The irony of quoting Walter Benjamin in support of Zionism is intense. Benjamin was in the pickle he was in (stuck in Vichy Frnace, trying to escape to Spain) because he had declined the repeated entreaties of his close friend Gershom Scholem to leave France and come to Eretz Yisrael.

Benjamin rejected Scholem's tgood advice and stayed in Frnace because of his (Bejamin's) marxism, which has made him a leading light among the academic marxists of the 21st century. One of the intellectual forebearers fo Edward Sa'id.

If Zionism can claim Benjamin for its own is this not a victory over the likes of Said?

Throw back the little ones.

I'm sorry, but brilliance is brilliance, whether the man was a Marxist or not.

If Israel is an "historical mistake" as Cohen seems to believe, then so is Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria... even Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States.

The mistakes made in the 20's and again in 1948 were errors in the details on where to draw borders. The creation of Israel was no more a mistake than the creation of Lebanon, Syria or Jordan.

It's not just that Israel's history is being ignored, more significantly is the fact that the Arabs have created an utter fantasy which somehow in the 60's and 70's became "History." They continue to be very effective in using this fantastic history as a weapon.

Richard Cohen has fallen for the leftist propaganda. The result of his commments are no different than Norman Finkelstein and Chomsky.

I think using Benjamin's angel is ironic for another reason - because the image of walking backward into the future, face affixed at history, is the Greek mythologization of time, rather than the Jewish conception of it.

I think Said enters the picture another way. Because Cohen has been persuaded - no doubt by Said and perhaps by Said without being conscious of it at all - to throw off all trappings of Western imperialism, and thereby, only to have regard for the Arab narrative of history in and of itself - as though a pure narative of history even existed - Lévi Strauss puts the lie to this at the end of The Savage Mind, when he refutes Sartre's existentialist philosophy of history.

In any case, Said, a much less distinguished thinker than Walter Benjamin, was only interested in the Arab narrative of history qua itself, which, as this Benjamin notes, is a thoroughly modern construct for mapping meaning.

I don't understand why Robert is conflating Walter Benjamin with Said except for the fact that they are both Marxists. And neither of them particularly believed in Zionism.

Alcibides -

I think the Angel is very much a Jewish conception of time. Benjamin was very influenced by his friend Scholem's research into the Kabbalah. Benjamin's view of history seems, to me at least, to be very much influenced by Scholem's take on Laurianic Kabbalah.

Judaism's view of history is "progressive" in the philosophical sense. The world is advancing to perfection - and it is specifically willed human action that effects this progress.

Benjamin's description of history as a pile-up of catastrophes is poignant in context of his own life, and superficially describes the facts of the Jewish diaspora - but it does not jibe with Judaism's explanation of what has befallen the Jews.

Benjamin's view of history seems, to me at least, to be very much influenced by Scholem's take on Lurianic Kabbalah.

Do you care to elaborate? I'm far more familiar, myself, with Scholem's work than Benjamin's.

ben-david -
I completely disagree with the idea that Judaism has a progressive view of history. I don't think Judaism has any single "view of history" per se. There are progressive aspects to the Halacha and the Talmud, certainly, "it is not for you to finish the work, etc...". Kohelet, on the other hand, completely rejects any progression in history and, in my view, rejects the idea of history altogether. I would argue that the Song of Songs does the same, encapsulating its chorus of voices into a single moment. The prophets, it could be argued, claim that the world is advancing towards perfection, but I would argue that this is highly open to interpretation, given the ecstatic, evocative language of the prophetic books. It is difficult to say that the prophets advance a coherent worldview in any form. Laurianic Kabbalah, on the other hand, poses a semi-coherent progression, but it is not towards perfection of the material world, rather it is towards its annihilation and the reconstruction of the divine world of perfection. "Tikkun" in the Laurianic sense is a total rejection of the material world, not a theory of its perfection. Judaism is far too vast to be encapsulated into a single view, theory, or essence with the sole exception, in my opinion, of the textual relationship.

Alcibiades -
Scholem's concept of Laurianic Kabbalah presents a vision of creation as a breakage, a crisis, in the divine world which creates the material world of corruption. Benjamin's (Marxist) concept of history strikes me as very similar. Benjamin saw history as a series of crises, "catastrophes" as he calls them. In another part of the Theses of History he remarks that the state of crisis in which the theses were written is the normal state of the world. We live, in other words, in the world of the klippot, the broken vessels piled one upon the other, away from which the Angel is propelled by the wind from paradise. It is not a coincidence, I think, that the essay on the Angel is prefaced by a poem of Scholem's.

Of course no one thinks of Kohelet as the theological core of Judaism. And as Ben David points out, Judaism is classically - perhaps I should say academically - understood as the religion which first advanced a linear rather than a cyclical understanding of time.

Then you have the Torah, which is the story of a progression, a journey, from our ancestors in the past into the present, thus delineating the nature of our relation with the Lord.

Why, by the way, do you interpret Ben David as meaning a perfection of the material world? He didn't appear to me to be making that argument.