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"Love of the Jewish People..."
A recent post by Jodi on patriotism (along with the horrible events now taking place in Gaza) reminded me of an exchange between Gershom Scholem and 
Hannah Arendt that took place back in the 1960's. The topic was Arendt's controversial account of the Eichmann trial and the subsequent backlash from the Jewish community both in and out of Israel. Scholem was among those who felt that Arendt's account tended to "blame the victims" of the holocaust, going so far as describing her tone as "heartless," "almost sneering and malicious..." It is within this context that Scholem brings up the concept of Ahabath Israel, or "Love of the Jewish People..." " In you dear Hannah, as in so many intellectuals who came from the German Left, I find little trace of this."
Though it should be noted that Arendt pointedly denies coming from the "German Left," it is her response to the accusation of not loving "one's own" that is really provocative:
You are quite right - I am not moved by any "love" of this sort, and for two reasons: I have never in my life "loved" any people or collective - neither the German people, nor the French, nor the American, nor the working class or anything of that sort. I indeed love "only" my friends and the only kind of love I know of and believe in is the love of persons.
Secondly, this "love of the Jews" would appear to me, since I am myself Jewish, as something rather suspect. I cannot love myself or anything which I know is part and parcel of my own person. To clarify this, let me tell you of a conversation I had in Israel with a prominent political personality who was defending the - in my opinion disastrous - non- separation of religion and state in Israel. What he said - I am not sure of the exact words any more - ran something like this: "You will understand that, as a Socialist, I, of course, do not believe in God; I believe in the Jewish people." I found this a shocking statement and, being too shocked, I did not reply at the time. But I could have answered: the greatness of this people was once that it believed in God, and believed in Him in such a way that its trust and love towards Him was greater than its fear. And now this people only believes in itself? What good can come out of that? - Well, in this sense I do not "love" the Jews, nor do I "believe" in them; I merely belong to them as a matter of course, beyond dispute or argument.
There is a great deal one could discuss in this passage, some of which seems a bit disingenuous (like only being a Jew "as a matter of course") but what strikes me is the denunciation of any sort of religiously inspired Nationalism. To her credit, Arendt presents this criticism during the charged atmosphere of the "Eichmann controversy," amidst all the suggestions of betrayal and disloyalty to "her people."
Further on in her response to Scholem, Arendt does allow for a type of "patriotism," but suggests that there can be no true "patriotism without permanent opposition and criticism." She also insinuates that there is some deeper connection when she says that "the wrong done by my own people naturally grieves me more than the wrong done by other peoples." Whether this reflects an inconsistency in her thought, I am not sure. But I do wish more people felt the same way today.
In relating musings, see the interesting comments by Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua via Le Colonel Chabert. Apparently he believes that "Jewish life in Israel is more total than anywhere outside Israel..." As in Totalitarian?
By Alain | July 1, 2006 in Israel/Palestine | Permalink
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Comments
Alain, In the interests of a dialogical authenticity, what was Gershom's response? I am a big admirer of Scholem and consider him the greatest scholar of the 20th century--not that that makes his Zionism any more admirable.
Posted by: cynic librarian | Jul 1, 2006 10:54:32 PM
It's ambiguous in some respects. But Arendt's distinction between loving particular people and loving the abstraction "one's" or "the people" is perhaps crucial. The latter can abide by and defend all sorts of horrors toward persons in the name of the (as she notes, often deified) latter.
Thanks for this Alain.
Posted by: s0metim3s | Jul 2, 2006 1:37:07 AM
It might be worth remarking that for Arendt "love"- (but what of philia?)- could not be a political category, as politics for her concerned the encounter with others in their plurality/particularity: one does not love in public.
Posted by: john c. halasz | Jul 2, 2006 2:00:42 AM
Thanks, Alain. You may not be surprised to know that it reminds me of the way that Zizek talks about love as cutting through a larger field to privilege another above the rest. This seems right to me. Yet, I wonder, is it not possible to privilege a particular group about the rest? Perhaps this is where Arendt makes a more subtle distinction than does Zizek as she points out that she has never loved a group, suggesting thereby that one cannot pick a group above the rest, that love is not an attachment that applies to groups.
Then, I want to know: is it the case that an attachment to a group CANNOT be love, that it is misdescribed as love or that it SHOULD not be love? And then would nationalism/patriotism be a kind of category mistake, a form of deception (ideological or otherwise) or is an ethical mistake?
Posted by: Jodi | Jul 2, 2006 3:03:29 PM
Cynic Librarian, I appreciate your point about dialogical authenticity. My source for this exchange is a collection of Arendt essays on Zionism called "The Jew as Pariah" (which is sadly out of print). Unfortunately, there is no written response from Scholem in the book but I suspect that he may never have provided one. The tone of his letter is one of total disbelief and dismay - "how could Arendt turn so viciously against her own people?" In fairness to Scholem, the tone of the Eichmann book is rather pedantic - I agree with much of what she has to say but still get the sense that Arendt thinks she is better than all the participants in the court room(except for the Judges) becuase of her European intellectual pedigree. It would be interesting to see if Scholem did ever respond, either publicly or privately.
Posted by: Alain | Jul 2, 2006 8:39:21 PM
Raluca Eddon (from the UN, apparently) has an article entitled "Arendt, Scholem, Benjamin: Between Revolution and Messianism" in the current issue of the European Journal of Political Theory. The abstract includes the following: "... as well as to the complex and hitherto misrecognized intellectual relationship between Arendt and Scholem." I can be convinced to re-distribute the article privately to those who don't otherwise have access to it.
Posted by: Craig | Jul 3, 2006 1:39:30 AM
A Jew who renounces "religiously inspired nationalism" strikes me as something other than a Jew except, perhaps, "as a matter of course." Arendt identified the key element which makes the Jewish people Jewish. The departure from the reality of their constitution--a constitution predicated upon the truth of the Torah--is a departure from being a Jew. Perhaps the identification can slip back into more general ethnic categories such as semite, but obviously, one doesn't have to be a Jew to be a semite (nor does one have to be a Muslim or an Orthodox/Eastern Christian).
Her idea of "true patriotism" strikes me as fluffy rhetoric. It is rooted in notion that dates back a couple of centuries; it certainly has nothing to do with Jewish patriotism as understood for over three millennia. If Arendt wants to be an apologetic liberal, so be it. Why that should matter to Jewishness or the obligations of the Jew under the Torah is quite beyond me. In that realm, her remarks can have no purchase unless, of course, one has already voted so decisively against revelation in advance that the dangers of her synthesis can only be obscure.
It is alotgether odd that she still wants to call the Jews "her people" when the basis of "her people" is not her own; she is quite beyond it. As a practical matter, we know that it has been some time since the Jews have collectively identified themselves in the light of the Torah. They have accepted the ethnic classification and, from there, made a political position out of it (i.e., political Zionism). Whether or not that position is intellectual tenable absent the Law is another matter entirely. Certainly, a socio-political argument can be and has been made for the existence of Israel without revelation. What I cannot comprehend is how the Jews are unique in that respect without it.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jul 3, 2006 11:20:54 AM
Within the context of traditional/halachic/Torah Judaism, one is a Jew if one's mother is Jewish or if one converts to Judaism, regardless of the state of one's belief, self-identification, or religious practice. Scholem himself was not a practicing Jew in any normative sense, even referring to the Jewish dietary laws as "kitchen Judaism", but nevertheless considered himself religious and believed in revelation and was, of course, an ardent Zionist. His writings on these matters, including his letter to Arendt, can be found in two collections, On Jews and Judaism in Crisis (which includes a lengthy interview in which he talks about meeting Allen Ginsberg and reveals an interest in Walt Whitman) and On The Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time & Other Essays.
Posted by: marcegoodman | Jul 3, 2006 12:09:10 PM
Marce,
Within the context of traditional/halachic/Torah Judaism, one is a Jew if one's mother is Jewish or if one converts to Judaism, regardless of the state of one's belief, self-identification, or religious practice.
I am aware of this. But under the Law, does not one cease to be Jewish after renouncing their belief or engaging in the one act--according to Maimonides--that the Law was meant to prevent (i.e., idol worship)? I am almost positive that according to conservative and orthodox Judaism, one can "renounce" their Jewishness and abandon the faith. Such persons children would then not be Jewish, correct?
Scholem himself was not a practicing Jew in any normative sense, even referring to the Jewish dietary laws as "kitchen Judaism", but nevertheless considered himself religious and believed in revelation and was, of course, an ardent Zionist.
There's an obvious distinction between beliving oneself to be Jewish and actually being Jewish. With regards to faithful adherence to the Law, it is quite clear that there are many "religious" Jews who do not take either a conservative or an orthodox route in that regards. In the eyes of the latter then, their religion--while perhaps better than no religion--is not the true religion; it is not Judaism as Judaism was meant to be lived. Calling those practices "kitchen Judaism" strikes me as an unfaithful rebuke to the religion as revealed.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jul 3, 2006 12:35:55 PM
Oy vey! Gabe, give it a rest. Chances are that you've never read Arendt and that you haven't a clue as to what was at issue in her dispute with Scholem over her Eichmann commentary. Arendt never claimed to be a Jew in the sense of a traditionalist adherent of the Torah, and the Torah is not the unique scriptural basis of Judaism, absent the Talmud and midrash. You're importing all sorts of irrelevant ideological notions of your own devising into any explication of what might be at issue. In fact, Arendt was a highly secular German Jew, who came upon her Jewish/Zionist identification in the face of the Nazi ascendency. And she was not clearly a liberal, nor a conservative, nor a leftist in her writings on political "philosophy". (Perhaps she might best be described as a kind of "utopian" republican). Rather she attempted to explicate the political in terms of the public sphere as the site of confrontations/encounters with others, as constituting the realm of human initiative/ freedom and corresponding responsibility. If there was anything specifically Jewish in her thinking, then it was precisely in her adherence to (secular) worldliness and her understanding that that involved acceptance of ethical otherness.
Posted by: john c. halasz | Jul 3, 2006 12:55:09 PM
Gabriel I suspect we inhabit radically different intellectual realms. And it is perhaps the case that you would not even agree with this point. Nevertheless, whether someone is or is not Jewish by the standards of their relationship to the revelation at Sinai seems beside the point for this disscussion. Arendt is trying to think of a relationship to a nation in a different way - one that you suggest is a sort of untenable fluffy liberalism. The fact that most Isreali's are secularists would also seem to put them in the same boat.
Posted by: Alain | Jul 3, 2006 1:08:33 PM
Jodi, I apologize for not responding to your question sooner. I like the connection to Zizek and I think Arendt's acocount might provide a supplement to Zizek's. Regarding your question whether attachment to a group can be described as love, I have struggled with this for a long time. I am sympathetic to the view that patriotism is a kind of category mistake, or a ideological formation. But we still need to find a way to describe our very real attachment to place - whether it is our "home town" or our nation. And I think this goes beyond love of one's neighbors or friends, or even love of one's own. But I have not yet found an account that seems satisfactory to me.
Posted by: Alain | Jul 3, 2006 1:30:29 PM
Craig, would you mind sending me a copy of that article, "Arendt, Scholem, Benjamin: Between Revolution and Messianism"? It sounds like it would be very pertinent to the current discussion.
Posted by: Alain | Jul 3, 2006 2:23:01 PM
John,
Oh, I've read Arendt, which is more than I can say for you concerning the people I've seen you "discuss" thus far. (Or are you just cleverly hiding it behind a mask of feigned stupidity?) Your point about Arendt wasn't lost on me when I wrote the reply. The problem is, you seem to enjoy skipping over what is on the page in front of you in order to cut straight to your empty polemic. That's cute and all, but I'm struggling to comprehend why I should care.
I am not "imposing" anything on Arendt other than the possibility that her "Jewishness" isn't "Jewishness" at all, except perhaps in an ethnic sense. I understand that the category "Jew" has taken on a secular meaning that breaks radically with the historical-revelatory experience it engenders. That's fine. Of course, it renders Arendt's "point" meaningless to that experience. I suppose if there was something "more" to her position than what is quoted, I could say more. As it stands, its fluffy rhetoric about national loyalty; the substance is missing.
Alain,
Arendt's point may be tenable, but her rhetoric is fluffy. Maybe I made a wrong step in trying to tie her too closely to the Jewish experience--the experience from which her comments seem to spring and Gershom's criticism takes root in. I would argue that "patriotism" means something different to the religiously orthodox Jew than it ever would to a secular Jew or, for that matter, any secular liberal.
I understand the situation in Israel and, as such, there is a need to consider the matter from alternate angles. If we eliminate the revelation of God from the matter completely, what is the issue we are left with? The answer to that question--to me at least--is puzzling. If it is the case that the Jews who inhabit that land have, by and large, rejected that thing which positively made them Jews, what are they? It seems they are constituted instead by a negative, i.e., the label imposed upon them by others, regardless of how they self-identify themselves or understand that which originally gave them a separate identification.
Since Arendt was thinking so clearly in a (secular) Jewish context, I don't think those sorts of questions should be discarded. I am willing to entertain the notion that for a general discussion of patriotism, they may be more "back burner", however.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jul 3, 2006 2:48:49 PM
Gabriel, you raise several fair points, including an essential question: "If it is the case that the Jews who inhabit that land have, by and large, rejected that thing which positively made them Jews, what are they?" Whether that leaves them defined by others, or rather defined in opposition to the Palestinians, I am not sure.
Posted by: Alain | Jul 3, 2006 2:59:27 PM
Thanks, Alain. And, I suppose place can be virtual as well, whether thought in terms of a idealized past or future or even present, somewhere over the rainbow. With this virtualization, though, we get into an additional set of complications as to the way to understand the affective (in addition to the cognitive) elements of the attachment.
Posted by: Jodi | Jul 3, 2006 4:43:30 PM
Gabriel, I'm almost convinced that you are dealing us a false dilemma. An alternative is that Jews who don't practice the religion and do not idenitfy with the ethnic apsects of Judaism are right in saying they're just people, human beings, like others.
Of course, they'd also identify with the various political assumptions of the countries they might happen to live in. In this way, secular Jews who live in Israeli are just Israelis, in America Americans, and so on.
If this is true, then there's no need to ascribe some empty identifier to those of jewish descent, nor do we need to say that they are what others say they are. They are who they say they are, no?
Posted by: cynic librarian | Jul 3, 2006 6:05:56 PM
Pardon me for stepping into the conversation and on anyones toes. Gabriel's aggresive questioning of the authenticity or the positive content of a certain jewish identification may seem harsh and even naive . But for the very same reason, it is especially pertinent. Yes, this jewishness which isn't jewish enough for the orthodoxy is by far the dominant strain. Of course it is extraordinarily pompous, and rediculous, to say that so many self-identifying jews are not jewish, as determined by some reactionary, fundamentalist religious authority. But it can't be denied that this jewishness which we americans share with many others is most easily identified by what it is not. With the primary alternatives for american jews being the 'positive' visions of a racial, political, American Zionism or alternatively the Orthodox's religious fundamentalism, our alternative jewishness is something of a default position. A position lacking positive content? A jewishness characterized by active personal rejection of ethnic, racial, and religious identification, for sure.
In america at least, it seems to me that what jewish people have left is Culture (and especially a culture of humor) as the sole remaining zone of mutual identification. We accept Sienfeld, the Marx Brothers, bagels; we reject Ellis Island and the image of the wandering jew, except with irony. Our 'nonliteral' interpretation of scripture transmutes the bible from religious document to art form. Ethnic, racial, and religious zones remain open to us for selective use, without implying any binding force. Whats left after everything else is stripped away is an always ironic but inclusive reference to an accepted and assimilated culture. The ever present irony innoculates one from faith in total belief systems or ontologies or nativist/nationalist fervor, and instead encourages a broad openness to the other, to the other as individual and as group; since every group is other, including the group 'jewish people'. Maybe.
Thats how I, at least, picture the essence of american non-political, non-orthodox judaism. The kind subscribed to by me. What is it about an 'american jewishness' that engendered or engenders irony as a spur towards cosmopolitanism? Where does this irony come from? Is it simply a remnant of the Ashkenazi/yiddish culture, glorifying 'schlemiels'? Or do we find these predecessors to our humor as a result of just sharing it today?
And am I putting too much weight on an american-jewish humorous culture? In other words why do people like Arendt and Derrida and even Benjamin seem to share so many of the characteristics of a judaism turned into cosmopolitanism?
Benjamin, Arendt, and Derrida (maybe incidentally, I admire all of them) were jews who stripped themselves of any enforced ethnic, racial, or religious obligations and identifications. What is left is a kind of embracing of a non-People, an identification with those who (like other jews) are not identified by religious, racial, or ethnic commitments and exclusionary practices. I think. Is this a fair description? Where does this kind of thinking stem from? (certainly not from a culture of american-jewish humor)
Posted by: Jarad | Jul 3, 2006 7:08:05 PM
Jarad, I wonder whether what you describe pertains only to jews who have grown up in households where jewsihness was an issue--whether traditional, secular or even denial. I think, for instance, of someone like Madeleine Albright. She grew up as a mainstream Chrsitian but recently learned that she had jewsih roots.
In what sense is she jewish? I have not read her recent work on religion and politics, but I did hear her on the radio and it seems that she does not identify with being a jew in any way. Does this mean that she's in denial? Is she somehow less authentic in her religious views than she might otherwise be were she to acknowledge in some way her "jewishness"?
I like what you have to say--it makes much sense. But, again, I think reason it makes sense is to see it from the context of someone who knows they are jewish and are trying in some way to deal with it on various religious, ethnic, psychological levels.
Posted by: cynic librarian | Jul 3, 2006 7:28:32 PM
Jarad you raise great questions. I am a first generation American Jew, my father, uncle and grandmother survivors from France. Before they arrived, they already embodied whatever it is you attribute to Benjamin, Arendt and Derrida. To quote Arendt, this is simply a matter of course. But I would ask is this sort of thinking so completely foreign to a nation of immigrants (I know this is an idealized view but work with me). This is also why Jews were initially so active in the civil rights movement, and the general issues of social justice. Clearly a history of persecution has something to do with a general appeal to cosmopolitan values, to a feeling of "homelessness" and a sense that we ought to try and welcome the stranger. Is this really so mysterious?
And you also raise the classical dialectical question of identity - secular, "postmodern," (sometimes) liberal Jews seem to define themselves in terms of what they are not - orthodox, nationalistic, or tribal. But is this the whole story? For myself, my jewishness is not merely characterized by "active personal rejection of ethnic, racial, and religious identification..." I embrace a great deal of our traditions and committment to a redemptive moral vision. Even though I am selective in what I take, I am also proud of our secular humanist tradition that includes not only those you mention but Einstein, Marcuse, Adorno, Freud, and Husserl. And I do not see an inconsistency in this celebration of both the Judaic religious and secular traditions. It is a torch that I aspire to continue (in a very small way of course).
Sorry if that sounds preachy. Self deprecation is also an important part of Jewish upbringing. If only the neo-cons would have picked that up in hebrew school? But I digress.
On a related subject, here is an exchange I had with Alphonse over a year ago on Long Sunday:
http://www.long-sunday.net/long_sunday/2005/05/two_new_york_je.html
Posted by: Alain | Jul 3, 2006 7:39:12 PM
While I am happy to see that this conversation has moved along, in response to Gabriel's question, from a Jewish legal standpoint one cannot "renounce" one's Judaism. One remains a Jew regardless. Even an excommunication (however severe) does not undo one's Jewishness.
Posted by: marcegoodman | Jul 3, 2006 9:29:35 PM
I see it that there are three forces that pull on someone to render them Jewish: a form of Judaism, a form of Zionism, a form of secular Jewish culture. Many people calling themselves Jews don't accept the pull of all three, or even two of the three. What's more, there are people around who accept the pull of one or some of these who don't call themselves Jews: think Madonna for a form of Judaism (ignore the howls of rage from frummers on this, I'm being technical) or George Bush, who I think we could call a Zionist.
So we have three clouds of being none of which is exclusively Jewish!
For people trying to extract certainties from the 'Jewish situation', this typification is irritating. They don't like opt-outs and find the non- or anti-zionist, secular Jew eating bagels (beigels too, where 'ei' rhymes with 'why) and using remnants of yiddish is an annoying figure to them. But when did human identity involve certainties, hard edges and essences? Probably never.
I know analogies are loathesome but consider the situation re: the Irish. All over the world there are people who you might identify as being of Irish Catholic origin. This is embodied in their names, tastes in music, backing of teams in sport, membership of clubs and so on. Here you have the pulls of religion, culture and an interest in the old country. You don't have to buy into all three to feel that you're in someway or another part of the Catholic Irish thing. In other words you can be for example an atheist Irish Catholic.
Meanwhile, the purity of all this has to be resisted. Yes, no one is purely Jewish. Wherever Jews have parked themselves, they're part of the process of interacting with the surrounding cultures. When the German Jewish refugees came into Britain in the thirties, the Jews of Polish and Russian origin living in, say, London, discovered that the secular cultures of these two communities were very different.
Note: all the above applies more or less to the Ashkenazim of the last hundred years or so. I wouldn't presume to spread this out into consideration of Sephardi life which I know nothing about.
Posted by: isakofsky | Jul 4, 2006 1:41:45 AM
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