[lbo-talk] "Heavenly Decreed Exile" and the Last Jewish Intellectual (was Israel Must Win By Gilad Atzmon)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 8/24/06, Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 08:26:59 -0700 (PDT) Chris Doss
> <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> writes:
> > --- Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > I agree that this view is whacky and highly
> > > offensive
> > > but if one holds, as do Orthodox Jews along with
> > > conservative Christians and Muslims, that God is
> > > a being who is at once omnipotent, omniscient,
> > > and omnibenevolent, then really no other view that
> > > can make sense. All evil events, even the Holocaust
> > > must necessarily be part of the divine plan and so
> > > must ultimately result in good, even if we, with our
> > > finite intellects,
> > > cannot perceive this.
> >
> > It appears repulsive to us non-believers, but given
> > their religious system it is not whacky at all. It's
> > completely consistent with the tone of the Old
> > Testament. God brought mass destruction down upon His
> > People in punishment for sin like a billion times.
>
> Quite so, and in traditional Jewish thought such
> events as the destruction of the First and Second
> Temples and the expulsion of the Jews from
> Palestine were all punishments from God
> for the sins of the Jewish people. And there
> are lots of Orthodox Jews, today, who would
> insist that the same was true for the Holocaust.

Here's an interesting paradox: the pre-modern religious Jewish thought
that their fate is to live in "heavenly decreed exile" till "the day
when all mankind will recognize the One G-g and serve Him in harmony"
(at
<http://www.nkusa.org/activities/Statements/2005Oct28Iran.cfm>) is far
more in accordance with the modernist and post-modernist aesthetic
exaltation of exile* than secular modern state-building nationalism
such as Zionism and (the till recently dominant current of)
Palestinian nationalism is.

* Remember what Edward Said said: "Of course.  I'm the last Jewish
intellectual.  You don't know anyone else.  All your other Jewish
intellectuals are now suburban squires. From Amos Oz to all these
people here in America.  So I'm the last one.  The only true follower
of Adorno.  Let me put it this way: I'm a Jewish-Palestinian" (qtd. in
Ari Shavit, "My Right of Return," An Interview with Edward Said,
Ha'aretz, 18 August 2000).

-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>