States of Exile

Editor's Note: In the spirit of universal exile, I present a guest post from another hemisphere. Et in Brasil ego. There is an outlandish harmony in the world, a fearful symmetry that can only be glimpsed in brief, rare intervals. When the author of this blog invited me to blog here as a guest, I didn’t think I’d have anything to say. I couldn’t see the subterranean implications of this invitation; I was blind to something that stood right in front of me, but something so big that I couldn’t see, precisely because it is so big. This consideration soon brought memories of an essay by Borges, which first paragraph I reproduce and translate here, for the sake of making this digression relevant. Cuando el remoto compilador del Zohar tuvo que arriesgar alguna noticia de su indistinto Dios—divinidad tan pura que ni siquiera el atributo de ser puede sin blasfemia aplicársele—discurrió un modo prodigioso de hacerlo. Escribió que su cara era trescientas setenta veces más ancha que diez mil...

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...

August Bebel aptly called anti-Semitism "the socialism of fools." Leo Strauss even more aptly responded that "the fact that anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools is an argument not against, but for, anti-Semitism; given the fact that there is such an abundance of fools, why should one not steal that very profitable thunder?" Stalin, Idi Amin, Nasser: examples of those who cynically stole that profitable thunder to rally the proles go on and on. Eric Hoffer's seminal The True Believer says it best: "Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil." For anti-Semites, the Jews serve precisely the Christian function of the devil: "lords of this world," secret hand moving history ("killed the tsar and his ministers; Anastasia screamed in vain") and black-clad seducers (if not notably handsome). And then there's Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial offends me intellectually as much or ...

Et in Arcadia ego is a Latin phrase meaning "Even in Arcadia I exist," with the "I" in question being death personified. Arcadia was an ancient Greek idyll, a pagan Eden home to nymphs and swains. The message of the phrase is that death lurks in paradise too. "Sadness in Palestine?!" is what Franz Kafka wrote in a letter to Max Brod about early Zionist Yosef Haim Brenner's novel Breakdown and Bereavement . Palestine was an ancient Hebrew idyll, a Biblical Arcadia home to farmers and warriors. The message of the phrase is that sadness lurks in paradise too. There is sadness and death in any earthly Zion precisely because it is earthly. Some orthodox Jews believe that with the coming of the Messiah, all Jewish corpses outside of Israel will burrow through the earth and be resurrected in the Holy Land. I'll make my aliyah then.

Historically, the worst mistake the Jews ever made was revolting against the Roman empire. It's a comparison no one wants to make, but the Jews were the Muslims of the ancient world order: the only ones, by virtue of religious zealotry, not to accept Pax Romana. Nowadays the Muslims refuse to accept Pax Americana, and for the same kind of reasons as the Jews refused to accept Roman rule: fear of cultural assimilation (Hellenism, American popular culture), anger at corrupt client kings (Herod, the Saudi royal family) and offended religious sensibilities (Roman soldiers in Jerusalem, American soldiers in Arabia). The difference of course is that the Romans so crushed the fighting spirit of the Jews that they became virtual pacifists for the next millennia. Only in the twentieth century did the Jews regain enough martial spirit to take back Palestine (the name the Romans gave Judea after dispersing the Jews). Yet now the rules have changed and martial spirit doesn't prove national...

. . . in 1981 Dar al-Hurriyya, the government publishing house, widely circulated a pamphlet whose title in translation is Three Whom God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews and Flies . The author is Khairallah Tulfah, former governor of Baghdad and foster-father, uncle, and father-in-law of Saddam Husain. Persians, Tulfah says, are "animals God created in the shape of humans." Jews are a "mixture of the dirt and leftovers of diverse peoples," and flies are a trifling creation "whom we do not understand God's purpose in creating." - Kanan Makiya, Republic of Fear The above is racism and unduly harsh to Jews and flies. Zionism is not racism; it is arguably chauvinistic and illiberal (as are many of its enemies and all of its neighbours), but it is not racist for the simple reason that it discriminates based on religion and not race. The Islamic Republic of Iran, which discriminates against the Bahá'ís based on religion and not race, should be co...

Look and remember. Look upon this sky; Look deep and deep into the sea-clean air, The unconfined, the terminus of prayer. Speak now and speak into the hallowed dome. What do you hear? What does the sky reply? The heavens are taken: this is not your home. Look and remember. Look upon this sea; Look down and down into the tireless tide. What of a life below, a life inside, A tomb, a cradle in the curly foam? The waves arise; sea-wind and sea agree The waters are taken: this is not your home. Look and remember. Look upon this land, Far, far across the factories and the grass. Surely, there, surely they will let you pass. Speak then and ask the forest and the loam. What do you hear? What does the land command? The earth is taken: this is not your home. - Karl Shapiro

Alas, my brothers, this god whom I created was man-made and madness, like all gods! Man he was, and only a poor specimen of man and ego: out of my own ashes and fire this ghost came to me, and, verily, it did not come to me from beyond. - Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them. - Psalm 115 Friedrich Nietzsche was the modern idol-smasher par excellence. The Jews were the ancient idol-smashers par excellence. The reason Jews are not the modern idol-smashers par excellence is because too many Jews have taken on new idols like revolution, "the wretched of the earth", the American dream and the nation-state. The difference between ancient...

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 ...

Albert Caraco was a French-Jewish aphorist and misanthrope who wrote, according to a friend who is translating one of his books, "The Jews are the backbone of the white race." I like this quotation particularly for its broad capacity to offend. Are Jews members of the white race? Are Jews the backbone of the white race? The answer to the first question of course, depends on who's asking. There is no halakah for race. South Africa considered its Jews white enough to be categorizable as such under Apartheid, but they benefited from comparison to the more visible "other." Similarly motivated, in 1938 Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo offered to take in 100,000 Jewish refugees from Europe in order to "whiten" his brownish country. No doubt the Jews would have been more acceptable to the Germans if Haiti had been next door to supply contrast. Yet nowadays, what does it really matter? As another French misanthrope, Michel Houllebecq says , "I'm ...

If God is dead and the the mission of the Jews is to bear his message, it is now our mission to bear his memory.

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...