Exile and the Prophetic: Plus suffering

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.

I’m drinking water with limes that I bought at my local coop.  They’re unsprayed and local, like you find on a tree in your backyard. I’m savoring this small wonder on a rainy afternoon. 

Earlier in the day, I decide to leave my writing aside but in the John Cage biography I’m running across the inner life of my artist self. I’m back thinking how Cage applies. 

That’s after my walk on the beach with Einstein yesterday.  You may not know it but I was once compared with Einstein.  No, not in science.  With regard to Israel.  Here’s how it happened.

A few years ago I wrote a book, Judaism Does Not Equal Israel.  At about the same time, Jerome Robbins wrote a book analyzing Einstein’s views on Zionism and the state of Israel.  The books were reviewed together by Glenn Altschuler.  The review appeared in Ha’aretz and the Forward.  In Altschuler’s mind Einstein had ideas that were important to communicate today.  He thought I did, too.

Here’s Altschuler’s summary of Einstein: 

Einstein’s writings underscore that he was not a systematic political thinker. His idealism, moreover, often crossed the border into naiveté. His views on a Jewish state, however, were rather consistent. Alarmed by the rising tide of antisemitism in Eastern Europe at the end of World War I, Einstein declared himself a human being, a Jew, an opponent of nationalism and a Zionist.

Militantly secular, he maintained that the bond uniting his people was “the democratic ideal of social justice, coupled with the ideal of mutual tolerance among all men.” Einstein’s Zionism used the “fact” of Jewish nationality to promote self-knowledge, self-esteem and solidarity. But it was “immune from the folly of power” and “the obsession with race” that dominated Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
Einstein supported a “homeland” for Jews in Palestine, but he opposed a Jewish state “with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power.” Since two-thirds of the population of Palestine consisted of Arabs, he preferred bi-national status with “continuously functioning, mixed, administrative, economic, and social organizations.” Only cooperation with Arabs, led by “educated, spiritually alert” Jewish workers, he wrote, “can create a dignified and safe life…. What saddens me is less the fact that the Jews are not smart enough to understand this, but rather, that they are not just smart enough to want it.”

 Altschuler’s take on me begins like this: 

Judaism Does Not Equal Israel” is a sharper — and shriller — version of Einstein’s critique of the Jewish state. A “post-Holocaust” theology, according to Marc Ellis, professor of Jewish studies and director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University, has conflated Jewish identity with allegiance to Israel, justified the “ethnic cleansing of more than seven hundred thousand Palestinians,” and muzzled “even mainstream, moderate critics” as “self-hating Jews.” 

 His conclusion:

  Mourning can be a sign of hope, in which God returns or doesn’t, Ellis emphasizes, rather abstractly. And “too late can be right on time — when the time is right.” For now, though, he’s a self-proclaimed prophet in exile. His book is often over the top, but Ellis’s concerns about the ethical obligations of the State of Israel are, at times, worth listening to, even by those with a powerful urge to doubt, dismiss or destroy him.

 Well, considering everything, I didn’t do badly.  First, it’s clear that Altschuler agrees with Einstein and me.  Though he notes that Einstein can be naïve and I am sometimes over the top, those are covers for Jews who want to survive the Golden Age of Constantinian Judaism.  Altschuler wants our ideas out there and, for the most part, describes them fairly.  He also wants distance from both of us.  Altschuler doesn’t want to be destroyed by those with a “powerful urge to doubt, dismiss or destroy”me.

The attempt to destroy me has already taken place – and failed.  I am back in the ring, honing my asceticism, and coming back stronger than ever.  After my walk on the beach with Einstein yesterday I feel relaxed.  What prophetic company I – and we – have in exile!

A suggestion for Jews of Conscience:  Take a day off and stroll with Einstein on the beach of your choice.  If you’re landlocked, take a stroll in your mind.  Zen Mind, Einstein’s Mind.  Try it.

I’m relaxing on my (un)writing day, reading Cage’s lectures on something, then on nothing.  They’re titled that way, “Lecture on Something,”“Lecture on Nothing.”  In her biography, Kay Larson traces the evolution of these lectures.As it should be, she’s gets somewhere and nowhere, at the same time.

Cage explores the process of “going nowhere.”  He speaks:  “I am here, and there is nothing to say.  If among you are those who wish to get somewhere, let them leave at any moment.”  On the Israel/Palestine front, such a lecture might begin:  “I am here, and there is something to say.  If among you are those who wish to get nowhere, let them leave at any moment.”

The dramatic exits I’ve experienced during my lectures!  The disgruntled ones who stay seated huffing and puffing.  The angry ones who begin talking loudly to no one in particular. Those who stomp out shouting expletives.  The Israelis who have left. Israel military types who threaten to kill me. 

Jews of Conscience know the exits, staged and otherwise.  Getting somewhere?

I am thinking of my Palestinian student in Austria who said getting somewhere was a fantasy.  My Israeli student needed that somewhere, though she knew it was an illusion.

Larson italicizes the process – going nowhere. Possible lecture title:  “The Process of Going Nowhere in Israel/Palestine.”

I hear the howls already.  How dare I suggest that going nowhere is acceptable in the present situation?  I’m not suggesting that as a politics.  I’m trying to wrap my mind around a future different than the present. 

In our instant electronic world, it is more and more difficult to take a longer view.  It seems that in the Blogosphere, the responses are relentlessly negative to nuanced thought, especially from a Jew, I might add.  This leads me back to my European tour a few years ago, the one where I encountered the anti-Semitic BDS leadership in Ireland and Scotland.  Just before those encounters, I experienced another shock.

It was right after the Gaza invasion, in the spring of 2009.  My first lecture was in Geneva, then on the various venues in France.  From Paris, I flew to Ireland and Scotland.   I was traveling Jewish through a very strange terrain.

With Gaza on their mind, the audiences were large. A good number of European Jews attended.  Everyone was convinced that Gaza was the turning point of the Israeli/Palestinian crisis. The world wouldn’t tolerate Israel’s behavior any longer.  I told them they were wrong.  They were.

I found the Jewish side of things as startling as the BDS side.  After my lecture in Geneva, I had a long discussion with my Israeli-born host who was now living in Geneva.  I asked him if I had it right: the Jews I encountered weren’t simply against Israeli policies or only arguing for the end of a Jewish state, that, in fact, they were ashamed of being Jewish.  He replied, “They are.”

This was before I encountered the other side of the coin in Ireland and Scotland.  On the plane home, I felt like exiting the entire scene.  Talk about the process of going nowhere.

This is where Cage is caught up short.  At least, I don’t know what to do with the truths this Zen provocateur speaks.  When he thinks through the “process of going nowhere,” I think – plus suffering.  When he says, “I am here, and there is nothing to say.  If among you are those who wish to get somewhere, let them leave at any moment,” I think – plus suffering.

Plus suffering.This means we have to get somewhere.  Nowhere won’t do.  But, most of the time, nowhere is where we are anyway. Let’s mine that direction and see where nowhere takes us.

It’s 1952 and Cage is still moving.  Nowhere.  Also getting somewhere.  What is to be said?  “People and sounds interpenetrate.”  They do – plus justice.

Zen – plus justice.  Can Zen be in history – without justice? 

Perhaps this is the challenge of all religions, as religions.  Religions project themselves into the heavenly spheres.  In the heavenly spheres, there’s no substitute for conformism to power here on the earth.

So what is a Zen provocateur, a religious provocateur a secular provocateur – minus justice?  So far in the Cage biography, the justice-oriented commitment is mute. But searching I find another side of Cage who is deeply involved with the question of history. This involves his theory of interpenetration “in order to thicken the plot.”

Justice thickens the plot by calling us to another level of engagement.  The music of the spheres is not enough.  But since, even with the best of intentions and all the hard work and commitment imaginable, we fall short, the thickened plot is not enough, either.

Justice – plus limitations?  Justice – plus silence? Justice – plus compassion? 

Israel/Palestine.  The need for justice – plus?

Only justice – mindlessness.  The revolution devouring its own.

The revolution that isn’t a revolution.