The No-State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto

by Daniel Boyarin

A provocative manifesto, arguing for a new understanding of the Jews’ peoplehood
 
“A self-consciously radical statement that is both astute and joyous.”— Kirkus Reviews
 
Today there are two seemingly mutually exclusive notions of what “the Jews” either a religion or a nation/ethnicity. The widespread conception is that the Jews were formerly either a religious community in exile or a nation based on Jewish ethnicity. The latter position is commonly known as Zionism, and all articulations of a political theory of Zionism are taken to be variations of that view.
 
In this provocative book, based on his decades of study of the history of the Jews, Daniel Boyarin lays out the problematic aspects of this binary opposition and offers the outlines of a different—and very old—answer to the question of the identity of a diaspora nation. He aims to drive a wedge between the “nation” and the “state,” only very recently conjoined, and recover a robust sense of nationalism that does not involve sovereignty.

Genres: Judaism, Jewish, Politics, Nonfiction, Religion, Middle East, Israel

200 pages, Hardcover

Published January 31, 2023

About the author

Daniel Boyarin, Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture and rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. His books include A Radical Jew, Border Lines, and Socrates and the Fat Rabbis. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Reviews

[Eitan]

Book number two of this break that is aggressively relevant both to current events and also my Judaic studies course last semester.

From reading the preface I knew I wasn’t going to be fully on board with Boyarin’s argument, namely because he is a staunch anti-Zionist and I am not. However, wanting a good window into Diasporism and waiting to get my hands on the Magid book, I decided to go ahead. I was pleasantly surprised that there was a lot more that I liked that anticipated.

The Good:
Makes a very convincing argument for Talmud study!Same takeaway as People Love Dead Jews.

I like the idea of “the Jews” as a family being an option in the race vs. religion conversation.

The chapters arguing against Judaism as a race and Judaism as a religion, as well as the chapter about Judaite/Negritude were engaging. The relevance to my class on the political theology of the Jewish question was never louder than when Boyarin chose the exact same Fanon quotes in reading with Sartre as I did in my final paper.

The Not So Good:
A good chunk of the argument hinging on Boyarin’s essential glossing over of the significance of the land of Israel in Judaism and the Rabbinic tradition. He convincingly shows that the diaspora is not the big bad worst possible thing always ever, but he then goes a step further to essentially say the land of Israel doesn’t really matter at all, and he doesn’t back it up too well in my opinion.

I know he rightfully calls Kant an antisemite at the end, but when Boyarin says maybe we should accept Kant’s idea of the Jews in the second chapter when that text that he quoted laid the foundations for antisemitic German race science and denies the Jews a positive conception of faith, it really irks me.

The sort-of “gotcha” in the Zionism Without Israel chapter built on Shumsky falls a little flat- the distinction between a Jewish fully autonomous region within a large colonial empire versus a nation-state in a post-colonial region does not seem all too significant within the context of the argument of this book.

Finally, I am not so sure if Boyarin intended to provide a rationale for anti-Zionism other than being pro-Palestinian, but this book seems to completely the fact that Israel does in fact exist today, and it does not seem to meaningfully engage with the effect it would have on a positive construction of a “Diaspora Nation.” To completely take Israel out of the picture appears to be an argument of simply going back to the world before the birth of modern Zionism, and Boyarin completely ignores the global antisemitism that was its cause. He offers a practical step forward for a positive diasporic identity, but no practical steps forward for the actual state of Israel. Perhaps I would infer that it would be advocating for a single secular (maybe?) democratic state for Israelis and Palestinians, but I don’t remember him making the argument for this explicitly.

[EDIT: I am realizing now that what he does explicitly say he supports is the complete abolishing of nation-states, including but not limited to Israel.]

Also, the tone of this book was pretty academic with a flavor of casual author voice, including some wit. That wit was a bit annoying to me because it often tacitly built on something I disagreed with, but that’s neither here nor there.

I think, in the end, this manifesto provided me with some confidence the idea of a positive Jewish identity in the diaspora, but was not convincing in the full argument and its ramifications. I am looking forward to reading Magid’s book.

Footnote:
The relevance to my course Political Theology of the “Jewish Question”
Authors read:
Arendt, Du Bois, Dara Horn, Walzer, Wilderson
Specific texts by authors read:
Fanon, Sartre, Lapidot, Shumsky, Kant, Mufti, Rosenzweig, Paul (the apostle)

Also:
Adi Ophir

Footnote 2:
This is book number two that I read on my phone. Again not the best experience although convenient. Would have preferred a slim little paper copy.

[EDIT 2: Linking this review/critique I enjoyed and thought interesting: https://jewishcurrents.org/two-paths-...]

[Shira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another chapter on my quest to unlearn some of my reflexive Zionism...

My experience with this book was the inverse trajectory of Shaul Magid's The Necessity of Exile in that I was a little put off by some of the early material (the entire 'what is "the Jews"' with that phrase consistently in scare quotes I found disorienting and uncomfortable), but by page 75 was like "HELL YEAH no more nation states!"

Here are some things I flagged (removing the flags so I can return this book to the person who lent it to me):
* Read Herzl's "Altneuland"
* Negritude / Judeaitude concepts - Black Skin, White Masks by Fanon - "to see what can be learned from putting Jewishness and Blackness in conversation with each other"
* Rosenzweig - substitution of genealogy for compatriotism "enables a kind of eternality precisely because it enables existence without prior essence..."

[Marcy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a lot of mental masturbation that never really gets at the heart of what the title of his book indicates the author might explore. While there may be some interesting moments of philosophizing about what it means to be Jewish - is it a religion? a nation? - there is no political point to those questions. Given that he claims to be motivated by the then most recent Israeli massacre on Gaza, it seems quite odd that he doesn't engage with the repercussions of Jewish statehood.

[Fabienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boyarin’s attempt at grasping Jewish identity as a diaspora rather than linked to a territory is extremely relevant in light of the extreme violence of the zionist project (although Boyarin - despite being explicitly anti-Zionist - even goes as far as to say that early zionist writings have been (consciously) misinterpreted and appropriated into a territorial concept rather than as a diasporic notion. I cannot verify this). His suggestion for conceptualizing Jewish identity, drawing on Négritude and the Black radical tradition, Butler’s theory of performance, the immagined community by Flood, and the Islamic ‘Umma, amongst others, is what he calls a “Jewish Diaspora Nation”, a deterritorialized community. While an interesting approach, his concept of “nation”, something like a “people”, delenienated from a religion, culture or race, fell a bit flat for me, as I found it just as instable as the other constructs of identity he critiques. Nonetheless, a valuable work to read, one of the strengths of the book for me is his critique of what he calls disembodied multiculturalism. It’s a bit dense with a lot of reference to theory as well as Jewish thought, if working through the whole book is too much for you, reading the introduction already gives a pretty good scope of the book, or, there are also a couple of podcast episodes featuring Boyarin talking about the content of the book that also do the job.

[Esha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een pleidooi voor joods diasporanationalisme. Boyarin keert zich fel tegen kosmopolieten die particuliere identiteiten willen achterlaten in ruil voor een abstract en universeel soort wereldburger, maar universaliseert binnen zijn diaspora de vele joodse geschiedenissen, talen en culturen tot één wereldjodendom waarin een soort joods-engels de voertaal zou moeten zijn. Geen woord over kolonialisme, ook niet in zijn bespreking van vroeg zionisten, terwijl het vanaf de begindagen van het zionisme belangrijkste oorzaak van Palestijnse onteigening is. Maar serieus ingaan op kolonialisme zou leiden tot de constatering dat 'het joodse volk' ook een product is van Europese joden die onder diezelfde vermeende eenheid Arabische en Ethiopische joden assimileert, en helemaal niet zo verenigd is of hoeft te zijn. Juist de talmoedcentrische opvatting van Boyarin biedt geen ruimte voor Karaïeten of Ethiopische joden om deel uit te maken van de 'diaspora nation'. Al met al interessant maar een beetje losgezongen.

[Yanan Rahim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not perfect, but a truly insightful read.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

this man is my rebbe

[Benjamin Solidarity · Rating 3 out of 5]

While in general I'd recommend this work and agree with a lot of the ideas it is exploring on Jewish identity, even if the notion of a "Diasporic nation" seems a little forced. When the author adopted anti-Patrilineal Jew ideas without comment or exploration I was immediately insulted and turned off by him. Maybe that's a little petty of me but I am what I am. And I hate for such an interesting work to be soiled with such old bigotries. At the same time his discussion on Jewishness as a kinship built around a shared "performativity" in the Judith Butler sense gives a lot of opening for Patrilinial, Jews of Color, converts, and others, that he just doesn't explore properly. It's annoying the lost potential

[Elijah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book filled with love for self and for family. It starts with critiques of other perspectives on what “the Jews” is, but doesn’t dwell on them. It dwells on a positive, historically and culturally important vision of Jewishness. I hope more people who don’t feel confident about what it means to be Jewish in this day will read this and steel themselves to hold fast to what that means.

[Noam Weinreich · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit meandering to start, but so many valuable insights about the nature of Diaspora, Jewish collective existence, the nature of language, and an inspiring and provocative vision for a Jewish future.

[Leib Mitchell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Book review
The No-state Solution
0/5 stars
"With prose like this, who needs waterboarding?"
******
Even as short as this book was, I couldn't get more than 15 pages into it.

Books published on University labels tend to be intensely boring, and so I have a little bit more patience with them.

But every man has his limits.

The takeaway message that I get from this book is: Even though they seem to be different, academics and Kollel avreichem really are on opposite sides of the same circle.

Both are excellent examples of what happens when people retreat into a "labyrinth of textuality, such that reality does not exist for them anymore."

What we have here, of all possible things is an academic that teaches Gemara.

What could possibly go wrong?!?!

In the mind of somebody that studies Gemara for a living, everything is floating abstraction and anything could be true or false.

So, that explains how A Jewish Man could come to the mental state to write a book about a "no-state solution."

Right in the introduction the author starts out with the word "social construction" and he also mentions the postmodern dogma that "there are no biological races." (And it's just a coincidence that all of the lowest HDI countries are all black African and all of the lowest performing people in the United States are black.)

Another way to look at this topic (I'm still not sure what it is, 12 pages in) is that: That which is can be.

If the circumstances make it such that the State of Israel can exist, then one can reverse engineer the answer to "what is Jewishness?" (When circumstances were not right for Israel to be reestablished, then Jews were The Diaspora Nation; Now that the circumstances are fitting, they can be a nation-state. If circumstances change again, then they can go back to being A Diaspora Nation.)

So, what difference do ab initio definitions make?

And what are we supposed to do with sentences like this? ("[Christian supersessionism] as has been shown in various works of post-colonial criticism, deeply informs modern colonial ideologies of Eurocentric progressivism.")
******
Verdict: EMPHATICALLY NOT RECOMMENDED.

$25.63 I spent for this piece of crap.

And the best I can get as a buyback is about $6 - - not even enough to reach the $10 threshold for somebody to cut a PayPal deposit.

Vocabulary:

bruit

[Orest Mercator · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, this book started out really strong with moderate and insightful meditations on identity politics in the context of Judaism and Zionism, but it ultimately descends into a slightly ponderous consideration of too many different academic trends. Boyarin writes clearly, and his chapter have focus, but the whole does not fit together in the most obvious way -- making it hard to read this book casually and still piece everything together. His critique of cosmopolitanism (qua universalism) is compelling, and I share his distaste for some of Kwame Anthony Appiah's positions, but I find Boyarin less coherent in the wider-ranging discussions that occupy him as he tries to weave together three hundred years of critical theory.

Overarchingly, he insists that we not collapse Judaism into Zionism, providing historical and philosophical arguments to this effect. Helpfully, he situates these debates within the evolution of concepts of nationhood (which only attaches to territorial ownership and sovereignty in modern times). Less helpfully, he draws on a ton of sources to make that argument, making his claim feel a little too piecemeal. His categorical rejection of nationalism grounds his anti- or non-Zionism. Ultimately, he also argues that Herzl, Jabotinsky, and Ben-Gurion undermine conventional Judaism with a political Zionism that the religion (a category he takes issue with) does not sustain. Along the way, he provides an interesting picture of a Judaism as a tertium quid, between religion and race, nation and people, that can defend the merit of preserving Jewish heritage without that preservation weighting Jewish lives over others. He also argues that exile (galut) is not historically a negatively charged term in Hebrew and thinks that Jewish religious tradition can support a position of exile as a virtuous state of being.

Lastly, Boyarin makes provocative (but in my opinion underdeveloped) use of Heidegger's concept of thrownness (geworfenheit) to examine the condition of Jewish being as an unchosen identity. I need to reread to get clearer on what he's trying to say here, especially since he speaks of thrownness not with Heidegger (the term's architect), but with Heidegger's contemporary Franz Rosenzweig.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is trying to answer a very difficult question: are Jews a religion or are they an ethnicity/state? Written almost as a thesis, it presumes a knowledge of many who have written previously on this topic. It has a 10-page bibliography. It has 25 pages of notes, presented at the back of the text. Along with a difficult question, it is a difficult read. And in this perpetual state of war on the Israeli state, I am not able to push through this text. It feels like it should be able to be reduced to more accessible language but even the concluding chapter is tough.

[Serena Jampel · Rating 4 out of 5]

polemic but revelatory

[Gerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part of the answer to the identity politics question. Highly reccomended.

[Kea Cranko · Rating 4 out of 5]

any book reccs on diasporic futures / world building would be very welcome 💛

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disjointed and full of silly ideas dressed up in overly intellectual prose.

[Akshay Seetharam · Rating 3 out of 5]

an oddly convincing argument against cosmopolitanism