In his book “Being and Nothingness”, Jean-Paul Sartre tells us that “any relationship to others can be read as a function of an ascending or descending dynamic” In short, depending on whether language, more exactly attitude, locates its interlocutor as subject or as object. This is an angle we can take to capture the story.
How can a discourse of union be established in Israel today, overcoming the obstacles which still obliterated its advent: that is, that of the ethno-Judaic rhetoric which, in the forgetfulness of the alienation suffered, the nostalgia of ‘lost Jewish authenticity; or, that of self-denial by posing as the instance of all legitimate discourse, the “Torah”, which is the vital element of the ubiquitous Western Judaism. The Masters of the Oral Torah, beyond any current misinterpretation and loophole, have undertaken to found in all rigor a Jewish discourse which assumes the becoming for-itself of the Jewish man in all of his determinations and demands. Against the backdrop of this identity crisis generated by disunity, Jewish intellectual production is often inhabited by the quest for new extra-Torah landmarks, a quest that constantly oscillates between the extremes of nostalgia for the past on the one hand and mimicry. servile of the triumphant world on the other hand. Having laid bare the alienating “thought” of these two alternatives. These Rahamim problematized with a certain originality the future of Israel. The evidence of such an experience allows us to shift our focus from the dominant interpretation. In this specific case, of the value that Jewish anthropology gives to the concepts of identity and not of ethnicity. Likewise, the significance attached to it by political borders and the fragile qualities of national belonging. The experience allows us to take up the tensions to which you are referring, “problems”, or “the illusion of the socio-cultural unity of the People”. At the same time, there is indeed a Jewish reality to which the physical and the geographical refer.
Happy Passover Holidays