Tag Archives: Judaism

Nationalism Restored

01 Saturday Sep 2018

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Hazony, Yoram. The Virtue of Nationalism. New York: Basic Books, 2018. 304 pp.

Ever since the cultural turn in academia in the early 1970s, it has become de rigueur to disparage nationalism as a volatile and dangerous sentiment susceptible to extreme violence and prejudice. Nationalism was cast as an imagined community with the implication that it was a simulacrum whose substance came wholly from fabricated myths, rituals, and symbols. In this echo chamber, Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism comes as a rare and welcome breath of fresh air that revives the idea and places it in context with other alternatives that have been offered over the ages.

Hazony looks to the Bible, specifically Devarim, to find his definition of nationalism. The scriptures actively promote the feeling of brotherhood among all members of the Jewish nation and Mosaic law would serve as their constitution; the king of the Jewish state, its priests, and prophets would all be drawn from among the brotherhood and each would have a role in preserving the traditions, customs, and laws of the community. Geographically, the boundaries of Israel are set by Moses as he expressly forbids the expansion of the nation-state into the neighbouring lands of Esau, Moav, Lot, and Ammon.

The ambitions of nationalism are clearly limited and not inherently expansionist or committed to world domination as critics are prone to hyperventilate. Hazony does not deny that there has been great violence in the past in the name of nationalism but that is also true of any other theory of mass organisation, ethics, and governance. This is an interesting proposition put forth by the author, that nationalism is not merely a feeling of cultural connectedness between people who do not know each other but properly seen, it also includes a system of ethics.

According to Hazony, the roots of nationalism are to be found in the structure of the family – individuals are biologically related in a family and share a sense of rights and duties, blood and belonging, vis-a-vis one another; the prosperity of one member is the success of them all. As families band together into clans, clans into tribes, and tribes into nations to provide better security and accomplish greater tasks, the loyalty commanded by the heads is transferred upwards towards common characteristics the members share, such as language, faith, or ethnicity.

Using the family as a model of organisation for the state is certainly not peculiar to the Bible – similar notions are found as far apart as China and Greece. Confucius clings to the metaphor a little too closely with the result that the ideal Chinese state tends towards authoritarianism; Aristotle sees the polis – state – as the full flowering of the family life but does not carry the analogy too far as he recognises that there is a difference in the nature of power within states and families, not just quantitatively but qualitatively as well.

The Virtue of Nationalism juxtaposes a localised nationalism with universalist ideologies such as imperialism, Christianity, Marxism, and Liberalism. Nations are inherently anti-imperial and therefore more stable, the argument runs, because its members are connected to each other through bonds not mediated by institutions of state. Nations are particular to geography, language, faith, ethnicity, or some other criterion that defines the community whereas the universalist aspirations of Christianity, Islam, Marxism, and Liberalism fall to the temptation of conquest and subjugation of the entire world to the one “true” doctrine of choice.

Hazony’s depiction of nationalism as limited may be true in the Jewish tradition but it has had a very different history in Europe and Asia, at least. Halakha distinguishes between milkhemet mitzva – war of obligation – and milkhemet hareshut – optional war. In the first category fall, for example, the wars of Joshua against the seven nations while David’s campaigns of expansion come under the latter classification. In fact, G-d prohibits David from building the Temple because he was “a man of battles and [had] shed blood.”

It is also problematic to portray imperialism as a universalist principle. Although imperialists have no bounds to their geographic ambitions, it is usually also true that the imperial quest is usually carried out in the name of a nation; the various nations that fall to a growing empire are neither treated nor seen as equals. We see this again and again from the Roman Empire to the pink-tainted map of British expansion. Rome expanded its citizen base only in the latter years to stave off a fiscal crisis brought on by decades of decadent emperors but ties by birth or marriage to the Italian peninsula and preferably Rome were favourable traits to possess well into the second century. Similarly, London scoffed at Mohandas Gandhi’s idea that Britain welcome all inhabitants of its dominions as equal citizens of their empire. Hazony accepts this at one point, but not before an unnecessary discourse on the universalist instincts of imperialism.

The difficulty of sustaining nations on abstractions such as liberalism stems from the inability to justify loyalty to the principle. The likelihood of changing our minds as we experience life and are exposed to more information means that any belonging to an ideal remains unstable at best. Hazony takes help from psychology to make the case that humans are social animals who have a need to belong to networks and believe in something greater than than the mere material of life. Here, he brings up a word not often seen in nationalism studies these days – loyalty – which is the crux of the debate. It is not easy, if at all possible, to have loyalty to an idea in the same manner one feels ties to a sibling or parent.

Hazony reworks several historical events to lend support to his hypothesis, in many cases problematically. For example, rather than see the Thirty Years’ War from the traditional perspective of a conflagration between Protestants and Catholics, Hazony casts it as being primarily motivated by universalist impulses against local inclinations. While most historians would agree that the religious element ceased to animate the conflict as the years passed, the war remained an old-fashioned struggle for geopolitical dominance between France and the Habsburgs.

Perhaps the most jarring incongruity in The Virtue of Nationalism is how the second Christian schism is repackaged as a contest between universalism and particularism. At a certain level, it is undeniable that Catholic allegiance to their Pope made way for dual loyalties. However, it is hardly the case that Protestantism was a particularist creed any more than Christianity a sub-sect of Judaism. While the theological reorganisation gave monarchs their independence from Rome, the faith itself still believed it possessed a universal message. The recent Evangelical movement has strongly underscored this conviction.

The largest empire in the modern era was put together by Britain and it was Prussian militarism that sank Europe into the first of its cataclysmic convulsions of the 20th century. The United States began its expansionist project with Manifest Destiny and then eyed territories beyond; none of these countries were Catholic. What is disappointing is that these ill-considered examples are unnecessary and distract from Hazony’s already persuasive defence of nationalism.

These weak digressions may conceal the real import of The Virtue of Nationalism, which is an assault on the cult of the solitary individual. Hazony traces the roots of this ideology to at least one of its origins, John Locke. Hazony finds the English philosopher’s initial assumption that all people are rational and his utilitarian methodology in assessing rationality flawed. Contrary to Locke, Hazony argues that the fundamental unit of existence is not the individual or even the family but the community. Our ethics arise from our communal interactions as does our sense of self; in turn, these inform all our other beliefs and relations, such as liberty or nationalism.

This is at the root of the conservative world view, that the community and family are prior to the individual. Ever since the early Liberals recast society as a collective of individuals, the idea has taken hold and grown to a point where it is not even questioned any more. The few who reject this modern normal have usually done so on theological grounds and have been easy to ignore in an increasingly profane world. By reviving a classical framework, The Virtue of Nationalism fires a broadside at not just the critics of nationalism but the entire Liberal project. Not only are the dangers of a universalist mindset compared against nationalism and found to be as dangerous if not worse, but individual liberty is argued to be mere license if not exercised within the bounds of community and morality. Thus, this is as much a work of political philosophy as it is about nationalism.

It is to the author’s credit that he does not pay much heed to the silly distinction between patriotism and nationalism – Vidura counters this best in the Udyoga Parva in India’s treasured epic, the Mahabharata, when he says, “[t]hose prone to get drunk get drunk on knowledge, wealth, and good birth; but the same are triumphs of the strict.”

The Virtue of Nationalism is a short book and not written in a solemn academic tone despite boasting an impressive bibliography. Hazony would do well to realise, however, that his understanding of nationalism is peculiar to Judaism and not characteristic of all politico-cultural movements. The inadvertent contradistinction, however, should be most interesting to scholars of nationalism. Readers should beware that the chatty affectation of the book belies a profound sociopolitical weltanshauung and a powerful critique of Liberalism in all its guises. There may be some historical quibbles but they do not, oddly, take away from the overall argument and to narrowly focus on those would be to miss the forest for the trees. In an era of Liberal activist academia, Hazony’s efforts to take us back to first principles and rethink our implicit assumptions is a welcome intellectual challenge.

Jews and Israel, Nation and State

21 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by in Israel, Middle East

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The Israeli Knesset passed on July 19 the contentious ‘Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People’ legislation with 62 votes in favour, 55 against, and two abstentions. The slim margin of victory is a good barometer of the divisions the law has exacerbated in the Israeli and Jewish communities, Arabs and Jews, sabra and Diaspora alike.

In essence, the Nation-State Bill (NSB) explicitly declares Israel as the “national home of the Jewish people” and is part of the Basic Laws that guide Israel as a constitution might other states. It further declares that the undivided city of Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state and that the state shall “encourage and promote” the “establishment and consolidation” of Jewish settlements. Other clauses of the Bill reiterate the status of Hebrew, the Sabbath, the anthem, national holidays, and the use of Jewish symbols by the state. Furthermore, Israel will remain open for Jewish immigration and strive to ensure the safety of Jews all around the world.

The Bill was first proposed by former Shin Bet director Avi Dichter in 2011 and has caused controversy ever since. The barrage of criticism has been loudest from Israel’s own post-Zionists and the United States, though Arab members of the Knesset and Europe have not been far behind in their hyperbolic condemnation of the law that heralds the birth of “fascism and apartheid.” The primary concern seems to be that such a law disturbs the equilibrium between Israel’s democracy and its Jewish identity.

There is a fundamental philosophical weakness in this line of argument and it is that it not only takes European social development as normative but also considers only the outcomes that conform to particular theories or ideologies. In doing so, it reaffirms the self-indulgent belief that a liberal politics is truly pluralistic and neutral whereas liberalism actually advocates a dogma of its own that is no less rigid or exclusive than others.

Despite the controversy, if there is one thing that most Israelis agree on, it is that Israel is a Jewish state. The bulk of the NSB – its reaffirmation of Israel’s national symbols and its designation as a safe haven for international Jewry – is de facto law and finds wide consensus among Israelis. The need to restate the obvious and enshrine it into law, however, comes from the equally widespread feeling that the Jewish character of the Israeli state has been gradually undermined by post-Zionist intellectuals, the New Historians, and an increasingly liberal activist Supreme Court beginning with Aharon Barak, president of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1995 to 2006.

The Basic Laws, which serve as the constitution of Israel, clearly establish the civil and political rights of its citizens and make an overt commitment to secularism and democracy. Although the Declaration of Independence unequivocally defines Israel as a Jewish state, what that constitutes was left ambiguous; the NSB remedies this lacuna by providing an anchor to the state’s Jewish heritage and identity.

The circumstances in which Israel was created in 1948, the Jewish experience in Europe over the preceding two millennia, and the status of the country as the sole Jewish state in the world merit some consideration in the Knesset’s desire to cement the state’s Jewish character. Despite the demonisation, much of what the NSB has proposed is no different from many Western democracies. If Israel’s observation of the Sabbath or prevalence of the menorah make it less secular, the same might be argued for Christian countries who observe Sunday as the day of rest and display Biblical symbols in their sigils.

Opponents of the NSB are worried that the reservation of the right to national self-determination in Israel only to the Jewish people (1C) may put the country’s sizable Arab minority at a disadvantage. Yet it is unfathomable that any sovereign state allow national self-determination to any group other than the dominant majority. Spain, for example, has little patience for Basque or Catalan national expression and Italy may not react well to the Alto Adige returning to Austria.

Related to self determination is the encouragement and promotion of Jewish settlements (7A). While foreign critics are worried that this spells a fresh wave of Jewish halutzim to Judea and Samaria, David Hazony, executive director of the Israel Innovation Fund, points out that the Hebrew word used – hityashvut – reminds Israelis of the Negev and the Galilee.

Another fear opponents have of preferential treatment given to Jewish settlements is that the law could cascade into further housing discrimination against Arabs. Again, this is unlikely as Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty passed in 1992 provide certain protections. The NSB, however, does weaken the ability of the court to intervene in mundane quotidian matters of budgetary allocations favouring Jewish population centres over Arab areas. It is important to note that there are already over 400 yishuvim – villages – in the Negev and Galilee that are preferentially Jewish settlements whose right the Supreme Court upheld in 2014 to appoint “acceptance committees” to vet candidates who wish to move to these settlements.

However, conservatives might want to reconsider giving legal force to communal segregation. The right to create exclusive communities does not sit well with a modern cosmopolitan democracy and can only be a recipe for turmoil in the future. They might still work at a smaller scale of an apartment complex but entire mono-cultural settlements could easily be polarised pockets simmering with radicalism and instability. Problems need not arise just from Jewish communities excluding Arabs but even other Jews from Haredi settlements, for example.

The Zionist project was undoubtedly secular, even atheistic perhaps, but it was not seen as hostile to Judaism, its raison d’etre, until recent intellectual developments. There is the obvious case to be made that the NSB is a backlash against the potential Progressive capture of state institutions before it is too late. Yet to call it a frontal assault on the secular nature of the Israeli state is to have too slavish a devotion to the European experience rather than the Jewish story.

An intriguing interpretation is presented by Eyal Benvenisti, a professor of international law at the University of Cambridge, and Doreen Lustig, a senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University, who argue that the fears surrounding the Nation-State Law must be tempered with other Basic Laws on Human Dignity and on Fair Employment. Furthermore, reading the Nation-State Law in conjunction with the February 2017 Judea and Samaria Settlement Regulation Law, it appears plausible that the Likud and its coalition partners are laying the groundwork for an inevitability they have realised – a Jewish Israel and an autonomous, Islamic Palestinian region as part of a single state.

The Western keening for Israeli democracy is at least puzzling if not downright hypocritical. Most established nations have used force to forge a national identity and protected it with the banal acts of everyday nationalism and immigration controls; the only difference is that Europe and the United States had achieved this a century ago while Israel is a newer nation. As waves of Muslim refugees threaten European shores, the backlash is already discernible in policies and voting patterns. Israel, though a Jewish state, lives with a multicultural population whose demographics threaten to weaken the core of its identity – an ipseity its people have been persecuted for over the centuries like no other. One cannot fault Israeli lawmakers for a passionate defence of their homeland’s essential Jewish character.

Modern Political Shibboleths

27 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Israel, Middle East

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When Winston Churchill described the Soviet Union as a “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” in an October 1939 radio broadcast, the British prime minister might as well have been describing the future state of Israel. Outwardly European in many ways, the tiny Jewish state remains far closer socio-culturally to its Middle Eastern neighbours much like it plays football in Europe while sitting in Asia. Officially, Israel is a secular state although with interesting caveats that explicitly emphasise its Jewish identity. Similarly, the Jewish State is a democracy but more so for its Jewish citizens than others.

It is not as if these contradictions of the Middle East’s only functional democracy are new or were just noticed. Several factors contribute to the recent focus on the apparent weaknesses of the Israeli polity: the receding of the immediate, existential threats faced by the new state; the removal from power of the founding generation of socialist Zionists; and the growth of a segment of Israeli society that is more traditional and religious. An external source of alarm has been the Jewish Diaspora, particularly in America, whose numbers and financial contributions to community causes gives them a loud voice, that have felt increasingly alienated from the Jewish homeland as a result of its policies.

There is, however, no need to panic just yet unless, of course, we are hidebound by doctrinaire definitions of ideas. Israel’s intriguing strains of democracy, secularism, and identity are indeed correlative to the country’s history and socio-political circumstances but are not as unique as they are sometimes portrayed to be. In fact, Israeli politics falls well within the normal behavioural parameters of nations and states that are presently unfashionable thanks only to the vicissitudes of public politics.

Let us take the example of secularism in Israel. Although the state recognises Islam, the Druze, and Bahá’í as well as ten sects of Christianity apart from Judaism. Nonetheless, a menorah has the pride of place on the country’s sigil and the weekend falls on the Sabbath; government buildings are decorated for Hanukkah and the national anthem, the Hatikvah, is replete with Jewish motifs; public institutions such as El Al, the national airline, and the Israeli Defence Forces observe kashrut, and Hebrew, the language of Jewish scripture and the bearer of its culture, is the national language.

In essence, Israel is as secular as any liberal democracy. Whether it is France, the United States, or some other example, even liberal democracies cleave fiercely to their heritage, which, for historical reasons, has seen religion in a paramount position. Where Israel goes beyond other secular democracies is in its policing of the boundaries between religions. For example, the state allows Jews from anywhere in the world to return to the Holy Land and obtain citizenship without question. This, however, is not entirely remarkable because dozens of countries offer jus sanguinus citizenship and have leges sanguinus; Israel is not unique in this respect even though the ethnocentricism may be politically offensive to some.

Israel also officially recognises only Orthodox Judaism, and marriage, divorce, and inheritance is based on halakha. Marriage between the different denominations of Judaism are not recognised, nor are inter-faith marriages with Jews. However, the state accepts any marriage that occurs outside Israel’s borders and it is estimated that some 10 percent of marrying couples travel abroad, usually to Cyprus, for their big day.

These policies have come under fire from secular activists for fostering a strong presence of religion in Israeli public life and for being at odds with democratic principles. The Diaspora, a large portion of whom are Reform or Conservative, are also incensed with their official status in the eyes of the Chief Rabbinate that considers them as sufficiently Jewish to make aliyah but not for religious purposes. The Knesset’s purpose for having such laws, however, is to maintain the Jewish character of the Israeli state the value of which is often forgotten in debates over abstract notions.

It is easy to overlook the necessity of a Jewish state, especially as outsiders. The world of academic discourse and international politics, albeit using a vocabulary of liberal pluralism, still bears a strong majoritarian accent of European historical experience. Israel is the only Jewish state in the world, and as such, must bear the responsibility of preserving its ancient culture. Christian and Muslim states have the luxury of flirting with various social movements and ideologies and the sheer number of their sovereignties, not to mention the faithful masses, ensures that there remains a traditional core or anchor. On the other hand, Jews are more susceptible to attenuation through inter-faith marriage, conversion out of the fold, or atheism – a problem compounded by the fact that Judaism has stringent procedures for those who wish to embrace it.

Another necessity of a Jewish state is that there must always be a place that can serve as a safe haven for international Jewry. The fact remains that anti-Semitism still thrives the world over if with a little more discretion, such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. On the brighter end of the spectrum, Emancipation removed any lingering doubts that Europe was first and foremost a Christian realm and Jews would perennially remain die Ewigen. The uglier face of the same phenomenon is the Shoah during World War II. It becomes incumbent upon Israel, as the world’s lone Jewish state, to defend that identity of its tribes that have made them such targets.

Israeli democracy can serve no role that is different from its secularism – it must be as inclusive and equitable as possible without in any way endangering the core identity upon which the state itself was demanded and built. Israel extends universal adult suffrage to all its citizens and does not bar any profession to certain faiths or ethnicities. There are non-Jewish members in the Knesset, the civil service, and even the military. Activists do, however, point to the discrimination in building permits and resource allocation between Jewish and Arab citizens. From the Israeli perspective, however, this has to do with retaining demographic control over the holy city of Jerusalem (and other religious sites in Judea and Samaria) and falls under the broad rubric of preserving the national heritage. Besides, Arabs had denied Jews access to their religious sites when the area was occupied by Muslims.

As abstractions, democracy and secularism are laudable principles perhaps. Yet the reality of Israeli circumstances demand that they serve only as beacons rather than absolute mandates. Much is made of Israel as an innovative country of startups and the technologically gifted. As true as that may be, the country also serves as an example for innovation in counter-terrorism, legal frameworks, and social policy to countries that do not enjoy the luxury of nearly monolithic cultures and live under constant threat.

By carping about the ostensible failures of Israeli democracy and secularism, critics appear devoted to how we might best serve these ideas rather than the more important question of how these ideas may best serve society. The Western one-size-fits-all model of development – be it material or social – clearly does not hold. Interestingly, the flow of immigrants from cultures that are substantially different from European and American societies has resulted in similar fissures in the West and has led to several leaders (David Cameron, Angela Merkel, and Nicolas Sarkozy) announcing the death of multiculturalism. It is worth bearing in mind that Israel, on the other hand, has lived with these fissiparous tendencies since its inception.

As Israel celebrates its 70th year of existence, it is time to reflect on the trials and tribulations the tiny state has undergone in that period. Only the local context will inform us whether the Jewish state has succeeded in living up to its promise, not hoary theories of political systems.