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PARTISAN REVIEW
So for them the matter is settled . But for George Steiner it is not .
The voice of God for him cannot be heard in "Long Live
Israel," shouted by Jews .
Steiner's caution about "shouting in the streets" is well–
advised. We recall the Nazis shouting in the streets. And Jews
recently shouting "Long live King Sharon," referring to the
General who invaded Lebanon . And shouting in the streets in
various fascist countries, for example in Latin America .
It
is not a
question of Steiner holding out for Truth with a capital
T,
as Abel
suggests . It is a question of his remembering the crimes committed
in the name of the People. Abel knows this too. He is no defender of
militarism or fascism . And I doubt that he would shut his eyes to
fascism in Israel. But is his confidence in Israel a religious belief? Or
is it conditional?
Is Steiner "waiting for Truth "? Or is. he warning us against
the greatest evil of our time: militarism and nationalism and their
deadly combination? And does he see these dangers as even greater
for Israel because of its tendency to funnel religious emotions into
nationalism? Is it not precisely this combination of religion and
politics against which the best Jewish thinkers warned (Magnes,
Buber, Scholem, Breuer, Kohn and Gutkind, to name a few)? Did
not Scholem understand, from his monumental study of the Sabbati
Zevi movement , just how dangerous this was?
Israel was founded as a secular state, yet by a People whose
history has not been secular, but quite the reverse, permeated by an
almost too literal Messianism. Hence Israel may not be playing the
"game of the nations , " but the far too committed "game of Zion"
in which "zealotry," "impossiblism" and "forcing God" may
again prove irresistible as they did in Roman times. The danger of
fundamentalism and apocalypticism (sacralizing current events) is
that this tends to release forces of tradition and destiny which then
proceed with a momentum of their own. We have seen it happen
already in this century with the totalitarian "sleepwalkers," and we
have not seen the end of it.
* * *
Is there a demonic element in Judaism analagous to the
demonic element in the Christian Church? Does it have to do with
the same confusion between worldly power and religion? Is it an at–
tempt to wrest power from God (faith, tradition, prophecy) for the
"national soul" as Christians attempted to do for the Church?
