The Difference Between Diaspora and Exile
I hear through the grapevine snatches of a question about the goal of Mishkaneering -- in particular, whether it be an anti-Zionist agenda. This question hits me with perfect timing, thank G!d, because it brings forth a deeper Torah that we could use in a few conversations taking place currently. It also sent me back to my definition of "Mishkaneering" from last week in which, I just realized, I made a critical mistake. I had written of "Mishkan" that the Hebrew literally means "in(to) dwelling." That was incorrect: "Mishkan" literally means "from dwelling."
Does this matter? Well, when has a single letter of Torah ever not meant the whole world? With the "from"-ness of Hebrew mem, "Mishkan" suggests that there is a meeting between Yisraeyl and Shekhinah that arises from the Jews' dwelling together in the wilderness. The process of dwelling is the source of Divine connection, not its product.
This necessarily impacts how we understand the constitution of Temple consciousness itself, because the Temple is built partly out of the Mishkan, and when one is lost the other is lost with it. Torah provides no design for Temple without Mishkan, and no vision of Temple left standing after Mishkan's destruction. Therefore, if the ultimate aspiration of Zionism is the Temple reconstituted, then Zionism is integrally dependent upon the dwelling of Jews in the wilderness.
Also impacted is our understanding of the "wilderness." The Hebrew word "HaMidbar" -- meaning "from the word/thing" or, more to the essence, "from duality" -- signifies both the desert-like isolation and the jungle-like complexity that arises from living in a world of boundaries, distinctions, insides versus outsides, language. "Mishkan" defines the way from that confounded aloneness to realization of Holy One-ness as a way of dwelling in the challenges of duality.
The other Hebrew word, "galut," is conventionally translated as "exile" and carries significant negative connotation. In common usage, galut is the perjorative term for Diaspora Jewry's unfortunate situation outside of the Biblical Holy Land. Its Hebrew root, signifying "exposure," is the same used for Sefer Vayikra (Leviticus)'s prohibited "uncoverings" of family relations, where also it has carried a negative connotation. As that passage in Parshat Acharey (home to the contentious "if a man should lie with a man..." pasuk) becomes ripe for deeper reading, we are approaching the possibility of a more constructive understanding of the spiritual function of nakedness in general.
Without a long tangent into comparitive mysticism, suffice it to say that there is a model for the progressive development of enlightened consciousness whose translation in Lurianic Hebrew is: 1, "haknaah" (submission) to 2, "havdalah" (differentiation) to 3, "hamtakah" (sweetening) -- each valence of consciousness being predicated upon the previous. I am going to guess right now that the spiritual psychology of Diaspora includes the same constituent valences: 1, "Galut" (exposure) to 2, "Midbar" (duality) to 3, "Mishkan" (dwelling). Torah also provides a corresponding geopolitical mapping of the three valences -- 1, Diaspora (guest culture) into 2, Zion (host culture) into 3, Temple ("Nation of Priests"). Because each level is the foundation of the next, this schematic liberates "galut" from necessarily bearing negative connotation.
Now this is all a bit academic. The progression becomes tangible only through direct experience. Until recently, this experience was the exclusive possession of mystics who could taste it through focused consciousness-raising discipline. That all changed in 1948. Today Jewish culture broadly possesses direct experience of the possibility of consciousness progression, because we are, with the State of Israel, now functioning as a host culture and not merely a guest culture. Consequently, Diaspora consciousness is itself transformed, because it is now manifestly the foundation of something, i.e. Zion. We are thereby motivated to aspire from Diaspora to Zion, for sure, but also within Diaspora (within our landed dispersion, which is all "Diaspora" really means) we are motivated to aspire from exposure as everybody's Other to a rich and self-secure dwelling in radical chosenness by way of embracing the messy duality of Jewish identity.
We are, therefore, transitioning from the Exilic Diaspora to the Post-Exilic Diaspora (which would be more accurately termed the Super-Exilic Diaspora), and this fact is manifest in the evolution of Jewish institutional life in North America since two generations ago, such that we can identify Exilic Diaspora institutional structures -- synagogues -- as distinct from Post- or Super-Exilic Diaspora institutional models like the chavurah, Hillel, and Federation.
To Be Continued. But please do comment on this work in progress.
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Good stuff!
Since synagogues actually pre-date the Exile, how can they be products of the Exilic Diaspora? If anything, the synagogue is a Pre-Exilic institution that has survived the Exile, though, to be sure, it has adapted.
The irony in all of this, of course, is that, as Rabbi Ed Feinstein put it, your typical seminary graduate knows more of the latest research about 1st-century Palestinian synagogues than s/he does about 21st-century American synagogues.
That's why S3K advocates synagogue studies research to improve the state of our knowledge about contemporary sacred communities.
In my view, we need to know much, much, more about synagogues, independent minyanim, "parashul" organizations, chavurot*, and other sacred communities, before we can characterize them as pre-, post-, or super-exilic.
We also need more research about conditions of "Post-Exilic" Judaism. I highly recommend Caryn Aviv and David Shneer's book, New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora, which I reviewed here.
And we need many more conversations like this one!
*There are extant two excellent books on 1970s/early 80s chavurot by Riv-Ellen Prell and Chava Weissler. We need more research on contemporary iterations.
By Shawn Landres, at 6:25 PM
Since synagogues actually pre-date the Exile, how can they be products of the Exilic Diaspora?
Well put. I meant, of course, "synagogue organizations as we know them in N. America" which is, I think, a fundamentally different animal from either the classical or the modern Israeli beyt knesset. But you're right, we don't have a very robust or rigorous language for describing the Jewish Diaspora institutions of any age, and it sure would be helpful if we could develop one!
By Yoel Natan, at 6:42 PM
we need to know much, much, more about synagogues [...] and other sacred communities, before we can characterize them as pre-, post-, or super-exilic
This is perhaps true for academic purposes, but I have personally been involved in the organization of enough different Jewish community structures that I can testify without any doubt: the new paradigm tastes different from the previous, and it is palpable when an organizational process switches from one to the other. The best guideline I can offer from my experience, off the top of my head, is that the Exilic organization offers a definition of Jewish identity to its membership, whereas the post-Exilic organization assists its membership to seek Jewish identity in life narrative and experience. Does that resonate?
By Yoel Natan, at 6:58 PM
the Exilic organization offers a definition of Jewish identity to its membership, whereas the post-Exilic organization assists its membership to seek Jewish identity in life narrative and experience.
That very much resonates, Yoel, but I'm not sure this is a function of exile-vs-postexile. It's much more a function of secularization-vs-postsecularization, as the paradigm shift is not at all unique to Judaism.
Key questions include the following:
* Who is the author of "Jewish identity"? The individual or the collective? The agent or the institution?
* Does the possibility exist for multiple legitimate Jewish identities? (Note that one can have multiple collective/institutional identities, not only multiple individual ones.)
* Is the identity rooted in an external/legal/behavioral framework, or does it emerge from an internal/narrative/attitudinal framework? (Again - not intending to create false dyads here - just for heuristic purposes.)
Diasporic/post-Diasporic identity is a piece of this puzzle, but not the only piece, and Jews are not the only people who have experienced diaspora/exile, let alone had it fundamentally shape our sense of individual and collective self.
I also want to disagree gently with your comment about "academic purposes." The organized Jewish community has too long a history of doing things by the seat of its pants, because we know how things "really" are or how they "taste," as you put it. And that has led, in addition to some good outcomes, to some really bad ones as well. We need rigorous research not only for academic purposes but also for very practical reasons, as we professionalize (and I include maggids, etc., in my definition of professionals) the management/administration of the community/ies.
By Shawn Landres, at 9:27 PM
The organized Jewish community has too long a history of doing things by the seat of its pants... (emphasis mine)
This doesn't ring true to me. Jewish culture is one of improvisation and study in equal measure. We are, by a combination of internal and external compulsion, forever flying by the seat of our pants -- and forever learning how to do it better. We disparage monasticism as much as we disparage illiteracy. This is deeply ingrained and I see no reason to believe it is not our proper function.
If your meaning is that we need to maintain a careful balance between research and innovation, and to eschew hubris and ideology in the process, then I agree with you whole-heartedly. If your meaning however is literally that we cannot make practical working distinction between old and new paradigms without first researching and peer-reviewing an airtight definition of the new paradigm, then I must apologize that I can't join you there. It is, as we say, not my practice. :) I understand eyn mukdam umeuchar baTorah to mean that strict teleologies will lead me off the path of Hebrew wisdom, so I do my best to avoid them.
Anyway, it doesn't much matter what I believe on this subject. (We should always make sure to declare our beliefs before saying that!) The new paradigm has already arrived. (Consumers were shopping the Long Tail before Wired magazine was marketing itself there, much less trying to give it a name.)
Jews are already approaching our old-paradigm tools with new-paradigm intentions, and meawhile also trying to build new-paradigm tools. They aren't going to wait for the research to be done. By then they'll probably be on to the next new paradigm anyway. If we want to assist them, I don't see how we can avoid flying by the seat of the pants, and doing our research on the fly. Such is the experience of anyone who has ever worked in community leadership. It's really quite like conducting psychotherapy or collaborative artwork. You don't bring the answers in with you; you bring a process for discovering the answers wherever they're poised to come out.
In Moshav HaAm, we have sloganized this as, "we don't own the content." It is a maggidic rather than a rabbinic approach to community leadership, in that the leader's function is not to offer answers to the community, but to offer process by which the community can realize the answers it already carries. There is a place in this model for serious research as well, but it must be conducted in dialogue with the organizing on the ground, because the latter will not wait for the former even if we want it to. This is more or less how I understand your call for more conversation, incidentally. I am for one very pleased and grateful to hear a skilled and insightful researcher's voice in this chorus!
As for the past "bad outcomes" you allude to, I would like to open a focused conversation just on that point, because I agree that it is very important for us to understand our missteps so as not to repeat them in the future. I suspect that it is not mainly our kishkes that are to blame, though, but rather faulty processes. The most common deficiencies of process I think I've seen are: pushing too fast; pulling too slow; using ideology to absorb uncertainty; and trying to do the old-paradigm tool's work with the new-paradigm tool. Just last week, I sat on a planning session for a very interesting emergent Jewish community, where I was thrilled by the energetic, innovative creativity, but also alarmed to see three of the deficiencies of process I just named crop up big time. In order to absorb a great deal of uncertainty about what this organization will look like in a couple of years, by which point many potential members are concerned that they will have new needs that the organization has no clear sense yet of whether or how it will provide for, the leadership short-circuited the process of emergence by deciding a priori that they will assume X, Y, and Z functions of a conventional synagogue by a certain date in the future. This then raised the questions of how the organization could practically function as a conventional synagogue, and how it could avoid robbing other extant synagogues of their membership and financing. There were no good answers to these questions.
By Yoel Natan, at 3:07 PM
I'm not sure this is a function of exile-vs-postexile. It's much more a function of secularization-vs-postsecularization, as the paradigm shift is not at all unique to Judaism.
I agree. Exile-versus-post/superexile describes the shift in terms of Jewish experience, whereas the shift is described by the emergence of industrialization, secularization, and liberal consumer capitalism in terms of historical function. I was as remiss in suggesting that Israeli statehood creates (rather than is created by) the emergent consciousness as if I had said that the chicken-head came before the egg. That said, I still think Exilic/Superexilic describes the essence of the Hebrew experience of the shift, for more or less the reasons I outlined in the original article. It is important to use language that speaks to the spiritual psychology of our experience. Much more can be said about how that experience has come about, for sure; I just ran out of time yesterday. :)
By Yoel Natan, at 4:05 PM
Sarah just helped me to realize that there is a linguistic fault-line in this conversation that I have not been consciously aware of, between the lexicon of classical Torah and secular/liberal Enlightenment. "Exile," "Zion," etc. are, as she and I use them, psychospiritual terms that aren't intended to draw political divisions between liberal and conservative religious perspectives, nor to impose a sectarian program on our discussion of the klal's history and consciousness. But of course classical Torah terminology is not politically neutral for most of modern Jewry. I wonder whether/how the language can be reclaimed for ecumenical (intra-Jewish) purposes? I hope it can be, because it is the language that is ours, and I believe it describes our experience much better than even the most secular academic language of our host culture(s).
By Yoel Natan, at 4:22 PM
B"H
Hi All, Shalom shalom.
Enjoying our unfolding conversation-- taking advantage of Joel's entry into this talk to breathe at home and incubate all of these ruminations. You have sent
over many fine questions for examining, we'll see what I come up with. I think we are mostly working around the same piece, but differently, and with perhaps
some very different theory, which is good!
As for the need for balance between radical action and researched or
well-measured paths, it is a stated goal of this project that our
intentional/bounded community be a laboratory in the field (thus employing radical action) that offers a maggidic or midrashic process as a resource for other existing or emerging communities to use in defining their own points of
solidarity and organizational structures. Whether individual communities/bounded kehillot choose to take on radical or more time tested approaches to community
modeling will be determined by the life of that community as it already exists-- the midrashic process is meant to articulate just this, the soul or life of the community as it already exists, so that members can orient the organizational structure of the kehilla around this point of solidarity, the soul of the community, instead of around the divisively more common point of demarcation--
Halacha.
By Maggid Sarah, at 5:10 PM
B"H
Ahead of time I will say that "the life of the community as it already exists" is a phrase that I will be expanding on, as I'm sure I am using it other that most will read it at face value.
Every community has a life of it's own, a soul of it's own that must be honored in the organizational structure of the kehilla.
What are the implications of this statement? They are key.
Blessings.
By Maggid Sarah, at 5:18 PM
B"H
The organized Jewish community has too long a history of doing things by the seat of its pants...
Balance, Balance, Balance
Hasidism and Haskala both were and still are ridiculed for rash and foolish shortsightedness and yet without both would we be here having this conversation? Perhaps not. Perhaps. (?)
This is why I say that established, repectable, academic and heavy weight bios are important, but also up from the street populist voices in community conversations, especially about models for communal structure.
Would the words of Korach have rung more true if his intention was truly about Democracy and the people's voice instead of his own? I have to go back and look at it again, but it bears thinking on.
By Maggid Sarah, at 5:41 PM
...We need to maintain a careful balance between research and innovation, and to eschew hubris and ideology in the process
Yes, that's what I meant, not the latter. I also meant that anecdotal evidence is not evidence: just because something "works" for one person in one place doesn't mean it's the New Answer.
I think I don't agree with you that the Exile/Post-Exile is the Jewish equivalent of secularization/post-secularization. The terms aren't parallel: "exile" implies a great deal about homeland, diaspora, displacement, hoped-for return, etc., while "secularization" implies disestablishment, differentiation, desacralization, etc.
Sarah's point about the life of the community as it exists is really important. Even from a research perspective, we've had an imbalance weighted toward philosophy and history over ethnography and cultural critique. Nothing against the former, but we definitely need rather more of the latter....
This is a great conversation - I am traveling over the next week, though, so if I fail to respond,please don't interpret my silence as anything but, well, silence!
By Shawn Landres, at 8:58 AM
By the way, your blog is beautiful and I enjoy reading it. I just had a side comment on the word "mishkan". The "M" isn't necesarily the preposition "from" -- it may as likely function as the "Causative", as in godel=grows up, magdil=raises; or ochel=eats, ma'achil=feeds.
By alan, at 11:16 AM
Hello, Alan, thank you for your presence!
The "M" isn't necesarily the preposition "from" -- it may as likely function as the "Causative"
This is a wonderfully elegant articulation of a big theme that has emerged in this conversation, which I tried to describe in terms of eggs and chicken(head)s and "eyn mukdam umeuchar baTorah," and which I see Shawn raising (though I'm not certain this is his intention; I may be projecting it) with the question of "function"ality in historical trends. By casting Hebrew Mem as a signifier only of product and not of cause, I made one of those strict teleologies I'm supposed to shun. Mem (that watery middle letter) of course describes both principles as one; that is, "Mishkan" defines Midbar-dwelling both as how Shekhinah-connection is achieved and also as what results from Shekhinah-connection. Likewise, the shift into superexilic consciousness both generates and is generated by Enlightenment self-determination and modern Zionism.
As in Chaos Theory, new dimensions unfold by way of feedback loops.
This really is exactly the kind of conversation I had hoped for! Gratitude and blessings to all!
By Yoel Natan, at 12:17 PM
I also meant that anecdotal evidence is not evidence: just because something "works" for one person in one place doesn't mean it's the New Answer.
No one here would ever have said so, though. There is a categorical difference between "anecdotal" or as I am calling it "experiential" and/or "narrative" evidence in significant aggregate vs. one person's experience in one place. I agree that the latter is of very limited use, but does that really bear upon the usefulness of the former?
By Yoel Natan, at 12:28 PM
I think I don't agree with you that the Exile/Post-Exile is the Jewish equivalent of secularization/post-secularization. The terms aren't parallel: "exile" implies a great deal about homeland, diaspora, displacement, hoped-for return, etc., while "secularization" implies disestablishment, differentiation, desacralization, etc.
I don't mean that the terms are equivalent or even parallel exactly. Secularization, which is a fact of Modernity for all cultures, happens to resonate the grand narrative of Hebrew culture along the exilic axis. It (and, actually, Modernity in general) is experienced by Jewish culture as a shift into superexilic consciousness. I should emphasize here again that, when I speak of "Exile," I mean it as a psychospiritual more than a geoethnic term. As Heschel wrote, we are a people of time over space. Hebrew geography is a metaphor first and foremost.
So yes, homeland, diaspora, return -- of course -- but most powerfully what Exile and Zion refer to is ownership, agency, empowerment. What Jewish culture has embraced in the experience of secular Modernity is a kind of putting the choice back into chosenness, and this empowered attitude is what I refer to as superexilic conscousness. Even Modern Jewish culture's most secular-identified elements have shown considerable ambivalence about disestablishment, differentiation, and desacralization. Just look at the arc of the Reform movement. These referents of secularism are (a) old news to the Hebrew worldview (disestablishmentarianism has been an integral vein of Jewish culture since the beginning), and (b) not the fulcrum over which Jewish imagination has been lit afire these past several generations.
By Yoel Natan, at 2:31 PM
Sarah's point about the life of the community as it exists is really important. Even from a research perspective, we've had an imbalance weighted toward philosophy and history over ethnography and cultural critique. Nothing against the former, but we definitely need rather more of the latter.
Sarah is beginning (and I'm totally thrilled to see it!) to describe this term we throw around here, "midrashic community." And you're right, it's foundational. Relating to the community as an integral living organism; following it and adapting its organizational structure at, as I have called it, the "pace of unfolding narrative." This is why maggidut, in the holistic sense, is so key to our work. More on this from me in a forthcoming post.
I would just say that I am unhappy with this philosophy-versus-ethnography division. I believe one of our most major obstacles in ascertaining the true life of Hebrew consciousness in our time is the deep political polarization between the Beyt Midrash, which has largely claimed Jewish philosophy and grand narrative, and the Academy, which has largely claimed ethnography and cultural critique. We should be striving for an integrated understanding, by way of active dialogue between and across these divisions, if we really want to understand the life of the organism.
By Yoel Natan, at 2:53 PM
I am traveling over the next week[...]
Thanks for the heads-up. I actually will be on the road as well B"H, first for my brother's wedding and then for a week-long class.
Nesia tova! (And chodesh tov!)
By Yoel Natan, at 3:09 PM
"we can identify Exilic Diaspora institutional structures -- synagogues -- as distinct from Post- or Super-Exilic Diaspora institutional models like the chavurah, Hillel, and Federation."
I'm bothered by the way you have set up "Exilic" and "Post-Exilic" as temporally exclusive categories. It reminds me of the way some academics are already talking about "post-capitalist" this and that - it's not really something with a clearly defined boundary, yet.
In our case, just because the state of Israel exists doesn't mean we are in a post-exilic age. Many Jews worldwide still feel exiled from the connection to HaShem, either because we can't rebuild the temple, because there's no moshiach yet, or because they are alienated from Israel itself, or from other Jews, or from their sense of the Sacred.
And I can't imagine the majority of Jewish communal life in the ongoing diaspora without synagogues, simply because they provide a workable model and the physical space and infrastructure necessary to maintain communal functions of education, service, etc. - unless you're making some distinction between synagogue (a communally-supported Jewish institution for prayer, study, and righteous action) and chavurah (a communally organized group of Jews who study, pray and do righteous action) that I'm not getting...
I can see the progression as a series of spirals, where each contains the other (ie., post-exile could contain exilic state), but not a series of clear-cut separate 'stages' where one supercedes the other. That is not a Jewish model of growth, as far as I can tell. Am I misinterpreting your post?
By Tzipporah, at 2:46 PM
Welcome, Tzipporah! Thank you for this contribution. They are very good questions and concerns. I feel like they have generally been answered in the course of discussion. Do you feel that they are adequately addressed by the comments thread here? I can always say more -- I'm just thinking that perhaps it's good for me to be more moderated in that regard. :)
Shabbat shalom!
By Yoel Natan, at 5:46 PM
B"H
Hi Tzipporah, shalom shalom. All of the points you are making are excellent, but unfortunately you are largely misinterpreting us on all points. In particular, no one has suggested a clear cut line of demarcation between ages. It takes generations to shift an age, so maybe this age we are in in is really an age of transition? I think we're really getting hung up on language here.
I have not, myself, done much to articulate my position, but I have been working on a response that address most of these issues-- and I expect to post it soon.
By Maggid Sarah, at 2:24 AM