States of Exile

Several aphorisms of the Baal Shem Tov on the notion of metaphysical exile and return: It is written, "For you (the people of Israel) shall be a desirable land, says G‑d" (Malachi 3:12). Just as the greatest explorers will never uncover the limits of the great and valuable resources which the Almighty has placed within the earth, neither will anyone ever discover the limits of the great treasures which lie buried within a Jew - G‑d's "desirable land." "And Moses said: Let me move from here..." (Exodus 3:3). Even a completely righteous individual such as Moses is not to be content with his spiritual achievements; he, too, must constantly ascend from "here" to "there." "Conceal shall I conceal My face on that day" (Deuteronomy 31:18). Galut (the Exile) is a twofold concealment, wherein the concealment itself is concealed. So great is this concealment, that one is not even aware of the concealment; one may even come to thi...

Every Jew possesses in the history of his fathers and grandfathers a great fund of examples of the coldest self-possession and endurance in fearful situations, of the subtlest outwitting and exploiting of chance and misfortune; their courage beneath the cloak of miserable submission. - Friedrich Nietzsche Jewish citizens of the state of exile include: Abraham , Elisha ben Abuyah , Ahasver , Hannah Arendt, Isaac Babel, Benjamin of Tudela , Walter Benjamin, Leopold Bloom, Yosef Haim Brenner , Joseph Brodsky, Martin Buber , Elias Canetti, Albert Caraco , Abraham Miguel Cardozo, Benjamin De Casseres , Paul Celan, Marc Chagall, Monsieur Chouchani , Uriel da Costa , Abraham ibn Ezra, Benjamin Fondane , Semyon Frank, Judah Halevi, Heinrich Heine , Edmond Jabès , Jeremiah, Franz Kafka , Arthur Koestler , Koheleth , Karl Kraus , Emmanuel Levinas , Isaac Luria, Norman Manea, Moses, Harry Mulisch , Nathan of Gaza, Lev Nussimbaum , Franz Rosenzweig , Joseph Roth , Sarmad , Saul of Tarsus , Bruno S...

Spengler writes in a blog post : When Christian theology declares that the New Testament fulfills the Old, they mean in effect that the history of Israel is a map to the inner life of every Christian. And this history is not simply a record interred in a book. The history of the Jewish people is manifest in the life of the Jewish people, for we are our history: Every one of us stood with Moses to receive the Torah at Mount Sinai, and all who clung to YHWH are alive today, as we pray before reading the Torah in public. We, the living people of Israel, are a flesh-and-blood map to the salvation of every Christian. Can't the history of Israel be a map to the inner life of a Jew? Take the following passage from an essay by Bernard-Henri Lévy: The Kabbalists go further still in recognizing in the prolonged stay in Egypt a ruse of Providence to incorporate in the Spirit of Israel all the "sparks" lost in the temples of impurity. What better way to interpret a bad relationship ...

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. - Ja...

In his essay Nietzsche and the Marginal Jews , Jacob Golomb provides a term for the modern Jew in exile: Grenzjuden . Golomb refers to a cultural and intellectual trend among early-twentieth century German Jews: These individuals tragically lacked an identity: they rejected any affinity with the Jewish community but were nonetheless unwelcome among their non-Jewish contemporaries. Jakob Wassermann describes them from within as: "religiously and socially speaking floating in the air. They no longer had the old faith; they refused to accept the new one, that is to say, Christianity . . . the physical ghetto has become a mental and moral one." There is an incipient identity in the "tragic lack" of identity. Through disillusionment with the "community of truth" there can come a greater affinity for that truth: the truth of exile. I don't reject any affinity with the Jewish community, nor am I unwelcome among my non-Jewish contemporaries. The situation has ...

Detachment is 'unnatural,' not primary, but the outcome of a liberation from the primary attachment, of an alienation, a break, a betrayal; the primary is fidelity, and the sympathy and love which go with fidelity. - Leo Strauss, Preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion What is the liberation, alienation, break or betrayal that leads to exile? From a historical perspective, the primary attachment of our ancestors was to the ethnos . The Greek word means more than just ethnic group. Ethnos encompasses what moderns now categorize as religion, culture, bloodline, language and land. The challenge to the ethnos comes from universalism, whether propagated by Alexander the Great, St. Paul, Karl Marx or Uncle Sam. The Jewish people are a classic example of an ethnos , because they kept the traditional unity between nationality and religion intact. The Jewish people have historically resisted universalizing trends like Christianity and Hellenism, no matter if individual Jews emb...

There is an article in the Jewish Virtual Library that gives a good overview of the traditional Jewish concept of galut . However, since my own idiosyncratic idea of galut is not necessarily the orthodox one, I have some differences in interpretation. To begin with: The Hebrew term galut expresses the Jewish conception of the condition and feelings of a nation uprooted from its homeland and subject to alien rule. I do not think galut is fundamentally national even in the Jewish tradition. Going back to "fundamentals," i.e. the beginning, the first exiles were Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve predate the existence of not just the Jewish nation, but any nation; they are individuals. Before national exile from the Jewish homeland there is individual exile from the primordial homeland: Eden. The longing for Eden, the longing for a return to origins (the childhood home, the golden age, the womb), is not exclusively or even primarily a national feeling. Further, what precisely is ...

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...