chapter 20 The Dialectics of Diaspora in Contemporary Modernity

Lars Dencik

Diaspora: The Origin and Carrier of Jewish Culture

Dwelling far from one’s homeland is a frequently re-occurring Ur-Geschichte in the stories of the Bible. In Jewish history in general, it constitutes what scholars of literature would call a leitmotiv. Just recall the story of Abraham, who was told by God to leave his home in Ur in Chaldea (located close to where the river Euphrates joins the river Tigris in the south of present-day Iraq) to go the land of Israel. But circumstances there soon forced him to leave the country to seek better conditions outside the Promised Land—in Egypt. Later on, it was there, under the rule of the Egyptian Pharaoh, that Joseph lived—the son of another of Judaism’s “founding fathers” Jacob, whom God named Israel. And the Jews, as is re-told every year at the Passover ceremony, were slaves until a man with a clearly Egyptian name, Moses, removed the Jews from the land and out of slavery. While roaming for 40 years in the desert, i.e. in no-man’s land, the crowd that Moses had liberated became shaped as a people—again, outside the Promised Land (a land that Moses had in sight, but—I think this is sym- bolically significant—never entered). And there, in the desert of Sinai, accord- ing to the myth, the primary source of Jewish identity, the Torah, comprising the essence of Jewish wisdom and laws, was given to the Jewish people and through them to all humanity. After a not very long period as rulers (the Kingdom of David and Solomon lasted for less than a hundred years from about the year 1000 B.C.E.), and a relatively short period as a sedentary people in what had been the land of the Canaanites and other peoples—a period described in the historiographic books of the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Joshua, The Book of Judges, the Books of Kings, Samuel and the former prophets, and in many respects dealing with the problems of authority and obedience—the Jews again had to hit the road. In the year 586 B.C.E., Jerusalem and the first Temple were destroyed and the leadership and tribe of Judah forced into the Babylonian Exile, to live in an area called Mesopotamia. There, to quote the Psalm (137), “By the rivers

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/9789004277076_022 406 dencik of Babylon, there we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.” It is interesting in this context to note the remark by the historian Martin Gilbert in his The Atlas of Jewish History (1993) about the map of the first Jewish disper- sion 722–586 B.C.E. Gilbert cites “Cities in which the Jews settled after their dispersal” and adds the following comment: “The Jews quickly established vig- orous intellectual and merchant communities throughout the ‘Diaspora’ or area of dispersal” (Gilbert, 1993: 7). Against this background one may ask: what would Jewish culture have been today had the Jews remained a tribe in the Judean desert? What would have happened had the Jews not been forced into the Babylonian Exile 2,500 years ago when the remnants of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah were con- quered and Solomon’s temple, i.e. the First Temple, destroyed? What would have happened had the Jews not become “dispersed among the nations” little more than 500 years later; that is, a little less than 2,000 years ago, as a conse- quence of Jerusalem’s looting by Roman soldiers under Titus, son of the Emperor, and their leveling Herod’s temple, i.e. the Second Temple (leaving only the ruins of one of its outer supporting walls—today’s Western Wall (in Hebrew: Kotel). As we are repeatedly told in present-day Israel, in the year 73 the last fighting forces in the land of Israel at that time committed collective suicide in a heroic gesture at Masada. If the Jews had not become “dispersed among the nations” what would have been the fate of Jewish culture? No one, of course, can answer this question. But it is a matter of fact that Jewish culture as we know it is largely a Diaspora product and most of the texts that express, carry, and are salient and significant to, Jewish culture were written and com- piled in the Jewish Diaspora. The very word “diaspora” emerges for the first time in written history in the Greek translation of the Hebrew bible, where it means approximately “to cul- tivate over wide areas.” In the Bible it appears in Deuteronomy 28 when the Lord threatens to “disperse among the peoples” (verse 64) his Chosen People, should they diverge from what He has proscribed to be the “right way.” In a story about an unsuccessful fight led by the Jewish leader, Zedekiah, against the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, we confront what could be regarded a mythical matrix in Jewish narration regarding the Jewish people’s relationship to seizing worldly, or rather territorial, power. According to the biblical text (Kings II 25, vii), the territory-seeking Jewish leader Zedekiah is punished in three ways: (a) his sons are killed, as it is said, in front of his eyes. This may be interpreted: he shall be aware that there will be nobody to carry on and preserve the teachings and the culture of ancient Israel, i.e. of Jewish thought; (b) he is blinded so that he, as it is said, becomes sightless. This may be inter- preted: he will no longer be able to orient himself through life, that is, unable