The Metaphysics of Antisemitism

Between Denial and Despair

“The Jewish people and their fate are the living witness for the absence of redemption. This, one could say, is the meaning of the chosen people; the Jews are chosen to prove the absence of redemption.”

Leo Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews”

The world is broken. This unbearable reality engenders two equally flawed reactions. On the one hand, denial, and on the other hand, despair. Denialists claim that a grand solution to our woes exists: it doesn’t matter whether that silver bullet is communism, capitalism, wokeness, utilitarianism, rationalism, fascism, New Age, Sabbateanism, or Christianity. Just find the truth and you will be set free.

Despairists, by contrast, claim that because no solution exists we are not obligated to do much—just enjoy your life, live and let live; just be here now. Just soften your attachments. All action is vain, all impact is illusory, a castle in the sand. Retreat to the ashram or the cave, or just absorb immerse yourself in surfing.

Judaism as developed by the rabbis espouses a middle way between denial and despair: We are not obliged to perfect the world but we are not exempt from caring for its betterment. We should pursue the best course of action but we should not delude ourselves into thinking that any ideology is going to be problem free. The rabbis awaited the messiah every day, but they also did not hold their breath. They didn’t buy apocalypse futures; they built schools and families and compounded Torah study and observance over generations. The rabbis as a whole eschewed revolution in favor of survival—and their strategy worked. Most of their contemporary counter-movements fizzled out. Rage and nostalgia play well in the primaries but have little to do with governance. The rabbis minimized distraction and focused on the uplifting, if modest idea that “The Divine Presence goes into Exile with us.”

The Divine Presence in Exile perfectly summarizes a theology that refuses both denial and despair. Exile emphasizes brokenness, thus avoiding denial. But Divine Presence emphasizes consolation and access, thus avoiding despair. We live in a fallen world but one in which we can find and create something meaningful and good. Our situation is not binary (good or evil) but dialectical (good and evil). The complexity of the rabbinic worldview bothers many and places the Jews in a position of narrative violation.

Jews are hated on the left and right for refusing to make a god of politics. Jews are hated by the powerful for insisting that might doesn’t make right, but they are also hated by the powerless for insisting that weakness doesn’t make right, either. For millennia we were accused of deicide. Now, in the secular age we are accused of killing more figurative gods. The existence of Israel is one such god-killer: it’s a small and young nation that is both a superpower with a thriving and innovative economy and a fragile country surrounded by enemies, as the recent attacks by Hamas remind us. Anti-Zionism is 99/100 a form of antisemitism, not because it effectively denies the Jewish people a right to survival and self defense, but because it perpetuates the metaphysical idea that you have to choose between wielding state power and wielding moral power. Political Zionism, though not messianic religious Zionism, is continuous with the rabbinic view that although God is in exile, we shouldn’t throw up our hands. The state is in spiritual exile, but not for that reason disconnected from a God who is also in Exile. The mistake of some religious Zionists is in conflating political sovereignty with the arrival of redemption.

The benchmark for the Jewish people’s goodness should not be the unachievable perfect, but the BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement). I don’t want to live in a world run by utopians or by nihilists. Hamas and ISIS are pure nihilism. But tokenistic Western support for them in the name of “decolonization” represents an equally wrong utopianism. It’s always easier to tweet in favor of utopia than actually live there. Judaism recognizes the absence of redemption without being deterred.

Am Yisrael Chai.