On Land and Eretz Israel in Lévinas’s Thought Questions for Zionism

Abstract

Emmanuel Lévinas’s (1906-1996) philosophy, as a deontological system that seeks to accord primacy to ethics over metaphysics, makes it possible to philosophically reconsider some of the formative principles of Zionist consciousness in the Land of Israel. His mode of thought attempts to bring to Western philosophical deliberation Talmudic Jewish wisdom, its ethical principles, and its attitude and approach to the other.

Lévinas re-examines basic concepts that bear significance in a Zionist context, such as land, history, sanctity, and homeland. Part of Lévinas’s discussion of Zionism takes place through the re-examination of religious concepts, such as ‘the Holy Land’, ‘graves of the patriarchs’, ‘land of our ancestors’, while another part of the discussion occurs within European philosophical discourse, in response to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger.

This article attempts to outline Lévinas’s arguments, examining the philosophical way in which he chooses to employ Talmudic – and Jewish – concepts and arguments. The questions and themes to be explored: Eretz Israel as the Jewish people’s homeland, the sanctity and uniqueness of Eretz Israel, Utopia as a question, Eretz Israel as an ancestral homeland, the ethical question of the idea of conquest, and the metaphysical perception of Eretz Israel as the center of the world. We will pose the question: does the totality of these topics form a coherent stance that testifies to Lévinas’s attitude toward the Zionist idea?