a Doe’: The Secret Sermon of Isaac Luria Before His Death,” Mehkarei Yerushalayim 10 (1992): 113–169 [Hebrew]. See also Meroz, “Redemption”; and Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos. Cf. Moshe Idel, Messianic Mystics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 164–175, and his critique ­there on what he sees as an overemphasis of the messianic in Lurianic Kabbalah. See also the early David Tamar, “The Ari and R. Hayyim Vital as the Messiah Son of Joseph,” Sefunot 7 (1963): 169– 177 [Hebrew]. Yet cf. Scholem’s tendency to play down ­these aspects: Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 26; Scholem, “Isaac Luria and His School,” 273–275. 11. Aaron Zeev Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1956) [Hebrew]; Idel, Messianic Mystics, 154–182; and especially Moti Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho: The Life and Death of Messiah Ben Joseph (Jerusalem: Ben-­Zvi Institute, 2016) [Hebrew]. 12. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Turning the Stones Over: Sixteenth-­Century Millenarianism from the Tagus to the Gan­ges,” Indian Economic & Social History Review 40, no.  2 (June 2003): 131. 13. Abraham ben Eliezer Ha-­Levi, Ma’amar Meshare Qitrin: Constantinople 1510, ed. Gershom Scholem and Malachi Beit-­A rié (Jerusalem, 1977), 9. 14. See an updated lit­er­a­t ure survey, in Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 75. 15. Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 80. 16. Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 203. 17. Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 197–199. 18. Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 203, 317–319. 19. See Idel, Messianic Mystics, 63; and more recently, Bracha Sack and Yoed Kadari, “Some Notes on the Moderate Messianism in the Circle of R. Shlomo Alkabetz and R. Moshe Cordovero,” in Sefer Hayovel le-­Moshe Idel, ed. Avriel Bar-­Levav, Ron Margolin, and Moshe Halbertal (Tel Aviv: Idra, forthcoming) [Hebrew], and the lit­er­a­t ure cited ­there. I thank the authors for providing me with a copy of the article before its publication. 20. See, at length, Scholem, “Isaac Luria and His School”; Isaiah Tishby, Torat ha­-­Ra’ ve-­ha-­Kelipah be-­Kabbalat ha-­Ari (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984); Meroz, “Redemption”; Fine, Physician of the Soul. 21. To be clear, by that I am certainly not implying that Safed’s messianic interest had no a­ ctual social and communal expressions, both popu­lar and elitist. See Scholem’s early note of the “social or even quasi-­political character” of the Safedian “[a]ttempts to curtail or end the Exile by or­g a­nized mystical action,” in Scholem, “Isaac Luria and His School,” 250. 22. See, in detail, Asulin, “Between Cyclicality and Progression”; Safrai, “Intention and Ability.” 23. Amnon Raz-­K rakotzkin, “The National Narration of Exile,” PhD diss., Tel Aviv University, 1996, 219–220 [Hebrew].



Notes to Pages 125–127

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24. Hayim Hillel Ben-­Sasson, “Yemey ha-­Beynayim ha-­Yehudiyim Mahem: Mekomam be-­Toledot Yisra’el,” Molad 16 (1958): 369–370 (quoted in Raz-­K rakotzkin, “The National Narration of Exile,” 169). 25. Cf. Rivka Schatz, “Jewish Messianism ­After the Expulsion from Spain—­Some Characteristics,” Da’at 11 (1983): 53–57 [Hebrew]. 26. See the extensive historical survey in Yaron Ezrahi, ­Imagined Democracies: Necessary Po­liti­cal Fictions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 27. John B. Thompson, Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984), 6. 28. Ezrahi, ­Imagined Democracies, 87. 29. See, e.g., the con­ve­nient summaries in Terry Ea­gleton, Ideology (London: Routledge, 2014). 30. Thompson, Studies in the Theory of Ideology, 5. 31. Eli Yassif, Safed Legends: Life and Fantasy in the City of Kabbala (Haifa: Yediot Sfarim, 2001), 108–109 [Hebrew]. 32. To emphasize, “myth” has a long and complex history in modern po­liti­cal theory, especially in relation to imagination, but this context is, as a rule, absent from the scholarship on Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot’s dreams. See, especially, Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Chris­ tian­ity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 21–66. 33. Nurith Inbar, “Perceptions and Cultural Constructions of Dreams and Visions in the ‘Book of Visions’ of Rabbi Hayyim Vital,” PhD diss., Ben Gurion University of the Negev, 2019 [Hebrew]. 34. Inbar, “Perceptions and Cultural Constructions of Dreams,” 90. See also from a dif­ fer­ent perspective: J. H. Chajes, Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003). 35. Inbar, “Perceptions and Cultural Constructions of Dreams,” 69–73, 148–152; Dwight F. Reynolds, “Symbolic Narratives of Self: Dreams in Medieval Arabic Autobiographies,” in On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Lit­er­a­ture, ed. Philip F. Kennedy (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005), 261–286; Aharon Layish, “Waqf and Sufi Settlement in Eretz-­Israel at the Early Ottoman Period,” Cathedra 35 (1985): 29 [Hebrew]. 36. See Ben-­Naeh, Jews in the Realm of the Sultans; Minna Rosen, The Jewish Community of Jerusalem in the Seventeenth C ­ entury (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1984) [Hebrew]. 37. See Tamari, “Body Discourse,” 68. 38. See Amnon Cohen and Elisheva Simon-­Pikali, Jews in the Moslem Religious Court: Society, Economy and Communal Organ­ization in the XVIth ­Century (Jerusalem: Ben-­Zvi Institute, 1993) [Hebrew]. 39. Dror Zeevi, An Ottoman C ­ entury: The District of Jerusalem in the 1600s (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 34–35. 40. In one case a palil’s identification as mufti is near certain. See the discussion of the palil Abd al-­Nabi’ ­later in this chapter. 41. See, e.g., Muhammad Adnan Bakhit, The Ottoman Province of Damascus in the Sixteenth ­Century (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1982), 132–134; Daniella Talmon-­Heller, “The Shaykh and the Community: Popu­lar Hanbalite Islam in 12th–13th-­Century Jabal Nablus and Jabal Qasyūn,” Studia Islamica 79 (1994): 103–120. 42. Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 51. 43. See Tamari, “Body Discourse,” esp. 26–73. 44. See, e.g., Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 52–57.

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Notes to Pages 127–130

45. See Yaron Ben-­Naeh, “ ‘A Tried and Tested Spell’: Magic Beliefs and Acts Among Ottoman Jews,” Pe’amim 85 (2000): 102 [Hebrew]; Chajes, Between Worlds, 85, 90–95. 46. See Meir Benayahu, “Rabbi Hayyim Vital in Jerusalem,” Sinai 30 (1952): 65–75 [Hebrew]; Rosen, The Jewish Community of Jerusalem in the Seventeenth ­Century, 144; and most recently, Uri Safrai, “R. Haim Vital’s Sermon from Jerusalem,” Kabbalah 46 (2020): 189–207 [Hebrew]. 47. R. Ḥayyim Yosef David Azulai, Shem ha-­Gedolim (Jerusalem: Otsar ha-­sefarim, 1994), 30. 48. Rosen, The Jewish Community of Jerusalem in the Seventeenth C ­ entury, 32–35. 49. On Hezekiah’s messianic significance for Ṿital, see Meroz, “Redemption,” 358–359; Safrai, “Vital’s Sermon.” 50. See Asulin, “Between Cyclicality and Progression,” 54. 51. The spring’s opening carries a strong eschatological connotation, as ­water springing from the ­Temple Mount appears in many visions of the redemptive moment. See, e.g., Ezekiel 47:1–12; Zachariah 14:8; Joel 4:18; Tosefta Sukkah, 3:3. See also Asulin, “Between Cyclicality and Progression,” 56. 52. Azulai, Shem Ha-Gedolim, 30. 53. Asulin, “Between Cyclicality and Progression,” 56. 54. Rosen, The Jewish Community of Jerusalem in the Seventeenth ­Century, 32–35, and many references ­there. 55. See note 59; Safrai, “Vital’s Sermon.” 56. Rosen, The Jewish Community of Jerusalem in the Seventeenth C ­ entury, 108–166. 57. Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 113–114. Could it be that Ṿital did not know Arabic, as suggested by the description? It is far more likely, I believe, that Ṿital was proficient enough to conduct a basic conversation in Arabic, and that the study of Arabic ­here refers to fluency sufficient for a sensitive interreligious debate. 58. Cf. Ben-­Naeh’s claim that “religious debate [between the Jews and the ‘ulema] was rare, since the Muslims ­were very sensitive to any slight to the honor of their religion” (in Ben-­Naeh, Jews in the Realm of the Sultans, 95). 59. Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 113. 60. On ­women’s religiosity in Book of Visions, see, among ­others: J. H. Chajes, “He Said She Said: Hearing the Voices of Pneumatic Early Modern Jewish ­Women,” Nashim 10 (2005): 99–125. 61. Cohen and Simon-­Pikali, Jews in the Moslem Religious Court, 48, 50. Unfortunately, I was not able to locate the year of his death in external sources. 62. On the ­Temple’s keys in Jewish lit­er­a­t ure of late antiquity, see Meir Ben Shahar, “Priestly Suicide in the Burning ­Temple,” in Josephus and the Rabbis, by Tal Ilan and Vered Noam, in collaboration with Meir Ben Shahar, Daphne Baratz, and Yael Fisch (Jerusalem: Ben-­Zvi Institute, 2017), II, 771–803 [Hebrew]. The key motif is also predominant in Chris­ tian­ity, especially through the character of Saint Peter, who, according to the Gospel of Matthew, ­w ill receive “the keys to the kingdom of heaven” (16:19), and thereby is one of the chief symbols for the papal authority. The keys of heaven are also found in Islamic traditions. According to one Ottoman narrative, the keys ­were seized from the popes ­because of their corruption, transferred to Muhammad, and eventually reached the hands of the Ottoman sultans; only ­those who obey the sultans ­w ill be granted entry to the Garden of Eden. See Tijana Krstic, Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 84.



Notes to Pages 130–134

275

63. See, e.g., Avraham Daṿid, In Zion and Jerusalem: The Itinerary of Rabbi Moses Basola (1521–1523) (Jerusalem: C.G. Foundation Jerusalem Proj­ect Publications, 1999), 18–20; Y. D. Eisenstein, A Compendium of Jewish Travels (New York: Y.  D. Eisenstein, 1926), 100, 129 [Hebrew]. 64. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Book of Judges, Kings and Their Wars, 11:1; see En­ glish translation in Maimonides, The Code of Maimonides: Book 14, the Book of Judges, trans. Abraham M. Hershman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1949), 14, 238. 65. See, e.g., R. Abraham Halevi, Shlosha Ma’amrey Ge’ulah, ed. Amnon Gross (Jerusalem: A. Gross, 2000), 41, 44–45. See also Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 78–79. 66. Elhanan Reiner, “Pilgrims and Pilgrimage to Eretz Yisrael, 1099–1517,” PhD diss., Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1988, 157–214 [Hebrew]. 67. Theophanes, The Chronicle of Theophanes, ed. Harry Turtledove (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), 342. For another example of the Muslim use of the site in a polemical context, see Shemuel Tamari, Iconotextual Studies in the Muslim Ideology of Umayyad Architecture and Urbanism (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996), 1–26. 68. Giovanni Francesco Alcarotti, Del Viaggio di Terra Santa (Novara: Appresso gli Heredi di Fr. Sesalli, 1596), 71. 69. See also Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 47. 70. The differing (and similar) attitudes ­toward Chris­tian­ity and Islam throughout the ­Middle Ages have a complex history, which is beyond the pre­sent scope. Of par­tic­u­lar importance is the identifications of the rival religions with Esau and Ishmael, on the one hand, and the common exemption of Islam and inclusion of Chris­tian­ity in idolatry, on the other. 71. Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 77. 72. Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 77. 73. Mishneh Torah, Kings and Their Wars, 11:4 (Maimonides, The Code of Maimonides, 240). 74. See Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 198–199. 75. Tamar, “Messianic Dreams,” 216. 76. Tamar, “Messianic Dreams,” 216. 77. See, e.g., Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 78. 78. Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 78. 79. Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 198–202, 208–209, and passim. Tellingly, Ishmael is not exempt in Molcho’s visions from the annihilation of the nations. See Shlomo Molcho, Drashot (Salonica, 1528), 10b. 80. See Moshe Idel, “On Mishmarot and Messianism in Jerusalem in the 16th–17th Centuries,” Shalem 5 (1987): 83–94, 90–91 [Hebrew]. 81. Ben-­Naeh, Jews in the Realm of the Sultans, 105. 82. Cf. the extraordinary statement by the Mabit (R. Moses di Trani) envisioning that, when the tide is turned and Islam and Chris­tian­ity become the inferior, “we ­w ill show them more mercy than they have shown us.” In  R. Moses di Trani, Sefer Beyt Elohim (Venice, 1576), 93a. 83. Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 148–149. 84. Assaf Tamari, “ ‘I misled such a ­g reat nation and my time . . . ​has passed’: Ottoman Millenarianism and the ‘True Religion’ in R. Hayyim Ṿital’s Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot,” Jama’a: An Interdisciplinary Journal of M ­ iddle East Studies 25 (2021): 297–314 [Hebrew]. 85. Ṿital, “Book of Visions,” 74–75. 86. The six men may allude to the six-­w inged angels of Isaiah 6:2.

276

Notes to Pages 134–141

87. Vital, “The Book of Visions,” 75. 88. See especially Amos Funkenstein, Maimonides: Nature, History and Messianic Beliefs (Tel-­Aviv: MOD Books, 1997) [Hebrew]. 89. Mishneh Torah, Kings and Their wars, 11:4 (Maimonides, The Code of Maimonides, 240). 90. See Subrahmanyam, “Turning the Stones Over”; Stephen P. Blake, Time in Early Modern Islam: Calendar, Ceremony, and Chronology in the Safavid, Mughal, and Ottoman Empires (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Krstic, Contested Conversions to Islam, 75–97. 91. Cornell H. Fleischer, “A Mediterranean Apocalypse: Prophecies of Empire in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 61, nos. 1–2 (2018): 18–90. 92. Krstic, Contested Conversions to Islam, 81–82; Blake, Time in Early Modern Islam, 163. 93. See, e.g., Ibn Khaldün, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, ed. Ν. J. Dawood, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1967), 257–258. 94. B. Flemming, “Khodja Efendi,” Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 5 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 27–28. 95. Krstic, Contested Conversions to Islam, 75–95. 96. Krstic, Contested Conversions to Islam, 75–95. On ­these pro­cesses, see Derin Terzioğlu, “How to Conceptualize Ottoman Sunnitization: A Historiographical Discussion,” Turcica, 44 (2012): 301–338. 97. Nir Shafir, “How to Read Heresy in the Ottoman Empire,” in Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450–­c. 1750, ed. Tijana Krstic and Derin Terzioğlu (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 196–231. 98. Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 98–99; Moshe Idel, “Shlomo Molkho as Magician,” Sefunot 3 (1985): 193–219, 216–217 [Hebrew]; Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 316–317; Yasif, “Dream-­ Fairytale,” 140–143. 99. Vital, “The Book of Visions,” 99. 100. Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 96–97. The plague and resulting flight to Jerusalem are documented in an Ottoman court rec­ord of that same year. See Ben-­Naeh, Jews in the Realm of the Sultans, 83. 101. Cf. B. Talmud: Shabbat, 156b. 102. Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 96–97. 103. Mishnah, Berakhot, 5:1. 104. Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 53. 105. Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 60. 106. Safrai, “Intention and Ability”; and more broadly, Tamari, “Body Discourse.” 107. Cf. Asulin, “Between Cyclicality and Progression,” 56. 108. Inbar, “Dreams and Visions.” 109. Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 116–118. On this conflict, see Faierstein’s summary in Ṿital, “The Book of Visions,” 9–10. 110. Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 317–319.

chapter 6 1. It is notoriously difficult to associate ­these claims with specific names and titles, especially since ­these claims often overlap or intertwine. For classic examples of each of the



Notes to Pages 142–146

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three claims, see David Myers, Between Arab and Jew: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2008); Michael Löwy, Georg Lukács: From Romanticism to Bolshevism (London: Verso, 1979); Peter Gordon, “The Concept of the Apo­liti­ cal: German-­Jewish Thought and Weimar Po­liti­cal Theology,” Social Research 74, no. 3 (2007): 855–879. For numerous references on the specific blend of religion and politics in the period, see, for example, Christian Wiese and Martina Urban, eds., German-­Jewish Thought Between Religion and Politics: Festschrift for Paul Mendes-­Flohr on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012); Peter E. Gordon and John P. McCormick, eds., Weimar Thought: A Contested Legacy (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2013). 2. Julius Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism: The History of Jewish Philosophy from Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig, trans. David  W. Silverman (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1966), 3. 3. Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem, Briefwechsel: “Der liebe Gott wohnt im Detail,” 1939–1969, ed. Asaf Angermann (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2015), 61. 4. Hans Liebeschütz, Von Georg Simmel zu Franz Rosenzweig: Studien zum jüdischen Denken im deutschen Kulturbereich (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1970), 3. 5. To be sure, one could certainly address the balance between the demands of Jewish life and the demands of the majority society without taking an interest in philosophy. But it was German-­Jewish philosophy, from Moses Mendelssohn to Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig, that had created the model of this balance. A downside of this model was that it seemed to blur the lines between philosophical reason and the demands of the non-­Jewish majority society. This conflation became a point of concern for critics of German-­Jewish assimilation such as Gershom Scholem and Leo Strauss. 6. Leopold Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur,” Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1 (Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1875), 28. 7. Salomon Munk, Philosophie und philosophische Schriftsteller der Juden: Eine historische Skizze (Leipzig: Hunger, 1852), 37. 8. Isaac Husik, A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy (New York: Atheneum, 1969), 432. 9. Friedrich Niewöhner, “Vorüberlegungen zu einem Stichwort: ‘Philosophie, jüdische,’ ” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 24, no. 2 (1980): 195. 10. Hermann Cohen, “Zur Errichtung von Lehrstühlen für Ethik und Religionsphilosophie an den jüdisch-­t heologischen Lehranstalten,” Jüdische Schriften, vol. 2 (Berlin: Schwetschke, 1924), 111, 115, 119, 124. 11. Julius Guttmann, Religion und Wissenschaft im mittelalterlichen und im modernen Denken (Berlin: Philo, 1922); cf. Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism; Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Pre­de­ces­sors, trans. Eve Adler (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995). 12. Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism, 400. 13. Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism, 415–416. 14. Strauss, Philosophy and Law, 47–48. Cf. Julius Guttmann, “Philosophie der Religion oder Philosophie des Gesetzes?,” Proceedings of the Israel Acad­emy of Sciences and Humanities vol. 5, no. 6 (1974): 148–173. 15. Cf. Leo Strauss, “The ‘Jewish Writings’ of Hermann Cohen,” trans. Michael Zank, Interpretation 39, no. 2 (2012): 118–127. 16. Cf. Kenneth Seeskin, Jewish Philosophy in a Secular Age (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990), 3–4.

278

Notes to Pages 146–151

17. Cf. especially Leo Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections,” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, ed. Kenneth Hart Green (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997), 377–405. 18. I have sketched this reentry of Judaism into theory with regard to the Frankfurt School in my article: Philipp von Wussow, “Horkheimer und Adorno über ‘jüdische Psychologie’: Ein vergessenes Theorieprogramm der 1940er Jahre,” Naharaim: Zeitschrift für deutsch-­jüdische Literatur und Kulturgeschichte/Journal of German-­Jewish Lit­er­a­ture and Cultural History 8, no. 2 (2014): 172–209. 19. Georg Simmel, Sociology: Inquiry into the Construction of Social Forms (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 601–605. 20. Isaac Deutscher, The Non-­Jewish Jew and Other Essays (London: Oxford University Press, 1968). 21. George Steiner, “Some ‘Meta-­Rabbis,’ ” in Next Year in Jerusalem: Portraits of the Jew in the Twentieth ­Century, ed. Douglas Villiers (London: Viking, 1976), 64–76. 22. Hannah Arendt, “The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition,” Jewish Social Studies 6, no. 2 (1944): 101 n.1. 23. Cf. Steven S. Schwarzschild, “Jean-­Paul Sartre as Jew,” in The Pursuit of the Ideal: Jewish Writings of Steven Schwarzschild, ed. M. Kellner (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990), 161–184. 24. For a plethora of references regarding the history of Jewish Nietz­scheanism, cf. Werner Stegmaier and Daniel Krochmalnik, eds., Jüdischer Nietz­scheanismus (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997). The case for Heidegger in the context of Jewish philosophy has been made most vigorously by Peter Eli Gordon, Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 25. Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of Eu­ro­pean Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. David Carr (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 22. 26. Edmund Husserl, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, trans. Quentin Lauer (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 124–125. 27. Husserl, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” § 1. 28. Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, Husserliana, vol. 6, ed. Walter Biemel (Nijhoff: Den Haag, 1954), 508. 29. Gershom Scholem, “Against the Myth of German-­Jewish Dialogue,” in On Jews and Judaism in Crisis: Selected Essays, ed. Werner Dannhauser (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2012), 63. 30. Liebeschütz, Von Georg Simmel zu Franz Rosenzweig, 3. 31. Cf. Klaus Christian Köhnke, Der junge Simmel in Theoriebeziehungen und sozialen Bewegungen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996), 123; Kurt Gassen and Michael Landmann, eds., Buch des Dankes an Georg Simmel: Briefe, Erinnerungen, Biblio­graphie (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1958). 32. Cf. Köhnke, Der junge Simmel in Theoriebeziehungen und sozialen Bewegungen, 122–138. 33. See Simmel, Sociology, 602: “The history of the Eu­ro­pean Jews provides the classic example.” 34. Simmel, Sociology, 601. 35. Simmel, Sociology, 602.



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36. René König, “Die Juden und die Soziologie,” Studien zur Soziologie: Thema mit Variationen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1971), 128. 37. Leo Löwenthal, “Judentum und deutscher Geist,” Schriften, vol. 4: Judaica, Vorträge, Briefe, ed. Helmut Dubiel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990), 9–57. Löwenthal translated German-­Jewish thought into categories of the history of “bourgeois thought” and “class strug­gle,” rephrasing the ideas of German-­Jewish thinkers from Mendelssohn to Hermann Cohen and Freud with regard to their “progressive” and “reactionary” ele­ments. 38. Karl Wilhelm [= Otto Neurath], Jüdische Planwirtschaft in Palästina: Ein gesellschaftstechnisches Gutachten (Berlin: Welt-­Verlag, 1921). 39. Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, “Reason and Revelation,” in Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, trans. Henry W. Pickford (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 135– 142. The brief article captures and summarizes Adorno’s general critique of “positive” religion. As to the “truth content” of religions, cf. Theodor Adorno, “Zu Subjekt und Objekt,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 10.2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), 743. 40. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3, 1843–1844 (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 175; Friedrich Nietz­sche, The Anti-­Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 187; Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, ed. James Strachey, vol. 21, 1927–1931 (London: Hogarth Press, 1961), 75. 41. For particulars, see Philipp von Wussow, “Marx, Nietz­sche, Freud: T ­ owards a History of ‘Theory’ in Modern Jewish History,” in Language as Bridge and Border: Cultural and Social Constellations in the German-­Jewish Context, ed. Sabine Sander (Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2015), 225–240. 42. Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism, 4. 43. Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism, 4. 44. Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism, 4. 45. Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism, 451; cf. 422 on why Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption is not a philosophy of Judaism. 46. Cf. Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), 112–114. 47. Alexander Altmann, “Metaphysics and Religion,” in The Meaning of Jewish Existence: Theological Essays 1930–1939, ed. Alfred  L. Ivry (Hanover, NH: University Press of New ­England, 1991), 1–15. 48. Strauss, Philosophy and Law, 29. 49. Strauss, Philosophy and Law, 33–34. 50. Hermann Cohen, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann, 1929), 42. The phrase was omitted in the En­glish translation; cf. Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Simon Kaplan (New York: Ungar, 1972), 12–13. 51. See Löwith’s letter to Leo Strauss, April 15, 1935, in Leo Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3: Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft und zugehörige Schriften—­B riefe, 2nd ed., ed. Heinrich Meier and Wiebke Meier (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2008), 645. 52. Jürgen Habermas, “Jeder von den Emigranten konnte nach 1945 nur als Jude zurückkommen!” Münchner Beiträge zur jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur 1 (2012): 15. 53. Cf. Jürgen Habermas, Philosophisch-­politische Profile (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), 385.

280

Notes to Pages 159–162

54. Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem, Briefwechsel 1939–1969, ed. Asaf Angermann (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2015), 418–419. 55. Cf. Steven Aschheim, Beyond the Border: The German-­Jewish Legacy Abroad (Prince­ ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2007).

chapter 7 1. Halford J. Mackinder, “The Geo­g raph­i­cal Pivot of History,” Geo­g raph­i­cal Journal 23 (1904): 421–437. 2. Torbjorn L. Knutsen, “Halford J. Mackinder, Geopolitics, and the Heartland Thesis,” International History Review 36, no. 5 (2014): 835–857. 3. Akira Iriye, “A C ­ entury of NGOs,” Diplomatic History 23, no. 3 (1999): 421–435. 4. American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). See Yehuda Bauer, My ­B rother’s Keeper: A History of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1929–1939 (Skokie, IL: Varda Books, 1974); Naomi Wiener Cohen, Not ­Free to Desist: The American Jewish Committee 1906–1966 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1972); Oscar Handlin, A Continuing Task: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee: 1914–1964 (New York: Random House, 1965); Zosa Szajkowski, “Private and Or­ga­nized American Jewish Overseas Relief (1914–1938),” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 57, no. 1 (1967): 52–106; Zosa Szajkowski, “Private American Jewish Overseas Relief (1919–1938): Prob­lems and Attempted Solutions,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 57, no. 3 (1968): 285–350. Jacklyn Granick, International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the G ­ reat War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). 5. ­There is a vast lit­er­a­t ure on how the US government, through programs such as the Marshall Plan, used money, influence, and expertise to reshape Eu­rope ­a fter the Second World War. Two excellent overviews of the lit­er­a­t ure can be found in Michael J. Hogan, The Marshall Plan: Amer­i­ca, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Eu­rope, 1947–1952 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), and Nicolaus Mills, Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and Amer­i­ca’s Coming of Age as a Superpower (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley Sons Inc., 2008). 6. For additional information on landsmanshaft associations, the most popu­lar form of organ­ization among East Eu­ro­pean Jewish immigrants in the United States, see I. Rontoch, ed., Di yidishe landsmanshaftn fun nyu york (New York: Y.L. Perets Shrayber Fareyn, 1938); Daniel Soyer, Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880–1939 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Michael R. Weisser, A Brotherhood of Memory: Jewish Landsmanshaftn in the New World (New York: Basic Books, 1985); Hannah Kliger, “Traditions of Grass-­Roots Organ­ization and Leadership: The Continuity of Landsmanshaftn in New York,” American Jewish History 76, no. 1 (1986): 25–39. 7. Mordechai Babitsh, “A rizikalishe shlikhes in a kritisher tsayt,” Dos naye lebn (1919), 1. 8. Dziennik Białostocki 25 (1919); Dziennik Białostocki 27 (1919); Dziennik Białostocki 158 (1919); Dziennik Białostocki 183 (1919). The specific feature on David Sohn and his compatriots appeared in Dziennik Białostocki, November 13, 1919, in which the editors constantly referred to ­these émigré philanthropists as “the Jewish activists from Amer­i­ca.” 9. Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002). 10. Granick, International Jewish Humanitarianism, 1–7. See Steven J. Zipperstein, “The Politics of Relief: The Transformation of Rus­sian Jewish Communal Life During the First



Notes to Pages 162–165

281

World War,” in Studies in Con­temporary Jewry, vol. 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 22–40. 11. Derek Penslar, Shylock’s ­Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Eu­rope (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 1. 12. ­There is a long historiographical tradition in the United States which constructs Jewish philanthropy as mere benevolence devoid of po­liti­cal implications and interventions. See Ephraim Frisch, An Historical Survey of Jewish Philanthropy: From the Earliest Times to the Nineteenth ­Century (New York: Macmillan, 1924); Samuel Joseph, History of the Baron de Hirsch Fund: The Americanization of the Jewish Immigrant (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1935); Leon Shapiro, The History of ORT: A Jewish Movement for Social Change (New York: Schocken Books, 1980); Boris Bogen, Jewish Philanthropy: An Exposition of Princi­ples and Methods of Jewish Social Ser­vice in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1917); Bauer, My ­Brother’s Keeper. Recent treatments that speak about the po­liti­cal implications of international Jewish aid include Penslar, Shylock’s ­Children; Zipperstein, “The Politics of Relief,” 22–40; Abigail Green, Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010); Jonathan Dekel-­Chen, “Philanthropy, Diplomacy and Jewish Internationalism,” in Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume VIII: The Modern Period, c. 1815—­c. 2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 475–498. Also, this topic was fully addressed in Jaclyn Granick’s International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the ­Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). 13. Zbigniew Landau and Jerzy Tomaszewski, Zarys Historii Gospodarczej Polski, 1918– 1939 (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1962), 59–77; Zbigniew Landau and Jerzy Tomaszewski, The Polish Economy in the Twentieth ­Century, trans. Wojciech Roszkowski (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 27–53; Janusz Ka­liński and Zbigniew Landau, Gospodarka Polski w XX wieku (Warsaw: Polskie Wydawn, 1998). 14. By the 1930s ­there ­were more than two thousand of ­these organ­izations in operation in the United States, serving a constituency of more than one million members. Daniel Soyer, Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880–1939 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2018), 1–2; Dovid Davidovitch, Der Weg (April  1923), 7, quoted in Szajkowski, “Private and Or­ga­nized American Jewish Overseas Relief (1914–1938),” 61. 15. Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: Amer­i­ca’s Advance Through 20th-­Century Eu­ rope (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 6–7. 16. Ken Moss, An Unchosen ­People: Jewish Po­liti­cal Reckoning in Interwar Poland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021); Gershon Bacon, The Politics of Tradition: Agudat Yisrael in Poland, 1916–1939 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996); Ezra Mendelsohn, Jews of East Central Eu­rope between the World Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). 17. Joseph S. Nye, “Soft Power,” Foreign Policy 80 (1990): 153–171; Todd Hall, “An Unclear Attraction: A Critical Examination of Soft Power as an Analytical Category,” Chinese Journal of International Politics 3, no. 2 (2010): 189–211. 18. Tony Smith, Why Wilson ­Matters: The Origin of American Liberal Internationalism and Its Crisis ­Today (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2019); Lloyd E. Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and American Internationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Beate Jahn, Liberal Internationalism: Theory, History, Practice (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 19. Boris Bogen to Hugh Gibson, May 1, 1919, JDC Archives, NYAR191921/4/34/1/202.1. 20. Granick, International Jewish Humanitarianism, 33–37, 44–46.

282

Notes to Pages 165–169

21. “Activities of the JDC in Poland, February 1, 1920—­July 1, 1920,” JDC Archives, http://­search​.­a rchives​.­jdc​.­org​/­multimedia​/ ­Documents​/ ­N YAR1921​/­00017​/ ­N YAR192103990​ .­pdf, accessed June 24, 2020. 22. On the historic and con­temporary role of remittances, see Samuel Munzele Maimbo and Dilip Ratha, Remittances: Development Impact and ­Future Prospects (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005), https://­w ww​.­pewresearch​.­org​/­w p​-­content​/­uploads​/­sites​/­5​/­reports​/­13​.­pdf. Historically, remittances played a critical role in world economic development, as discussed by Rui Esteves and David Khoudour-­Castéras, “Remittances, Capital Flows and Financial Development During the Mass Migration Period, 1870–1913,” Eu­ro­pean Review of Economic History 15, no. 3 (2011): 443–474. 23. Herbert Lehman, “­There are two ­things I want to report on to­night,” JDC Executive Committee Meeting, May 13, 1920, JDC Archives, http://­search​.­archives​.­jdc​.­org​/­multimedia​ /­Documents​/ ­N YAR1921​/­00006​/ ­N YAR192103503​.­pdf, accessed June 24, 2020. 24. Antony Polonsky, Politics in In­de­pen­dent Poland: The Crisis of Constitutional Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 108–109. 25. Granick, International Jewish Humanitarianism, 269–280. 26. Granick, International Jewish Humanitarianism, 280–281. 27. “Overview of Activities in Poland, 1919–1939,” folder 142, Poland Collection, JDC Archives. 28. Isak Rontch, “Der itstiger matsev fun di landsmanshaftn,” in Di yidishe landsmanshaftn fun nyu york. 29. Szajkowski, “Private American Jewish Overseas Relief (1919–1938): Prob­lems and Attempted Solutions,” 301. 30. Magdalena Opalski and Yiśrael Baral, Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1992); Alina Cała, Asymilacja Żydow w Krolestwie Polskim, 1864–1897 (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy,  1989); Frank Golczewski, Polnisch-­ Jüdische Beziehungen, 1881–1922: Eine Studie zur Geschichte des Anti-­Semitismus in Osteuropa (Wiesbaden, 1981). 31. On Polish Catholics who fought for Poland, see Janusz Cisek, Kosciuszko, We Are ­Here!: American Pi­lots of the Kosciuszko Squadron in Defense of Poland, 1919–1921 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002). Concerning Jewish fund­rais­ing versus the minimal sums raised by Polish Catholics, see “Informacje dotyczâce ruchu żydowskiego w USA,” folders 408–49, Collection 492 Konsulat Generalny RP w Nowym Jorku, 1919–1945: Archiwum Akt Nowych, Warsaw, Poland. Granick, International Jewish Humanitarianism, 36. 32. “Brest-­Litowsk: Report 1922,” New York Collection, JDC Archives, http://­search​ .­a rchives​.­jdc​.­org​/­multimedia​/ ­Documents/ NY_AR2132_00178, accessed June 5, 2020. 33. For expansive discussions of the devastation in small towns throughout Poland, see JDC Archives, folders 324–412, AR2132. Folders 357–360 and 407 provide detailed discussions of the situations in Brisk and Bialystok. 34. Irma May, “Synagogues of Brest-­Litovsk: An Inferno of ­Human Suffering as Told by Miss Irma May,” transcript, RG898, box 2, folder 1, pp. 1–2, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York. 35. “Brest-­Litowsk: Report 1922,” JDC Archives, http://­search​.­archives​.­jdc​.­org​/­multimedia​ /­Documents/ NY_AR2132_00178, accessed June 5, 2020. 36. Jacob Finkelstein, “50  Years United Brisker Relief,” 50th  Anniversary of United Brisker Relief, June 13, 1965 (souvenir journal), 5, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.



Notes to Pages 169–173

283

37. Soyer, Jewish Immigrant Associations, 180–181, 186. 38. Jacob Finkelstein, “Geshikhte fareynigter brisker relif ” (manuscript), and “Bletl geshikhte brisker relif—­same onfang” (manuscript), both in Folder 12, Rec­ords of United Brisker Relief, RG 898, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York. Also see Soyer, Jewish Immigrant Associations, 186. 39. ­There is extensive correspondence between M. Drachle to Jacob Finkelstein in the 1920s. See in par­tic­u­lar M. Drachle to Finkelstein, March 18, 1926; M. Drachle to Finkelstein, August 27, 1926; M. Drachle to Finkelstein, February 2, 1927, Box 1, Folder 13, Rec­ords of the United Brisker Relief, RG 898, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York. 40. Michael Beizer, “Who Murdered Professor Israel Friedlaender and Rabbi Bernard Cantor: The Truth Rediscovered,” American Jewish Archives 55, no. 1 (2003): 63–114. 41. Michael Beizer, “New Light on the Murder of Israel Friedlander and Bernard Cantor: The Truth Rediscovered,” American Jewish Archives 55, no. 1 (2003): 106. 42. Hugh Gibson to JDC, undated letter, AR2132, Folder 1, American Joint Distribution Archives. 43. Hensel, Buchamnn and Lerbacher, Inc. to Brisker Relief Committee, September 1, 1921, RG 898, Box 4, Photo collection, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York. 44. Box 1, Folder 16, RG 898, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York. 45. Box 1, Folder 16, RG 898, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York. 46. Piotr Wróbel, “Na równi pochyłej. Żydzi Bial,egostoku w latach 1918–1939,” 175. Y. Goldberg, “Bialistoker Textil Industria,” Unzer lebn, October 8, 1937, 8; Abraham Herschberg, Pinkes Byalistok: Grunt materyaln tsu der geshikte fun di Yidn in Byalistok (The chronicle of Bialystok: Basic material on the history of the Jews in Bialystok) (New York: aroysgegebn fun Der Gezelshaft far Geshikhte fun Bialistok, 1949), 30–33; Tomasz Wisniewski, Jewish Bialystok. A Guide for Yesterday and T ­ oday (Ipswich, MA: Ipswich Press, 1998), appendix 3. 47. See Budżet Miasta Białegostoku na rok 1927/8 and Budżet Miasta Białegostoku na rok 1929/30, Archi-­ wun Państwowe w Białymstoku, Akta Miasta Białegostoku, sygnatura 116, 117, 121. See Ezras Yesomim, 1917–1920 (Bialystok, 1921) and Report fun Ezras Yesomim, 1923–1927 (Bialystok, 1928). Both of ­these booklets can be found in Bund Archives, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, Folder M-14/17. In this collection, one can also see the influence of American representatives in the Bulletin of the Sholom Aleichem Library in Bialystok from 1927 and 1939 (Bialystok, February 1927 and May 1938), Tel Aviv University Archive. 48. Shaul Stampfer notes that the need to raise funds in Amer­i­ca prompted many informally run institutions of Jewish education to formalize their curricula and to publish newsletters, balance sheets, and annual reports. See Shaul Stampfer, “Hasidic Yeshivot in Inter-­war Poland,” Polin 11 (1998): 3–25. Also see Rachel Rojanski, “American Jewry’s Influence Upon the Establishment of the Jewish Welfare Apparatus in Poland, 1920–1929,” Gal­Ed 11 (1989): 59–86. 49. It is fascinating to compare the financial report of Ezras Yesomim in Bialystok from the period before 1920 and the period following the intervention of Morris Sunshine, one of the representatives of the Bialystoker Relief Organ­ization in Bialystok. See Ezras Yesomim, 1917–1920 (Bialystok, 1921) and Report fun Ezras Yesomim, 1923–1927 (Bialystok, 1928). The impact the requirements of American philanthropists had on institutions can also be clearly seen through the comparison of the reports of Ezras Yesomim with the Peretz ­Children’s Home and Work School’s 1920 handwritten report of their activities from the period between 1919 and 1920.

284

Notes to Pages 173–178

50. Bericht fun Payen Bank in Bialistok (Bialystok, 1926); David Sohn, “A Half ­Century of Bialystoker Activity in Amer­i­ca,” unpublished manuscript, 5. The conversion to approximate current values is derived from www​.­measuringworth​.­com or from eh​.­net​/­hmit. 51. See Budżet Miasta Białegostoku na rok 1927/8 and Budżet Miasta Białegostoku na rok 1929/30: Akta Miasta Białegostoku, Zespol 64: Sygnatura 116 and 121, APB. 52. Budżet Miasta Białegostoku na rok 1927/8 and Budżet Miasta Białegostoku na rok 1929/30, sygnatura, 116 and 121, APB. 53. Biuletyn Biblioteka im. “Szołem-­A łejchema” w Białymstoku (February 1937), 1–2, Folder M-14/17, Bund Archives, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York. 54. For more information on the history of this organ­ization, see Tomacz Wisniewski, “The Linas Hatsedek Charitable Fraternity in Bialystok, 1885–1939,” Polin 7 (1992): 122–129; M.  A., oral interview, Kiryat Bialystok, March  26, 1999. In­for­mant asked not to be identified. 55. M. A., oral interview, Kiryat Bialystok, March 26, 1999. 56. Dos naye lebn, October 6–8, 1919, 2. 57. Golos Belostoka, August 21, 1919, 2. Also see Piotr Wróbel, “Na równi pochyłej. Żydzi Białegostoku w latach 1918–1939,” 193. 58. Dos naye lebn, October 1919, 2 59. Dos naye lebn, October 1919, 2. 60. See the following letters of Pesach Kaplan to David Sohn: August 8, 1923, October 8, 1924, July 1, 1925. The dozens of letters sent by Kaplan to Sohn can be found among Sohn’s personal papers, Tel Aviv University Archives, A-18/38-18. 61. Tygodniowe sprawozdania sytuacyjne 18/3/28, Urząd Wojewódzki Białostocki: Sygnatura 34, del. 69 APB. 62. Dziennik Białostoki 123 (1919); Dziennik Białostoki 125 (1919). See Katarzyna Sztop-­ Rutkowska, “Konflikty polsko-­ż ydowskie jako ele­ment kształtowania się ladu polityczno-­ społecznego w Białymstoku w latach 1919–1920, w świetle lokalnej prasy,” Studia Judaica 5.2–6.1 (2002–2003): 131–150; Katarzyna Sztop-­Rutkowska, “Meandry dialogu: Polacy i Żydzi w dyskursie prasowym międzywojennego Białegostoku,” Przegląd Socjologii Jakościowej 3, no. 7 (2007): 63–81; Katarzyna Sztop-­Rutkowska and Rebecca Kobrin, “Żydzi w międzywojennym Białymstoku: Między lokalnością a diaspora,” in Bialystok—­Mayn Heym, ed. D. Boćkowski (Białystok: Bialystok University Press, 2014), 151–179. 63. See for example, Dziennik Białostoki 25 (1919); Dziennik Białostoki 27(1919); Dziennik Białostoki 158 (1919); Dziennik Białostoki 183 (1919). 64. Prożektor 2, January 9–10, 1926. 65. Prożektor 20, August 10–11, 1929. 66. Hugh Gibson quoted in Zosa Szajkowski, “Private American Jewish Overseas Relief (1919–1938),” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 57 (March 1968): 302. 67. Gazeta Polska, January 26, 1938, quoted in Emanuel Melzer, No Way Out: The Politics of Polish Jewry 1935–1939 (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997), 44.

chapter 8 Epigraph: “The Jewish Prob­lem: How to Solve It,” at louisville​.­edu​/­law​/­library​/­special​ -­collections​/­t he​-­louis​-­d​.­​-­brandeis​-­collection​/­t he​-­jewish​-­problem​-­how​-­to​-­solve​-­it​-­by​-­louis​ -­d​.­​-­brandeis, accessed February 2019.



Notes to Pages 178–182

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1. ­There is a library of studies on this question. For one that accessibly addresses the question theoretically and critically, see Yoram Hazony, The Jewish State: The Strug­gle for Israel’s Soul (New York: Basic Books, 2000). 2. See, for example, Sammy Smooha, “A Zionist State, a Binational State and an In-­ Between Jewish and Demo­cratic State,” in Nationalism and Binationalism: The Perils of Perfect Structures, ed. Anita Shapira, Yedidia Z. Stern, and Alexander Yakobson (Eastbourne, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2013). 3. ­There is a broad debate on the nature of Israel’s democracy and its viability. For a concise review of the lit­er­a­t ure, see Shaul Magid and Yehuda Magid, “Democracy in Israel/ Palestine: Ethnic Democracy or Ethnocracy?” Public Seminar (February  27, 2019), www​ .­publicseminar​.­org​/­2019​/­02​/­democracy​-­in​-­israel​-­palestine​-­today​/­, accessed February 2019. 4. See, for example, in Hasia Diner’s A New Promised Land: A History of Jews in Amer­i­ca (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 5. See, for example, in Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1986). And see, Yvonne Chireau and Nathaniel Deutsch, eds., Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 6. On the history of religious Zionism, see Dov Schwartz, Religious-­Zionism: History and Ideology (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2008); Avi Sagi and Dov Schwartz, Religious Zionism and the Six-­Day War (New York: Routledge, 2018); and Motti Inbari, Messianic Religious Zionism Confronts Israeli Territorial Compromise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 7. See, for example, in Hannah Arendt, “Zionism Reconsidered,” in Hannah Arendt: The Jewish Writings, ed. J. Kohn and R. H. Feldman (New York: Schocken Books, 2008), 348. On Zionism and communism in Israel, see Amir Locker-­Biletzki, Holidays of the Revolution: Communist Identity in Israel, 1919–1965 (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2020). On Zionist utopianism more generally, see Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia, repr. ed. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996). For the En­glish reader, I still think Arthur Hertzberg’s introductory essay to his edited volume, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analy­sis and Reader (New York: NYU Press, 1997), is one of the best introductions. 8. See, for example, in Michael Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 9. The speed by which the state emerged was a cause for alarm by numerous po­liti­cal theorists, including Hannah Arendt. She takes this up most forcefully in Arendt, “To Save the Homeland,” in Hannah Arendt: The Jewish Writings, 388–401. 10. The Judeo-­Christian tradition is a highly debated and ideologically charged term. For a discussion of its history and implications see Mark Silk, “Notes on the Judeo-­Christian Tradition in Amer­i­ca,” American Quarterly 36, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 65–85; and my “The Judeo-­ Christian Tradition,” in Theories of American Exceptionalism, ed. W. F. ­Sullivan and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021), 107–114. 11. See, for example, in Walzer’s Exodus and Revolution. For some specific examples, see John Gibbs St. Clair Drake, “African Diaspora and Jewish Diaspora: Convergence and Divergence,” in Jews in Black Perspective: A Dialogue, ed. J. R. Washington Jr. (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickenson University Press, 1984), 19–41. 12. See Amy Greenberg, Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2018), 1–40. 13. I use the term race cautiously, as Jews are no longer defined by race. Yet Jewishness in Israel is determined in a biological manner that also includes the possibility of conversion.

286

Notes to Pages 182–184

The law defines Jewishness in relation to citizenship largely but not exclusively through the halakhic definition of Jewishness, determined by a Jewish ­mother or conversion. So while Jews are no longer formally considered a race, privilege in Israel is determined by an ethnic category that comes close to a racial one. The ethnic (ethnos) versus racial (genos) distinction is a complex one, especially before modernity. See, for example, Eric Gruen, “Did Ancient Identity Depend on Ethnicity?” Phoenix 67, no.1/2 (2013): 1–22. 14. See, for example, Michael Fischbach, Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019), esp.131–148. 15. The definitive historical study of Jews, race, and whiteness is Eric Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jewish, Race, and American Identity (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2008). 16. Arguably it extends back to medieval Spain and the notion of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood), which was used to exclude Jewish converts (and Muslim converts) from the church. That is, the Jew was defined as racially deficient to be a proper Christian. See Race and Blood in the Iberian World, ed. W. Hering Torres, M. E. Martinez, and D. Nirenberg (Zu­rich: LIT Verlag, 2012). 17. For an essay that delineates the topography of this debate and weighs in from a so­cio­ log­i­cal perspective, see Bruce Haynes, “­People of God, ­Children of Ham,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 8, no. 2 (July 2009): 237–254. Cf. Don Seeman, “The Question of Kinship: Bodies and Narratives in the Beta Israel-­European Encounter (1860–1920)” Journal of Religion in Africa 30 (February 2000): 86–120. 18. See Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Dif­fer­ent Color (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 3–135, 187–199, 246–273. Cf. Ben Ratskoff, “James Baldwin’s Black Critique of Jewish Whiteness,” Jewish Quarterly Review 27, no. 3 (2020): 240–260. 19. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness, 1, 3. 20. Baldwin, “Negroes are Anti-­Semitic ­Because They Are Anti-­W hite,” New York Times Magazine, April 9, 1967, included in Black Anti-­Semitism and Jewish Racism, ed. Nat Hentoff (New York: Schocken Books, 1970), 3–14. 21. For an impor­tant collection that addresses this issue, see Jews and Race: Writings on Identity and Difference 1880–1940, ed. Mitchell Hart (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011). 22. Hans Kohn, “Zion and the Nationalist Idea,” Menorah Journal 46 (Autumn–­Winter 1958), reprinted in Zionism Reconsidered, ed. M. Seltzer (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 187. 23. Morris Cohen, “Zionism: Tribalism or Liberalism?” in Zionism Reconsidered, ed. Seltzer, 67. 24. Such language is used in Buber’s early essays. See, for example, in his “The Spirit of the Orient and Judaism,” in On Judaism (New York: Schocken Books, 1967), 56–78. See, also, in Thomas Hauschild, “Christians, Jews, and the Other in German Anthropology,” American Anthropologist, n.s. 99, no. 4 (December 1997): 749. “Buber, writing at this time as a Zionist, praised the racial pride of the Jewish nation as an answer to a smoldering anti-­Semitism” (my italics). The mix of “race” and “nation” is common in regard to the Jews at that time. 25. In general, see Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in Amer­i­ca (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 25–76. 26. See Kevin Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar Amer­i­ca to Its Protestant Promise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); and Tisa Wenger, Religious Freedom: The Contested History of a Religious Ideal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), esp. chapter 4.



Notes to Pages 184–187

287

27. Wenger, Religious Freedom, 143–187. 28. The 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, authored by Kaufmann Kohler, then rector of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. It served as the first formal definition of American Jewry. It has been revised in subsequent platforms. 29. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness, 119–137; 165–188. 30. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness, 92. 31. Pan-­A fricanism also relates to inter-­A frican national relations. I use the term as it was used in Amer­i­ca to define a movement of African Americans. 32. On Blyden, see Teshale Tibebu, Edward Wilmot Blyden and the Racial Nationalist Imagination (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012). The influence of Ca­rib­ bean and West Indian Black ­people on movements of Black nationalism is im­mense, beginning with Blyden and continuing to Marcus Garvey and Stokely Carmichael, whose parents emigrated from the West Indies when he was a child. See Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Black Intellectual (New York: New York Review of Books, 1967), 115–146. Another serendipitous moment was that, two weeks ­a fter the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, Henry Sylvester Williams, from Trinidad, founded the African Association in London, a conference that brought together “the African race” from all over the world to discuss issues of black autonomy. The first “Pan-­Africanist Conference” was then held in London in July 1900. 33. Hollis R. Lynch, “A Black Nineteenth-­Century Response to Jews and Zionism,” in Jews in Black Perspective: A Dialogue, ed. Washington, 42. 34. Blyden did not have the religious or messianic tenor of some Jewish proto-­Zionists, but l­ater Pan-­Africanists did. On Blyden, see Lynch, “A Black Nineteenth-­Century Response to Jews and Zionism,” in Jews in Black Perspective, ed. Washington, 42–54. 35. Blyden had extensive exposure to Jews and Judaism, even studying Hebrew with a young Jew, David Cardoze, in St. Thomas in the Dutch Virgin Islands, where he grew up. Lynch, “A Black Nineteenth-­Century Response to Jews and Zionism,” 43, 44. 36. Blyden, “West African Before Eu­rope,” Journal of the Royal African Society 2, no. 8 (1903). 37. Edward Wilmot Blyden, Black Spokesmen: Selected Published Writings of Edward Wilmot Blyden, ed. Hollis Ralph Lynch (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1971), 210–211. 38. Theodor Herzl, Altneuland, trans. David Blondheim (New York, Federation of American Zionists, 1916), 107. 39. Martin R. Delany, “Emigration,” in Delany: A Documentary Reader, ed. Robert Levine (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 203. 40. Cited in Manning Marable, W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Demo­crat (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986), 100. My italics. 41. Blyden spoke out very forcefully against “part-­blacks” or mulattoes, whom he saw as not being of the pure Black race and therefore they ­were not to be trusted. See Edwin Redkey, Black Exodus (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1969), 51, 52. On Garvey and “racial nationalism” and “black Zionism,” see Edmund David Cronon, Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1955), 223. 42. On Booker T. Washington, see Victoria Earle Matthews, Black ­Belt Diamonds: Gems from the Speeches, Addresses, and Talks to Students of Booker T. Washington (New York: Fortune and Scott, 1898), 19, 27, and 58–59. 43. See James Cone, Martin and Malcolm in Amer­i­ca: A Dream or a Nightmare (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991). See also in Dean E. Robinson, Black Nationalism in American Politics and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 12.

288

Notes to Pages 187–190

44. Garvey, “Declaration of Rights of the Negro ­Peoples of the World,” in Modern Black Nationalism, ed. W. L. Van Deburg (New York: NYU Press, 1997), 26. 45. On the term “New Negro,” see Cameron McWhirter, Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black Amer­i­ca (New York: St Martin’s Griffin, 2012), 183–191. 46. Harold Brackman, “Jews, African Americans, and Israel: The Ties That Bind,” Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance 2 (2010) cited in Michael Stevens, We Too Stand: A Call for the African American Church to Support the Jewish State (Chicago: Frontline Books, 2013), 123. See also, Robinson, Black Nationalism in American Politics and Thought, 8–11. 47. See Brackman, “Jews, African Americans, and Israel.” When Garvey called Hitler “a ­g reat man,” ­a fter his coming to power in 1933, the Yiddish press retracted their support of Garvey; but Garvey ­later relented and in 1935 backtracked and began praising the Jews’ work in Palestine. 48. Jared Taylor attributes this to Thomas Jefferson. See Jared Taylor, White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st ­Century (Oakton, VA.: New ­Century Books, 2011), 222. In the letter, Truman did acknowledge that his views ­were “racist in nature.” 49. E.g., in his “Coffee and Cream” speech in Detroit in 1963. 50. Cited in Cronon, Black Moses, 191, 192. 51. The idea of Israel as a “national spiritual center” originates with Leo Pinsker, and is then developed by Ahad Ha’am. ­Earlier, Moses Hess coined the term “center of activity,” which applied more to social action rather than to a cultural re­nais­sance. On the distinction between Pinsker and Ahad Ha’am, see Buber, On Zion: The History of an Idea (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), 119. 52. Cited in Cronon, Black Moses, 184, 185. For more on Garvey and Herzl, see Black Moses, 199; and Arnold Rose, The Negro’s Morale (New York: Literary Licensing, 2011), 43–44. 53. Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions (Eastford, CT: Martino Fine Books, 2014), 1. 137. 54. See Cronon, Black Moses, 188–190; and Robinson, Black Nationalism, 29–33. 55. See below on how Cox’s work gets revived in Taylor’s White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st ­Century, along with Richard Spencer’s “White Zionism,” linking racial homogeneity and anti-­integration in Amer­i­ca with Zionist ideology. 56. Nathaniel Deutsch, “The Proximate Other: The Nation of Islam and Judaism,” in Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism, ed. N. Deutsch and Y. Chireau (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 91–117. 57. See Elijah Muhammad, How to Eat and Live, Book 1, repr. ed. (Cleveland, OH: Secretarius MEMPS, 2006). The book was originally published privately in 1967. 58. Deutsch, Black Zion, 94. 59. This is developed in ­g reat detail in Michael Fischbach’s Black Power and Palestine, esp. 1–30. The inclusion of the Palestinian in the Third World war against the West begins in earnest at the First Afro-­Asian-­Latin American ­Peoples’ Solidarity Conference held in Havana, Cuba, on January 15, 1966. The PLO, founded a few years before in 1964, was included and became a part of the larger Marxist bloc opposing Western imperialism. 60. Stokely Carmichael, “Pan-­A fricanism—­Land and Power,” in Modern Black Nationalism (New York: NYU Press, 1997), 206. This reflects attitudes taken much ­earlier by Delany and Bishop Henry Turner in the 1880s and 1890s, and Garvey in the 1920s. Known as “repatriationists,” they argued that Blacks had no chance of equal status in the white supremacist country of the United States. See Robinson, Black Nationalism, 9–33. 61. Carmichael, “Pan Africanism,” 209.



Notes to Pages 190–195

289

62. Blyden was aware of Herzl, even reading Der Judenstaat, but Zionism was too young then for Blyden to ­really understand the multitudinous complexity of Zionism as a po­liti­cal and cultural movement. 63. See Carmichael, Ready for Revolution: The Life and Strug­gles of Stokely Carmichael, repr. ed. (New York: Scribner, 2005), 559. 64. Carmichael, Ready for Revolution. The Boers are another worthwhile example of a group that makes theological claims to a land with many structural connections to Zionism. See, for example, Donald H. Akenson, God’s ­Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); and Alton J. Templin, “God and the Covenant in the South African Wilderness.” Church History 37, no. 3 (1968): 281–297. 65. Ture certainly ­wasn’t the only Black American who spoke out against Israel’s ties to South Africa. Bayard Rustin, who was pro-­Zionist and a defender of the Jews, spoke against Israel’s decision to reinstate ties with the apartheid regime. See Naomi Chazan, “The Fallacies of Pragmatism: Israel Foreign Policy ­Toward South Africa,” in African Affairs 82, no. 327 (1983): 169–199. 66. On Israel’s relationship with South Africa, see Sasha Polakow-­Suransky, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with South Africa (New York: Pantheon, 2010); and Chazan, “The Fallacies of Pragmatism.” Chazan acknowledges Carmichael’s points. 67. On Garvey’s antisemitic attitudes, see Cronon, Black Moses, 181. 68. Cited in Marc Dollinger, Black Power/Jewish Politics (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2018), 156, 157. 69. Dollinger, Black Power/Jewish Politics, 165, 166. 70. On the question of Jewish exceptionalism more generally and also in regard to Zionism, see Magid, “The Judeo-­Christian Tradition”; David Novak, Judaism and Zionism: A New Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2, 3, 71, 144; and also my “Politics and Pre­ce­dent: David Novak, Meir Kahane, and Yoel Teitelbaum (the Satmar Rebbe) on Judaism and Zionism,” in Covenantal Thinking: Essays on the Philosophy of David Novak, ed. Yaniv Feller and Paul Nahme (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming). 71. See for example in Taylor, White Identity, 77–112. 72. Taylor, White Identity, 217–240. 73. Taylor, White Identity, 291. 74. Taylor, White Identity, 290. 75. Taylor, White Identity, 288. 76. Quoted in Michael Phillips, “The Elite Roots of Richard Spencer,” Jacobin, December 29, 2016, www​.­jacobinmag​.­com​/­2016​/­12​/­richard​-­spencer​-­a lt​-­right​-­dallas​-­texas​/­, accessed February 2018. 77. Responding to a critique of Culture Minister Miri Regev by Rotem Sela, an Israeli TV personality, Netanyahu said on Instagram: “Dear Rotem, an impor­tant correction: Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the nation-­state law we passed, Israel is the nation-­ state of the Jewish ­people—­a nd not anyone ­else. As you wrote, ­there is no prob­lem with Israel’s Arab citizens. They have equal rights, and the Likud government has invested more than any other government in the Arab population.” 78. See Buber, On Zion: History of an Idea (New York: Schocken Books, 1973). 79. I have not dealt with the implications of ­these alternative forms of Zionism for Jews in other parts of the Diaspora, since the two forms of Black Zionism and White Zionism are products of Amer­i­ca. 80. See Wenger, Religious Freedom, 188–214.

290

Notes to Pages 195–204

81. Jean-­Frederic Schaub, Race Is About Politics (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2019) 82. On Zionism and pro-­Israelism, see Simon Herman, Zionism and Pro-­Israelism: A Social Psychological Analy­sis (Jerusalem: Institute of Con­temporary Jewry, 1976); and Ariel Beery, “When Pro-­Israelism Weakens Zionism,” Times of Israel, May 2, 2012, https://­blogs​ .­timesofisrael​.­com​/­when​-­pro​-­israelism​-­weakens​-­zionism​/­, accessed February 2019. 83. I have argued elsewhere that while this may be shifting, for the time being Zionism remains a dominant form of Jewish self-­fashioning in Amer­i­ca. See Magid, American Post-­ Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015), 16–34. 84. See Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness, 95. 85. Brandeis, Zionism and Patriotism (New York: Federation of American Zionists, 1918). 86. Interestingly, Jonathan Sarna notes that Jews in Amer­i­ca argued for “the belief that Judaism and Americanism reinforce one another, the two converging in a common path,” a similar locution to Brandeis that substituted “Judaism” for “Zionism.” Sarna is cited in Matthew Hoffman, From Rebel to Rabbi: Reclaiming Jesus and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 51. 87. Brandeis, “The Jewish Prob­lem—­How to Solve It,” in Jacob De Haas, Louis Brandeis: A Biographical Sketch (New York: Bloch Publishing, 1929), 178, 179. This was an address Brandeis gave to the Conference of Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis, April 25, 1915. 88. For a recent assessment, see James Kirchik, “How Dare Chelsea Clinton Defend the Jews,” Tablet Magazine, March 23, 2019, https://­w ww​.­tabletmag​.­com​/­jewish​-­news​-­and​-­politics​ /­2 82106​/­how​-­dare​-­chelsea​-­clinton​-­defend​-­the​-­jews, accessed February 2019. 89. Baldwin, cited in James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (New York: Orbis Books, 2011), 56.

chapter 9 1. A recording of the full panel, held as part of a study day noting the fortieth anniversary of the Masorti movement in Israel, can be viewed ­here: http://­w ww​.­masorti​.­org​.­il​/­page​ .­php​?­pid​=5­ 562, accessed December 11, 2020. 2. In the rest of the chapter, I ­w ill use “­Temple Mount” for short, since that is the term used by the Jewish activists discussed in this chapter. 3. A recording of the full panel, held as part of a study day noting the fortieth anniversary of the Masorti movement in Israel, can be viewed ­here: http://­w ww​.­masorti​.­org​.­il​/­page​ .­php​?­pid​=5­ 562, accessed December 11, 2020. 4. “The First Years,” ­Women of the Wall, March 22, 2018, https://­w ww​.­womenofthewall​ .­org​.­il​/­the​-­fi rst​-­years​/­, accessed December 8, 2020. 5. Yuval Jobani and Nahshon Perez, ­Women of the Wall: Navigating Religion in Sacred Sites (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Yitzhak Reiter, “Feminists in the ­Temple of Orthodoxy: The Strug­gle of the ­Women of the Wall to Change the Status Quo,” Shofar 34, no.2 (2016): 79–107. 6. “Arrests Against ­Women of the Wall,” ­Women of the Wall, March 26, 2018, https://­ www​.­womenofthewall​.­org​.­il​/­a rrests​-­women​-­wall​/­, accessed December 8, 2020. 7. Decision 23834-04-13, The State of Israel vs. Ras et al. 8. Yoel Cohen, “The Po­liti­cal Role of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate in the ­Temple Mount Question,” Jewish Po­liti­cal Studies Review (1999): 101–126.



Notes to Pages 205–214

291

9. See also the example in HCJ decision 2725/93: “The princi­ple premise is that ­every Jew has the right to ascend to ­Temple Mount, pray ­there, and commune with his Maker; it is part of religious freedom and part of freedom of expression.” 10. HCJ decision 4044/93, quoted in Knesset Research and Information Report, “Entry of Jews to ­Temple Mount,” April 6, 2014, p. 12. 11. HCJ decision 2189/10, quoted in in Knesset Research and Information Report on “Entry of Jews to T ­ emple Mount.” April 6, 2014, p. 17. 12. HCJ decision 257/89. 13. A recording of the full panel, held as part of a study day noting the fortieth anniversary of the Masorti movement in Israel, can be viewed ­here: http://­w ww​.­masorti​.­org​.­il​/­page​ .­php​?­pid​=5­ 562, accessed December 11, 2020. 14. Lihi Ben Shitrit, “Gender and the (In) divisibility of Contested Sacred Places: The Case of ­Women for the ­Temple,” Politics and Religion 10, no.4 (2017): 812–839. 15. Phyllis Chesler and Rivka Haut, eds. ­Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at Judaism’s Holy Site (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2003), xx–­x xi. 16. Kobi Nahshoni, “The Paratroopers Enlisting: ­Will Pray with ­Women of the Wall,” Ynet, February 10, 2013, https://­w ww​.­ynet​.­co​.­il​/ ­E xt​/­Comp​/­A rticleLayout​/­C daArticle​ PrintPreview​/­0,2506,L​-­4342979,00​.­html, accessed December 11, 2020. 17. ­Women of the Wall, “Press release 11.7.17: The paratroopers, liberators of the Western Wall, showed up in a demonstration of support alongside ­Women of the Wall,” https://­w ww​ .­womenofthewall​.­org​.­il​/­he​/­​-­​-­11​-­7​-­17—​/­, accessed December 11, 2020 (site discontinued). 18. Gil Nativ, “The Liberation of Jerusalem—­T hen and Now,” Ynet, April 24, 2016, https://­w ww​.­y net​. ­c o​. ­i l​/ ­E xt​/­C omp​/­A rticleLayout​/­C daArticlePrintPreview​/­0 ,2506,L​ -­4795439,00​.­html, accessed December 8, 2020. 19. Chesler and Haut, ­Women of the Wall, 186–187 (italics mine). 20. ­Women of the Wall, “Objectives,” https://­w ww​.­womenofthewall​.­org​.­il​/­matarot​/­, accessed December 11, 2020. 21. Chesler and Haut, eds., ­Women of the Wall, 44–45. 22. Interview with Shira Pruce, Jerusalem, June 13, 2016. 23. Yitzhak Reiter, Contesting Symbolic Landscape in Jerusalem: Jewish/Islamic Conflict Over the Museum of Tolerance at Mamilla Cemetery (Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2014); Saree Makdisi, “The Architecture of Erasure,” Critical Inquiry 36, no.  3 (2010): 519–559. 24. Natan Sharansky, “One Journey for One ­People,” Jerusalem Post, February 18, 2016, https://­w ww​.­jpost​.­com​/­Opinion​/­One​-­journey​-­for​-­one​-­people​-­4 45423, accessed December 8, 2020. 25. Israel Harel, “We Must Liberate the Kotel,” Haaretz, June 30, 2017, https://­w ww​ .­haaretz​.­co​.­il​/­opinions​/­​.­premium​-­1​.­4214073, accessed December 11, 2020. 26. Amir Tibon, “US Reform Jews ­Stopped Fearing the Yesha Guy and Started Loving Danny Dayan,” Haaretz, August 11, 2017, https://­w ww​.­haaretz​.­co​.­il​/­1​.­4343762, accessed December 11, 2020. 27. Moshe Feiglin, “Hakotel, Neshot Hakotel, Har Habayit, and the Link Between Them,” Chadashot Har ha-­B ait, https://­har​-­habait​.­org​/­a rticleBody​/­7078, accessed December 11, 2020 (site discontinued). 28. Arnon Segal and Arik Bender, “MK Shuli Mualem in the ­Temple Mount: If ­Women of the Wall Can, So Do I,” Makor Rishon, April 30, 2013, https://­w ww​.­makorrishon​.­co​.­il​/­nrg​ /­online​/­11​/­A RT2​/­465​/­127​.­html, accessed December 11, 2020.

292

Notes to Pages 214–221

29. Segal and Bender, “MK Shuli Mualem in the T ­ emple Mount.” 30. Guy Ezra, “Yehuda Glick to ‘Srugim’: ­Women of the Wall’s Hanachat Tefilin—­ Devotion and Self-­sacrifice,” Srugim, August 22, 2016, https://­w ww​.­srugim​.­co​.­il​/­158267, accessed December 11, 2020 (site discontinued). 31. See: ­Women of the Wall Facebook page, https://­w ww​.­facebook​.­com​/­neshothakotel​ /­photos​/­a​.­361294200630949​/­1146539145439780​/­​?­t ype​=3­ , accessed December 11, 2020.; ­Women of the Wall Facebook page, https://­w ww​.­facebook​.­com​/­neshothakotel​/­photos​/­a​.­361294200630949​ /­1146549968772031​/­​?­t ype​=3­ theater, accessed December 11, 2020. 32. The Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism Facebook page, https://­ www​.­f acebook​.­com​/ ­ReformJudaismIsrael​/­photos​/­a ​.­184109091629874​/­1706720126035422​/­​ ?­t ype​=3­ &theater, accessed December 11, 2020. 33. Khaled Abu Toameh, “­Grand Mufti Condemns New Jewish Egalitarian Prayer Section at Western Wall,” Jerusalem Post, February 1, 2016, https://­w ww​.­jpost​.­com​/­A rab​-­Israeli​ -­C onflict​/­G rand​-­Mufti​-­condemns​-­I sraels​- ­decision​-­to​-­c reate​-­new​-­p rayer​-­s ection​-­at​-­t he​ -­Western​-­Wall​-­4 43493, accessed December 11, 2020. 34. The Times of Israel Staff, “Palestinians Cry Foul over Planned Mixed-­G ender Western Wall Section,” Times of Israel, February  1, 2016, https://­w ww​.­t imesofisrael​.­com​ /­palestinians​-­cry​-­foul​-­over​-­planned​-­mixed​-­gender​-­western​-­wall​-­section​/­, accessed December 11, 2020. 35. “iftitah sahat salah lilyahud janub almasjid alaqsa hwa I‘tida’ sarikh ‘ala al-­awqaf al-­ islamiyya” jam ‘iyat al-­aqsa website, February 1, 2016, http://­w ww​.­aqsana​.­org​/­#​/­a rticle​?­A Id​ =­231, accessed December 11, 2020. 36. A recording of the full panel, held as part of a study day noting the fortieth anniversary of the Masorti movement in Israel, can be viewed ­here: http://­w ww​.­masorti​.­org​.­il​ /­page​.­php​?­pid​=5­ 562, accessed December 11, 2020. 37. Leslie Sachs, “­Sister, the Western Wall Is Not Yours,” Haaretz, July  30, 2015, https://­w ww​.­haaretz​.­co​.­il​/­m isc​/­a rticle​-­print​-­page​/­​.­premium​-­1​.­2 696041, accessed December 11, 2020. 38. About the outlawing of the Northern Islamic Movement and the Murabitun/Murabitat, see Lihi Ben Shitrit, “The Israeli Government and Civil Society Organ­izations,” Al-­Jazeera Centre for Studies, February 17, 2016, https://­studies​.­a ljazeera​.­net​/­en​/­reports​/­2016​ /­02​/­201621791234701755​.­html, accessed December  11, 2020; about the Murabitat’s experience, see Ali Al-­Awar, “Pious Palestinian ­Women Supporting the Religious and Po­liti­cal Role of Al-­Haram al-­Sharif,” PhD diss., Hebrew University, 2017; Ben Shitrit, ­Women and the Holy City. 39. Chesler and Haut, ­Women of the Wall, xiv–xv. 40. Arik Bender, “A Storm Following the Words of MK Eichler: ‘­Women of the Wall Are Like the ­Women of the Murabitat,’ ” Ma’ariv, October 26, 2015, https://­w ww​.­maariv​.­co​ .­il​/­news​/­politics​/­A rticle​-­506145, accessed December 11, 2020. 41. Ben Shitrit, “The Israeli Government.” 42. For example, see the bios of WOW’s board of directors: https://­w ww​.­womenofthewall​ .­org​.­il​/ ­board​-­a nd​-­staff​/­, accessed December 11, 2020. 43. Also see Shakdiel on WOW and her question of ­whether “radical religious feminism [can] decolonize Jewish nationalism,” in Leah Shakdiel, “­Women of the Wall: Radical Feminism as an Opportunity for a New Discourse in Israel,” Journal of Israeli History 21, nos. 1–2 (2002): 126–163.



Notes to Pages 221–226

293

44. Fiona Wright, The Israeli Radical Left: An Ethics of Complicity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 56–57 45. Wright, The Israeli Radical Left, 193.

chapter 10 1. Following Yitzhak Baer’s essay on the origins and foundations of the medieval Jewish community that seems to me to best capture the deep po­liti­cal structure of the Mishnah. See Yitzhak Baer, Mehkarim u-­Massot be-­Toledot ‘Am Yisrael (Jerusalem: ha-­Hevrah ha-­Historit ha-­Yisraelit, 1985), 60–100. 2. See, classically, Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951), 12–24. 3. See, e.g., Maimonides, Commentary to the Mishnah, Introduction to Helek, the Twelfth Fundamental Princi­ple, in A Maimonides Reader, ed. Isadore Twersky (New York: Behrman, 1972), 422. See, too, Arnold Eisen, “Exile,” in Con­temporary Jewish Religious Thought, ed. Arthur A. Cohen and Paul Mendes-­Flohr (New York: F ­ ree Press, 1988), 221–222. 4. This is the main methodological contribution of Isaac Baer, Galut (Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1936). The term Galut-­Gedankens appears in his discussion of Yehudah Ha-­Levi on p. 23. Baer’s discussion is colored by the immediate polarity of Nazism on the one hand and Zionism on the other, and this historical moment lends the book a haunting eschatological urgency, of being posed at a moment of decision. In this re­spect the work should be counterpoised in theme and in tone to Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1982). For a poignant reassessment of the theory of galut relevant to the State of Israel, ­today see Amnon Raz-­K rakotzkin, “Exile Within Sovereignty: Critique of ‘Negating the Exile’ in Israeli Culture,” in Scaffolding of Sovereignty, ed. Zvi Ben-­Dor Benite, Stephanos Gerounlanos, and Nicole Jerr (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 393–420. 5. Eisen, “Exile,” highlights wandering in the experience and indeed the roots of exile. However, wandering is a form of life typical to nomadic tribes and need not connote the unique alienation of galut. Wandering as a function of uprootedness needs further honing in terms of the several phenomenological components of galut. 6. Erik Peterson’s critique of Carl Schmitt’s po­liti­cal theology is meant to detach Christian eschatology from the Constantinian moment. See Erik Peterson, “Mono­the­ism as a Po­liti­cal Prob­lem,” in Theological Tractates, ed. and trans. Michael J. Hollerich (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 68–105. I believe Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s latter theology to be keenly aware of the sense of the Divine hiding of the face that makes martyrdom necessary. This is a form of theology of exile though not articulated that way. See Martin E. Marty, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison: A Biography (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2011). 7. See Michael Walzer, What It Means to Be an American (New York: Marsilio, 1992), 23–52. 8. See Elad Lapidot, Jews Out of the Question (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2020). 9. See Menachem Brinker, “The End of Zionism?” Dissent 32 (1985): 83–87. 10. See Menachem I. Kahana, ed., Sifre on Numbers, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2011), piska 161, 92–93 [Hebrew]; Gershom Scholem, Ele­ments of the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. Yosef Ben-­Shlomo (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1980), 259–307 [Hebrew].

294

Notes to Pages 226–229

11. Following, e.g., Gershom Scholem’s understanding in Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676, ed. Yaacob Dweck and R.  J. Zwi Werblowsky (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1973), 44–46; Gershom Scholem, “Reflections on Jewish Theology,” in On Jews and Judaism in Crisis, ed. Werner J. Dannhauser (New York: Schocken, 1976), 285, and pace Moshe Idel, Old Worlds, New Mirrors (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 95–102. See, too, Vivian Liska, German-­Jewish Thought and Its Afterlife (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 114–124. 12. Scholem famously described this condition as compelling a “life lived in deferment,” in the title essay of The Messianic Idea in Judaism, trans. Michael A. Meyer (New York: Schocken, 1974), 35. I take issue with this definition, as galut taken metaphysically is not life in deferral—it is life, it is the ­human condition in its finitude. 13. Ismar Schorsch, “On the History of the Po­liti­cal Judgment of the Jew,” in From Text to Context (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1994), 118–132. 14. The translation of Maimonides is my own—­ML. 15. See Solomon b. Abraham Adret (Rashba) in his Novellae on Babylonian Talmud tractate Gittin 61a in The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol 2: Membership, ed. Michael Walzer, Menachem Lorberbaum, and Noam Zohar, and coed. Ari Ackerman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 483–484. 16. See, e.g., the category of a “perfect and upright king of the ­house of David” in contradistinction to the Messiah in “Kings and Their Wars,” 11:4. 17. On the concept of theopolitics in the context of Buber’s thought, see Orr Scharff, “A Tale of Light and Darkness: Martin Buber’s Gnostic Canon and the Birth of Theopolitics,” Religions 10, no. 4 (2019): 242. 18. Menachem Lorberbaum, Politics and the Limits of Law (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). 19. Cf. Leo Strauss’s haunting statement as to the circumstances of writing his Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, trans. Elsa M. Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 1: “This study on Spinoza’s Theologico-­political Treatise was written during the years 1925–28 in Germany. The author was a young Jew born and raised in Germany who found himself in the grip of the theological-­political predicament.” Apropos of this it should be noted that this ­later edition of the work omitted Strauss’s critical review of Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Po­liti­cal. See Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, 331–351. Po­liti­cal placing of this predicament does not exhaust its significance as determining a field of inquiry, as shown by Leora Batnitzky, “Leo Strauss and the ‘Theological-­Political Predicament,’ ” in The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss, ed. Steven B. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 41–62. 20. See Leo Strauss, The Po­liti­cal Philosophy of Hobbes, trans. Elsa M. Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 15–18, 115–116. 21. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, trans. Aharon Amir, ed. Menachem Lorberbaum (Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2009). 22. See Yaron Ezrahi, ­Imagined Democracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 23. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 120. 24. See Menachem Lorberbaum, “Making Space for Leviathan: On Hobbes’ Po­liti­cal Theory,” Hebraic Po­liti­cal Studies 2 (2007): 78–100. 25. Carl Schmitt, Po­liti­cal Theology, trans. George Schwab (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), 36.



Notes to Pages 230–231

295

26. Martin Heidegger, “The Word of Nietz­sche: ‘God Is Dead,’ ” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper Perennial, 1977), 53–112. 27. An epoch connotes “the establishment of a princi­ple [and] its institution at the beginning of the period for which it ­w ill serve as ultimate point of reference, of recourse, thus dominating the era” (Reiner Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, trans. Christine-­ Marie Gros and the author [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990], 30). And, “the po­liti­cal has to be described as the manifest constellation of ­things, actions and speech” (39). 28. Though some constitutional arrangements are no doubt better than ­others in this curtailment. 29. Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, 35. 30. Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, 81 (italics in original). 31. Is not all presencing a form of idolatry? This is a crucial question and is at the very heart of Derrida’s work, and of course, requires an in­de­pen­dent discussion. See, e.g., his “Sauf le nom (Post Scriptum),” in On the Name, trans. John P. Leavy Jr. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 35–85. 32. See Abraham Isaac Kook, Orot Ha-­Ḳodesh, vol. 3, ed. David Cohen (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1978) [Hebrew], “The Morality of Holiness” (136), 191. For an En­glish translation, see Michael Walzer, Menachem Lorberbaum, and Noam Zohar, eds., and Yair Lorberbaum, coed., The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 1: Authority (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 480. 33. See, e.g., John Bright, Covenant and Promise (London: SCM, 1977). 34. On the pos­si­ble Mesopotamian royal theology as an ancient source of this schematization of the emanation, see Simo Parpola, “The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Mono­the­ism and Greek Philosophy,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52 (1993): 161–208. 35. On the role of Hegelian philosophy in articulating the claims to presence in the metaphysics of Western culture, see Jacques Derrida, Margins, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 119–123. 36. See Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1981). 37. I assume that the Hegelian theory is meant to bridge the gap between an essentially monarchic tradition of legitimacy and prevailing republican theories of state in the early twentieth ­century, when Kook is writing. Note Maimonides’ insistence on the personalistic monarchic understanding of messianism in Maimonides, Commentary to the Mishnah, and in Mishneh Torah, “Kings and Their Wars,” 1:7. See Kook’s discussion of nonmonarchic legitimacy in a responsum in Mishpat Cohen (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1985) (144), 335–338; partial En­glish translation in The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 1: Authority, 470–471. 38. Indeed, Rabbi Kook’s tradition of followers has generated a more Rousseauian conception of the general ­w ill, preferring an anarchistic-­expressive form of politics denying the state the self-­evident instantiation of the general ­w ill. See the masterful analy­sis by Shlomo Fischer, “Self-­E xpression and Democracy in Radical Religious Zionist Ideology,” PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007. In any case the question remains: Why should the bureaucratic institution of a state be treated as transparent to the nation and its ­w ill? Alternatively, and more in line with the statist position cited ­earlier, Kook’s thought has promoted notions of sagelike leadership claiming insight to the intricacies of the po­liti­cal history of the State of Israel as a chapter in the sacred messianic history. In any case, it should be emphasized that the centrality of Eu­ro­pean models of politics—of Rousseau and of Hegel—to

296

Notes to Pages 232–240

this po­liti­cal theology underscores that the crucial question of modern Jewish politics is not what is an au­then­tic Jewish politics but which of the Eu­ro­pean models should Jews adopt. Rousseau and Hegel are no more au­then­tic in this re­spect than Locke, Kant, or Mill. 39. Kook’s discussion of the state ­here does not sufficiently develop its character as a nation-­state, and this assumption is crucial to his argument. Po­liti­cally speaking, the state is not a res publica, an institution belonging to the public, but ­imagined as belonging to an abstract nation (ummah) conceived of as the covenantal person. This is a central point in his responsum mentioned ­earlier, in note 32. This, however, is not clearly articulated ­here. In any case, ­whether primarily statist or nationalist, individual demo­c ratic constitution or legitimacy are thus obviated. 40. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Judaism, ­Human Values, and the Jewish State, trans. Eliezer Goldman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 189. 41. Leibowitz, Judaism, H ­ uman Values, and the Jewish State, 189. 42. See Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987). 43. See Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). 44. The effort to comprehend the source of this anguish distinguishes Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Vio­lence” (in Reflections, ed. Peter Demetz, trans. Edmund Jephcott [New York: Schocken, 1978], 277–300) from Schmitt’s reflections on po­liti­cal theology. 45. For a comprehensive pre­sen­ta­tion of Jewish communal life and its placing in the po­ liti­cal, see Michael Walzer, Menachem Lorberbaum, and Noam J. Zohar, eds., and Madeline Kochen, coed., The Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition, vol. 3: Community (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018). On territory, see Menachem Lorberbaum, “Making and Unmaking the Bound­a ries of Holy Land,” in States, Nations and Borders: The Ethics of Making Bound­aries, eds. Allen Buchanan and Margaret Moore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 19–40. 46. Mishneh Torah, “Laws of Gifts to the Poor,” 9:3 (my translation). 47. Mishneh Torah, “Laws of Gifts to the Poor,” ch. 10.

chapter 11 Acknowl­edgments: Thanks to Sam Brody and Julie Cooper for their feedback on this chapter. Thanks also to Cara Rock-­Singer and Asaf Angermann for hosting workshops on the text at Cornell and Yale, respectively, and to participants in ­those workshops for their feedback. I especially appreciate Elisabeth Maselli’s support for the chapter’s inclusion in this volume. 1. “Alice Walker: By the Book,” New York Times, December 13, 2018, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​ .­com​/­2018​/­12​/­13​/ ­books​/­review​/­a lice​-­walker​-­by​-­the​-­book​.­html, accessed August 30, 2022. 2. Yair Rosenberg, “The New York Times Just Published an Unqualified Recommendation for an Insanely Anti-­Semitic Book,” Tablet, December 17, 2018, https://­w ww​.­tabletmag​ .­com​/­scroll​/­277273​/­the​-­new​-­york​-­times​-­just​-­published​-­a n​-­unqualified​-­recommendation​-­for​ -­a n​-­insanely​-­a nti​-­semitic​-­book, accessed August 30, 2022. 3. Alison Flood, “ ‘We’ve informed you’: New York Times Defends R ­ unning Alice Walker’s David Icke Recommendation,” Guardian, December 13, 2018, https://­w ww​.­theguardian​ .­c om​/ ­b ooks​/­2 018​/­d ec​/­2 0​/­w eve​-­i nformed​- ­y ou​-­n ew​- ­y ork​-­t imes​- ­d efends​-­r unning​- ­a lice​ -­walkers​-­david​-­icke​-­recommendation, accessed August 30, 2022.



Notes to Pages 240–244

297

4. Scott Jaschik, “Alice Walker Disinvited,” Inside Higher Ed, August 16, 2013, https://­ www​.­insidehighered​.­com​/­news​/­2 013​/­0 8​/­16​/­u niversity​-­m ichigan​-­rescinds​-­invitation​-­a lice​ -­walker, accessed August 30, 2022. She was ­later reinvited to Michigan: Scott Jaschik, “New Invitation for Alice Walker,” Inside Higher Ed, August 19, 2013, https://­w ww​.­insidehighered​ .­com​/­news​/­2013​/­08​/­19​/­university​-­michigan​-­offers​-­new​-­invitation​-­a lice​-­walker, accessed August 30, 2022. 5. Ali Abunimah, “Alice Walker Disinvited from University of Michigan over ‘Israel Comments,’ ” Electronic Intifada, August  15, 2013, https://­electronicintifada​.­net​/ ­blogs​/­a li​ -­abunimah​/­a lice​-­walker​-­disinvited​-­university​-­michigan​-­over​-­israel​-­comments, accessed August 30, 2022. 6. Alice Walker, The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker (New York: New Press, 2010), 273. 7. Walker, The World Has Changed, 273. 8. For biographical information, see Evelyn C. White, Alice Walker: A Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004); Alice Walker, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (New York: Random House, 2000). 9. Walker, The World Has Changed, 82. 10. Rebecca Walker, Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self (New York: Riverhead Books, 2001). As an adult, Rebecca Leventhal (who would change her name to Walker) made much of her split Black-­Jewish identity in her 2001 memoir. 11. Walker, The World Has Changed, 11. 12. White, Alice Walker, 156. Before they left for Mississippi, on ­Mother’s Day, Alice Walker would write to her new mother-­in-­law attempting to reconcile, reminding her mother-­ in-­law that she may soon be bearing a grand­child, and Mrs. Leventhal would retract the demand for gifts to be returned and even offer money, though the relationship remained fraught. Walker wrote, “If that ­g reat God of the Jews exists I am sure he ­w ill be pleased [Melvyn] has not forgotten his teachings in a world where it is so easy to forget” (in Walker, The World Has Changed, 15). 13. White, Alice Walker, 148. Alice Walker reflects, “I knew that my ­mother’s heart was entirely open to him. . . . ​W hen it dawned on her where she had heard about Jewish p­ eople, she just blurted out what the preachers said in church” (148). Walker herself had already experienced an emotionally intense relationship with a Jewish man: her beloved undergraduate mentor and lifelong friend Howard Zinn. 14. Alice Walker, In Search of Our ­Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 349, 350, 352. 15. Sarah Imhoff, “Half Jewish, Just Jewish, and the Oddities of Religious Identification,” Journal of Religion and Society, supplement 13 (2016): 76–89. 16. Compare Devorah Baum’s work, which attends to affect but does not take affect as foundational. Devorah Baum, Feeling Jewish (A Book for Just About Anyone) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). 17. See Hanna Yablonka, “Oriental Jewry and the Holocaust: A Tri-­Generational Perspective,” Israel Studies 14 (2009): 94–122. 18. See Teresa Brennan, The Transmission of Affect (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004). 19. Walker, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart, 4. 20. It might be objected that to describe Walker, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as a Jewish writer is to diminish her role as a pioneering Black writer, one of the first generation

298

Notes to Pages 246–253

of Black feminist literary ­g reats. ­There is no reason we cannot think of Walker as formed by two traditions at once, each illuminating her literary production and its po­liti­cal significance. 21. Alice Walker, Revolutionary Petunias (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), iii. 22. Walker, Revolutionary Petunias, iv. 23. Walker, Revolutionary Petunias, 11. 24. Walker, Revolutionary Petunias, 15. 25. Walker, Revolutionary Petunias, 23. 26. Walker, Revolutionary Petunias, 24. 27. Walker, Revolutionary Petunias, 24. 28. Walker, Revolutionary Petunias, 30. 29. Walker, Revolutionary Petunias, 14. 30. Walker, Revolutionary Petunias, 49. 31. Walker, Revolutionary Petunias, 48. 32. Walker, Revolutionary Petunias, 69. 33. Barbara Christian, “Novels for Everyday Use,” in Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives Past and Pre­sent, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and K. A. Appiah (New York: Amistad, 1993), 100. Leslie Wingard argues that the novel shows how social change is pos­si­ble “only ­a fter an artificial separation between the sacred and secular is contested and dismantled.” Leslie Wingard, “As Seen Through Stained Glass: Religion, Politics, and Aesthetics in Alice Walker’s Meridian,” Religion and Lit­er­a­ture 44, no. 1 (2012): 98. 34. Alice Walker, Meridian (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), iii. 35. But see how feelings of sickness and ecstasy go together, for Meridian, in college (Walker, Meridian, 117). 36. Walker, Meridian, 10. 37. Walker, Meridian, 10. 38. Lauren S. Cardon, “From Black Nationalism to Ethnic Revival: Meridian’s Lynne Rabinowitz,” MELUS: Multi-­Ethnic Lit­er­a­ture of the U.S. 36, no. 3 (2011): 180. 39. Donna Krolik Hollenberg, “Teaching Alice Walker’s Meridian: From Self-­Defense to Mutual Discovery,” MELUS: Multi-­Ethnic Lit­er­a­ture of the U.S. 17, no. 4 (1991): 81–89. 40. Walker, Meridian, 138. 41. Walker, Meridian, 152. 42. Walker, Meridian, 167. 43. Walker, Meridian, 175. 44. Walker, Meridian, 228. 45. From a vantage point ten years ­a fter the book’s publication, in a new preface. Alice Walker, The Color Purple (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992), v. 46. Walker, The Color Purple, v. 47. Walker, The Color Purple, vi. 48. White, Alice Walker, 148. Her ­mother would ­later become a Jehovah’s Witness. See Walker, The World Has Changed, 155. 49. Alice Walker, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart, 51: “Maybe ­there is no ‘promised land’ for us. Just look at this poor country, like the orphan of the Universe. But even this fails to frighten me anymore. I believe only the moment we are in is promised, and that it, what­ever it is, should always be ‘the ­f uture’ we want.” 50. Walker, The World Has Changed, 127. See also p. 301: “Once you realize that you are just part of the ­whole ­thing, then you just kind of worship that, and yourself, and every­thing—­ all is one.”



Notes to Pages 253–256

299

51. This definition is taken up by Black feminist Christian theologians as the foundation of their proj­ect, but its location in the broader trajectory of Walker’s work is rarely recognized in ­those Christian theological spaces. See, for example, Katie  G. Canon, Black Womanist Ethics (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1988). 52. Walker, In Search, xi–­x ii. Jennifer Nash situates this affirmation in a broader arc of Black feminist affirmation of love ethics. See Jennifer Nash, “Practicing Love: Black Feminism, Love-­Politics, and Post-­Intersectionality,” Meridians 1, no. 2 (2011), 1–24. 53. Gillian Rose has helpful ­things to say about this desire to suspend judgment and its connection to supersessionism. See Gillian Rose, Mourning Becomes the Law: Philosophy and Repre­sen­ta­tion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 54. Walker, In Search, 347–354. 55. The frame of affect is most productive, I think, in its dissonance, as it names tension. That is when judgment is necessary, and powerfully motivated. Linda Zerilli worries about affect theory’s quiescence on judgment. See Linda Zerilli, “The Turn to Affect and the Prob­lem of Judgment,” New Literary History 46, no. 2 (2015): 261–286. 56. For a feminist critique of the diversity industry, see Sara Ahmed, Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012). For an academic critique of “neoliberal multiculturalism” that represents a position that subsequently migrated beyond the acad­emy, see Jodi Melamed, Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Vio­lence in the New Racial Capitalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). For a sample of scholar-­activist work on ­these topics, see Nada Elia et al., Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016). 57. Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1967), and Hettie Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones (New York: Dutton, 1990).

Contributors

Samuel Hayim Brody is associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. Julie  E. Cooper is se­n ior lecturer in the Department of Po­liti­c al Science at Tel Aviv University. Arye Edrei is Yoram Dinstein Professor of Law at the Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University. Meirav Jones is assistant professor (CLA) in the Department of Religious Studies at McMaster University. Rebecca Kobrin is Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University. Vincent Lloyd is associate professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University. Menachem Lorberbaum is professor in the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud at Tel Aviv University. Shaul Magid is professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College. Lihi Ben Shitrit is associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. Assaf Tamari is a postdoctoral fellow at the Polonsky Acad­emy for Advanced Study in the Humanities and the Social Sciences at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Irene Tucker is professor of En­glish at the University of California, Irvine. Philipp von Wussow is se­n ior researcher at the Martin Buber Chair in Jewish Religious Thought and Philosophy at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. Michael Walzer is professor (emeritus) of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Index

Abulafia, Rabbi Jacob, 138 adam ḥashuv (impor­tant person), 104–5 Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 239, 255 Adjami, Mirna, 31 Adorno, Theodor W., 142, 152, 158, 159 African Americans: antisemitism of, 183, 189, 197, 240; symbolic value of Zion for, 179–80; and theories of Black superiority, 184. See also Black nationalism; Pan-­A fricanism African Association, 287n32 Agnon, Shmuel Yosef, Days of Awe, 16–17, 261n60 Aha, Rabbi Yakov bar, 14 Akiva, Rabbi, 16, 134 Al-­Aqsa Association, 215 Al-­Aqsa Mosque, 130, 219 al-­Din, Sa’ad, 133, 135–36 ‘Aleinu (prayer), 18 Alkalai, Yehuda, 185 al-­K anānī, Shaykh ‘abd al-­Nabī, 130 Al-­K hattāb, ‘Umar ibn, 131 All ­England Law Reports, 73 Altmann, Alexander, 153, 155 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), 15, 160, 162, 164–66, 168–77 American Jewish philanthropy, 15, 22, 160–77 American Red Cross, 165 American Relief Administration, 165 Amiel, Rabbi Elijah, 138 Anaya, S. James, 30 Angelou, Ma­ya, 239 Anti-­Defamation League, 240 antisemitism: of African Americans, 183, 189, 197, 240; in Germany, 152; and Jewish thought, 148–50; in postwar

Poland, 175; in United States, 197; Walker’s, 25, 240–41, 245, 254–56 Aranoff, Susan, 209–10 Arendt, Hannah, 1–2, 6, 79, 147, 148, 158, 183 Association for Jewish Studies, 112 authority, 18 Avoda, 211 Babylonian Talmud, 12, 16 Baldwin, James, 183, 197 Balfour, Lord, 187 Bamberger, Seligmann Baer, 112 Barak, Aharon, 38, 205 Baraka, Amiri, 256 Baron, Salo W., 77–80, 88–92, 94–96, 98 Basic Law, 1985 addition, 178 Basic Law: H ­ uman Dignity and Freedom (1992), 32, 35, 38–39, 50, 53 Basyatchi, Elijah, 6 Bavli case, 265n13 Begin, Menachem, 113 Ben Ami, Itamar, 96 Ben-­Gurion, David, 70–71, 79, 266n22 Benjamin, Walter, 142, 159 Benmelech, Moti, 123–24, 136, 139 Bennett, Naftali, 26 Ben-­Sasson, Hayyim Hillel, 125 Berdichevsky, Micha Josef, 78, 92 bet midrash (study hall), 58, 75 Bialystok, Poland, 161–62, 167–68, 172–76 Bialystoker Relief Committee, 162, 173, 177 Bible, 7, 70, 266n22 Biden, Joe, 26 Black, Daniel, 239 Black Elk, 249 #BlackLivesMatter, 240 Black nationalism (Black Zionism), 15, 23, 179, 181–82, 185–91, 287n32, 288n60

304

Index

Black Power Movement, 189, 246 Blyden, Edward, 181, 185–86, 278n35, 287n32, 287n41, 289n62 Bodin, Jean, 81–83 Boers, 289n64 Bogen, Bernard, 164–65 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 293n6 Brandeis, Louis, 178, 180, 196 Brenner, Yosef Haim, 79 Brisk, Poland, 167–72 Brisk’s ­Women’s Organ­ization, 172 Brontë, Charlotte, 239 Buber, Martin, 78, 92, 112, 150, 153, 156, 158, 184, 194 Canada, 91–92 Cantor, Bernard, 170, 172 Carmichael, Stokely. See Ture, Kwame Cassirer, Ernst, 156, 158 Catholics, 105, 166, 168 Central Elections Committee, 64 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 8–9, 11, 12, 14, 257n8 Chaplin, Charlie, 147, 148 Charles V, Emperor, 123 Chassidism, 78 Chesler, Phyllis, 211 chief rabbinate, 59, 62, 204 Chief Rabbinic Council, 61 chosenness, 184 Christian, Barbara, 249 Chris­tian­ity: and formulation of Judeo-­ Christian tradition, 181–82; Judaism in opposition to, 245–46; messianism/ eschatology in, 121, 225; Ṿital and, 131–33, 137. See also white nationalism Church of the Holy Sepulcher, 132 civil rights movement, 105, 189, 246–49, 251 Cleaver, Eldridge, 256 Cohen, Hermann, 112, 142, 144–46, 152, 153, 157; Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, 146, 154, 157 Cohen, Morris, 183–84 common law, 72–73 community laws and organ­ization: autonomy and, 101–3; center and periphery in, 109–10; in diaspora, 99–115; education and learning in, 110–15; and fund­rais­ing, 107, 109; in medieval period, 66, 70–74, 100; and membership, 108–9; rule of one, few, and many in, 104–8;

sources of legitimacy in, 108; state power compared to, 100, 234; in United States, 100–102, 105, 109, 112, 114. See also kahal Comparative Po­liti­cal Theory, 257n8 complicity, 221–22 Conservative Judaism, 105, 107, 203, 204, 212, 214 constitutions, 30, 35–39 Copenhagen manifesto (1917), 34 corporatism, 80, 89–92, 96–97, 100 Council of Jewish Lands, 34 Council of the Four Lands, 101–2 Cox, Earnest Sevier, 189, 194 creation, 226–28 ­Cromwell, Oliver, 82 Cronon, Edmund David, 188 cultural nationalism, 31–34 cultural Zionism, 32, 34, 55, 74, 87, 190 Darwish, Mahmoud, 95 David (biblical figure), 231 Dayan, Danny, 213 decisor. See posek Declaration of In­de­pen­dence (Israel), 34, 36, 50, 79, 95 deconstruction, of politics, 230–37 defendants’ rights, 66–68 De Grazia, Victoria, 163 Delany, Martin, 181, 186, 288n60 Denikin, Anton, 172 Der Weg (newspaper), 163 destruction of the Second ­Temple, 13, 79, 131, 223 Deutsch, Nathaniel, 189 Deutscher, Isaac, 147 diaspora: Ben-­Gurion’s views on, 266n22; characteristics of Jewish life in, 99–101; communal organ­ization in, 99–115; exile contrasted with, 224; laws developed in, 63, 68–69; Mishpat ‘Ivri linked to, 56; politics in, 2, 7, 20. See also exile Dickinson, Emily, 239, 255 Digest of the Responsa Lit­er­a­ture, 73 dignity: concept of, 29–30, 32; constitutions and, 39; dugri and, 32–33, 47–50, 52; Israel and, 35–36, 52–53; Kant’s conception of, 29, 33, 39–40, 45–47, 49–50, 52; moral agency linked to, 29, 40; nationality linked to, 31, 34; paradoxical status of, 29–30, 35, 36, 38–39, 46–47, 53; shadow, 30–31, 33–36



Index

divine sovereignty, 18 Dome of the Rock, 130 Dos naye lebn (The New Life) [newspaper], 161, 174–75 Drache, Mordecai, 170 dreams, of Ṿital, 119–22, 125–26, 128–40 Druze, 51 Dubnow, Simon, 3–6, 96, 101–2, 112 Du Bois, W. E. B., 181, 186–88, 240 dugri (frankness), 32–33, 47–50, 52 Dunbar, Paul, Laurence, 239 duties, perfect and imperfect, 41–46 Dziennik Białostocki (Bialystok Daily News), 162, 173, 175 Edrei, Arye, 19 Efendi, Hoca Saded-­din, 135 Elazar, Daniel, 3–6 Eliot, T. S., 239 Elkins, Rabbi Dov Peretz, 191 Elon, Menachem, 19, 54, 56–76, 205–6, 264n2; Jewish Law, 57 Emancipation, 62–63, 71, 73, 77–79, 91, 100–101, 181 ­England, 88 Englard, Izhak, 57–58 Enlightenment, Eu­ro­pean, 83, 84, 89, 155–56, 225, 238 Ethiopianism, 186 ethnocentrism, 179 exile: diaspora contrasted with, 224; halakhah and, 19–20; meanings of “negation of exile,” 79; the modern state and the negation of, 81–83; ontological character of, 223–24; po­liti­cal critique from standpoint of, 233; politics linked to, 227–28; theological conception of, 225, 226–28; wandering contrasted with, 293n5; Zionism’s engagement with, 77–78, 80, 85–89; Zionism’s negation of, 77–80, 113, 224–25. See also diaspora Ezrahi, Yaron, 125 Faierstein, Morris, 135 Federation of Polish Jews in Amer­i­ca, 176 Feiglin, Moshe, 204, 213–14 Feinstein, Moshe, 104 feminism: egalitarian, 219–22; and politics in occupied East Jerusalem, 24, 201–22; Walker and, 241, 253, 255

305

Finkelstein, Jacob, 169–71 First Lebanon War. See Lebanon War (1982) First World War, 31, 33, 162 Fourth Zionist Congress, 225 Frankfurt School, 142, 152 Freehof, Solomon, 105 Freud, Sigmund, 152, 154, 156 Friedlaender, Israel, 170, 172 Frost, Robert, 239 fund­rais­ing, 107, 109 Galon, Zehava, 218 galut. See diaspora; exile Garvey, Marcus, 181, 184, 187–90, 194, 240, 287n32, 288n47, 288n60 genocide, 35 German-­Jewish philosophy, 22, 141–59; “Jewish philosophy” and, 143–46; and philosophy of Judaism, 153–58; and theory, 146–53; two strands of, 141–43 Gershon, Rabbi Levi ben (Ralbag), 67, 265n19 Geyer, Rabbi, 86 Gibson, Hugh, 164, 167, 175 Gittelson, Roland, 191 Glick, Yehuda, 201–2, 204, 206–7, 214–17 Glover, Danny, 241 God: creation by, 226–28; memory of, 20–21; politics grounded in, 229, 231–32; presence of, 226. See also divine sovereignty Goldberg, Whoopi, 241 Goldman, Eliezer, 69 Goldstein, Eric, 182–83, 185 Golos Belostoka (The Voice of Bialystok) [newspaper], 174 Greenberg, Uri Zvi: “Baim Schloss” (At the Close), 93; “Ehai, Yehudei Hapeot” (“My ­Brothers, Jews of Payot [Sidelocks]”), 94; “The Necessity,” 92–93 Grotius, Hugo, 81 Guttmann, Julius, 142–45, 153–55 Ḥida (Rabbi Ḥayyim Yosef David Azulai), 128 Ha’am, Ahad, 32, 79, 87, 112, 188, 288n51 Habermas, Jürgen, 11, 159 Hafetz Hayim, 60

306

Index

halakhah (Jewish law): authority of, 104, 111; civil law in relation to, 19, 54–76; community practices’ effect on, 62; con­temporary issues for, 105; cultural, as opposed to religious, aspect of, 55; in the diaspora, 63, 68–69; Elon and, 56–76; homeland and exile in, 19–20; interpretation of, 57–58; living, changing nature of, 57, 60–63; minority opinion’s effect on, 62; and minority rights, 64–65; politics-­related aspects of, 4, 13–14; private and public m ­ atters in, 73; role and status of, in state of Israel, 36; and rule of recognition, 76; study of, 104–5, 110–12; and ­Temple Mount, 204 Halevi, Rabbi Abraham, 122–23, 132 Hamer, Fannie Lou, 246 Hanukkah, 110 ha-­Parhi, Estori, 93 Haram al-­Sharif. See ­Temple Mount Harari, Yizhar, 37 Harari Decision, 37–38 Harel, Israel, 213 ha-­Reuveni, David, 123 Harrington, James, 81–83, 87 Harrington, Julia, 31 Hartman, David, 4 Haskalah (Rus­sian enlightenment), 112 Ha-­Tikva (national anthem), 51, 187, 208–9 Haut, Rivka, 202 Hazony, David, 51 HCJ. See High Court of Justice Head, Bessie, 239 Hebraic Po­liti­cal Studies (journal), 3, 4 Hebrew University, 71 Hegel, G.W.F., 231, 295n38 Heidegger, Martin, 148, 230 Heine, Heinrich, 147 Hertzberg, Arthur, 191 Herzl, Theodor, 83, 84–89, 93, 94, 181, 183, 185–86, 188, 225; Altneuland, 85–87, 186; The Jewish State, 85 Herzog, Rabbi, 69 Hess, Moses, 184, 185, 288n51 Hezekiah, King, 128 High Court of Justice (HCJ), 203, 205, 217 High Holiday maḥor (prayerbook), 11, 261n62 Hijri millennium (1591–92), 134 Hillel, Shlomo, 65 Himmelfarb, Milton, 107 Hirsch, Samson Raphael, 112

history and historiography: and messianism, 121, 124–25; pre­sent agency in relation to conceptions of, 21–22; Zionist, 20 Hitler, Adolf, 288n47 Hobbes, Thomas, 81, 82, 229–30; Leviathan, 229 Hoffman, Anat, 201–2, 206–7, 209–11, 213–18 Holocaust, 158–59, 182, 240, 243–45, 248, 249 Holy Basin, 130 Hoover, Herbert, 164 ­human rights, 19, 29–31 Hurston, Zora Neale, 239, 255 Husik, Isaac, 144 Hussein, Sheikh Muhammad, 215 Husserl, Edmund, 142, 148–49 Icke, David, And the Truth ­Shall Set You ­Free, 239–40, 253–55 Ideiss, Youssef, 215 IDF. See Israel Defense Forces imagination, and po­liti­cal theory, 125–26. See also po­liti­cal imagination Imhoff, Sarah, 243 Inbar, Nurith, 126, 138 indigeneity, 224–26, 235–37 Inquisition, 90–91 International Bill of ­Human Rights, 34 International Committee of ­Women of the Wall, 209–10 Iriye, Akira, 160 ‘Isa ibn Maryam (Jesus of Nazareth), 121, 133–35 Islam. See Muslims and Islam Islamic Movement in Israel, 215, 218 Islamic Waqf, 203, 206, 212, 215 Israel: American attitudes t­ oward, 15, 197; attitudes ­toward the state in, 32–33, 36, 48; Black nationalist opposition to, 189; conception of the state in, 232; constitution of, 35–39, 263n10; and cultural nationalism, 32, 74; democracy in, 178, 181; and dignity, 35–36; establishment of, 35, 36; ethnocentrism in, 178–79, 181, 197–98; halakhah’s role and status in, 36, 68–70; Jewish politics associated with, 4, 5; messianism in, 228–29, 231; nationalism of, 89; rule of law in, 19; theological critique of, 225–26, 232–33; ­women’s activism in, 201–22 Israel Defense Forces (IDF), 208–9, 232



Index

Israel Our Home (Yisrael Beitenu), 213 Isserlin, Rabbi Yisrael, 65–66 Jabotinsky, Ze’ev, 84 Jackson, George, 246 Jackson, Jesse, 240 Jacobson, Matthew Frye, 182 JDC. See American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Jerusalem Talmud, 13–14 Jesus, 121, 133–35, 253 Jewish Home (Habayit Hayehudi), 213 Jewish ­Labor Bund, 20 Jewish philosophy, 143–46 Jewish Po­liti­cal Studies Review (journal), 3, 4 Jewish po­liti­cal thought: distinctiveness of, 11–14; Elon’s use of medieval community laws as part of, 72; liturgy as framework for studying, 11–14, 16; non-­Jewish engagement with, 15, 23, 260n50; questions about, 6–7; role of the Bible and rabbinic lit­er­a­t ure in, 7; tradition and academic discipline of, 3–8, 15; Ṿital and, 119–40; Walker and, 241, 256; Western traditions in relation to, 9–13, 15, 257n8. See also Zionism Jewish Po­liti­cal Tradition (anthologies), 3–8, 10–11, 26, 257n8 Jewish question/problem, 150–51, 185–86, 189, 225, 238 Jewish studies, 112 Jewish Under­g round, 204 Jews and Judaism: affect associated with, 243–46; Christians in opposition to, 245–46; definitions of, 178–79, 182–84, 196–97, 238, 243–44, 285n13, 286n16, 287n28; and German-­Jewish philosophy, 141–59; in German university system, 149–50; judgment associated with, 25, 240, 246, 254; Muslims’ relations with, 119–21, 128–33, 139–40, 201–22; philosophy of, in a narrow sense, 153–59; po­liti­cal engagement of, 1–2; statelessness of, 1, 6–9, 20, 31, 34, 82–88, 115; as strangers, 150–52; voluntarism and individualism in, 100–101; Walker’s affinities with, 240–44, 255–56. See also antisemitism; Chassidism; community laws and organ­ization; Conservative Judaism; Jewish po­liti­cal thought; medieval Judaism; Orthodox Judaism;

307

Reform Judaism; ultra-­Orthodox Judaism; Zionism Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 107 Jones, Hettie, 256 Judeo-­Christian tradition, 181–82 judgment: Jewishness associated with, 25, 240, 246, 254; in Walker’s thought and works, 248, 250, 254–55 judicial system: halakhah’s relation to, 19, 54–76; historical-­sociological theory of, 55; Jewish culture and, 55; medieval community laws and, 70–72 Kabbalah, 226, 231–32. See also Luria, Rabbi Isaac, and Lurianic Kabbalah; Safed kabbalists Kaddish, 110 kahal (community), 4, 6–7, 24, 100–101, 106, 114, 223, 224, 234 Kahane, Meir, 64–66, 70 Kahane v. Speaker of Knesset, 65–66 Kalischer, Zvi Hirsch, 185 Kallen, Horace, 102 Kant, Immanuel, 35, 39–47, 49–50, 52, 84, 228; Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 29, 32–33, 40, 42, 46 Kaplan, Pesach, 174 Kariv, Rabbi Gilad, 213, 218 kassas (cooperative banks), 167 Katriel, Tamar, 48 Kaufmann, Yehezkel, 108 Kehillah, 102 kibbutz movement, 69 Kibiyeh incident (1953), 232 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 187, 246 “king is in the field,” 12 Knesset, 37–38, 50, 53, 64–66, 72, 211, 263n10 Kobrin, Rebecca, 15, 22 Kohn, Hans, 183 Kolech, 220 Kol Nidre, 110 König, René, 151 Kook, Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen, 61, 64, 231–32, 295n38 Kotel. See Western Wall Krstic, Tijana, 135 Ku Klux Klan, 189, 194 ­Labor Party, 4 land. See territory Land for All, 97

308

Index

Landmann, Michael, 150 Land of Israel Forum, 205 landsmanshaftn (mutual-­a id socie­ties), 162, 167, 168, 176 Lapid, Yair, 26 Lauterpacht, Hersch Zvi, 34, 36, 47 Lavie, Aliza, 211 law. See halakhah (Jewish law); judicial system; rule of law Lazare, Bernard, 147 League of Nations, 33–34 Lebanon War (1982), 4, 113 ­Legal Defense Fund (NAACP), 241 Lehman, Herbert, 166–67 Leibowitz, Yeshayahu, 69, 232–33 Lemmlein, Rabbit Asher, 122 Leventhal, Melvyn, 241–46, 254, 297n12 Levine, Rabbi Allan, 191 Levy, Jacob, 90 Liberia, 185 Lieberman, Avigdor, 214 Liebes, Yehuda, 122 Liebeschütz, Hans, 142, 150 Lifshitz, Eugene, 173 Likud, 214 Linas ha-­Tsedek, 174 Litwak, David, 86 Livni, Tzipi, 211 Locke, John, 10, 238 Loeffler, James, 34 love, in Walker’s thought and work, 25, 240–41, 246–48, 253, 256 Löwenthal, Leo, 152 Löwith, Karl, 158–59 Luria, Rabbi Isaac, and Lurianic Kabbalah, 22, 119, 122, 123, 128, 129, 137, 228 lying, 41–47 Lynch, Hollis, 185 Mackinder, Halford, 160 Mahdi (redeemer), 135 Maimonides, 10, 132, 134, 227, 234; Mishneh Torah, 130, 227 Malbim. See Yehiel, Rabbi Meir Leibush ben malchuyot (regimes), 13, 16–20 Mam, Somaly, 239 mandate system, 33 Manifest Destiny, 180, 181, 184, 193, 194 Marcus, Louis, 175 Marshall Plan, 164 Marx, Karl, 8, 152, 153, 156

May, Irma, 168–69 McAdoo, Bill, 186 McMillan, Terry, 239 medieval Judaism: community laws and organ­ization of, 66, 70–74, 80, 89–92, 100; Jewish philosophy and, 143–44. See also kahal Mehozay, Yoav, 37, 263n10 Meir, Golda, 191 Mendelssohn, Moses, 238 Meretz, 211, 218 messianism: Christian, 121, 225; exile linked to, 94; in Israel, 228–29, 231; Muslims and, 121, 133; po­liti­cal aspect of, 22, 23–24, 121, 124–26, 139; Safed kabbalists and, 22; in sixteenth ­century, 122–24, 132, 139; Ṿital and, 120, 122–24, 128–29, 131–32, 139; Zionism and, 121, 124–25, 231 Michels, Robert, 108 midrash (rabbinic interpretation of scripture), 12, 260n44 minoritarianism, 31–32, 47, 48, 50 Minorities Treaties, 33–34 minority rights, 64–65 Mishpat ‘Ivri school, 19, 55–56, 58, 62–63, 65, 72–73, 74 Mitchell, Margaret, Gone with the Wind, 239, 255 modernity, 225–26, 230, 238 modern state, 80–89, 91, 230 Molcho, Shlomo, 123, 132, 136 Moses (biblical figure), 104, 136 Moses, Bob, 246 Mualem, Shuli, 214 Muhammad (prophet), 121, 133–35 Muhammad, Elijah, 184, 187, 189 multiculturalism, 91–92, 195, 241, 255 Munk, Salomon, 143 Murabitat (organ­ization of Muslim ­women), 218–19 Murat Paşa, Kuyucu, 120 musaf ‘Amidah (Rosh Hashanah prayer ser­vice), 13, 16–17 Museum of Tolerance, Jerusalem, 212 Muslims and Islam: associated with statehood, 81; and dreams, 126; effect of Jewish ­women’s activism on, 201–22; Jews’ relations with, 119–21, 128–33, 139–40; messianism/millenarianism and, 121, 134–35; as pelilim, 127; po­liti­cal messianism in, 121; Ṿital and, 119–21, 126–40



Index

Nagar v. Nagar, 60 Nahmanides synagogue, 128 Naiman v. Central Elections Committee, 64–65, 70 nationalism. See Black nationalism; cultural nationalism; white nationalism; ­women: and nationalism; Zionism National Socialism. See Nazis Nation of Islam, 187, 189 Nation-­State Law (2018), 50–53, 193, 198 Nativ, Rabbi Gil, 209 Native Americans, 182, 194, 248, 249, 254 Nazis, 35, 158, 179, 180, 184, 189 Negro World (newspaper), 187 neo-­Baronianism, 77 neo-­K antianism, 143, 155, 157 Netanyahu, Benjamin, 192–94, 213, 214, 218, 289n77 Neurath, Otto, 152 New Age, 25, 240, 246, 253, 254 New Jew, 187 New Negro, 187 New York Times (newspaper), 187, 210, 239–40, 251, 253–55 Nietz­sche, Friedrich, 148, 152, 153, 156, 229–30 Niewöhner, Friedrich, 144 nonstatist forms of cultural autonomy, 31, 33–34, 84–89 Nye, Joseph R., 163–64 Oakeshott, Michael, 269n40 Ohana, Amir, 214 oligarchs, 106–7, 108 Omar, Ilhan, 197 Omer, Atalia, 261n62 Oppenheimer, Yohai, 93 Original W ­ omen of the Wall, 203, 220 Orthodox Judaism, 104, 105, 107, 112, 155–56, 189, 202–3, 207, 211, 220 Orwell, George, 21, 255 Oslo peace pro­cess (1993), 4, 26 O’­Sullivan, James, 180 Oxford Handbook of Comparative Po­liti­cal Theory, 257n8 Pagels, Elaine, The Gnostic Gospels, 253 Palestine: as home for the Jews, 34, 84, 88; UN partition of, 36, 88 Palestine Liberation Organ­ization (PLO), 288n59

309

Palestinian Authority, 51, 206 Palestinians: Black nationalist alignment with, 189, 288n59; dispossession of, 51–52, 201–22, 226; effect of Jewish ­women’s activism on, 24, 201–22; and exile, 95, 97; IDF’s massacre of, 232; Nation-­State Law and, 51–52; rejection by, of UN partition plan, 36; Walker’s empathy for, 243, 244 Pan-­A fricanism, 181–82, 184–91, 194, 287n31, 287n32 Pan-­Germanism, 183 Paul of Tarsus, 23–24 pelilim (Muslims), 127 Penslar, Derek, 162 Peretz, I. L., 78, 92 Persky, Daniel, 175 Pesach, 110 Peterson, Erik, 293n6 petiḥta, 12, 260n44 phenomenology, 143, 155, 156 philanthropy. See American Jewish philanthropy philosophy. See German-­Jewish philosophy Piłsudski, Jozef, 172, 175 pilpul (Talmudic argumentation), 49, 150 Pinsker, Leon, 83–84, 288n51 Pirkei Avot, 114 Pittsburgh Platform (1885), 184, 287n28 Poland, 22, 160–77 Poleser stime (newspaper), 170 Polier, Shad, 191 po­liti­cal imagination, 11, 14, 22, 23, 97, 121, 125–26, 128, 129, 138–39, 228–29 po­liti­c al theology, 23–24. See also theocracy po­liti­cal thought. See Jewish po­liti­cal thought politics: American Jewish philanthropy and, 22, 160–77; conceptions of, applied to the Jews, 1–2; conventionally associated with the state, 2, 6, 9; deconstruction of, 230–37; in diaspora, 2, 7, 20; divinity as source of legitimacy for, 229, 231–32; exile linked to, 227–28; Maimonides’s conception of, 227; as possibility of ­things’ being other­w ise, 233–34; secularization of, 228; soft power in, 161, 163–67, 173, 177; ­women’s activism and, 201–2, 206, 208–22. See also Jewish po­liti­cal thought; sovereignty

310

Index

posek (halakhic decisor), 19, 57, 64 postmodernity, 238 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, The, 240 Proverbs, book of, 67 Prożektor (newspaper), 175 Pruce, Shira, 210–11 public intellectuals, 114 public officials, 65–66 qadis (judges), 127 rabbinical courts, 59–60 rabbinic lit­er­a­t ure: and po­liti­cal thought, 7, 82–83; rejection of, 79 Rabin, Yitzhak, 229 race: as component of Black nationalism /Pan-­Africanism, 182, 185–91; as component of white nationalism, 182, 191–95; Jews seen through lens of, 178–79, 182–84, 189, 196–97, 285n13, 286n16; in present-­day Amer­i­ca, 195; Zionism and, 179, 183–85, 191, 193, 196–97 Rachmanowitz, Rachel, 173 racialization, 179 Ralbag. See Gershon, Rabbi Levi ben Randolph, A. Philip, 188 Raz-­K rakotzkin, Amnon, 95, 124, 267n13 Reform Judaism, 105, 107, 112, 203, 204, 207, 212–14, 218 Reiner, Elhanan, 130 remittances, 166 repatriationists, 288n60 responsa, 63, 70–74, 105 rights. See defendants’ rights; ­human rights; minority rights right to a nationality, 30–32, 34, 263n3 rituals, 110 Robinson’s Arch, 203, 204, 211, 220 Rosenzweig, Franz, 23, 142, 153, 154–56 Rosh Chodesh, 203, 207 Rosh Hashanah, 13–16, 23 Rothschild f­ amily, 240 Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques, 10, 83, 295n38 Roy, Arundhati, 255 rule of law, 18–19 Rumi, 255 Rus­sia, 87 Rustin, Bayard, 289n65 Sachaub, Jean-­Frederic, 195 Sachs, Lesley, 216

Sacred Esplanade, Jerusalem, 212, 214, 215, 217 Safed kabbalists, 22, 122 Safrai, Uri, 137 sages, 104 Samuel (prophet), 128, 130 Sartre, Jean-­Paul, 148 Sayfayn, Abu (Khadawardi Bey), 128 Scheler, Max, 155 Schmitt, Carl, 24, 229 Scholem, Gershom, 16–17, 22, 23, 142, 150, 158, 159 Schorsch, Ismar, 2 Schürmann, Reiner, 230 Schweid, Eliezer, 79 Second ­Temple, destruction of, 13, 79, 131, 223 Second World War, 35, 164, 176, 229 Sephardic community, 72 settler activism, 201–22 Shafir, Nir, 135 Shakdiel, Leah, 61 Shalom Hartman Institute, 105 Sharansky, Natan, 212–13 shekhinah (divine presence), 226 Shlonski, Abraham, “Lech Lecha,” 93–94 Shmirat haDinim (Guarding the Laws), 38 shofar/shofarot (ram’s horn/blasts), 13–17, 23–25 Sholem Aleichem Library, Bialystok, 174 Shraga, Rabbi Joseph ibn, 122 Shulchan Aruch, 73 Shumsky, Dimitry, 83–84 Simchat Torah, 110 Simmel, Georg, 142, 147, 150–52 Simon, Akiva Ernst, 69, 238 Six-­Day War (1967), 189, 243, 244 Smooha, Sammy, 178 SNCC. See Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee soft power, 161, 163–67, 173, 177 Sohn, David, 161–62, 173, 174 Solomon, Louis, 185 Soloveitchik, Rabbi Yitzhak Zev, 169–70 South Africa, 191, 289n65 sovereignty: deconstruction of, 232, 234–37; divinity claimed as source of legitimacy for, 229; of the modern state, 80–83; sacrality contrasted with, 236; Zionism and state, 80 Spencer, Richard, 181, 191, 193–94



Index

Spielberg, Steven, 241 Spinoza, Baruch, 83, 100, 238 state, the: absolutist pretensions of, 230, 232–33, 236; alternatives to, 83–89, 96–97; community power compared to that of, 100, 234; dignity linked to, 31; halakhah and the laws of, 68–70; Hegelian theory of, 231; ­human rights linked to, 31; Israeli attitudes ­toward, 32–33, 36, 48; kabbalistic conception of, 231–32; modern conception of, 80–89, 91, 230; Nation-­ State Law and, 50–53; and the negation of exile, 81–83; politics conventionally associated with, 2, 6, 9; sovereignty of, 80–83; territory associated with, 235–37; Zionism and, 83–89 Steiner, George, 147 stranger, Jew as, 150–52 Strauss, Leo, 145, 153, 155–56 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 189, 246–47 Sturdza, Dimitrie, 87 Stuyvesant, Peter, 114 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, 122 Sufian, Abdallah, 66 Suleiman the Magnificent, 134–35 Supreme Court (Israel): as bet midrash, 58; halakhah and civil law in, 56., 58–68, 71–76; petition pro­cess for, 65; power of, over legislature, 263n10; supervisory function of, 59 Supreme Rabbinical Court of Appeals, 60 Sutick, Barbara, 210 Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver’s Travels, 239 takkanot (­legal enactments), 63 Talmud: administrative law absent from, 73; argument and interpretation in, 49, 111, 112, 150; common law and, 73; and private law, 63; racism imputed to, 240; and rights of defendants, 67–68; on Torah learning, 104, 112; on unity of the Jews, 207; Walker and, 254–55; on war, 113. See also Babylonian Talmud; Jerusalem Talmud Tamar, David, 132 Tamari, Assaf, 21–22 Taoism, 255 Taubes, Jacob, 23–24 Taylor, Jared, 181, 191–94

311

­Temple Mount, 24, 120, 127, 129–33, 136, 138, 201–22 territory, and statehood, 235–37 theocracy, 7, 23. See also po­liti­cal theology theology: critique of the po­liti­cal from standpoint of, 25, 223–38; exilic, 225, 226–28; philosophy and, 155 Theophanes the Confessor, 131 theory, and Jewish thought, 146–53 Third Aliyah, 80, 92–93 Thompson, John, 125 tikkun (repair of the world), 233–34, 237 Torah, 58, 60, 64, 75, 104, 110, 114, 202–3, 236 Transition Law 5709–1949, 37 Truman, Harry, 188, 288n48 Trump, Donald, 25–26 Ture, Kwame (formerly Stokely Carmichael), 181, 187, 189–91, 287n32 Turner, Henry, 288n60 two-­state solution, 26, 91, 96 Two States One Homeland, 97 UDHR. See Universal Declaration of ­Human Rights Uganda proposal, 225 ultra-­Orthodox Judaism, 94, 203, 208, 212–14, 218, 220 United Brisker Relief, 169, 172, 177 United Jewish Appeal, 107 United Nations: establishment of Israel by, 35, 36; partition of Palestine by, 36, 88. See also Universal Declaration of ­Human Rights United States: antisemitism in, 197; attitudes ­toward Israel, 15, 197; geopolitics of, 160–64, 172, 176–77; Jewish community in, 100–102, 105, 109, 112, 114, 182–83, 184–85, 195–98, 225; Jewish philanthropy from, 15, 22, 160–77; Jewish po­liti­cal thought in, 15; race in present-­ day, 195; symbolic value of Zion in, 179–80; tri-­faith conception of, 184, 195. See also white nationalism unity, w ­ omen’s activism and, 207–14, 216 Universal Declaration of ­Human Rights (UDHR), 19, 29–32, 34, 35, 46 US State Department, 165, 167 Uziel, Rabbi, 69

312

Index

Ṿital, Rabbi Ḥayyim, 21–22, 119–40; Sefer ha-­Ḥezyonot (Book of Visions), 120–40 Walker, Alice, 15, 25, 239–56, 297n12, 297n13; “Baptism,” 247; “Beyond What,” 248; The Color Purple, 241, 249, 252–54; In Love and Trou­ble, 246; “It Is Our (Frightful) Duty to Study the Talmud,” 254–55; “Judge ­Every One with Perfect Calm,” 248; Meridian, 248–52, 256; Once, 246; Revolutionary Petunias, 246–48, 254, 255–56; The Third Life of Grange Copeland, 246 Walker, Margaret, 242 Walzer, Michael, 6–8, 10–11, 20 wandering, 293n5 Washington, Booker T., 187 wealthy, community roles of, 106 Weber, Max, 228, 229 Weizmann, Chaim, 79 welfare state, 114 Welt, Die (newspaper), 87 Wenger, Tisa, 184, 195 Western po­liti­cal theory: of the modern state, 81–83; non-­Western traditions in relation to, 8–13, 15, 257n8; theological-­ political model of, 229–30 Western Wall, 201–4, 206–22 white nationalism (White Zionism), 15, 23, 179, 181–82, 191–95 Williams, Henry Sylvester, 287n32 Wilson, Woodrow, 164, 168, 176–77 Winfrey, Oprah, 241 Wolf (Wolfowicz), Shimon ben, of Vilna, 106 womanism, 253 ­women: activism of, 24, 201–22; and nationalism, 201–2, 206, 208–22; status of, 60–62, 201–2 ­Women for the ­Temple, 204 ­Women of the Wall (WOW), 24, 201–22 World Union of Jewish Students, 34 world wars. See First World War; Second World War

worship, 228 WOW. See ­Women of the Wall Wright, Fiona, 221 X, Malcolm, 187–89, 192–93 Yassif, Eli, 125–26 Yehiel, Rabbi Meir Leibush ben (Malbim), 67, 265n19 Yehuda, Rabbi, 16 Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim, 21, 93–94 Yesomim, Ezras, 173 Yiddish, 93 Yiftachel, Oren, 178 Yohanan, Rabbi, 14 Yose, Yose ben, 21 YouTube, 255 zichronot (remembrances), 13, 16–17, 20–23 Zinn, Howard, 297n13 Zion, concept of, 179–80 Zionism: American Jews in relation to, 184–85, 195–98; challenges to, in Israeli anti-­statist attitudes, 33; and corporatism, 96–97; cultural, 32, 34, 55, 74, 87, 190; defined, 78–79, 180; engagement with/longing for exile by, 77–78, 85–89, 92–98; homeland and power in the thought of, 20; and Jewish po­liti­cal thought, 2, 4, 5; looking beyond, 80; and messianism, 121, 124–25, 231; as model for non-­Jews, 15, 23, 179–98; and modernity, 225–26; and the modern state, 83–89; negation of exile by, 77–80, 113, 224–25; paradox of revolution and tradition in, 70; and race, 179, 183–85, 191, 193, 196–97; and relationship of halakhah with civil law, 68, 74; rhe­toric of, 22–23; Rus­sia’s support of, 87; theological-­political significance of, 225–26 Zukerman, Borukh, 169 Zunz, Leopold, 143 Zvi, Shabbetai, 23

A c k n o w l ­e d g m e n t s

The editors and contributors would like to thank the many individuals and institutions that made this proj­ect pos­si­ble. First and foremost, we are grateful to the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, which sponsored the research program from which the volume emerged. Steve Weitzman offered staunch support at critical moments, and Natalie Dohrmann was always ready to entertain queries with good humor and sage counsel. At the University of Pennsylvania Press, we would like to thank Jerry Singerman for his guidance at the beginning of the long pro­cess of bringing this work to print, and Elisabeth Maselli for shepherding it through its final stages. Amit Katzav and Or Asher provided invaluable assistance with research, formatting, and bibliography. Their work was funded by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 1699/18).