MENS INSANA IN CORPORE SANO

Mens Insana In Corpore Sano, is such a thing even possible? Or else, there might be two other possibilities: one, that the mind is in fact sane, although it appears infirm, and the other, that the body, too, is ailing, even though not yet realizing that such is the case!

A splendid Nietzschean aphorism confronts the logistics of human wisdom: “There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.” Can we push this point even further, to say that there is more sanity in the body than in the mind? (…Isn’t it true that quite often the people of a country possess more common sense than their government, which amounts to approximately the same thing?)

Examples of mens sana in corpore infirmo on the grand scale of world nations are numerous. One can point to Russia alone on several occasions over the centuries, when devastated by terrible calamities, both foreign in origin and domestically produced, she was lying battered beyond human comprehension, yet would arise even mightier than before, just on the strength of her national mind and spirit. At the other end, we find the United States of America, where, with the exception of the Civil War, the body has always been producing the impression of great health, yet, ever since the onset of the twenty-first century, something clearly must have gone wrong with the mind, as though the splendidly healthy body has been snatched by some creatures from another place, infecting the American brain with some dangerous foreign bacteria, and making it sick.

Now returning to the peculiar title of this entry let us ask ourselves this very pointed and pertinent question: What about mens insana in corpore sano? Can we be somehow mistaken about the soundness of the body, and, perhaps, its latent infirmity is the cause of the more apparent infirmity of the spirit? But this is already Marxism--- not that we wish to argue with it at the moment, but, having given a lot of our attention to Marx and Marxism already, in various places of this book, we are not inclined to go in that same direction here.

Our purpose is to capture two other possibilities. Number one here is that the national spirit of a reasonably healthy nation might catch an insanity bug from abroad. In practical terms, this means a theoretically rare disease, yet apparently manifest in today’s America, when an alien interest ingratiates itself into the national brain, to the point of completely suppressing the will to pursue its native interest, and thus a schizophrenic personality comes into being, already diagnosed by us as such, in its irreconcilable conflict of the capitalist and religious moralities.

The other possibility is that what we call mens insana in corpore sano is in fact a complete misstatement of the situation. The proper characterization ought to have been a spirit of revolutionary change in the body of status quo. Thus the revolutionary madness of the spirit has been mistaken for a disease inside a philistine’s psychology, whereas in fact the former is the necessary condition of a qualitative progress manifesting itself in any society ready for change.

Interestingly, it is only through a proper understanding of the last paragraph that we can come to the proper appreciation of the legitimacy of the totalitarian ideal, which, in a nutshell, represents a logical alternative to social philistinism. This intriguing and terribly important subject has been discussed at considerable length throughout this Collective section, to which fact many of my entry titles properly testify.

NATIONAL GREATNESS AS MORE THAN A HEALTH CERTIFICATE

The physical health of a nation, even when this health is found demonstrably better than that of any other nation on the face of the earth, is not of itself a redeeming virtue, if all other virtues are hard to identify, in the sense that health alone does not provide any man or any nation with a sufficient legitimacy of existence, that is, the right to have an existence, the right to a future. By the same token, we put to death a criminal in perfect health for the crimes he has committed, thus demonstrating our complete disregard for the fact that he is in perfect, “superior” health. This is a very delicate, but wildly intriguing inquiry in the “Look for the acorns!” vein. I am far from even a hint of suggestion that anybody who cannot convincingly demonstrate to the judge and jury any accomplishment of his other than being in magnificent health, ought to be punished. That is silly. But what is not silly is the fact that a nation that wants legitimacy as a special kind of nation, must provide some proof of exceptionality, other than her AAA health certificate.

(The plum to this pudding will be served tomorrow.)

A VERY BAD CASE OF RABIES

I find it shocking, and almost inexplicable, how much pathological hatred toward Russia is being displayed by an overwhelming majority of Jewish-American foreign policy experts and media pundits. Have they all forgotten that the Russia they curse, and their proverbial archvillain Stalin (who, as I strongly suspect, is far more hated by these rabid creatures than either Khmelnitsky or Hitler, the perpetrators of the two worst Holocausts in Jewish history) defeated Hitler, liberated Auschwitz, and, prior to that, had saved nearly two million Jews from the Nazi Holocaust, for which historical act of benevolence Stalin was pronounced a Righteous Gentile, and praises to him have habitually been said at prayer time in every respectable Jewish shul in Russia?

I believe that the main reason of such pathological hatred has been betrayed by an emotional outburst from the former Secretary of State under President Clinton, Madeline Albright, who was famously complaining how unfair it was that Siberia belonged to Russia alone! No such hatred was in evidence during the Yeltsin years, though, when these American Jews saw their dream fulfilled of a Russia ruled by Khodorkovsky and his ilk, and through this perceived Russian fifth column (!!!) they saw a subservient Russia, controlled by the United States through the mechanism of the Jewish power, thus consolidating the American hegemony over the world.

Alas, for these wishfully-thinking Jews, their sweet dream has never quite come through, although at times they felt it so close, as if they could almost touch it. For this reason of their bitter disappointment in the collapse of their Russian dream, they have, ever since, developed this particularly severe case of rabies, and, honestly, from my personal experience with these sorely disappointed people, I am afraid, the disease is virtually incurable, without the help of a major intrusive surgery on the anatomy of Washington’s power.

…Or, perhaps, there may still be hope without a surgery. They say in honest that a shot of tequila is the next best treatment for rabies…

ARMAGEDDON

(In the past several decades many American Evangelical Christians have believed in the End of History and identified it with an Armageddon attack on the modern State of Israel. My response to it: this is blasphemy! I am placing this entry in the Tikkun Olam section, as its relevance to Res Judaica is far greater than to any other major theme, including Twilight, where its initial placement was nearly made a while ago.

It is also proper to group this entry with the two preceding ones, already grouped together, on what I can best describe as the emergence of a neo-Judaism, which has virtually eliminated the seemingly everlasting conflict between religious Judaism and Zionist secularism, by trivializing and effectively moving out of the way the traditional Jewish principle of the Mashiach.)

The intense apocalyptical concept of Armageddon and the End of History in an epic battle over Jerusalem is a purely Christian concept, so controversial that early on it had produced a feisty debate over the canonicity of the Biblical Book of Revelation. I have absolutely no problem with the allegorical Book of Revelation, of course, but its wild modern Christian literal interpretation as a necessity, implying an actual doomsday over the fate of the State Israel, worries me a lot, as it goes far beyond the readiness of American Christian Fundamentalists to go to war in defending Israel from any outside aggression, but it actually invites such a war, and suggests a willingness, on the part of these fanatics, to provoke such a war, in their effort to facilitate the fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy.

For this reason, I am yet further worried about the recent trend of desecularization of the traditionally secular Zionist Jewish nationalism (see my earlier entry Apostles Of A False Messiah), creating a new brand of religiously motivated Zionism masquerading as Biblical Judaism, seeing that, as these two forces-- American Christian Zionism and Israeli neo-religious Zionism, are finding each other, the resulting tinderbox may well explode with the biggest bang this Earth has ever experienced, signifying, as a frighteningly feasible hypothesis, the real end of human history.

I guess that there is little else for us to do than wait and see, and hopefully perhaps this scary all-destructive pseudo-Armageddon scenario will not play itself out in our lifetime. But, even at my fairly advanced age of sixty-plus I would not bet on it, and the probability that, given our current trends and circumstances, it shall occur one day, sooner or later, is far greater than any of us would like to think of.

What is then to be done to at least make a feeble effort to prevent such an Armageddon? The answer is there and ready, but I am afraid that those who can work on it are either unaware of the potential Armageddon, or recklessly dismissive of it while the two perilously converging forces (the American Evangelical and Israeli Religious Zionism) are about to merge in a lethal combination.

The nation of Iran’s nuclear program has now emerged as that potential spark to start the incineration of the planet. The Israeli government is visibly determined to go to war over it, despite all the protestations of the Israeli people, whereas the American Armageddon-inviters are presently zealously anxious to interpret any major military conflict involving Israel as their long-awaited cue to expand such a war into the apocalyptic end-of-days struggle, which their twisted interpretation of the Bible reads as an absolute necessity sine qua non for the rapture of the born-again righteous (that is, themselves), and, of course, for the Second Coming of Jesus, whose righteous helpers they would consider themselves to be, in such a case.

APOSTLES OF A FALSE MESSIAH PART II

...And now a little history. When the State of Israel was first formed as an essentially secular Zionist entity, an overwhelming majority of Orthodox (Ultra-Orthodox, to be precise) Jews were visibly upset with what they all saw as a sacrilegious act of preempting the advent of the Messiah, under whose leadership only was such an act possible. Eventually, however, a certain co-existential reconciliation became a reality, where the divide between religious Judaism and secular Zionism was recognized and respected by the parties on the opposite sides of the conflict.

The new development, exposed in the BBC piece, does not out of a sudden bridge the unbridgeable gap that has existed ever since the establishment of Medinat Yisroel. What it reveals is the effective expulsion of the Mashiach concept, sacred to classical Rabbinical Judaism, from Israel’s religious self-awareness, substituting it with the new pragmatic equivalency of Zionist nationalism with modern Jewish faith. The ease with which this substitution has apparently taken place is morally frightening. Paradoxically, it is frightening precisely because it is so natural, as all relativist morality and pragmatic amorality is natural.

Historically, too, this dramatic shift is eminently understandable, and fully consistent with Jewish religious history of the past four thousand years. After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans, in 70 AD, Torah Judaism was permanently suspended (or effectively abolished) in favor of Rabbinical Judaism, which existed for nearly two millennia, sustained by the sacred Jewish dream of the coming of the Messiah, who (and only who!) was expected to restore the Temple and the Jewish State, and to bring back the Torah Judaism of yore from its suspended animation. And now, in recognition of the new reality: the establishment of the State of Israel without any help from the Mashiach, the insurmountable conflict between nationalism and religion in Israel has apparently been resolved, and the Mashiach lost.

I have titled this entry Apostles Of A False Messiah. Perhaps, I was too strict about my title. Perhaps, today’s nationalistic allegiance to Zionism accompli makes the whole Mashiach argument moot. Having waited for his coming for so long, perhaps, the Jews of today have quietly retired him, together with their Torah, into a sentimental retirement home, internally inside their memory and externally in the synagogue, where they are still so fond of bringing out the textually meaningless, but symbolically never more meaningful, scroll, and kissing it ever so fondly with endless love and loyal allegiance to the external, yet carelessly dismissing the internal. In other words, with the word Mashiach losing all literal significance together with the Torah, the phrase false Messiah sounds too rude for the quiet enjoyment of the cherished Jewish comfort.

Yet I am a ‘stubborn man,’ as US Senator Barbara Boxer used to call me; and a ‘thorough man,’ as the late California Senator Milton Marks used to call me. I don’t care all that much about the sensibilities of Jewish comfort. The word Mashiach means something to me in the context of the historical religious Judaism; this is why my title Apostles Of A False Messiah stands, and, furthermore, I am quite proud of it.

APOSTLES OF A FALSE MESSIAH PART I

This is an unusual entry, as its centerpiece is a complete reproduction of the BBC report The Rise of Israel’s Military Rabbis, published on 9/7/2009. Its subject is the ongoing desecularization, in other words, religious reorientation of the Israeli Army. Having read this article, I was stunned by how incongruous this new trend has been, compared to the classic teachings of religious Judaism. Therefore, my comment on the BBC piece is not only in order, but becomes totally indispensable to anyone interested in Res Judaica (hence its proper placement in the Tikkun Olam section).

But let us first get acquainted with the BBC article:

The Rise of Israel’s Military Rabbis. By Katya Adler, BBC Newsnight, Israel. 9/7/2009.

Israel’s army is changing. Once proudly secular its combat units are now filling with those who believe that Israel’s wars are “God’s wars.”

Military rabbis are becoming more powerful. Trained in warfare, as well as religion, new army regulations mean they are now part of a military elite. They graduate from officers’ school and operate closely with the military commanders. (This reminds me of the erstwhile institute of the Military Commissars in the Soviet Army, undermining the authority of the military and the very principle of the proper chain of command. It was first introduced in 1918 and was denounced by the military commanders as disruptive and detrimental to the conduct of military activities. Abolished and reinstated several times over the course of two decades, its final demise came in 1942, when its negative role in the war against Nazi Germany was recognized even by its staunchest proponents.) One of their main duties is to boost soldiers’ morale and drive, even on the front line. This has caused quite some controversy in Israel: Should military motivation come from men of God, or from a belief in the state of Israel and keeping it safe?
Military rabbis rose to prominence during Israeli invasion of Gaza earlier this year. Some of their activities raised troubling questions about political-religious influence in the military. Gal Einav, a non-religious soldier said there was wall-to-wall religious rhetoric in the base, the barracks and on the battlefield. As soon as soldiers signed for their rifles, he said, they were given a book of psalms. And, as his company headed into Gaza, he told me, they were flanked by a civilian rabbi on one side and a military rabbi on the other. “It felt like a religious war, like a crusade. It disturbed me. Religion and the army must be completely separate,” he said.

Sons of light.

But military rabbis, like Lieutenant Shmuel Kaufman, welcome the changes. In previous wars rabbis had to stay far from the front, he says. In Gaza they were ordered to accompany the fighters. Our job was to boost the fighting spirit of the soldiers. The eternal Jewish spirit from Bible times to the coming of the Messiah.

Before his unit went into Gaza, Rabbi Kaufman said their commander told him to blow the [shofar], ram’s horn: “Like (biblical) Joshua, when he conquered the land of Israel. It makes the war holier.”
Rabbis handed out hundreds of religious pamphlets during the Gaza war. When this came to light, it caused huge controversy in Israel. Some leaflets called Israeli soldiers the sons of light and Palestinians the sons of darkness; others compared the Palestinians to the Philistines, the bitter biblical enemy of the Jewish people. Israel's military has distanced itself from the publications, but they carried the army’s official stamp. Still, army leaders insist their rabbis respect military ethics and put their private convictions aside. They say the same about the new wave of nationalist religious solders joining Israel’s fighting forces.

“Religious duty.”

I visited an orthodox Jewish seminary near Hebron in the West Bank. It is one of an increasing number of religious schools which encourage taking the Jewish Bible to the battlefield. All students at the seminary choose to serve in Israel's combat units while statistics suggest less ideologically driven Israelis are avoiding them. This has made headline news in Israel. The 19-year-olds I spoke to at the seminary told me religious soldiers, like them, can make the army behave better and become “more moral.” They believe that it is their religious duty to protect the citizens of Israel, the Jewish state. The Lord commands it, they said.

The students’ seminary is built in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank. If President Obama gets his way, Israel will eventually evacuate most settlements. They are illegal under the international law, and Palestinians claim the territory as part of their future state. But for the religious soldiers the West Bank is part of the land, given to the Jews by God. Gal Einav thinks many soldiers will refuse to close settlements down. The settlement issue could well tear the army apart, he told me, adding that most of his officers were settlers these days.
“If it comes to a clash between political orders from Israel’s government and a contradictory message from the rabbis, settlers and religious right-wing soldiers will follow the rabbis,” he said.

Threat of “Jihad.”

Israel’s military leaders strongly disagree. Brigadier General Eli Shermeister is the army’s chief education officer. He admits some mistakes were made in the past, but says the right balance has now been found with the military rabbis. He insists Israel’s military commanders are the only ones in charge of the soldiers’ spirit. “The moral code of Israel’s army is clear. We judge soldiers in the light of this code. Nobody can create another moral code. [Certainly] not a religious one.”

But his predecessor describes what he sees as clear and worrying changes within the military. According to Reserve General Nehemiah Dagan, what is happening in the army is far more dangerous than most Israelis realize: “We (soldiers) used to be able to put aside our own ideas in order to do what we had to do. It didn’t matter if we were religious or from a kibbutz. But that is not the case anymore.
“The morals of the battlefield can’t come from a religious authority. Once it does, it’s Jihad. I know people will not like that word but that’s what it is, Holy War. And once it’s Holy War, there are no limits.”
Many religious Jews object to the type of preaching heard during Israel’s recent Gaza operation. They say it perverts the true teachings of Judaism as well as contradicts Israel’s military code. Day to day, Israel’s army mainly operates in civilian areas-- in Gaza, the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. The influences that Israeli soldiers are exposed to are extremely significant. How they view the Palestinians who live here is likely to affect the way they use their power and their weapons. [The End of the Article.]

(This is the end of Part I. Part II will be published tomorrow.)

REASON FOR THE SEASON

Every year during the month of December an elderly neighbor of mine goes around the neighborhood with a very happy smile, accosting all passers-by with the same question-and-answer riddle:

“Are you, friends, aware of the reason for this wonderful season? Lord Jesus was born on Christmas Day!”

Is December 25^th indeed the birthday of Jesus? Please, let us not engage now in such silly trivia as, say, the fact that Jesus’ Birthday is an extra-Biblical stretch, appropriating the pagan Roman holiday of Saturnalia for Christian purposes, or that the celebration of Christmas as we know it is of a fairly recent German origin (dating back just a couple of hundred years). Let those who see it in purely religious terms keep enjoying it that way.

I celebrate December 25^th in America not because this is the birthday of Jesus, which to me it is not. For any Russian Orthodox Christian (which I am), and for most of Eastern Christianity, the religious holiday of Christmas does not arrive until January 7^th, which makes December 25^th religiously meaningless.

To me, Western Christmas is certainly the greatest cultural event in the Western world, and traditionally in America as well. Peace on earth and goodwill towards men, what can be more uplifting and unifying for a nation than celebrating Christmas together? I applaud all Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Shamanists, atheists, and, yes, my fellow Orthodox Christians, who appreciate the huge cultural significance of this day, and do not allow themselves to be drawn into a religious dispute over the “reason for the season.”

Unfortunately, there are powerful forces in America, which are tearing this society apart, as if determined to turn it into a multitude of cultural ghettos, having nothing in common among them, rather than the look of their passport. It is a crime against American society, in my judgment, to attempt to seduce the historically Christian American Black community into celebrating Kwanzaa as a cultural alternative to Christmas. It is an unfortunate narrow-mindedness on the part of those Jews who ignore Christmas looking at Hanukah not as a nice Jewish holiday in its own right, but as a Jewish substitute for Christmas. It is great folly on the part of all other Americans who fail to see American Christmas as their holiday.

The broadly defined “reason for the season” is a coming-together of the whole nation to celebrate her oneness in goodwill and self-appreciation. Although historically it may have started as a Christian holiday, it is a public, rather than religious holiday, properly intended to be celebrated as such in America and elsewhere. Without Christmas, it is all diversity and no nation. A perversion of the Marxist paradise…

Merry Christmas, dear readers, and may the spirit of the season be with you, regardless of the reason.

SPARTA’S PAST AND ISRAEL’S FUTURE PART II

…The year 1967 was the highest point of Zionism triumphant, a forceful validation of the historical Jewish rallying call Next Year In Jerusalem, now transformed in the Jewish mind into Jerusalem Forever. Jews all over the world were now all of a sudden energized and exhilarated. In the United States they were about to become a huge political force, to be organized first as liberal Jewish activists within the Democratic Party, then as somewhat more hawkish proponents of an aggressive foreign policy, focused on Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union, then as the so-called Reagan Democrats within the Republican Party, and finally, as the Republican neoconservatives of the New American Century fame, the ones that have given America her war in Iraq, and, in the larger context, the hottest proponents of an American neo-Crusade against… Islam.

Their chief engine of power is Zionism. Their policies are centered around the State of Israel, but not in the sense of promoting the interests of Israel, as much as formulating those interests themselves, and acting upon them… But wait a minute, what about Israel herself?

Over forty years have passed since 1967. Today’s Israel is no longer the Israel of the Six-Day War. The old caste of warriors that won that war has been diluted through the immigration of non-combatant Jews from the Soviet Union, most of whom, I repeat, have regarded Israel not as the Zion of their spiritual destiny, but as a poor man’s substitute for America, their capitalist Paradise… The great Zionist Sparta is no more!

Thus, immigration has been both the boon of Israel and one of her banes. Ironically, in the technical question of immigration, modern Israel isn’t much different from ancient Sparta. Spartan citizenship, if we remember, was passed on by blood, and so is Jewish citizenship. The physical place of birth in neither case has been an essential factor in the determination of citizenship.

Another bane of Israel is the Palestinian population, just as Sparta was plagued in her sunset years by helots and helot revolts. It is hard to imagine however that the Palestinians will be the immediate cause of Israel’s demise.

What is the future of Israel then? No, it is not threatened by physical destruction, nor by Palestinian or Arab terrorism. Terrorism, in this exact sense, is hardly possible, even given the threat from the nuclear-armed Pakistan, or from the Iranian nuclear ambitions. Not that the fact itself is impossible, but I do believe that a different force is going to determine the bleak future of Israel.

Her civilian Jews, those new immigrants who have come to Israel for ‘comfort,’ rather than to fight for the land and persevere against great odds, have become the nation’s debilitating fifth column. For the terrorists to win, a military victory is not required. The meaning of anti-Israeli terrorism today is non-lethal, specific, and easily achievable in practical terms. It is not to exterminate the Israelis, but to terrorize them mentally to the point of making the “softy” majority leave Israel, to find a peaceful life elsewhere…

And here comes my second group of Israeli citizens constituting the country’s fifth column.---

---Any Jew living in Israel who holds an American, Australian, or any other passport, or passports, in other words, one who holds multiple citizenships, whenever push comes to shove will be motivated to leave Israel with its mounting troubles behind. This is by no means an insult to the proper Israeli loyalties, but a simple statement of fact. I sincerely believe, and with a good cause at that, that any true Israeli Spartan should have a single Israeli citizenship as a matter of principle. Multiple citizenships imply split loyalties, and they make defective citizens, no matter what the holders of several passports may say in their defense.

Just read the requirements of naturalized citizenship in the United States. No split loyalties there! On paper, I mean. In reality, things are much different.

SPARTA’S PAST AND ISRAEL’S FUTURE PART I

One of my apte dictums says that every society has its own fifth column. This entry looks at the situation in Israel today, and identifies its own fifth column.

Israel.

…This fifth column actually consists of two somewhat overlapping groups. One covers a large part of those immigrant Jews from the former Soviet Union of the 1970’s and of later on, who had come to Israel as their poor man’s America, seeking not the Zionist dream of the earlier settlers, but the illusory comfort provided by the West, which they had naïvely and predictably idealized. Disappointed in their illusions, these Soviet Jews en masse constitute a major part of modern Israel’s fifth column, that will eventually lead to an effective demise of the State of Israel.
(…I hope that my reader does not get the wrong immediate impression from what I have just said that in my opinion all Soviet Jews, and no other Jews coming to Israel, thus constitute Israel’s fifth column. A second, “other” group will be identified later, on in Part II of this entry, while the first group of Soviet Jews certainly does not include those for whom their emigration to Israel was an Aliya, the happy realization of a lifelong Zionist dream. It goes without saying that such Jews had never even thought of emigrating to America or to Western Europe, in which case, having resigned to becoming Israelis as a second or third best, they would have become Israel’s fifth column right away…)

Sparta.

Had the city-state of Sparta in its prime allowed free immigration, its celebrated historical culture of citizen-soldiers would have been so diluted that even their legends would have been lost to us. (A shocking riddle!)
…But, on the other hand, Sparta did fall, in the long run. After the period of the so-called Spartan hegemony, extending from the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC to the Battle of Leuctra (in which Thebes, led by Epaminondas, won a historically significant battle against Sparta, using innovative military tactics) in 371 BC, came the period of decline, or rather gradual degeneration. Neither Philip II of Macedonia nor his son Alexander ever thought of conquering Sparta in their Empire-building, perhaps, out of respect for her former glory, but her strength was undermined anyway from within by several damaging factors including a decline of her population (Spartans did not allow immigration, their citizenship conferred exclusively by blood, and not even by place of birth) and a dramatic increase of the helot population, accompanied by the frequent revolts encouraged by Sparta’s enemies.

Israel and Sparta.

One cannot compare ancient Sparta to modern Israel in every possible respect, but, as with any meaningful comparison of non-identical items, there are certain substantial aspects of them that yield themselves to such comparisons, allowing us to reach very important conclusions. Our starting hypothesis is to posit Israel as a modern-day Sparta.
The first groups of modern Zionist immigrants who came to the land of Israel, then under the Ottoman rule, starting in the 1870’s, with the idea of turning the land into a national home for the Jews, are known as the first Aliya. They numbered some 25,000 Jews, primarily from Eastern Europe. Many of them found themselves unable to endure the intense hardships and returned to where they had come from. But all those who stayed--- they were the toughest of the lot, the most motivated, and the most determined.
They were the Israeli Spartans, tempered like steel through that peculiar natural selection and survival of the fittest. It looked like the future belonged to them, just as it probably appeared to the proud citizens of Sparta when the realization of their virtual invulnerability had first dawned upon them.

(This is the end of Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)

BOLSHEVISM AND THE JEWS

It is a historical mistake to attribute the Russian Bolshevik Revolution to a Jewish conspiracy. It is also a mistake to overstate the peculiar shape and the phenomenon in-itself of Great-Russian anti-Semitism. The following two quotations address both points. The first one belongs to M. Ouendyke, the Ambassador of the Netherlands to Russia, in his letter to Lord Balfour of England, written from Petrograd on September 18, 1918:

“Unless Bolshevism is nipped in the bud immediately, it is bound to spread in one form or another across Europe and the whole world, for it is organized and worked by Jews, who have no nationality, and whose object is to destroy for their own ends the existing order of things.”

Here is a classic case of a “mistaken identity,” whose effect was anticipated by the Russian Keepers of the Faith and the Nation, whose hidden agenda was of course to use the Jews, and blame them for all excesses and everything that might go wrong, in the process energizing the Jews of the Capitalist world to become useful agents of influence and subversion for exactly the same phony reason that would make the Gentiles of the Capitalist world shake and tremble in their boots… Three cheers to the argument from stupidity!

But, on the other hand, seek the truth, and you shall find it, unless, of course, the lie that one has previously accepted as the truth, chases away the truth, branding it as an impostor, somewhat akin to the situation in the movie The Net… Here is an excerpt from one of Lenin’s always-informative speeches, made about the same time as the misguided Dutchman was sending his dismayed dispatch to the Albion. One could deduce a lot from this little gem and perhaps even weave a magnificent doctoral dissertation around it. Where there is a will, there is a way, they say, only in such cases as this, the will is demonstrably lacking…

“The Jewish bourgeoisie are our enemies not as Jews, but as bourgeoisie. The Jewish worker is our brother.” (From Lenin’s Speech before the SovNarKom [Council of People’s Commissars] on August 9, 1918.)

Notice, that once we remove the piquant portions regarding the Jews from this text: “The bourgeoisie are our enemies. The worker is our brother,” this passage turns into a worthless piece of tedious propaganda. It is the reference to the Jews, which supplies the “Tsimmes.”

Once we are on this subject, Lenin’s personal attitude to the Jews was indisputably negative {despite of, or perhaps because of his deep resentment of his own Jewish roots, on his mother’s side [Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova, nèe Blank], this fact cleverly concealed by Stalin, in an odd ploy to appease Hitler’s anti-Semitic sensibilities, for which see my History section!}, as revealed by his scorching resentment of Trotsky in particular, both in a private conversation about Trotsky’s unacceptable “Yiddishness,” and also in the so-called Lenin’s Testament (this ground-breaking entry was posted on my blog on February 2, 2011), where Lenin openly mocks Trotsky and deconstructs other Jews, heaping actual praise on Stalin, to which attitude the above passage from Lenin’s SovNarKom speech provides an important elucidation.

DIE JUDENFRAGE AUF KARL MARX UND FRIEDRICH... NIETZSCHE PART II

...Nietzsche's often-quoted phrase from The Antichrist, XXIV, “Anti-Semitism is the final consequence of Judaism,” has been so grotesquely misinterpreted, that he was quite right, in Ecce Homo, to demand “Hear me! I am such and such person, do not mistake me for someone else.”

Fresh from the Marxian experience, our natural question should be, what exactly is Judaism according to Friedrich Nietzsche? Does he, like Marx, distinguish between the Sabbath Jew and the everyday Jew, and, with this in mind, must we address his “virulently anti-Semitic” dictum.

But Nietzsche is no anti-Semite. Anyone promoting such vicious lies can be easily countered by citing just one passage from Menschliches (475), which follows:

“…Incidentally, the whole problem of the Jews exists only within national states, inasmuch as their energy and higher intelligence, their capital of spirit and will, which accumulated from generation to generation in the long school of their suffering, must predominate to a degree that awakens envy and hatred; and so, in the literature of nearly all present-day nations (and, in fact, in proportion to their renewed nationalistic behavior), there is an increase in literary misconduct, leading the Jews to the slaughterhouse, as scapegoats for every possible public and private misfortune. As soon as it is no longer a matter of preserving nations, but of producing the strongest possible mixed European race, the Jew becomes as useful and desirable an ingredient as any other national quantity. Every nation, every man, has disagreeable, and even dangerous, characteristics; it is cruel to demand that the Jew should be an exception. Those characteristics may even be especially dangerous and frightful in him, and, perhaps, the youthful Jew of the stock exchange is the most repugnant invention of the whole human race. Nevertheless, I would like to know how much one must excuse in the overall accounting of a people, which, not without guilt on all our parts, has had the most sorrowful history of all peoples, and to whom we owe the noblest human being (Christ [this is obviously very consistent with Nietzsche’s view of Jesus Christ, as opposed to what would later become the Christian doctrine]), the purest philosopher (Spinoza [Nietzsche’s view of Spinoza is complicated, but on the balance very high]), the mightiest book (the Bible), and the most effective moral code in the world. Furthermore, in the darkest medieval times, when the Asiatic cloud had settled heavily over Europe, it was the Jewish [sic!] free thinkers, scholars, and doctors, who, under the harshest personal pressure, held fast to the banner of enlightenment and intellectual independence, and defended Europe against Asia [sic!]; we owe to their efforts not least, that a more natural, rational, and in any event unmythical explanation of the world could finally triumph again and that the ring of culture now linking us to the enlightenment of Graeco-Roman antiquity, remained unbroken. If Christianity did everything possible to orientalize the Occident, Judaism helped substantially to occidentalize it again and again, which, in a certain sense, is to say that it made Europe’s history and task into a continuation of the Greek.”

From this necessarily lengthy, but extremely instructive passage we hear an echo of the Marxian critique of Judaism as Capitalism, but only an echo, as Nietzsche makes himself clear that, in his mind, Judaism can be also equated to the Renaissance, and I am sure that in that equation it is not that kind of Judaism that can be conceivably perceived as a causa ultima of anti-Semitism.

But, incidentally, here is his previous comment on anti-Semitism, now in full context:

“The Jews are the most remarkable people in the history of the world, for when they were confronted with the question, to be or not to be, they chose, with perfectly unearthly deliberation, to be at any price: this price involved a radical falsification of all nature, of all naturalness, of all reality, of the inner world, as well as of the outer. They put themselves against all those conditions under which, hitherto, a people had been able to live, or had even been permitted to live; out of themselves they evolved an idea which stood in direct opposition to natural conditions-- one by one they distorted religion, civilization, morality, history, and psychology, until each had become a contradiction of its natural significance. We meet with the same phenomenon later on, in an incalculably exaggerated form, but only as a copy: the Christian church, put beside the “people of God,” shows a complete lack of any claim to originality. Precisely for this reason the Jews are the most fateful people in the history of the world: their influence has so falsified the reasoning of mankind in this matter that today the Christian can cherish anti-Semitism without realizing that it is no more than the final consequence of Judaism.”

Perhaps Nietzsche wishes to say that Christianity itself is also the final consequence of Judaism?! For this would be very much in line with Schopenhauer’s claim that Christianity is a “Jewish religion…”

Cutting through these complications, at least one thing stands out quite clear. It was not Sabbath Judaism, which Marx was attacking. It was not Renaissance Judaism, which Nietzsche was attacking. Here, finally, are my own chicken coming home to roost. In professing my personal admiration for Judaism, it was the mystical-religious Sabbath Judaism of the ultra-Orthodox Jews, and the aesthetic Renaissance Judaism of the Haskala, today’s Reform Jews, that I was, and still am admiring; but the totally different even if related type of stock market Judaism, with its trickle-down morality of greed and money-making frenzy and the Judaism of “to be at any price,” I can only deplore.

DIE JUDENFRAGE AUF KARL MARX UND FRIEDRICH... NIETZSCHE PART I

(The humor of the title may be too elusive for the American reader, and perhaps even for younger Russian readers, but it should be instantly recognized by anybody growing up in the Soviet times. The expectation here is to find Friedrich Engels, rather than Friedrich Nietzsche, as the natural complement to Karl Marx!

The following critique on Die Judenfrage by Karl Marx, in his one-sided polemic with his former mentor Bruno Bauer (see a much fuller exposition of this important subject in my Marx Contra Bauer entry, earlier in this section), has earned Marx a particularly harsh accusation of being an anti-Semite. It may be true that Marx’s attack on Jewish venality perhaps betrays a personal chip on the shoulder, but what he actually says is extremely insightful, especially considering the fact that a disregard of his criticism by the German Jews had undoubtedly contributed to the kind of social conditions in Germany, eventually making the Holocaust possible.

The subject of discussion in Bauer’s essays, and in Marx’s response to them, is Jewish emancipation. And here is Marx’s solution: “The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.”

It is too easy to misconstrue what he says, therefore, the immediate question which arises is what exactly is Judaism according to Karl Marx? And here is his crucial distinction of the Sabbath Jew from the everyday Jew:

“Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew, not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew.

“Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.
“Well, then, emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently, from practical real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time. An organization of society abolishing the preconditions for huckstering, and therefore, the possibility of huckstering, would make the Jew impossible. His religious consciousness would be dissipated like a thin haze in the real air of society. On the other hand, if the Jew recognizes that his practical nature is futile, and works to abolish it, he extricates himself from his previous development, and works for human emancipation as such, and turns against the supreme practical expression of human self-estrangement.
“We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time, an element, which through historical development (to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed) has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate.
“In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.”

(And now Marx is about to equate Judaism with Capitalism. Nota bene!---)

“The Jew has already emancipated himself in a Jewish way.

“‘The Jew, who, in Vienna, for example, is only tolerated, determines the fate of the whole Austrian Empire by his financial power. The Jew, who may have no rights in the smallest German state, decides the fate of Europe. While corporations and guilds refuse to admit Jews, or have not yet adopted a favorable attitude towards them, the audacity of industry mocks at the obstinacy of the material institutions.’” (Bruno Bauer, The Jewish Question, p. 114)
“This is no isolated fact. The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish way, not only by acquiring financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from him, money has become a world power, and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves in so far as the Christians have become Jews.”

The best comment on the passage above is to remain speechless, allowing the weight of these words to sink in. That mission accomplished, I wish to turn next, as promised, to Nietzsche’s take on the Judenfrage…

(This is the end of Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.

RAMBAN OF GIRONA

There is no way for me to forgo mentioning Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman Girondi (1194-1270), also known, or rather, little-known, outside the Haredim communities, as Ramban, or Nahmanides, who is placed at the very respectable #72 in Michael Shapiro’s 100 List of the most influential Jews of all time. He is also known, or rather, little-known, as a philosopher, physician, early Kabbalist, and Biblical and Talmudic commentator.

Nahmanides has to be famous for two particular achievements. First, he virtually invented a whole new type of Talmudic studies, producing a series of commentaries on selected Talmudic passages, which would later be copiously imitated. Secondly, he reinvented Biblical studies by infusing them with heavy mysticism and digging Biblical passages down literally to each letter, ascribing particular symbolic values to these letters, and to their combinations. Going after the irrational and esoteric, he did not deny any legitimacy to reason, but severely curtailed its applicability and effectiveness in matters of religious and philosophical studies. He valued mystical interpretations well above literal meanings and rational deductions, and applied them quite profusely in his mystical understanding of history.

Ironically, while happily at home with non-literal, allegorical-mystical interpretations of the Written Torah, he invested the authority of virtual literal infallibility in the Rabbis of the Oral Torah. “We bow before them,” he wrote, “and even when the reason for their words is not quite evident to us, we submit to them.” His intention is well understandable. With the Torah having lost its practical authority, following the destruction of the Second Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 AD, the Jews needed an absolute religious authority, as an everyday substitute for the disabled Scripture, and Nahmanides strove to offer such a substitute in the augmented authority of the Oral Torah. Needless to say, this Herculean labor could not be handled single-handedly by one man, even armed with a perfectly good sense, but at least he was able to achieve some limited success with his endeavor.

As for his esoteric mystical pursuits, he was truly one of the principal developers of the Kabbalah; and all these things taken into account, he deserves a much greater measure of name recognition than he is getting, despite Mr. Shapiro’s valiant, but hopelessly elitist effort to exalt him in his famous ranking roster.

Fittingly, Ramban ended his days in the Holy Land, where he moved in 1267, three years before his death.

GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

(This is a Purim-style jocular Interlude, before proceeding with other serious matters…)

My apologies to Bach, this entry has nothing to do with his or anybody else’s music, except for its title. Its subject is the amusing etymology of Jewish surnames in modern times.

Simon Bar Kokhba, Saad Ben Joseph, Moshe Ben Maimon, here are some choice properly Jewish names of yore. And then, of course, we have another set of perfectly Jewish names, such as Cohen, in all possible and impossible variations, and Levi-Levine-Halevi-Levitz, plus Rabin-Rabinowitz and such, plus some less explicit surnames, such as Katz (no relation to the German Puss in Boots), which is just an etymologically misleading anagram for Kohein Tzaddek; or Segal (often deliberately misspelled as Siegel or Seagal) which is yet another anagram, this time for Se Gan Levi, etc. Nor should there be any grounds for a surprise when, say, Bar Mendel becomes Mendelssohn, or Rivka’s son becomes Rivkin…

Of course, today we may be having a “Jewish man with a golden tooth named Smith,” and no one will ever want to ask, What are the names of your other teeth? But in between Ben Hur and Smith there are a host of other German-sounding names, like Stein, Bronstein, and Rubinstein, and where do they all come from?

Unlike Smith and Stephens, these Rosenbaums and Trafficants are easily recognized, often mistakenly, as Jewish names, but they have not existed just like that from the beginning of time. In fact, they are products of the emancipation of the European Jewry, to make their position of being different less striking in at least one area where the rules of Kashrus did not seem to apply.

The story of how the socially emancipated, shtetl-free Jews were getting their new Germanized names, and how much they were paying for them to the proper German authorities is one of the most hilarious episodes in the history of Judenthum.

I have to dig up some examples, mostly out of my head, I am afraid, as I shall never be able to dig up from any other place the price difference between surnames Goldberg and Silverberg or between Perleman and Rubin. But common sense should tell us that, had everyone been able to “afford” the name Diamant, there would have been no Steins… Nor Bergs, where Goldbergs had been equally available.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION AMONG THE HAREDIM

Writing this concluding and ultimate entry in the Jewish Philosophy subsection, it is very appropriate to end it with the thinking of the modern Haredim, that is, the super-ultra-Orthodox Jews, among whom my dear friend Rabbi Yisroel Rice might be considered left-wing.

These Haredim, consistently with their “philosophy,” place religion above all human preoccupations, while correctly observing that religion is not an exercise in free thought but a tightly conditioned discipline which is controlled by a set of given premises. From this generally valid point they make the next step, concluding that philosophy is a far inferior preoccupation, as it has no predetermined factors, allowing uninhibited, and thus irresponsible, thought, where “everything is allowed,” intellectually speaking.

In a previous Lev Shestov entry All Things Are Possible, we addressed the conflict between philosophy and science, and saw how Shestov deals with it. Even more previously, in Guiding The Perplexed, we discussed Maimonides’ not very successful effort to reconcile the three strong-headed giants, namely religion, science and philosophy. These two and most others have thus strove to find a measure of compatibility between the said disciplines, at least allowing them a peaceful coexistence. The Haredim, on the other hand, have stated a principled objection to the very foundation of philosophy, grounded in free thought, and have thus striven to deny it any legitimacy.

Having said that, what else are the Talmud and the Kaballah, which the Haredim are so adept in, if not first-rate philosophy? And for an outsider looking in, what is the religion of the Haredim if not that selfsame bona fide exercise in well-preserved free thought of the Jewish millennia?

THE POSTHUMOUS WILD ADVENTURES OF A NICE JEWISH THINKER PART III

Now, the following is an extremely interesting treatment of Leo Strauss by the Russian Academia, namely, Professor Yevgeni Mikhailovich Drohne, who was the official reviewer of Leo Strauss for the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (the post-Soviet Great Russian Encyclopedia still in production has just [in 2010] reached the letter “L,” which means that it will reach Strauss only in 2013 at best), and the modern Russian philosopher Boris Andreevich Mezhuyev. Observe the smooth progression from Strauss’s esoterism to his “conspiracy theory,” as allegedly revealed by the actual neoconservative takeover of America during the Presidency of George W. Bush (2001-2009), and perceptibly enduring, despite the disastrous setbacks in Iraq and wherever Washington’s efforts to impose its hegemony on the post-cold war world have been repulsed and ridiculed, even under the current Obama Administration.

According to Mezhuyev, “Strauss believed that ancient political philosophers secretly held views that were different from those held by the populations of their hometowns. For this reason, in their writings they used codes accessible only to the chosen, to convey their higher truth, so that none of the others would be able to understand. For Strauss, such esoterism of the ancient philosophers reveals their moral superiority. Strauss understood very clearly that without a belief in this higher truth liberal democracy as a political formation is doomed to fail.” And here is Drohne: “Strauss insisted that if a man has enough intellect to figure out what he wrote in code in his books, then he is not going to fight against it, because being smart enough to figure it out--and thus potentially to belong to the inner circle--will by definition want to participate in this game.” It’s on this principle that the Straussian conception of neoconservatism has been based, its essence being the “creation of a reality with a double bottom: one for all, and the other for the few.”

Dr. Drohne continues his commentary on Strauss in 2004, as the results of the neoconservative revolution in the United States were coming in with a vengeance, having been made visible to all. “On bloodless takeover of power.” Theoretically refined and successfully used in practice, the longterm mechanism of this takeover would be as follows: “There are several circles of disciples; and even those taken into lesser confidence can be used for lesser tasks; whereas the closest disciples of the innermost circle are initiated into the subtlest fineries of the teaching… outside the texts (!!!), that is orally, entirely sub rosa. Thus we are raising several graduating classes of students over the years and the initiated ones are now forming a kind of sect, helping each other’s careers and making careers for themselves, keeping the teacher informed and involved at all times… in this fashion after a few decades of this practice, ours, without firing a shot, take control over the most powerful country in the world.”

Such is the Russian take on Strauss, and on whatever happened to America over the last several decades. All this looks farfetched, and even preposterous, except there is no smoke without fire here. Strauss has indeed been accused by the American scholars and political theorists of being an accomplished intellectual fascist, a sinister cult leader taking his cue from Messrs.’ Lenin and Trotsky; and, from all that has been said about him, really capable of the worst insinuated about him. But there is a repudiation of such a characterization as well, and even some evidence to suggest that rather than being the father of the American secret order of the neocons, he was no such thing, and that, in fact, the neocons themselves, decades after Strauss’s death, appropriated his name and his legend for their cause, basically making up all these sordid associations and insinuations themselves.

So, was there, indeed, a super-secretive and super-sinister oral teaching initiated by Leo Strauss? Due to the super-hidden nature of this subject matter, the truth is hard to come by. But the fact itself that such talk has active currency, and that its sources are not some anti-Semitic bigots of the Protocols' historical infamy, but American Jewish academics and political activists themselves, brings forth several troubling questions, and the least troubling of them, in fact, the least relevant of them, is whether the late Professor Leo Strauss had anything to do with it at all.

THE POSTHUMOUS WILD ADVENTURES OF A NICE JEWISH THINKER PART II

Before we touch upon the more sensitive aspects of Strauss’s Leninist proclivities, let me say all the positive stuff I have to say about him.

Strauss was a well-educated student of classical philosophy with a special interest in the thought of Ancient Greece. Being a political philosopher, he separated the era of the pre-Socratics, where science and ontology were the main preoccupation, from the era that started with Socrates, seeing the birth of political philosophy in Socrates’ view that philosophers could not study nature without first studying their own human nature. In Aristotle’s words, Strauss says, “man is by nature a political animal,” hence, we are present at the birth of political philosophy.

Apart from his love for the Ancient Greeks, Strauss was a great admirer of Nietzsche. In his own words, “I can only say that Nietzsche so dominated and bewitched me between my 22^nd and 30^th years that I literally believed everything that I understood of him.” He wrote that Nietzsche was the first philosopher to properly understand relativism, an idea grounded in a general acceptance of Hegelian historicism. Heidegger, in his view, sanitized and politicized Nietzsche, whereas Nietzsche believed that our own principles including the belief in progress, will become as relative as all earlier principles had shown themselves to be; the only way out… that one voluntarily choose life-giving delusion instead of deadly truth, that one fabricate a myth. He also wrote that Hegel was correct when he postulated that an end of history implies an end to philosophy as understood by classical political philosophy.

My hands-down favorite among Strauss’s ideas is his excellent distinction between “scholars” and “great thinkers,” which I have chosen to present as a separate entry in my The Genius And The Scholar section. He says that most self-described philosophers are in actuality scholars, cautious and methodical. Great thinkers, in contrast, boldly and creatively address big problems. Scholars deal with these problems only indirectly, by reasoning about the great thinkers’ differences. With a deliberate touch of humility he characterizes himself as a “scholar.”

Now, before we move on with everything else, here is a brief but instructive Strauss summary, courtesy of the Wikipedia (which appears in teal font).---

According to Strauss, modern social science is flawed, because it assumes the fact-value distinction, which concept he finds dubious, tracing its roots in philosophy to Max Weber, a thinker whom he described as a “serious and noble mind.” Weber wanted to separate values from science, but, according to Strauss, he was really a derivative thinker, deeply influenced by Nietzsche’s (lupus in fabulis!) relativism. Strauss treated politics as something that could not be studied from afar. For Strauss a political scientist examining politics with a value-free scientific eye was self-deluded. Positivism, heir to both Auguste Comte and Max Weber in the quest to make purportedly value-free judgments, failed to justify its own existence, which requires a value judgment.
While modern liberalism stressed the pursuit of individual liberty as its highest goal, he felt that there must be a greater interest in the problem of human excellence and political virtue. In his writings, he constantly raised the question of how, and to what extent, freedom and excellence can coexist. He refused to make do with simplistic or one-sided resolutions of the Socratic question: “What is the good for the city and man?”
Strauss taught that liberalism in its modern form contained within it an intrinsic tendency towards extreme relativism, which in turn led to two types of nihilism. The first was “brutal” nihilism, expressed in Nazi and Marxist regimes. He said that these ideologies, both descendants of Enlightenment thought, tried to destroy traditions, history, ethics and moral standards replacing them by force under which nature and mankind are subjugated and conquered. The second type, “gentle” nihilism, expressed in Western liberal democracies, was a kind of value-free aimlessness and a hedonistic “permissive egalitarianism,” permeating the fabric of contemporary American society. In the belief that twentieth century relativism, scientism, historicism, and nihilism were all implicated in the deterioration of modern society and philosophy, he sought to uncover the philosophical pathways that had led to this situation. The study of it led Strauss to advocate a return to classical political philosophy as a starting point for judging political action.

So far so good, and so innocent, but now the clouds are about to appear on the horizon. Ironically, they start with the allegedly anti-democratic premise, which I totally share, that all societies consist of the minority elite and the majority hoi polloi. Apparently, to protect itself from the physically overwhelming majority, and, at the same time, to effectively subjugate hoi polloi to its superior intellect and will, the elite minority practices esoterism.

In 1952, he published Persecution and the Art of Writing, commonly understood to advance the argument that some philosophers write esoterically in order to avoid persecution by political or religious authorities. A few readers of Strauss suggest esoteric writing may also seek to protect politics from political philosophy whose explosive reasoning might well shatter fragile opinions undergirding the political order. Stemming from his study of Maimonides and extended to his reading of Plato, he proposed that esoteric texts were the proper type for philosophical learning. Rather than simply outlining the philosopher’s thoughts, the esoteric text forces readers to do their own thinking and learning. As Socrates says in the Phaedrus, writing does not respond when questioned, but invites a dialogue with the reader, thus reducing the problems of the written word. One political danger Strauss pointed to was students too quickly accepting dangerous ideas.

Ultimately, he believed that philosophers offered both an exoteric, or salutary teaching and an esoteric, or true teaching, the latter concealed from the general reader. For maintaining this distinction, Strauss is often accused of having written esoterically himself.

This does not look so innocent anymore...

 

(This is the end of Part II. Part III will be published tomorrow.)

THE POSTHUMOUS WILD ADVENTURES OF A NICE JEWISH THINKER PART I

(This entry is being posted in three consecutive parts.)

The reader ought to be aware that I am quite seriously of two minds about the persona of Leo Strauss. On the one hand, I like many of his ideas, and in some ways I see him almost as a kindred spirit. On the other hand, there exists a significant body of evidence picturing him as effectively the mastermind of a brilliantly clever (devilish, one might say) plot to take over the power in the United States in a bloodless coup, relying on the extreme determination and superior brainpower of its predominantly Jewish conspirators, bringing forth frightening memories of the pernicious and indisputably utterly fictitious Elders of Zion, of the infamous Protocols fame. Hence, his spurious title of the father of the American Neoconservative Movement, which is thus being equated to the said political conspiracy. Ironically, Strauss happens to be just as controversial and just as significant as a particular representative of the species, as the whole of Judenthum is significant and controversial on the world-historical scale.

And one more thing: on the question of American neoconservatism, allegedly begotten by Leo Strauss and put into action by his “followers,” see my previously posted entry Lenin In America in the American section, posted on this blog on June 30^th, 2011. (There is perfect justice in having entries about Leo Strauss in both American and Jewish sections.)

As the reader has been reading this section, he or she must undoubtedly have noticed that alongside some very positive things that I am saying about the Jews, other things are by no means flattering to them, but on the balance I can hardly be suspected of picking up either the plus or the minus side at the expense of the other. (Those who may suspect me of bias, will suspect me anyway, just for speaking my mind, instead of talking in bland propaganda generalities, which is the only acceptable way of talking about these things.)

There are at least three important reasons for my placement of the German-born Jewish-American political philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973) in Tikkun Olam, in addition to, say, in the American section, where I try keeping all notable Americans together. On the one hand, he was certainly a bona fide Jew who changed his country of residence several times during his life, moving from Germany to France, then on to England, and only then to the United States, where he would live from 1937 until his death, thirty-six years later. In this respect, like Albert Einstein, he can be called a Jew with far greater justification than he can be called an American, like someone, Jew or Gentile, who had lived in America all his life. On the other hand, his portrayal in America, as the founding father of the modern neoconservative movement, has been so much affected by this terrible association that, in order not to be too biased against him, I would rather leave that misshapen image where it belongs, but detach the wretched man from it, by considering him here as a Jewish political philosopher, as opposed to there, as an American political ideologue.

There is a third reason here, too, which is the fact that I would like to maintain a proper balance of fairness in speaking my mind on Res Judaica, and, in case anyone still thinks that I am too harsh on the Jews in this section, here is a very peculiar case in point. Leo Strauss, who represents a striking contrast of perceptions: was he a nice Jewish thinker, with some extremely interesting ideas, or was he indeed a sinister mastermind of a daring political conspiracy to take over the power in the United States by means of a bloodless coup, based on the superior brainpower of the select, using esoteric codes, psychological games, dissimulation, as well as the latest brainwashing techniques?

(This is the end of Part I. Part II will be published tomorrow, and part III the day after.)

THE REDEMPTIVE STAR OF FRANZ ROSENZWEIG

My next two Jewish philosophers are Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) and Martin Buber (1878-1965). They are so closely related that for a while I was thinking of giving them both a joint entry, but at the end of the day I thought otherwise. It is true that Buber is better known, but personally I used to be more taken by the intellectual brilliance and the remarkable personality of Rosenzweig, probably because I had a chance to read him at length with an undivided attention, finding him very interesting, and also learning some facts of his biography, which have intrigued me. Such a distinctive personal edge elevates Rosenzweig to a subjective level in my “graces,” which I cannot say about Buber. The particular reason why the two of them are closely tied is that they were very good friends, and collaborated on a number of projects, including a new German translation of the Biblia Hebraica.

Other than that, they were in constant argument concerning the phenomenon of Zionism. Buber was a dedicated Zionist, for which reason he was-- and is-- especially honored in the State of Israel. Rosenzweig, on the contrary, happened to be an anti-Zionist, deeply worried about the future of the Jewish people, should they pursue the Zionist ambition. This conviction must be perhaps the main reason of his undeserved semi-oblivion among the Jews, not even to mention the Gentiles, who are virtually ignorant of him.

The title of this entry belongs to Rosenzweig’s magnum opus, the one that I have read with a considerable interest. Franz Rosenzweig published his principal philosophical work Der Stern der Erlösung in 1921. It begins with a rejection of the traditional philosophical attitude denying the fear of death, and maintaining instead that this fear is the beginning of the cognition of the All. Man should continue to fear death, despite the attitude of the philosophers who have a predilection for accepting it. (It can also be said, I may add, that the fear of death is the beginning of all ethics! Fearless people tend to be amoral, in my estimation. Such an attitude is not very popular, of course, but I am happy to share it with Rosenzweig.)

Traditional philosophy is monistic; it is interested in the universal only. But there are actually three distinct domains, as identified by Kant: God, the world, and man. A monistic perspective deprives our consideration of this triad of the necessary analytical flexibility. (This is a promising approach, which establishes not one or two, but three active forces that also happen to be interactive forces. The argument about analytical flexibility, or the lack thereof, is invincible, even if one disagrees with the other parts.)

Everything is known through experience (and experience of God is through revelation). The Bible focuses on all three parts of the triad, in their relation to each other: between God and the world, which is creation, between God and man, which is revelation, and between man and the world, which leads to salvation. (The most unusual observation, effectively denying the quality of salvation to the relationship between man and God. Before we dismiss it indignantly, however, Rosenzweig’s triad is well worth thinking through carefully, and even if we persist in our disagreement, our own understanding is deeply enriched by the encounter with his thinking.)

Biblical faith produces two valid religions, according to Rosenzweig. They are Judaism and Christianity. (In a way, this is almost a truism, but Rosenzweig is clearly trying to establish a meaningful comparison of the two faiths, for which reason he isolates them from all other religions.) The latter seeks the way to salvation in the vicissitudes of time and history. Judaism, on the other hand, is utterly unconcerned with these two. In fact, Jewish life is already a life eternal, forever renewed by the rhythm of the Jewish liturgical year cycle.

Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption was ignored by mainstream philosophy, and it gained its reputation as a piece of maverick thinking, which, not surprisingly, I find most attractive.

The highlight of his life was his decision at the age of 26 and after a long struggle with himself to convert to Christianity (his personal experience with Judaism was virtually non-existent). Having found his solution to the philosophical problem of man in religious faith, Protestantism was appealing to him particularly, as allowing an existential faith and a “dialogical” relationship with God. While preparing himself for Baptism, he attended, however, as perhaps his last rite as a Jew, the Yom Kippur services in a small Orthodox shul in Berlin. The event had a profound effect on his psyche, as, according to his description of it, he now found what he was looking for, both spiritually and philosophically, not outside his inherited Jewish identity, but precisely within its confines. And from then on, he would devote his life and thought to the study, teaching, and the religious practice of Judaism.

Another biographical fact about him, which I find still more appealing, in terms of my personal partialities, is that, having served in the German Army, during World War I, in 1918, he attended an officers’ training course near Warsaw, as Poland at the time was under German occupation. There he had a chance to observe the life of the Poilische Yidden and was summarily overwhelmed by the depth and richness of their faith. It was that encounter which prompted his thinking toward what would become his intellectual masterpiece--- Der Stern der Erlösung.

(I must remind the reader that the general attitude of German Jews toward the Poilische Yidden had always been contemptuous and culturally dismissive. It was therefore almost heroic on the part of Rosenzweig that in his case he was able so acutely to appreciate the distinctive Jewishness of the Haredim, who constituted a small fraction of German Jews, but nearly a hundred per cent among the Polish religious Jews. The reason why I italicize “religious” is that a large number of Polish and Russian Jews were agnostics, and as much dismissive of religion as such, as the emancipated German Jews used to be dismissive of the Haredim, and not surprisingly still are. Ironically, choosing the Haredim, who would never care about him anyway, over the Haskala Jews, who have surely been offended by his dismissal of non-Orthodox Judaism, Rosenzweig found himself in the unenviable position of a pariah, which offers the reader another reason for his continuing semi-oblivion.

In the last years of his life, suffering from an incurable illness gradually taking away his life, he became interested in classical and sacred music (another winner for him in my estimation), leaving an array of delightful essays on the subject as the last testament in his brilliant and original legacy.

And now, Franz Rosenzweig’s beautiful title The Star of Redemption is about to connect the legacy of them both, Rosenzweig and Buber: the man who died before his time, and the man who certainly had outlived it. (The Martin Buber entry will be posted later.)

FONS VITAE

[This entry about the philosopher-poet Solomon ibn Gabirol (1020-1057), uses the title of his major work Fons Vitae as its own title. Originally written in Arabic (there are no extant texts of the original), its Latin translation was made a century after its author’s death, in 1150, and only afterwards found its way into Hebrew, as a translation from Latin! Jewish scholars have shown little interest in Gabirol as a philosopher, but all have honored him as a poet and the genius author of the hymn Adon Olam. (See my Adon Olam entry earlier in this section.)]

There were several notable Jewish philosophers during the time between the closure of the Talmud and the coming of Rambam (Maimonides). Some of them will be mentioned in the historical subsection, later on in this section; others are of lesser interest to me, and therefore are not going not be mentioned at all. But one of them in particular needs a special mention, perhaps not so much as a philosopher as a case of some curiosity in the history of the often uneasy coexistence between the Jews and the Christian world.

Solomon ibn Gabirol (1020-1057), known in Latin to Christian scholars as Avicebron, is considered a neo-Platonist philosopher, and several later Jewish scholars have used this “offense” against him, complaining about his “Gentile” leanings, and his lack of interest in Res Judaica proper. It is hard to imagine, however, that the great author of Adon Olam could ever be accused of a deficiency in Jewish zeal! Much more likely, as a philosopher, he had taken it upon himself to reconcile Jewish thought with Gentile philosophy, finding such a mission to be more in tune with his philosophical aspirations, and, generally speaking, more useful to Res Judaica than the normal occupation of a Jewish scholar, working in complete isolation from the outside non-Jewish world.

Ironically, Gabirol’s apparent preoccupation paid off with the Gentile posterity, when his works, particularly his Fons Vitae, in Latin translation, were mistaken for works of some Christian scholastic philosopher. One of his chief admirers was none other than Duns Scotus, a dedicated Platonist. On the Aristotelian side of the purely Christian controversy over Gabirol’s philosophical legacy were such luminaries of Christian thought as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.

To be honest, Gabirol’s philosophy is rather too scholastic, and there is little point in writing about matters scholastic any more than they have already been treated in my philosophical sections. But a brief detached summary of Gabirol’s philosophy may be in order, once we have used Fons Vitae as our title anyway.

(Quoted from the Wikipedia.) “Fons Vitae consists of five tractates, treating of (1) matter and form in general, and their relation in physical substances; (2) the substance that underlies the corporeality of the world; (3) proofs of the existence of substantiae simplices, of intermediaries between God and the physical world; (4) proofs that these are likewise constituted of matter and form; (5) universal matter and universal form.

The chief doctrines of the Fons Vitae may be summarized as follows:

(1) All created beings are constituted of form and matter.

(2) This holds true of the physical world, and is not less true of the spiritual world.

(3) Matter and form are always, and everywhere, in the relation of sustinens and sustentatum, propriatum and proprietas, substratum and property or attribute.

The main thesis of Fons Vitae is that all that exists is constituted of matter and form; the same matter runs through the whole universe from the highest limits of the spiritual down to the lowest limits of the physical, excepting that matter the farther it is removed from its first source becomes less and less spiritual. Gabirol insists over and over again that the materia universalis is the substratum of all that exists.”

Those who are familiar with Duns Scotus, can easily deduce that it was materia universalis which caught his attention in particular, in Fons Vitae. But I would assume that Duns promoted Fons Vitae (presumed to be a Christian work, remember!) not so much for its intrinsic merit, as to promote his own original views, using Fons Vitae as a vehicle, after the saying that there is safety in numbers.