Eykev and Jewish chosenness / עקב און דער אם־סגולה

This is a weekly series

of parsha dvarim (Tōrah commentaries) written by an orthodox atheist transsexual anarchist, with guest posts from comrades. It's the work of each generation to extricate meaning from our cultural and religious inheritance, and it's crucial that we resist the narrative that Zionism owns Judaism. We aim to offer comment which is true to the pshat (i.e. engages with the plain meaning of the text, especially when it's difficult) and uses Tōrah like a light to reflect on our modern times.

An appeal

My friend Kamal needs help to leave Gaza. He is trying to immigrate to Greece to search for his missing son, who in desperation took a small and dangerous lifeboat across the Mediterranean. Please donate what you can.

Content note

Mentions of genocide in Palestine, Zionism, antisemitism

The parsha this week is a continuation of Mōshe's soliloquy. He retells the story of the golden calf, the carving and smashing and re-carving of the tablets, the miracle of mana, and the failure of the Israelites to take the land after the spies returned. Mōshe implores us to have faith, to remember how awesome Hashem is, to destroy the peoples He delivers to us, and not to be ensnared by the lesser gods of other nations. Mōshe is rounding off the narrative, harkening back to Bereshis when Hashem promised to make Avrohom's children as numerous as the stars, and offering further promises from Hashem that will be fulfilled if we merit them.

This parsha is dense. It gives us the second paragraph of the Shema—the foundational Jewish prayer—with a reiteration of last week's commandments to lay tefilin and put up mezuzehs. Hashem (through Mōshe) claims to eschew bribes and execute justice for the widow and orphan, and once again commands kindness for the stranger. These things give us comfort and orient us toward righteousness. But the parsha also gives us an explicit articulation of chosenness and promises of genocides unfolding in our favor, in which we "show them no pity". There's plenty here to prop up Jewish ethnonationalism.

For better or worse, Tōrah contains both values we love and verses we struggle with. It is our work not to discard that which we don't like, but to reframe it and shift our understanding of what it means. Jewish chosenness, or Jewish particularism, is an ancient idea and liturgical battleground in liberal siddurim.

The orthodox view of Tōrah is that it is an immutable and timeless text. You don't get to rewrite the word of G-d. But, while the text is perfect, we are not: more than being permitted, we are required to reframe what we read and interpret it anew.

Chosenness

Tōrah is a complete text: it should be read with reference to itself, and the commentaries which come after. To pluck half-lines out of context is to disrespect the entire text and tradition, especially when done in service of violence.

The first half of this verse is used as a divine justification for Jewish superiority, but in context we see that the blessing being offered to set us "above" is fertility (and, in the following verses, health and military victory). It's a promise as yet unfulfilled: we are not blessed above others, evidenced by the continued problem of infertility among even a single Jew (or Jewish cow). We still get sick.

We could conclude that we do not yet merit chosenness.

Many leftists are uncomfortable with the concept of Jewish chosenness on a purely material basis. We can engage with the theology all we want, but in the meantime this idea is used as a justification for ethnonationalism—racism, xenophobia and violence. Antizionist Jewish organizing is dogged by the problems of particularity/universalism, tradition, isolation (within Jewish and antizionist communities), and guilt.

The genocide in Palestine continues. At least 184 journalists have been murdered. (This particularism doesn't mean that their lives were more valuable than martyrs who weren't journalists, but it helps us understand the scale of violence by zooming in, and gives us a glimpse into just how much is lost with each life. Journalists cover the atrocities and provide us with narrative; every martyr loses their voice, but journalists are silenced.) How can Jews preoccupy ourselves navel-gazing on Jewish issues in the face of such horror?

Antizionism and definitions in negative

Since October 7, antizionist Jews have been organizing to stop the genocide and support Palestinians. Some of us have organized as leftists; some as leftist Jews in particular; many of us moving between both contexts. There is utility in both.

For some antizionist Jews, their Judaism or Jewishness is defined by their antizionism: in relation to—specifically, in conflict with—Zionism and the crimes of medinas Yisrael. Ironically, this capitulates a lot of ground to Zionism by centering the state. When I lived in Scotland, there were two Jewish antizionist groups. Both went to pro-Palestine rallies, but only one hosted Shabos dinners.

Antizionism is an ideology, not a tradition. In the latest issue of Jewish Currents, editor-in-chief Arielle Angel observed that leftist organizing focuses on street movements rather than institution building, and the hesitation to agitate for collective liberation from a position of Jewish particularity rather than universalism:

Indeed, even among those who insist on the principled separation of Jewishness and Zionism, I’ve noticed a tendency to cede ever more territory, to declare more and more of Jewish life contaminated or at least suspicious, with suspicion reason enough for withdrawal. I’ve seen some friends and comrades become increasingly skittish about Jewish left politics, out of discomfort with the way that even adamantly anti-Zionist formations remain responsive to a seemingly compromised Jewish subjectivity.

The Jewish left has so far failed to articulate a Jewishness that is in solidarity with Palestine and isn't apologetic. This precludes us from being effective comrades who can leverage our particular position. It also denies us our heritage and the strength that our tradition can provide us, leaving us spiritually unfortified. To see Jewishness only as something to apologize for is to finalize the process of Jewish assimilation into whiteness.

This identity crisis is not just a distraction. If our Jewishness is going to be effective as a spiritual or rhetorical tool, it needs to be less self-doubting and offer something more inspiring than not-Zionism.

I was always a vocal antizionist, but my ritual observance is as divorced from the question of Zionism as it is from the question of "gender ideology". Of course I cannot help but daven as an antizionist, transsexual, bisexual, atheist, American, autistic, and all the other adjectives which comprise my identity—but primarily I daven as a Jew.

On building power

Some instagram activists quip that the last thing antizionist Jews should be trying to do right now is building power: the ongoing genocide shows what happens when Jews are in control. (I'm not going to link to examples and fuel the outrage economy.) It's a strange and racist notion to discourage people that you agree with—people with whom you share political goals, and political enemies—that they should not try to build power or coalition because of what their coreligionists are doing. Are Jews inherently and uniquely predisposed to abusing power?

The consensus on my social media is that Jews can be in coalition as leftists, but in trying to build power as Jews we are incapable of being in genuine solidarity with Palestine, or in fact any other oppressed group.

The left fetishizes disenfranchisement: "We outsiders remain pure, but powerless," Angel writes. In building the pink peacock—a queer, Yiddish, anarchist free food café and infoshop in Glasgow—I found this to be true. As we opened we braced for Nazis and TERFs, but the overwhelming majority of hostility came from leftists. We were by no means perfect (our hours were sporadic and our brand of social media was maybe annoying) but we were by no means the grifters or enemies of "the community" that some made us out to be. We were a small group of mostly-trans anarchists trying to feed people for free, and I'm proud to say we did that successfully. The left is more suspicious of those trying to seize power and wield it for good than those who already have and abuse it. Punching left and punching down is easier than building coalition with people you think are annoying.

Zionists have no moral qualms about building and seizing power. If we're to effectively combat them, we must build power too.

There is an assumption that we cannot care about Jewish intracommunity dynamics—the dynamics which these same detractors correctly say perpetuate the genocide, which you would think should be combated from within as well as outwith—and also care about Palestine.

The refrains "Zionism is not Judaism" and "antizionism is not antisemitism" are so tired but sadly, still relevant. By insisting that all of Jewishness and all Jews are tainted with Zionism, these self-defeating antizionists are the doing the work of both Zionism and antisemitism.

I wonder what it is that these critics expect us to do, other than throw it all away and meld into the emptiness of whiteness and passive liberal guilt—I wonder, but only for as long as it takes to write this essay. The antizionist Jews I know are busy. Alongside the work we're doing to support Palestine, we're divesting from institutions which cheer on (however reluctantly and "reluctantly") the state of Israel and its genocide. We're building something new.

We're holding not only our people but our entire tradition accountable.

Chosenness as an idea gets thrown out as garbage because some people wield it as a weapon and a justification for violence. But you could say that about all of Judaism, and as noted above, some people do: that Judaism is rotten and needs to be thrown away, because Jews are committing a genocide. I disagree with the argument but at least it's coherent and unafraid of its logical conclusion, unlike the notion that we should throw away only some parts which get weaponized. Where are the red lines? Why are you drawing red lines across the Tōrah?

As antizionist Jews invested in the tradition, we are charged with being more imaginative.

Orthodoxy is one of the most diverse and decentralized denominations. And, I'd be remiss to ignore that the "orthonormative" position on chosenness is racist.

Why are we conceding any of our tradition to its worst adherents? Some antizionists are antisemitic—should we dismiss the entire movement on that basis? Feminism gets weaponized to do transphobia—do we throw away feminism? Of course not.

To look at Tōrah's verse on chosenness and see white supremacy is ahistoric and frankly antisemitic. It's like hearing Kol Nidre and concluding that Jews are untrustworthy goblins: that is, completely divorced from context and taken in bad faith.

As a transsexual I can't help but see this through a gendered lens: some people try to solve misogyny and transphobia (arguably the same poison) by calling for the complete abolition of gender, as if rewriting millennia of cultures and expressions is either possible or desirable. Flattening gender into a single thing so expansive it includes everyone is a bad project and an insult. Particularism and its variety is one of the most beautiful parts of being human. I am not like everyone else, and I don't want to assimilate into the way they are. I do not want everyone else to become like me. I treasure the ways we're different. Pluralism—or, to use a liberal buzzword: diversity—seems an obvious principle of any decent leftist worldview.

Jewish merit

The parsha goes to great lengths to instill in us that Hashem is responsible for all things: our bodies (sickness, fertility, hunger), delivering our enemies into our hands, the luxurious fruits of the earth, the copper in the mines, all manner of wonderful terrible creatures like the giant serpents in the desert, all goodness and all hardship. We are not responsible for the good or bad things which happen to us.

Mōshe chastises us again for being a stubborn, stiff-necked people. The Israelites are not going to win on their merit, but because the other nations are so wicked they deserve to die. The number of Jews who have positively earned Hashem's favor can be counted on one hand—our blessings are on their merit, not ours.

We're not inherently better nor better behaved. A reading which claims that Jews are superior is, ironically, a blatant rejection of Tōrah. If we are chosen, it is not on merit.

Choosing to be Jewish

I believe that Jews are chosen—if we are chosen at all, now or in olam habo—insofar as we are chosen to be Jews. This is not a value judgement on us or anyone else, just a statement of fact: we are different. Jewish chosenness is not inherently a declaration of Jewish superiority.

Furthermore, we choose Jewishness as much as Hashem separates us as "chosen" to be Jews. We choose to be Jews every moment that we do something Jewish, and every moment we don't do something un-Jewish. This is the process of co-creation between the people and the divine—which is to say, the people.

What should I do? Mōshe has an answer: follow the rules. But this isn't enough. If this is all Hashem asks, then we are not the co-creators that our sages have insisted we be.

I am an active participant in my Yiddishkeyt. I refuse to let genocidal Jews and antisemitic goyim take the Tōrah from me. I refuse to let Zionism steal Jewishness from me or our ancestors or our children.

Unfulfilled promises

Hashem makes many promises—benevolent and threatening—throughout Tōrah. This week we are promised chosenness, health, fertility, military victories, and the land.

Hashem promised Avrohom to make us less numerous than other nations, but as numerous as the grains of sand on the seashore or the stars. There are about 7.5 quintillion (7.5 x 10¹⁸) grains of sand on Earth including the deserts. (I could not find quantification of sand on seashores alone, but it is sure to be much more than the 15 million or so Jews.) The Hubble telescope images from 2016 suggested some 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, each with approximately 100 million stars (2 x 10²⁰). Maybe I'm being too literal. It would probably not be a blessing to have that many people on Earth; maybe we're not only on Earth by that point.

Nevermind colonizing space. All the promises unfulfilled indicate that we have not yet "entered the land", despite Jews living in erets-Yisroel/Palestine. "The land" is not just a geography, but a geography-and-time.

We cannot enter the land until we merit it. Tradition holds that at that moment too, Moshiakh will come. Moshiakh coming will be an indication that we've entered the time-place of Moshiakh. The tautology is deliberate. This will probably not happen in our lifetime.