Reflections of a Nonpolitical Jew

Whoever would aspire to transform Germany into a middle-class democracy in the Western-Roman sense and spirit would wish to take away from her all that is best and complex, to take away the problematic character that really makes up her nationality; he would make her dull, shallow, stupid, an un-German, and he would therefore be an antinationalist who insisted that Germany become a nation in a foreign sense and spirit.
- Thomas Mann, Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man

The above applies equally to Israel, both state and nation. The most prevalent form of modern Jewish nationalism, middle-class liberal Zionism, is really antinationalism. Is the final goal of Zionism for Israel to be "a nation like all other nations"? Which nations then, Belgium? Slovakia? America? Shall we be satisfied with McDonald's in Hebrew, Israel in the E.U.?

I don't claim to have all the answers, but it is precisely the "problematic character" of Jewish existence that grants greatness to our nationality. Wrestling with God, casting down idols, singing by Babylon's shores: that is my vision of Israel. Our ancestors dreamed of more for us than merely mourning past victimhood and celebrating contemporary (temporary?) statehood.

Zakhor: the state is not the nation and the nation is not the highest truth. The nation is a means to the highest truth, whether that truth is externalized as the kingly, ascendant YHWH or internalized as the self-propelling, hidden Ein-sof. The nation begins and ends with the individual, and the individual has the right, the duty to his difference:
The King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, has stamped every person with the seal of the first person, yet no one of them is like the other. Therefore every one must say, "For my sake was the world created."
- Sanhedrin 4:5

Homogeneity is death, and that includes the homogeneity that masks itself as Zionist, or any other collective, consensus.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Manifesto

The establishment of the state of Israel is the most profound modification of the galut which has occurred, but it is not the end of the galut : in the religious sense, and perhaps not only in the religious sense, the state of Israel is a part of the galut . Finite, relative problems can be solved; infinite, absolute problems cannot be solved. In other words, human beings will never create a society which is free of contradictions. From every point of view it looks as if the Jewish people were the chosen people, at least in the sense that the Jewish problem is the most manifest symbol of the human problem . . . - Leo Strauss I am a Jew living in the galut . I would remain a Jew living in the galut if I lived on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Zionism responds to the geopolitical dimension of Jewish exile, but exile is not simply or primarily a geopolitical problem. Exile is an infinite, absolute problem that crosses all borders. The state of exile encompasses displacement from God, di
Read more

The Anti-Semite as High School Girl

The Germans hate the Jewish religion less than their race, less their peculiar faith than their peculiar noses. - Moses Hess, Rome and Jerusalem The most assimilated and preeminent Westerners of Jewish lineage still preserved in their physical physiognomy, if in nothing else, the unmistakable and eternal stamp of Israel. And this inevitable fact has again and again infuriated the pagan peoples of the world. - Ludwig Lewisohn I found the reductio ad absurdum proof of the above sentiment in a blog comment posted by an Internet beauty queen: Plenty of people object to Jewish looks/appearance, not just WNs…Jews tend to be very physically ugly. Actually, the vast majority of Jews aren’t just ugly, many are FRIGHTENINGLY UGLY, so much so that most normal and healthy people of all racial/ethnic backgrounds are immediately repulsed or even instinctively scared (women and children, mostly) of them and as such avoid contact with them. Full-blooded Jews, especially unmixed Ashkenazim, are quite
Read more

Anti-Semites, The Nation of Priests

Anti-Semites cite the following passage from Genealogy of Morals to enlist Nietzsche into their cause: All the world’s efforts against the “aristocrats,” the “mighty,” the “masters,” the “holders of power” are negligible by comparison with what has been accomplished against those classes by the Jews—the Jews, that priestly nation which eventually realized that the one method of effecting satisfaction on its enemies and tyrants was by means of a radical transvaluation of values, which was at the same time an act of the cleverest revenge. Yet the method was only appropriate to a nation of priests, to a nation of the most jealously nursed priestly revengefulness. It was the Jews who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristocratic = beautiful = happy = loved by the gods), dared with terrifying logic to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to maintain with the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness) this contrary equation, namely, “the wretched are
Read more