THE HANDSTAND
june 2005
Detachment and
Alienation: From freedom of choice to the promise of
being
chosen.
By Ariella
Atzmon©
In the beginning was the WORD, God
speaking, to be followed later by the prohibition of the
figurative, and the children of Israel were left
aloof in a world of words without things. Freud's
diagnosis proposes this condition of aloofness as
obsessional neurosis, and Lyotard adopts the hypothesis
of psychosis[1]. Hence, in order to evaluate the
distinctiveness of Judaism we need to first be liberated
from the bonds of political correctness.
An analysis of the two synonymous words ALIENATION and
DETACHMENT epitomizes a gap between the view that refers
to human beings as celebrating freedom of choice, and the
Judaic self-conviction of being chosen. Taking a
psychoanalytical line might be helpful in specifying
typical Jewish political conduct as being afflicted with
symptoms of detachment.
Since the symptoms of detachment are attributed to Jewish
identity we need to define what detachment means as
distinct from alienation. Detachment is defined as a
mental morbidity, a spiritual and mental separation from
the world which appears as a lack of empathy to worldly
concerns. Thus detachment, as observing others without
emotional commitment, is diagnosed
between neurosis and psychosis.
Alienation on the other hand is an estrangement in
feeling imposed on the human subject by external
circumstances. In the best case it is an intentional
externalization of experiences; in the worst it is the
instance where man is conditioned to be alienated from
what are properly his functions and creations, and where
instead of controlling them, he is controlled by them (as
in Marxist theory). Alienation is not an intrinsic mental
state like detachment since it is caused by conditioning.
Actually Jews are not alienated but detached. Throughout
history the presence of Jews was evidently central in all
worldly affairs. More than 50% of the Bush
administration's posts are held by Jews. We can trace
Jews as the initiators of ideologies and as central
figures who triggered social and cultural reforms and
revolutions. This proves clearly that Jews are not
alienated, but detached from the gloomy consequences of
their deeds. Despite being conceived as the eternal
ultimate 'other', the Jewish presence and its
unmistakable influence is evident in all fields of
political and cultural life. It is suggested that
adherence to the role of the ultimate 'other' including
separatist tendencies, relates to a transcendence from
the figurative, being left solely within the play of
words and without icons. Judaism is characterized by the
prohibition of making an image of God. They worship a God
whom they cannot see. The sensory perception came second
after the abstract idea. The ear listens to the writing,
and the writing comes from an absent God! So what is
considered a Judaic triumph of intellectuality over
sensuality, renounces the discourse/figure
complimentarity.
Among savages for instance, the figurative prevails, and
thus they have no philosophy, no deliberative politics.
The savage resolves his wish fulfillment within the
existing social organization itself, and by the cultural
ritual façade which satisfies the wish to know. In
the Greek polis, conversely, the rhetor initiated a
secular use of discourse, where the word must sound
reasonable. The birth of logos gave birth to science. In
Hellenism, the pagan rituals were shifted towards
theatrical epic and to the rhetorical theater. Hellenism
turned the magic into myth, into theater. The
Dionysian encountered the Apollonian stage of rhetoric
leading to the path of logic. This is the route that
western people have taken since then. In Judaism, the
prohibition of the figurative wish-fulfillment turned
into neurosis and even psychosis. And where the balance
among the natural triad, signified-signifier-referent is
distorted, detachment prevails. Apparently the discarding
of the referent, including the signifier, conforms to the
spirit of post-structuralism. But what is considered a
virtue according to post-structuralism went too far with
Judaism - right up to psychosis i.e.:
narcissism and paranoia[2]. The exclusion
of the figurative icon was transformed in Jewish
tradition to repetitive ceremonial rites, where
irrational ritualism compensates for the forbidden icon.
In secular Zionism, the religious rituals were
substituted by nationalistic patriotic ceremonies.
Following Lacan, the imaginary represented by the
figurative is contrasted with the symbolic, articulated
as a discursive language. The gaps of the inexpressible
that inspire the work of art stem from rejected elements,
absent as audible words but retained as visible things.
Judaism excludes the
figure, excludes magic, excludes reconciliation, refuses
to admit to parricide, and thus there is no art in
Judaism. Lyotard asks: Where to place this religion? The
empirical mark of its difference is the hatred it
inspires; anti-Semitism. Circumcision as the covenant
with the word is a cut off from the imaginary, without
gaining an entry to the symbolic order. By circumcision
the Jew is caught in a double negation, being locked
within the symbolic i.e, 'the name of the father,' while
the name of the father is censored. With no symbolic
order the access to science is blocked too. Hence, the
Jew is left aloof without science and without art,
emptied of human desire, where the balance between the
pleasure principle and the reality principle is ruined.
The moment the desire to kill God, which is the
key motive of science, is repressed and denied the escape
to art, Jews are caught in psychosis, detached from
reality, including all its symptoms.
The difference between neurosis and psychosis
in terms of their respective positions vis-à-vis
language, is that the schizophrenic treats words as
though they are things, perceiving reality by the
signified without signifiers. Ordinary people cope
between words and their thing presentation by trial and
error. But while the neurotic get confused with the
discrepancies of reality, the schizophrenic has no means
for testing what is. The attempt to recuperate things via
their verbal aspect, without resorting to images, while
every thing remains in the realm of articulated language,
brings about a schizophrenic aloofness from reality. It
ends with inhuman acts, wrongs caused without even a
wink. It is not being unethical but rather lacking a
sense of ethics. While neurosis is a clash between
wish-fulfillment and reality, psychosis occurs when the
subject turns against the outside world, sniffing an
enemy (anti-Semitism) behind every corner. If dialectic
means compromise and reconciliation then the psychotic is
not dialectic. Thus, Jewish politics, including Zionism,
manifest no compromise and no reconciliation.
Narcissistic pathology is recognized by self-centeredness
and a lack of empathy. When this disruption is coupled
with a sense of superiority it generates hostility and
paranoia that bequeaths to the generations to come the
same victim mentality. It is manifested by the
legitimization of theft of absentees' lands declaring it
'a proper Zionist decision'. For the sake of Jewish
'survival', Zionism distorts history and justifies
discrimination. Thus Zionism is unethical just as Judaism
is!
The attitude to past narration and history is another
sign of the Jew's detachment and unethical attitude. The
Jew turns his eye from the visible and thus history turns
into a religious text. It is not reality but words. All
traditions revive their forgotten grandeurs by past
reconstruction. While Hellenistic glory was recollected
in the Homeric epic, for orthodox Jews, including secular
Zionists, the legacy of the past is engraved within the
holy pages of the bible. Up to the present the bible is
considered by all brands of Zionism as a legal document
which substantiates the rights to the Promised Land. In
Greece the pleasure principle was given free reign in
Homerism, but Jewish religion excludes the pleasure
principle and thus the core of historical writing is
prohibited. For westerners, history is a reactivation of
memories in the attempt to interpret the past, for the
Jews, history is a teleological pursuit not meant to aid
understanding the past, but rather relating the
course of history to its end. The birth of messianic
Judaism, can be understood in the light of the basic
Jewish attitude to history. The coming of the Messiah is
believed to be the end of Jewish victimization and the
gentiles' Judgment-Day. While in other monotheist
religions God’s judgment is directed at individuals,
in Judaism, God's judgment is revealed in the history of
the nation. The reign of God is expected to materialize
in a new kingdom under a Davidic messiah. But the
discrepancy in Judaism is that despite God’s
promise, God is remote and invisible and the relations
with his believers are mediated through the Rabbinic
tradition of legalism. God does not meet the observant
Jew in real daily life, where human beings encounter
their neighbors and take responsibility for how their
deeds affect the lives of others[3].
The distressing historical attitude devolved into all
brands of Zionism. While religious Zionism was
established on the nationalistic aspirations of being
chosen, waiting for the minute God will restore the
people's former glory, secular Zionists, inspired by 19th
century European ideologies, were plotting a nationalist,
racist Jewish state. The radical right was dedicated to
the primordial idea of blood and race, while the left was
ecstatically confused between international socialism and
national aspirations.
It is clearly proved that at the point where ideological
thought seemed to emancipate itself from the religious
sphere and attempt to accomplish the task of
demythologization, Zionism failed. I would argue that
present day Jewish nationalism, manifested by Israeli
colonialist and racist conduct, is deeply grounded in
Jewish detachment from reality. The fact that secular
Zionism never tried seriously to reflect critically upon
its innate contradictory elements, is symptomatic of the
old psychosis of floating in the realm of words.
The state of Israel reflects a cleavage between those who
perceive Judaism as grounded in a mutual covenant between
the children of Israel and God, and those who are fixed
on the idea of statehood. Besides the antagonism between
the two perceptions, just as in the time of the prophets,
each of these positions does not allow for the existence
of a Jewish community under its own basic assumptions.
For the former perception, as long there is a promise of
continuing with the Jewish life style and Halachic law
the existence of an independent Jewish state is not
conditional; while the Zionist view, by advocating the
notion of statehood, is caught in the contradictory
terminology of defining Israel as a democratic Jewish
state. Thus the moment they put the prefix Jewish before
the word state they dismantle the sense of democracy in
the same breath. From all the many complexities bound to
the notion of a Jewish state, I choose to elaborate the
perplexities associated
with the notion secular Jews which is an oddity in
itself. For the orthodox, Jewish identity means a
complete observance of the law without compromise, and
thus, it does not cause any problem. Their difficulties
emerge precisely in Israel as a secular democratic Jewish
state. Real obscurity is revealed when secular Jews start
wrestling with their identification as Jews. Most
Israelis try to avoid this question by shooting from the
hip that what unites all Jews is anti-Semitism, as if
anti-Semitism is an inherent feature of the world. As a
reflection of their own animosity toward gentiles, Jews
are completely convinced that it is an inborn gentile
necessity to exploit the ultimate Jewish otherness as a
punching bag. Israeli educational curricula blame other
religions, mainly Christianity, for orchestrating hatred
towards Jews throughout history - as if the
segregationist predisposition is a Christian invention.
Children's books are saturated with inquisition and
pogroms, ignoring the circumstances that led to those
historical events. Israeli Jews mourn their killed
children while remaining oblivious to their atrocities
that brought the Palestinian martyr to perpetrate his
desperate act.
Some secular Israeli Jews recite the slogan that Judaism
is not a homogeneous entity, that there are many versions
of Judaism. They identify themselves as Jews
characterized by the glorious Jewish cultural tradition
of scholarship. But this false pride falls apart easily
when they are asked what they mean by Jewish culture, or
what are the main virtues of Jewish scholarship? Their
ignorance is grounded in religious and political motives
that intentionally blur the narrative regarding the fall
of Jerusalem and the birth of Christianity. Jews in
general, and Israeli Jews in particular, are lacking in
knowledge about the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, as
Judaic oppositionary paradigms.
Beit Hallahmi (1993) In his book ‘Original
Sins’ elaborates a thorough
overview that clarifies the background for the distortion
of Hebraism into
the Rabbinic tradition. The Rabbinic tradition is
responsible for what is
called Jewish culture or Jewish genius over 2000 years of
exile. He blames
this tradition for the origin of Jewish segregation and
intolerance. In
exile, after the fall of Jerusalem, the rabbinic
tradition took over and
became the driving force behind all characteristics of
Jewish identity. The
rabbinic ruling interpreted the law given in the five
books of Moses, the
written version of the oral tradition which was collected
in six volumes
called the Mishna. This is the core for further
interpretation in the
Talmud. Beit Hallahmi argues that the Mishna
was actually a new version of
Judaism.
The Rabbinic tradition is linked with the Pharisees who
attempted to modify the harshness of the law by
interpretation and inference. Actually they were the
authoritarians who successfully tied the whole of life,
down to its smallest details with the observance of the
Law. The oppositionary conservative school to the
Pharisees, the Sadducees, rejected any tradition that was
established by scribal activity. After the fall of
Jerusalem they disappeared and the Pharisees' exposition
of the law became the touch-stone of Jewish scholarship.
The rampant deception about profound Jewish scholarship
is prevalent among Jews. The glamorous tradition of
scholarship is actually a learning by rote of piles upon
piles of rules as related to the Jewish law. Judaism is a
religion where man in relation to God, is conceived in
legalistic terms, where the ethics are equated with
obedience and fear of God. There is no theology in
Judaism.
These darkened spaces in narrating their
‘national’ past cause further ignorance which
ends in a detachment from reality. The same people who
praise Jewish culture and its profound scholarship, lack
any knowledge regarding the style of Jewish learning. The
secular young Israeli Jew is not faced with a Pentateuch
scroll or with a Talmud page. But although Israeli Jews
are completely alien to Jewish PILPUL (scribe
interpretation) they are very keen to raise their voice
in praise of Jewish scholarship.
In a brilliant article Meron Benvenisti declares that if
Zionism does not convert its ideological basis it is
doomed. I argue that it is not the ideology but rather a
genuine morbidity typical of Jewish identity which causes
Zionist conduct. Taking a step further I would say that
there is no chance for a people afflicted by the
morbidity of detachment to change, and thus they are
doomed.
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[1] The Lyotard reader, 1989 (Oxford:Basil Blackwell)
[2] Even the close proximity of postmodernism and
poststructuralism to
Judaism is refuted. Post structuralism as the linguistic
turn is related
with the artistic nature of language where all binary
oppositions are
dismantled. Since Judaism is obliged to differentiate
between the secular
and the profane, Jews and gentiles, Kosher and TRAIFAH,
Judaism takes a
diverged route from post structuralism.
[3] Butmann R., 1956, Primitive Christianity, (The
Fontana Library)
http://www.gilad.co.uk