Introduction

Summary

The extended introduction to the book frames the argument in its entirety. Yadgar presents his critique of secular epistemology and the vast, dominant body of concepts it produces to argue that it is wrong to view Judaism as a religion and Zionism as a secular phenomenon. This is a summation of an argument made more thoroughly (and more theoretically and abstractly) in Yadgar’s previous work. What the introduction to this book provides us with is a concise, rapid and convincing view of this theoretical argument. The introduction then goes on to highlight the Zionist reliance on a questionable notion of “Jewish blood” to demarcate the in-group of this national movement. Yadgar insists that this is a questionable notion primarily for traditionally Jewish reasons. This Zionist insistence on “biology” is, I would say, a Jewish transgression in Yadgar’s reading. An important part of the introduction explores the difference between what Yadgar terms “Jewish sovereignty” and “the sovereignty of Jews.” This allows him to highlight the lack of correspondence and dialog between the politics of Israel and Jewish tradition, and to highlight the degree to which Israeli politics is founded on racial distinctions of belonging and otherness. Like in Yadgar’s other works, the introduction also insists on a re-utilization of the concept of tradition to overcome the limits of the secularist epistemology. I find this to be a valuable theoretical contribution that surely goes beyond the Israeli and Jewish cases. What we have here is a way out of the predicament of the Enlightenment’s sense of modernity, which is premised on a notion of breaking away from tradition, unable to see its reliance on exactly this: a specific tradition of thought.