semitism.net

This is the first in my Arrival Day 2005 essay series, which focuses on American Jews as part of a larger whole. Needless to say, there are many possible permutations to this theme, because the American Jewish community is both many distinct parts and a member of many distinct wholes. I began this series with the vague idea that the first whole to be discussed would be the United States at large, but it has become increasingly clear that the starting point must be the relationship of American Jews, and the greater diaspora, to the Jewish people.

The catalyst was Islamoyankee’s contribution to this year’s blogburst, in which he offered a digression on Philip Roth’s concept of “diasporism.” Diasporism is, in essence, an antithesis to Zionism, holding that diaspora Judaism’s interaction with the world makes it cosmopolitan and outward-looking while nationalist Judaism is narrow and chauvinistic. What Roth neglects to mention, however, is that for many people, diasporism is an existing belief system rather than a fictional construction.

With all due respect to Roth, I’d argue that diasporism is based on a false premise. There’s nothing inherently chauvinistic about nationalism or nationhood; after all, the fact that France is a nation-state with a relatively small diaspora hasn’t prevented it from developing a cosmopolitan culture. But I suspect that those who have adopted diasporism in actual fact have done so primarily for another reason: not out of belief that diasporas are inherently more outward-looking but out of mourning for lost innocence.

One of the defining factors in modern Jewish identity is that, on May 14, 1948, the Jewish people came down off a pedestal. Instead of a dispersed and persecuted people, Jews became masters of a nation among other nations. A Jewish state was created that got down in the dirt with other nations and, inevitably, committed the crimes of statehood. As it became clear that Jews were now a nation like any other and that the fortunes of diaspora Jewry were inextricably intertwined with those of Israel, there were those who mourned what they saw as diaspora Jews’ special moral status. From this came an ideology not much different from what was advocated by Philip Roth.

In its most extreme form, as advocated in Marxist professor Bertell Ollman’s Letter of Resignation from the Jewish People, this ideology posited Zionism as something inherently destructive to Jewish values:

From what I’ve said so far, it would be easy for some to dismiss me as a self-hating Jew, but that would be a mistake. If anything, I am a self-loving Jew, but the Jew I love in me is the Diaspora Jew, the Jew that was blessed for 2,000 years by having no country to call his/her own. That this was accompanied by many cruel disadvantages is well known, but it had one crowning advantage that towered over all the rest. By being an outsider in every country and belonging to the family of outsiders throughout the world, Jews on the whole suffered less from the small-minded prejudices that disfigure all forms of nationalism. If you couldn’t be a full and equal citizen of the country in which you lived, you could be a citizen of the world, or at least begin to think of yourself as such even before the concepts existed that would help to clarify what this meant…

As for what was lost in acquiring a homeland, it is important to recognize that Zionism is a form of nationalism like any other, and nationalism - as even sympathetic observers like Albert Einstein were forced to recognize - always has its price… Where Jews once believed they were “chosen” to receive God’s laws for all humanity, Zionists seem to believe that they were “chosen” to break them whenever they interfere with the national interest. What room does this leave for a belief in the inherent equality of all human beings?

Professor Ollman is right in at least one respect: that nationalism, and particularly successful nationalism, exacts a price in terms of moral compromise. What I think he fails to appreciate, however, is that existence as a stateless diaspora also exacts an ethical toll, and that it is one over which the diasporic population exercises far less control.

The existence of the premodern Jewish diaspora is often seen in terms of physical and social persecution, and this is no doubt what Professor Ollman meant by its “cruel disadvantages.” What is less appreciated - and, I think, often hidden - is that life in the diaspora required compromises of the soul as well as the body. From the late Middle Ages onward, Jewish habitation in Europe was conditional upon the usefulness of the Jews to the local rulers, and this often meant that Jews became the involuntary instruments of oppressive government policy. Jewish court factors collected taxes for feudal lords and absolute kings; Jewish agents collected rents for Polish landlords. In the worst case, Jews were kapos in concentration camps and members of the Judenrate of Nazi ghettos.

Needless to say, this circumstance was far from unique to Jews. Many other minorities have been used in much the same way. Colonial powers used favored groups, like the Tutsi in Rwanda, as middlemen and enforcers. Merchant minorities like the Armenians have likewise bought toleration by serving as the instruments of official policy. The oppressed throughout the world and time have bought their own lives and safety by serving their oppressors, often at the expense of their coethnics. Jews are certainly no worse than any other oppressed minority and, like many such minorities, diaspora Jews also developed a profound commitment to humanism and social justice. But it was not an accident that the founders of the Israeli state felt that nationhood was worth its price, because it not only enabled Jews to ensure their own physical safety but also freed them from the crimes of weakness.

Strength, of course, brings its own crimes. Indeed, because the strong are more powerful, their crimes are often greater. But the strong have a luxury that is denied to the weak: the ability to examine themselves, to take control of their own destiny, and to reject ethical compromise. Strength does not always bring ethical maturity, but it brings the potential for maturity in practice as well as in theory. It is the strong and secure who can look beyond the exigencies of survival and shape themselves into what they want to become.

All the same, there is something seductive about the crimes of weakness. It is possible to escape responsibility, to excuse those crimes by saying “we were forced to do it, we had no choice.” Strength carries not only the luxury of self-examination and self-correction but the responsibility, and that is a fearful responsibility to face. The temptation to escape responsibility in this manner has proven well-nigh irresistible to the Palestinians, who have time and again chosen the moral comfort of victimhood over the perils of mature self-determination. It has also proven irresistible to Jews like Professor Ollman, who confuse coercion and oppression with innocence.

I do not make that equation, and that is why I am a Zionist. I am a Zionist because I believe that the freedom of strength is worth the responsibility. I am a Zionist because the existence of Israel has given that freedom to the diaspora. There is no need, any more, for a Jew to say “I had no choice.” The excuse has been taken away, but so has the necessity. There is no need for any Jew, anywhere, to acquiesce in his own oppression or the oppression of others.

The fact that I am a Zionist does not, of course, mean that I am uncritically accepting of Israel or its policies. Indeed, I believe that the strength that comes with Jewish nationhood carries an obligation to be more critical and more exacting, to ensure that the luxury of self-examination is taken up and carried to its conclusion. I hold, as did Emmanuel Levinas, that Zionism must be not merely a nationalism of survival but a nationalism of values. I hold that Israel cannot call itself fully Jewish as long as it transgresses the values of Judaism, and that every Jew is responsible for ensuring that Israel keeps to those values as closely as possible. I hold, as well, that a Zionist state cannot deny to others the strength and moral responsibility that it has achieved, and that Palestinian freedom is therefore one of the most critical Zionist causes of our time.

And here is where, despite being a Zionist, I am also a bit of a diasporist. I insist that Zionism incorporate the best of the diaspora while discarding the worst; that it include diaspora Jews’ universalism and humanism as foundational principles. And I demand, at the same time, that the diaspora take on the best of Zionism: the responsibility and free choice that comes with strength, the ability to create one’s own destiny rather than fulfilling the roles assigned by others. If Zionism is the thesis and diasporism the antithesis, then from both must come the synthesis, and the Jewish future.

Jonathan, you’ve started a very interesting discussion.

Nations are, first and foremost, geographic entities. Americans are people who live in America - not just descendents of the Pilgrims, but Irish and Latino and Catholic and Jewish and Muslim and whatever. And to the extent that there’s an “American” identity, it’s constituted by the common experiences of the people who live here, not by ethnic factors per se.

It seems to me that Judaism is a religion. That’s not the same thing as a national identity. I don’t think one can accurately deny the category of “cultural” or non-religious Jews. Plenty of people consider themselves to fall in this category. My great-grandparents lived in the Shtetl, my grandparents were communists. This was common trajectory for many Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe and Russia. It’s part of my heritage.

But, really, I wouldn’t consider myself actively Jewish if I didn’t observe the Sabbath, study Torah, pray, etc. And as Rachel pointed out above, these activities can be conducted anywhere and do not depend on a presence in the “holy land”.

So, whence, really, the notion of a Jewish State? It’s not a theocracy (no matter what the religious parties think)… more of an ethnocracy. But a state where one ethnic group holds primacy over others is an inherently bad and unjust form of government.

In Israel, presumably all Arabs have equal rights, though discrimination in practice is well documented (you’ll say that this would not be true under a morally responsible Zionism). But to embrace this form of democracy, the state itself must take stringent measures to maintain a Jewish majority if it is to remain a “Jewish state”. This seems to me to be just another way of ensuring ethnic dominance.

Then there’s the question of who is a Jew for purposes of Israeli citizenship. The Mitrahi were considered Arabs when Israel was courting European Jews. Then, when European immigration fell off, suddenly the Mizrahi were Jews and Israel wanted them. Under Sharon, it seems that all Russians are considred Jews, no matter what their religion, as long as they vote Likud.

If someone with Jewish parents converted to Islam and then tried to immigrate to Israel, would he be Jewish?

My point is that “Jewish ethnicity” in this context becomes a completely arbitrary entity. We really are not a single ethnic group.

I’ll mention that I’m as opposed to the notion of Arab ethnic states as I am to a Jewish one. I suppose you could argue that, in an imperfect world, where Jews face discrimination and expulsion, a Jewish state is a practical necessity or at least an advantage. This was the strongest argument of the original Zionists, I feel.

But even if that is so - and even if you ignore the reductio ad absurdum argument (should every discriminated group have a state?) - I still don’t think we should embrace ethnic statism as a desirable form of government. At best, we should see it as a transitional form.

One last point: there are different forms of self-determination. Long before Zionism, Jews who faced discrimination in Europe came to the U.S., formed communities, participated in the democratic process, fought for equal rights here.

This could happen under democracy, where it could not in a Europe whose social organization still retained the vestiges of feudalism. But now that democracy does exist, working hard to preserve it, with its guarantees of religious freedom, is another form of self-determination - and is in no way a passive acceptance of victimhood.

Nations are, first and foremost, geographic entities. Americans are people who live in America - not just descendents of the Pilgrims, but Irish and Latino and Catholic and Jewish and Muslim and whatever. And to the extent that there’s an “American” identity, it’s constituted by the common experiences of the people who live here, not by ethnic factors per se.

I agree with two thirds of what you wrote here, but I think the other third is the fundamental point. Nations are not necessarily geographic entities. They are, at bottom, constructs created by human beings based on shared history, values and struggle. In some cases - even most - the people who construct a national identity are geographically concentrated, but in others they are not, and even where a geographically concentrated group is subsequently dispersed, it does not thereby cease to be a nation.

Jews, I would argue, are such a group. Would it even be possible to speak of “diaspora Judaism” if Jews had no shared history? Note that virtually all the other groups described as “diasporas” are fundamentally ethnic or national in character, and have something tying them together beyond shared beliefs. The very fact that a cohesive Jewish diaspora exists at all - that Judah Halevi is not an exclusively Sephardic poet, and Mendelssohn not an exclusively Ashkenazic philosopher - is proof of a peoplehood beyond religion.

But, really, I wouldn’t consider myself actively Jewish if I didn’t observe the Sabbath, study Torah, pray, etc.

I don’t observe the Sabbath or pray. I do study Torah, but more because my Jewish identity is intimately tied in with learning than out of any sense of religious obligation. I believe in God on alternate Thursdays. I have no religion. Despite all these things, however, I consider myself an active Jew. My Judaism is a heritage, a history, a culture and a kinship with those who share the same. I don’t think it can be said that there is only one possible construction of Jewish identity.

So, whence, really, the notion of a Jewish State? It’s not a theocracy (no matter what the religious parties think)… more of an ethnocracy. But a state where one ethnic group holds primacy over others is an inherently bad and unjust form of government.

As I have argued above, the concept of a Jewish state can be viewed in other ways: in terms of values, in terms of sanctuary or in terms of cultural preservation. (Your very eloquent essay of three days ago can, in fact, be read as a manifesto for a certain conception of Jewish statehood.) A state can be constructed around any of these concepts without hardwiring the subjugation of any non-Jewish ethnic groups. Indeed, I don’t think that even an ethnic state is inherently unjust to minorities; the EU model of ethnic states with collective and individual rights for national minorities seems no worse in practice than any other model of pluralistic statehood.

That Israel has done bad things cannot be denied. That some of these deeds have been influenced by nationalism also cannot be denied. But I would certainly deny that any of these deeds are inherent in Zionism.

My point is that “Jewish ethnicity” in this context becomes a completely arbitrary entity. We really are not a single ethnic group.

That isn’t the end of the matter when it comes to nationhood, though. In fact, you argue above (and I agree) that a nation, such as the United States, can incorporate more than one ethnic group. The question is how much of a common root the various Jewish ethnic groups have - and, I would argue, they share enough of one that they are not foreign to each other.

I’ll mention that I’m as opposed to the notion of Arab ethnic states as I am to a Jewish one. I suppose you could argue that, in an imperfect world, where Jews face discrimination and expulsion, a Jewish state is a practical necessity or at least an advantage.

This, I suppose, is where we all converge - you, me, Nicholas, Danny, even Neal. A Jewish state may be permanent or transitional, a necessary evil or a positive good, but it is a necessity as the world is presently constituted, and in all likelihood, the transition to a world in which it isn’t necessary will last beyond any of our lifetimes. I’ll let our descendants decide how to react to the changes that they face.

But now that democracy does exist, working hard to preserve it, with its guarantees of religious freedom, is another form of self-determination - and is in no way a passive acceptance of victimhood.

If you read the last paragraph of the main post, you’ll see that I agree - with the caveat, of course, that the one form of self-determination does not negate the other.

Hi, Jonathan. Thank you for your very thoughtful answer to my comment. You make a strong case for a responsible and humane Zionism. I appreciate your call for Jews to take collective responsibility both for our destiny, and for our actions with relation to other groups. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long, but I’ve been thinking about what you said before replying.

Nations are not necessarily geographic entities. They are, at bottom, constructs created by human beings based on shared history, values and struggle.

Perhaps you’re right. The most accurate statement would probably be that there is no universally accepted definition of a nation. Nationhood can be approached as an intrinsic characteristic of a group, or as a product of social forces. This quote is from “National Identity as a Philosophical Problem” by Omar Dahbour (The Philosophical Forum, Fall-Winter 1996-97):

On the one hand, national identity can be regarded as rooted in the fundamental and prepolitical features of personal identity; on the other hand, it can be considered to be primarily a function of a way of forming identities within modern life… Another way of putting this is to consider whether national identities are formed in a Lockean fashion or in an Hegelian fashion. As Jonathan Ree has emphasized, Locke regarded memory as the key to understanding the concept of personal identities; for national identities, the analagous concept would be some form of collective memory based on a common ancestry, kinship, or locality… Thus, to be Polish or Palestinian cannot only be a statement about affiliation with a state or political movement, but must also be about a kind of collective remembrance or a past existence.

Yet, from a different perspective, the idea that the identity of a nation is marked by some form of collective memory is at least as problematic an idea as many philosophers have come to regard Locke’s concept of personal identity. A nation - just as much as a person - ought to be viewed as the product of the “social practices which create and sustain it”. National identity… is a phenomenon formed within, rather than prior to, the practices of a society.

Either way, a nation can arise as the social self-conception of an existing state; but a sense of nationhood may also exist among a stateless group. The interesting question is whether nationhood exists organically in certain groups, or is manufactured.

Jews, I would argue, are such a group. Would it even be possible to speak of “diaspora Judaism” if Jews had no shared history?

My sense is that Zionism tried quite consciously to create a national identity for Jews along nineteenth century lines, which was rather at odds with our religion and culture. Nationhood, in the Lockean sense, was perceived to be the prerequisite for statehood.

An example of the way that Zionism changed Judaism is the perjorative meaning suddenly attached to the term diaspora. Here I quote biblical scholar Martin Baumann. The word made its first appearance in the Septuagint, the first Greek translation of the Books of Moses.

Suprisingly, the Hebrew words for exile, banishment and deportation, gôla and galût, were not rendered into Greek by diaspora. Gôla and galût, were understood as special biblical terms for the Babylonian captivity… and thus were translated in the Septuagint by Greek words denoting exile, captivity, deportation. Arowele stresses that Hellenistic Jews avoided making an equivalence between Gola and diaspora, thus purposefully differentiating between these terms…

Why is this so? Why did Jewish-Greek translators of third and second century BC intentionally distinguish between galût, and diaspora, and adopt a new word to neologically express their situation of living outside Palestine or Eretz Israel?

In retrospect, post-Babylonian Jews theologically interpreted the Babylonian captivity (galût) as a punishment exercised by God for disobedience to the commands of the Torah, the Jewish law. With the return to Palestine and Jerusalem (late 6th century) this punishment had come to an end - thus it was declared. Living subsequently, i.e. since the fifth and fourth century BC, again outside the “Holy Land”, was understood differently. It was not an imposed punishment for breaking the laws; no deportation as denoted by the Hebrew terms gôla and galût was involved.

In Hellenistic times, Jews were able to travel to Palestine and Jerusalem - the large number of pilgrims giving ample evidence of this fact. They could have returned and settled in Palestine, but most stayed in the diaspora. Why? Theologically, it was held that the gathering in the Holy Land was not to be brought about by men, but by God alone. As Davies clarifies: “If the return were an act of divine intervention, it could not be engineered or forced by political or any other human means: to do so would be impious.” The only activity men and women were able to undertake in the diaspora was to live wholeheartedly according to the commands of the Torah, in order to possibly bring about the final gathering a little earlier.

Jews considered diaspora (dispersion) to be a natural and appropriate condition until Zionism began to take hold in the twentieth century. Over the past hundred years, the term has regained a good deal of its exilic meaning (this, incidentally, had been retained in Christian theology, which still held that the Jews had been banished from Jerusalem for our sins).

In the evolution of Zionism, the paradigm shifted from possession of land as a necessity for the expression of Jewish nationhood, to the settling of biblical lands Israel as the overriding task of modern Jewry. This is from an interesting article I found by Kevin Avruch, from a 1998 issue of Judaism. He’s referring to a book by W.B. Davis called “The Territorial Dimension of Judaism”.

In one sense of course, as Davies notes at the close of his essay, it was the Zionists themselves, in advocating aliya, who brought the Land from the back to the front of Jewish consciousness: but hardly, especially in the early years of the movement, unproblematically so. Practically from the beginning, the powerful polemical voice of Ahad Ha’am (1856-1927) opposed the “political Zionism” of Herzl, arguing that the primary goal of the Jewish national awakening should not be a state-another state in a world of states-but rather a spiritual or cultural flowering of Jewish identity and peoplehood….

Thus the early Zionists did not speak univocally on the Land, even as they strove successfully to populate Palestine with Jews. It was in the transformation of religious Zionism into messianic nationalism that the Land is reconfigured as the sine qua non of Jewish redemption. For the activists in Gush Emunim, physical (re)possession of the towns and valleys and hills of Judea and Samaria, establishing Jewish settlements therein, is part of the Jews’ personal participation in the People’s redemption.

You wrote:

That Israel has done bad things cannot be denied. That some of these deeds have been influenced by nationalism also cannot be denied. But I would certainly deny that any of these deeds are inherent in Zionism.

No doubt the original Zionists had some good aims. I believe that they were trying, as you say, to take collective responsibility for the Jewish destiny. I am sure that they envisioned a state governed by all the Jewish virtues.

Nationalism can produce admirable ideals of universal value. Mahatma Ghandi succeeded in leading the Indian people where Nehru and others had failed, because he essentially created a national character in his own persona; and the qualities he chose to embody India are ones that have been an inspiration to the world.

But it seems to me that the worst atrocities of the past century had their roots in ethnic nationalism: Ku Klux Klan lynchings, the rise of Naziism driven by the notion of a superior Arayan race entitled to rule Germany, the partition of British India and the massacres that followed, the Armenian genocide, the slaughter of the Bosnians by Serbians and Croations, and of Tutsi by Hutu; the current conflict between Sunni, Shiites and Kurds in Iraq. In all these cases, demogogues created a sense of nationhood in people bound together by race or ethnic origin; inculcated the idea that nationhood confers the right to territorial sovereignty; and unleashed terrible racial - sometimes genocidal - violence.

While I greatly admire your call for responsible Zionism, I would argue that the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel is not an aberration. Ethnic nationalism is a flawed political philosophy. Even if it formally embraces notions of democracy, equality and humanism, it is in its nature to trample on other groups in pursuit of statehood. In fact, the more that Zionism idealizes Jewish values, the more crucial it becomes to purge the state of those who would dilute them. When moral purity is equated with ethnic purity, demonization and persecution of minorities is all but guaranteed.

Regardless of whether nationhood exists inherently in the Jews, or was created by social practices, this nationhood did not need to find expression in a bounded state. I can accept nationalism arising within a heterogeneous group in already-defined geographic boundaries, provided that the concept of nationhood is fluid enough to admit diversity of race, culture, belief and religion; but I cannot accept a nationhood based on ethnic or religious separatism.

I am sincere when I say that if anyone can redeem Zionism for me, it is probably you and you make a great case. But I still find myself feeling that, rather than expressing Jewish values, we have compromised them by our embrace of this philosopy.

I believe in God on alternate Thursdays.

I love that. But wouldn’t Fridays be better…?

Andrew:

The most accurate statement would probably be that there is no universally accepted definition of a nation. Nationhood can be approached as an intrinsic characteristic of a group, or as a product of social forces.

I’m not sure there’s really a distinction between the two. Describing nationality as “an intrinsic characteristic of a group” only begs the question of how the group coalesced in the first place and how it came to have a common identity. I’d say that nationhood is a social construct but, since it is constructed primarily from within, it eventually becomes intrinsic to its members.

Nations can be created, and while geographic concentration might make the creation process easier, it isn’t an absolute necessity. There are other diasporic nations; the Palestinians may be archetypal in that regard, and so are the Roma.

My sense is that Zionism tried quite consciously to create a national identity for Jews along nineteenth century lines, which was rather at odds with our religion and culture.

This, of course, isn’t inconsistent with there being a pre-existing Jewish national identity. One can interpret the Zionist efforts either as an attempt to create a national identity ex nihilo or to refashion one that already existed, and I’d argue that the latter is closer to the truth. Certainly, throughout the pre-Zionist diaspora, there was a certain degree of common cultural roots, a common belief system and scholarly language, a considerable amount of cultural cross- pollination and at least some sense of shared identity. The use of “people” or “nation” to describe the Jews was hardly a Zionist invention.

I’d argue that, rather than creating Jewish nationhood, Zionism changed it by structuring it around political self-determination. In fact, I’d venture that the Zionist movement wouldn’t have been nearly as successful if there hadn’t been a pre-existing sense of peoplehood that it could attempt to refashion.

Jews considered diaspora (dispersion) to be a natural and appropriate condition until Zionism began to take hold in the twentieth century. Over the past hundred years, the term has regained a good deal of its exilic meaning.

I’d actually disagree with both of these premises. Jews may have accepted the diaspora existence and found some worth in it, but the longing for the holy land was a frequent theme of Jewish poetry and prayer even during the pre-Zionist period. Nor has “diaspora” necessarily become a pejorative term today; I see it used most often as a neutral descriptor for Jews outside Israel rather than as a moral judgment. I don’t think the dividing line between pre-Zionist and Zionist Jewish peoplehood is nearly as sharp as you portray it.

But it seems to me that the worst atrocities of the past century had their roots in ethnic nationalism […] Even if it formally embraces notions of democracy, equality and humanism, it is in its nature to trample on other groups in pursuit of statehood.

As others have pointed out, universalist ideologies have been responsible for crimes that are as bad or worse. There is a beast lurking within every kind of political identity, and I don’t think the beast within ethnonationalism is necessarily more savage than the others.

Consider that universalist ideologies tend to be evangelical, finding no room to tolerate anyone who doesn’t share their belief system. Liberal individualism also has its evangelical aspects, given that it tends to subordinate group identities entirely (which may be why it’s easier to create in new societies where group identities are more attenuated and malleable to begin with). Ethnic nationalism, in contrast, isn’t intrinsically evangelical. It’s perfectly plausible for an ethnonationalist movement to relate to its neighbors on the basis of “you’ve got yours, I’ve got mine.” This can indeed happen even within a state, as evidenced by the EU national minority system. I’d argue that in many ways European democracy is based more on “tamed” ethnic nationalism than American-style liberal individualism, and that it’s quite workable as such.

I think you’re confusing ethnic nationalism with ethnic supremacism, when the latter is in fact only a subset of the former. There are branches of Zionism which are supremacist in nature - Kahanism, for instance - but plenty of others that aren’t, especially those that have ideologies beyond ethnic survival. I personally believe in a non-supremacist, humanist Zionism, and I’m certainly not the only one who does.

In fact, the more that Zionism idealizes Jewish values, the more crucial it becomes to purge the state of those who would dilute them. When moral purity is equated with ethnic purity, demonization and persecution of minorities is all but guaranteed.

But what if tolerance of minorities is itself one of the values that the state seeks to affirm? Levinas, for one, argued that respect for the moral rights of the Other was one of the Jewish values against which a Zionist state must measure itself. And while he was a relatively radical thinker, Enlightenment-based tolerance and humanism has certainly become a mainstream part of Judaism.

Imagine a state that affirmed your values, Andrew - that’s one possible formulation of Zionism.

But I still find myself feeling that, rather than expressing Jewish values, we have compromised them by our embrace of this philosophy.

Which, again, comes back to the topic of my original post. Nationhood does, indeed, entail moral compromises. No nation lives up to its values all the time, and most fall short often. However, existence as a diaspora is also morally compromising. Diasporic existence is also a real-world existence, and - like statehood - frequently entails unpalatable moral choices. Indeed, the subtext of quite a few medieval (and even modern) responsa consists of nuanced judgments as to exactly how much it is permissible to compromise Jewish values in order to stay alive.

I don’t equate Zionism with innocence, but I also don’t equate the diaspora with innocence or moral purity. The moral distinction between the two is less purity versus compromise than which compromise is more worth making. And of course, now that Israel is an established fact, the issue isn’t even that; it’s how the entire Jewish people, in Israel and the diaspora, can work together to affirm our moral principles.