Latest article: On Zionism and Diasporism
And more of what I've been writing, reading, and watching
I published a long essay for the Times’s weekly Sunday Ideas vertical about Jewish “diasporism,” which in the guise I was examining means a Judaism or Jewishness with Israel de-centered from it. My essay wasn’t intended as polemic or advocacy; along with highlighting diasporism and some of the arguments in favor of it, I presented substantial rebuttals.
A riff I had at one point that (along with much, much else!) floated down to the cutting room floor got close to one of my obsessions, which is the role Israel has played in driving Jewish life and culture not only inside but also outside of Israel.
Two years ago, it was reported that the prominent Irish author Sally Rooney had refused to allow her third novel to be translated into Hebrew as part of a cultural boycott in support of Palestinian rights. The decision rang false even to some strong critics of Israel: After all, Hebrew is an ancient Jewish language, studied continuously over millennia of exile, revived as an everyday vernacular partly outside of the Holy Land and spoken the world over by Jews – and others – who may or may not be Israeli or supporters of Israel themselves.
Ms. Rooney felt compelled to issue a clarification: What she had refused was not a Hebrew translation, but an edition by an Israeli publisher. “It would be an honor,” she added, “for me to have my latest novel translated into Hebrew and available to Hebrew-language readers,” provided the process complied with her boycott of Israel.
Two years later, the novel remains unavailable in Hebrew. Because while an authentic Hebrew culture unbound by Zionism and Israel might seem attractive to some – and though it is technically possible; there is even a diasporic Hebrew journal published from Paris’s Maison de la culture Yiddish – in practice, there is no viable market, in all senses, for this culture without Israel.
The Rooney affair presents in miniature the central challenge diasporism poses to its adherents. Diaspora Jews promoted their people and culture over the past 75 years with the benefit of Israel. And it is impossible for either diasporists or Zionists to know how the diaspora would have fared without it.
The article went online Sunday and was in print today, Monday. I hope you take a look.
Other writing: I wrote about a stage adaptation of Philip Roth’s raunchiest and quite possibly best novel; Susan Sarandon’s history of activism; and Bob Dylan’s recent tendency toward city-specific cover songs.
Reading: I just finished Alexander Stille’s The Sullivanians, a history of a psychoanalytic groupuscule/cult on the Upper West Side in the postwar decades. It’s a shame there was never a Mad Men featuring them, they would have fit right in not only sociologically, historically, and geographically, but thematically — the moral and social costs of revolutionary libertinism and all that. Now I’m reading Adam Thirlwell’s The Future Future, which is a novel about pre-revolutionary France that is really about the Internet.
Watching: I am way behind on 2023 movies I want to see, but the two excellent ones I saw in recent weeks have been Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up (on my television, sadly) and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. That said, the most memorable moviegoing experience I’ve had lately was seeing Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978) at Film Forum last week. The only other Malick I had seen was Badlands — stupidly, on my television, though I also suspect it’s a much lesser film. Days of Heaven is just absolutely virtusoic, not at all a tone poem or only about its insanely gorgeous shots, as I think I had feared, but really something about the American myth, the Western, and how (to quote another great film about the American myth and the Western) the whole darn human comedy keeps perpetuatin’ itself. Highest of recommendations. Hopefully one of the New York theaters will do a Malick series in advance of his forthcoming Jesus film so I can see some of the others.
Your point on Jewish culture as not dependant upon Zionism is notable. It embodies most Jews I know. My orthodox father explained to me that Zion was a state of mind. It makes sense. No one can take that away.