The Wandering Who: A Study of Jewish Identity Politics (16 page)

The American anthropologist Glenn Bowman, who specialises in the study of exilic identities, offers a crucial insight into the subject of fear and its contribution to identity politics: ‘Antagonism is fundamental to the process of fetishisation underlying identity, because one tends precisely to talk about who one is or what one is at a moment in which that being seems threatened. I begin to call myself such and such a person, or such and such a representative of an imagined community, at the moment something seems to threaten to disallow the being that the name I speak stands for. Identity terms come into usage at precisely the moment in which, for some reason, one comes to feel they signify a being or entity one has to fight to defend.’
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Bowman emphasises that it is
fear
that crystallises the notion of identity. However, once fear matures into a state of a collective pre-traumatic stress, identity re-forms itself.

It was the Bible that originally set the Jews in a state of Pre-TSS and initiated the fear of Judeocide, the Bible that paints the Jewish universe as a disaster waiting to happen. Increasingly, Bible scholars have come to dispute the historicity of the Scripture. For instance, Niels Lemche (in
The Canaanites and Their Land
) argues that the Bible was, for the most part, written after
the Babylonian exile, and that those writings rework (and in large part invent) previous Israelite history to reflect and reiterate the experiences of those returning from the Babylonian exile.
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In other words, the Bible was written by home-comers, and incorporates hardcore exilic ideology into a historic narrative, very much in the manner of early Zionist ideologues who regarded assimilation as a death threat: ‘The communities which aggregated under the leadership of the Yahwehist priesthood (at the time of the Babylonian exile) saw assimilation and apostasy not only as social death for themselves as Judeans but also as attempted deicide. They resolved to maintain an absolute and exclusive commitment to Yahweh who, they were sure, would lead them back to the land from which they had been expelled. They prescribed blood purity as a means of maintaining the borders of the national community, thus proscribed inter-marriage with those surrounding them. They also established a series of exclusivist rituals that set themselves off from their neighbours, and these not only included a surrogate form of temple worship but also a distinct calendar which ritualistically enabled them to exist in a different time frame than the communities with which they shared space. All of these diacritical devices served to mark and maintain difference, but did not prevent them from trading with and thus being able to sustain themselves amongst the Babylonians.’
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The spectacular readings by Bowman and Lemche of the Bible and the Judaic narrative as a manifestation of exilic and marginal identity help explain the fact that Jewish-ness flourishes in exile, but loses its impetus once it becomes a domestic adventure. If Jewish-ness is indeed centred on an émigré collective survival ideology, it will prosper in exile. Once back in the dreamed-of homeland, the ideology melts into the void. Looking at Jewish history in this way also helps us to understand the success and failure of modern Jewish nationalism. Like Judaism, both
Zionism and Jewish ‘progressive’ ideologies are exilic by nature. They make some sense when considered in their pre-revolutionary era, but become totally meaningless once metamorphosis has occurred. To a certain extent, the wall with which Israel now surrounds itself symbolises a return to the exilic Jewish condition of the old European ghettos. Similarly, the Bund did survive the Soviet revolution, but became meaningless soon afterward and ceased to exist as an organic revolutionary setting.

That which maintains the Jewish collective identity is fear. As in the case of the Holocaust religion, Jewish-ness sets the fear of Judeocide at the core of the Jewish psyche, yet it also offers spiritual, ideological and pragmatic measures with which to deal with this fear.

Chapter 19

The Book of Esther

‘Haman said to King Achashvairosh, “There is a nation scattered and separated among the nations [the Jews] throughout your empire. Their laws are different than everyone else’s, they do not obey the king’s laws, and it does not pay for the king to tolerate their existence. If it pleases the king, let a law be written that they be destroyed, and I will pay to the executors ten thousand silver Kikar-coins for the king’s treasury.”’
The Book of Esther, Chapter 3

The Book of Esther
is a biblical story that forms the basis for the celebration of Purim, probably the most joyously celebrated Jewish festival. The book tells of an attempted Judeocide, but also of Jews who manage to change their fate. In the
Book of Esther
, the Jews rescue themselves, and even get to mete out revenge.

It is set in the third year of the reign of the Persian king Ahasuerus (commonly identified with Xerxes I). It is a story of a palace, a conspiracy, the aforementioned attempted Judeocide and a brave and beautiful Jewish queen – Esther – who manages to save her people at the very last minute.

Ahasuerus is married to Vashti, whom he repudiates after she rejects his command to show herself off to his assembled guests during a feast. Esther is selected from amongst many candidates to be Ahasuerus’s new bride. As the story progresses, Ahasuerus’s prime minister, Haman, plots to have all the Jews in the Persian empire killed in revenge for a refusal by Esther’s cousin Mordechai to bow to him in respect. Esther, now queen, plots with Mordechai to save the day for the Persian Jews. At the risk of endangering her own safety, Esther warns Ahasuerus of
Haman’s murderous anti-Jewish plot. (As she had not disclosed her Jewish origins beforehand, the king had been unaware of them.) Haman and his sons are hanged on the fifty-cubit-high gallows he had originally built for Mordechai. As it happens, Mordechai takes Haman’s place as prime minister. Ahasuerus’s edict decreeing the murder of the Jews cannot be rescinded, so he issues another one allowing the Jews to take up arms and kill their enemies – which they do.

The moral of the story is clear. If Jews want to survive, they had better infiltrate the corridors of power. In light of
The Book of Esther
, Mordechai and Purim, AIPAC and the notion of ‘Jewish power’ appears to be an embodiment of a deep Biblical and cultural ideology.

However, here is the interesting twist. Though the story is presented as a record of actual events, the historical accuracy of the
Book of Esther
is in fact largely disputed by most modern Bible scholars. The lack of clear corroboration for any of the book’s details with what is known of Persian history from classical sources has led scholars to conclude that the story is mostly or even totally fictional. In other words, the moral notwithstanding, the attempted genocide is fictional. Seemingly, the
Book of Esther
encourages its (Jewish) followers into collective Pre-TSS, making a fantasy of ‘destruction’ into an ‘ideology of survival’. Indeed, some read the story as an allegory of quintessentially assimilated Jews, who discover that they are targets of anti-Semitism, but who are also in a position to save themselves and their fellow Jews.

Reading the Haman quotes above, while keeping Bowman in mind, the
Book of Esther
shapes an exilic identity. It sews existential stress and is a prelude to the Holocaust religion, setting the conditions that turn the Holocaust into reality. Interestingly a very similar, threatening narrative is explored in the beginning of Exodus. Again, in order to set an atmosphere of a ‘
Shoah
to come’ and a liberation to follow, an existential fear is
established:

‘Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us; come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there befalleth us any war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against us, and get them up out of the land.” Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses.’
Exodus 8-11

Both in Exodus and
The Book of Esther
, the author of the text manages to predict the kind of accusations that would be leveled against Jews for centuries to come, such as power-seeking, tribalism and treachery. Shockingly, the text in Exodus evokes a prophesy of the Nazi Holocaust. It depicts a reality of ethnic cleansing, economic oppressive measures that eventually lead to slave labour camps (
Pithom and Raamses).
Yet, in both Exodus and the Book of Esther it is the Jews who eventually kill.

Interestingly, the
Book of Esther
(in the Hebrew version of the Bible; six chapters were added to the Greek translation) is one of only two books of the Bible that do not directly mention God (the other is
Song of Songs
). As in the Holocaust religion, in the
Book of Esther
it is the Jews who believe in
themselves
, in their own power, in their uniqueness, sophistication, ability to conspire, ability to take over kingdoms, ability to save themselves. The
Book of Esther
is all about empowerment. It conveys the essence and metaphysics of Jewish power.

From Purim to Washington

In an article titled ‘A Purim Lesson: Lobbying Against Genocide, Then and Now’, Dr Rafael Medoff expounds on what he regards as the lesson bequeathed to the Jews by Esther and Mordechai:
the art of lobbying. ‘The holiday of Purim,’ Medoff says, ‘celebrates the successful effort by prominent Jews in the capitol [sic] of ancient Persia to prevent genocide against the Jewish people.’
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This specific exercise of what some call ‘Jewish power’ (though Medoff does not use this phrase) has been carried forward, and is performed by modern emancipated Jews: ‘What is not well known is that a comparable lobbying effort took place in modern times – in Washington, D.C., at the peak of the Holocaust.’
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Medoff explores the similarities between Esther’s lobbying in Persia and her modern counterparts lobbying inside FDR’s administration at the height of the Second World War: ‘The Esther in 1940s Washington was Henry Morgenthau Jr., a wealthy, assimilated Jew of German descent who (as his son later put it) was anxious to be regarded as ‘one hundred percent American.’ Downplaying his Jewish-ness, Morgenthau gradually rose from being FDR’s friend and adviser to his Treasury Secretary.’
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Clearly, Medoff also spotted a modern Mordechai: ‘a young Zionist emissary from Jerusalem, Peter Bergson (real name: Hillel Kook) who led a series of protest campaigns to bring about U.S. rescue of Jews from Hitler. The Bergson group’s newspaper ads and public rallies roused public awareness of the Holocaust – particularly when it organized over 400 rabbis to march to the front gate of the White House just before Yom Kippur in 1943.’
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Medoff’s reading of the
Book of Esther
provides a glaring insight into the internal codes of Jewish collective survival dynamics, in which the assimilated (Esther) and the observant (Mordechai) join forces with Jewish interests on their minds. According to Medoff, the parallels to modern times are striking: ‘Mordechai’s pressure finally convinced Esther to go to the king; the pressure of Morgenthau’s aides finally convinced him to go to the president, armed with a stinging 18-page report that they titled “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This
Government in the Murder of the Jews.” Esther’s lobbying succeeded. [Ahasuerus] cancelled the genocide decree and executed Haman and his henchmen. Morgenthau’s lobbying also succeeded. A Bergson-initiated Congressional resolution calling for U.S. rescue action quickly passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – enabling Morgenthau to tell FDR that “you have either got to move very fast, or the Congress of the United States will do it for you.” Ten months before election day, the last thing FDR wanted was an embarrassing public scandal over the refugee issue. Within days, Roosevelt did what the Congressional resolution sought – he issued an executive order creating the War Refugee Board, a U.S. government agency to rescue refugees from Hitler.’
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Doubtless Medoff sees the
Book of Esther
as a general guideline for a healthy Jewish conduct: ‘The claim that nothing could be done to help Europe’s Jews had been demolished by Jews who shook off their fears and spoke up for their people – in ancient Persia and in modern Washington.’ In other words, Jews can and should do for themselves. This is indeed the moral of the
Book of Esther
as well as of the Holocaust religion.

What Jews should do for themselves is indeed an open question. Different Jews have different ideas. The neoconservatives believe in dragging the US and the West into an endless war against Islam. Some Jews believe that Jews should actually position themselves at the forefront of the struggle against oppression and injustice. Indeed, Jewish empowerment is just one answer among many. Yet it is a very powerful one, and dangerous when the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and AIPAC act as modern-day Mordechais and publicly engage in extensive lobbying efforts for war against Iran.

Both AIPAC and the AJC are inherently in line with the Hebrew Biblical school of thought. They follow their Biblical mentor, Mordechai. However, while the Mordechais are relatively easy to spot, the Esthers – those who act for Israel
behind the scenes – are slightly more difficult to track.

Once we learn to consider Israeli lobbying within the parameters drawn by the
Book of Esther
and the Holocaust religion, we are then entitled to regard Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the current Haman/Hitler figure. In addition to the AJC and AIPAC, President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Lord Levy are also Mordechais, Obama is obviously Ahasuerus, yet Esther can be almost anyone, from the last Neocon to Dick Cheney and beyond.

Brenner and Prinz

I have asked what Jewish-ness stands for. Though I accept the complexity of the notion of Jewish-ness, I also accept Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s contribution to the subject: the Holocaust is probably the new Jewish religion. However, I also take the liberty of extending the notion of the Holocaust itself. Rather than referring merely to the
Shoah
, i.e., the Nazi Judeocide, I believe the Holocaust is actually engraved in the Jewish culture, discourse and spirit. The Holocaust is the essence of the collective Jewish Pre-TSS, which predates the
Shoah
. To be a Jew is to see a threat in every
Goy
, to be on a constant alert. To internalise the message of the
Book of Esther
is to aim for the most influential centres of hegemony, to collaborate with power and bond with rulers.

The American Jewish Marxist historian Lenni Brenner is fascinated by the collaboration between Zionists and Nazism. In his book
Zionism in the Age of Dictators
, Brenner presents an extract from a book written by Rabbi Joachim Prinz and published in 1937 after Rabbi Prinz left Germany for the US: ‘Everyone in Germany knew that only the Zionists could responsibly represent the Jews in dealings with the Nazi government. We all felt sure that one day the government would arrange a round table conference with the Jews, at which – after the riots and atrocities of the revolution had passed – the new status of German Jewry could be considered. The government announced
very solemnly that there was no country in the world which tried to solve the Jewish problem as seriously as did Germany. Solution of the Jewish question? It was our Zionist dream! We never denied the existence of the Jewish question! Dissimilation? It was our own appeal! … In a statement notable for its pride and dignity, we called for a conference.’
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Brenner then cites extracts from a memorandum sent to the Nazi Party by the ZVfD (
Die Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland
, or Zionist Federation of Germany) on 21 June 1933: ‘Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition, which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one’s own tradition … On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race, we wish so to fit our community into the total structure so that for us too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible … Our acknowledgement of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group … We believe in the possibility of an honest relationship of loyalty between a group-conscious Jewry and the German state …’
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Brenner doesn’t approve of Prinz’s point of view, nor of the Zionist initiative. Filled with loathing he writes: ‘This document, a treason to the Jews of Germany, was written in standard Zionist clichés: “abnormal occupational pattern”, “rootless intellectuals greatly in need of moral regeneration”, etc. In it the German Zionists offered calculated collaboration between Zionism and Nazism, hallowed by the goal of a Jewish state: we shall wage no battle against thee, only against those that would resist thee.’
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Brenner, a Marxist and totally unfamiliar with the culture and ideology entangled with his subject matter, fails to see the
obvious. Prinz and the ZVfD were not traitors, they were genuine Jews, adhering to a very Jewish cultural code. They followed the
Book of Esther
, assuming the Mordechai role. They tried to find a way to collaborate with what they correctly identified as a prominent emerging power. In 1969, Prinz confessed: ‘Since the assassination of Walther Rathenau in 1922, there was no doubt in our minds that the German development would be toward an anti-Semitic totalitarian regime. When Hitler began to rise and, as he put it “awaken” the German nation to racial consciousness and racial superiority, we had no doubt that this man would sooner or later become the leader of the German nation.’
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