Wondering about the
Wandering Who
Gilad Atzmon,
The Wandering Who?: A Study of
Jewish Identity Politics, (John Hunt
Publishing 2011) $14.95, 177 pp., Paper.
Reviewed by Israel Shamir
Gilad
Atzmon is larger than life; no delicate and sensitive
artistic soul, he is rather a living volcano, a titan
with a Rabelaisian sense of humor and enough energy to
power a city. Nights, you will find him entertaining his
fans in every corner of the globe with his masterful
saxophone playing: tonight in Mexico City, tomorrow
night in Sheffield. His days are spent producing a vast
quantity of writing and blogging, sending out at least
two letters a day to his many readers. His previous
book,
My One and Only Love,
is a very funny novel with more than a touch of the
macabre and grotesque. It features a roving Israeli
orchestra smuggling Nazis in double bass cases. It also
contains kosher pigs, sexy spies, smelly underwear,
casual killings, and a row of Israeli national leaders,
all with their trousers down.
The best writings of Gilad Atzmon
firmly belong to the realm of Israeli literature. His
preference for writing in English attennuates his
essentially Israeli character, just as Beckett remained
a British writer while writing in French. His merciless
goading of tender Jewish sentiments recalls the
much-loved Israeli playwright, Hanoch Levin; this
explains why Atzmon is enjoyed more by his country-mates
than by Diaspora Jews. His newest book,
The Wandering Who?
is a collection of essays that revolve around
Jewish-identity politics. This subject (“what does it
mean to be a Jew”) holds much fascination to people
of Jewish origin. Many contemporary Jewish writers
indulge in this sort of reflection, usually slipping
into woe and whine mixed with self-adoration, and coated
over with treacle and romanticism.
Being no delicate flower (see above),
Atzmon delivers robust and forceful opinions with both
hands. He regains some of the lost honesty once
expressed by free thinkers and Zionists of the
fin-de-siècle. Early Zionists from Nordau to Herzl
provided some very frank and critical assessments of
Jewish society. Yet even more critical was Otto
Weininger (1880 – 1903), the tragic Viennese writer who
dared to connect sex and Jews in his great bestseller
Sex and Character;
he followed up his success by committing suicide at the
age of 23. Weininger has long been forgotten in Europe,
and yet he holds a fascination for Israelis. A play by
prominent Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol,
Weininger's Night (subtitled “The Soul of a Jew”)
was a great hit in 1983; it was responsible for opening
up Israeli theatre to the world. It was the first
Israeli play ever staged in Moscow’s MXAT theatre
(in 1990), directed by talented Gedalia Besser.
Atzmon has a loving and thoughtful
essay about him. He provides some valuable insights. He
turns Weininger’s “I dislike what I am” into “I
dislike what I do”. Atzmon sees Weininger’s suicide
as an impetuous reaction against his womanly/Jewish
side. Atzmon sympathizes with Weininger’s feeling that
“Jewishness” is somewhat similar to “queerness”, and
this provides a key to the book’s understanding.
Jewish-identity musings, like gender-identity
discussions, tend to fluctuate between the vulgar and
the brazen; both can seem boring and repetitious unless
the reader is directly involved, and perhaps even then.
The first essay of the collection has
the freshness and sincerity of true testimony. The story
of a young man trying to break free from his fiercely
nationalist non-religious Jewish family background is
akin to any man’s escape from stifling gender politics.
Imagine a virile young man conceived in vitro and
brought up by a sorority of lesbian activists, who has
finally come of age and broken out into a rich and
satisfying world of natural love. Clearly one might
expect and forgive such a young man his unflattering
depictions of “dykes” and “butches”, but such
transgressions could never be forgiven by the
sanctimonious gay activists and PC wardens who decide
for us what is permissible and what is not.
This in fact has happened with
Atzmon’s book: it has generated a significant amount of
heated controversy. This kind of publicity is never bad
for book sales. As for the author, he is no shrinking
violet and quite up to the task; in fact, he is a
pugnacious fellow, able to defend himself and always
ready for a good brawl. Many of Atzmon’s critics seem to
think that when we talk about Jews we must speak as we
do about the dead: say something nice, or don’t say
anything at all. And yet who should critique the
activities and attitudes of the dead but the living?
Banning all outsiders from the debate is a recipe for
insipidity.
And yet, Atzmon is no outsider. An
(ex-) Israeli, he has some first-hand knowledge, and he
introduces us to a long obscured side of Jewishness,
just as Jean Genet once reminded us about the backside
of queerness. In Genet’s oevre we see the
gender-confused men who are not saintly martyrs on their
way to Auschwitz, but brutal criminals who kill and
betray their friends in the hellish darkness of a jail.
Though art is perhaps a better mode for such delivery.
One of his problems is that the
Jewish subject is over-explored, and one treads on the
footsteps of predecessors, even if one does not give
them credit. The most interesting essay in the book
contains Atzmon’s reflections on an essay by Milton
Friedman. Friedman was curious as to why so many Jews
had abandoned their historically Left-leaning socialist
ways. To avoid the conclusion that Jews used to
love Justice and Mercy, and now they have traded it for
Power, Friedman instead posits that Jews are most
naturally creatures of the Right. Friedman declares that
while pure capitalism is the environment in which Jews
thrive best, for one hundred years Jews were kept out of
right-wing politics because the Right stood with the
Church; the Left, anti-clerical and atheist, accepted
them as they were. It was only after the Right was
separated from the Church that Jews began to stream back
into right-wing movements, and they ended up
wholeheartedly embracing capitalism of the most brutal
kind. This is a valuable observation, something that has
yet to be learned by leftist philosemites like
Seumas Milne, and
by the Christian Right. The mass participation of Jews
in a movement has a price, and this price is the
rejection of the Christian Church.
Atzmon rejects Friedman’s
conclusions: he would rather walk us through all the
hypocrisies of the Jewish Left, as though a change in
leadership would solve the problem. This attitude is
very common among educated Israelis who have lived
through the great betrayal of humanism by the left-wing
parties, climaxing with labour leader Ehud Barak
carrying water for Sharon and Netanyahu. Since the
destruction of the Israeli Left can be directly
attributed to these “traitors to the cause”, Atzmon
might be forgiven for thinking that but for a crisis in
leadership the Left would be still ruling the roost.
Atzmon gets carried away by his own
rhetoric when he proclaims that the Jewish Left wants to
seize assets of the rich just because Jews do not
respect Goyim property rights. This is plainly not true:
radical leftists everywhere call for the expropriation
of all banks, Jewish or otherwise, and Jewish
leftists are no different in this aspect. Jews are the
wealthiest minority in the world; they have the most to
lose in a leftist revolution. It’s apparent to everyone
except Atzmon that the Jewish move to the Right is as
natural as bacon.
With zeal of a born-again Christian,
Atzmon offers not the smallest fig leaf of hope for
good-hearted Jews. If a Jew supports the Left, he is
doing it because he wants to rob wealthy Goys with
Talmudic impunity. If a Jew supports the Right, it is
because he wants to steal land. If a Jew supports
Palestine, he is doing it in order to take over the
Palestinian movement. This is a bridge too far. This
sort of self-criticism should be reserved for
confession. Not all Jews are that self-serving. Yes,
there are hopeless wretches like Tony Greenstein and
Roland Rance, leftist British Jews whose main
participation in the Palestinian struggle is constrained
to battling phantom antisemitism and Holocaust rhetoric,
but not all Atzmon’s adversaries are paper tigers.
However, as Atzmon wrote in his essay
on Weininger, one condemns one’s own faults, so
perhaps this is a form of his contrition.
Atzmon is tough on Jewish tribalism,
no endearing feature to be sure, but something not all
rare in the Middle East. Jews are not any more tribalist
than are Armenians, and no more nationalist than
Georgians. This clannishness may be less common in
British/American culture, but the tribal setup of
immigrant croups is well known even there. Jewish
success in the US and the UK cannot be explained by
expounding upon Jewish insularity; a better explanation
is traditional Jewish fidelity to power.
We could do with less psychologism
and Portnoy’s complaints. Discussion of English or
American identity and mentality does not lead to better
understanding of British and American imperial policies.
Likewise, policies of the World Jewry are very relevant
for us, while Jewish mental attitudes are not. Who cares
what Jews feel towards their neighbours? We care
what the Jews do. Instead of dealing with bees,
we need to know of swarms, and this is what Atzmon fails
to deliver, because this brave man gets cold feet.
Atzmon is least convincing and most
dull when he pedantically constructs his castle of
exceptions and explanations intended to ward off the
inevitable accusations of ‘hate’ and ‘racism’. He
declares his preference for “accidental Jews”, i.e.
people who are Jews by accident of birth. This alibi is
designed to fortify his position against attack. It is
as if Nietzsche added to his famous dictum (“You are
going to women? Do not forget the whip!”)
a caveat “but beware some women are able to use the
whip, too”. An allegoric poetic quality of writing has
been ruined, and now nobody is happy. We admire Atzmon’s
fierce and fearless qualities, and it’s kind of a
let-down when he chooses to be prudent now and then.
One can point out several errors of
fact in his book. For instance, he claims that Jews did
not write any histories until the 19th
century. This is not true: Abraham Zacuto produced his
History of the Jews
(“Sefer Yohassin”) in the last decades of the 15th
century, and this book is available on
Amazon. Still he
builds some castles on this factual error, and they
collapse like straw houses.
However, Atzmon’s greatest fault is
narcissism, or perhaps it is a myopic solipsism. Atzmon
remains locked in the very Jewish dichotomy of Jews
vs. Gentiles. He does not seem to appreciate the
marvellous variety of the Gentiles; he cannot recognize
that the Nations of the Earth are quite different from
each other. The British are not the same as the
Palestinians, nor are they as French as France. And yet
for Atzmon, they are all one happy crowd without
specific features. In vain shall we seek to learn what
are the qualities of the Palestinians that have
attracted him (except perhaps the ability to make good
hummus). The one all-redeeming quality that they all
share is that they are not Jewish. For this reason he
suggests that Jews fully adapt to the modern, generic,
global cosmopolitan monoculture of multiculturalism.
This is absolutely unnecessary. While we applaud
acculturation, Jews should adopt the culture of the land
they inhabit, become one with the folk they live with.
There is no shortcut to universality. I would like to
read about Atzmon hanging out with average Brits,
Scouses, and Brummies, or about his adventures with
Palestinian shepherds, but they are not to be found: in
a diverse world, he sees only Jews.
Another problem is the absence of
God. Indeed, all discourse on Jews sine God is
quite useless. I am aware that in the modern British
climate, if Atzmon were to publish his thoughts on God
and Jews, he would not find a publisher. You may use
every obscenity, but you should not mention Christ. And
yet Jews are first of all a religious community; a valid
analysis of Jewish identity must take religion into
account. Atzmon purposely adds a disclaimer declaring he
will not criticise Judaism, but this simply ducks the
issue.
He does give himself permission to
use the Bible against them, but his literal readings are
too primitive for the sophisticated readers of the 21st
century. One can’t quote bloody stories of the Conquest
of Canaan from the Book of Joshua like one quotes the
admissions of a criminal. So many wonderful minds have
discussed these tales, from St Jerome to Edward Said,
and all of them had more valuable thoughts than Atzmon
has to share. Indeed, when God says: you will inherit
houses you did not build and vineyards you did not plant,
Atzmon says: “that’s why the Jews seized Palestine!”
This is trite. We live in houses we did not build, most
especially in the houses of our bodies, built by God. We
enjoy many wonderful things we did not produce. For
instance, we enjoy Atzmon’s saxophone, though we didn’t
built it. God’s grace gave us these things. This
Biblical verse reminds us all that we receive a lot of
undeserved things, and that we should all work harder to
justify God’s trust in us.
The bottom line is that identity
musings are dry and boring stuff; Atzmon is actually a
much better writer than one would conclude from reading
this book. He wanted to get it off his chest. Fine! Now
let us see more of his witty novels.
P.S. Naturally I side with Atzmon in
his polemics against his numerous detractors, but their
arguments are so senile that it would be a waste of
reader’s time to dwell time and time again on the
endless and fruitless assertions of ‘hate’ and
‘self-hate’. What we do is soul-searching, not hate.
Non-Jews have become so over-sensitised to allegations
of race hatred that they swarm with the rest even when
it’s an honest discussion between Jews.
Israel Shamir
This review
was published in the December 2011 issue of
Culture Wars.
