Jewishness is a rather broad term. It refers to a culture with many faces, varied distinctive groups, different beliefs, opposing political camps, different classes and diversified ethnicity. Nevertheless, the connection between those very many people who happen to identify themselves as Jews is rather intriguing. In the paragraphs that follow, I will try to further the search into the notion of Jewishness. I will make an attempt to trace the intellectual, spiritual and mythological collective bond that makes Jewishness into a powerful identity.
Clearly, Jewishness is neither a racial nor an ethnic category. Though Jewish identity is racially and ethnically orientated, the Jewish people do not form a homogenous group. There is no racial or ethnic continuum. Jewishness may be seen by some as a continuation of Judaism. I would maintain that this is not necessarily the case either. Though Jewishness borrows some fundamental Judaic elements, Jewishness is not Judaism and it is even categorically different from Judaism. Furthermore, as we know, more than a few of those who proudly define themselves as Jews have very little knowledge of Judaism, many of them are atheists, non-religious and even overtly oppose Judaism or any other religion. Many of those Jews who happen to oppose Judaism happen to maintain their Jewish identity and to be extremely proud about it[2]. This opposition to Judaism obviously includes Zionism (at least the early version) but it also is the basis of much of Jewish socialist anti-Zionism.
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Though Holocaust religion didn't replace Judaism, it gave Jewishness a new meaning. It sets a modern Jewish narrative allocating the Jewish subject within a Jewish project. It allocates the Jew a central role within his own self-centred universe. The 'sufferer' and the 'innocent' are marching towards 'redemption' and 'empowerment'. God is obviously out of the game, he is fired, he has failed in his historic mission, he wasn't there to save the Jews. Within the new religion the Jew becomes 'the Jews' new God', it is all about the Jew who redeems himself.
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As we can see, the Holocaust functions as an ideological interface. It provides its follower with a logos. On the level of consciousness, it suggests a purely analytical vision of the past and present, yet, it doesn't stop just there, it also defines the struggle to come. It defines a vision of a Jewish future. Nevertheless, as a consequence it fills the Jewish subject's unconsciousness with the ultimate anxiety: the destruction of the 'I'.
Needless to say, a faith that stimulates the consciousness (Ideology) and steers the unconsciousness (Spirit) is a very good recipe for a winning religion. This structural bond of ideology and spirit is fundamental to the Judaic tradition. The bond between the legal clarity of the halacah (ideology) and the mysteriousness of Jehovah or even Kabala (spirit) makes Judaism into a totality, a universe in itself. Bolshevism, the mass movement rather than the political theory, is built upon the same structure, the lucidity of pseudo-scientific materialism together with the fear of the capitalistic appetite. Neoconservative's politics of fear is again all about locking the subject in the chasm between the alleged forensic lucidity of WMDs and the inexpressible fright of 'terror to come'.
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In a previous paper I have defined the notion of 'Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder' (Pre-TSD) [7]. Within the condition of the Pre-TSD, the stress is the outcome of a phantasmic imaginary episode set in the future, an event that has never taken place. Unlike the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, in which stress is realised as the direct reaction to an event that (may) have taken place in the past, within the state of Pre-TSD, the stress is formed as the outcome of an imaginary potential event. Within the Pre-TSD an illusion pre-empts the conditions in which the fantasy of future terror is shaping the present reality.
As it seems, the dialectic of fear dominates the Jewish existence as well as mindset far longer than we are ready to admit. Though fright is exploited politically by Jewish ethnic leaders since the early days of emancipation, the dialectic of fear is far older than modern Jewish history. In fact it is the heritage of the Tanach (the Hebrew Bible) that is there to set the Jew in a pre-traumatic state. It is the Hebrew Bible that sets a binary framework of Innocence/Suffering and Persecution/Empowerment. More particularly, the fear of Judeocide is entangled with Jewish spirit, culture and literature.
I would argue here that the Holocaust religion was there to transform the ancient Israelites into Jews.
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