A metaphorical trip through Jewish history
Traditional Jewish thought may posit that only God can perform miracles, but in his new work, “Israel is Real,” Rich Cohen claims that the rabbis of 2000 years ago “turned the temple into a book.”
In the book Cohen argues that now that Judaism identifies with the Israeli state, the religion once again centers around “a Temple” and thus risks destruction.
Israel is Real connects the dots between all the heroes and happenings taught in Hebrew school, placing them all in the arc of Jewish history. Cohen explains that the 16th-century false messiah Shabbatai Zvi, for example, is one link in a chain of demagogues who promised redemption to the oppressed Jews of Eastern Europe.
But Cohen is not so much interested in explaining Jewish history as he is in identifying the dominant “metaphors” of that history. These include the Jews as Abraham in the binding of Isaac, ready to sacrifice the beloved for belief and Ariel Sharon as King David because both fought heroic, underdog battles and grew jaded with age.
As he tries to interpret everything that has happened to the Jews in exile, Cohen switches his tone from pro-Zionist to ambivalent in light of recent events. He begins with roughly 300 pages of prose extolling warriors, from Temple-era Zealots to modern Israelis, but becomes pessimistic in view of the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
This tone shift is understandable given that it reflects a similar mood shift in Israel following the events of the 1973 war, which shattered the Israelis’ sense of invincibility following the Six Day War in 1967. Cohen, however, does not reference the change in the Israeli view of the situation following the Yom Kippur War, switching his outlook without explanation, a move that may cause readers to feel lost.
And although Cohen’s book takes readers on a bounding ride through Jewish history, he does not do justice to some of the narrative’s key elements. Cohen spends minimal time on the place of the Palestinians in that history, as well as on the role of religious Zionists. In addition, his commentary on Diaspora Jewry remains sketchy.
The motive behind this neglect of the Diaspora lies in Cohen’s main thesis: that the “destruction of the Second Temple saved Judaism—“it freed them from the ho-hum life of nations, it forced their thought to become symbolic and abstract;” the return, however, of a Judaism based around a location—Israel—obviates the need for such an abstract tradition. In essence, Cohen sees Jewish history as a lead-up to the State of Israel.
The latter part of his thesis, however, is that the Jewish people risk destruction because they have embodied themselves in that fragile nation-state. Cohen’s picture, though, is incomplete. The Diaspora contains an incredible and vital diversity of Jewish expression. Israel is important to modern Judaism, but’s it’s not all there is.
The latter part of his thesis, however, is that the Jewish people risk destruction because they have embodied themselves in that fragile nation-state. Cohen’s picture, though, is incomplete. The Diaspora contains an incredible and vital diversity of Jewish expression. Israel is important to modern Judaism, but it’s not all there is.
This poesy also comes in when Cohen meditates on Rabbi Johanan Ben Zakkai, a figure thought to have shifted Judaism from a temple-centered religion to a religion of the book, and with Theodore Herzl, the man who shifted the focus back to the land of Israel. Cohen portrayed Herzl as a man who “takes his coffee in a swallow” during “morning in Europa.” This language is not necessary.
Cohen’s flowery language also did not jibe with his defeatist attitude towards Israeli’s current struggles, to which he offers no solution. He writes that political realities are stacked against both a two-state solution and a one-state comprise. This is not a helpful answer to a question that seems at the base of Cohen’s book, and of his view of the Jewish people. Had Cohen perhaps focused more on concrete ideas and less on vague metaphors, he would have left his readers with more to think about.
