Customer Reviews

Jews and Power (Jewish Encounters)

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From King David, to the philosopher Spinoza, to boxer Barney Ross, the Jewish Encounter Series has been as varied as it has been excellent. Now, into this mix comes Ruth Wisse's thoughtful, provocative essay, "Jews and Power" polemical in the best sense of the word. Against a grain of modern scholarship that tends to run counterfactual in its effort to imagine Jews and the Jewish state as both ordinary and extraordinarily bad, Wisse produces a work which effectively demolishes both perspectives. Her relatively short book examines Jewish history from the period of the 2nd Commonwealth to the modern state of Israel in a manner both engaging and highly readable.

Wisse argues that the uniqueness of the Jewish community exists in a relentless self criticism going back at least to Roman times. Unlike other cultures which faced with powerlessness tended to blame the other, Jews through their first and second exile sought to affix the blame neither to their neighbors nor their stars, but to themselves. Moreover, Wisse shows no shyness about asking tough questions, such as those who imagine prefer being powerless and in danger to being strong. This will make some uncomfortable, but still she pulls no punches.

Another interesting topic covered is the contradiction in anti-Judaism, despising Jews for being both too weak (stateless, poor) and too strong (seizing control of the world, too smart, too rich, and though she gives it insufficient coverage, killing god). As it happens the same paradigm exists today. Two professors from distinguished universities raise a firestorm by arguing that neo-cons and the Israel lobby (read Jews) have seized control of the American government policy against the national interest (an impressive trick by any standard) even as others argue against all evidence that the world's perpetual denunciations of Israel is the same as the treatment of any other state.

To her great credit Wisse does not embrace the false modesty of imagining the Jews as the same as any other people, recognizing how, against all odds, they continue to make contributions to culture, the sciences, and philosophy that far outstrip their meager numbers. She likewise recognizes the uniqueness of the State of Israel, both in terms of the good (the return of an exiled people to their homeland, a thing without precedent in human history other than the last time they did it), as well as the bad the failure of the Zionist enterprise to achieve the normalization of the status of Jews that its founders imagined.

If one were to quibble with Wisse's book, its main shortcoming is that she could have delved further into the theological underpinnings of Jewish self identity. Does Judaism's relentless monotheism, lacking a serious conception of a devil foster the tendency towards self criticism that she describes? Is that Jewish theology embraces an oversized eschatological goal - the perfection of the world through Jewish action - likewise have an affect?

That said, this book, at less than 200 pages, could hardly be expected to be all embracing. What it is, however, is small and impactful to a degree that belies it size, just like the phenomenon it seeks to describe.

Ruth Wisse begins this book by exploring some of the ways in which Jews have traditionally examined their own behavior. And that's an interesting point of view. Is it really true that the Arab-Israeli conflict is partially cultural, with Jews tending to blame themselves for much of what happens? Is Arab culture different in this respect? If so, that could explain a tendency of both sides to examine Jewish behavior far more than Arab behavior, and it might explain what I consider an exaggeration of Israel's importance by both sides in the conflict.

Wisse is quick to point out that while Jews had been confined to ghettos for centuries, emancipation led to a different type of problem: modern anti-Semitism. The accusations by anti-Semites were intended to show that Jews "were unworthy of the legal and social position conferred upon them." And even when anti-Semitism reached epidemic proportions, the carriers of this malady saw no reason to stop: it appeared to put them at no disadvantage. Meanwhile, the Jews themselves were powerless to stop it, as they were the prey.

As Wisse explains, while some anti-liberal political parties were not "originally or innately anti-Semitic," there were "no anti-Semitic parties that were not innately anti-liberal."

We then get to Zionism, and Wisse explains some of its origins. But, as Wisse tells us, Zionism lacked one ingredient, namely "the military planning force that every nation assumes it needs in order to regain, gain, or maintain its land." Although Wisse traces the start of Jewish defence forces back to 1920, I think that only after years of even more calamities, topped by the 1939 British White Paper, did the majority of Jews realize the need for an independent state, including armed forces.

The most interesting part of this book deals with the innovations of anti-Zionism, and the ways in which it has gone beyond anti-Semitism. Once again, as in the case of anti-Semitism, the animus against the accused was "not directed to any correctable attribute or rectifiable lapses." But there were differences. While National Socialist Germany took the lead in anti-Semitic propaganda, it did not organize "a Pan-European movement around that issue." On the other hand, "opposition to Israel became the glue of Pan-Arabism."

European anti-Semites blamed Jews for their existing social crises (and I would add that they blamed the Jews for suffering the effects of anti-Semitism), but "Arab leaders created the crisis for which they blamed the Jews." That is, they refused to allow the resettlement of Arab refugees simply in order to blame Jews.

Although the European anti-Semites did sporadically boycott Jewish stores and businesses in the 1930s, Arabs went beyond this to arrange systematic boycotts of Israel. I agree: just ask yourself if you have ever seen Israel participate in the Mediterranean Games. I think we all realize that Israel has a Mediterranean coastline. Don't you ever wonder what the nations who go along with such a boycott are thinking? I think the threats of academic boycotts of Israel are also an example of this phenomenon.

I think most of us are aware of the mass rallies that the National Socialists held. Once again, as Wisse points out, anti-Zionists have gone beyond this to use weapons of mass communication.

A fifth aspect of the enhancement of anti-Zionism over anti-Semitism that Wisse mentions is the use (Wisse uses the word "conscription") of the United Nations. I would add two more aspects: the conscription of some of the Western media and some Western academic departments.

The author says that while the purpose of Zionism and Israel was to normalize Jewish existence, this did not happen, just as Jewish emancipation did not regularize the political status of European Jews. The Arab-Israeli conflict turned out to be "an asymmetrical attack by the Arab-Islamic world on the idea of a Jewish homeland." Yes, some folks say that the source of the problem is the fact that Israel has some territory in the West Bank. But Wisse answers that "since the disputed territories are Israel's as a result of Arab aggression, they could not retroactively have become its cause."

Wisse does discuss the Levantine Arabs, and says that Rashid Khalidi compares these people with peoples who lack independence, namely the Armenians and Kurds. Of course, Armenia actually exists now, but Wisse shows us that there really are huge differences between the Levantine Arabs and peoples who have long had their own language and culture. In addition, it is curious that the Kurds and Armenians (along with the Jews) have long been opposed by the Arabs.

Meanwhile, Wisse goes into detail about the extent to which the Levantine Arabs have fashioned their entire identity, myths, symbols, slogans, and domestic and foreign policies around opposition to the Jews. I agree that all this is terribly counterproductive, not only for what it does to the Levantine Arabs outright, and not only for the immediate threat to world peace, but also because of the precedent it has set: what goes around can come around.

The author does mention the terrible mistake of the Oslo agreement, which "triggered an immediate escalation of terror, not only against Israel but against the West." This was an avoidable error which many people easily foresaw but were unable to prevent. Wisse adds that no Israeli initiative could correct what went wrong in Arab societies, just as no Jewish initiative "could have solved the German problem" that led to National Socialism.

Wisse concludes by wisely explaining that aggressors against a democratic system can be invigorated by their anti-Semitism to move against society as a whole: "why stop at the Jews?" I agree: it is unlikely that anti-Zionism will stop with the Jews.

I recommend this book.

Wisse presents a first-rate historical analysis of Jewish history in terms of the political influence they were able to exert in the context of their lives after the destruction of the 2nd temple, up to present times. Yes, the current analysis tends to be polemical, but justifiably so in laying out the situation as it is. Very well written and easy to read.

Gave me an unexpected and refreshing perspective on the history of the Jewish people. They have much to be proud of, I learned, particularly in their need to excel without armies, national power, or centralized wealth and influence in the centuries before establishment of the present State of Israil. The perspective is especially interesting in considering the current conflict with Palestinians in the Middle East.

As a book that seeks to begin a debate about Jews' ambiguous relationship to (and even more ambiguous feelings about) political power, this book works quite well. It works far less well, however, when Ruth Wisse strays into an analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Here's where the book works. Wisse traces the Jewish communities' Diaspora politics of accommodation which resulted in highly flexible and democratic communities whose first instinct was to see whether there was anything that the community could have done or could do better in the existing circumstances and a desire to please others at the community's own expense. Wisse also does a good job of pointing out the spiritual facet of that politics which made the Jewish communities reluctant to assume political or military power and, in turn, made a fighting force the last institution the Jews developed under the Mandate. (In this context, it would have been interesting to see Ruth Wisse comment on whether this political tradition--which put so much emphasis on not doing wrong as opposed to risking doing wrong in the name of the community--had anything to do with the fact that, Ben Zakkai, a pacifist was instrumental in launching Diaspora politics.)

The book breaks down however in Wisse's analysis of anti-Semitism (it's the non-Jews' problem) and in her analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian/Israeli-Arab conflicts. Firstly, it is true that the nobility found it easy to "sacrifice" the Jews to fend off the mobs. However, in most of Europe, the majority of Jews were not well off. So the argument that they stood out more than the Gypsies did not convince me. Anti-Semitism has been described as "the rumor about Jews," in other words the West's and the East's longest-running conspiracy theory. Rather than dismiss this argument (or rather not even mention it), Ruth Wisse would have done herself and us a great service by frankly engaging with it.

Secondly, there is her treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab conflict. Although she dismisses the claims of both the ultra-Right and the ultra-Left ("the first [claim] is not subject to proof; the second is demonstrably bogus") she essentializes Arabs (a people who she says are the opposite of Jews) and Palestinians (a people who are the opposite of Jews and who seek to take on Jewish symbols) and hence makes any sort of analysis of the conflict impossible. What is more this whole line of argument was not even necessary for Ruth Wisse to make her point. All she had to do was point out the callousness with which some Jews treat Jewish claims--and contrast that to the sensitivity these same Jews show to (identical or equivalent) Arab and Palestinian claims. That, I feel, would have made her point (that Diaspora politics plays a tremendous role in shaping Israeli politics) far better than what she did. This, after all, is a book about Jewish; not Arab politics--and when it sticks to its subject it works well; when it does not it does not work and sometimes becomes downright insulting.

For anyone interested in a stimulating discussion about Jewish Diaspora politics I would recommend this book with the proviso to read section on the Arab/Palestinian-Israeli conflict with more than a grain of salt.

This is one of the BEST books out there on the subject of anti-Semitism (hatred of Jews or the Jewish State).
She takes us on a discussion from the loss of Jewish sovereignty in 70 CE, when Roman emperor Titus crushed the Jewish revolt against Roman rule in Israel, burning the Temple in Jerusalem and sending many Jews into Exile, up until the failure of the doomed Oslo Accords leading to the war of terror against the Israeli people launched by Yasser Arafat in 2000,
On note of hope and courage she notes that to her the re-establishment of Israel only three years after the destruction of European Jewry is an even more hopeful augury than the dove's appearance before Noah with an olive leaf after the flood. She rightly pours scorn on modern day would be Hitler, Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
who branded Israel as ' a rotten dried tree that will eliminated by one storm', reminding us that Jews have lived to see the downfall of every Haman and Hitler.
In fact most likely Ahmadinejad is foretelling the fate of his own decayed society.
The basis of her essay is the dual discussion on Jewish survival and the realization that no other people developed a similar long-term culture of accommodation to defeat.

In response to Russian pogroms of 1881 one of the early modern Zionist thinkers Leon Pinkser issued a call for Jewish self-emancipation, arguing that exile had turned the Jews into a nation of zombies. Hebrew poet Haim Nahman Bialik rebuked has fellow Jews for passively allowing themselves to be slaughtered urging self-liberation for Jews to determine their own future.
Wisse points out how since ancient times the Jews have always been vulnerable to betrayal by the least satisfied people in their own, seeking revenge on their people for real and imagined slights. From the collaborators who worked with the Greeks and Romans during the occupation of Israel by their Empires, to the Jew-hating Jews oif today with their bottomless hatred of Israel and it's people, and their efforts to do Israel harm and encourage it's genocidal foes like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian and Syrian regimes.


In a detailed study of the Diaspora, the author notes how
one of the most unfortunate developments in the exile was the loathsome moser (informer), the negative counterpart of the shtadlan (intercessor) who intercedes with the authorities who speak for the Jews to those in power. "The Jewish community was always hostage to it's unhappiest members who stood to gain by serving the powers that be."

On the other hand the persecution of the Jews into the 19th century helped to galvanize the Jewish people into a coherent national movement that would restore the Jews to sovereignty in their own ancient homeland.
Moses Leib Lilienblum, once a secular socialist, became a passionate Zionist as a result of the 19981-82 pogroms in Russia.
Similarly Theodore Herzl was a committed assimilationist before covering the Dreyfuss Affair in France in 1894, after which he became the father of modern day Zionism.
Wisse's study of how this Jew-hatred led to Jews becoming committed Zionists resonates with me.
The 2000 war of terror ('intifada') of 2000, accompanied by the massive growth of the vicious anti-Israel industry of the Muslim world and international left, who control the media, universities and United Nations, among other things, turned me into a committed Jew and passionate Zionist. Especially the violent and venomous international hate fest against Jews and Israel of 2001 in Durban, ironically in Orwellian fashion called the 'UN Conference Against Racism', and a campaign by Jewish mosers to outdo their gentile counterparts in hatred of Israel and demands for that country's destruction.

Part Three of this book is about the Jew's Return to Zion and the struggle of Israel to survive against an Arab world obsessed with her destruction. She illustrates how "Although European anti-Semites blamed Jews for their existing social crises such as poverty, unemployment and loss of spiritual direction, Arab leaders created the crisis for which they were blamed' in rejecting partition and refusing the resettlement of Palestinian refugees they deliberately sustained the refugee crisis because Israel could be charged for fake moral repsonsibility of the refugee crisis as long as the crisis could be prolonged.

Contrary to the image the world has been brainwashed with by the international left and Muslim power networks, the entire conflict has in reality revolved around Israeli efforts at accommodation against Arab aggression and expansionism.
Therefore when Golda Meir told Sadat that "We can forgive you for killing our sons, But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours" she was admitted an unhealthy attitude of ceaseless efforts at accommodation against a relentless aggressor , whose political traditions interpreted her confession as a weakness.
The author correctly tells us that she would have demonstrated greater understanding of her Arab adversary, as well as mutual decency. tolerance and realism of both sides (instead of all decency, tolerance and accommodation coming form the Israeli side as it has for the last 60 years) if she had told him "WE Jews are here to stay."

The Arabs Soviet tutors supplied the Arabs with far more potent ideological language than the right wing type anti-Semitic language used by Hitler's mufti, when they taught them to invert reality and accuse Israel of 'racism' and 'imperialism'.
The author explains how the Palestinians have built a national identity based PURELY on bottomless hatred of another people and obsessive determination to destroy them rather than any cultural traditions of their own.
Their language, culture and traditions are identical to that of other Arabs in the Middle East, unlike real national minorities like the Kurds and Maronites. Only hatred of Israel has been used to forge a national identity.
What if, the author asks if the Palestinians had concentrated on "how to 'improve education, health care, governance, trade and commerce, and public works- had they prepared to build their own society rather than destroying someone else's".
The author also does not spare condemnation of the perfidy of the United Nations when she points out that 'In the 1960s the Arab-Soviet bloc used opposition to Israel to take political control over the world organization for which America was footing the bill. Resolutions attacking Israel's "racism" and "discrimination" routinely divert attention away from their sponsors, who unlike Israel,institutionalize racism and discrimination (including against women) in their countries. Professional observers have buy now provided ample evidence of how the Arab war against Israel "debased the UN, sullied it's charter, perverted the meaning of human rights and ransacked international law and it's highest court".
It all boils down to the fact as the author tells us that a genuine chance of peace depend on how soon Israel is accorded the rightful place it has earned in the family of nations.
Violence continues for the same reason it took place in 1920 and before.

The refusal of the Arabs to accept the presence of the Jewish people in their ancient homeland.

And peace will only come when the Arabs and their backers realize once and for all that the Jews of Israel are there to stay.

In this relatively short book, Ruth Wisse manages to cover thousands of years of Jewish history and to point out the basic aspect of Jewish faith, that God knows why everything occurs, that He has a reason for it, but that at the end, if we are good people, He will bring us back to our home in Jerusalem. Jews also understood, until recently, that they were alive a the good will of the local authorities and that the best way to maintain this good will was to make themselves indispensable. Which led to many of them acquiring advanced skills. Only after 1948 did Israel provide a defense of its citizens. Ruth Wisse style is direct and fluid.

A very nice work and a very informative read.

Jacques Beser, Ph.D.
Newport beach, CA

As a black man who has read a great deal of Jewish history, both as a potential idealized theoretical model for how blacks might someday finally get their act together and negotiate their way around white racism, as well as to get another perhaps more honest assessment of Jewish history itself, I have found nothing that comes even remotely close to this densely pack, passionate, plainly written, but profoundly academic little book.

As is true of the Jewish condition itself, this book too peels back the complex layers of existential necessity that led to the mechanisms of adaptation required to underwrite the Jewish mode of survival. Unsurprisingly, (and as usual) it has little or nothing to do with the conspiracy mythologies, which usually surround both thought and scholarship about Jews in general, and about the Jews of Israel in particular.

Here in a nutshell is a superb history of a people told in terms that make imminent logical, practical, historical and religious good sense. It not only puts Jewish religious history into the full context of Jewish survival, but it also puts Jewish political history - that is, Jews relationship to power -- into context as well.

In a recent book I reviewed on Amazon.com, called "Blood and Belonging," Michael Ignaieff, reveals a compelling paradigm among peoples: between "their fear of being alone out in this world" and "having the protection of a government to allay such fears." It is an existential problem that lives deeply at the root of so many yearnings of so many different peoples. Take any group of your choice throughout history (except perhaps for the Romani people) and multiply it by a factor of ten and then you may come close to understanding the Jewish existential position throughout history.

What we learn in this well-organized and well-written book is that Jewish life has never been just about survival alone, but also about "living as full human beings" in lands owned by other people. In order to negotiate the life of a "full human being," especially in the midst of historically hostile forces, required a skill at adaptation that for most peoples is almost unimaginable, but which seemed to have been perfected by Jews and came to them almost as "second nature." Everywhere throughout history (perhaps with the exception of present day Israel), Jewish values have transmitted a passion for justice as a social and a political way of "being in the world;" and as a way of repairing an evolving in an always damaged global community. However, even for Jews themselves, there is always the caveat expressed so eloquently in the movie Munich, where the Golda Meir character says "Just because we have been victims of the Holocaust, does not make us decent?"

There is a story to be told about that passion to pursue the human values needed to be, and to remain, fully human in a world seemingly filled with hatred and animosity -- much of it directed at Jews themselves -- and also remain decent (even in ones own land!). That story is the one that is told so beautifully here. As a crowning theme of a book full of them, this author tells us what the obligations for Jews to live up to those transcendental human values are; and how they have been complicated and constantly strained by the knowledge that many societies feel driven to eliminate Jews from the face of the earth. One of the existential solutions to this problem of course was Zionism and the establishment of Israel.

The main thesis explored in great depth in this book is the theme that Jews turned to religion to give them the normal protections most peoples would expect from the state, thus making them "top-heavy" in their reliance on religion; and deficient in their reliance on politics and political power. This version, as is true of Jewish history itself, is replete with examples of how Jews "went-along-to-get-along." Both the wholly religious model and the "go-along-to-get-along" strategies seemed to have been colossal failures? However that is only one part of a long story of incremental historical, social and political adaptations and progress.

The other half of the story is that Jews, always "looking their existential predicament squarely in the face," since the second sacking of the Temple, knew they had to find ways to gain the protection of those in power in the lands of the Diaspora. They did not ( like the Romani or Taureq for instance), become Nomads. Instead they continued to seek "institutional and religious autonomy" within the societies they became members; and where necessary paid for protection via taxes or by making themselves indispensable to the needs of their adopted nations. To a surprising extent, a great deal of modern Western history owes a large debt to Jews in the way this survival strategy enriched the cultures of those nations.

Hitler's genocide changed the game of Jewish survive in a fundamental way. Negotiating a relationship with "the powers that be" in alien lands, cease to be a discretionary long-term option. The act of trying to work out favorable conditions for permanent residence and thus simply "be tolerated as aliens" was no longer viable. Creative accommodation in which Jews remained elastic, pliable, supple - mastering skills that made them indispensable in other people's land; and compensating political weaknesses with economic strength, also were survival strategies that had worn thin and were not the answer to a world that allowed Hitler to carry out mechanized murder.

The proper response of course was the Zionists impulse to establish Israel. Yet, in light of recent events it is not unreasoinable to ask: Has the establishment of Israel given the Jewish people the security and protection that Michael Ignatieff has theorized about that a state is designed to provide? And also perhaps even more importantly: Have the Jews lost their souls and that essential quality of "being fully human" in their pursuit of national and ethnic security? Did Israel, as the Munich movie suggest, finally make the Jews of the Holocaust decent? Now that Israel has become the fourth largest military in the world, with an arsenal of 200 + hydrogen bombs, is the security of the Jewish people finally ensured? And if so, and in light of the present predicament vis-a vis the Palestinian problem, at what cost has Israel been to Jewish humanity?

Naturally, this book leaves such speculation as an exercise to the reader. Ten stars

Wisse's erudite and highly readable survey of Jewish history covers the entire period between the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. and the present day. Her basic point is that Diaspora Jews have been willing and able to preserve and enhance the Jewish values of decency and social justice, but that for too long, those values were accompanied by an accommodationist strategy that did not foster the strength to combat new and resurgent strains of anti-Semitism. Even as Jews returned to the land of Israel in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they were unprepared to face Arab hostility. The basic requirement of all societies is defense against a common enemy, she points out, and for a very long time, Jews failed to provide that.

Wisse's account should certainly be read by the enemies of Israel and of the Jewish people who somehow believe that Zionism was in its origins a colonialist or militarist movement. Far from it. And as a brief history of anti-Semitism in Europe up until the Nazi period, this book is highly valuable and provides fascinating insights into events as diverse as the religious disputations of the Middle Ages and the Dreyfus case.

It is interesting that Wisse does not follow the thread of European anti-Semitism and the Jewish responses that it evoked into a discussion of Hitler's rise to power and Jewish resistance to genocide. Rather, she turns directly toward Israel and to her thoughts on the connection between accommodation to hatred in the Diaspora and accommodation to Arab hostility in the Middle East. Here, I argue that she goes astray in attributing Israelis' support for the Oslo agreements of 1993 to a Diaspora mentality. I don't believe Israeli leaders remained naive 45 years after the state was founded. Rather, they believed that the state's continued strength rests on the a two-way negotiation with the Arabs. Sadly, that did not occur, as the Arabs proved themselves not to be legitimate peace partners.

Also, in a book about Jewish power, Wisse has nothing to say about Jewish political power in the most significant Diaspora land of the twenty-first century, the United States. An Orthodox Jew was nominated for vice president in 2000 (and nearly won). Jews occupy high positions in politics, business, government -- what does the future hold? I would have liked to know Wisse's views.

I find that Michael Santomauro's (former identification S. Jacoby) review for this book is offensive and does not do any justice for the book. But thank you reviewers - you say what Michael Santomauro does not. Michael Santomauro should write his reviews for Der Sturmer or for Pravda, but Amazon.com is not a place for political propaganda.