This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
There’s a sadness about it all, what we Jews have become, at least on the American and Israeli side, where most Jews live.
But if we’re holding out for some nostalgic return to a European/Arab/North African pre-Holocaust/pre-Israel Jewry or an internationalist postcolonial Frantz Fanon Left– as if there’s a purity in either – it’s unlikely to happen.
Traveling back in time is for the cinema. Back to the Future is unreal for any identity, including Jewish.
Besides, geographically and ethically, Jews were all over the map then, too. Ethnicities and religiosities are like nation-states. Memory makes them better than they were.
Is European – American – Israeli – and every Jewish group sucked into that now normative vortex we might call Empire Jewish – fated to declare war on everyone outside of Europe, America and Israel? Sometimes it looks like that.
When I read Joseph Massad, the intrepid Jordanian-born Palestinian and professor at Columbia University, I try hard not to extrapolate from his analysis. Read him for yourself, you’ll see it’s easier said than done. I consider this a tribute to his challenging words.
I’m also following a series on Mondoweiss regarding Jewishness and how Jewish activists wear and/or discard their identity. It’s fascinating to read how Jews identity Jewish. Even when they distance themselves from Jewish, they do so in such an identifiable – Jewish – way.
Mossad and the Mondoweiss series challenge Jews everywhere. What is Jewish identity and where do certain Jewish identity configurations lead?
Even in the most intimate of circumstances being Jewish is rarely simple. As a Jew, have you ever been with someone who loves your Jewishness when you take on the Jewish establishment but values you personally in so far as your Jewish identity doesn’t exist beyond being born Jewish?
If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will. When it does, think how far we’ve travelled in identity’s Time Machine. Moving forward, you find yourself experiencing the past you thought was left behind.
Palestinians need all the allies they can get. Nonetheless, I would be wary of those who prize Jews as fighters of the Jewish establishment only. When Palestinians come into their own, these same folks will expect Palestinians to be street fighters in public and universalists at home.
The Palestinian cause has never been a human and political rights issue – only. The Palestinian cause has never been a non-White world issue – only. The Palestinian cause has never been an Islamic and Arab cause – only. First and foremost, the Palestinian cause is a Palestinian cause. Palestinians shouldn’t apologize for this, should they?
Palestinians shouldn’t be Palestinians in public and universalists at home. Nor should Palestinians be universalists in public and Palestinians at home. If either option is adopted we’re back to the European Enlightenment wherever Palestinians live. We’re back to 18th and 19th century Europe and Jewish “emancipation.” Talk about traveling back in time!
There’s a discourse out there that sees Euro-American White Zionist Jewishness as criminal in and of itself. Like there’s something inherent in Jewishness that pre-disposes Jews to criminal alliances when the opportunity arises. Historically, though, I’ve noticed that every particularity, including Palestinian, faces the same alliance temptations whenever that opportunity presents itself.
Massad is clear on this when he speaks of the Palestinian Authority and Arab dictatorships. Jews who seek to jettison their identity for justice – and who know Massad to be right – are caught up short here. Because if every identity configuration is tempted to align itself with unjust power, including the universalist Left, where are identity’s resources to break this headlong fall into power’s original sin?
I doubt that jettisoning Jewishness will accomplish the “I’m not complicit” trick. Even that jettisoning is historically identifiable as Jewish.
Here’s what I think about identity and justice:
When an individual can’t locate her resistance somewhere beyond her individuality, she needs to broaden her search.
Without a rooted identity, there is no resistance.
No man is an island – as the saying traditionally goes. No dissent is an island either.
All of this goes for Palestinian dissent – and Jewish dissent as well.
Where does this lead?
Much more reflection is needed. What we should know by now is that neither particularity without universalism nor universalism without particularity will move us closer to a justice that is achievable and livable.
“Read him for yourself, you’ll see it’s easier said than done. I consider this a tribute to his challenging words.”
Most definitely a tribute…and in the same spirit…reading you, Prof Ellis, is not always a piece of cake.
Every child I ever met, including myself way back in the day, had a keen sense of fairness–aka justice. This cut across cultures, race, ethnicity, wealth, etc. I think humans are born with this awareness, although early education of every sort slants it in matters of impact beyond the immediate individual self, that is, we are taught as children to empathize with some, not others, to walk in X’s shoes in imagination, but not Y’s shoes. I don’t think Mr. Ellis’s logic takes enough account of this situation. No man is an island, nor is a man simply a tiny part of the main. Both are the roots of human self-identity, the main is happenstance. I don’t think the main is primary unless one has not grown in the Maslow pyramid context. Adults are just old kids, or more, or less, depending on the context–their choice.
So simple and simultaneously baroque Professor.
“Without a rooted identity, there is no resistance. ”
?#*$^#+! We all have a firmly rooted identity – we’re Earthlings. The rest is decorative delusion. Universalism seems to rub the wrong way? How about we give it a shot both in public and at home? If we as a species understand that “as long as one person is oppressed then no one is free” we don’t need to cling to narrow tribal/religious/racial/nationalist identities. We can simply struggle to end that oppression. You don’t need to be a “Hawking” to get your head around that.
Your first proposition (“When an individual can’t locate her resistance somewhere beyond her individuality, she needs to broaden her search”) at least admits that an uprooted individual is capable of resistance. But your second proposition retracts this admission: “Without a rooted identity, there is no resistance.” Am I alone in detecting a logical contradiction here?
What is “identity” anyway? You seem to be talking about ethnic identity, because you insist on “roots” and an identity based on convictions, for instance, lacks roots. Nevertheless, resistance based on individual conviction is quite possible. On what “rooted identity” was Galileo relying when he told his inquisitors: “Eppur si muove” (the earth still moves, not the sun)?
Trees have roots. People have legs.
Stalin was also opposed to “rootless cosmopolitans” — perhaps you would clarify the difference between his view and yours?
RE: “There’s a discourse out there that sees Euro-American White Zionist Jewishness as criminal in and of itself. Like there’s something inherent in Jewishness that pre-disposes Jews to criminal alliances when the opportunity arises. Historically, though, I’ve noticed that every particularity, including Palestinian, faces the same alliance temptations whenever that opportunity presents itself.” ~ Marc Ellis
GEORGE ORWELL CONCURS*: “Notes on Nationalism”, by George Orwell, 1945
SOURCE (“Notes on Nationalism”, by George Orwell, 1945) – http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat
* Catch Me If You Can Movie CLIP – “Doctor…, Do You Concur?” (2002) [VIDEO, 01:53] – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5j1wWY-qus