Shaul Magid

This essay coins a term "Judeopessimism," engaging questions of some of the contemporary writing on antisemitism and its claim to be historical in nature through the lens of critical race theory, specifically Afropessimism and its offshoots, which make claims of anti-Blackness as political ontology. Is some of this writing on antisemitism really making theological or political ontological claims of "eternal antisemitism" refracted in a less volatile historical narrative? How can critical race theory and its understanding of anti-Blackness help refine, clarify, and push the discussion on antisemitism to be more forthright about its underlying claims? I explore some examples of ontological antisemitism in the writings of Meir Kahane and Naftali Zvi Berlin who each in different ways offer ahistorical and even ontological views on antisemitism that are mostly shunned by contemporary writing on the subject and suggest that Afropessimism offers a helpful way to see beyond the historical veil of how antisemitism is understood today.

In this response to the essays in the symposium on my book Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical I tried to clarify and expand some of the thoughtful and astute themes in the remarks of my interlocutors, especially about how the book was not intended to be about one figure but rather an intervention into postwar American and Israeli Judaism through the lens of a maligned figure who is ignored by most American Jews and demonized by most Israeli Jews. Meir Kahane remains present because he never went away. And he never went away because he offered solutions that, while unpopular and egregious, continue to resonate when Jews begin to feel unstable about their place in America or Israel. He is the dark underside of the modern Jewish project that will not go away.

I Over the course of his career, Peter Ochs has been a leading voice in a team of scholars who have been instrumental in reconceptualizing the reading of scripture in the wake of creating a new paradigm for inter-religious conversation founded on a postliberal perspective. 1 Ochs' own philosophical and theological contribution to the larger project includes creating a logic for adherence to scriptural authority without succumbing to fundamentalism, creating conditions for deep engagement with various scriptural traditions through close readings of scriptures by Jews, Christians, and Muslims and thinking about the conditions required for such a reading that is both anti-foundationalist and still modern (Ochs uses the term "postliberal") that includes translating that professional theological enterprise into language that can be used by religious communities. Finally Ochs has developed a way of thinking through the structures of not what each tradition needs to sacrifice but how each tradition can do so without either succumbing to the foundationalist modern notion of questioning all tradition or questioning Reason itself as a catalyst 1. On postliberalism, see Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine.

How Did Hasidic Jewry Become a Stronghold of Trumpism? | Religion Dispatches https://religiondispatches.org/how-did-hasidic-jewry-become-a-stronghold-of-trumpism/ 1/4 I Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://religiondispatches.org/how-did-hasidic-jewry-become-a-stronghold-of-trumpism/&display=popup&ref=plugin&src=share_button) Tweet (https://twitter.com/share?url=https://religiondispatches.org/how-did-hasidic-jewry-become-a-stronghold-of-trumpism/&text=How%20Did%20Hasidic%20Jewry%20Become%20a%20Stronghold%20of%20Trumpism%3F) s American Hasidism in crisis? After successfully rebuilding its institutions after the war, Hasidism in America has flourished. And yet, its response to COVID and its newfound reactionary political populism, leads us to ask the question: is something changing in contemporary Hasidism that's worth examining more closely? Much has been written lately about the politicization of the Hasidic world in America, particularly its full-throttled support of Donald Trump. In fact, Hasidic voting patterns now closely resemble those of evangelical Christians(https://thelehrhaus.com/scholarship/the-modern-orthodox-vote-and-the-episcopalian-turn/? fbclid=IwAR0j9FsVAcWEiSsPzxJRPA8kNw3JXaGJNggdDSbTV1ZAhjuagwaM7CNmKPc). Scholars and pundits have weighed in(https://jewishcurrents.org/the-new-heimish-populism/#:~:text=The%20rise%20of%20what%20might%20be%20called%20a,have%20become%20part%20of%20the%20broader%20Republican%20coa on this surprising political activism in a community that usually keeps a low profile and focuses on its internal needs. And this activism has become even more visible as Hasidic communities have flouted health guidelines in the COVD crisis and made a public health issue into a political one(https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/belief/articles/covid-haredi-magical-thinking). While the fact of these phenomena have been well documented, what are some of the underlying conditions that have contributed to a kind of "perfect storm" of populist reactionary Hasidic activism? Part of what we're witnessing in this new Hasidic populism is another stage of Hasidic Americanization in the wake of the loss of the last vestiges of European authority. The great Hasidic figures from Eastern Europe commanded intense devotion and respect from their communities, representing an authentic world destroyed in the Holocaust. Others emerged to take their place but it's arguable that the weight of authority of these masters was not replicated in their American or Israeli born successors.

the-haterade jews/&text=Savoring%20the%20Haterade%3A%20Why%20Jews%20Love%20Dara%20Horn% am a Jew. And I am alive. As a scholar of Judaism I spend my days reading, writing, thinking about, and teaching about dead Jews. So I guess I love dead Jews. But I'm not the "people" Dara Horn is referring to in her new book

the-haterade jews/&text=Savoring%20the%20Haterade%3A%20Why%20Jews%20Love%20Dara%20Horn% am a Jew. And I am alive. As a scholar of Judaism I spend my days reading, writing, thinking about, and teaching about dead Jews. So I guess I love dead Jews. But I'm not the "people" Dara Horn is referring to in her new book

the-haterade jews/&text=Savoring%20the%20Haterade%3A%20Why%20Jews%20Love%20Dara%20Horn% am a Jew. And I am alive. As a scholar of Judaism I spend my days reading, writing, thinking about, and teaching about dead Jews. So I guess I love dead Jews. But I'm not the "people" Dara Horn is referring to in her new book

the-haterade jews/&text=Savoring%20the%20Haterade%3A%20Why%20Jews%20Love%20Dara%20Horn% am a Jew. And I am alive. As a scholar of Judaism I spend my days reading, writing, thinking about, and teaching about dead Jews. So I guess I love dead Jews. But I'm not the "people" Dara Horn is referring to in her new book

Zionist scholars are battling the religious left for the Hasidic legacy By Shaul Magid Today we are in the midst of an internal battle in the academic study of Hasidism, an attempt by more conservative readers to appropriate Hasidism, particularly as seen from the viewpoint of the academy, from its more radical neo-Hasidic frame. Neo-Hasidism has historically been congenial to left-wing and revolutionary religious readings. Its conservative critics, whom we might call neo-Haredim, comprise a loose group of scholars, mostly within the Orthodox world, who have been engaging in a synthetic project merging Hasidism with the Zionist writings of Abraham Kook (1865-1935) and with various other forms of a new nationalized Jewish spirituality. My intention in this essay is not to delve into the arguments and counterarguments of each side, nor to weigh in on which view is more compelling. Rather, I explore how and why this is happening when it is. What prompted this scholarly backlash, this challenge to the neo-Hasidic frame of Hasidic scholarship? First, the background. There were at least two waves of neo-Hasidism, movements that have appropriated and transformed what they loved most in the original 18th-century Hasidism for their own creative and religious purposes. The first wave comprised literary figures, artists, and theologians in the early 20th century. The second wave emerged in 1960s and 1970s counterculture, using Hasidism as a Jewish source for nontraditional religiosity that cohered with the revolutionary spirit of the age. In both of these waves, neo-Hasidism was interested in Hasidism's radical, critical perspective of normative religious practice. And this was true not only for practitioners, but also for scholars who used neo-Hasidism as a scholarly frame, concerned more with explication than with praxis. Frequently, of course, there was overlap between neo