Vol. 54 No. 2 1987 - page 289

Roy
Finch
ABEL AND STEINER
Lionel Abel, in his essay "So Who Is to Have the Last
Word?"
(PR
3, 1986), disagrees with George Steiner on two main
points:
(l)Abel
does not accept Steiner's version of the Torah as a
Derrida-like text; and (2)he has, instead, what Steiner does not
have, faith in the State of Israel.
When we look at these disagreements more closely, we see that
they are not as great as they appear, for, just as Steiner doesn't
really
believe in the Torah as the Supreme Text (but only as one more
text), so Abel doesn't
really
accept the State of Israel as a Homeland
(but only as a place to be emotionally attached to and perhaps to
vi.sit now and then) . Yet behind this there is a profound difference of
orientation which I propose to examine. (I will not be able to do this
without expressing my own point of view, which is different from
both of theirs and which I will state later.)
Abel is certainly right that the Torah as "text" is no "Homeland"
and no religious authority either, and hence no foundation for any
recognizable Judaism. But Steiner does not need or want a
Homeland . His position has always been that Homelessness is the
better state for Jews and that to be able to live without a Homeland
(until the time of the Messiah) is their peculiar and special gift.
Faced with the actual choice of returning to Israel, a great
many Jews have decided not to, for reasons which the Israeli writer
A.B. Yehoshua, along with others, has recently explored in depth in
a volume entitled
Diaspora: Exile and the Contemporary Jewish Condition
(Harper and Row).
In
what sense then is it their Homeland?
Perhaps they send money, or visit occasionally, or let their children
work in a kibbutz, or write articles about it. Of course, the matter is
more complicated. Yehoshua and his colleagues believe that
American Jewish "leaders" wishing to help Israel are nevertheless
causing serious damage by turning it into a superpower beyond its
natural means. An unhealthy dependence has developed on both
sides, and Israel is encouraged to undertake a global role, half on its
own and half in what it believes to be American interests.
We do not know to what extent this reflects the "voice of the
People," but what matters for Abel is that the existence ofIsrael as a
Homeland for those who live there is the "voice of God" speaking as
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