Holiness, Heresy and the Ironies of Zionism
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Redemptive Fictions Holiness, Heresy and the Ironies of Zionism n the late 13th century, after fleeing from Spain to Palestine at age 73, the Igreat kabbalist and biblical commentator Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (known as Ramban) concluded a lengthy Rosh Hashanah sermon in the Crusader city of Acre by quoting the Sifre, an ancient halachic text: “Dwelling in the Land of Israel is equal in importance to all the commandments of the Torah.” According to Nahmanides, religious observance in exile is a dress rehearsal; only in the Holy Land does Jewish ritual achieve mystical power and cosmic significance. { By STUART SCHOFFMAN 68 | Fall 2008 Redemptive Fictions /// Stuart Schoffman Holiness, Heresy and the Ironies of Zionism HAVRUTA | 69 In the 21st century, secular Israeli cos- The intimidating image of a king’s palace mopolites who never heard of Ramban or the helps us fathom why ultra-Orthodox Jews Sifre take the idea of sacred geography as a throw rocks at cars on Shabbat and have zero free pass, utterly confident that living a He- tolerance for gay parades in Jerusalem. Its brew life in Tel Aviv while willfully oblivious broader implications may also be the reason Theodore Herzl to Jewish tradition makes them more fully – as such disparate Israeli intellectuals as A. /// Illustration by Jewish than overseas Jews, the denizens B. Yehoshua and Aviezer Ravitzky have sug- Moran Barak of galut (exile). Meanwhile, in Jerusalem or gested – why Diaspora Jews, for many cen- Bnei Brak, legions of ultra-Orthodox Jews turies, were afraid to make aliyah. All that continue to live in imaginary galut, denying holiness was way too dangerous. Moreover, the validity of the Zionist state. Hypersensi- as the acerbic Anglo-Jewish author Israel tive to infractions of Jewish law, they take Zangwill wrote in 1919, in the giddy after- very seriously what Nahmanides said in that math of the Balfour Declaration, overheated same Rosh Hashanah discourse about “those Zionists should keep in mind that the Holy who are privileged to dwell before the Holy Land is not holy to Jews alone: One, Blessed be He, in his Land, for they are as those who see the King’s face”: Zion is a bride who after her divorce from Israel has been twice married to Gen- tiles –once to a Christian and once to a “Hypertension” is a Mohammedan – and when Israel takes her back he will find his household en- fair metaphor for the cumbered with the litter of the two in- tervening ménages. Such considerations, vulnerable, nervous however, are still invisible to the stock Jewish condition, which Zionist on whose self-spun structures re- alities impinge in vain, and whose Zion is is hereditary, like high as much a city of dream as that builded on celestial foundations by the popular blood pressure or imagination yearning for the Messiah. diabetes, and treatable, Zionism, in other words, is a tricky busi- if not curable. ness, but the Jews had, and have, little choice. In 1882, in the wake of the pogroms that fol- lowed the assassination of Czar Alexander II, I f they are heedful of His honor, it is the Odessa physician Leo Pinsker delivered a beneficial to them and they are happy. trenchant diagnosis of the Jewish condition However, if they rebel against Him, woe in his tract Auto-Emancipation: to them more so than to all [other] peo- ple, for they make war and provoke the With the loss of their country, the Jewish King in His [own] palace. He [therefore] people lost their independence, and fell removes them from there, as Scripture into a decay which is not compatible with states, a people that provoke Me to My face existence as a whole vital organism. The continually (Isaiah. 65:3) Again it states, state was crushed before the eyes of the They shall not dwell in the Eternal’s land nations. But after the Jewish people had (Hosea. 9:3).*1 ceased to exist as an actual state, as a po- litical entity, they could nevertheless not 1 * Ramban, Writings and Discourses, translated by Rabbi Dr. submit to total annihilation – they lived Charles B. Chavel (1985). 70 | Fall 2008 Redemptive Fictions /// Stuart Schoffman on spiritually as a nation. The world saw in tion) suspected Herzl of harboring messianic this people the uncanny form of one of the fantasies, and denounced the movement at dead walking among the living. A fear large as a violation of the religious dictum of the Jewish ghost has passed down the that only God, not man, could effect the in- generations and the centuries. gathering of the exiles and the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. Pinsker had a name for this fear. “Judeo- phobia is a psychic aberration,” he continued. “As a psychic aberration it is hereditary and Never have Jews as a disease transmitted for two thousand years, it is incurable.” As a Jew in Jerusalem, benefited from the I regret to agree that this is still so. But as hospitality of America any serious patient can tell you, there’s a vi- tal difference between “curable” and “treat- as broadly and brazenly able.” “Hypertension” is a fair metaphor for the vulnerable, nervous Jewish condition, as they have in our day, which is hereditary, like high blood pressure or diabetes, and treatable, if not curable. as they stand at their The best treatment, as Pinsker prescribed, full height with a blue- is Zionism. It was precisely because the Jews, unlike other nations, lacked a country of and-white flag waving at their own, argued the good doctor, that they could never feel truly secure anywhere: their back. Th e foreigner has a claim to hospitality, But the idea caught on, albeit all too slowly, which he can repay in the same coin. The and it was Hitler who drove it home. The pro- Jew can make no such return; consequently found historical necessity of a renewed Jew- he can make no claim to hospitality. He ish state was finally comprehended by the is not a guest, much less a welcome guest. world and its remaining Jews only after mil- Since the Jew is nowhere at home, nowhere lions were murdered by a Judeophobic mad- regarded as a native, he remains an alien man and his ostensibly rational apprentices. everywhere. That he himself and his ances- And with the restoration of Jewish sovereign tors as well are born in the country does not power came a sea change in the status and alter this fact in the least. self-image of American Jews. Back in 1936, Fortune magazine could declare, in a special Theodor Herzl, as it happened, hadn’t yet survey called “Jews in America”: read Auto-Emancipation when he drew the same conclusions and, in 1896, launched The Jew is everywhere, and everywhere the political movement that captured the the Jew is strange. Japanese are strangers imagination of many Jews – and ignited in California but not in Japan. Scotsmen the anxieties of far more. You want us to do are outlanders in Paris but not in Edin- what? exclaimed Western Jews who wor- burgh. The country of the Jews, as Scho- ried, understandably, that their hard-won penhauer puts it, is other Jews. rights as citizens might be jeopardized by a scheme to relocate from Europe to an Otto- In 2008, when the country of the Jews man backwater called Palestine. Heresy! cried is called the State of Israel, Pinsker trumps Orthodox rabbis, who (not without justifica- Schopenhauer. Never have Jews benefited HAVRUTA | 71 from the hospitality of America as broadly plicating the problem. Staunch advocates of and brazenly as they have in our day, as they Israel are infuriated (and shaky Jewish lib- stand at their full height with a blue-and- erals are unnerved) by the postcolonial cant white flag waving at their back. Now, in Israel, emanating from respectable universities that we Jews are full-fledged hosts, world leaders lumps Zionism with the Crusades and defies in science and technology. Here, collectively, the legitimacy of the state. Haaretz newspaper delivery staff, ca. we are a Grand Hotel on the Mediterranean Many overseas Jews are unhappy with the 1930 shore, with a menorah in the lobby instead of Israeli press, which appears to hang dirty a tree. And oh yes, we have an army. laundry online for the instantaneous delec- Too often, however, it seems that the vaccine tation of our foes worldwide. In an ironic in- against Judeophobia has only revived it, in new version of Nahmanides, many Diaspora Jews and virulent forms. Anti-Zionism is sometimes observe a strict ritual wherein one is forbid- a mask for anti-Semitism, but often not, com- den to criticize Israel except in Israel itself, 72 | Fall 2008 Redemptive Fictions /// Stuart Schoffman where transgressors have the most to lose. So it’s all true, he thought: It’s true that Others, of course – including many lovers of there’s really a hell. Wherever you went, Zion – behave like Israelis and don’t observe sin followed after. If you didn’t say “amen” that ritual at all. the right way after a single prayer, your soul was already damned. If you forgot to The Beginnings of Wisdom wash your hands even once before pray- In grappling with the perplexities of modern ing or eating, it was condemned to live in a frog for seven whole years. – It’s so terrible, Jewish history, it is the writers of fiction who **2 can get away with almost anything. With God, it’s so hard to live in Your world.