For Jews in the diaspora it’s always been a matter of life and death for universalism to triumph; Hitler’s institution of tribal power was catastrophic for us

By Herbert Rothschild

“It takes an act of abstraction to become a universalist; to see the possibility of common dignity in all the weird and gorgeous ways human beings differ is an achievement we’ve forgotten to celebrate.”

— Susan Nieman

More than once I’ve used Relocations to criticize the politics of tribalism, arguing that leftist identity politics is a mirror image of rightist identity politics and a losing strategy for the Democratic Party. Helped by the analysis of Susan Nieman in “The Left Is Not Woke,” in a column last December I defended the Enlightenment values of universal dignity and justice against theorists like Michel Foucault, who maintained that all discourses and all historical struggles are a jockeying for power among distinct groups.

Perhaps I was primed to believe in a common human dignity and thus equal justice for all because I am a Jew. Between Rome’s conquest of Judea in 63 BCE and until the founding of the state of Israel, Jews never were in a position to win a contest of identity politics and had repeatedly suffered at the hands of people — primarily Christians — who thought and acted in those terms. For us it was a matter of life and death for universalism to triumph. Hitler’s explicit rejection of Enlightenment values and his institution of tribal power was catastrophic for us.

Universalism, however, wasn’t just an 18th century Western European philosophical development that Jews endorsed for our own safety. The Hebrew scriptures (aka the Old Testament) and portions of the Christian scriptures (the New Testament) can be read as the evolution from a tribal understanding of the Jewish people and their god into a universalist one.

From their settlement of Canaan (roughly Palestine) before 1000 BCE until the capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the First Temple by the Neo-Babylonians in 586 BCE, the nexus of land, people and god was definitive for the identity of Hebrews. The exclusive worship they were commanded to give to their god was not because their god was the only god, but because this god had chosen them as his only people and given them a land “flowing with milk and honey.”

This nexus was shaken by the Babylonian Captivity in 586 BCE, when Jerusalem was conquered, the Temple destroyed, and the leadership carried into exile. There were only two possibilities. Hebrews could lose their identities, as the 10 tribes of the Northern Kingdom had lost their identities when the Assyrians had conquered them in 722 BCE and relocated them elsewhere in the Assyrian empire, or they could reconceive their god, themselves and the relationship between them.

That was the beginning of a process that resulted in Jewish monotheism as we understand it — there is only one god, that god is ubiquitous, and one can be in relation with that god anywhere. Jews became a people of the book (especially the Torah) instead of a people of the land. The process was finalized by two Jews of the first century CE, Jesus of Nazareth and Saul/Paul of Tarsus. They took the interiorization of the book (the covenant), begun by earlier prophets, to its inevitable conclusion: One could be among god’s chosen people without first being a Jew (specifically, without being circumcised).

Jews had to reject Paul’s complete dismissal of tribalism if we wished to remain Jews. When our distinctive identity was a choice rather than an imposition by the other peoples we lived among, observance of the external covenant, including a prohibition on intermarriage, was the ground of unity. Maintaining our distinctive identity, however, no longer was taken to mean being “a people separate and apart” in the literal sense. To the extent that the dominant societies among whom we lived permitted it, we could be integrated politically, economically, residentially and even socially.

The Holocaust and the refusal of so many countries, including the U.S., to shelter Jews fleeing from it shook the faith of many Jews that such integration was possible. The alternative was to create a state in which Jews have power over how we are treated. So, the link between Jewish identity and the land in which Jews dwelled was reforged. In 2018, the land was officially declared Jewish. Israel is now by law a Jewish state, although one need not be a Jew to live there.

And one need not live in Israel to be a Jew. Until recently, however, in many Jewish circles outside Israel, support of Israel was a litmus test of one’s Jewishness parallel to, or substituting for, observance of religious laws. To criticize Israel invited the accusation of being a “self-hating Jew.” Implied here is that Israeli and Jewish identity, though not necessarily the same, are intertwined.

Now that the intensity of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians is far more widely known than before, I think it fair to say that support of Israel in spite of that knowledge is a mark of tribalism, and criticism of Israel on the basis of that knowledge is a mark of universalism. I regard the choice of more and more Jews outside Israel to be universalists — meaning in this case to value justice above parochial loyalty — as a hopeful development.

Just as Christian nationalism is a distortion of the universalist character of Christianity, so Jewish nationalism is a distortion of the universalist character that Judaism acquired when it developed into a world religion. Both these religious tribalisms pose serious threats to U.S. Jews. The former threat is primarily political, the second primarily spiritual. For our own well-being we must expose and resist both.

Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear on Friday in Ashland.news. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views and may or may not reflect those of Ashland.news. Email Rothschild at herbertrothschild6839@gmail.com.