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AJS 2017 Highlights

Hated, hated, hated being in Washington D.C. this year for the Association for Jewish Studies conference, what with the monster just down the street in the White House and the zombie tourists at the Mall. After three days off grid, I slogged my way on Tuesday through afternoon traffic down New York  Avenue and rt. 50, trying to get home, listening on the radio to the sickening spectacle of Paul Ryan crowing and the Senate “debate” about the GOP plan to kill the country with tax cuts for corporations and the super wealthy. The closeness of being so near to all that cast a pall over the entire conference, at least for me. The Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address with their commitments to equality and democracy engraved into the walls of the side wings of the Lincoln Memorial were incredibly moving but did nothing to console. Thanks to global warming, the weather was unseasonably mild. Mourning or melancholy?

Here, though, are 8 mostly positive highlights from the conference: [1] Meeting and conversations with young colleagues and old friends about enemies, aesthetics and ethics, Leibniz, and philosophy of biology, [2] the realization that there are young or youngish colleagues coming to the AJS for the first or second time who actually find the conference congenial and  welcoming, [3] soliciting book projects for the series in New Jewish Philosophy and Thought at Indiana University Press, [4] grave concern about the state of modern Jewish thought, [5] coming to some philosophical terms about the “invention of Jewish ethics,” [6] the start of a working group on Jewish Studies and “media” i.e. objects, networks, and affect, [7] not talking  about Israel hardly at all, [8] the realization that after some 50 years, the hottest thing at the AJS is….Talmud, the study of which is now dominated by women.

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AJS & The Transmission of Affect (Yoni Brafman)

“Is there anyone who has not, at least once, walked into a room and “felt the Jewey atmosphere”? But if many have paused to wonder how they received this Jewey impression, and why it seemed both objective and certain, there is no record of their curiosity in the copious literature in group and crowd psychology, or in the psychological and psychoanalytic that claims that one person can feel another person’s Jewey feelings (and there is writing that does this, as we shall see).”

(With apologies to Teresa Brennan, Yoni Brafman won this year’s AJS with this little and seemingly late night little quip)

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Hanukah & Hasmoneans

This time of year, there’s a lot of snark about the Hanuka taking up an ideological cudgel against the fanatic Maccabees. Some of the discussion relies on the ambivalence tending towards hostility expressed in the Bavli towards this minor festival and against the Hasmoneans, who were the successors of the Maccabees. “In Praise of the Hasmoneans: Chanukah Beyond Rabbinic Literature” by Ophir Münz-Manor is a particularly excellent corrective. Münz-Manor tracks the place of Hanuka and the Hasomoneans in late antique and medieval piyyut and situates the form of piyyut in tension with the rabbinic class and its concerns. Maybe the Hasmoneans were not so bad after all.

This is the conclusion to his post, which you can read here at Gemara:

The overall picture that emerges reveals that the Hasmoneans were well represented and even celebrated by the payytanim, and presumably by the congregations in which the piyyutim were performed. This is significantly different from the way the Hasmoneans are represented in classical rabbinic literature. How might we account for this disparity?

It is possible that the figuration of the Hasmoneans in piyyut and their relative absence in rabbinic texts indeed reflects a different ideological stance, though this cannot be easily ascertained. Some scholars have recently argued that the payytanim belonged to or identified with priestly circles, and therefore promoted priestly themes in piyyut, including the importance of the Hasmoneans, who served as priests.

We must also remember that the payytanim were not merely singing rabbis. Although they shared many beliefs and practices with the rabbis, their social role, their artistic interests, and the synagogal context in which they functioned, were distinct from the rabbis and their study halls. Other para-rabbinic groups existed, such as the meturgamanim(translators) who offered expanded version of the Bible in Aramaic, as well as magicians and mystics, which scholars of late antique Jewry tend to overlook or downplay.

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The Radical Future of American Judaism?

My dear friend Shaul Magid is working on a major project on Meir Kahane and the JDL during its heyday in the late 1960s and 1970s. Drawn to extreme expression, Shaul thinks that the future of the American Jewish community and American Judaism lies always at the radical margin. He posted this photo from 1969 on  FB. Not sure what he sees in them, I think they look like morons. Going directly to the heart of our longstanding disagreements about liberals and radicals, I am prepared to generalize from this very particular case.

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Trump + Jerusalem

The Forward posted a little something under my name,  “Trump Declared Jerusalem Israel’s Capital — So What Happens Next?”. You can read the whole thing here. I tried to cover all the bases. What happens next is most likely nothing. The municipal borders of the city are never defined in the declaration and no mention is made regarding Israeli sovereign control over the Old City and holy sites. The Jewish right will discover that Trump’s statement is not a “serious” one because it defines and does nothing, even as it seems to define and do something. I might be wrong, but the idea that the United States might use this statement to leverage Israeli concessions for peace is risible, and no one on the left should have any great expectation about “the Kushner plan.” In fact, Trump has made U.S. support of a two state solution conditional upon the agreement of both parties. By recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel with no mention of East Jerusalem as the future capital of Palestine, what the United States has now done is to harden and formalize the identity of Israel as a bi-national regime with apartheid features in the West Bank. As if on a silver platter, this is the gift of the Jewish right and Donald Trump to the conclusion of the Zionist dream, namely the Jewish and Democratic State Idea, and to the future of a “single secular state” in historic Palestine.

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Empty No Water In It (Trump’s Mouth)

Apropos the recognition of Jerusalem, like the pit into which Joseph was thrown by his brothers, President Trump’s mouth is “empty; there [is[ no water in it” (Gen. 37:24).  The rabbis interpret the apparent redundancy (“’empty” and “no water”) to conclude that the pit was full of snakes and scorpions, also not unlike Trump’s mouth.

“R. Kahana also said, R. Nathan b. Minyomi expounded in R. Tanhum’s name: Why is it written, and the pit was empty, there was no water in it? From the implication of what is said, ‘and the pit was empty’, do I not know that there was no water in it; what then is taught by, ‘there was no water in it’? There was no water, yet there were snakes and scorpions in it” (Shabbat 22a).

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Not On Antisemitism (JVP)

If you are a gentile on the left side of the political spectrum and you want to be an ally to Jews, but do not fully understand the history of antisemitism and the politics of Israel and Palestine, you may not want to look to this book for guidance. If you are a Jew, committed or not to the struggle for social justice, you may find unpleasant or awkward a book “on antisemitism” that is not a book on antisemitism.

After years avoiding a direct address to the problem of antisemitism, particularly as it manifests itself on the political left, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) came up with a manifesto and a volume of edited essays on the topic. The strongest selling point of On Antisemitism: Solidarity and The Struggle for Justice lies in opening the discussion to diverse writers, among them Ashkenzai Jews, Black Jews, Latinx Jews, Mizrachi Jews, and Queer Jews alongside Christian and Muslim allies of “the movement.”  The focus of this book “on antisemitism” is not antisemitism, but rather the claim that antisemitism is being abused by “the Jewish community” to silence “criticisms” of Israel and to obfuscate racism in mainstream Jewish society. The strongest essays are those that actually return to the subject after addressing endemic problems concerning the marginalization Jews of Color in the Jewish community. The book’s primary emphasis is political.

On Antisemitism is noteworthy if only for the fact that JVP has successfully captured a prominent visible profile for itself at the far anti-Zionist left of the Jewish community. The volume offers a snapshot view of the American Jewish community at this historical moment after 50 years of Occupation and de facto annexation in the West Bank, creating a single state under semi-apartheid Jewish hegemony in Israel/Palestine, the rise of religious radicalization and racial animosity, the collapse of the Zionist dream as heretofore dreamed as Jewish and liberal-democratic. The book highlights a vocal, even obnoxious segment of the American Jewish left. Written by activists, not scholars, On Antisemitism raises serious questions about the American Jewish community, Israel and the Occupation, the history of Zionism, power and privilege. Alongside these are genuine questions concerning the positioning of the Jewish left in relation to the liberal mainstream of the Jewish community and to larger national and international political contexts and social justice agendas.

On Antisemitism is not a book about antisemitism. One will find nothing to learn by way of a direct examination of its history and its contemporary expression on the right and on the left, the demonization of Jews, stigmatization, tropes of Jewish power, privilege, and influence, claims regarding Jews, money and the media, or the active attempts at excluding Jews from society and culture, primarily on campus. The volume advances no leftist point of view that might shed light on the actual phenomenon from that particular perspective. Not antisemitism, the book’s primary intention is to explore how antisemitism has been allegedly misused to cudgel critics of Israel, to obscure or justify Israeli oppression of Palestinians, and to hide completely from view the dynamics of white Ashkenazi privilege vis-à-vis Mizrachi Jews and (other) Jews of Color including Black Jews.

In this way, the discussion in On Antisemitism pivots constantly off topic, and about this one begins to wonder. Consider the “JVP Statements on Antisemitism” included in the volume as a case in point. The Statements would seem to be a formal institutional position paper in which the opening historical sketch and discussion of Christian hegemony and racial antisemitism are interrupted by the caveat that antisemitism does not effect all Jews in the same way. The caveat is then followed by the claim that, unlike anti-Black and anti-Muslim racism and xenophobia, antisemitism in the United States is not “systemic,” by which is meant reinforced by state institutions such as criminal law and police, and immigration law. The “Statements on Antisemitism” continues to explore the white privilege enjoyed by Ashkenazi Jews in this country and U.S. responsibility for Israeli apartheid. This is all crammed into the two pages of section #1. In section #2, the “Statements” pivots to explore allegedly false claim that anti-Zionism (the struggle for justice for Palestinians, including a comprehensive right of return) is antisemitism. The “Statements” rejects the image of eternal Jewish suffering and the idea of eternal Jewish victimhood, and refuses to equate what the “Statements” call anti-Semitic “micro-aggressions” with “structural inequality.”  The point is not to “divert” attention from power and privilege enjoyed by “some Jews.” The discussion of antisemitism gives way to what in the “Statements” is the motivating overriding concern for Muslim Americans and people of color and for how Muslims and Arabs are blamed for antisemitism (pp.213-16).

Treating its contemporary manifestation as an isolated microgragession is an index to the non-centrality of antisemitism or Jewish lives in this book “on antisemitism.” What is defined as “a starting point” in each of the contributions in a book “on antisemitism” is not antisemitism, but rather “the fight for Palestinian rights,” which forms an integral “part of the framework of our commitment to justice” (p.3, emphasis added). This is why the book refuses even to define antisemitism, because the task would “distract” from “necessary attention” to state power and the structural power of Islamophobia, anti-black, and anti-immigration bigotry. In On Antisemitism and at JVP, the problem with “antisemitism” is that it “shields” Jews from having to confront their own complicity in oppression in Israel and the United States. According to the director of JVP, this is “the proper context” for a “serious consideration of antisemitism” (ibid.).

That JVP and the anti-Zionist left might actually have a real antisemitism problem is suggested by the confession that for the contributors the subject is considered “fraught” and reflects not a little “frustration.” The frustration has to do with how allegedly isolated incidents of real antisemitism that arise in “our movement” threaten to overshadow the “more urgent” need to end the occupation (p.207). The apologetic purpose of the book is how to help “interfaith partners” who want to know how to “deflect” accusations that they are antisemitic. At the very moment in which “Christians and other partners” are challenged to consider the antisemitism they may harbor, the discussion quickly pivots, as if on cue, back to Israel and how “relentless privileging” of antisemitism in debates about Israel and Palestine “stymie” the struggle. The purpose here is ultimately is to let liberal Christians and pro-Palestine activists off the hook when they seek to boycott Israel (pp.209-10). At the same time, people at JVP are “confused” by how to distinguish the fight against “actual antisemitism” with “false” accusations of antisemitism.

No doubt, the confusion is of their own making. The very idea of Jewish privilege and the reality of Jewish power today are vexed ones that require critical care. Long time critics of JVP will not be surprised to see how, without such care, actual expressions of antisemitism slip into this book “on antisemitism.” One contributor, a Christian clergyperson, regurgitates claims about “disproportionate Jewish influence,” “entitlement,” “privilege, and “control” of Holocaust narrative (pp.111-120) while two Palestinian contributors effectively compare Israel to Nazi Germany (pp.139, 146, 151, 201-2). The promotional blurb on the back of the book by a onetime professor widely perceived in the Jewish community to be an antisemitic internet troll only contributes to the sense that there is an antisemitism problem at JVP, that certain expressions of antisemitism will not be perceived as such at JVP. Perhaps these are the isolated incidents, but surely they would have had no place in a volume had it been organized by a movement that understood antisemitism to be a primary topic of concern.

The Achilles’ heel of the JVP book “on antisemitism” is the intentional refusal to define the term antisemitism (pp. vii, 3, 61, 207). In part, the refusal comes from the laboratory of bad or misplaced academic ideas, although in this book the function is apologetic and polemical. One contributor suggests the need for a minimum definition, which she herself does not provide even as she is preoccupied with the challenge of interpretation (p.vii). As for the definition provided in the “JVP Statements,” it is a painfully thin description of antisemitism as “discrimination against, violence towards, or stereotypes for being Jewish” (p.213). That one single sentence is as much as one gets. Failing as it does to define the term with more robust clarity, the volume as a whole slips into a meta-discourse (discourse about the discourse of antisemitism) that quickly gets lost at the “intersection” with Islamophobia and other forms of racism. Before antisemitism is even addressed, the subject has been changed at JVP. A case in point being the author who insists first that there is no need to define the term, but then, some pages later, states that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism “by definition” (p.67).

Jewish or not Jewish, for any radical leftist to be called an antisemite must undoubtedly be “painful.” It is hard, however, to understand in what way it holds, according to the author of the book’s foreword, that “whether or not the accusation is true” is “less important” for the person who wields the cudgel of calling someone an antisemite than whether it is politically effective in silencing critics of Israel. The claim is certainly false that the person who calls another person an antisemite “knows” that the person being accused of antisemitism is not, in fact, an antisemite (p.xi, xii).  On Antisemitism gives no tools with which to make that discernment. Without a minimum working definition, there are no criteria with which to refine the critique of Israel or Zionism, or of Jews and Judaism, or with which to distinguish between true and false accusations of antisemitism. What one is left with is anti-Zionist special pleading.

Another one of the scholars included in the volume, himself neither a member of JVP nor a supporter of BDS, traces the conflict of interpretation back to David Engel’s essay “Away from a Definition of Antisemitism.” Engel’s argument is against the historically anachronistic and uncritical application of a modern term with distinct and traceable origins in the 1870s to create the false impression of an abstract, disembodied, and eternal “antisemitism” (Rethinking European Jewish History, p. 45). Engel argues that there is “no necessary relation among particular instances of [anti-Jewish] violence, hostile depiction, agitation, discrimination, and private unfriendly feeling across time and space can be assumed. Indeed, none has ever been demonstrated” (Ibid., p. 53). All of this is well and true, but a little beside the point. In this particular context, an academic argument serves as a political pretext fundamental to the overall apologetic and polemical structure of the book, the point of which is to dissolve the sharpness of what is considered to be an ideological weapon directed at critics of Israel.

About Engel’s thesis, without a doubt, antisemitism is a retrospective term and it is also true that antisemitism is not a unified phenomenon. It is impossible to speak of any abstract identity persisting over time. The data is too diverse in manifestation. There is no cause and effect chain, and no necessary lines link all of the data into a complete and rounded whole. Historians immersed in historical data submit the data to the splintering effect that is basic to their analytic work. That does not mean, however, that the data do not lend themselves to patterns based on a family of shared overlapping consistencies. One tries to define the pattern while alert to the variations in mode. All of the concepts with which we think are retrospective. They are used to reflect from the present and for the present back on the accumulation of variant historical data. In our case, to disavow the labor of abstract conceptual work is to leave antisemitism unthought. To not define antisemitism supports the ready-made conclusion that today it is an isolated epiphenomenon, not deeply or permanently structured, in large part a figment of the political imagination, nothing very much more than an ideological cudgel.

As for the claims made about Israel in On Antisemitism, it is simply not true that the problem for many Jews who support the well-being of the State of Israel in one form or another is “criticisms” of Israel. It would be more accurate to say that only the far Jewish right in the United States and in Israel judge any and all criticism of Israel to be antisemitic (p.xi). In contrast, most mainstream Jewish organizations and personages have consistently maintained that Israel and Israeli policy regarding religion and state and regarding settlements in the occupied West Bank, are open for criticism. The argument has always been focused on particular forms of criticism that many people perceive as slipping into expressions of antisemitism, namely the specially pronounced hostility with which a people, and now a country, is treated. As the author of the foreward suggests, “we have to change the terms of the question itself.” An adjective designating which “criticisms” are considered by some to be genuinely problematic and which “criticisms” are not considered problematic at all by most reasonable people would have helped clarify the terms of the debate in the first place.

Looking past Israel, the second general purpose of On Antisemitism is to set up “the American Jewish community” as a strawperson. We see this by way of blanket and general condemnations. Already on the first page mention is made against the alleged “[a]cquiescence of and even support for Trump by a number of major Jewish institutions” (p.1). These institutions go unnamed, creating the false impression that major Jewish institutions support Trump. The claim fails to clarify that these were rightwing Jewish organizations and does nothing to reflect the opposition against Trump by so many Jewish institutions. Ditto regarding the ugly language that “certain” influential groups whose focus on antisemitism is “infected” with “Zionist bias” (p.19). Ditto regarding the claim that “some mainstream Jewish institutions” misuse antisemitism for the express purpose of justifying any and all Israeli actions. Two rightwing Zionist groups, Amcha and Stand with Us, are accused of mainlining Islamophobia on camps, as is Hillel (pp.159, 170). Ditto regarding a claim that Jews support the status quo or that American Jewish students side with state power in Israel (pp.113, 178). What goes ignored in Antisemitism is the nearly wall-to-wall opposition against the Trump agenda in the Jewish community from liberal organizations and synagogues to prominent Jewish neoconservatives. The creation of this caricature is part of a self-serving attempt to create a clean friend/enemy distinction, positioning JVP on one side and “the Jewish community” on the other side. Painting this false picture, JVP, which is a more or less marginal group, is self-defined as a true reflection of the American Jewish community (p.2).

Always quick to change the topic, On Antisemitism is an unreflective book and as such does little to advance its own agenda. Marked as it is by extreme defensiveness, unclarity, and confusion, missing from the volume as a whole is a genuine culture of self-criticism. In place of self-congratulation, sustained attention to instances and patterns of real antisemitism in “our movement” would have gone a long way in creating a volume that took its topic with the requisite seriousness that it deserves. The same holds true for the subject of antisemitism in the Arab world, which gets only very little notice and which is mostly glossed over (pp.61-2, 148, 131). The same is true regarding anti-Arab racism in Mizrachi communities, which gets mentioned only once (p.78). These are among the other “difficult conversations” evaded in the volume. While I do not count myself among them, one could argue that Jewish neoconservatives have with more consistent rigor opposed the racism expressed by President Trump and his supporters than JVP has opposed antisemitism from the left.

Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism by definition, but one first has to define antisemitism to make this argument stick. In his own classic study, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism, the distinguished medieval historian Gavin Langmuir, culling through the data, came to a specific understanding of our topic. He distinguished carefully between “realistic,” “xenophobic,” and “chimerical” assertions of inter-group hostility and hatred. A “realistic” assertion of antipathy towards Jews, as members of an out-group, would be one based on the same assumptions with which one assesses the behavior of all other groups, including one’s own in-group. A “xenophobic” assertion is one in which all members of the targeted outgroup (the Jews, or Muslims) are judged on the basis of a small sub-group among them. In contrast, a “chimerical” assertion about the out-group has no recognized basis in reality (Langmuir, p.328). The classic example is the blood libel and ritual cannibalism. Such assertions would involve fantasies, figments of the imagination, monsters that, although dressed syntactically in the clothes of real humans, have never been seen and are projections of mental processes unconnected with the real people of the outgroup” (ibid., 334).

As opposed to anti-Judaism, by which Langmuir means antipathy of an ethnic and/or religious nature against Jews for reasons that are either “realistic” or “xenophobic,” antisemitism is defined as a unique form of chimerical expression, with origins in medieval France. For our purposes here and today, one criterion with which one could determine whether or not one can call a criticism of Israel antisemitic would depend upon whether or not the expression of anti-Zionism is or is not realistic. Are, for instance, the assumptions applied to the State of Israel or to Zionism the same ones that the critic would apply to the members of any other group, especially one’s own in-group? A second criterion with which to clarify these questions would depend on whether the expression of anti-Zionism is or is not simply a xenophobic form of inter-ethnic antipathy, in which the outgroup as whole is held responsible for the act of an individual or, we should add, the individual for the group. None of this can be settled in the abstract. It depends on the speaker and the action. But insofar as Israel and Zionism are ascribed with devilish attributes, extra-ordinary guilt causing extra-ordinary harm, and chimerical powers, insofar as Zionism becomes the special target of intense group animus, the more the discourse tends to unmoor itself from the practical character of normal inter-group conflict, and the closer we get drawn to the border with classical antisemitism.

Realist appraisals of antisemitism and anti-Zionism would have to recognize that, increasingly, antisemitism is becoming a pronounced problem in American society and in Europe, one that represents a hard challenge for the political left insofar as it takes up the banner in opposition to Zionism. For the left, in particular, this requires a better understanding of Zionism, a term that also goes undefined in On Antisemitism. A central chapter in modern Jewish history, is Zionism to be understood simply as a manifestation of “settler colonialism”? Or was Zionism a national movement, promoting self-determination (auto-emancipation) as the correct political response to the condition of Jewish precarity in the modern period? As a historical form, Zionism originated in the surge of antisemitism in western and central Europe, to waves of pogroms in Russia starting in the 1880s, to massive and violent disruption in the wake of the Russian Revolution, to the Holocaust, to the collapse of colonial rule and the rise of pan-Arabism across the postwar Middle East. Today, the State of Israel is home to half the Jewish people, the only country in the world whose culture as a whole is stamped by Judaism and Jewishness, where Jews do not live in a minority, subaltern or semi-subaltern social status. The tight intertwining of Zionism into the modern Jewish experience of systemic antisemitism cannot be simply waved away and made to disappear under the umbrella of postcolonialism. In this respect, On Antisemitism is not the place to look for a realistic reckoning of a human phenomenon as complex and fraught as the experience of Jewish powerlessness and power. To not see the history of Zionism in relation to the history of antisemitism may not itself be antisemitic, but it is arguably “anti-Jewish.”

What gets under the skin of so many of the group’s critics is how JVP flouts a cardinal moral rule of a pariah people, which is the deep, often myopic solidarity that defines the embattled in-group. Themselves subject to internecine rifts, the most active members inside the in-group tend to circle around their own narrow wagon when pressed from the outside. One could look for this in rabbinic and Hasidic sources, where the love of the people Israel (ahavat Yisrael) reflects a supreme religious value, one that has carried over into the larger Jewish world. No matter how much they fought against each other, Jewish socialists and socialist Zionists, rightwing Zionists and leftwing Zionists, Reform Jews and orthodox Jews, religious and anti-religious staked their position in uncompromising solidarity with the Jewish group and its immediate political interests. Given the history of anti-Jewish prejudice and violence, the anti-Zionism over at JVP faces insurmountable obstacles in the Jewish community. The impression that JVP deliberately sets itself outside the communal tent aggravates these arguments at the very moment when recent governments under Prime Minister Netanyahu do so much to alienate American Jews from Israel with sustained lurching towards the radical political-religious right. JVP and the Jewish right are inverse mirror images to each other. In a co-dependent relationship, neither can do without the example of the other. The one is a buttress to the other and the other to the one, excepting for the fact that JVP holds no power.

JVP has its own perceived problem with Jewwashing that On Antisemitism will do nothing to resolve and everything to aggravate. In their self-positioning, they and they alone are “the good Jews,” the litmus test often being used to exclude “bad Zionist Jews” from various parts of the intersectional left. Given the prominence on the anti-Zionist left which has been deliberately cultivated, they are ultimately responsible for promoting and providing cover for full-blown expressions of anti-Zionism, including those that are structurally adjacent to and slip into actual antisemitism. Under the cover of JVP, one can say under the banner of the anti-Zionist left whatever one wants to say about Israel and Palestine, and now act against any and all Jewish groups that support the State of Israel. How can they be antisemitic, or at least anti-Jewish, when they act out against a broadly perceived Jewish political interest if JVP stands with them?

JVP should enjoy no monopoly on the Jewish left. Compare in contrast what in Langmuir’s words one might call the more “realistic” statement put out by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREG). It is more thoughtful, more nuanced, more focused on a conception of “the Jewish experience” as a basic starting point. The statement does not share the same reflect to change automatically the terms of the debate as soon as antisemitism is raised as a topic of concern, even within “the movement.” The JFREG statement even addresses why so many Jews, perhaps the vast majority of them, perceive the State of Israel to be a vital Jewish political and social interest. If Not Now represents another serious voice to the left of liberal Zionists like JStreet and Americans for Peace Now. If JVP gets a lion’s share of attention, they can only be commended for having mastered the art of agitprop. But much of that attention is of a negative sort. It owes itself to the vociferousness with which they have mangled Jewish norms and attacked Jewish communal institutions with so much destructive heat as to call their moral judgment and political priorities into serious question.

After reading On Antisemitism: Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice, with what information will the reader walk away with regarding modern Jewish history, antisemitism, and the history of Zionism beyond a cursory sketch and crude caricature? What do we learn about the American Jewish community other than it it supports the status quo, in the Age of Trump?! And what do we learn about antisemitism except that, today, is a microaggression used for political purposes in relation to Israel and Palestine and to shoring up Ashkenazi privilege and white supremacy?

Solidarity and the unified struggle against antisemitism, racism, and Islamophobia in this country and in Israel are all urgent political tasks, and the “question of Palestine” has always been and remains an urgent Jewish political interest. Not taking the subject seriously, On Antisemitism effectively leaves the discourse about antisemitism in the hands of the Jewish far right, and in the more responsible hands of mainstream organizations like ADL that are themselves committed against antisemitism and racism. For its part, the Jewish left has to bring something to the table aside from apologetic obfuscation and intra-Jewish trolling. JVP and BDS are the useful idiots of the Jewish right. Wielding no actual political power, they work to whip up the Jewish right and alienate politically non-committed liberal Jews from social justice work. On Antisemitism: Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice is wrapped special for Hanukah, a gift to the Jewish right from the intersectional left.

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December 2, 2017 Umm al-Amad, Ma‘in David Shulman

Touching Photographs

Umm al-Amad, July, 2017. photograph: Margaret Olin

He’s young, the lieutenant; the faint trace of a mustache tells all. Awkward, inexperienced, unsure. More than a boy, hardly a man. He speaks fast, the words clipped, sharp, hurtful. He keeps playing with his rifle, waving it, aiming it, caressing it, turning it upside down, comforting it when it somehow rights itself again. The bullet clip is loaded; I can’t see if the safety catch is released. I don’t like any of this, for two reasons. First, I don’t like guns. I had to carry one, when I was a little older than the lieutenant, and I hated it. Second, I don’t like men who like guns.

Photo: Guy Butavia

He’s here to drive the shepherds off their lands. He’s got the Closed Military Zone order, not in its usual hard-copy form, a piece of paper signed by the Brigade Commander, but…

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I’m A Dog Shit Democrat

Thinking about the tax bill that the Senate just passed, with the collusion of liberal Republicans and the so-called maverick. Thinking too about all the people, especially young people, who don’t vote, because, you know, whatever. Politics is not about keeping your hands clean. I’m a proud Dog Shit Democrat. I’ll always show up to vote and I’ll vote for the Democrat and only the Democrat all the time.

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[jewishphilosophyplace]

Antisemitism Has Always Slipped Into Anti-Zionism (A Note from Damascus) (1929)

Here’s an interesting bit from Norman Stillman’s anthology of documents, Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times. It was written in 1929 by A. Silberstein, the director of the Alliance School for Boys in Damascus in the wake of the anti-Jewish riots and massacres in British Palestine of the same year. (Regarding that event, see Hillel Cohen’s  book 1929: Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict about which I have blogged here at JPP). Stillman takes care to note that Silberstein was actually an anti-Zionist and worked against Zionist activity in the Syrian Jewish community. But here’s what he had to say. “The Arabic and even the French newspapers of Syria and Lebanon continue to be very  violent in their attacks against the Zionists. The term ‘anti-Semite’ has disappeared from Syria; thoday there are no more anti-Semites among us, but rather anti-Zionists! In employing this term. the papers believe that they are permitted to say anything against the Jews! Should our Syrian co-religionists rejoice by this change of vocable? I think not, since for the masses, Zionists and non-Zionists are Jews. It is true that for a few of our neighbors, the Zionists are something else entirely, and many have gone so far as to ask us whether the Zionists have the same religion as other Jews” (p.358).

It would be not too hard to gloss these remarks on to today, when the worst possible things can be said about “Zionists” or “Israel” as if the words had no connection to antisemitism. Israel and racism. Netanyahu wearing a necklace made of the skulls of Palestinian children. Israel and Nazis. Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto. Israel harvesting the organs of dead Palestinian protesters. Israel maiming Palestinian protesters in order to control the population. Zionist control at the American University in Beirut, Zionism and white supremacy. Israel and police violence against African Americans, Zionism and genocide. Should we be happy about the change of “vocable”? Apparently what is sometimes called “the new antisemitism” (Israel taking the place of world Jewry as a central locus of evil) picks up and transforms the classical expression.

What Silberstein already saw in 1929 is that there is no way to control the slippage between “Jews” and “Zionists” or “antisemitism” and “anti-Zionism.” Certainly not when one allows gives free reign to the imagination, to the most hateful expression about Israel. Non-binary in character and for good and for bad, the categories –Jew, Zionist, antisemitism, and anti-Zionism– are too cooked, one into the other and the other into the one. There’s no way to make such hard and fast distinctions, try as one might. In Silberstein’s letter, what one is left with at best are well meaning but ridiculous questions about whether or not the religion of Zionists is the same as the religion of the Jews. I imagine this happens a lot on the anti-Zionist Jewish left, that these questions get asked by well meaning gentiles or even Jews, these attempts to unscramble the omelette.

http://ift.tt/2irbDDA

[jewishphilosophyplace]

Scholarship, Activism, & Jews Who Tarry (Max Weber)

After so many years, the conclusion of Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation” still has the power to bring up short a Jewish reader. Writing against armchair prophets, the main thesis of the essay is to draw a bright red line between the work of the scholar from practical political work. Speaking to the his generation of German youth who hunger for religion and religious truth, Weber sets up this stark choice. Either “man” up and come to terms with the reality of our disenchanted world, or go back to church.  For those who in his day “tarry for new prophets and saviors,” Weber cites Isaiah’s oracle, He calleth me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if you enquire, enquire ye: return, come.” Out of the blue, the concluding paragraph refers to the Jews of Weber’s own day. “The people to whom this was said,” namely the Jews, “has enquired and tarried for more than two millennia, and we are shaken to realize its fate.” Sounding like a political Zionist, which he was not, Weber concludes, “From this we want to draw the lesson that nothing is gained by yearning and we shall act differently. We shall set to work and meet the ‘demands of the day,’ in human relations as well as in our vocation. This, however, is plain and simple, if each finds and obeys the demon who holds the fibers of his very life” “Science as a Vocation” in  From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, p.156). Shaken to the core, the sociologist calls critical attention to the miserable condition of a dreamy pariah people as a negative foil with which to model political work in relation to the vocation of scholarship.

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[jewishphilosophyplace]

Antisemitism Panel At New School Live Tweets

For anyone interested, here’s my live tweets from the Antisemitism Panel at the New School. As best I know, the world did not end. The genuine (as opposed to bogus) hoopla leading up the event was that the panelists were not equipped to deal with a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon, but I will say that Leo Ferguson was genuinely thoughtful and Lina Morales had an interesting moment where she voiced criticism of “the movement.” But there was little to be learned about antisemitism at a panel hosted by a university. About that the critics were right, but no damage done. Whatever you already thought you would have left still thinking. The greatest problem with the event was that all questions from the audience were written on index cards and pre-screened. While i understood the perceived need to control the crazies, so much for open discussion. As it was, there was only one disruption, and this from a man complaining about the silencing of the direct audience voice  I tried to keep my commentary to a minimum. The live tweets below start from the bottom.

TweetsTweets, current page.

Tweets & replies

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 4m4 minutes ago

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The genuine hoopla about the Antisemitism panel was that the panel was not going to be able to address a phenomenon that is complex, and multi-faceted. This turned out to be the case. @TheNewSchool opened the conversation, but did not hit the mark

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 18m18 minutes ago

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okay, that New University Antisemitism Panel was pretty awful

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 22m22 minutes ago

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Leo Ferguson back to talking about antisemitism at New University Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 23m23 minutes ago

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Lina Morales talking about white backlash in the U.S. at New University Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 24m24 minutes ago

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Claire Potter says “a disruptor got up and started yelling that the panel won’t let anyone else talk, which is true: you can send an index card up with a question, but you can’t actually ask a question” at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 26m26 minutes ago

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Lina Morales does not understand that a third or half of German Jews knew what was happening and got the hell out of Dodge by immigrating to… Palestine —at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 30m30 minutes ago

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Rebecca Vilkomerson now backing up the claim that antisemitism is not institutionally structural in the U.S. today at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 32m32 minutes ago

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Linda Sarsour now addressing the statement she made that “antisemitism is not systemic.” (i.e. not written into law today like other forms of racism today) (institutionalized in 2017).

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 37m37 minutes ago

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Linda Sarsour set no litmus test on Zionism when raising money for desecrating cemeteries at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 38m38 minutes ago

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Replying to @ZacharyBraiterm

at the New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 38m38 minutes ago

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Linda Sarsour says she opposed antisemitism in her community and Jews need to do the same re: Islamophobia

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 39m39 minutes ago

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Linda Sarsour brings it back to herself at the New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 40m40 minutes ago

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Linda Sarsour says not everyone in the movement needs to agree with each other at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 41m41 minutes ago

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Sarsour thinks that progressive Zionists want to impose Zionism on the movement, that they are new to the movement and don’t know how to play the game. Lecturing the Jewish community.

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 44m44 minutes ago

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Sarsour returns to Palestinian narrative on Zionism, as her right. Is unable to know what people want her to think about Zionism at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 46m46 minutes ago

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Amy Goodman wants to know if Sarsour can work w/ progressive Zionists for justice in Palestine at New School Antisemitism Panel. Can you work for Palestine without supporting BDS? Sarsour says, don’t interfere with her right to support BDS. Sarsour conflates Zionism w Holocaust

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 48m48 minutes ago

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recognizes this is a genuine problem with JVP

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 49m49 minutes ago

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Replying to @ZacharyBraiterm

at the New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 49m49 minutes ago

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Lina Morales trying to bring nuance to her anti Zionism at New School Antisemitism Panel not because she is “above” Jewishness but from within a position of Jewishness. Takes some in JVP to task on this score

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 56m56 minutes ago

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Panelists are finished. Discussion time for the panelists at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 58m58 minutes ago

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Linda Sarsous says she’ll show up to do antisemitism work, even if people don’t like her at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 59m59 minutes ago

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Linda Sarsour says Jews should just show up to do social justice work without imposing one’s own personal litmus tests, just like she does at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Linda Sarsour has always been an ally of jews at New School Antisemitism Panel. Her Jewish friends are not Zionist.

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Linda Sarsour wants to know why only experts on antisemitism should be on a panel on antisemitism at a university at New School Antisemitism Panel. Back to talking about Linda Sarsour, not antisemitism

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Linda Sarsour has always been talking about intersectionality before it was cool. She’s going to tell us what intersectionality is (as intersected oppressions)

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Linda Sarsour talking about herself at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Rebecca Vilkomerson arguing that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, but the real problem is The Institutional Jewish Community. It’s only JVP that’s going to do the social justice work.

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Rebecca Vilkomerson now railing against ADL and others at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Rebecca Vilkomerson trying to figure out how to talk about real antisemitism and its political abuse at the same time at the New School Antisemitism Panel. She’s “angry” at Jewish community hypocrisy. Now into a deep anti-Israel rant

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Replying to @ZacharyBraiterm

(Rebecca)

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Rachel Vilkomerson quickly pivots to fighting Israel apartheid at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Rebecca Vilkomerson talking about the visibility of antisemitism in the Age of Trump at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Lina Morales, Zionism as tool of western imperialism and antisemitism

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Look, none of these people at the New School Antisemitism Panel are so far bringing any scholarly expertise. Sweeping generalizations about history

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Lina Morales now talking about Zionism and colonialism at New School Antisemitism Panel and genocide of mizrachi jewish cultures

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Lina Morales talking about antisemitism as tool of capitalism and imperialism at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Lina Morales talks about antisemitism as tool of western society used to obfuscate at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Lina Morales talking about antisemitism and jews of color and against the idea that POC are disproportionately antisemitic, Zionism, anti-imperialism

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Leo Ferguson did not mention Israel and Palestine at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 1h1 hour ago

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Leo Fergusion talking about friends and allies in the Age of Trump, deep and trusting partnerships between Jews and others. He’s still skating around the Israel and BDS question which muddies the water (his term). Keeping focus on anti-Sem versus false charges

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 2h2 hours ago

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Back to talking about abuse of antisemitism at New School Antisemitism Panel, i.e. false accusations, etc

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 2h2 hours ago

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Replying to @ZacharyBraiterm

and scapegoating jews

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 2h2 hours ago

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Leo Fergusion talking about capitalism and antisemitism

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 2h2 hours ago

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Within 2 minutes, Leo Ferguson pivots from antisemitism to the manipulation of antisemitism at the New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 2h2 hours ago

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Leo Ferguson introducing a short history Antisemitism at New School Antisemitism Panel

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 2h2 hours ago

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the comments at Jacobin FB page for the New School Antisemitism Panel is bat shit crazy

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 2h2 hours ago

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Zachary Braiterman Retweeted jacob

It’s not a Sarsour event. She’s one panelist on a panel organized by JVP, Jews for Economic and Racial Justice, and Jacobin Magazine

Zachary Braiterman added,

jacob @jacobplitman

Sarsour event begins with recalling Charlottesville, “these racists felt safe enough to march without hoods, chanting ‘Jews will not replace us'”

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 2h2 hours ago

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Amy Goodman New School Antisemitism Panel talking about Charlottesville

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Zachary Braiterman‏ @ZacharyBraiterm 2h2 hours ago

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Alisa Wise at New School Antisemitism Panel sets up the dichotomy between those who support JVP and pro-occupation Islamophobic right supporters of oppressive agendas

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[jewishphilosophyplace]

(Not Anti-Semitic) Anti-Zionism is Anti-Jewish (BDS)

Sometimes or often enough, anti-Semitism, loosely defined as an antipathy to Jews and Judaism, inflects BDS and anti-Zionism writ large. Recent evidence for such is sustained by a story recently making the rounds regarding the co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine. http://ift.tt/2BhTR9x But perhaps the more apt term is “anti-Jewish.” Over time, the State of Israel, for all its many and serious faults and failings, is come to be perceived to be a vital Jewish political interest by the large segments of the population that dominate the community, both in Israel and in the United States. BDS is not the same as working to end the occupation or to promote a just and peaceful resolution to the Isreal-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts. This has nothing to do with the 1967 occupation of Palestinian territories and the Israeli settlement project. Anti-Zionism opposes the very notion of a democratic Jewish majority state in any part of Palestine, in which the culture, values and narratives are defined by “Judaism” and “Jewishness.” For many/most Jews, sovereign Israel, being a majority Jewish country, is the one place in the world not defined by the cultures of either Christianity or Islam. Supporters of BDS, be they non-Jewish or Jewish, are dense in not understanding the rage they provoke from large segments of the active Jewish community when they propose to cast off and stigmatize the place and polity under which half the Jewish people call home. BDS and anti-Zionism may or may not be anti-Semitic as classically defined; they jury is out and proceeds case by case. But there’s every reason to see why so many Jews understand BDS and anti-Zionism to be “anti-Jewish.”

  http://ift.tt/2BjKLJk

[jewishphilosophyplace]

The Cinema of Spiritual Life (Deleuze)

A fascinating quote by Deleuze on cinema and thought the keyterms of which are “decision,” “obstinacy,” “choice,” “existence,” and “spiritual life.”

“The reverse was also true, one went right from cinema to philosophy. Something bizarre about the cinema struck me: its unexpected ability to show not only behavior, but spiritual life [la vie spirituelle] as well (at the same time as aberrant behavior). Spiritual life isn’t dream or fantasy—which were always the cinema’s dead ends—but rather the domain of cold decision, of absolute obstinacy, of the choice of existence. How is it that the cinema is so expert at excavating this spiritual life? This can lead to the worst, a cinematic Catholicism or religious kitsch [sulpicisme] specific to the cinema, but also to the greatest: Dreyer, Sternberg, Bresson, Rosselini, and even Rohmer today. It’s interesting how Rohmer assigns to cinema the study of the spheres of existence: aesthetic existence in La Collectionmuse, ethical existence in Le Beau manage, religious existence in Ma nuit chez Maud (My Night at Maud’s). One thinks of Kierkegaard, who, well before cinema, already felt the need to write in odd synopses. Cinema not only puts movement in the image, it also puts movement in the mind. Spiritual life is the movement of the mind. One naturally goes from philosophy to cinema, but also from cinema to philosophy.”

   “The Brain Is the Screen: An Interview with Gilles Deleuze” in Gregory Flaxman (ed.), The Brain Is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema. p.366

http://ift.tt/2BqReDb

[jewishphilosophyplace]

Thanksgiving Sheni

In the spirit of John Waters, I rushed off after Shabbat to the local Morton Williams to pick up an extra cheap supply of Thanksgiving fixings: cranberry sauce, stuffing, and margarine. The turkey was leftover from Marilyn’s, but the good stuff always comes out of a box and a can. I personally prepared, cooked and  reheated the whole damn mess in under 7 minutes. I’m that good. Sorry, Mom, but you know the consensus by us about canned cranberry sauce, especially in regard to the importance of maintaining those ridge lines on the goop. Also, everyone, and I mean everyone, agreed that my stuffing was better. After all that sodium, my heartbeat is racing like a thoroughbred going through its paces.

http://ift.tt/2zBry9t

[jewishphilosophyplace]

The Virtue of Meaningless Bourgeois Religion (Ancient Judaism) (Max Weber)

“Meaning” can sometimes seem like it is all the rage around some corners of the contemporary Jewish discourse, particularly in relation to religion and ritual. “Have a meaningful fast.” “What is the meaning of life?” “The synagogue seems to so many to be utterly devoid of meaning.” You get the point. “Meaning” is not a term that I use much. In the various worlds of contemporary theory, the very concept is retardataire. “Meaning” is tied up with language, semiotics, symbolism, and other theoretical themes left behind in the turn away from the linguistic turn. Reading Max Weber confirms why we might be better off without the pretentious term.

Doing due diligence for the Religion Studies Theories and Methods Seminar brought me to Weber’s Ancient Judaism. Weber, of course, was very interested in “meaning” precisely because he thought we lived in a meaningless world. This is in the definition of basic sociological terms in the opening chapter of the massive Economy and Society. For Weber, meaning is only a subjective ascription assigned to social action. Weber’s study of ancient Judaism re-enforces that subjective-social definition of meaning that is rational and humane.

Not so interesting about Ancient Judaism is the way the book is intended to shore up Weber’s thesis about the origins of capitalism in the Protestant west. Setting aside the anachronism, part of the point is to argue against Sombert and maybe Marx that the Jews and Judaism are unimportant engines of modern capitalism. Weber argues that the pariah status of the Jews does not lend itself to capitalism and that, in Judaism, the study of law and ritual practice are more important than making money. At the same time, Weber sees in the religion of ancient Israel a precursor form of rationalism that he contrasts with the religions of India, as well as the cosmo-theology reflected in the religions of China. In the Hebrew Bible the world is not fixed, not mystical, not magical, possessed of no “meaning” beyond history and human action. To be sure, one can inquire about the divine purpose, the anger of God, etc. But “[b]eyond that, there was nothing. This presupposition indeed, precluded the development of speculation about the ‘meaning’ of the world in Indian fashion” (p.225, cf. pp.206, 313, 317, 398).

Based on a picture of a world without meaning, Weber’s thoughts about the flat affective character of Israelite religion are utterly disenchanting. After Buber and especially Heschel, the argument seems counter-intuitive, indeed contradicted by charismatic prophetic visions of a world saturated by meaning, by the pathos of God. I am suggesting here that to grasp this part of Weber’s argument depends upon a recognition of ancient Israelite texts as literary art-objects. Indeed, reading such texts leaves one with two alternative interpretations. One possible interpretation is that the prophetic text reflects that real, overpowering of some immediate religious experience, reflecting the actual pathos of a great religious affect that saturates the prophet. An alternative interpretation is that the prophet is a literary persona and that prophetic books constitute no direct recording device of some intentional subjective state of lived consciousness, but is itself a carefully crafted poetic device. In support of the latter possibility is what Weber identifies as the suppression of prophecy by the “bourgeois” priests in the history of ancient Israel (pp.380-2). In like manner, the hot expectation that would seem to animate in our sources the idea of the future redemption is recognized by Weber to have been ultimately compressed into the limiting frame of “soulful longing” (p.399),  a subjective state with no genuine objective meaning apart from its own expression. Weber also insists that what others will later call the messianic idea in Judaism is a strictly religious one, not political. In line with the argument in “Politics as a Vocation,” prophets are not politicians. Weber’s data for ancient data is primarily textual, which calls attention to the artful compression of literary-religious expression beyond which they “mean” nothing.

A takeaway from reading Weber’s analysis in Ancient Judaism is that “meaning” is as overrated a phenomenon as the bourgeoisie is an underrated one. The concluding pages to Ancient Judaism indicate the power of endurance enjoyed by this particular religious form. Weber speculates that the appeal of Judaism in the ancient world to converts, especially after the collapse of Hellenic states, was the grand and majestic idea of God, the elimination of cult deities, a vigorous ethic, and a fixed order of life offered by ritual (pp.419-20). In the self-formation of this pariah people, prophecy and ritual contribute to the making of an exclusive “confessional association” (p.336). Viewed from an opposite perspective, the failure of Christianity to convert the Jews was due to what Judaism had to offer the members of an exclusive “confessional association,” namely a stable tradition and structured way of life, “the strength of the firmly structured social community, the family, and the congregation.” These closing words to Ancient Judaism read like a paean to the bourgeois virtue of the Jews. “All of this,” he wants his readers to appreciate, “makes the Jewish community remain in its self-chosen situation of a pariah people as long and as far as the unbroken spirit of the Jewish law, and, that is to say, the spirit of the Pharisees and the rabbis of late antiquity continued and continues to live on” (p.424).

Has Weber confused the religion of ancient Judaism with the rabbis or with the modern synagogue? It will help to remember that Das antike Judentum is itself a period piece. It appeared in the 1917–1919 issues of the Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialforschung right in the midst of and after the maw of the Great War. Consider too the simple decorative device on the front cover of the 1952 English translation. I might be overreading Weber’s thesis, but would argue that he encourages us to consider the religion of ancient Israel as priestly, bourgeois, and rational, not prophetic, radical, and mystical. The same goes for the modern Judaism of his day. In the face of catastrophe, the legacy of ancient Judaism and the picture of modern Judaism would be that of small comfort and humble virtue of social association in a meaningless world.

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UNDERSTANDING ANTISEMITISM: AN OFFERING TO OUR MOVEMENT (Jews For Racial & Economic Justice)

An excellent resource on understanding anti-Semitism from a left, anti-racist perspective put together by Jews For Racial & Economic Justice. The text is agnostic about Zionism, an ideology it refuses to reject out of hand, even as it supports legitimate criticism of the State of Israel. Primarily writing for non-Jews, but not just, the authors do not shy away from calling out anti-Semitism as it appears on the left. Appealing to Jewish difference and the diversity of Jewish difference, the vision of the Jewish people is global, multi-racial and inter-ethnic. An interesting document reflecting upon the Jewish left at our historical moment, you can read the whole thing here. It comes as close as it comes to pitch perfect.

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