Posted on November 7, 2007 by Steve Pollak
When asked about spirituality, many people like to say they don’t believe in any sort of “organized religion.”
Ruth R. Wisse, however, understands why being organized is a good thing for the Jews.
Her new book, “Jews and Power
,” explores the history of the Jewish people’s relationship with political power, whether it be their own in the state of Israel or someone else’s in the Diaspora. She begins the discussion with the loss of Jewish sovereignty following the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE.
Wisse, a professor of Yiddish literature and comparative literature at Harvard University, notes that many historians dismissed the idea that Diaspora Jewry engaged in any meaningful political activity during the years of exile:
Jewish political history was thought to have ended with the destruction of the Second Temple and started up again in the late nineteenth century. ‘We didn’t make our own history, the goyim make it for us,’ declares Yudka, one of the best-known characters of modern Hebrew fiction, founding member of an Israeli kibbutz. Yudka would simply forbid teaching Israeli youngsters about a ‘collection of wounded, hunted, groaning and wailing wretches always begging for mercy.’ His is the extreme voice of pioneering Israel that, having left the Diaspora in body, also wished to repudiate its qualities in mind and spirit.
For her part, Wisse rejects the notion that the departure from the land of Israel meant a suspension of Jewish politics for 1,800 years. But, while the book takes for granted that Jews remained politically active in the Diaspora, Wisse conjures a picture of a politically weak community not too far removed from Yudka’s description.
Wisse says Jews in the Diaspora placed more emphasis on their relationship with God than with the rulers of the land. This gave them a long-term view of their history and a belief that while empires rise and fall, the Jewish people could pursue their religious goals on a purely moral plain, she says.
“The more power Jews ascribed to God, the more politically independent they became of the power other nations wielded over them,” Wisse writes.
So, Jewish politics basically devolved into hoping God prevents another tragedy. At the same time, the Jews did their best to stay on the ruler’s good side.
It’s this position of political weakness and accommodation for those who would do us harm that Wisse assails in her book. She says the political weakness of the Jews made them more susceptible to scapegoating and violence. And, it turned Jews into continuous targets.
Indeed, it is almost formulaic in history: any time a ruler wants to deflect criticism of his own government, he can blame the Jews. It’s convenient and, as history has shown, it works. And it continues today.
In countries like Egypt where the vast majority of the population lives in impoverished conditions, the state-run newspapers and television stations regularly pump out anti-Semitic diatribes. At the same time, you never hear much criticism of the Mubarak government.
The emergence of the state of Israel obviously changes the dynamics of any discussion of Jewish political power. After all, we now have our own borders, our own army, navy and air force and a thriving economy that contributes to the region.
Wisse says she’s hopeful about Israel but she sees too many parallels between the politics of the Diaspora and the politics of the Jewish state. It’s a sure bet she views the Middle East peace process as a symptom of Diaspora-like accommodation.
“[T]he creation of Israel had inadvertently reproduced in the Middle East a political imbalance almost identical to the one that Jews had experienced in the Diaspora. Israelis were no more inclined or able to subdue the Arabs than the nations among whom Jews had sojourned in exile,” she writes.
The political accommodations of the peace process could leave Israel in a vulnerable position as it attempts to stave off its enemies — many of whom are also enemies of the United States and democracy in general. Here’s the line that lingers in the reader’s mind at the book’s conclusion: “The word goes forth from Zion in ways that earlier Israelites never intended: in defending themselves, Jews have been turned into the fighting front line of the democratic world.”
My chief complaint about this book is that Wisse leaves a lot of things unsaid. What exactly does she want Israel to do differently? Abandon the peace process? And what would she have wanted the Diaspora to do differently during its exile? What else can be done?
Wisse offers little in the way of alternatives. She notes that Israel cannot force the Arab nations bent on its destruction to think differently and it cannot will normalized relations with the rest of the world. This, presumably, is the ultimate objective of Jewish politics.
Our enemies will hate us under any scenario Wisse offers, whether we try to engage them using the Diaspora methods of accommodation and compromise or whether we come to them from a position of strength. She writes:
The options of self-defense that Israel acquired by establishing its own military and intelligence made Jews for the first time in two thousand years a potentially valuable ally, including of the world’s superpower, the United States. At the same time, Israel’s susceptibility as a Jewish and democratic state greatly enhanced its utility as a political target for those who demonized both Jews and democracy. These advantages and liabilities were inextricably linked, greatly magnifying Israel’s prominence in the international arena and exaggerating the image of Jewish ‘power’ without altering the radical imbalance between Arabs and Muslims on one side and Jews on the other. Already the world’s most mythologized people, Jews acquired as the despised ‘Zionist entity’ an international reputation greater than Jehovah’s.
That’s a nice observation but as I continued to read the book I kept wondering what is the ultimate point of Wisse’s analysis? To make us feel sorry for ourselves? To lose hope of ever having peaceful relations with the Arabs and Muslims?
Surely, that’s not a worthwhile message. And yet, I don’t see any other point she’s trying to make. Like I said, she doesn’t bother to say whether a solution exists.
My smaller complaint is that there’s not a lot in here that any Israeli history buff would find new. Also, the book has a neo-con tinge to it but that’s not surprising given that Wisse writes occasionally for Commentary. Indeed, at times I felt like I was reading an extended Commentary article.
In the end, I found “Jews and Power” to be a disappointing read not only for the lack of solutions but also for the hopelessness it evokes.