Why everyone wants a piece of the Jews
Our historical dispute over what role we should play in the world has been exploited by both left and right — with polarising results
WHY IS everyone so preoccupied with us? Even amid a global pandemic Jewish matters have broken into the headlines. In the controversy over Rebecca Long-Bailey’s retweet and subsequent sacking by Sir Keir Starmer, the casual association of Israeli state violence with George Floyd’s murder in Maxine Peake’s initial tweet was widely seen as a reminder of the persistent susceptibility of the British left to Jewish conspiracy theories. Others argued that the degree of attention given to the incident reflected a disproportionate focus on antisemitism relative to other forms of prejudice. Whatever one’s view on the issue, Jews seemed in one way or another to be singled out for special attention.
International condemnations of Bibi Netanyahu’s push to annex parts of the West Bank, meanwhile, appear to some as yet another example of Israel being placed under uniquely intense scrutiny. American backing for the plan, though, is above all based on Donald Trump’s political need to appeal to the theological fascination of evangelical Christians with the Holy
Land and the Jews who live there. Once again, from both ends of the political spectrum it seems that it is outside interest in this issue that makes it a very special case. For over 200 years many Jews have yearned simply to be considered and treated in the same way as everyone else – but this hope of normality remains as elusive as ever.
The complexities of ‘singling out’ lie at the heart of Judaism. In the biblical covenant God singles out the Jews as a ‘chosen people’, and much of the Jewish tradition is devoted to grappling with what that means. Talmudic sages and medieval rabbis interpreted the covenant as a divine promise of a future messianic age, when Jews would in some way lead the world into a transformed state of harmony and peace. This messianic destiny marked the Jews apart as special, and invested them with a unique purpose in the world.
In Christianity, belief in a future messianic era has been equally important. Christians have traditionally anticipated the eventual conversion of all Jews to Christianity as the future transformation that will herald the advent of utopian unity on earth. This sharply double-edged doctrine is heavily implicated in the history of antiJewish hostility and hatred. It has also, though, extended beyond Judaism the idea that Jews been singled out to play a very special role in human history. It is this belief that energises Trump’s evangelical electoral base.
Secular thinkers have repeatedly sought to topple this messianic faith in the future. The betterment of the world, innumerable philosophers since the Enlightenment have argued, cannot be based on trust in God: it must be achieved through the determined marshalling of our own human capabilities. Even while
Obsessed with Israel: Maxine Peake and Donald Trump challenging and ridiculing religious faith, though, these thinkers often recreated their own surprisingly similar dogmas of future transformation, through science, civilisation or socialism. They also often ascribed a special role in the realisation of these better futures to Jews.
The extension of political rights to European Jews in the wake of the French Revolution inspired uniquely intense controversies and passions. In the nineteenth century most Jews, Christians and secularists agreed that Jews played a very special role in human affairs. Many 19-century rabbis, particularly in the early Reform movement in Germany and the US, assertively proclaimed a unique Jewish mission to others as beacons of ethics and spiritual wisdom.
Jews have been both effusively praised and venomously castigated for their supposed prominence in the history of capitalism, and also in the left-wing political movements opposed to capitalism. And no nation state has been freighted with special hopes so disproportionate to its size as Israel. Both Jewish and non-Jewish Zionists have often imagined the Jewish state, in the words of the prophet Isaiah on the biblical covenant, as ‘a light unto the nations’.
The horror of the Holocaust cast a profound chill over the idea of Jewish special purpose and exceptionality, which seemed to have culminated in exceptional slaughter. In response, many Jews in the second half of the twentieth century insisted on the normalisation of the place of Jews in the world. The Holocaust itself, though, has over the past few decades increasingly been seen as a uniquely crucial moral lesson of history. In this form the memory of the Nazi genocide has become a new strand of Jewish educational mission to the world.
In September 2018, when the newspaper Haaretz polled Israeli Jews on the question ‘Do you believe the Jewish people is a chosen people?’, 56 per cent answered ‘yes’,
‘Singling out’ and its complexities lie at the heart of Judaism