Strangers Among Strangers

Galut had numerous meanings for Jacob Joseph of Polonnoe, who at one time (around 1750) thought of settling in Palestine, and he differentiates several sorts of galut: physical galut, in which one is subject to non-Jewish peoples; and spiritual galut, in which the soul is the captive of the evil instinct (yetzer hara). Furthermore, physical galut is not exclusively a state of being held in captivity by the non-Jews. This is only one form of exile, and the easier one. A second, much harder kind is the "exile of the scholar" (talmid hakham) among the ignorant who despise him. A third sort of exile, the hardest of all, is that inflicted upon the pious scholar by the wicked scholars (the "Jewish devil" scholars).
- Bernard Dov Weinryb, The Jews of Poland

Sages saw themselves as special within the context of a general society to be transformed in the image and after the likeness of sages. They were to "Israel" as "Israel" was to the nations.
- Jacob Neusner, "'Israel': Judaism and Its Social Metaphors"

A Jew can be in exile among his own people. A Jew must be in exile among his own people. Judaism is not democratic. The majority of Jews worshipped the golden calf. The majority of Jews ignored the warnings of the prophets. The majority, even the majority of a minority, is always wrong. If the majority of Jews are liberal, that doesn't make Judaism liberalism. If the majority of Jews are atheist, that doesn't make Judaism atheism. Abraham was the minority of one who rejected idol-worship. Abraham is our father, and a son's first loyalty is to his father, not to his brothers. That means a Jew must look to approval from his ancestors, not his contemporaries. The more alienated I feel from my contemporary kin by blood, the more drawn I feel to my ancestral kin by blood and spirit: Moses, exiled before the entrance to the Promised Land; Kafka, exiled before the gate of the law.

That Socrates was fed hemlock by his kinsmen makes him no less a Greek. That Jesus was crucified by his kinsmen makes him no less a Jew. Great religions and nations are vaster than their numbers; even or especially those who number themselves the orthodox. Why should we look to approval from the merely living? The Jewish community is not Judaism, although the two may occasionally overlap. The state of Israel is not spiritual Israel, although the two may occasionally overlap. Israel is not a liberal democracy, but a sacral monarchy; not an extant nation-state, but an existential state of being. Even if our king is dead, even if we killed our king (Nietzsche: "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him"), He is still our king. Fealty to dead ancestors is strange, and fealty to a dead king is even stranger; but to be a stranger in the world is to be at home in the world to come.

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