Shibboleth

Vilém Flusser’s “The Jewish War (A Testimony of Commitment)” was written in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In this text, in a highly original fashion, Flusser introduced a distinction that cuts through modern Jewish history. Now, more than fifty years later, on the occasion of the publication of Flusser’s text in K, my short commentary here is framed by two questions. First: Could this text have been written today, about the current war? And second, more specific to Flusser: Would he have written this text about the current war as well?  

It is unclear for what purpose Flusser wrote “The Jewish War”. In this issue of K, Rainer Guldin situates the text within Flusser’s biography. The text was only published years after his death, in the journal Flusser Studies. While featuring some of Flusser’s famous brilliance, it differs at least partially from the rest of his oeuvre in terms of its subject matter (an ongoing conflict) and vocabulary (political terminology). With relatively few exceptions, Flusser otherwise avoided addressing political history or political-philosophical traditions of thought, touching only indirectly on ongoing political issues. This text is also difficult to contextualize because Flusser did not otherwise participate in conversations about Jewish matters. “The Jewish War” stands out in these respects.         

Untangling Flusser’s trajectory

To appreciate “The Jewish War”, the reader should know that his entire life, Flusser opposed Zionism: both specifically, because he conceived of Judaism as rooted in groundlessness¹, and because he opposed all forms of nationalism in general. While elsewhere he developed a full-fledged perspective of groundlessness, that is only partially relevant to “The Jewish War”. It would require further investigation to say whether one could see an evolution in his views on Zionism or Israel. 

Vilém Flusser was one of the last of the Central European Jewish thinkers born before the Holocaust who both rejected Zionism, as being opposed to their ideal of Judaism, and desired that Israel would transcend the kind of state that is reducible to power and realpolitik. Flusser was born in Prague, in 1920, to a liberal German- and Czech-speaking Jewish family. When the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Flusser fled Czechoslovakia with his girlfriend Judith and her family. Less than a year after first fleeing to England, fearing an imminent German invasion of Britain, they sought refuge elsewhere. Largely by chance, they landed in Brazil. Flusser’s parents and siblings, who had declined to leave with him, all met violent deaths in the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. 

Flusser and his wife lived in Sao Paulo for thirty years; then, following the second military coup there, they returned to Europe. After a sojourn in Merano, in northern Italy, close to the Austrian border, they settled in southern France. It is widely accepted that Flusser’s biography was vitally relevant to his thought and writing.  

Vilém Flusser was one of the last of the Central European Jewish thinkers born before the Holocaust who both rejected Zionism, as being opposed to their ideal of Judaism, and desired that Israel would transcend the kind of state that is reducible to power and realpolitik.

Flusser’s entire formal higher education consisted of a semester at the Charles University of Prague and a semester at the London School of Economics, neither of which had anything to do with Jewish studies or Jewish history. As an émigré intellectual interested in science, technology, and art, Flusser showed some similarities with the Frankfurt School and, in particular, with Theodor Adorno. But unlike Adorno, Flusser was never drawn to Freud’s psychoanalysis nor Marx’s dialectics of social class. In Flusser’s philosophy of “groundlessness”, he identified Judaism with this permanent commitment to exile. From his early books, written in Brazil, and throughout the rest of his life, Flusser detested nationalism, as the epitome of a false “grounding”. Zionism he understood as diametrically opposed to his outlook. Here, in the intersection between his specific rejection of Zionism, as the false opposite of Judaism’s true (ethical) specificity, and his general rejection of nationalism, as the false promise of “grounding”. we start to approach the intellectual structure of “The Jewish War”. 

“The Jewish War”: An atypical political testimony

If we approach this text from the perspective of Jewish history, the history of war, or even the Arab–Israeli conflict, its contentions are flawed. Flusser develops categorizations that arbitrarily posit unfounded equalities, for instance when he equates the perceptions of Jews and of antisemites. He fails to distinguish whether given perceptions are held by the self about that same self, as opposed to being held by the self about the other. This weakness is easily seen if we compare the endorsement of “Jewish specialness” by Jews and by antisemites. It makes little sense to equate antisemitic conceptions about Jews with Jews’ own conception of “Jewish specialness”. If we want to appreciate Flusser’s originality, however, and the possible questions that he helps us approach, we must approach the text differently.  

While the context of the text is the Yom Kippur War, and the immediate interest in publishing it in K is the current war, my commentary here focuses on what I take to be a potent distinction that Flusser makes in the text: between “the Jewish aspect” and whether “everything that is Jewish” might be able to be “fully understood through general categories” (1).    

Is this the “Jewish aspect” as shibboleth?

In the immediate context of the war, Flusser writes that the fighting that started on October 6, 1973 could be seen as one of many border clashes typical of the second half of the twentieth century, where siding with Israel or the Arabs is based on a commitment to either the American or the Soviet superpower (1). Flusser opposes this view with one that emphasizes the characteristically “Jewish aspect” (I quote from the passage exactly as written):

Now if it were true that the adjective “Jewish” always implies difficulties of classification (for instance: Jewish religion is unlike religion in general, Jewish people is unlike people in general, Jewish state is unlike state in general), if it were true that the specificity of Jewishness is to be not true species of any given genus, then any generalization of the Jewish war under the heading “border clashes” will fail to really explain it. . . . No use of trying to deny it: the believe that to be Jewish is to be something special and not easily generelizable is an important element of Judaism. (1)   

Hence, a person who emphasizes that aspect with regard to the war will tend to believe that such a perspective, while revealing very important aspects of the event, will not allow to see its characteristically Jewish aspect. It will not show that this is a “Jewish” war, and, for its being Jewish, it is essentially unlike any other war in similar contexts. He will tend to believe that everything that is Jewish cannot be fully understood through general categories because “Jewishness” seems to be a species which does not fit well any classifications. (1) 

Is this the “Jewish aspect” as shibboleth? In the biblical story in Judges 12, the Gileadites used the word shibboleth as a password to identify Ephraimites (who pronounced it as sibboleth) trying to cross the Jordan River. Their passage and life were decided based on their pronunciation of the word. Either everything Jewish is reducible to generalizable categories or it is not. (Many scholars trained in Jewish history, certainly at Israeli universities, assume or even openly endorse Jewish history’s irreducibility to general categories.) Flusser, as far as I know, was the first to explicitly articulate this as a problem of categories. What makes Flusser’s distinction—between “the Jewish aspect” and whether “everything that is Jewish” can be “fully understood through general categories”—particularly interesting is its dual nature: It may be either an observation about the world or a simple speech act, as I will discuss at the end of this piece.  

The Judentum in relation to general categories

The observation that either everything Jewish is reducible to generalizable categories or it is not can be put to the twofold test of phenomenological reduction. First, would the concept of Judentum² (which simultaneously encompasses Judaism, Jews, Jewry, and Jewishness) survive if we reduced it to one of the following generalizable categories? Let us think, for example, about three such generalizable categories: Would the concept of antisemitism survive being reduced to racism or xenophobia of the kind suffered by many other groups? Would the concept of Zionism survive being reduced to a movement of national self-determination like those of many other national groups and national movements? Would the concept of the state of Israel survive being reduced to the same status as any other nation-state? The simple answer is no, because all three categories are facets of Judentum, which nonetheless transcends each of them in a way that impedes successful phenomenological reduction. Second, we could invert the perspective and ask about the equivalent concepts in other contexts. Would the concept of Christianity survive its phenomenological reduction to the category of religion? Would the concept of racism toward people of African descent survive its phenomenological reduction to the category of racism? Would the concept of the state of France survive its phenomenological reduction to that of the political category of the state? Based on the logic of phenomenological reduction, the latter cases allow a smoother phenomenological reduction than the former.  

Flusser’s text, then, touches on Israel’s reducibility to generalizable categories. For Flusser, the deeper question is whether the state of Israel is endangering Judentum. The two questions of, first, Israel’s reducibility to the category of state (with border clashes like any other) and, second, whether Israel endangers Judentum (because Judentum cannot be reduced to a state) cannot be separated from each other. Flusser expresses this when he determines that “the [belief] that to be Jewish is to be something special and not easily [generalizable] is an important element of Judaism. All efforts to deny this [belief] amount to a denial of Judaism” (1). In this sense, it is a Jewish war.  

What makes Flusser’s distinction—between “the Jewish aspect” and whether “everything that is Jewish” can be “fully understood through general categories”—particularly interesting is its dual nature: It may be either an observation about the world or a simple speech act.

Flusser then further develops his distinction between how the specialness operates among Jews and among non-Jews: 

The paradox in it is this: if such an effort to deny Jewish specificity is made by Jews, it aims at Jewish “normalisation”, which means the disappearance of Judaism. And if it is made by non-Jews, it aims at the acceptance and absorption of the Jewish in their context, which also means the disappearance of Judaism. The paradox is that what is “antisemitism” in non-Jews (acceptance of Jewish specificity), is fidelity to Judaism in Jews (the same acceptance) (1).

Up to this point, Flusser has led us through short, formal, sharply drawn distinctions. Here, however, somewhat unfortunately, he inserts his own “groundlessness” into the picture, thereby limiting and weakening the distinctions he draws. The paradox resolves, Flusser writes, “if one considers what is meant by ‘Jewish specialness’” (1). “Judaism means by this some sort of special and not generalizable obligation toward mankind assumed by every true Jew. Antisemitism means by this some sort of biological or cultural characteristics” (1–2). Flusser derives four ways of looking at the war. First, the purely antisemitic: Jews are a special type of human and this war proves that Israel is not a state but a “position conquered and expanded of international Jewry” (3). Second, the purely assimilationist: Jews are fighting this war in order to prove that they are like any other nation. Flusser considers this the (normalizing) position of the Israeli establishment (3). Third, the purely absorptive: Jews have nothing to do with this war, even though one side consists of Jews. Flusser ascribes this position to the Soviet establishment, if its antisemitic elements are filtered out. (3) And fourth, the purely Jewish: The special obligations that Jews assume toward humankind have to do with justice. The war is both a consequence of the failure to assume the role and an opportunity to assume it. (3) If the war ends in some political agreement with the Arab establishments, rather than a radical change in the Israeli conscience expressed in a commitment to the liberation of the “Third World”, Flusser writes, then this war will have been of no particular Jewish significance. (4) 

Flusser opposed Zionism: both specifically, because he conceived of Judaism as rooted in groundlessness, and because he opposed all forms of nationalism in general.

As I have noted, by inserting his own view of Judaism’s true ethical mission in the world as the criterion for specialness, Flusser limits and undercuts the power of his formal distinctions. 

If we set aside Flusser’s own limiting interpretation and focus on the formal distinction, however, two main possibilities emerge for how to understand Jewish specialness. In the first (following the phenomenological tests I suggested above), that specialness is ontological. There is an essential discrepancy between Judaism, or Judentum, and the generalizable classificatory categories. In the second, Jewish specialness is nothing but a semiotic shifter—a mere sign, devoid of content or meaning (just like shibboleth as a way to distinguish between Gileadites and Ephramites, which had nothing to do with the word’s meaning)—that draws a distinction between scholars who endorse the irreducibility of Judentum (and hence of Israel) and those who reject it.

Where is Flusser in all of this? In one sense, in articulating the distinction, Flusser puts himself in the semiotic camp: Like the biblical storyteller, he is outside or above the story being told. In other words, he implicitly rejects the distinction and accepts Judaism’s reducibility to generalizable categories. 

From a different perspective, however, when Flusser endorses the specialness of Judaism as a commitment to humanism and justice, he is endorsing the distinction. Though not explicitly saying so here, Flusser assumes that Zionism and Israel fall short of the Jewish mission, both in general and in this war in particular. To meet the expectations for Judaism’s specialness, Israel would have to demonstrate something beyond the politics of power found in all other states and contribute to the world (for instance by strengthening third-world states in Africa or advancing justice).

Flusser put to the test with Gaza and Iran

With this contextualization in mind, let us return to the questions I posed at the beginning. First, could this text, written in 1973, be applied to Israel’s current war? And second, were Flusser alive today, would he have written it about the current war? While the American–Soviet divide with which Flusser opened his text no longer exists in the same way, it could be translated to a similar contemporary divide along geopolitical or ideological lines.    

To meet the expectations for Judaism’s specialness, Israel would have to demonstrate something beyond the politics of power found in all other states and contribute to the world (for instance by strengthening third-world states in Africa or advancing justice).

Let us begin with the second, and easier, question. From the vantage point of our cynical era, the 1970s appear childishly naïve, and of course the question about Flusser is entirely speculative. But I believe that his response to the current war would have followed the fundamental lines of his existing text. Flusser’s verdict on Israel’s current war would have been the same, not least because old men seldom dramatically change their views. 

The much harder question is the first one, about whether the existing text can be applied to the current war. Contending with this question is an exercise in the subtle and complex dialectics of the idealization and de-idealization of “the specialness of Judaism” or the impulse toward “normalization” in modern Jewish history. And this issue of specialness versus normalization is clearest in the most extreme context, that of war. It is not coincidental that that is the context in which Flusser articulated it (and, it should be noted, there is not even a hint of fascination with war or violence). The question of Judaism’s specialness has become even more problematic since the war that began on October 7 evolved into a direct war between Israel and Iran. It is easier to use the “normalizing” prism of “border-crossing war” (in Flusser’s terminology), downplaying or ignoring the Islamist and racial-annihilatory aspects, for the war between Israel and its Palestinian and Lebanese neighbors. Those aspects are harder to suppress for the war between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has no border with Israel and where the Islamist-antisemitic and annihilatory aspects are explicit. It would have been particularly interesting to see how Flusser dealt with this aspect of this war. In his autobiography, he expressed regret that when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, he escaped, unlike his father, who declined to sacrifice his dignity for his life. (The idea of joining the British army to fight Nazi Germany never seems to have entered Flusser’s mind.) 

Simultaneously, however, Israel’s war with Iran also incorporates the notion of “normalization”, because it is much more clearly a war between two states, each with its own military forces. Yet the Islamist aspect of annihilation has become impossible to ignore. Strange tensions and inversions become visible here, as some of the Jewish voices most critical of Israel and Israel’s conduct of the war (such as Judith Butler, Jonathan Boyarin, and Shaul Magid) rely on an idealized view of Judaism like that portrayed by Flusser, assuming the “specialness of Judaism”, while some of their clearest opponents  (such as Israel Auman and Ya’acov Amidror), though grasping the annihilatory aspect of the war and therefore endorsing the “specialness of Judaism”, also support Israel’s conduct of the war based on a de-idealized view of the war and of Israel and thus, in practice, rejecting “the specialness of Judaism”.  

Flusser’s distinction touches on the impulse toward normalization in modern Jewish history. Is it good or bad? But also, either way: Is it possible? This question involves how the past became the present and how the future is derived from the present. What real (as opposed to imaginary or logical) possibilities are open to Judaism? This is a comparative question. We are back to the question of which generalizable categories apply to Judaism, and whether the options open to Judaism are the same as the options open to other groups to whom those generalizable categories do more readily apply: Can Jews do what those other groups have done, are doing now, or would do? 

Perhaps saying that Judaism is a commitment to humanism and justice (as Flusser does) is equivalent to saying that Judaism is irreducible to generalizable categories.

More than fifty years later, it is easier to discern that the idealism in Flusser’s text—expecting Israel to champion African states, advance justice, or protect the rights of oppressed minorities—involves a touch of patronization and expresses a sense of Jewish hubris. Flusser was a sui generis thinker, yet in generational terms, he belonged to a type of Central European Jewish émigré thinker that by 1973 was dying out. With Flusser back in Europe after three decades in Brazil, but still far from any major Jewish center, maybe the text should simply be taken as an expression of his desire to join a Jewish conversation. The distinctions he draws about the war lead us into a broader historical landscape than he considered in the text. I cannot end without asking whether the ontological (Jewish specialness as real) and the semiotic (Jewish specialness as a way to draw a distinction among scholars) are not ultimately the same thing—and likewise the formal possibilities Flusser first identifies and the more limited interpretations to which he then reduces them. In other words, perhaps saying that Judaism is a commitment to humanism and justice (as Flusser does) is equivalent to saying that Judaism is irreducible to generalizable categories. If, from the intellectual historian’s perspective, the answer is affirmative (as in Flusser’s subtitle, “A Testimony of Commitment”), then the next question (following Gottlob Frege) must be whether the equivalence is in fact a tautology. That is, are the two things equivalent because they are just two ways of saying the same thing (as in A=A or Jewish specialness=Jewish specialness)? Or are they functionally the same equivalent but even though what is found on both sides of the sign of equality is different as when it can be true but nevertheless fundamentally distinct and distinguishable (as in A=B or Jewish irreducibility=Jewish specialness)? Finally, however, this very discussion returns us, full circle, to Flusser’s initial distinction: between “the Jewish aspect” and whether “everything that is Jewish” might be able to be “fully understood through general categories”. 

1. For Flusser, this Bodenlosigkeit (lack of soil or roots) represents the very condition of the Jewish intellectual migrant: a fertile uprooting, resolutely anti-nationalist, which rejects any fixed roots in favor of a nomadic and constantly renewed ethical commitment. ↩︎
2. Judentum in German refers to the set of doctrines, practices, and traditions that constitute Jewish identity, often contrasted with Hellenismos (Hellenism) in antiquity as a distinct way of life that rejected cultural assimilation. ↩︎