Diasporic and diasporist
I am a Jew. I am a diasporic Jew: the chance of History had me born in the Diaspora. A chance historically and statistically explicable: at the moment I was born, barely two or three percent of the Jews of the world were being born in Palestine. I am also a diasporist Jew: reflection led me to believe that my place was in the Diaspora, that it was a legitimate place, a lasting one, even a kind of obligation. It matters to me to say “diaspora” and not hagola, “dispersion” rather than “exile.” This is not to deny the fact that the Jewish people, my people, had on some very distant day been exiled from its home; it is a rebellion against the pejoration of the exilic condition, against the idea that the centuries of life in dispersion are merely a parenthesis in our history, a parenthesis with no reason to exist now that a Jewish State exists. Here one enters the domain of intuitive conviction, of an attitude that lends itself to no discussion, but that one then sets about grounding through arguments of seemingly logical appearance. I shall return to this.
My diasporism is not without its merits: in the Polish lycée where, some fifty-five years ago, I underwent part of my secondary schooling, it sometimes happened that my classmates dragged me by force before the vast “Eurasia” map that covered one wall of the classroom, in order to thrust — with no excessive gentleness — my nose (the perversity of chance had it strike the wall at about the right height) against a little red patch on the edge of the Mediterranean1, saying: “Jew, your place is there! Get the hell out of here!” It may be that my diasporist conviction was born of the revolt against this imposed choice, of that spirit of “davke” that inhabits the Jew and that sometimes prevents him from yielding to the temptation of the “right choice.” Once again, this is my personal history; it is the result that is to be retained.
In reflecting on the condition of the Jew on the basis of these instinctive convictions, I felt very early the temptation to contest the relevance of the State of Israel. A difficult contestation, even an iconoclastic one, running counter to the universal momentum. The Jews of Europe, emerging from the Genocide, wanted more than ever a place of their own; as for the others, the non-Jews, the horror at the memory of what had happened pushed them to grant the Jews their kingdom (on the backs of others); not to mention those whose antisemitism made them say “good riddance.” All the same, when in 1949 the situation of the Jew in Poland — confronted at once with deadly antisemitism and triumphant Stalinism — became unbearable to what remained of my family, we left, left for elsewhere but not for Israel. “Because of the climate,” said my mother, who had a heart condition. Because of the climate too, no doubt… It is time to attempt a more rational synthesis.
Attempting to rationalize the “against the State”
There are among the Jews of the Diaspora some who refused, once and for all, the idea of a Jewish national state. Before 1939, the creation of such a State seemed an unrealistic utopia to those who could not see how to uproot and transfer elsewhere — toward an “elsewhere” that was harsh and hostile besides — the millions of European Jews. History proved them wrong: the problem was resolved by the murder of those very millions. Their disappearance made the Zionist dream and its concretization realistic. But the creation and above all the evolution of Israel did not abolish all the objections of principle; it took some years for reflection to organize itself; today a certain clarification has been achieved.
One may speak first of a diasporic vocation of the Jewish people, with the conviction — paradoxical in appearance (but appearances do sometimes deceive) — that the change brought about by a statehood existence in the psychology, attitudes, and behaviors of the Jews is not necessarily beneficial, either for those of the Diaspora or for those of Israel.
Thus, until the creation of the State, the acts of the Jews taken as a whole were scarcely guided by reason of State — they had none. A circumstance that allowed them to place themselves more easily at the vanguard of ethical struggles. For “reason of State” is a powerful reason, which alas dictates to the Hebrew State behaviors that individual morality must refuse. The image of the Jew suffers from it, and first of all in his own eyes — but not only. Every Jew breathed a sigh of satisfaction when the image, once current in Europe, of the fearful Jew fleeing war was replaced by that of the Hagana and of Tsahal (the Israel Defense Forces), a powerful and how very effective army… Alas, the use the State makes of this formidable tool plunges one into perplexity.
A different cause of perplexity is the passage from the condition of the minority to that of the majority. For millennia, the Jews were in the countries that sheltered them a more or less accepted minority, and this sheltering created for them certain necessities. The necessity of being better, indeed the best — simply to live and survive. Derisory in strength (even though history records numerous cases of armed Jewish uprisings in the ancient world, and even of fleeting creations of independent Jewish entities), they had to develop on other planes certain particular qualities. It is no accident if, in the Poland of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, the converted Jew (it was considered at that time that his religion alone, and what attached to it, prevented him from being “like the others”) automatically acceded to the nobility: homage was thus paid to the intellectual level of men issued from the “people of the Book,” whom one could not have cast into the estate of serf-peasants or into that of the burghers, the two other classes (castes?) of the Polish society of the time (this attitude changed completely in the following centuries, when Polish society, more and more reluctant, decided that a Jew would remain a Jew whatever he did; but that is another story).
The passage to the status of the majority, the acquisition of a “home of one’s own,” induces in the Jew-Israeli attitudes that follow logically from this new condition. Does he not henceforth behave toward minorities according to patterns of which he had himself been the victim in other places? Not only are Israeli Arabs the object of a discrimination in their status as citizens (a discrimination generally explicable by the “provisional” circumstances, but which is not without recalling those of which the Jews in the Diaspora had complained until their emancipation), but, what is more, the average Israeli Jew has a propensity to regard them as his intrinsic inferiors, transposing mutatis mutandis not only the acts but also the prejudices of which his fathers had been the victims. This rather widespread attitude toward “the other,” whoever he may be — including the labor force imported from Eastern Europe or the Far East — prolongs and aggravates the discriminations that Israeli society had already sketched out (this is a euphemism) within its own bosom, with the Ashkenazi/Sephardi conflicts, and the prejudices against “blacks” in general — and the Falashas are not the only ones targeted here.
There are more subtle corollaries of the status of the majority. The necessity of fighting for survival has passed, in Israel, from the individual to the collectivity: henceforth it is the whole of the Israelis who must confront a massively hostile environment, while the individual Israeli, in his effort toward success, confronts competitors who are his fellows (certainly, economic conditions aside, but it is the same everywhere). This challenge, hard as it may be, is no different from the one any individual in a civilized country confronts in his life. It is no longer the struggle of a member of a minority disadvantaged by his condition — a harder and therefore more stimulating struggle, which compels him to surpass himself and which engenders exceptional successes. This thesis appears fragile, I grant it, but how to explain, for example, that since the birth of Israel the some 600,000 Jews of France have given to the world, in the scientific domains, half a dozen Nobel Prizes, whereas the Israelis, however much more numerous, have to this day engendered, if I am not mistaken, only half a one, in economics? It is true that they have made up for it as regards the Peace Prize, which counts three laureates — without, alas, obtaining peace. (I do not forget Agnon in literature, but that is yet another thing, and the State does not seem to me directly involved.) Do not think that I find particular talents in French Jews; it is probable that analogous results would appear if one looked into American, British, or even Russian Jews: all the countries that have had Nobel laureates in a statistically perceptible manner have among them a percentage of Jews superior to the “logical”…
One may find this reflection specious and fragile… And yet it sheds light in part on the reasons for the choice I make between a “normal” life that might one day become that of a small people at last stabilized and turned into a State, and on the other side — the role of the “chosen one,” of the “salt of the nations,” of the catalyst of ideas, of the promoter of progress in every domain, and of the scapegoat. Evidently, other choices are possible, but this one is mine.
Attempting to explain the “for diasporism”
There is not only the mistrust toward a statified life. Beyond this doubt, and beyond the “davke” evoked at the start, here are other positive aspects of my diasporist choice. I shall speak, for the record only, of the sweetness of living in France, of the gastronomic, cultural, and touristic richness of our provinces… All the same, there is among us a vast community of “diasporists of well-being,” or if one prefers, of “Zionists by proxy,” for whom, avowed or not, the material takes precedence over the ideological (the “material” may here include immaterial items and comforts: the language, the culture, the habits, the space…). They had to be mentioned. In the eyes of those diasporics, the antisemitism that some of my friends evoke insistently does not carry, or not yet, the same weight. But let us pass on to what is important.
The Second World War, by annihilating European Judaism (to a depth one always has trouble measuring), seemed tragically to prove diasporism wrong. The “logical” consequence of the creation of the Hebrew State (if all the borders had at the time been open to the Jews, and if the very existence of Israel had not appeared to many potential olim as too precarious because of the active hostility of the Arabs) would have been the gathering on this promised land of the major part of the dispersed Jewish people. To such a gathering, desired and actively promoted by the proponents of the State of Israel (is it useful to recall the at least clumsy exploitation that was recently made of the antisemitic flare-up in France?), one may subscribe. But one may also raise troubling questions: is it expedient to gather the entirety of the Jews in a single place? For two thousand years and more this people has paradoxically survived thanks to its dispersion; the ghettos went up in flames now here, now there, the Jews perished by the thousands, but there always remained somewhere survivors and a land of refuge. To create a ghetto on the scale of the planet is an innovation that, contrary to the appearances of a security at last acquired, presents an unprecedented risk and creates a new possibility of annihilating the Jewish people. Yes, this is a thoroughly cataclysmic vision of the future, one that easily leads to a psychological block, to an essential refusal, but can one guarantee that it will not be? “Times have changed, we have become a strong State, never again,” say the Sabras. May they be right! May they be right, if only as regards their own security. As for that of the Jews in the Diaspora, these are beginning to realize that the glorious vision of Entebbe is (unfortunately) gone, that the support they would enjoy from Israel in case of vital danger could only be diplomatic — and the Law of Return, if there is still time. Which is no small thing.
In the meantime, one has witnessed a new phenomenon: an antisemitic flare-up in Europe motivated by the present treatment of the Palestinians, which has offered a convenient outlet to anti-Zionism (not forgetting antisemitism, lately repressed out of decency, and which here finds an occasion to resurface). Paradoxically, this shield of the dispersed Jews that Israel was supposed to be brings them, on the contrary, a few setbacks. These are still of the order of psychological trauma rather than a real threat; and we shall face them. With, for some, this inglorious leitmotiv: “If one day things go bad here, I’ll go over there.” But not before? Is it being a Zionist to keep Israel as a possible lifebuoy, on a par with a Swiss bank account?
Fidelity
Another reason underlies my diasporist option, and it is the duty created by the Genocide of the European Jews. Some of the survivors (and Marek Edelman is one of the most emblematic, even if the reasons for his choice to remain in Poland are manifold) chose to remain on the sites of the Shoah as “keepers of the cemeteries.” For some are needed, and one cannot count on others. The following generations have, for their part, another duty before history and before the Jewish people: we must carry on Jewish presence and Jewish life there where they had wished to eradicate them. Again the spirit of “davke,” the spirit of “mir zeinen do” (we are here). The tragic past compels us to choose our future otherwise than by chance; among the possible choices I make that of fidelity: “The Judas tree in the French forest,” said Albert Cohen. To carry on Jewish presence in the Diaspora appears, then, as a duty. I sincerely believe that we can succeed well at this historical examination. We must continue; the future lies ahead.
I do not love it, but I would die for it (or with it)…
The rational is only in appearance the property of (Jewish) man. There is the rest, the visceral. After explaining my reticences with respect to the State of the Jews, I am forced to acknowledge that neither its behaviors nor its fate leave me indifferent. To go straight to the essential: if one day the State of Israel were to disappear (and I do not have enough imagination to envisage its disappearance in any manner other than the tragic)2, the event would be unacceptable to me. I cannot then see myself as anything but setting off to die over there, with my brothers. A ridiculous impulse at seventy, but a deep and sincere one. No doubt an indelible aftereffect of the memory of the passivity of the American Jews during the Genocide. All the more as I do not believe the Jewish people capable, despite its vitality, of withstanding another Horban (destruction). How many of ours have fled the Jewish condition by becoming “something else”? And also, how many of ours have fled the memory of the Shoah by joining nothingness? Life is, in the Jewish tradition, the most precious good, and many prohibitions fade away before the necessity of preserving it — but there comes a moment and circumstances in which the difficult question poses itself.
Hostile to Israel?
The recurrent reproach addressed to the diasporist, that he turns his back on Israel, indeed that he is hostile to it, is specious. In the majority of cases, nothing is more false. The stubbornness in wishing to persist in the Diaspora does not entail, as an inevitable corollary, anti-Zionism. The Jewish people is rich enough (if this paradox is in order) to have made coexist within itself both the diasporist utopia and the Zionist utopia, which have been and will yet be by turns right and wrong. A difficult coexistence, conflictual because competitive, with in the past a few anathemas on either side, which laggards still brandish. To deny the reality of the moment in the name of a past or future reality is among us a custom that can lead a Jew to turn away from his brother, even to consign him to the gibbet — only to fly to his aid in extreme need. It is nonetheless a fertile custom; the whole history of the Jewish people shows that to believe in miracles is sometimes reasonable, on condition of not abusing it…
For the diasporist Jew, it is important to take care that the interest he bears in Israel does not become a source of negative manifestations. There are thus Jews whose only specific reference seems to be a vigorous anti-Sharonism, and whose only activity is the public demonstrations of dissociation from Israeli policy. As a mirror image of those who abstain from expressing open criticism against the Hebrew State, fearing to contribute to the confusion between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
The Zionist does not love the diasporist?
On the side of the partisans of Israel, the hostility against diasporism seems logical, insofar as it is a matter of a direct competition that threatens (or rather would threaten, were this attitude to become general) both the ideological justification and the practical existence of a Jewish State. The antagonism between the Zionists and the diasporists (of whom, in the past, the Bund — without being its only example — was the best known, to the point that one qualifies today, with a nuance of derision, as “neo-Bundist” any opponent of Zionism) goes beyond the stage where, as is the custom, each holds the truth and tolerates neither the truth of his neighbor nor his competition.
If the Diaspora continues, as is currently the case, to gather the major part of the Jewish people, then one of the Zionist objectives — that of the gathering of the people in its historic homeland — will not have been completely accomplished. But could one not content oneself with a partial success? All the more as, simultaneously, realism pushes those responsible for the Hebrew State to wish for the persistence (provisional?) of at least a part of the Diaspora: it is one thing to transfer to Israel the Jews of Yemen, of Ethiopia, or even of Russia; it would be another to deprive oneself of the support of the Jews of the United States. And the economic contribution of the whole of the world’s Jews to the Israeli economy, weak as it is, is not entirely negligible.
However, faced with this “provisionally” tolerated Diaspora, the attitude is domineering, attempting to impose on it submission and obedience, in the form of material contributions and of unconditional support for everything the Hebrew State decides and undertakes. The notion of a Jewish solidarity in the face of the permanent perils that threaten Israel is a strong argument for justifying this posture, which willfully confuses the people, the State, and the government. The alas incontestable reality of these perils serves to ground the epithet of “bad Jew,” of “traitor,” too often pinned on the critics. As this stigmatization has numerous spokesmen in the Diaspora itself, dialogue is not easy. What is one to answer to him who, in his need to defend Israel in the name of a requirement of universal Jewish solidarity, not only forbids himself the least criticism but forbids it to others: “the Goyim are watching us and seize on everything we may say”?
On the possibility of a synthesis
For the good of all the components of our people, a kind of symbiosis must be established between Zionists and diasporists. Numerous obstacles, psychological and also political, today hamper such a “historic compromise.” A genuine mutual recognition would be needed so that an equitable and fertile dialogue might begin. Here one leaves the realistic domain for a series of pious wishes; yet the realization of these wishes is a necessary precondition… The cup seems still far from our lips, however great the thirst.
It would thus be fitting to put a little order into the Diaspora, where a permanent hiatus exists between the official institutions (and one knows how far their representativeness can be contested) and the “Jewish street” that neglects to confer on these institutions a genuine legitimacy: the various elections that put these representatives in place attract only a feeble minority of those who say they are Jews. Now, the official Jewish institutions of France often have a simplistic attitude in favor of Israel, even if the individuals who lead them hold in private (indeed sometimes in public, but in a personal capacity) a more nuanced discourse. One chronically hears the explanation “this is not the moment to criticize our brothers who are in mortal danger.” An unanswerable argument, one that lands fully among those who, living in security (despite “antisemitism in France”), derive from it a feeling of guilt and do not allow themselves criticism — above all not in public. And, faced with this massive support, the vociferations of the few “anti-Zionists”…
It would therefore be necessary, besides the improvement of the representativeness of our spokesmen, that there cease among us this feeling of “desertion,” of abandonment of our brothers — in a word, of guilt — that our relative security and our choice not to leave for Israel induce. Then the Diaspora could address the Israelis in a serene and useful manner. Now, one cannot imagine that this “guilt” and this feeling of duty toward the Israelis should fade before the disappearance of the threat upon Israel, and thus without a lasting peace, accompanied by serious guarantees (the Sharonian idea of security for Israel while avoiding the creation of a viable and independent Palestinian State seems even more chimerical than the paragraph above). Alas, this is not for the immediate future.
On the other side, in Israel, one would need to be listened to, and thus a recognition of the Diaspora as a partner in a balanced dialogue. Can one dream of it? Faced with a State that is strong, structured, and organized, individuals weigh little, and the local organizations scarcely more, even the most important. Would one have to imagine, then, a representative entity democratically designated by the whole of the world’s Jewish Diaspora (which the World Jewish Congress is not), so that the two dispersed thirds of the Jewish people might be taken into consideration by the “statified” third? One quickly realizes that such ideas have little chance of becoming concrete in any foreseeable future. Consequently, the Israel/Diaspora relation seems to pertain essentially to the private domain of each diasporic Jew. To each to choose his attitude — and here we are, alas, brought back to the present situation… Our people has succeeded more than once, in the course of its history, in extricating itself from vicious circles, but this one is of an unprecedented and particularly arduous kind. At the least, may each reflect upon it lucidly!