The Wandering Who: A Study of Jewish Identity Politics (10 page)

Chapter 10

The Righteous Jew

I believe the sudden change in the Israeli collective mood, after the 2006 Lebanon war, was the outcome of an attempt to resolve the schizophrenic state of being tangled up with Zionism. The conflict between the tribal and the universal ripened into a state of colossal phobia. The Israeli leading writers Oz, Yehoshua and Grossman were practically bouncing between these extremes, between the insularity of Jerusalem and the openness of Athens, between the repellent
shtetl
and the glamorous metropolis.

The pattern is clear: the more Israelis want to secure themselves by clinging to isolation, the more death they spread around themselves. Once again, this reading of Israeli reality can help us to understand the magnitude of Operation Cast Lead, the 2008–09 Gaza assault, and the excessive use of power in that conflict. The more Israel wanted to justify Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, the more corpses they had to leave behind only a few years later. Nor was this merely a political matter
–
as much as 94 percent of the Israeli Jewish population supported the lethal measures taken by the IDF against Palestinian civilians in Gaza
⁵¹
. But herein lies a problem. The more death the Israelis cause, the less they feel that they resemble the rest of humanity, and the more they begin to hate the leaders who had set them on such a chaotic path.

Israelis perceive themselves as inhabiting a democracy, and indeed Israel is a democracy, albeit a racially-selective and exclusive one. Olmert’s 2006 reprisal in Lebanon reflected the wishes of the majority, at least at the beginning of the war. The emerging Israeli dissatisfaction with Olmert, Peretz and the IDF revealed a severe conflict within the Israeli collective psyche. The
people ended up hating Olmert and company but it is in fact themselves they can no longer stand. The more Israelis detest themselves, the more horrified they become at their doomed situation. They despise the fact that they might have lost the ghetto for good, yet have failed to join the community of nations. They have never become ‘people like all people’. To repeat: the more they insist on loving themselves for who they think they are, the more they loathe themselves for what they have become.

Is the case of the Jewish anti-Zionists Bard and Rosenberg any different? Aren’t they falling into the exact same trap? Don’t they love themselves for being enlightened, progressive socialists, while at the same time sinking into neurosis upon realising that being Jewish tribal
petit bourgeois
, they have never managed to join the human family, let alone the working class? Like the Israelis, Bard and Rosenberg and, generally speaking, all ‘righteous Jews’ who operate within ‘Jews only’ political clubs have failed to find a way to merge Athens and Jerusalem. It may as well be possible that Athens and Jerusalem can never be blended together into a lucid and coherent political world view.

I guess that three escape routes are left for Zionists – and the third category Jews:

1.
  Total segregation.
This form of Zionism eliminates the notion of the other, or any correspondence or exchange with such an other. Such a solution is reflected in Sharon’s disengagement as well as in the Jewish socialists clinging to tribalism and anti-assimilationism. The current Netanyahu government has adopted this route, consciously and willingly steering Israeli international affairs toward conflict.

2.
  Return to orthodoxy.
The numbers of Israelis leaving behind secular Jewish culture to re-embrace the observance of religious Judaism reveal that this solution is, in fact,
becoming a common choice. In 2007 the Israel Democratic Institute (IDI) demographic survey found that the percentage of Jews describing themselves as secular has dropped sharply over the past 30 years, while the religious and traditional proportions had risen. The annual survey found that the secular public comprised only 20% of the Israeli population - compared to 41% in 1974
⁵²
.

3.
  Flight from Jewish-ness.
Departing from Jewish-ness, Jerusalem and any other form of Judaic tribalism, and leaving ‘Chosen-ness’ behind. This is probably the only form of genuine secular Jewish resistance to Zionism one can take seriously.

Nordau, no doubt a clever man, could identify the new Marranos, the Jews who split from Judaism, with real conviction, as the greatest danger for a tribal Jewish future. Like the other anti-assimilationists, Nordau was very explicit about it: ‘Many try to save themselves by flight from Judaism. But racial anti-Semitism denies the power of change by baptism, and this mode of salvation does not seem to have much prospect … In this way there arises a new Marrano, who is worse than the old. The latter had an idealistic direction – a secret desire for truth or a heartbreaking distress of conscience, and they often sought for pardon and purification through Martyrdom.’

Nordau had already realised in 1897 that the new Marranos, who genuinely craved truth and could even manage to find it outside the
shtetl
, constituted the ultimate danger. Nevertheless, he was living in a world inflamed with Darwinism and biological determinism. Nowadays, biological determinism is – hopefully – behind us, and people are free to escape their so-called ‘fate’. Nowadays, hardly anyone thinks in terms of blood, except Zionists, Israelis, and, embarrassingly enough, some of the so-called Jewish ‘socialists’.

To be a Zionist is to prevent assimilation, to stop Jews from ‘drifting away’, to engage in some form of Judeo-centric political discourse. Zionism, as we know it, indeed colonises Palestine, but its branches are far-reaching. It is not a local movement supported by some enthusiastic lobbies around the world, but a global matrix that possesses the capacity to shape and reshape the notion of the Jewish ghetto, to form and re-form the dialectic of Chosen-ness, to balance the emerging tension between insularity and openness yet to include most Jews. Zionism is a global network with no head, it is a spirit
–
spirit, unfortunately, cannot be defeated. Yet, it must be exposed for what it is.

Chapter 11

Sex and Anti Semitism

For the last decade I have been drawing many of my insights from a man who has been totally eradicated from Western academic and scholarly discourse. Considering the influence he exerted in the first half of the twentieth century, this complete disappearance certainly raises some questions. Wittgenstein considered him to have had a major impact on his life. James Joyce drew upon him when writing
Ulysses
. He inspired Robert Musil and Hermann Broch. One can easily trace his thoughts in Lacan and Heidegger. Freud was also interested in his ideas. Even Hitler supposedly mentioned him, admitting: ‘There was one decent Jew, and he killed himself.’ This man was Otto Weininger, and although he was one of the most influential thinkers of the first four decades of the twentieth century, few are still familiar with his thoughts or have even heard his name. Weininger was an anti-Semite as well as a radical misogynist. He didn’t like Jews or women, yet, as you might have already suspected, he was a Jew himself and, insofar as historical research can disclose such truths, an effeminate one.

Weininger was an aphorism artist. Many of his statements can’t be taken seriously. Some of his anti-woman and anti-Jewish rants evoke the image of a naughty schoolboy struggling to understand the concept of adulthood. Yet Weininger is an astonishing thinker. His understanding of the notion of genius could easily fit into the final section of Kant’s third critique; his understanding of sexuality is overwhelmingly astute given that his book was published when he was just twenty-one years old. Many of Weininger’s opponents happen to admit to the man’s brilliant talent. Simply put, there is far too much wisdom in
Weininger for us to cast him aside without looking.

There is a personal side to my admiration: Weininger helped me grasp who I am, or rather who I may be, what I do, what I try to achieve and why my detractors invest so much effort trying to stop me.

Weininger published
Sex and Character
, his one and only book, in 1903. It was presented as a philosophical study of sexuality. A ferocious attack on the concept of femininity, it nevertheless isn’t only women Weininger appears to despise
–
he presents Jews as degraded beings as well, and Englishmen as effeminate characters. Weininger is nothing less than outrageous. Some of my female associates who began reading the text dismissed it before they reached the end of the first paragraph. Yet I insist that almost every sentence in Weininger’s book should be considered thought-provoking literature. Weininger hates almost everything that fails to be Aryan masculinity. His tendency toward mathematical formulation is slightly childish, and no doubt dated. He makes some categorical mistakes. At the same time, he induces deep ideological, essentialist and metaphysical thinking.

Weininger on Sexuality

Weininger’s point of departure is far from original. Man and woman, he says, are merely types. In other words, the individual appearance is basically a manifestation of a mixture of the two types. Every individual is a compound of two sexual types in different proportions. Some men are more masculine than others, and some women are more feminine than their sisters. This idea is obviously supported by basic physiological observations as well as sophisticated genetic and biological study.

Weininger doesn’t stop there, however. He moves on to formulate the ‘law of sexual attraction’: ‘For true sexual union it is necessary that there come together a complete Male and a complete Female.’
⁵³
The bond between a man and a woman results in a unity of maleness and femaleness to which the two
partners mutually contribute. In practice, Weininger speaks here of the complementary between men and women. Each partner contributes toward the formation of a greater femininity and masculinity. If Tony is 55 percent male and 45 percent female, and Sue is 45 percent male and 55 percent female, the sum of their added maleness and femaleness results in a perfect unity of 100 percent male and 100 percent female. In other words, as far as sexual attraction is concerned, we can expect Tony and Sue to be highly excited about each other. Their union brings together a complete unity of man and woman. They also have a lot in common for Tony has a lot of woman in him and Sue, similarly, possesses a lot of man in her.

Needless to say, Weininger’s reference to human beings as statistical objects is slightly bizarre as well as problematic. When we examine the people around us we do not see mathematical figures or clear-cut divisions between masculinity and femininity. We, instead, see desires, wishes, intentions, hopes and sexual needs. Yet Weininger’s idea, regardless of its practical implications, is far from stupid. The idea that Tony and Sue are engaged in a complementary relationship is very explanatory. Tony is attracted to Sue not only for her feminine qualities, but because he finds in Sue his missing masculinity. Similarly, Sue celebrates the discovery of her lacking femininity. According to Weininger, we are most attracted to those who bring us closer to this unity.

Naturally, we would expect the bond between extreme masculinity and extreme femininity to result in a high degree of sexual attraction. However, as Weininger points out, this attraction is coupled with very little cross-gender understanding: ‘The more femaleness a woman possess the less will she understand a man … So also the more manly a man is the less will he understand women.’
⁵⁴
The reasoning is clear: the more femaleness a woman possesses, the less maleness is present in her physical and psychological makeup. Assume, for example,
that Mark is the ultimate macho man, 99 percent male, and Deborah is very feminine to a similar extent. Their sexual intensity might be explosive beyond belief, yet the quality of their communication beforehand or afterward will be nil. With 1 percent femininity, Mark can never understand Deborah, and vice versa. Mark will probably turn his back to Deborah as soon as the intercourse is over. He falls asleep and she ends up upset.

This idea is shocking in its simplicity, but its implications are powerful. It leaves the Left’s discourse in ruins. For if Weininger is correct, comprehension of the other is conditioned by a form of self-realisation. The notion of empathy and otherness so enthusiastically embraced by the post-Second World War Left falls apart. If I can understand my beloved only inasmuch as I possess enough of her in me, it follows that we can only understand the other as long as we have enough of the other in us. This insight may explain why the Left, along with the entire discourse of multiculturalism, collapsed after the events of 11 September 2001. The lack of empathy with Arabs and Muslims amongst so-called ‘progressive’ liberals can be accounted for by the fact that they had very little Arab or Muslim in them, in fact, they may have very little in them except themselves.

Such a reading may explain why the Western Left failed to grasp the transformation within the Arab world. As much as the Left claims to support the Arab masses’ uprising against their pro-American tyrants, it somehow found it hard to admit that what we see in the Arab World is not exactly a Socialist revolution. In Weiningerian terminology, the Left has failed to read the situation in the Arab world because it has very little in common with Arab culture. The Left was doomed to fail on that front.

The Genius and the Artist

This concept of possessing different psychological characteristics is further explored by Weininger in his treatment of the genius.
For him, it is obvious that the genius isn’t merely a gifted being. Genius isn’t talent, nor is it a quality that can be learned or developed. The genius is rather ‘… a man who discovers many others in himself. He is a man with many men in his personality. But then the genius can understand other men better than they can understand themselves, because within himself he has not only the character he is grasping, but also its opposite. Duality is necessary for observation and comprehension … in short, to understand man means to have equal parts of himself and the opposite in one.’
⁵⁵

In a way, the genius is a person who hosts a dialectic dynamism that allows the rich prospects of the world to come alive. To a certain extent, Weininger hints here at the positive qualities of schizophrenia, ideas that were further explored by Lacan years later.

The genius is always telling us something about the world that we didn’t know before. The scientist observes the material world, and the philosopher looks into the realm of ideas. The artist derives insight by looking into him or herself: ‘In art, self-exploration is exploration of the world…’
⁵⁶
.

Weininger argues that the genius is a subject to the ‘strangest passions’ and ‘most repulsive instincts’, but that those passions are opposed by other internal characters. For example, ‘Zola, who has so faithfully described the impulse to commit murder, didn’t commit murder himself because there were so many other characters in him.’
⁵⁷
Zola, according to Weininger, would recognise the murderous impulse better than the murderer himself, rather than merely being subject to it. The ability to persuasively depict a fictional character is attributable to the fact that the character and its oppositions are well-orientated within the artist’s psyche.

Weininger’s appeal, for me, has much to do with this idea. In my fictional writing I have given birth to some charming yet appalling Israeli protagonists, all of them doomed people
speeding toward a concrete wall. I write about people who never manage to live with the terms they have imposed upon themselves, people who never find their way home. In my fiction one meets people who cannot escape their fate. In my political and ideological writing, I try to establish a philosophical pattern that can enlighten the complexity of Jewish-ness. I search for the metaphysical mechanisms that make Israel and the Jewish world so
different
. In my early days I believed myself to be an autonomous thinker, positing himself in a detached, Archimedean surveying position. Thanks to Weininger, I realised how wrong I was – I was not detached from the reality about which I wrote, and I never shall be. I am not looking at the Jews, or at Jewish identity, I am not looking at Israelis. I am actually looking in the mirror. With contempt, I am actually elaborating on the Jew in me.

The Jew in me is not an island. He is joined by hostile enemies and counter-personalities who have also settled in my psyche. There are, inside me, many characters that oppose each other. It isn’t as horrifying as it might sound. In fact, it is rather productive, amusing and certainly revealing.

The Anti-Semite

Following his own paradigm, Weininger argues: ‘People love in others the qualities they would like to have but do not actually have in any great degree. So we only hate in others what we do not wish to be and what, notwithstanding, we are partly. We hate only qualities to which we approximate, but which we realise first in other persons … Thus the fact is explained that the bitterest anti-Semites are to be found amongst the Jews themselves.’
⁵⁸

According to Weininger, some Jews oppose in others that which they despise in themselves. This tendency is called anti-Semitism, but Jews are not alone. Some non-Jews find Jewish tendencies within themselves as well. Weininger elaborates:
‘Even Richard Wagner, the bitterest anti-Semite, cannot be held free of accretion of Jewish-ness, even in his art.’
⁵⁹
I would argue that, for Weininger, Jewish-ness isn’t at all a racial category, but a mindset that some of us possess and a very few of us try to oppose.

Isn’t that merely to repeat Marx’s treatment of Jewish identity, explored in his famous essay ‘On The Jewish Question’? Marx equates Jews with capitalism, self-interest and money-grubbing. For him, capitalism is Judaism, and Judaism is capitalism. The Jews have liberated themselves to the point where Christians have become Jews. He concludes ferociously: ‘The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.’
⁶⁰
Judging Marx’s ideas in the Weiningerian frame of reference may suggest that Marx’s analysis is the outcome of Marx being Jewish himself. In other words, Marxism is the outcome of Marx’s capacity to oppose the Jew within.

As we can see, Weininger has provided us with a pretty useful analytical tool. He is granting us insight into the subject of hatred and self-hatred, going as far as arguing: ‘The Aryan has to thank the Jew that through him, he knows to guard against Judaism as a possibility within himself.’
⁶¹
In other words, antagonism towards others can be grasped as a manifestation of self-contempt. Thus the Nazi hatred toward anything even remotely Jewish could also be explained as a form of hostility towards the Jew within.

But if hatred is, at least partly, a form of self-negation, I have to admit that my own personal war against Zionism and Jewish identity politics could be seen as a war I have declared against myself. Taking it a step further, we may all have to admit that fighting racism for real primarily entails opposing the racist within.

Otto Weininger was just twenty-three when he committed suicide. One may wonder how he knew so much about women. Why did he hate them so? How did he know so much about
Jews, and why did he hate
them
so? The answer can be elicited from Weininger’s thoughts, though not from his own words. He hated women and Jews because he was a woman and a Jew. He adored Aryan masculinity because he probably lacked that quality in any significant amount in his own being. This revelation probably led Weininger to kill himself, just a month after the publication of his book. Very likely, he had managed to understand what his book was all about.