This is part thirty-one of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Plan B. Everyone needs a back-up plan. Jews have used many back-up plans in history, so many it would take a semester seminar to surface all of them. For the most part, others have forced Jews to contemplate back-up plans. Now we force others to develop alternative strategies of survival. What plan are Palestinians on?
Let’s see. There is the plan necessary to deal with Israel. Then there’s the plan necessary to deal with the American Jewish establishment. Oh yes, the dwindling Progressive Jewish establishment, Palestinians need plans for them. For Jews of Conscience?
Obviously, Jews of Conscience have been busy developing their own back-up plans. Jeff Halper, for example, who has alternated between the Progressive Jewish group and Jews of Conscience, was writing alternative scenarios of the Israel/Palestine future on almost a weekly basis. That was a few years ago. Halper had a plan, then another, still another – it seemed he had a plan for every failure of his previous plan(s).
Halper isn’t like Norman Finkelstein – Finkelstein has stuck to his (failed) International Law plan like a true believer. It may be a coincidence but just as Halper ran out of plans, Norman’s meltdown began. On the other hand, Michael Lerner keeps changing with the times. He’s never stuck in his own mind. He’s like a chameleon, changing colors faster than you can locate him on any GPS I know.
Think of Lerner as the Mitt Romney of the Jewish (un)Left. Or translated – think of Lerner as representing the (un)Leftwing of Empire Judaism.
Well, we’ve gone over the Tikkun crowd. So many of them are raring to go somewhere else. They’re looking for a new umbrella. Lerner’s ego gets in the way well – of Lerner’s ego. Another slayer of Moses – in his mind. How far we have fallen thought-wise in the last decades. Lerner’s sword is dull. He hasn’t slain anything, just carved out a place in the windmills of his own self-appointed (Rabbinic) universe.
Of all of them, I’ll stick with Halper. American Jews rock. Though he is an Israeli by confession. I suppose my loyalty is skewed by his great achievement. He attended Bob Dylan’s Bar Mitzvah. Must have been quite interesting. To say the least.
Dylan as an itinerant Jewish prophet, sure, yes, the last of a breed. I don’t mean on every political issue, including whatever he really thinks about Israel. I’m thinking in the broader Jewish prophetic category. Dylan has a Jewish mythic mind. Leave the practicalities to others.
By the way, Dylan is a reader. If I might, he read one of my books and even sent me an autographed picture of himself. Wouldn’t have it any other way. When I paint my masterpiece, I’ll tell you more. Wouldn’t it be neat if Dylan could have had a discussion with Chief Last Night – and Thomas Paine?
For those of a certain age, Dylan was the Jewish Plan B. Whether or not a prophet is a good person to plan around, a new generation is here. There aren’t going to be anymore Dylan’s.
I can hear some wondering how relevant an excursion into Dylan is, especially since I’m supposed to be dealing with the war of ideas in the Middle East. Here’s my take on it. Dylan was possible, as was the idea of a Jewish universality, because in Dylan’s childhood Jewish life in America was on the cusp of empowerment. What Jews would do with an accepting American culture hadn’t been decided yet.
Would Jews go down Highway 61? Or would we compete for the brass ring of American empire? America hadn’t completely decided on that empire route yet. Perhaps this is what Eisenhower’s warning was really all about. Once you travel on the Empire Road there’s no turning back. It’s one way street. The only way you can see Highway 61 is in the rearview mirror.
Since Dylan, Jewish life has chosen empowerment as Plan A. No other plans are allowed or now even available. That accounts for Jeff Halper’s initial frenetic effort at creating back-up plans. It explains his silence now. It looks like we will follow empowerment through to its bitter end. At the end, in the rubble, another plan will appear, because there will be no longer be any alternative.
Whose rubble will Jews be standing in? Ruins, debris, wreckage, remains – Jews have seen it from afar. As if Jenin or Gaza City are far away. As if they are foreign countries.
Plan A has visited devastation on others. It won’t always be that way. Then what?
Hitler followed it through to the bitter end. True, Germany has risen again, dominating Europe economically in much the same way as Hitler tried militarily. Let’s call its dominance in Europe, Germany’s Plan B. Dominance is dominance. Yet anyone who’s had conversations with thoughtful Germans, say of Bob Dylan’s generation, know there’s something haunting the core of German history.
Yes, and I’ve certainly been called on the carpet for not forgiving and forgetting as many in Germany have. That’s for another generation, perhaps for Aaron and Isaiah. I still would rather Volkswagen ceased advertising in America. Its new ad campaign featuring the German CEO and “Das” Volkswagen slogan doesn’t sit well with me.
Ridiculous, I know. Retro-city. Thankfully, at the Cape, I forgo television.
A more serious point is about atrocity, how it enters the language, culture and religion of any people. It has now entered “Jewish” at a deep level.
To imagine Hebrew used in torture. I don’t have to imagine. Or Hebrew being used in Star of David helicopter gunships. I don’t have to imagine.
Already in the rubble, wouldn’t you say?
And with the rubble, comes the rabble. They police Jewish dissent.
Torturers speaking Hebrew. Hebrew as the language of torturers. The Jewish establishment (speaking in English) enabling the torturers (speaking Hebrew.)
Netanyahu speaking Hebrew and English.
Specialists in torture, at least some of them, speaking Hebrew and Arabic and English.
Well, yes, Arabs torture, too. Like our man in Egypt who offered an arm where only a DNA sample was asked for.
At a film festival that featured the Middle East, in Austin if my memory serves me right, yes Stormin Norman was delivering the keynote, I spoke about these cultural and linguistic understandings. I wondered out loud how atrocity was so insidious that once inside the language/culture/religion it could never be eradicated. After my short address, shifting subjects, someone from the gallery shouted that I was a defeatist, a Palestinian victory was right around the corner.
A decade later, no doubt his response is the same. Or is he melting down, too?
And, with all due respect to Noam Chomsky, Israel’s road is not paved only with American bricks. Though dependent, Israel is also independent. Preferably with America but also without it, Israel is going all the way down Empowerment Road.
Because of these views, I have been blackballed in various corners of the international justice movement. Sometimes that’s the way it goes.
Surprised? Do you think it’s only the Empire and Progressive Jewish establishments that censor thought? If you do, think again.
Think of Plan B as a moving target. Where it is now – on all fronts – isn’t going to get us very far.
The only moving target here is your writing, which is so diffuse and stream-of-consciousness that it’s almost impossible to understand. Trying using logic and complete sentences.
@ hophmi,
Please explain to us why you think the following quote is not logical, nor direct, nor in plain and complete Hemingway prose as distinguished from Proustian stream-of-consciousness:
“And, with all due respect to Noam Chomsky, Israel’s road is not paved only with American bricks. Though dependent, Israel is also independent. Preferably with America but also without it, Israel is going all the way down Empowerment Road.”
You mean he is not saying what you want him to say, and is too clever for your usual simple minded denigration.
And what is your Plan B hophmi, when the cognitive dissonance of liberal zionism finally overloads your brain?
“The only moving target here is your writing, which is so diffuse and stream-of-consciousness that it’s almost impossible to understand. Trying using logic and complete sentences…”
Well, yeah…but it can be evocative of thoughts. For example, Ellis’ attempt to claim Bob Dylan for Judaism.
It wasn’t until a few years ago that I was even aware Bob Dylan was Jewish. Is he even particularly aware of it himself? I distinctly recall some born-again Christian phase.
‘ What Jews would do with an accepting American culture hadn’t been decided yet.’
But isn’t interaction with the surrounding gentile culture what Judaism has always been about? The most xenophobic rantings of the Talmud merely confirm that: if gentiles weren’t omnipresent, there would be no reason to hate them. Even the Israel in which the Torah was composed was flooded with Persian and Hellenic influences.
And so isn’t Israel an essentially misbegotten concept? An attempt to make an independent entity out of something that in the end isn’t? Isn’t Judaism without gentiles ultimately nonsensical?
I am vaguely uncomfortable with the idea of a distinct Jewish cultural identity. My solution would be complete assimilation. That’s not particularly tolerant. But isn’t the notion of a separate Jewish state equally unreasonable? Isn’t it just a different way of solving the problem by shooting the messenger? If the quintessence of the Jew is that he is among gentiles, then both I and the Zionists want the phenomenon of the Jew to just…go away.
We may both be wrong. Just as I tend to be averse to the progressive assumption that it’s possible to reach some static end-point of social perfection, it may not be right that the Jew should go away. Maybe that discomfort is good. Maybe they are a chosen people — but chosen for this, not to build some nasty neo-Nazi Paradise in Palestine.
Dylan’s Wikipedia article
link to en.wikipedia.org says:
Oh my God! You mean I’ve been hating on Dylan, all these years, for being a Gentile, and it turns out he’s Jewish? I can’t tell you how many times, when somebody extolled Dylan, I responded: “Sure, but have you ever listened to a real folk singer, like Allen Sherman? Don’t you know him? He’s your native son!”
And now it turns out Dylan is Jewish. Who knew?
Are you stalking W. Jones, Mooser? Just because he said on that other thread that the best way forward for jews is the universalist non-tribalist “assimilation”? And you called him an “antisemite” for suggesting it. Never seen you pull that semite joker card out before.
Hey I meant this thread, not “that other thread”. Gets so confusing sometimes with sooooooo many threads about jewishness. What’s a goy to do except stumble about the place drunk as a skunk on it all – sometimes.
Taxi,
You and Mooser are mistaken. I did not say anything about assimilation. That was Colin Wright’s post.
In fact, I went against Colin’s post. Colin talked about Ellis “attempting to claim Dylan for Judaism.” I quoted Wikipedia to show Dylan appears to be part of the religious community.
Okeedowkee W. Jones.
My double mistake then – apologies.
My point was not what Dylan actually believed or practiced.
It’s what my image of him was. Until some point in recent time, I simply wasn’t aware he was Jewish. He was an American cultural figure — existing without reference to his personal religious beliefs. Had I been asked, I would have guessed — wrongly, as it happens — that he was gentile on the basis of that Jesus phase of his.
@ Colin Wright
What do you think Bob Dylan was singing about in Neighborhood Bully? Who was he attacking, defending? Check it out: link to metrolyrics.com
More, from Rolling Stone:
In 1979 Dylan announced that he was a born-again Christian. The platinum Slow Train Coming (Number 24, 1979) netted Dylan his first Grammy (for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male). His West Coast tour late in 1979 featured only his born-again material; Saved (Number 24, 1980) and Shot of Love (Number 33, 1981) continued that message. In late 1981 he embarked on a 22-city U.S. tour; in 1982 amid rumors he had repudiated his born-again Christianity, Dylan traveled to Israel. Infidels (Number 20, 1983), recorded with a band that included Mark Knopfler, Mick Taylor, and reggae greats Sly and Robbie, answered no questions. Despite its title, the album was more churlish than religious, although Dylan did admit that “”Neighborhood Bully,”" his apparent defense of Israeli policy towards Palestine, was indeed about Arab-Israeli relations.”
Read more: link to rollingstone.com
I think you are missing my point.
It’s entirely secondary who Dylan actually was or is. I’m discussing how I perceived him. He could actually be a Zorastorian from an obscure Iranian mountain tribe for all I care.
I’ve got a couple of records of his somewhere. Haven’t listened to him in years…
“Maybe they are a chosen people — but chosen for this, not to build some nasty neo-Nazi Paradise in Palestine.”
Gosh, W Jones, I don’t know what the Jews would do if they didn’t have you to spray chapter-and-verse at them and tell them what they are chosen for!
Oh, I’m sure you mean well, but the last time somebody told us what we were chosen for…..
Mooser!
Colin Wright said that. Not me.
“I am vaguely uncomfortable with the idea of a distinct Jewish cultural identity. My solution would be complete assimilation. That’s not particularly tolerant.”
You know, W Jones, what you are saying there is classic anti-Semitism, unless you stipulate that you (or your church) will be willing to pay for all the plastic surgery.
But thanks for admitting you are an anti-Semite, it’s what you’ve been working towards.
Mooser!
Colin Wright said that. Not me.
I did not say that I am “uncomfortable with Jewish cultural identity.” I am not uncomfortable with Jewish cultural identity. Jewish cultural identity is fine and I like it fine.
I visited Odessa once and enjoyed the Jewish culture in Odessa, visited a Jewish restaurant, cultural center and museum. I liked it. I like Fiddler on the Roof. As a kid I liked Isaac Bashavis Singer’s cultural stories, and still think they are nice. I am not singling out Odessa either. Jewish culture in the Holy Land and other places is nice too.
National cultures, be they Italian, English, or Jewish are all fine. Do not put other people’s ethnocentric views on me.
“Mooser!
Colin Wright said that. Not me.
Mooser!
Colin Wright said that. Not me…”
This is classic.
Classicly ridiculous.
In what way do you feel uncomfortable about Jewish cultural identity, Colin?
“In what way do you feel uncomfortable about Jewish cultural identity, Colin?”
…because then they would be different from me, of course.
I’m just saying that given a choice between being surrounded by people who are explicitly different from oneself and people that are at least superficially the same, there’s an attraction to the latter. Partly for this reason, neither you nor I are champing at the bit to move into a communal compound in Ulan Baator.
We do want others to be like ourselves. Even those who would pretend to admire diversity can be extremely intolerant of any deviation that doesn’t meet with their approval — while we can pretend to admire difference, we’re usually only actually prepared to tolerate it in carefully specified areas. People who authentically like people who are authentically different from themselves are rather rare.
This doesn’t mean that I think Jews should assimilate. Merely because I find myself wanting something doesn’t mean I should get it. I was only observing that the Jew, as an explicit outsider in gentile society, does necessarily create some tension, and that the desire for assimilatation and Zionism can both be viewed as responses to this tension.
@ Colin Wright
Yes, what you outline in your comment does seem to be part of human nature. Maybe the sequel is, while some are initially drawn to different cultures, often it’s not only out of abundant curiosity/imagination, but also out of rebellion against aspects of what one grew up with–and after a time, as one absorbs more of the new culture(s), one begins to find aspects of that culture inferior to the culture one grew up with? Not that “there’s no place like home,” nor even, “You can’t go home again,” but that growing awareness in detail of various homes makes one seek a quality synthesis, often never enough attained? Just speculating… I don’t want to stand for a recipe of utter solitude since no man is an island. But in my own life I find that the more complex the person is in these matters, the more accustom they’ve become to feeling alone, if not downright superfluous to life as most humans live it.
“Partly for this reason, neither you nor I are champing at the bit to move into a communal compound in Ulan Baator.”
For me, no, it’s because it’s too far away and it’s kind of a backwater, like working in Wyoming or the middle of Australia. I am fine with diversity, including living together with people of other backgrounds.
I deny your view that “the Jew, as an explicit outsider in gentile society, does necessarily create some tension”. Since when do people starting talking of “the Jew“???
And in my mind No, persons of Jewish religion or ethnicity are no more an explicit outsider in American society than are Italians or Polish.
At least to me, it seems your apparent slight dislike of other national cultures does tend to go in the direction of Mooser’s response.
Is Mooser even going to read my response about this?
“The only moving target here is your writing, which is so diffuse and stream-of-consciousness that it’s almost impossible to understand.”
And the posts are so damned short? Good old Hophmi! My own personal straight man. Yeah, I know, Hophmi, diffuse is burned out. Why the only thing worse than that is a guy who is so ashamed of what he has to say here, he won’t even use his real name? And then in a display of truly “Biblical” presumption, expects us to consider him omniscient.
And yes, Hophmi, the only way Marc Ellis’s idea that Israel or Judaism is in trouble can be accounted for is prejudice. Anybody can see with his own lying eyes how wonderful everything is.
After all, Zionism cannot fail, no, but bad Jews can fail Zionism
You wrote: Plan B. Everyone needs a back-up plan. Jews have used many back-up plans in history, so many it would take a semester seminar to surface all of them. For the most part, others have forced Jews to contemplate back-up plans.
The Old Testament does provide backup plans. In Deuteronomy, the Lord promises that He will protect His people very strongly if they follow Him. But if they don’t follow Him, then plan B is that alot of destruction will fall on them, but He will protect a repentant remnant who He will see through the bad times. So Plan B is basically to repent of the bad things and then the Lord will protect the people again.
Now admittedly, I am not sure this is so clear-cut. After all, the concept of “vicarious suffering” by righteous people is apparently accepted by Rabbinical Judaism. Christianity also has the idea of righteous people “taking up their cross”, and the concept of people performing “vicarious suffering”is also put forth in the books of the Maccabees, although the books are only of “secondary” canonicity. But although the concept exists in those two religions, I am not sure the canonical Old Testament accepts the idea of a group of righteous people undergoing “vicarious suffering.” What I am getting at is that once you accept the concept that a group of righteous people could be suffering to a big degree and on behalf of others, then the belief in Deuteronomy that the Lord is going to very strongly a group (Plan B) doesn’t seem so strong after all.
Now the way to solve this puzzle seems to me to be that the Lord would protect the people if they did good and followed Him, but otherwise even the righteous could suffer as a result of the people’s disobedience. And as to the vicarious suffering of the righteous, this suffering doesn’t contradict the promise that the lord would protect the entire people if the entire people were good, since after all the righteous could be just part of the people. But it seems there could be a contradiction if the entire people were righteous and yet still suffering vicariously on others’ behalf. What do you think?
To give examples of “Plan Bs” in the Old Testament, we have:
1. Repent and turn to the Lord and he will protect the people, and restore them if they are conquered.
2. Go to other kings like the Syrian king, and try to get him to protect the people. But Hosea 5-6 says that doesn’t really work.
3. In Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, the Plan B is basically that after the righteous person depicted dies, the Lord will resurrect the person. That’s an extreme Plan B!
I’d say that the Bible calls for those who do not succeed to wait patiently for God to vindicate them in some way that cannot be foreseen. A logical, if not always a plausible, implication of the basic idea of faith. In practice, this is the only Plan B that the Palestinians can have in the face of overwhelming Israeli power and the perverted conscience of the West.
@ Colin, da f**k?
Obviously, you need to be clearer.
Bob Dylan on ziocaine:
link to wideasleepinamerica.com
dylan is the musical equivalent of dershowitz.
Dylan started going off the deep end a long time ago when he first converted to Christianity. Then he progressed to ziocaine. You know what they say about gateway drugs.
“You know what they say about gateway drugs.”
Everybody knows PEP pills are the gateway drug to a full-on ziocaine syndrome, if there is no intervention. If it gets bad, they have to go to a rehab place like Zionon for a while.
What does withdrawal look like?
The problem is it can be dangerous to quit ziocaine cold turkey–you have to taper off slowly, like Beinart is doing.
RE: “Once you travel on the Empire Road there’s no turning back. It’s [a] one way street. The only way you can see Highway 61 is in the rearview mirror.” – Marc Ellis
SPEAKING OF “TRAVEL ON THE EMPIRE ROAD”, TRY A LITTLE “JUICE” (Join Us In Creating Excitement) ! ! !
FILM: Requiem for a Dream, 2000, UR, 102 minutes
A widow’s growing dependence on amphetamines and a self-help television show parallels the struggles of her heroin-addicted son and his girlfriend and friend in Darren Aronofsky’s bleak drama.
Netflix Availability: DVD and Blu-ray
• NETFLIX LISTING – link to movies.netflix.com
• Internet Movie Database (IMDb) – link to imdb.com
• REQUIEM FOR A DREAM TRAILER HD HQ – best scenes of a movie (VIDEO, 03:32) – link to youtube.com
• Requiem For A Dream Music composed by Clint Mansell, performed by the Kronos Quartet. / From the soundtrack for Darren Aronofsky’s second film. (VIDEO, 05:21) – link to youtube.com
P.S. Be certain to watch/listen to “The making of…” and the “Director’s Commentary” in the bonus/extra features. Aronofsky has some interesting things to say about addictions that I think might also apply to “Empire”* (and many, many other things). Also, try to have Dolby/DTS 5.1 audio when watching the feature film. They make very good use of the side/rear channels.
And Ellen Burstyn’s acting is absolutely brilliant!* I see some parallels between “Empire” and Sara Goldfarb’s addiction to amphetamines and her obsession with the self-help television show – an infomercial hosted by self-help guru Tappy Tibbons (Christopher McDonald), based on the acronym JUICE (Join Us In Creating Excitement).
BUT THEN, WHAT DO I KNOW? I’m certainly no Stuart Smalley!
P.S. FROM REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000):
SOURCE – link to imdb.com
VIDEOS
• Requiem for a Dream – 11. “Be Excited” [VIDEO, 01:33] – link to youtube.com
• Tappy’s 3rd Thing-Tappy Tibbons Month of Fury! [VIDEO, 02:20] – link to youtube.com
• Tappy Tibbons Month Of Fury (mostly not from the film, but rather from the bonus features on the DVD) [VIDEO, 07:25] – link to youtube.com
• The fall of Sara Goldfarb [VIDEO, 03:18] – link to youtube.com
Ms. Goldfarb has morped into the Bride of Frankenstein wearing a red dress! More precisely, at about the 40 second mark of the video (‘The fall of Sarah Goldfarb’) Ms. Goldfarb has morphed into the a disheveled Bride of Frankenstein (1935) wearing a very filthy red dress! – link to tvtropes.org