Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism

by Judith Butler

W jednym ze swoich esejów z „London Review of Books” Judith Butler pytała: „Co mamy zrobić z Żydami, którzy nie identyfikują się z Izraelem, a przynajmniej z izraelskim państwem?”. Książka Na rozdrożu: żydowskość i krytyka syjonizmu jest próbą odpowiedzi na to pytanie. Zarówno poszukiwaniem pozycji, z których Żydzi mogą krytykować politykę swojego państwa wobec Palestyny, jak i osobistym świadectwem autorki wypisania się z poparcia dla poczynań Izraela.
Równocześnie jest też czymś więcej. Zapisem uważnej lektury Emmanuela Levinasa, Waltera Benjamina i Hannah Arendt, angażującą dyskusją z Edwardem Saidem i Primo Levim, a także prezentacją, tego jak filozofia pozwala zrozumieć teraźniejszość i wyobrazić sobie przyszłość konfliktu izraelsko-palestyńskiego.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Judaism, Religion, Jewish, Theory

265 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2012

About the author

Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist and feminist philosopher who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy and ethics. They are currently a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.

Butler received their Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University in 1984, for a dissertation subsequently published as Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France. In the late-1980s they held several teaching and research appointments, and were involved in "post-structuralist" efforts within Western feminist theory to question the "presuppositional terms" of feminism.

Their research ranges from literary theory, modern philosophical fiction, feminist and sexuality studies, to 19th- and 20th-century European literature and philosophy, Kafka and loss, and mourning and war. Their most recent work focuses on Jewish philosophy and exploring pre- and post-Zionist criticisms of state violence.

Reviews

[Quin Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unorthodox approach to the Israel-Palestine "conflict" (better described as a colonial occupation), Butler draws from Jewish resources (conceived broadly) to establish grounds for a non-antisemitic critique of Zionism, and an anti-Zionist Judaism. Readers looking for an introduction to and/or history of the occupation might prefer to start elsewhere; this text is excellent, but it's not a primer to the situation.

Butler begins the text working with Levinas, moves on to Benjamin, and continues on through Arendt and Levi. She ends with Darwish and Said, two Palestinian thinkers who complement Butler's overall theme of drawing from the diasporic experience of both Jews and Palestinians to craft a future beyond Zionism.

This book is in many ways the capstone of Butler's oeuvre. One can find everything from her theories of gender (performativity, citationality, abjection) through her work on the (in)ability of the subject to fully account for itself and on the precarity of human life at play here. Moreover, many of the criticisms for which Butler has become infamous (that she is too hard to read, that she fails to give concrete examples, that one needs to have read an extensive list of texts before one can even begin to comprehend what she is saying) are largely absent from this book. Written in clear, if at times poetic, language, and grounded in concrete political struggles, this book de facto serves as a good introduction to some of the major works of Levinas, Benjamin, and Arendt. Butler works with the reader in a way that I have not noticed in her other work that I have read. To be sure, she is brilliant, and it really comes across here.

Centering the ethical, Parting Ways is an excellent resource in challenging Zionism and Israeli settler colonialism, and in imagining a binationalist, one-state for the region.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been on a kick of reading books by anti-zionist Jews, specifically ones criticizing the state of Israel. Parting Ways has been the hardest, most dense of the books I've read so far, but Butler refers a lot to other writers whose books I have read, which made it a little easier to understand. A big difference between myself and these writers, which I noticed while reading this book, is that they all broke from zionism, while I never agreed with zionism or considered myself a zionist. I don't know if this matters, but it piqued my interest. We all agree, though, that Judaism is not the same thing as zionism (which is obvious, based on the fact that there are more christian zionists in the US than there are Jews in the entire world).
Butler spends a good chunk of the book (at least the parts that I understood) talking about Jewishness and the other. For example, we can't choose who we live with. The nazis disagreed with this, as do supporters of Israel, but it's true; there are a lot of people in this world and we're going to be forced to have interaction with some people who aren't like us. There's no way around this. When you consider that there would be no Jew without the non-Jew, this makes total sense. How can we know who we are or what we stand for if we've gone out of our way to avoid anyone who isn't like us?
Butler published this book in 2012, when things were still fucked but not quite as much as they are now. She talks a lot about the false dichotomy of equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Since then countless laws have been passed to make it so most of the world thinks if you hate the genocidal maniacs running the state of Israel, clearly you hate all Jews. They've made it illegal to protest the genocide currently taking place. Shit, I don't know how many times I've been called a self-hating Jew because I think other Jews shouldn't erase an entire people. Because, like Butler, I believe that ““The idea that a forcible dispossession of others might rightfully compensate for having been forcibly dispossessed follows no legitimate ethical or legal line of reasoning.” So many people think that because the nazis tried to genocide the Jews, it gives the Jews the right to genocide Palestinians and anyone else who gets in their way. This is insane.
I don't think I learned much new about Martin Buber, and for the most part I agree with everything Butler says about him and his beliefs. She and I are also in total agreement over Hannah Arendt, but through this book I learned a lot more of why I should disregard almost everything I learned from Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt was racist against non-Europeans. She didn't like Muslims, nor did she feel the need to hide her awful comments about non-Ashkenazi Jews. I can still glean some good stuff from her words, but I won't be reading any more of them anytime soon. Butler also talks a lot about Primo Levi, an author who's fiction I had read and appreciated. Yet, I never knew he had very strong opinions against the founding of Israel. I will be reading more of his words.
Since there was a lot of this book that was over my head, I will let you know what feelings it provoked in me. It woke up my inner wandering Jew. When I first started traveling I would joke about being the reason why I was always moving. Now, though, I see it as connected to being against Israel. We are a diasporic, wandering people, and have been for thousands of years. Founding a “state” has not changed this, nor will killing anyone who disagrees with said state. There was another part of the book that hit home; that I can't really put into words, but still rings true to me. I've always been uncomfortable when I hear the Jews referred to as the “chosen people,” but I'd never thought about the fact that there are now a lot of Jews who don't even believe in god or the torah, but still believe they're chosen. How does that make any sense?
Butler shows that zionism is not the only way to be Jewish; in fact, it's not even a good way to do it. I agree with this and would add that zionism is the biggest cause for antisemitism. I finished this book feeling more grounded in the diaspora and that being Jewish doesn't require having a state or excluding everyone else. I am Jewish. Not wanting Israel to exist or thinking that I was chosen by god does not make me any more or less Jewish.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, excellent. Sharp, passionate. In short, one of Butler's most brilliant and essential works.

[shamaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Often incredibly insightful anti-Zionist critique drawing from histories of Jewish and Palestinian thought. Useful, focussed, relevant

[Ai Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly the best book Butler has written. The Arendt chapters are great, the Primo Levi chapter is powerful, and the Said chapter is incredible. (I'm sure if I understand Levinas and/or Benjamin, I'd like those chapters too.) Is it still Butler? Yes, with all the baggage of that. But it's the most ethically clear and cogent Butler I've read.

[Cami · Rating 2 out of 5]

I assume that Judith Butler accomplishes what they set out to do with these essays, but personally, I did not find them especially mind-blowing or insightful. I felt like I was wading through a bog of complicated words such as "chiasma," "cathected," and "prosopeia" only to derive a meaning that could have been explained in much simpler terms.

For example, I thought it was interesting to discuss the idea of faces and how looking at another person's face humanizes them yet simultaneously compels the viewer to turn away in shame at the thought of how their existence has hurt another person's. I thought that this "theory" presented a great opportunity to analyze how Palestinians are often rendered faceless as people deny their very existence and refuse to see how they are suffering at the hands of the state of Israel.

But the majority of these sections in "Parting Ways" were occupied with overly complicated notions of alterity that made my head spin to read each sentence. It was simultaneously too complicated and not deep enough, because when I finally understood "the point" of such sections, I felt underwhelmed. "Is that it?" I thought. "All those complicated words and circuitous sentences for such meager payoff?"

Perhaps my feelings stem from the fact that this book is outdated, with a new decade of history concerning Israel and Palestine that Judith Butler does not include in their analysis, because it hadn't happened at the time of their writing. "Parting Ways" may have been just what I needed, if I had been learning more about the Israel-Palestine conflict ten years ago.

I wonder if Butler's philosophical background is another barrier for me with regards to these essays. I took one (1) philosophy course in college and was quite annoyed by most of the texts that I read, feeling as though the philosophers in questions weren't hitting upon any truths and were "proving" things without a solid basis. I imagine that Judith Butler is doing a great job of philosophical critique; but if I'm not interested in the philosophy they're using as a base, then it's no wonder that I'm not getting as much out of their essays as another, more philosophically inclined reader might.

This is probably how non-English majors felt when I asked them to proofread my essays about literature—and it's worth noting that I felt most at ease during the final chapter, when Butler was analyzing a poem. I have been taught to recognize the value of analyzing poetry more than philosophical texts/theories, so many of Butler's analyses left me feeling confused and uninterested.

This is the third text that I've read about Israel and Palestine, and it is the last one I would recommend to people. It assumes a familiarity with the subject, making it unsuitable for those who know little about the conflict. It is definitely not an introductory text. But if you know most of the history of Palestine and Israel and want some philosophical theorizing about it, then this is certainly a good book for you.

[David]

In Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism Judith Butler makes the case that Judaism and Zionism represent vastly different world views. Butler's readers are more likely to be liberal and progressive secular Jews, but no doubt readers also include both political and religious Zionists. Because Butler does not address the Zionists directly, as Shaul Magid does in The Necessity of Exile, they may be scandalized by the critical studies approach drawing on a variety of Jewish scholars, postwar philosophers, German-Jewish thinkers, and Palestinian writers. Nevertheless, Butler addresses Jewish ethics as well as Zionism's use of state violence and its newfound messianism.

After Israel's 2008 Operation Cast Lead, Butler sought to debunk the claim that criticism of Israel is antisemitic, proposing that Judaism is in fact opposed to injustice, state violence, expulsion, dispossession; and that in all its traditions — secular, socialist and religious — Judaism is dedicated to social justice and social equality. And if that case could be made, "it would be a painful irony indeed if the Jewish struggle for social justice were itself cast as anti-Jewish."

Thus Butler sets out to show "that there are bona fide Jewish but imperative Jewish traditions that oppose state violence and modes of colonial expulsion and containment [,…] affirming a different Jewishness than the one in whose name the Israeli state claims to speak."

To do this Butler needs to show that resistance to Zionism is itself a Jewish value, that Zionism's illiberal exceptionalist lens must be replaced by a democratic universalist, and Jewish, lens. And, to overcome the objection that Zionism's violence is only reactive and not intrinsic, it must also be demonstrated that a critique of state violence, which Israel uses to repress Palestinians, is not only inherent in Jewish values but that Zionism is not inherent in Judaism or in Jewishness. It's a tall order.

Butler's main task, like Magid's, is to rescue Jewishness and Judaism from Zionism and to rescue Judaism from the grip of a Zionist framing:

"It continues to surprise me that many people believe that to claim one's Jewishness is to claim Zionism or believe that every person who attends a synagogue is necessarily Zionist. Equally concerning is the number of people who think they must now disavow Jewishness because they cannot accept the policies of the State of Israel. If Zionism continues to control the meaning of Jewishness, then there can be no Jewish critique of Israel and no acknowledgment of those of Jewish descent or formation who call into question the right of the State of Israel to speak for Jewish values or, indeed, the Jewish people. Although it is surely possible to derive certain principles of equality, justice, and cohabitation from Jewish resources, broadly construed, how can one do this without thereby making those very values Jewish and so effacing or devaluing other modes of valuation that belong to other religious and cultural traditions and practices?"

In deriving first principles from an ethical or religious tradition, Butler asks if Jewish sources can be reinterpreted anew and if non-Jewish sources can ever be used to illustrate Jewish values.

One would think that these arguments would depend on firmly establishing that even Jewish sources regard Zionism's qualities as alien to Judaism. And they do. But Jewish values such as cohabitation with the "other," equality, and justice can be applied universally. Jewish experiences, such as dispersion and exile, may have particularist but also universal meanings. Certainly both Jews and Palestinians have experienced both. Butler acknowledges that universal concepts may not always hold precisely the same meaning for all parties. Even Jews are famously heterogenous. Everyone, Butler argues, perhaps Jews especially, must contend with the notion of the "other," with alterity.

Ultimately, Butler elects "to depart from a[n entirely] Jewish-centered framework for thinking about the problem of Zionism and to locate Jewishness in the moment of its encounter with the non-Jewish, in the dispersing of the self that follows from that encounter." These encounters are far-ranging, and if one does not have a solid background (which I don’t) in critical theory they will find themselves treading water instead of swimming happily along. Nevertheless, Butler's book offers some useful framings to consider Zionism's hijacking of Judaism.

Butler begins their meditations with an insight from Edward Said, who noted that Moses the Egyptian, Judaism's founder, is recognizable as both a Jew and an Arab. The moment we begin to grapple with these opposing identities, we are engaging, in Butler's terms, with alterity. Said makes the point that the only thing that really distinguishes Moses as a Jew is receiving the tablets at Sinai. The two peoples he embodies have much more in common — chiefly, their refugee status, both in scripture and in the modern historical record.

Outwardly it's difficult to distinguish Mizrachi Jews from Arabs. It's hardly a surprise that Jews (including many Ashkenazim) and Arabs share much of the same DNA. Now, many centuries after Sinai, having joined a world of nation-states, the real difference between contemporary Israeli Jews and Palestinians boils down to who has the power to deploy violence against the other to maintain its claim of exclusive ownership of a contested piece of land.

While critical studies certainly have their challenges, they are also remarkably capable of identifying central issues. In Zionism's case it is institutional violence toward the “other.”

The weaponization of "alterity" and its counterpoint in the [non-militarized] idea of "cohabitation" are thus flip sides of a major theme of Butler's book, whose first two chapters largely focus on Emmanual Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Rashi's discussions of how Jews relate to non-Jews, and Walter Benjamin's critique of violence.

Butler demonstrates that Judaism itself, Jewish scholars like Levinas, and sages like Rashi have long grappled with the ethics of the "other." Contrary to Judaism, Zionism cannot see — in fact, refuses to recognize — the humanity of the "other," valuing only survival, relying on state violence and operating by the law of the jungle.

Although Butler themself does not quote Vladimir Jabotinsky's Iron Wall, this foundational document expresses Zionism's almost sociopathic "survival-over-morality" in terms that ought to make any religious scholar shudder:

"We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not. There is no other morality."

Zionism’s fundamental absence of morality was echoed recently in a statement by Israel's Kahanist National Security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir:

"My right, my wife’s right, my children’s right to travel on the roads of Judea and Samaria is more important than Arabs’ freedom of movement. Sorry, Mohammad, but that’s the reality, that’s the truth."

I had thought I was up to the challenge of reading Parting Ways because I had previously read several of the works of Hannah Arendt and Edward Said, which Butler uses as departure points. I thought I might be able to keep up. And even though I had also read the Kafka mentioned and Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, I had never read Benjamin's famously obscure meditation on violence, which also treats divine violence and wades into messianism. Despite a better than average chance of understanding Butler's many eclectic references, some of the chapters were still a very tough slog.

It pains me when Zionists claim that their beloved Apartheid state and the twisted, amoral ideology that undergirds it are central to Judaism. There may once have been a Kingdom of Israel (actually two, which only lasted 125 years) but that Israel is clearly not the same as today's ethno-state, despite the fantasies of Kahanists, hilltop setters and Christian Zionists.

So I don't mean to slam Butler's overall thesis at all, because I agree with it. But this slim volume makes something relatively straightforward unnecessarily complex. I also found the book physically painful to read because the font size is 8 or 9 points. There are far more approachable dissections of why Judaism and Zionism are not only completely separate but stand absolutely in opposition to one another.

We could start with the Talmud, for one. There is nothing in the Talmud's 63 tractates that describes the contemporary state of Israel now run by fascists, Kahanists, and religious lunatics. Look at the Talmud's laws of war to see how Israel has violated virtually every stricture. Or look to the pre-state Zionists for their objections to contemporary Zionism, discussed in Chapter 6 of Parting Ways.

Even before Israel's founding, many of the early Zionists like Albert Einstein, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, and Judah Magnes quickly distanced themselves from the ethnic cleansing and fascism that had become inevitabilities of Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism embraced at the 1942 Biltmore Zionist Conference. Their argument was that stealing from and murdering Arabs would create an unsustainable, racist state and violate every tenet of Jewish ethics.

And, really. How could Zionists have proceeded to steal an entire land from its indigenous people in spite of such easily-foreseen consequences? Because Zionism has no morality, no concern for the "other," no respect for universal values. Even after there was no longer a Nazi threat to Jewish life, Zionism continued on its trajectory of genocide and dispossession of Palestinians.

Today finding Jews critical of Zionism is not very difficult. There are hundreds of Jewish organizations, even some within Judaism itself, that are critical of Zionism. If you're looking for a contemporary, theoretical critique, check out the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, which numbers a respectable share of Jewish intellectuals. Visit https://criticalzionismstudies.org/ and their podcast.

In the final analysis, recognizing the differences between Judaism and Zionism requires no esoteric meditation. Zionism, with its attendant, even logically consequential, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and oppression, is diametrically opposed to Judaism's Tzedek, tzedek tirdof! (Justice, justice, shalt thou pursue!). And Zionism most surely contradicts Hillel's dictum: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the entire Torah, and the rest is its commentary."

[Christian Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book of essays that centers the diaspora in its critiques of Israel and effectively dismantles the logic behind the need for its brutal repression. Interestingly, in working within a Jewish framework, it gives many important (and at times, trangressive) readings on Levinas, Benjamin, Arendt, and Said. Here are some quotes that I liked:

"But I am holding out for a way of thinking and acting politically that does not presume that self-defense or self-destruction are the only two alternatives. Within such a closed dialectic, no thought is finally possible - and certainly no politics one can stand by" (93)

"If one fails to universalize the interdiction against destruction, then one pursues the destruction of the "Other" with the assumption that only through that destruction can one oneself survive" (119).

"...the Nazi genocide against the Jews is no longer remembered for itself, is no longer given its appropriate place as a traumatic and ungraspable loss. The sanctification of what she calls the Holocaust is actually its devaluation, since it exercises a continuing traumatic effect, even endorsing local political arguments with 'transcendental, inexpressible quality'" (240).

[RavenNoir]

Just started reading this out of curiosity, and at 10%; it's very dense, mentally chewy reading. The author is a professor at UC Berkeley, in this book attempting to separate criticism of Israel's policies and actions from actual anti-Semitism, and explaining why. Israel does not represent all Jewish people. Being published in 2012 this book may not be current but the points they make still seem relevant and valid.

So far, how I feel about this book's purpose is summed up well by another reviewer, "David:"

In the final analysis, recognizing the differences between Judaism and Zionism requires no esoteric meditation. Zionism, with its attendant, even logically consequential, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and oppression, is diametrically opposed to Judaism's Tzedek, tzedek tirdof! (Justice, justice, shalt thou pursue!). And Zionism most surely contradicts Hillel's dictum: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the entire Torah, and the rest is its commentary."

[bird · Rating 4 out of 5]

all this and no chapter weaving all the lit review threads together??? u might say, that's what the whole book was. but i wouldn't

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism Judith Butler makes the case that Judaism and Zionism represent vastly different world views. Butler's readers are more likely to be liberal and progressive secular Jews, but no doubt readers also include both political and religious Zionists. Because Butler does not address the Zionists directly, as Shaul Magid does in The Necessity of Exile, they may be scandalized by the critical studies approach drawing on a variety of Jewish scholars, postwar philosophers, German-Jewish thinkers, and Palestinian writers. Nevertheless, Butler addresses Jewish ethics as well as Zionism's use of state violence and its newfound messianism.

After Israel's 2008 Operation Cast Lead, Butler sought to debunk the claim that criticism of Israel is antisemitic, proposing that Judaism is in fact opposed to injustice, state violence, expulsion, dispossession; and that in all its traditions — secular, socialist and religious — Judaism is dedicated to social justice and social equality. And if that case could be made, "it would be a painful irony indeed if the Jewish struggle for social justice were itself cast as anti-Jewish."

Thus Butler sets out to show "that there are bona fide Jewish but imperative Jewish traditions that oppose state violence and modes of colonial expulsion and containment [,…] affirming a different Jewishness than the one in whose name the Israeli state claims to speak."

To do this Butler needs to show that resistance to Zionism is itself a Jewish value, that Zionism's illiberal exceptionalist lens must be replaced by a democratic universalist, and Jewish, lens. And, to overcome the objection that Zionism's violence is only reactive and not intrinsic, it must also be demonstrated that a critique of state violence, which Israel uses to repress Palestinians, is not only inherent in Jewish values but that Zionism is not inherent in Judaism or in Jewishness. It's a tall order.

Butler's main task, like Magid's, is to rescue Jewishness and Judaism from Zionism and to rescue Judaism from the grip of a Zionist framing:

"It continues to surprise me that many people believe that to claim one's Jewishness is to claim Zionism or believe that every person who attends a synagogue is necessarily Zionist. Equally concerning is the number of people who think they must now disavow Jewishness because they cannot accept the policies of the State of Israel. If Zionism continues to control the meaning of Jewishness, then there can be no Jewish critique of Israel and no acknowledgment of those of Jewish descent or formation who call into question the right of the State of Israel to speak for Jewish values or, indeed, the Jewish people. Although it is surely possible to derive certain principles of equality, justice, and cohabitation from Jewish resources, broadly construed, how can one do this without thereby making those very values Jewish and so effacing or devaluing other modes of valuation that belong to other religious and cultural traditions and practices?"

In deriving first principles from an ethical or religious tradition, Butler asks if Jewish sources can be reinterpreted anew and if non-Jewish sources can ever be used to illustrate Jewish values.

One would think that these arguments would depend on firmly establishing that even Jewish sources regard Zionism's qualities as alien to Judaism. And they do. But Jewish values such as cohabitation with the "other," equality, and justice can be applied universally. Jewish experiences, such as dispersion and exile, may have particularist but also universal meanings. Certainly both Jews and Palestinians have experienced both. Butler acknowledges that universal concepts may not always hold precisely the same meaning for all parties. Even Jews are famously heterogenous. Everyone, Butler argues, perhaps Jews especially, must contend with the notion of the "other," with alterity.

Ultimately, Butler elects "to depart from a[n entirely] Jewish-centered framework for thinking about the problem of Zionism and to locate Jewishness in the moment of its encounter with the non-Jewish, in the dispersing of the self that follows from that encounter." These encounters are far-ranging, and if one does not have a solid background (which I don’t) in critical theory they will find themselves treading water instead of swimming happily along. Nevertheless, Butler's book offers some useful framings to consider Zionism's hijacking of Judaism.

Butler begins their meditations with an insight from Edward Said, who noted that Moses the Egyptian, Judaism's founder, is recognizable as both a Jew and an Arab. The moment we begin to grapple with these opposing identities, we are engaging, in Butler's terms, with alterity. Said makes the point that the only thing that really distinguishes Moses as a Jew is receiving the tablets at Sinai. The two peoples he embodies have much more in common — chiefly, their refugee status, both in scripture and in the modern historical record.

Outwardly it's difficult to distinguish Mizrachi Jews from Arabs. It's hardly a surprise that Jews (including many Ashkenazim) and Arabs share much of the same DNA. Now, many centuries after Sinai, having joined a world of nation-states, the real difference between contemporary Israeli Jews and Palestinians boils down to who has the power to deploy violence against the other to maintain its claim of exclusive ownership of a contested piece of land.

While critical studies certainly have their challenges, they are also remarkably capable of identifying central issues. In Zionism's case it is institutional violence toward the “other.”

The weaponization of "alterity" and its counterpoint in the [non-militarized] idea of "cohabitation" are thus flip sides of a major theme of Butler's book, whose first two chapters largely focus on Emmanual Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Rashi's discussions of how Jews relate to non-Jews, and Walter Benjamin's critique of violence.

Butler demonstrates that Judaism itself, Jewish scholars like Levinas, and sages like Rashi have long grappled with the ethics of the "other." Contrary to Judaism, Zionism cannot see — in fact, refuses to recognize — the humanity of the "other," valuing only survival, relying on state violence and operating by the law of the jungle.

Although Butler themself does not quote Vladimir Jabotinsky's Iron Wall, this foundational document expresses Zionism's almost sociopathic "survival-over-morality" in terms that ought to make any religious scholar shudder:

"We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not. There is no other morality."

Zionism’s fundamental absence of morality was echoed recently in a statement by Israel's Kahanist National Security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir:

"My right, my wife’s right, my children’s right to travel on the roads of Judea and Samaria is more important than Arabs’ freedom of movement. Sorry, Mohammad, but that’s the reality, that’s the truth."

I had thought I was up to the challenge of reading Parting Ways because I had previously read several of the works of Hannah Arendt and Edward Said, which Butler uses as departure points. I thought I might be able to keep up. And even though I had also read the Kafka mentioned and Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, I had never read Benjamin's famously obscure meditation on violence, which also treats divine violence and wades into messianism. Despite a better than average chance of understanding Butler's many eclectic references, some of the chapters were still a very tough slog.

It pains me when Zionists claim that their beloved Apartheid state and the twisted, amoral ideology that undergirds it are central to Judaism. There may once have been a Kingdom of Israel (actually two, which only lasted 125 years) but that Israel is clearly not the same as today's ethno-state, despite the fantasies of Kahanists, hilltop setters and Christian Zionists.

So I don't mean to slam Butler's overall thesis at all, because I agree with it. But this slim volume makes something relatively straightforward unnecessarily complex. I also found the book physically painful to read because the font size is 8 or 9 points. There are far more approachable dissections of why Judaism and Zionism are not only completely separate but stand absolutely in opposition to one another.

We could start with the Talmud, for one. There is nothing in the Talmud's 63 tractates that describes the contemporary state of Israel now run by fascists, Kahanists, and religious lunatics. Look at the Talmud's laws of war to see how Israel has violated virtually every stricture. Or look to the pre-state Zionists for their objections to contemporary Zionism, discussed in Chapter 6 of Parting Ways.

Even before Israel's founding, many of the early Zionists like Albert Einstein, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, and Judah Magnes quickly distanced themselves from the ethnic cleansing and fascism that had become inevitabilities of Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism embraced at the 1942 Biltmore Zionist Conference. Their argument was that stealing from and murdering Arabs would create an unsustainable, racist state and violate every tenet of Jewish ethics.

And, really. How could Zionists have proceeded to steal an entire land from its indigenous people in spite of such easily-foreseen consequences? Because Zionism has no morality, no concern for the "other," no respect for universal values. Even after there was no longer a Nazi threat to Jewish life, Zionism continued on its trajectory of genocide and dispossession of Palestinians.

Today finding Jews critical of Zionism is not very difficult. There are hundreds of Jewish organizations, even some within Judaism itself, that are critical of Zionism. If you're looking for a contemporary, theoretical critique, check out the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, which numbers a respectable share of Jewish intellectuals. Visit https://criticalzionismstudies.org/ and their podcast.

In the final analysis, recognizing the differences between Judaism and Zionism requires no esoteric meditation. Zionism, with its attendant, even logically consequential, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and oppression, is diametrically opposed to Judaism's Tzedek, tzedek tirdof! (Justice, justice, shalt thou pursue!). And Zionism most surely contradicts Hillel's dictum: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the entire Torah, and the rest is its commentary."

[Eliza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review Written for Modern Jewish History Course on Nov 5 2023:

I read Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism by Judith Butler (they/them) in the midst of the most tangibly severe demolition of Palestinean lives and culture by the Israeli State since the 1948 Nakba. This review is being written as the destruction continues on after not ceasing for nearly a month. As I see it, the current catastrophe has pushed Jews to define themselves and their communities beyond Zionism, considering that attaching one’s Jewish identity to the state of Israel demands that Jews learn to justify the ongoing genocide under the guise of preservation of their community. At the time of reading this book, I felt desperate for a thoughtful, factual, and to the point distinction between Judaism and Zionism. While to some extent the highly philosophical nature of this book felt not currently salient in this urgent moment, in this review I work to understand its usefulness in the tradition of Jewish academic thought, and see Butler’s contribution here as helpful in shaping the critical thinking of Jewish scholars and their allies, providing a nuanced academic reconsideration of what is showing itself to be a prevalent yet uniformed narrative that critiquing Israel is to engage in Anti-Semitism. Especially as a Jewish scholar who is well renowned in their field of critical and comparative thought, Butler’s engagement with this topic will provide necessary insight, I think especially for those scholars who are critical of anti-Zionism on the grounds of standing for the Jewish community.
In Parting Ways, Butler questions the need for a Jewish ethnostate and engages with the past works of Jewish and Palestinean critics and historians to name the consequences of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and reimagine Jewish future beyond it, as it proves incongruent with the Jewish ethic defined in this book. In Butler’s first chapter, they approach the practice of political Zionism from an ethical point of view, presupposing that colonial occupation cannot be ethical (19). It is from this understanding that Butler initially criticizes the idea that to argue against Zionism (they define Zionism here as the belief in Israel’s right to exist) is to take a “genocidal position” against Jews (19). To escape the bind one finds themselves in in the desire to critique Israel, Butler proposes that instead of asking whether Israel is legitimate, we ask “what form of polity could be regarded as legitimate for lands that are currently inhabited by Jewish and Palestinian Israelis, and by Palestinians living under occupation, and are no longer inhabited by hundreds of thousands Palestinians who were dispossessed of their lands through a systematic and recurrent pattern of land confiscation that is part of the ongoing project of settler colonialism?” (19). Butler begins to think on this question from a point of view which they call “Jewish ethics”, responding to the fact that a significant number of anti-Zionist Jews have abandoned their Jewish identity to commit to anti-Zionism (they call this phenomenon a success of the State of Israel) (20). In their initial insistence that Jewish values align with an Anti-Zionist position (naming historical relations to social justice, history of genocide, mourning practices, and living in diaspora and consequent relationality to non-Jews as evidence) Butler comes to an eventual critique of this logic (21). They propose that an exclusively Jewish framework cannot provide a complete critique of Zionism, noting that other critics of Israel, especially Palestineans, provide incomparable testimony to the consequences of the State of Israel’s existence, and in considering this fact, Butler notes that an exclusively Jewish critique may decenter the experiences of those who are most harmed by its colonialism.
Interestingly, even in naming this fact, it is my opinion that Parting Ways is ultimately a critique concerned primarily with Jewish values. As expressed previously, I think Butler does address and convince a worthwhile audience with this Jewish focus, but I would have appreciated an explicit acknowledgment of their purposes here. For the purposes of this short review, and because I have not read the sources Butler engages with in the body of Parting Ways, I will not attempt to fully outline each scholar mentioned in this books philosophy, but give a general overview of each of their points that Butler seems to find important for rethinking cohabitation in answering to the aforementioned ethical concern.
Butler initially engages with Emmanuel Levinas, who’s Zionist philosophy is useful for Butler as he defines the Other and the tension that arrises in the will both to kill them and to preserve an ethical obligation of nonviolence when one sees their face (58). Butler learns from this relation to the other (which in this case is presumed to be the Palestinean) that rather than genuinely wanting peace, a person or group is held in the fear that comes of this tension in relating to the Other. Butler recognizes from Levina’s philosophy that a nation established on an Other’s land is constantly held in this disturbing tension. Butler notes here the nonequivalence of peace and equality in the cohabitative environment of Palestine/Israel.
Next, Butler engages Walter Benjamin to expand on this conclusion. Benjamin provides insight into the process of the justification of violence, and Butler follows specifically his definition of “mythic violence” in regards to Palestine/Israel. Mythic violence is defined as a law established without justification where subjects are first bound by law, and a legal framework to justify the law is consequently established (72). Judaism is addressed specifically here as Benjamin assesses the commandment ‘thou shalt not kill’, noting that the enforcement of Jewish law does not rely on punitiveness nor guilt (74). It is from this fact that he understands this commandment as opening an invitation to Jews to engage individually with the ethical question of killing (72). In this ethical consideration, then, Benjamin proposes that responsibility not to kill must arise from solidarity, autonomous motive, and exist without the necessity of legal punishment (87). Butler ascertains, then, that practicing a Jewish ethic is reliant on cohabitation that aligns with these values, departing from Levina’s ingenuine peace (99). Butler also invokes Benjamin’s thinking on memory to advocate for remembering which does not type people and events to tell one story, but allows fragments (106).
Butler then converses with Hannah Arendt to ask whether Judaism is Zionism. Arendt’s thinking considers the Jewish relationship with land and with place. Arendt is quoted in her response to both Assimilationist belief and Zionism, saying “‘... both arise out of a shared Jewish fear of admitting that there are and always have been divergent interests between Jews and segments of the people with whom they live’” (134). Seemingly more so than other scholars, Butler focuses on Arendt’s relation to religiosity. Butler introduces Arendt’s fear that a Jewish state will promote Jewish political exceptionalism and departure from a focus on God (137). Butler explains her thinking here, writing that Arendt claims that “our modes of belonging can never serve as the basis of our rights or obligations” (180). Despite finding usefulness in Arendt’s critique of inherent Jewish deservingness of Palestine, Butler finds a gap in her thinking, prompting more discussion from Butler on how this philosophy is challenged by the reality of cohabitation elsewhere.
Butler starts to conclude with Primo Levi, who guides them to return to an analysis of the weaponization of the Shoah in response to critiques of Israel, once again clearly differentiating between Judaism and Zionism. In their discussion of Levi, they make clear his resistance toward comparing the Holocaust with Israel’s genocide, noting that he asserts that the difference is in the fact that the State of Israel doesn’t wish to exterminate Palestineans. With the growing evidence that civilian deaths are not being adequately prevented by Israel, I wonder if Levi’s position might change.
Butler also brings in Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish in their final chapter, reasserting the contradictory character of Zionism and it’s inability to reckon with the binationalism that Butler comes to advocate for. It’s important here to note that by advocating for binationalism, Butler does not advocate for a two state solution. Rather, they advocate for a Jewish life that, in accordance with what is previously delineated as a Jewish ethic, exists in genuinely (not state mandated) peaceful concurrence with other groups. From my reading, Butler does not explicitly call for the de-occupation of Palestine in their thinking about a binational future and critique of Zionism, but especially as the current situation continues, a cohabitation in Palestine/Israel that is in accordance with Butler’s established ethics appears impossible. In my view, and in Butler’s, apparently, Israel cannot use the preservation of Jewish community as a justification to continue to occupy Palestinean land with a clear conscious. In Butler’s words, “[Israel] must continually seek to cover over the gap that exists permanently between its claim to be a Jewish state and its struggle to maintain demographic advantage because it is not a Jewish state” (213).

[monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

nobody who needs to read this will read it. but they should!

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the escalation in Occupied Palestine this past May 2021, I was in a Vienna library and this just kind of leapt off the shelf at me. I've never read Butler before, and always thought the Palestine stuff would be sort of obvious to me... I wanted to read Gender Trouble first... but suddenly it seemed like a priority. I was anticipating a lot of nasty online arguments with friends and family but the social media experience was completely different than it was in 2014. You must have noticed as well.

I was looking forward to revisiting cats like Walter Benjamin and some of the other people Butler examines here. Years ago, I read that Michael Löwy book Redemption And Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought In Central Europe: A Study In Elective Affinity, but I didn't remember anybody's stances towards Palestine, really, except for Buber and Scholem who were already living there before the catastrophe. Walter Benjamin is as cool in Butler's retelling as I remember him, but I did not know that Levinas was such a jerk... ready to throw his whole post-Holocaust ethical project out the window when it comes to Palestine.

Hannah Arendt takes up a lot of space here as well, and not having read her yet it's hard for me to judge if Arendt was confused, or if Butler is confused, but I am definitely confused. The last two essays are the best, one about Primo Levi who comes across as so freakin' right on it hurts. I've never read his real Shoah stuff, just "lighter" fare like The Monkey's Wrench. Turns out he was very pro-Palestine.

Edward Said bookends the set. Butler is mainly interested in his book about Moses, and some statements he made about exile and diaspora and building a new multi-national state with the shared experience of exile at its heart. Sounds lovely. I'm a bit confused about framing Moses as an Arab, though. Surely the Copts are the indigenous Egyptians, not the Arabs? But when you're spinning academic metaphor webs why nitpick about it? As KRS-1 taught me, "Moses passed as the Pharaoh's grandson... so he must have looked just like him..." After 1300 years of Islam, "who is an Arab" gets as tricky as "who is a Jew." Still, Butler glosses over the Arab conquest of Egypt, or maybe Said does... I don't know.

I don't think Butler even comes close to answering her own question, about whether it's possible to have a Jewish state given Jewish ethics. It's too hard to define Jewish ethics... I mean... it's not that easy to define "Jewish." Butler keeps reminding us that even though they're looking at a gang of Central European thinkers, there are Sephardim and Mizrahim and lots of other kinds of Jews and ways to be Jewish. Still, if they'd just stuck with Hillel and Maimonides and cats like that, we might have come closer to a real answer, and if I had to bet, the answer would be "No." You can't just plop your state in the middle of somebody else's home. To suddenly claim that Galut is over... is not Jewish. Butler, and I'm sure it's not for lack of courage, just never really says that in stark black-and-white like that. But it's obvious that's what they're thinking. If you comment on this review, please be respectful.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

“If the narration proves not to be fully tellable, would that be a Nazi success story? Or can we safeguard the fallibility in and of narrative for another purpose? Is there a way to consider the fallibility of narrative, its very breakdown, as the evidentiary trace of trauma itself?
Although the book starts with a strong claim about the Nazis seeking to destroy memory, to render the future witness impossible, it turns within a few pages to the problems that obstruct a simple reconstruction of memory. Calling memory a "suspect source" (DS, 34), especially the memory of suffering, he notes first that the memory of suffering has a way of "crystallizing" as story. This crystallized story then takes on a life of its own. And further, the memory, in being told and crystallized in this way in turn begins to restructure memory itself.

Indeed, the telling of the story performs a crystallization of that memory of suffering that transforms memory such that some of the original memory is lost. Thus the story takes on a life that comes at the expense of the memory itself.

Paradoxically and painfully, the story can actually become the means by which the original suffering becomes lost to memory. Here is Levi's language: "a memory invoked too often, and expressed in the form of a story, tends to become fixed in stereotype, in a form tested by experience crystallized, perfected, adorned, installing itself in the place of the raw memory and growing at its expense" (DS, 24).

The idea is, of course, frightening that the more such a story is told, the more it crystallizes, the more we lose the memory of suffering that prompts the story. And though Levi resists the consequences of this insight, he is truthful enough to articulate it anyway. We might consider that what Levi fears, and also what he knows to be partially true, is that there can be a loss of the loss itself and that this can be the result of the story we tell. Of course, the story is told in order to make sure that the Nazi project does not achieve the goal of destroying evidence, and it is told precisely against the revisionists who would question the very facts of the extermination camps. The story is there to establish evidence, to acknowledge that there was an enormous, if not unfathomable, loss of life, and to provide the explicit recognition of loss that mourning requires. But if the story makes more remote the memory of suffering and loss, then the story might be said to institute a kind of melancholia in which the suffering and loss are denied. The story threatens to substitute for the events it relays, and crystallization is the means of that substitution. The substitution comes at the cost of the event, and so it would seem that a certain strict accountability applies: the story is purchased at the expense of the event itself, just as the life of the survivor is understood to come at the expense of the dead.

That crystallization, however, is not strictly responsible for the loss of the referent. The unbearability of loss and guilt gnaws at the referential capacity of language. But it would also have to be said, along with White, that the "moral charge that inspires the form" is part of the objective reality to be relayed (FR,122). If referentiality is still troubled, this has to do with the difficulty of remembering or recalling that suffering, a difficulty that afflicts the very capacity to retain a form for memory. Levi points out that "many survivors of wars or other complex and traumatic experiences tend unconsciously to filter their memory....
They dwell on moments of respite.... The most painful episodes ... lose their contours" (DS, 32). He refers earlier to this loss of contour in the context of those who recite their memories, substituting descriptions for memories and moving from bad faith to good faith. Of those who seek to substitute a description for a memory, he writes that "the distinction between true and false progressively loses its contours, and man ends up fully believing the story he has told so many times and continues to tell" (DS, 27). This situation starts as a moral failure, although it becomes a form of self-deception sustained by no explicit intention to falsify. But then, in the next paragraph, he suggests that this capacity of the story to substitute for memory may well happen as "events fade into the past.» Under such conditions, "the construction of convenient truth grows and is perfected" (DS, 27).

It is only pages later that he returns to this problem to suggest that it may well be the painfulness of the memory itself that prompts the story form that ends up taking its place. At this point, the story emerges briefly, no longer as a sign of moral failure, but rather one of trauma. The trauma works to undo the painful memory as a bounded event, and, in crystallizing the memory, the story offers relief from precisely this traumatic encounter. It seems worth considering that the story works in tandem with a certain forgetfulness, a forgetfulness that is actually needed for survival. The story, which seeks to establish evidence of suffering on the basis of memory, crystallizes suffering, inducing a forgetfulness that helps the teller survive. It would seem that the requirements of survival sometimes work against the requirements to provide evidence. The story does not return to the original memory, but helps to vanquish it, and though Levi believes that the original memory, preserved, will lend veracity to his telling, his telling is also in the service of his surviving and so must act upon that memory, alleviate its traumatic effect, and even take its place. What is communicated as a result is the effect that trauma has on storytelling, and this written reflection that worries whether the story will be rooted in reality communicates precisely this reality of a trauma that unsettles the conventional function of the story.”

[Benjamin Siegel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five stars for idea; two stars for clarity for those of us outside the philosophy guild.

[Yassir Morsi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Butler examines Jewish identity, ethics, and the politics surrounding Zionism. Butler engages deeply with the works of intellectuals like Hannah Arendt, Edward Said, Walter Benjamin, and Primo Levi to challenge the notion that Jewish identity must be tethered to the nation-state model, specifically the state of Israel.

The best chapter for me highlighted the contradiction in Levinas's use of face (of the other) and how the real-life living Palestinian, in many ways, thwarted the abstractions of high philosophy

While Levinas promotes an ethics of "infinite responsibility" toward the Other, Butler questions why this responsibility seems to halt when it comes to Palestinians, whom Levinas treats as political rather than ethical subjects. Reading this while a genocide unfolds in Gaza against Palestinians, Butler’s critique powerfully underscores how Palestinians, indefinitely, are denied claims of universal ethical consideration. This suspension serves as a metaphor for the current erosion of human rights and international law, as Palestinian lives and rights are placed in a state of perpetual exception, excluded from the universal ethical responsibility that Levinas otherwise advocates on paper, but not in life.

That said, the book mostly questions the alignment of Jewish values with state-centred nationalism and territorial sovereignty, which often result in exclusionary and violent practices, particularly against Palestinians. Butler's exploration is structured around exile, plurality, and cohabitation, presenting a model of Jewish identity rooted in "diasporic ethics" rather than territorial claims. She contends that Jewishness, understood through these ethical frameworks, offers a vision of coexistence and justice that contrasts with Zionism’s nationalism.

Through her interpretation of Benjamin’s messianic politics and Arendt’s critique of sovereignty, Butler also suggests that Judaism holds the potential to foster a universal ethic of responsibility and plurality, countering state-driven violence.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was an immensely difficult and dense read... Butler is an amazing scholar, thinker, resistor, and human being... that said, this book really challenges you to stay with her point, that being the critique of Zionism as it relates to Israel (the state), Jews, Jewishness, and history... i found some chapters well nigh uber-theoreticcal and almost too philosophical or referential (she considers many thinkers in these pages) to follow effectively... other chapters are less "who is the I that can make the claims I make" and thus more understandable... still, her points, when made and not just considered, all made well... this is not a book for the faint-hearted or beginner or one unfamiliar with Butler, at least, if not various other thinkers (Benjamin is referenced often, and i have read him and always struggled to stay with his dreamy musings, if not his theoretical postulations)...

[Benja · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly, this was a very challenging read! I wish I had gone through it with a buddy, or group, or in a class. I think that I probably missed a lot because I am not as familiar with philosophy and the authors with whom this book engages. This did make me want to pick up some of those texts though. Overall, I think I was able to get something from this piece but will probably have to re-read for maximum impact.

[Vera Naamani]

Read for school, doesn’t necessarily reflect my own views.

[Doctor Science]

Very dense, had to go back before I'd read much.

[Cael Crosby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great political analysis. It’s really dense, but has so much great information about Judaism and Zionism. As always, Bulter is extremely forward thinking and insightful.

[Iris Core · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite book by Butler, simply a masterclass of political philosophy

[Stanimir · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Parting Ways, Judith Butler offers a provocative and deeply ethical critique of political Zionism, articulating a vision for cohabitation in Israel/Palestine grounded in Jewish intellectual history yet resistant to any exclusivist claims to it. Drawing from thinkers such as Edward Said, Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Primo Levi, and Mahmoud Darwish, Butler challenges the notion that critiques of state violence must be articulated solely through a Jewish lens. Instead, they argue for an ethical universalism rooted in historical Jewish experiences, particularly exile, responsibility, and cohabitation.

Butler is especially critical of the demographic logic underpinning the modern state of Israel. They contend that no democratic polity should seek to secure itself through ethnic or religious majoritarianism—a stance that directly opposes both classical Zionist thought and certain interpretations of Levinas. Yet, Butler does not abandon Levinas entirely; they reclaim his ethics of responsibility to the Other, extending it toward a radically inclusive, binational framework.

At the heart of Parting Ways is a call to dismantle settler colonial paradigms and imagine a shared future—one not based on partition or domination, but on mutual recognition, discomfort, and complex forms of cohabitation. This is not an appeal to simplistic multiculturalism, but rather a nuanced plea for a new, post-national polity built on the shared scars of dispossession and the ethical imperative to live together otherwise.

Butler’s work is as philosophically rigorous as it is politically courageous. Parting Ways does not offer easy solutions but insists on the moral necessity of rethinking identity, sovereignty, and coexistence from the ground up.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

After really enjoying Butler's op eds on the Israel/Palestine conflict, I thought I'd give this book a go. I have found more joy in reading the original theorists they cite. Her writing is so full of philosophical postulates and so devoid of facts that I just can't get into it. I rarely give up on books, but I think my time would be better spent elsewhere.

[Mills College Library]

320.54095 B9859 2014