The order of sovereign states is a moral necessity, the only tolerable alternative to a world of anarchy and empire. Having failed to establish such an order to their satisfaction, many in Europe and even some in America are nonetheless reaching out jealous hands today to the poison fruit of empire.³⁰ Educated men should know better. History is littered with the bones of nations that, beginning to feel their excellence and their strength, and becoming aware of some special calling, have turned these thoughts to the extension of their might and their law throughout the world. The outcome is almost always the same. A people bent on empire is one that ceases to concentrate on the maturation of the unique qualities that alone give its existence purpose. Instead it spreads itself ever more thinly across the globe, losing itself in unimagined plots and entanglements, squandering its strength and diluting its unique qualities, until the original fire gives out and it collapses into ignominy. Before we in the West acquiesce in so easy a return to imperial ways of thinking, we should make a more conscientious effort than has thus far been attempted to grasp what we would be losing in giving up our own independent states, each of which was the labor of generations, each of which is the bearer of unique purposes that a world of empire and anarchy will never be able to fulfill.

This is no less true of Israel than of any other state. The purpose of our own state was and is to be the Jewish state, the guardian of the Jewish people. I have tried to elaborate the meaning of this purpose, by considering anew three aspects of Jewish guardianship—the physical guardianship of the security and well-being of the Jews; the upbuilding and restoration of the unique Jewish vantage point on civilization; and the nurturing and development of the Jewish character. Each one of these is a worthy aim, and they were treated as such by the founders of the Zionist movement. But it is also useful to understand them as being dependent on one another in a sequence: The capacity for an independent Jewish foreign and security policy is ultimately dependent on the capacity of the Jews to articulate their own views concerning the essential questions facing mankind; and both of these are dependent on the development of Jewish character.

I have tried to show how fundamental Jewish character is to the other purposes of the state, but I have said less about another aspect of this threefold relationship that deserves to be touched upon. For the early Zionists, there was no question but that the Jewish religion, and the Jewish ideas and way of life that developed from it, had been the basis for Jewish survival in the lands of the dispersion. Yet this once-clear relationship between Jewish ideas and “survival” became almost unknown in the period after the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel; the extraordinary emphasis during this period on the role of the Jewish state in ensuring Jewish continuity tended to obscure the role that had been played previously by Jewish ideas, and in fact the State of Israel itself came to be seen by many as the central Jewish idea, or even the only one. Moreover, we must admit that this has been an especially difficult period for the propagation of the intellectual heritage that was handed down as part of the Jewish tradition. The destruction of metaphysics by Hume and Kant, together with the dismissal of the contribution of the Jews to the West by Hegel, left a profound doubt as to whether any aspect of Judaism would ever again be relevant to humanity; and the question of God’s abandonment of his people during the Holocaust settled the issue for many, so that Hitler was responsible for the erasure not only of much of the Jewish people, but also of its capacity to find strength in its own heritage. Only the necessity of protecting Jews from the likes of the Nazis seemed to be a clear imperative, and this imperative consequently served as the catalyst that brought the actual Jewish state into being. For many, the tottering edifice of Judaism was rebuilt on the sturdy foundation of Zionism.

But time has had its effects in this area, and to my mind they have been largely salutary. As was inevitable, a generation growing up without memory of the Holocaust no longer understands the imperative of a Jewish state as being self-evident, and has naturally discovered what in any case had always been true—that taken in isolation, the idea of the Jewish state is an insufficient basis on which to construct a compelling worldview. As memory of the Holocaust has faded, so too has Zionism, and with it the Judaism that many had sought to build upon it. In the meantime, however, the intellectual climate in which we live has gradually grown less forbidding. The stream of “pure” enlightenment has run its course, and everywhere on the intellectual horizon there are movements of resistance—communitarianism, conservatism, republicanism, post­modernism. Each of these has, in its own way, opened the forbidden doors that lead back to the Jewish tradition. It has now become possible to think of doing away with the unstable structure of a Judaism based almost exclusively on Zionism, and to reconsider the possibility of a Zionism whose basis is in our Judaism. In other words, just as the intellectual vantage point of our fathers sustained us in the dispersion, so too does it hold the key to preserving the Jewish people in its state, and therefore the Jewish state itself.

When these considerations are taken together, it seems to me that they offer a clear view of the purpose of our state. Through our state we have the opportunity to build up individuals of independent character; and through them we may yet see our civilization rise again, and with it our capacity to protect our people in times of hardship. Of course, the mere existence of a state can no more guarantee the character of the Jews than it can guarantee that their welfare will be safeguarded, or their civilization restored. The hope of establishing a Jewish character worthy of the name is, like these other hopes, no more than a potentiality and a promise. But what a promise! That the remnant of Jacob should once more have the opportunity to raise up commanders of armies and industries, poets, men of learning, and statesmen—perhaps among the best that ever were, perhaps to the enrichment of all nations, and in the name of their forefathers and the God of Israel. In this way, too, will we be able to contribute to humanity by serving as a bulwark against the encroachment of empire and anarchy, whose enmity to the aspirations of mankind was first understood by our own people, many centuries ago.

Yoram Hazony is the author of The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul (Basic Books and The New Republic, 2000). This is the last in a series of three articles.

  

1. In discussing personality, I make reference to its three distinct parts: Intellect, spirit, and appetites. Each of these aspects of our nature can be described in isolation from the others, and requires its own vocabulary to capture the range of characteristics and qualities that are special to it. Thus one may say that an individual possesses a quick mind or a creative or abstract one, these being descriptions of qualities of the intellect or reason; regarding appetites, too, one can say of an individual that he is voracious, subdued, perverse. The third part of our nature, the spirit, is that which detects danger and other forms of disorder in the environment around us, and rallies the forces needed to neutralize threats and reimpose order by means of passions such as anger and fear. The spirit, too, can be described in terms of qualities that vary from one person to the next. Thus a man may be aggressive or forceful or passive, magnanimous or petty, effusive or temperate, prone to debilitating fears and depressions or not so. And it is here, as well, that we find the quality of character, which is principally a quality of the spirited part of our personality.

There are those, of course, who believe life would be better without the experience of anger or fear. But there is little to admire in such a hope. The phases of our spirit can be seen as a continuum from despondency at one end, to exhilaration at the other, in which fear and anger are the middle phases. On this continuum, exhilaration is that emotion which represents to us circumstances of complete control over ourselves and our environment, while despair represents to us capitulation and complete loss of control. The phases and hues in the middle range, on the other hand, are those that permit us to move between these two extremes. The first twinges of anger warn us that stability and control stand to be lost, while the subsequent force of this passion affords us the chance to improve our condition through confrontation and struggle; fear functions in the same manner but in the opposite direction, warning that stability and control have already been lost, and mustering the resources necessary for retreat and retrenchment. In other words, it is the intermediate phases of the spirit that permit us to construct a predictable environment around us, by distinguishing that which is safely under our control from that which is threatened, and both of these from that which is beyond us. To live life without the emotions of the middle range would be to live in a kind of insane delusion, in which everything is either at one’s absolute command or else beyond any hope of influence.

2. Exodus 5:21. For the Jews’ earlier reception of Moses and Aharon, see Exodus 4:29-31.

3. Exodus 14:11-12.

4. Exodus 15:2-3, 17:3; Numbers 11:4-6, 19:2-5, 20:4-6. Dathan and Abiram go so far as to say that it was Egypt, and not Israel, that was “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Numbers 16:12-13.

5. Exodus 32:1ff.

6. When Caleb and Joshua attempt to persuade them that the land can be conquered, the congregation decides to stone them. Numbers 13:31-14:10.

7. Numbers 19:7-13.

8. Exodus 3:11. In fact all of Moses’ questions at the burning bush are arguments born of fear. He fears that both Pharaoh and the Hebrew elders will not believe him, that he will not know what to say, that they will ridicule and reject him. See also Exodus 3:13, 4:1, 10, 13.

9. The relationship between the state and personal qualities such as character is discussed in Plato, Republic 374e-376e, 428d-434e; Aristotle, Politics 1276b16-1277b16, 1337a11. Aristotle, in particular, emphasizes the need for character in smaller associations as well. See also Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses, 1:18, 3:1, 3:27ff., in Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, trans. Allan Gilbert (Durham: Duke University, 1965), v. i, pp. 241, 420-421, 492ff.; Machiavelli, The Art of War, in Chief Works, v. ii, pp. 566-567, 582, 723-724. In addition, there has been a substantial revival of interest in this topic in recent years. See, for example, Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1969), p. 118; J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton, 1975), pp. 74-75, 551; John Dunn, Rethinking Modern Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1985), pp. 34-54; William A. Galston, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1991), pp. 213-237; James Q. Wilson, On Character (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1995), pp. 113-122; Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford, 1997), pp. 241ff; Michael J. Meyer, “When Not to Claim Your Rights: The Abuse and the Virtuous Use of Rights,” Journal of Political Philosophy 5:2 (1997), pp. 149-162.

10. The conclusion that must be drawn is that while the political state must excel in its economic capacity and in the quantity of its armaments, it ultimately exists by virtue of the strength of character found among its officials and officers. Under a democratic form of government, in which a very broad public participates in determining the actions of the state, one must go further and say that the state relies for its existence on the character of its citizenry as a whole. Thus the weakness of British policy in 1938, including England’s ignominious betrayal of its commitments to the Czechs and the Jews, was not merely a reflection of poor character on Chamberlain’s part. It was to a significant degree a reflection of the weakness of an entire generation of Englishmen who proved insufficient to the challenge posed by Hitler. At the same time, it may also be said that Britain’s independence as a state was saved two years later by this same people’s recognition that it had to reform its posture and commitments or accede to enslavement. By this time Germany’s armies were already approaching victory in France, but it must be remembered that England still had an alternative to the “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” that were all Churchill had to offer. England could have chosen a settlement with Germany, as proposed by Hitler himself and supported by the faction of Lord Halifax—a settlement whose price would have been the establishment of Hitler’s rule in Europe. For an account of this live option of reaching a negotiated peace with Hitler, see John Lukacs, The Duel: The Eighty-Day Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler (New Haven: Yale, 2001); for some of Churchill’s war speeches, see Brian MacArthur, ed., The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century Speeches (New York: Penguin, 1992), pp. 185-189.

11. Particular attention should be paid to this choice of the 2-kilometer forced march during the first days of training. Not every such choice can have the desired effect. This first test must be harsh enough so that the recruits have genuine cause for fear, but not so harsh that the exercise will defeat them outright. The premise of such training is that fear is a deceiver, and that one must not live by its dictates. But if the recruits are defeated time after time, they will only be reinforced in trusting their fears and giving themselves up to them; that is, they will emerge broken in spirit. There is thus a fine line between an education that builds up the spirit, so that it grows stronger with each new trial, and one that breaks it. The latter, we may say, is the kind of education the Hebrew slaves received at the hands of their taskmasters, in which every clash of wills meant inevitable defeat; fear was therefore learned to be a faithful guide in choosing one’s actions. The former is, we may surmise, the kind of education that Moses received in the house of Pharaoh.

12. Ma’ariv, Friday supplement, April 12, 2002.

13. Exodus Rabba 5:14. Compare the commentary of Ibn Ezra on Exodus 14:13: “How could a vast camp of six hundred thousand men have been afraid of its [Egyptian] pursuers, and why would they not fight for their lives and for their children’s lives? The answer is that the Egyptians were masters over Israel, and the generation of the departure from Egypt had learned from childhood to suffer the yoke of Egypt, and their spirit was broken; and how would they now fight against their masters?”

14. R. Isaac Abravanel, commentary on Deuteronomy 28:65, in Commentary on the Torah (Jerusalem: Bnei Arbael, 1964), p. 270. [Hebrew]

15. R. Ya’akov Hagiz, Halachot Ketanot, part ii, 139:5.

16. Leviticus 26:36.

17. Max Nordau, Address at the Second Zionist Congress, delivered on August 28, 1898, in Nordau, To His People: A Summons and a Challenge (New York: Scopus, 1941), p. 90. [Hebrew] For similarly suggestive passages, see M.L. Lilienblum, “On the Rebirth of Israel on the Soil of the Land of Our Forefathers,” originally published in 1881, reprinted in Shalom Kramer, ed., M.L. Lilienblum: A Collection of His Articles (Tel Aviv: Joseph Sreberk, n.d.), p. 74 [Hebrew]; Leo Pinsker, “Auto-Emancipation: An Appeal to His People by a Russian Jew,” in Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997), pp. 186-190; Yosef Haim Brenner, “Micah Joseph Berdichevski: A Few Words on His Literary Personality,” originally published in 1913, reprinted in Writings, vol. iii (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1985), vol. iii, pp. 837-838 [Hebrew]; A.D. Gordon, The Nation and Labor (Jerusalem: Zionist Library, 1952), p. 188. [Hebrew] Herzl himself repeatedly used the image of the Exodus from Egypt to describe his plan for liberating the Jews from the exile; and the sin of the golden calf as a symbol of lack of Jewish character. See, for example, Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Herzl Press, 1970), pp. 90, 94.

18. See Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s eulogy for “Doctor Herzl” (Odessa: Kadima, 1905) [Russian], translated into Hebrew only in part in Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Early Zionist Writings (Jerusalem: Eri Jabotinsky, 1949), p. 98; Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Samson (New York: Judaea, 1986).

19. “Talked to Dr. F. of Berlin,” Herzl once noted in his diary. “He is for baptism. He wants to make the sacrifice for his son. I explained to him that there are other low-down ways in which one can make it easier for one’s son to get ahead.” Theodor Herzl, The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, ed. Raphael Patai, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Herzl Press, 1960), entry for August 10, 1895, vol. i, p. 228. The opening pages of Herzl’s diary include a declaration of his own record on the subject: “I can say to myself with the honesty inherent in this diary—which would be completely worthless if I played the hypocrite with myself—that I never seriously thought of becoming baptized or changing my name. This latter point is even attested to by an incident. When as a green young writer I took a manuscript to the Vienna Deutsche Wochenschrift, Dr. Friedjung advised me to adopt a pen name less Jewish than my own. I flatly refused, saying that I wanted to continue to bear the name of my father, and I offered to withdraw the manuscript. Friedjung accepted it anyway.” Herzl, The Complete Diaries, undated introduction, vol. i, pp. 4-5.

20. Max Nordau’s Dr. Kohn was published in English translation as A Question of Honor: A Tragedy of the Present Day, trans. Mary J. Safford (Boston: John W. Luce, 1907). This passage appears on pp. 82-83.

21. Nordau, A Question of Honor, pp. 81-82.

22. Theodor Herzl, “Judaism,” in Zionist Writings: Essays and Addresses, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Herzl Press, 1973), vol. i, pp. 57-58.

23. Herzl, The Jewish State, p. 110.

24. Ahad Ha’am, “The New Savior,” in Leon Simon, ed., Selected Essays by Ahad Ha’am (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1962), p. 250.

25. Ahad Ha’am, “Slavery in Freedom,” in Ahad Ha’am, Selected Essays, pp. 171-194. This quotation is from Ahad Ha’am, “The New Savior,” in Ahad Ha’am, Selected Essays, p. 250.

26. In this context, it is reasonable to ask whether we can really see the development of character as an end in itself—that is, as a purpose of the state comparable in importance to the physical guardianship of the Jews, or to the restoration of Jewish civilization. Certainly, there have been voices in the Zionist tradition that have made of character precisely such an end. This is, for example, the teaching of Jabotinsky’s Samson. I know more than a few readers who have asked what a Jew is supposed to learn from a Samson who regularly commits acts of thievery and adultery, who has never so much as heard the name of Moses, and who fiercely loves the Philistines to his dying day, because among them “every soldier is like a staff in the hands of his officer, every officer in the hands of his captain, and the whole army in the hands of the Saran.” Jabotinsky, Samson, p. 59. What makes the book such difficult reading is precisely the fact that its purpose is to present the case for character as an end in itself. Jabotinsky’s Samson can teach his people nothing concerning the significance or desirability of being a Jew because, given the choice, he himself would have chosen the life of a Philistine. Nevertheless, he does have something to teach his downtrodden brothers: He teaches them to stand their ground, to aspire to unity, to remain loyal to one another in adversity. In short, he teaches them character.

When viewed against the backdrop of the dissolution, disloyalty, and corruption that characterizes the Israelite settlement in Canaan in the time of the Judges, it may be argued that even the distilled quality of character in which Jabotinsky traffics, unmixed with any other virtue, does indeed possess a certain beauty. Nevertheless, it seems to me that this argument is insufficient to establish character as an end in itself. That is, if one asks whether this beauty, such as it is, is sufficient reason to establish the Jewish state and maintain it, with all the hardship this entails, I find myself unable to answer in the affirmative. Life and truth—these are things for which a man may have to sacrifice his life, or that of his son. But to sacrifice human life for the sake of beauty? Jews cannot wage war to be more beautiful men; we cannot teach men to lay down their lives and those of their children for beauty. It is Samson’s seeming willingness to sacrifice life for the sake of beauty that makes this book so repulsive to us. In the end, character is to be valued not as an end, but only as a means to other, higher ends.

27. One step that has been taken in recent years has been the establishment of a number of small, one-year pre-military academies, whose purpose is to provide young men and women with a framework capable of channeling their energies towards national service and placing this service within a larger intellectual scheme. But these are only a modest supplement to a public-school education whose focus, where it addresses questions of citizenship, is on teaching the student to insist on his rights, while saying nothing about the qualities of character he and his countrymen will need if the state that guarantees these rights is to be maintained.

28. Aharon Meged, Living on the Dead (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1965) [Hebrew], English edition trans. Misha Louvish (New York: McCall, 1971); Ya’akov Shabtai, Past Continuous (Tel Aviv: Siman Kri’a, 1977) [Hebrew], English edition trans. Dalya Bilu (New York: Shocken, 1989).

29. See Ari Shavit, “The Failure of the Grandchildren,” Ha’aretz, Weekend supplement, April 25, 2001, pp. 10-14.

30. Max Boot, “The Case for American Empire,” The Weekly Standard, October 15, 2001, pp. 27-30.