Same difference
I'd like to declare a moratorium on Jewish exceptionalism. Sure, we have great comedians and rack up Nobel Prizes. You like monotheism? You're welcome. Enjoy. Isn't it time we talk about the Sikhs, or the Cubans?
Of course, we have no one to blame but ourselves for the inordinate amount of attention we attract. We learned a lot of things in the desert but never quite got the hang of camouflage. When fate was handing out professions we picked finance, law, medicine, and movie-making. When God was handing out land, we said sure, we'll take that one, the one sitting in the middle of about a gazillion Muslims. Maybe they won't notice.
And we make our own claims for exceptionalism, proudly but not always wisely. We're happy to be included among the world's "Three Great Religions," and then we're shocked by "God's Warriors," a six-hour series on CNN that devotes as much time to our crazies as it does to the Muslims' and Christians'. I'd be happy to be demoted to the list of the world's Not-So-Great Religions if it meant never having to suffer through another Christiane Amanpour interview with a Jewish extremist who is best known for failing to blow up the Dome of the Rock.
But that's the price of exceptionalism: Specious comparisons between a tiny people's relatively marginal record of terrorism, versus state-sponsored mass murderers who have destroyed untold numbers of mosques and shrines in Iraq and Hindu temples in India and Pakistan, not to mention the occasional synagogue.
The argument for putting the Jewish story in the middle of the story is that, well, that's the way it is, whether you are talking about 20th-century Europe or the 21st-century Middle East. And we do ourselves no favors when we make the same case, as the Yiddish scholar Ruth Wisse does in a recent interview. Talking about her new book, Jews and Power, Wisse tells the Nextbook Web site that anti-Semitism is "the most successful ideology of modern times" in that it "made its way from Europe to the Middle East, and played a central role among so many different peoples."
It is a provocative statement, but it's one to which I am tempted to respond, "It's all about you, isn't it?" Black people in Africa, Europe, and North and South America might be surprised to hear that colonialism and its racist legacy run a poor second to anti-Semitism in terms of popularity. You can't make a claim for the primacy of anti-Semitism as a century's defining "ism" and then wonder why the world continues to treat you as a special case.
But at least Wisse has standing to declare Jewish exceptionalism — her only error is in overstating a case that is enormous to begin with. The real gymnastics are being performed by those who find Jews exceptional for doing what all other peoples and countries consider normal.
In a devastating article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Gadi Taub of Hebrew University shows how a certain type of anti-Zionist declares Israel unique — and uniquely flawed — for claiming a national identity based on some (hardly unusual) combination of ethnicity, religion, and shared history. Exhibit A is Bard College professor Joel Kovel's book Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine, whose very title declares his view that Israel's nationalist aspirations and democracy are contradictory.
Taub wonders why the Jewish brand of nationalism is exceptional and what is it that makes the "idea of a Jewish democratic state seem more contradictory to so many critics today than an English democratic state."
Is it religion? Israel is a hybrid of secular institutions and religious influence, but England, Denmark, and Norway all have state churches, and the Poles and Greeks have a clearly religious national character. Does secularism guarantee "democracy"? While militantly secular France denies basic religious rights to Muslims, for instance, Israel has an Arab-language school system and state-sponsored Muslim family courts.
What about the Law of Return, granting automatic citizenship to Jewish immigrants? Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, and Poland have similar laws for their citizens.
Or is it "ethnicity"? "Despite repeated usage," writes Taub, "it is still not clear why the term ‘ethnic' is useful for describing Israel, which is far less ethnically homogeneous than, say, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Poland, or Sweden. In what sense does ‘ethnic' describe the common identity of Israeli Jews from Argentina, England, Ethiopia, Germany, Morocco, Russia, and Yemen?"
Taub decides Israel's critics see what they want to see and read "exceptionalism" back into normalcy. Ironically, the criticism has become more fierce at a time when even hawkish Israelis have given up on the idea of a "Greater Israel" in order to protect Israel's Jewish and democratic character — in effect a "nationalist" move that benefits the Palestinians and their own dreams of democratic self-determination.
Taub doesn't exactly get into why these New Anti-Nationalists pick on Israel. That's up to Wisse, who thinks the world insists on Jewish exceptionalism as part of a "culture of blame" — as a way for countries and cultures to distract their followers from their real problems.
I'm proud of the Jews. I really am. But sometimes I'm with Tevye. "I know, I know. We are Your chosen people," says the hero of Fiddler on the Roof. "But, once in a while, can't You choose someone else?"
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