final solutions for you & me [going up & down] ...



~*~

THE
alternative story
I would tell of Jewish history
has three stages ...

~!@!~

IN
the first stage,
we find a people - call it a tribe -
not very different in certain respects
from peoples in similar material conditions all over the world,
a people like most others that regards itself
as special among humanity,
indeed as The People,
and its land as preeminently wonderful
among lands,
indeed as
The Land.


THIS is,
of course,
an oversimplification,
because this "tribe" never quite dwelled alone
and never regarded itself as
autochthonous
in its Land.

~!@!~

IN the
second stage,
this form of life increasingly becomes untenable,
morally and politically,
because the "tribe" no longer dwells alone,
as it were.

This is,
roughly speaking,
the Hellenistic period,
culminating in the crises of the first century,
of which I have read PAUL
as an integral part.

Various
solutions to this problem
were eventually
adopted.

Pauline
Christianity is one;
so, perhaps, is the retreat to QUMRAN,
while the Pharisaic Rabbis "invented" Diaspora,
even in the Land,
as the solution to this cultural
dilemma.

~!@!~

The rabbinic answer
to Paul's challenge was,
therefore, to renounce any possibility of domination
over Others
by being perpetually
out of power:

Just as
with seeing the return
in terms of the restoration of political rights,
seeing it in terms of redemption
has certain consequences.

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.

That coming was best served
by waiting in obedience for it:
men of violence would not avail
to bring it in.

The rabbinic aloofness
to messianic claimants sprang not only
from the history of disillusionment with such,
but from this underlying,
deeply ingrained
attitude.

It can be claimed
that under the main tabbinic tradition
Judaism condemned itself
to powerlessness.

But recognition of powerlessness
[rather than a frustrating, futile,
and tragic resistance]
was effective in preserving Judaism
in a very hostile Christendom,
and therefore had
its own brand
of "power."


~!@!~

As
before,
my impulse is only to slightly change the nuance
of the marvelously precise reading
above.

The renunciation
of temporal power
[not merely "recognition of powerlessness"]
was to my mind precisely the most powerful mode
of preservation
of difference and, therefore,
the most effective kind
of resistance.

The myDistory
of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai
being spirited out of besieged Jerusalem
[once Jewish Yerushalayim]
to set up the Academy at Yavneh
rather than staying and fighting for Jewish sovereignty
is emblematic of this
stance.

The Natorei Karta,
to this day. refuse to visit the Western Wall,
the 'holiest' place in Judaism, without PLO "visas,"
because it was taken
by violence.

And,
I would argue:
This response has much
to teach us.

I want
to propose
a privileging of Diaspora,
a dissociation of ethnicities
and political hegemonies,
as the only social structure which even begins
to make possible
a maintenance of cultural identity
in a world grown
thoroughly and inextricably
interdependent.

Indeed,
I would suggest that Diaspora,
and not monotheism,
may be the important contribution
that Judaism has to make to the world,
although I would not deny the positive role
that monotheism has played
in making Diaspora
possible.

The very current
example of eastern Europe
should provide much food for thought,
where the lesson of Diaspora,
namely, that peoples and lands
are NOT naturally and organically
connected,
were it taken to heart,
could prevent much
bloodshed.

Diaspora
can teach us
that it is possible for a people
to maintain its distinctive culture,
its difference,
without controlling land,
a fortiori without controlling other people
or developing a need
to dispossess them
of their lands.

THUS
the response of rabbinic Judaism
to the challenge of universalism,
which PAUL, among others,
raised against what was becoming
in the end of the millennium
and the beginning of the next,
an increasingly inappropriate doctrine of specialness
in an already interdependent world,
may provide some,
by no means all,
of the pieces to the solution
to the puzzle of how humanity can survive now
as another millennium has been drawn to its close
with no Messiah yet on the
mydirelihorizon.

I would argue,
therefore,
that only a precise reversal
of the synthesis
of domination and racism
could provide
any answer to the question
of how humanity
might
continue
to
survive.


Renunciation
of sovereignty,
autochthony, indigeneity
[as embodied politically
in the notion of self-determination],
on the one hand,
combined with a fierce tenacity
in holding onto
cultural identity,
on the other,
might yet have something
to offer.

For
we live in a world
in which the combination of these two
kills many thousands daily,
yet where the renunciation of difference
seems
both an impoverishment
of human life
and
an
inevitable
harbinger of
oppression.

What
goes around
comes around:
and what goes up
must come down ~ if the above pertains to groups,
so it does to individuals ~
to you and
me.


~liefdesverdriet~engel~verliefd~
engel
15 sep 2005 - bewerkt op 25 mrt 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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