Exile, Land, and Religious Nationalism: Review of Shaul Magid’s THE NECESSITY OF EXILE
As I’m writing this review of Shaul Magid’s new book, The Necessity of Exile, police in anti-riot gear are breaking up anti-Israel protests at Columbia University. Much the same is happening on other American college campuses. I don’t want to say with certainty what the point of the demonstrations is. After months of television coverage of bombing and suffering, Columbia students are understandably outraged at the genocidal levels of violence in Gaza. Generally speaking, it looks to me like students are aligning with the BDS (Boycott Divest Sanction) movement. Further, it appears to me that American sentiment has shifted away from blind support of Netanyahu’s State of Israel and towards sympathy for Palestinians.
Unfortunately, with any street demonstration, protesters can do little to set straight injustices in a century old situation. And protests–we remember the street demonstrations that followed George Floyd’s murder–even thoughtful and peaceful protests, can be infiltrated by trouble-makers.
The confusing atmosphere has given opportunity for true antisemites to display swastikas and Nazi symbols. Orthodox and Reformed Jewish students have become targets of, or feel threatened by, fellow students. The press and politicians will happily give their own interpretation of events. To the degree that this condition is true, we must conclude that antisemitism is at play and on the rise.
Anyway, I don’t want to reflexively take any sides. More information needs to be brought to the surface. It remains for the press to study and make clear precisely who is participating in the protests and what they wish to say.
The Complexity of the Situation in Palestine
The situation is like a three-ring circus with a lot of important activity going on at once. The actors include secular human rights advocates who seek justice for Palestinians, Orthodox Jews who want to establish Jewish dominance in Palestine, Neo-Nazi types, Palestinian victims seeking safety, Jewish victims of the Hamas attack, Reformed Jews worldwide who like the idea of a Jewish homeland, dispensationalist Christians who think that Jerusalem must be ruled by Jews in order for Jesus to return, and intellectuals of all sorts who hold a variety of views.
And the complexity of the situation unfolding in the news extends the complexity that has long been at the heart of Judaism’s quest to find a homeland.
About a month ago, I listened to journalist Chris Hedges’ podcast interview with Rabbi Shaul Magid. Magid, the Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and serves as the rabbi of the Fire Island synagogue in New York has just published a book of essays under the title, The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance. Importantly, this book provides a profound and irenic theological commentary on the lurid news of the day. At length, Magid sets forth his own opinion on what needs to happen in the Land of Israel.
I find Magid’s writing and experience enlightening. After reading this book I feel drawn to explore further the rich intellectual tradition of the Jewish left.
Review of The Necessity of Exile
Magid published his book at the same time as Hamas’ November 7th 2023 attack on Israeli citizens. He composed the essays, however, before the current conflagration. They are the fruit of his long-time study of early 20th century Jewish reflection on Zionism. Perhaps more important is Magid’s personal experience as a student in several rabbinical schools and several different outlooks on Zionism.
The book pays homage to an array of Jewish intellectuals, mostly rabbis including people like Rav Kook, Martin Buber, Theodore Hertzl, Rav Shagar, and Hanna Arendt. Their views are both profound and maddingly inconsistent. Like the dissonant chorus we are hearing on college campuses and Washington, Magid’s roundup of intellectuals makes it clear that the idea of a Jewish homeland has never been an unambiguous project.
The book’s title enticed me to buy it. I’ve long been interested in exile as a condition that could influence a surrounding culture. Is it possible that exile could be an opportunity? A situation to seek out? Does being in control of a place in the way that governments rule their territories and peoples give a religion the best opportunity to influence that region? Is there a Christian ethos of exile? Are there advantages to being the out-group, holding different values, and not assimilating?
What Happened to the Old Testament?
I bought the The Necessity of Exile hoping that Magid would explore the Old Testament stance on exile, a condition that Jews have lived in for two millennia. I wanted to confirm a hunch that exile indeed a Christian value and a missionary stance. What, for example, is the Christian analog to the Prophet Jeremiah’s instructions for exiled Jews to build houses and get married and become “good citizens” in Babylon? What are we to do with the fact that most Jews did not return to Canaan after Cyrus’ Edict in 539 BCE.
Magid never got to the Old Testament in any satisfying way, for me anyway. Neither did he offer much meditation on the spirituality of exile. Here and there through the essays Magid would drop a tantalizing remark about what it means to live on the edges of a dominant culture. But dishing up a spiritually of exile for this curious Protestant was not Magid’s main purpose.
Instead, the book pulled together examples of the century-long internal Jewish conversation about the pluses and minuses and contradictions and glories of a Jewish homeland.
Exile is Necessary
One thread that runs through the book is that Zionism has always been a flight from exile, which he claims to be an indispensable part of Jewish identity. In other words, Jews should preserve their vocation to live adjacent to and differentiated from a dominating culture. Jews should not allow themselves to assimilate into nor absorb the values of the dominant culture. Apartness is a distinctly Jewish vision of its mission to the world.
Of course, being different and living with a distinct identity gets people into trouble and provides a convenient group to scapegoat, which has been the Jewish fate since 732 bce. That was the year that the Assyrian Empire began deportations of the Northern Kingdom’s population. Jews have lived scattered and subservient ever since.
The prime reason that “the necessity of exile” is a difficult idea is because it negates another essential Jewish value, namely the eschatological view of The Land. For Jews, God’s covenant with David not only provided for a glorified and spiritualized King—the Messiah—but also a realm under the messiah’s rule. Jewish flourishing in safety and prosperity in a place of God’s providing is, like Exile, also an indispensable Jewish hope.
What we’ve got, and most people miss this, are opposing values: exile (diaspora) and homeland. Small wonder that Jewish intellectual reflection, especially since the late 19th century is all over the place on the topic of where Jews should live. This is the terrain that Magid navigates.
Zionism is New
The tension between exile and homeland has been around for a long time. Zionism is the most recent iteration of it.
At the end of the 19th century two developments fostered a surge in antisemitism in Europe.
First, was the Jewish Enlightenment, a stirring within the Jewish community that encouraged Jewish people to emerge from the shadows as a secondary population and to assimilate into Western society.
The second was the rise of the dubious science of race, a misapplication of biological classification to human populations. Jews suddenly became a “race.” Intellectuals started to deem Jewish people as biologically and culturally different from other races, notably the White race.
These twin developments breathed oxygen into the old embers of Jew hatred that has plagued the Christian west since antiquity. At length, mounting antisemitism culminated in the Holocaust that snuffed out 6 million of Europe’s 15 million Jewish people.
During this period of distress for the Jewish people, the idea of creating a homeland or place of refuge for beleaguered Jews gained popularity through the first 50 years of the 20th century and culminated when the UN set up the Jewish State of Israel in 1948. Before that, in 1920, Britain designated Palestine as a place of refuge within the Ottoman Empire for Jewish people. With this rudimentary homeland established, Jews began moving to the historical “Promised Land.”
What is Zionism?
Now, 100 years later, a plurality of the world’s 15 million Jewish people, 7 million, have settled in Israel, and 6 million reside in the US. Not surprisingly, the Holocaust in Europe accelerated the movement of Jews to Palestine.
Driving this remarkable migration and resettlement is an ideology called Zionism. Roughly defined, Zionism advocates for the importance of a Jewish homeland. Having a safe place to flourish is a perennial Jewish dream. Beyond the core idea that Zionism promotes a Jewish homeland, it also contains a dizzying array of nuances and controversies. These controversies make almost any opinion about current events in Palestine or Judaism appear naively shortsighted.
Here’s a personal admission. I read Magid’s entire book attentatively and found myself going back several times to the Wikipedia article on Zionism. What exactly is Zionism? Is it a country? A safe place to live? A spiritual ideal? Is living in Zion a replacement for the religion of Judaism. It’s complicated for me.
Magid’s Conclusion
Magid believes that Zionism is no longer a useful aspiration either for the Jewish people or the world. He supports his post-Zionism in several ways, again as threads that run through his essays:
The current Zionist experiment.
The State of Israel, has morphed into something that is less than Jewish. Jewish supremacy, oppression of Palestinian Arabs, the use of conquest to acquire territory, the fascistic character of the Netanyahu government, and the loss of exilic differentiation fall short of Jewish ethical ideals.
Twentieth Century Zionism is a new idea.
It originated in the late 19th century and began as a military and secular opportunity for western powers to exploit lands they occupied after both the world wars. Palestine was secured by dint of British and later American military power. It’s true that the idea of a promised land originated in the Old Testament. But the establishment of a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine is both new and controversial even among Jewish intellectuals who anticipated some of the problems we see today.
A Jewish homeland is best thought of as an eschatological idea.
Land connects with messianism, the idea of the re-establishment of a Davidic leader who not only is a divine king but one who also reigns over a safe, prosperous, and spiritually uplifting realm. A secular nation state, secured by conquest, that grants privilege to Jews at the expense of all other residents, is more a short-circuiting rather than fulfillment of the long-held hope for a homeland.
There are ways that Jews can retain both the ideals of diaspora and land…
in their own practice of Judaism. Jews residing in the United States may have more opportunity to live distinctly and safely than they do in Palestine.
Rav Shagar.
Magid gives much attention to the work of Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (1949-2007; Rav Shagar). Shagar’s theology is complex. We can put it in the philosophical bucket of post-modernism. What he is saying, to caricature Rabbi Shagar’s teachings, hopefully not beyond recognition, is that it’s possible for Palestine to be the holy land for the Jews and it is possible at the same time for it to be the holy land for Muslims. It’s possible to live in the Holy Land and to be in Exile or diaspora too. It’s possible for Palestine to be both Jewish and Muslim.
Other Insights that were New to Me
I’ve listed below a hodge podge of interesting ideas that Magid mentions in the book. These ideas are sometimes fanciful and brilliant but not necessarily what Magid, nor I, believe. But they have part of the conversation and have exerted influence on the Zionism debate.
Exile and Diaspora Foster Inferior Jewish Existence
The teachings of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook, the Chief Rabbi of British Mandate Palestine in the 1920s and his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, who has given religious mandate to the settler movement, represent an extreme Zionist view, which insists on total Jewish control of the land through a Jewish government. Israel according to the Kooks is a biblical mandate. This thinking reduces diaspora living to the level of a problem and those enduring it, say Reformed Jews in the US are lesser Jews as a result.
In fact, not only is exile or diaspora living an inferior state, so is Judaism itself when separated from the Biblical covenants of Land, Temple, and Law. Drawing on the ancient Spanish philosopher, Maimonides, Kook was the earth as vested with redemptive powers, a characteristic particularly true of the Land of Israel.
The rabbis, Kook, are not the only conservative Zionists who advocate for Jewish state and a secondary status for non-Jews (Palestinians) within Israel’s borders. Benjamin Netanyahu today is surrounded by Orthodox Jews who continually press him to adopt assertive measures which establish Judiasm’s dominance in Palestine.
There is also the settler movement composed of individuals who have decided personally that all of Palestine is a divine gift to Jewish people. The settlers are not waiting for the government to catch-up with this religious conviction. They are simply receiving what they deem to be their spiritual inheritance and building their homes on the land in proximity with Palestinians.
The Land Belongs to God
Martin Buber is the leading exponent of the idea that the Land belongs to God. Buber supports this position by citing, among other texts, Leviticus 25 and 27, the Jubilee regulations, which forbid members of the various tribes from selling the land that had been given to their patriarch. If Jews held to this view they would not push for a Jewish state that imposed governance over the land and its residents. The vision of God’s ownership of the Holy Land certainly seems incompatible with the confinement of Palestinians to the Gaza strip.
The Homeland Need not be in Palestine.
Zionism initially emerged as a response to European antisemitism and because of a generalized Jewish revival that started in the late 19th century. Some Jewish leaders, including Theodor Herzl, considered setting up a Jewish state outside of Palestine, perhaps in Uganda, Kenya, Argentina, Cypress, Mesopotamia, Mozambique, or in the Sinai Peninsula. Most of the movement’s leaders however attached themselves to a religious vision of creating the homeland in Palestine, then an area controlled by the Ottoman Empire. This kind of deliberation reveals Zionism’s new and provisional character as opposed to it being the fulfillment of divine decree.
Antisemitism Revisited
Antisemitism, and this is my personal and firm belief, which means hatred of Judaism and Jews is, as is any form of hatred, always wrong and destructive. The Holocaust in Germany in the 1930s and 40’s is history’s most ghastly example of how destructive antisemitism can be.
It is equally important to realize that Jewish people, religious communities, and the State of Israel can make mistakes or perpetuate evil. This happens not because they’re Jewish, but because they are human.
Hannah Arendt and David Engel have warned against recklessly expanding the term “antisemitism,” in part because it too easily becomes weaponized as a tool to undermine legitimate critiques of individual Jews, or Israel.
Accordingly, I personally need to carefully assess what is going on college campuses today. Are students protesting Israel’s continuing military action in Gaza antisemitic? Or are they outraged at wanton killing that has no moral justification whether carried out by Jews or another group?
America as the Land of Promise
A final surprise came late in Magid’s book when he mentioned the Kiryas Joel project in Upstate New York. The town, founded by Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, is home to Hasidic Jews who have found in the United States, and emphatically, not Israel or anywhere else, opportunity to practice their brand of religious devotion. Says Magid:
Teitelbaum deeply understood America, and he viewed it as the place to fulfill his mission. Eastern Europe was burnt territory, Israel defiled by a secular state. Did Teitelbaum think America was different from other diasporas? I think the answer is yes, but in a complicated manner. Like Schneerson, Teitelbaum saw opportunity in America not to rebuild something that was lost, but to build something that had never been. Kiryas Joel, his true fantasy collective in Orange County, New York, was only possible in America; here, he could build a model Hasidic enclave of his own imagination, which would maximize spreading the wisdom of Torah to the world through intense piety and fidelity to custom and law… America provided an opportunity for the kind of homogeneous collective existence Teitelbaum envisioned. As scholars of the town have noted, he deeply understood the opportunities America provided to fulfill his dream of creating an insular enclave to produce a surviving remnant for the end of days. (p. 80)
I read Magid’s words here as an unqualified tribute to American style constitutional democracy.
Christian Nationalism in America
Jewish supremacy and proprietary dominance of the land and peoples of Palestine is ironically anti-Jewish. This was the supreme lesson that lingered in my thoughts as I closed Magrid’s book. I hope I don’t forget it.
Because the United States is flirting with the idea of becoming more explicitly a Christian ethnostate.
The Toxic Mix of Religion and Nationalism
Many American conservative Christians and their hard right political allies are vigorously advocating for a fundamental shift in core constitutional values. To take an example right out of today’s news: Fundamentalist pastor and influencer, Doug Wilson talked with Tucker Carlson on April 15, 2024. In the hour-long conversation, Wilson set forth a vision for a Christianity-centered ethnostate.
Wilson says that Christian proclamation and values should receive endorsement and amplification by the American government. He gave examples: Government officials should not be shy about posting the Apostles’ Creed like fire drill instructions. Jesus’ resurrection should be blared out to the masses, maybe from loudspeakers mounted on the tops of cars.
It strikes me that Wilson’s vision is the same as that of Benjamin Netanyahu. Except the location and the religion are different.
Wilson’s is a binary world where there are Christians and secularists. The secularists are a cartoonish group who live in the thrall of extreme philosophies, pornography, drugs, and video games. Wilson reasons that while Christian history has its blemishes, it would bring a improvements on the secularists’ brand of depravity.
Ironically, Wilson’s vision would crack down on people like the Hasidic community, Kiryas Joel. That community is one of the poorest in the nation because the men don’t work. They are entirely devoted to study of the Torah. They draw unemployment and public assistance.
Wilson’s view is that they need the gospel and a job at Walmart. This would be how a Christianized, post constitutional America would roll.
Despite the nuances of Zionism and the Jewish version of Wilson’s Christianized America is playing out before our eyes. If we have the eyes to see it, the suffering and massive death in Gaza is a gruesome warning. When religion teams up with governmental power genocide follows.
Resources that Have Shaped my Outlook on the Unfolding Events in Israel
| Magid, Shaul | The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance |
| Hedges, Chris | The Death of Liberal Zionism |
| The New Evangelicals Podcast | Understanding Israel and Palestine: Part 1: Blame the British |
| Magid, Shaul on “The Dig” Podcast | Zionism vs. Anti-Zionism Episode 1 and 2 |
