Freedom and Exile
Hannah Arendt's final interview, 1973.
Dear friends,
This week we concluded our deep and illuminating communal study of Diaspora, led by our philosopher in residence, Dr. David Ponet, in which we read texts by Jean Amery, George Steiner, Edward Said and Hannah Arendt. Since we were eager to share some of what we picked up , I put some questions to Dr. Ponet on the topic, and I am glad to share his reflections with you.
MS: Thank you David, for such a great series. What did you learn from these past five weeks of dealing with the question of Diaspora?
DP: I learned so much on so many dimensions. 1) that studying with other people is an enriching experience that itself constitutes a powerful salve against the feeling of diaspora to the extent diaspora is something negative that one wants to mitigate. 2) It's an incredibly rich topic that touches on the core of what it means to be a human in the world and forces us to ask how we should or want to live in the world. 3) that diaspora has its gifts and challenges and that the experience of diaspora attaches to so many peoples 4) that one cannot be in diaspora without some sense of home. 5) that diaspora is not limited to being literally inside or outside the homeland. I could go on....
MS: We were all struck by the universalist beauty of Palestinian thinker, Edward Said's essay Reflections on Exile. Do you think the Jewish sense of exile is unique?
DP: Good question. I want to say there is a Jewish sense of exile. We are an ancient people with a long history of exile and of relating to the exilic condition. "Next year in Jerusalem ' strikes me as foundational. I'm wary of saying unique because I only know what I know and only know the traditions I know but there is certainly a distinctly Jewish obsession with exile. We are hardly the only exiles, but we have our unique story and tradition and practice.
MS: Like Said, Amery and Arendt were forced exiles. Amery survived Auschwitz, and Arendt a camp in France. When I read them I couldn't help but see the Jewish and Palestinian exile as mirroring realities.
DP: Of course there are differences in the historical accounts between Jews and Palestinians, but I think we do well to recognize how they mirror each other. Both Amery and Said are humanists. When Said talks about exile and Amery asks "How much home does a person need?" they are writing about the human condition. not the Jewish or Palestinian condition. Everyone needs some semblance of security, of trust in the world, some measure of home, in order to live.
MS: While we read a few thinkers, we kept coming back to Hannah Arendt. What's the pull so many of us have to her writing? Why is Arendt worth reading now?
DP: For so many reasons. Because she has insight into evil and its limitations. Because she lived through the worst forms of tyranny and totalitarianism and serves as a cogent warning to us about what we can do to avoid these freedom-destroying forces. Because in the darkness she finds light, reminds us that we can be free, that we can start new things, but that we must do this with other people, in concert with others, if we are to be free. Because when the world seems destined toward doom and gloom she rightfully asserts that the world of human affairs is a world defined by the emergence of infinitely improbable events - and that we may even be able to build a world that is habitable to humans.
MS: Arendt writes in What is Freedom:
"It is in the very nature of every new beginning
that it breaks into the world as an "infinite improbability," and yet
it is precisely this infinitely improbable which actually
constitutes the very texture of everything we call real. Our whole existence rests, after all, on a chain of miracles, as it were the coming into being of the earth, the development of organic life on it, the evolution of mankind out of the animal species."
Can you explain how her ideas on freedom relate to diaspora?
DP: Freedom for Arendt turns on action, making appearances in the public domain with others, performing and creating new things (enterprises, polities, alliances, communities, etc.). Public speech constitutes action for Arendt. The diaspora can be a place of profound possibility for freedom - where there is common space to act in concert with others and build something new. But diaspora is not one experience. It can also thwart any possibility for freedom if it's an exile that forces full retreat into the private or interior self. But similarly a homeland which cuts off the possibility of action, of natality, of beginning also stymies freedom.
MS: In that light Amery's question might shift from "how much home does a person need," to "How much is too much home?"
I hope we can find the balance between too much and not enough home, and maintain the freedom that allows us a sense of being at home in the universe. Thank you so much Dr. Ponet, and we look forward to your next chevrutah!
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
PS. if you'd like to read any of the essays mentioned above please reach out to Itamar. And a special thank you to Natalie Cohen for suggesting and helping us plan this chevrutah.
Rabbi Misha