On the Jewish Answer

(But what was the question?)

Alana Newhouse, founder of Tablet, has excited a good deal of discussion (both positive and negative) with her article “Zionism for Everyone” (which I suggest reading before you read this), in which she offers a modified version of the thesis that modern nationalism represents a kind of Judaization of the world, while also urging the nations of today to embrace this reality by following Israel’s example.

Meanwhile, Noah Millman, who is I think both tonally and substantively at variance with much of Tablet’s output, while still being concerned with many of its themes, had a very worthwhile critical response:

What Is a Zionism For the Palestinians?

Now, the entire subject is near and dear to my own heart, both because I am generally interested in the significance of nationalism for our world, and because I specifically wrote my dissertation on the ancient Hebraic sources of modern nationalism (fear not, dear reader, I’m not going to subject you to the entire thing).

So, naturally, I have some thoughts.

Newhouse’s argument in a nutshell is that we more or less live in a world of nation-states, in which peoples have a state to represent them and most states have a people they represent. And this conceptual framework of “peoplehood” derives from 19th-century German Romanticism, which among other concerns sought to establish a firmer cultural basis for nation-states, in which a people is not just a political entity but a culturally rooted one with shared language, customs, history, and so on. In so doing, writers like Johann Gottlieb Herder looked to the ancient Israelites as their model.

Newhouse also argues that at a time in which nation-states seem to have lost their self-confidence, they in turn should look to modern Israel as a model in their own time of an ethnos unapologetically advancing its interests. Here, she takes up a theme that has otherwise become much beloved by the so called National Conservatives or “natcons”— viz. that countries should embrace their national identities as a part of a revival of solidaristic virtue.

This is especially the project of one particular natcon, Yoram Hazony, and perhaps inevitably he too leans heavily upon the Hebrew example. Indeed, he is probably the most prominent recent writer to explicitly link nationalism to the Jews. Interestingly, Newhouse doesn’t mention him at all. I suspect this is at least partly because his own thesis—that the ancient Hebrews were not just an important model for modern nationalism but were for all intents and purposes a nation in the modern sense—is fairly silly, though I’m not going to get into this too much, having written about it here:

Why Ancient Israel Was Not a Modern Nation

Now, given that Zionism itself was more imitator than imitated—being after all a relative latecomer to the global process of nationalization—there is some irony in posing it now as a general model, including for nations in which Israel itself was partly made in imitation.¹

But I think there is a deeper irony here: namely, that recommending Zionism to all the nations of the world in fact emphasizes its universalism under the guise of applauding particularism. For the very things that make Jews particular must be effaced if they are to serve as a useful example.

Newhouse takes Barack Obama to task for having relativized American exceptionalism, as when he said “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”² While he probably didn’t realize it, his language curiously echoed Spinoza’s treatment of Hebrew election. Spinoza concludes that election or “chosenness”—understood as material success and prosperity—is not divinely conferred but really available to all peoples who enjoy good laws and good fortune. The Celtics and Lakers were “chosen” in the 1980s, while the Bulls were chosen in the 1990s, and so on.

And this universalizing of particularistic identity was a necessary development in the history of nationalism, as well as one that was contrary to the original Hebraic understanding of chosenness (which is why it took an apostate to do it). That is to say, Jews themselves did not think of election as a generally favorable set of conditions potentially available to any population group, but as a divine and unique calling that derives from their original covenant with the LORD. And this has a good deal to do with why Zionism itself was, however ironically, such a late-comer to modern nationalism. Practicing Jews would not have recognized other nations as extensions of their own history, nor did they view secular nationalism as an available alternative to themselves until the late 19th century. In other words, it is precisely this same relativization (or universalization, if one prefers) that makes nationalism available as a wider model to Jews and gentiles alike.

Noah Millman asks somewhat pointedly whether, given this universalization of Zionism, Palestinians also get to have a Zionism of their own.³ And while I get his point as a practical matter, this is a funny question to ask conceptually, seeing as the answer is…yes, almost literally? By which I mean that while other nations may have been influenced by the Hebraic example (or at least a highly modified version of it), Palestinian nationalism very specifically emulated Zionism itself. (Even Rashid Khalidi, who makes a heroic attempt at drawing out the historical legacy of Palestinian nationalism, does not date it before the emergence of modern Zionism.)

Of course, the Palestinians are not the only people out there not to have a state, but their case does illustrate a more general gap between the theory and practice of nationalism: in theory every people might generate a state to represent them, but in practice there is only so much territory to go around when we’re talking about basically exclusive institutions, and borders, and all the rest of it. This is part of the great game of musical chairs that started up in the 19th century and again in the postwar era with decolonization (and yet again, albeit on a smaller scale, at the end of the Cold War).

In any case, the way these problems necessarily cash out in particular and material ways is just one of many issues with the attempts by figures like Hazony to produce a kind of universalistic teaching of nationalism. Not because nationalism cannot be universal in principle, but because it cannot be universal in practice.

One can affirm the idea of a world of nation-states, and even commend some moderate version of nationalism to countries to which you are well-disposed, but you cannot really be a nationalist of all stripes.⁴ This is just not how politics works, if you are really a political animal. Your experience of, and commitment to, political life has to settle upon a particular political community and its particular interests. Saying I am for Hungary, and Israel, and the United States, and so on only works as long as we don’t descend to the realm of actual material concerns, which is to say the realm of actual politics.

I do think Newhouse is probably correct in linking some of these tensions to the remarkable virulence with which Israel gets discussed these days, even in countries that have small or nonexistent Jewish populations and little connection to the Middle East (and one sees this even in non-Muslim countries like Ireland or Spain). But I am not persuaded that the reason is envy so much as a bad conscience (plus, obviously, some darker stuff). Israel just very starkly exemplifies what is already a general model for social organization in our world, regardless of whether one ultimately embraces an ethnic core. And its sharp edges are inherent in that same model when it comes to maintaining borders, demarcating populations, extending or withdrawing certain protections and benefits, and so on.

Suffice it to say, I suspect some of this fundamental discomfort would persist even if the Palestinian problem didn’t loom so large. Indeed, I would say—and here, Millman might agree—this same discomfort is why commending portable Zionism to the gentiles is a nonstarter. They are already increasingly wary of exercising basic border controls or affirming some core identity in the absence of bland praise of multiculturalism. The intense nationalism of Israelis, in conjunction with the violence they have both suffered and dished out over the past few years, is not likely to appeal where more modest measures at shoring up national sovereignty have failed. It’s a bit like telling someone “ok, you may not have loved Lou Reed’s other solo albums, but have you checked out Metal Machine Music?”

In any case, it may be too simple to propose that Zionism supplies the answer that other have been missing. There’s a famous saying from Pirkei Avot, attributed to Hillel the Elder, which Leon Pinsker quotes in Auto-Emancipation, one of the founding documents of modern Zionism: “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if not now, when?” But Pinsker’s usage omits a line from the original: “If I am only for myself, what am I?”

Leo Strauss remarks that omitting this line represented an expression of “pureblooded political Zionism”—that is, an outlook that is principally concerned with the practical matter of advancing one’s interests. (I don’t necessarily mean this in a Machiavellian sense—that practical matter is a precondition for life and in this case became particularly pressing in light of the Shoah.) But political Zionism cannot answer the “what am I?” question, and as Strauss notes “cultural Zionism” arose in response: “Cultural Zionism means simply that it is not enough to have a Jewish state; the state must also have a Jewish culture.”

But what is Jewish culture? Klezmer music? Woody Allen movies? Pickle jars? One can point to a range of cultural signifiers, from the trivial to the profound, but in the end it must refer back to Judaism itself, above all to the Torah. Indeed, this was Spinoza’s blueprint. Though hardly a believer himself, he derived his account of what we would now call national culture from the rituals and practices of the ancient Hebrews, which not incidentally had the effect of shaping them into a coherent political body distinct from other peoples. The jubilees and days of rest and feast-days and thousands of smaller observances were thus oriented toward this necessity in his account. Except that was hardly their original purpose.

Israel’s own nationalism inevitably reflects this tension, viz. the tension between its instrumental and its substantive identity. From an instrumental standpoint, “Jewishness” provides a strong basis for asabiyyah—collective solidarity—as expressed in its military service, uncommonly high birth-rates, general national pride, and so on. And this solidarity is crucial, really, for a functioning state.

But substantively speaking, Judaism itself has never quite licensed modern Zionism, and attempts to do have always been sketchy. Similarly, Judaism as an actual tradition has its own purposes, which is why you get these disputes over things like Haredi military service, which are by definition unresolvable, because you can say this is why we have a state, so we can defend ourselves, but then what is the point of having a specifically Jewish state if not to shelter the actual practices of Jews, as opposed to the generic requirements of any state, and around and around we go.

And this, too, is part of the reason why there are limits to emulating Israel on the part of other countries, that go beyond contemporary discomfort with Zionism. It is not enough to say you want to commit (or recommit) to your own national identity; you have to have a prior understanding of that identity as something robust and choiceworthy and non-instrumental—or you need a genius Rousseauean legislator willing to work for cheap.

This was part of Strauss’ point above: that Zionism exemplifies a larger problem of modern political community, which is that we cannot but treat as instrumental things like solidarity and meaning and group loyalty that necessarily resist instrumentalization. It is only made especially acute in its case because the source of that resistance is not merely ancestral tradition but divine commandment.

To be clear, Strauss was not an opponent of Zionism. Rather his view seems to have been that Zionism solved a particular problem—the statelessness of the Jews—while inevitably opening up new ones. And I would actually say this is true of nationhood as such: that it solves certain fundamental problems of social organization while producing new ones.

And so this dilemma, which is resolvable really only in practice rather in principle, may stand in for the tensions inherent not just in Zionism but in any form of nationalism, as those who seek to emulate the former will likely rediscover.

1. This was part of Tony Judt’s case for the the prosecution.

2. Strictly speaking, this is sort of true/sort of not. Viz. some countries clearly have a deep sense of exceptionalism as a feature of their national identity—Russia, Iran, etc.—others less so. The Brits are in interesting case, because they are indeed distinctive, but it’s not really in their character to make a big thing out of it.

3. To Millman’s riposte, I might add the case of Germany, which remains the most pro-Israel of Western European countries for certain, um, historical reasons, but partly due to those same reasons is unable to embrace its own Germanness in the same way that Israelis might embrace their Jewish legacy.

4. One can participate in what Orwell called “transferred nationalism”—i.e., a kind of proxy nationalism in which one’s primary attachment is to a foreign cause, but even then one has just switched one commitment for another.