Jewish Diaspora and the Stakes of Nationalism: Margarete Susman's Theodicy

This article unpacks Margarete Susman's political and theological arguments at the core of her reading of the Book of Job. As I show through a reading of her oeuvre, Susman rejects political projects that she takes to be based on eschatology such as political Zionism. However, Susman should not...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Almog, Yaʿel 1970- (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: MDPI [2019]
Dans: Religions
Année: 2019, Volume: 10, Numéro: 2, Pages: 1-9
Sujets non-standardisés:B modern Jewish history
B German-Jewish history
B Margarete Susman
B Theodicy
B Zionism
B Diaspora
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Résumé:This article unpacks Margarete Susman's political and theological arguments at the core of her reading of the Book of Job. As I show through a reading of her oeuvre, Susman rejects political projects that she takes to be based on eschatology such as political Zionism. However, Susman should not be viewed merely as a critic of Zionism. I argue that an analysis tuned to the historical circumstances of her writing should recognize her stance on the nation-building project in Palestine as ambivalent rather than antagonistic. Susman's conception of the Jewish spirit as rooted in self-sacrifice allows her to appreciate the national aspirations at the core of the Zionist project while rejecting Zionism's exclusion of other Jewish national projects. I contend that Susman's understanding of Jewish messianism as immanent rather than teleological informs her ambivalence toward Zionism as well as her original vision of Jewish political action. I argue in closing that Susman's theodicy offers a novel vision for Jewish ethics that is not limited to the historical moment of its formulation. Susman's theodicy also resonates within contemporary debates on Jewish diaspora in providing a non-centralized vision of Jewish national projects.
ISSN:2077-1444
Contient:Enthalten in: Religions
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.3390/rel10020103