{"title":"The Politics of Galut: On the Rabbinical Tradition of the Least Bad Solution","authors":"D. Trom","doi":"10.1163/18750214-bja10026","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\nSince exile, the galut, is an outcome of Israel’s defeat, the Jewish political tradition rests on the quest of the least bad solution. This contrasts with Greek-Western political theory. Residing in foreign kingdoms, Jews had to accept their domination and invest in ways to survive in hostile environments. The article shows how rabbinical literature invented a kind of proto-theory of survival and opens opportunities for Jewish agency. Even the State of Israel, generally seen as a rupture in Jewish history, fits into this traditional political logic of survival in exile.","PeriodicalId":40667,"journal":{"name":"Zutot","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Zutot","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18750214-bja10026","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Since exile, the galut, is an outcome of Israel’s defeat, the Jewish political tradition rests on the quest of the least bad solution. This contrasts with Greek-Western political theory. Residing in foreign kingdoms, Jews had to accept their domination and invest in ways to survive in hostile environments. The article shows how rabbinical literature invented a kind of proto-theory of survival and opens opportunities for Jewish agency. Even the State of Israel, generally seen as a rupture in Jewish history, fits into this traditional political logic of survival in exile.
期刊介绍:
Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture aims to fill a gap that has become more and more conspicuous among the wealth of scholarly periodicals in the field of Jewish Studies. Whereas existing journals provide space to medium and large sized articles, they neglect the small but poignant contributions, which may be as important as the extended, detailed study. The Zutot serves as a platform for small but incisive contributions, and provides them with a distinct context. The substance of these contributions is derived from larger perspectives and, though not always presented in an exhaustive way, will have an impact on contemporary discussions. The Zutot covers Jewish culture in its broadest sense, i.e. encompassing various academic disciplines—literature, languages and linguistics, philosophy, art, sociology, politics and history—and reflects binary oppositions such as religious and secular, high and low, written and oral, male and female culture.