The Dark Side of Platonism (Column 239)

With God’s help

In quite a few comments that appeared following the previous column, I was asked what is wrong with inserting metaphysical considerations into decision-making and the formation of ideologies in the real world, at least when there is no concern about their reliability. In my reply I wrote that this can be understood as a safeguard whose purpose is to prevent mistaken conclusions that might mislead us, but I added that my feeling is that there is something problematic in the very insertion itself, even without the fear of error. In this column, which was not planned in advance, I want to demonstrate that kind of problem. These matters are also connected, in one way or another, to the upcoming elections—may they be for the good (and may they multiply)—which will be upon us very soon indeed. Therefore my prayer is spread out that our elections may multiply like the seeds of a pomegranate, and that in the election after next, a few months from now, with God’s help, additional topics for discussion will sprout, and thus analysis will increase and knowledge will abound, as the waters cover the sea (as water covers the sea).

The Noam Party’s “love of the Jewish people”

The Noam Party, founded not long ago, has provoked very harsh reactions (see one example among many in Shmuel Faust here), and not without reason. This time it is coming even from unexpected quarters, from moderate and tolerant people, even from Hardal circles and various rabbis, and it seems that this is because this time the cat is out of the bag. The instinct for moderation and respect toward rivals, especially rabbis, is no longer strong enough in the face of the torrent of hatred, slander, and filth that comes out of there. The propaganda of this cult usually drips with honey and is wrapped in a sticky veneer of love of the Jewish people; this time it produced from within itself an impressive heap of filth and placed it before our astonished eyes in the public square.

I will not go through, like a peddler, all the revolting pearls that these people have brought into the world (and darkened it) in the current round. I will make do with just one of them, namely this video (recommended viewing before you continue reading). This charming, heartwarming little video places LGBT people and Reform Jews in one camp with the Nazis, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Hamas, and the rest of our persecutors. Nor is this any surprise, since the goal of all of them—that is, of the ultimate “they” (this is the key word in the video)—is one and the same: the annihilation of Israel and the name of Israel from the face of the earth. It is that same “they” that appears throughout history in different incarnations, but make no mistake: it is always the same one (or “they”).

It is important for me to clarify that I have no problem with the style, and not even with the comparison to the Nazis, so long as it is made with context and logic (I oppose the instinctive outcry against this expression, including the various Godwin’s laws). Suppose they had said something like our Sages, who compared Laban to Pharaoh because both sought to destroy everything; that is, if they had said that all these people will bring about the destruction of the Jewish people. That is a grave and harsh statement (and also untrue), but in my eyes it is legitimate. There is a factual claim here, and it can be examined on its merits. But in the vile video mentioned above there is something far graver. The claim there is not that these groups will bring about the destruction of the Jewish people, but that this is precisely what they have intended all along to do. In other words, this is a deliberate and orchestrated move. That is what “they” are planning, and when one route does not work for “them,” “they” try another. The Reform movement is an incarnation of Hitler and Nasser, and apparently all of these are the long arm of the LGBT people (= demons from the impure side of the world of Atzilut).

This is only one video, but this house of study (?) has produced and continues to produce from beneath its feet, like the appearance of sapphire brickwork (as it were, like sapphire pavement), more such pearls and sapphires even before the age of “Noam,” though this certainly surpasses everything that preceded it. So one may add to the list of incarnations of the dreadful “they” also the Women of the Wall, female soldiers (= the “girl-bochurs”), women singers, the Ministry of Education, Bennett and Shaked (including “Rabbi Rafi,” who is actually a good fellow, but was seized by a demon that caused him to fund Reform Jews and LGBT people), the army, not to mention the left-wing parties, Heaven forfend, and certainly biblical critics (the people of “Tanakh at Eye Level”) and Talmud critics (the adherents of the “layers” approach), God forbid for us and for you, and really academia in general, and all the other haters of Israel throughout the generations and across the globe (including, of course, the “haters” as against the “terrorists”), from outside and from within. The claim that actually appears right in the text (and not only in the subtext) is that all of these are partners in a well-orchestrated plot whose deliberate aim is the destruction of the Torah and of the Jewish people. Moreover, all of them are nothing but incarnations of that same demon, whose name in Israel shall be “they” (yikes!!), who has risen against us in every generation (that rises against us in every generation). Truly the protocols of the elders of “they.”

Who are these “they” who keep returning to the stage of history time after time, from Laban the Aramean through Pharaoh and Hitler to Reform Jews, the Women of the Wall, LGBT people, and female soldiers—may their name and oil be erased? The video offers no explanation at all. But the viewer surely knows, for all our persecutors are just different incarnations of that mysterious “they.” The demon that drives hatred of Israel (including the self-hatred of Reform Jews and LGBT people, of course) is none other than Esau’s heavenly patron, Khamenei, and Angela Merkel.

So much for their “love of the Jewish people.” Below I will discuss their love of the Jewish people—without quotation marks.

“They say there is wickedness in the world”

Perhaps you will be surprised, but for my own part I am not inclined to believe in the existence of wicked people. Despite my critical bent, and despite the heated and unequivocal battles that I wage here with the whole world and his wife, I almost cannot imagine a truly wicked person—that is, a person who acts deliberately in order to do harm. Perhaps some low murderer or serial abuser might be such a person, but in my estimation even such people often have mitigating circumstances and motives other than simply causing evil. Someone who acts with the goal of doing harm is a kind of psychopath. As I understand it, a normal person does not do such things. In most cases people act because they believe in certain values and try to advance them. Sometimes they lie, at times they choose crooked and problematic means, sometimes they fall into the net of the evil inclination (another demon), and sometimes even their values themselves are warped. But I cannot see someone whose purpose is to destroy and to do harm for the sake of evil alone. A person who chooses evil in order to do evil, full stop. In this sense, even Hitler, who serves in this video as the archetype of evil (and therefore all incarnations of “they,” may their name be blotted out, are compared to him), is hard for me to imagine as someone who came merely to do harm. It seems to me that even he perhaps believed that what he was doing was justified.

But the members of this holy cult present all their opponents as belonging to the demon “they” (I think this is a cousin of “Shaya,” that demon from Bava Kamma who is responsible for the second law of thermodynamics—that is, the crumbling of uninhabited houses), which is reincarnated each time in another person or group. All of them act by its power in order to destroy the Jewish people and remove them from the stage of history. Now all that remains is to pass the law authorizing justice against “them” and their helpers.

Paraphrasing the poet, I would say here: They say there is wickedness in the world; what is wickedness?…

Two kinds of criticism

Regarding the phenomenon of Noam, one can find two kinds of criticism (it seems to me they are roughly equal in intensity): criticism of the content (such as the one I cited from Shmuel Faust, along with many others), and criticism of the conduct, consistency, and common sense. In the second context it is interesting to note Avishai Grinzaig’s Facebook post (fondly remembered from the beginning of my Column 74), which criticizes this party for its divisiveness and lack of logic in its conduct even by its own lights (it is worth noticing that at least implicitly he agrees with their content and ideology). Many have already remarked on their strange conduct, even if one accepts their Hardal worldview. It is not clear what exactly they want to achieve, or whether in their view and according to their own approach there will be any benefits at all from their move, or whether it will bring only damage to their own ideas (which from my perspective would of course be wonderfully welcome). On the face of it, they seem to be looking only for a fight and not to advance anything. For some reason they just feel like beating the living daylights out of the world, and that’s it (I must say this is a feeling I can easily identify with J).

All of these are technical questions that mainly reflect a lack of common sense, and as is known, looking for common sense among those guys is like looking for seals in Dimona. The main problem in the propaganda and products of this bizarre cult is the content, not the purist and irrational conduct and the lack of common sense. But I will not deal with all that here. In this column I intend to use the love of the Jewish people (or the “love of the Jewish people”) of these people to illustrate the meanings of a Platonic approach to life and to human beings. It seems to me that the strange phenomenon of the Noam Party is an excellent concrete example of this.

I should note that in a certain sense this column is a continuation of its predecessor, since here too we will encounter the tendency to examine reality through the subtexts and demons that supposedly stand behind it, instead of relating to reality itself. To my taste, this will offer an explanation of the question with which I opened here: why such a way of looking is problematic.

Love of the Jewish people in the Noam Party

Above we saw sublime expressions of the “love of the Jewish people” and of “love of humanity” in general from the school of the Noam Party. But in the statements of this cult there are also expressions that really do convey love, at least in formulation. In many cases they are interwoven with a somewhat childish condescension, a combination I find very amusing, mainly because it comes from a cult whose understanding of reality, and whose ability for self-criticism and ideological and intellectual analysis—at least when we move beyond Talmudic pilpul (and even there I am not yet convinced about all of them)—are paddling in very shallow waters. But do not worry; these exalted and righteous creatures love me and you as well. They are above childish and personal hatreds. They are soaked in love for everyone who bears the name Israel. Want proof? Here it comes.

Yesterday someone sent me a stirring poem written by three rabbis (I am sure you can guess which of the three was the poet. His name is being withheld by the system) in honor of the Noam Party. I hope that by publishing it here I am not violating copyright. But it seems to me that where classics such as this are concerned, there is room to be lenient (if only for the sake of preserving this intellectual and spiritual asset for future generations):

My people, I love you I melt with delight when I think of you I love each and every one of your children every Jew whether he is like me or different from me every Jewish woman and every Jewish man. My brother, I would hug you, so I embrace your soul. Even if you are secular I love you Even if you behave strangely I love you. For a moment I forget what your deeds are and I think of only one thing: you. Of course, it pains me that you are walking a foreign path but that does not prevent me from loving you. I simply forget for a moment actually, I forget forever. So I have a gift for you a wonderful gift For a long time I have been wondering whether it will find favor in your eyes and in the end I decided: yes, this is for you. I have a gift for you: a party a party fresh out of the package a party that did not exist until now a party so pleasant of people so pleasant who all love you like me. I know them they are full of Noam. They love you they want what is good for you so they left their important affairs, for your sake.

They do not chase honor, or money or power they pursue only one thing to do good for you. They care about you they are afraid, for your sake so they sound an alarm bell it is a little jarring it throbs a little but it comes from love. My people, I am afraid for you that you will drift away I am afraid that you will lose the happiness of family for family is a father and a mother, and that is the family that builds our people. I am troubled, I cry. My people, you keep me awake at night because of the erasure of ideals called postmodernism. I know that deep inside you are in love with ideals only they confuse you. I, in my lowliness, a disciple of Rabbi Kook believe in you as always believe in the state as always believe in revival as always believe that all humanity will be filled with knowledge, as always. And therefore I call to you: Rise, awaken. My friend, my companion, my brother, my people, I love you and want things to be good for you and even better. My people, my people your condition is good; blessed are you. And I want it to be even better. My beloved people my people, my people.   Signed: Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, Rabbi Mordechai Sternberg, Rabbi A. Yehoshua Zuckerman.

Well then, who can still cast doubt on the sublime love that this holy fraternity feels toward every Jew?! At this stage I cannot restrain myself, and I refer readers to two good responses that were sent to me about this poem:

Hagai Mesgav (from his Facebook page):   My people, they fooled you a bit about this business of chosenness My people, that’s not exactly how it is, and you’re not all that smart, beg pardon And in general, let us do your thinking for you, you’re in the negative Your values aren’t much, just a disgusting culture And of course now we shall immediately quote Rabbi Kook and his holy disciples above From Orot, of course. Not from Shemoneh Kevatzim, Heaven forbid Who published them at all—that is indeed a question And who wrote them—that is the greater question So, my people, sit aside, drink something, we’re on the wagon with the whip in hand and the staff of chastisers. And there is no question We are here, answering everything with a complete and excellent answer And there are no doubts and no deviations and no questioning and no slander For we are the normal ones here, and all the rest is blah-blah Close your eyes and come after us, toward the rising sun And if it seems to you that this is really the abyss below that is only because, as we already told you, they fooled you about this business of chosenness

Amalia Shinewald (private. Published with her permission):   **TL;DR: This is long and it concerns a public matter. I don’t like to write about politics, certainly not at times like these when everything is dripping with slime, but I simply don’t have the strength to keep quiet now, and it hurts me very, very much.**   Rabbi Shlomo Aviner published a poem today. I don’t have the strength to give him traffic, and it is long to a degree that is terrifying, but I will shorten it and put it into rhyme (clarification: this is my version! only loosely based on the original) for the lucky people who haven’t read it:…   And it reminded me of how, in “Tales of the City” in 1998, sick Michael sends from the hospital a coming-out letter to his parents. “I know what you’re thinking now, Mom,” he dictates from the bed, “you’re thinking ‘what did we do wrong,’ or which of you caused this to happen to me, but what I have to tell you is that if you or Dad are responsible in some measure for who I am, then I thank you from the bottom of my heart, because this is the light—being gay caused me to be exposed to the unlimited possibilities of life, and brought me close to people whose passion and generosity and sensitivity are a constant source of strength for me. It brought me into the family of man, and I love being here.”   If on some ordinary weekday you had stopped me and asked who contributed more to my spiritual development, Rabbi Aviner or Michael from Armistead Maupin, Rabbi Aviner would have overtaken him without blinking—in the dozens of his books that I read, in the lessons I heard, or in the inner arguments I had with him. But today I feel shame like someone who discovered that a relative of hers harmed children. I am alarmed by the traces that the education I acquired may have left in me, an education that yielded hatred and humiliation under a cover of poetic and infantile condescension and in a sweet French accent. In the choice between educating the family of man and being part of it, between looking human beings in the eye and stepping on their bodies on the way to redemption, I think I prefer Michael.   I thought of adding here some quick little Rabbi Kook quote, something from him—that was the broad and genuine foundation of mine and of all that I grew up in—that would show how far these people have distanced themselves from him and from his love, and what gratuitous love feels like. But I gave it up, because that is not why I recoil to the core from the people of Noam and from the rabbis who unleashed them on us. I recoil because yuck. Because injustice. Because fire in the fields and hatred in the marketplaces. And perhaps for me that is the plain meaning of Decency precedes Torah.

For my part, this poem reminds me of what my late grandfather Shmuel used to say about one of the famous Hasidic rebbes: he loved the Jewish collective with a fierce and tremendous love; he just had a bit of a problem with most of the particulars (all those who were not him, or someone in his image and likeness, or under his authority).

All right, friends, it is nevertheless time to calm down from the tremor, wipe away the tears (there is no need to decide whether they are tears of laughter or of crying), and get to the point itself.

Do they themselves believe this?

In light of what I described above about this group’s “love of the Jewish people,” it is no surprise that the initial reaction to this superb lyricism about love of the Jewish people—without quotation marks—is that this is hypocrisy. A party dripping with hatred and divisiveness, preaching the exclusion of everyone who is not like it, attacking rabbis and groups of every sort and kind, identifying Jews with different views with Nazis, disqualifying everything that moves outside itself, and out of sheer hatred behaving in bizarre ways contrary to its own interests, while all this does not in the least interfere with singing songs of love to every Jew—such a party must be hypocritical. Can a group whose central values are the unity of Israel (a value I find repellent, at least in its common expressions) and love of the Jewish people (a fine and good value), while everything it does is the exact opposite, really not be hypocritical?!

As I explained, unlike them—without quotation marks—I do not believe in wicked people or wickedness. Reasonable people (to some degree) are not wicked. Even if their values are invalid in my eyes, they generally really do believe in what they are doing. The Women of the Wall truly think that this is what should be done (and in my opinion they are also right), and so do LGBT people (including the LGBT silencing discussed in Column 225), and even the groups that try to force all of us to listen, in mixed company, to women singing (who are not right, and in my opinion even act in ugly ways), and all the groups that try to fight the religious world in its various forms—all these “they”s are not really wicked in my opinion. Some of them may be mistaken, and some of them employ twisted and harmful means and sometimes also irrational ones, and in my opinion many of them also suffer from intellectual failings, but despite all that it is hard for me to relate to any of these people—even those with whom I disagree—as wicked people acting deliberately to do harm. I very much doubt that there is such a creature at all. I would not place any of them alongside Hitler.

But precisely because of this, my feeling regarding this cult too is that this is not hypocrisy. I am inclined to believe that they truly act out of a sense of love of the Jewish people and for the sake of its unity. I actually believe them that these are their feelings, but precisely for that reason the matter cries out all the more for explanation. How does one reach such bizarre regions? How do people ascribe to themselves a sincere feeling of love of the Jewish people and of promoting its unity, when everything they do broadcasts hatred and divisiveness accompanied by a sense of persecution and condescension? How do people who ostensibly (and perhaps really) love every Jew fail to show even a gram of empathy toward other people—some of them fine observant Jews—who are coping with difficulties that I do not know who could withstand (giving up couplehood and sexual relations for an entire lifetime; I am referring, of course, to LGBT people). How are they unable to understand the basis for the activity of people with other opinions, even if they do not agree with them (and therefore see them all as wicked)? How do people so intelligent and of such exalted spiritual stature fail to understand that there are people who think differently, and that not everyone is driven by hatred of Israel and wants to destroy it in the name of the New Israel Fund and the European Union? In fact, even the New Israel Fund and the European Union (the ultimate demons), may their names rot, are perhaps not truly wicked either. How are these people unable to apply the teaching of their master (Rav Kook), who taught that every movement or idea has positive sides as well, and to write and act in a way that is in the category of our master, as they called him? Could all this really be done innocently? How can one say that this is not deliberate evil? But it is precisely this degree of absurdity that arouses in me the feeling that this is neither wickedness nor hypocrisy, but truly error (almost innocent).

Rabbi Aviner is a very intelligent man, and it is hard for me to understand how such a strange, bizarre, and childish poem comes from his hand. Something here utterly disrupts their way of thinking and acting, and that demands explanation. I found no explanation for this, except perhaps that there is some disdain here (entirely justified) for their followers. They probably estimate that anyone prepared to accept such bizarre ideas and arguments can also be influenced by such a silly children’s poem and enlisted in the odd and unclear move that it is trying to advance. But as for their mistake in their self-perception (see the previous paragraph), that, as I said, requires explanation.

After further thought, I think I understood what that mistake is, and, as stated, it reflects the mode of looking that was discussed in the previous column. In my opinion this is a sharp and extreme expression of this group’s detachment from reality, and there is an important lesson here regarding Platonic attitudes in general. That is why I decided after all to devote a column to this matter, despite the fact that we are speaking of an esoteric and insignificant group that in itself is not worth discussing (as the saying goes: blessed is He who fled from them and from their teaching).

The commandments of feeling: what is Platonism

To understand this, let us detach ourselves for a moment from the realms of current events and return to a topic I already discussed in Column 22: the commandments of feeling. I will focus here on commandments of love and hatred. There are several such commandments in Jewish law: love of the Jewish people, love of the convert, love of God, hatred of the wicked, and the like. There I tried to show that the commandments to love the Jewish people, to love the convert, and perhaps also to love God (though there it is more complicated), are commandments that seemingly place the idea at the center and not the object (=the person). The claim was that one must love the convert because he is a convert. Thus Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner writes, for example, that if I have a neighboring convert and I do not know that he is a convert, but I love him simply because he is nice—I have not fulfilled the commandment to love the convert. Only if I love him by reason of his being a convert is the commandment fulfilled. Regarding hatred of the wicked, the situation is clearer and more explicit in the halakhic decisors. Many have written that the commandment is to hate the sins and not the sinners. Others wrote that one must continue to love the person even while hating his opinions and deeds. If in the context of the commandments of love the Platonic conception is not self-evident and not agreed upon, in the context of hatred the prevalent and self-evident conception is Platonic. I discussed this at length in Column 22 and in the article on emotions in Jewish law, and even more so in Book 11 of the Talmudic Logic series, which deals with the Platonism of Jewish law.

In all those sources I explained that, ostensibly, we are dealing with a Platonic emotion—that is, an emotion directed toward a characteristic, a personality trait, or a value, rather than toward a person. I explained this through a discussion of the meaning of emotions in general, and argued that this is an intellectual attitude and not necessarily an emotion. Emotions are directed toward human beings, whereas intellectual attitudes can also be directed toward ideas and concepts. The claim is that Jewish law requires from us a love and a hatred that depend on something (on a certain personality trait and certain values). This is a Platonic relation in the sense that it is not directed toward the person but toward an idea, and its main element is not the emotion but rather the conception and the intellectual stance (and the emotion merely expresses them, if at all).

On the other hand, in all those places I added that the conclusion that there is no love or hatred of the person at all, but only of an idea or value, is absurd. Feelings of love and hatred are supposed, in the final analysis, to be directed toward a concrete person. Therefore I distinguished there between a feeling or attitude of love toward the idea of being a convert, and love toward a person because he is a convert. The difference between them is subtle but very important. In the end, we must always love a person, not merely a trait or a value. The trait or value can be the reason for the love, but not the addressee of that emotion. The same is true regarding hatred (there it is easier for people to espouse Platonism, at least on the theoretical plane). Hatred too should be directed first and foremost toward a person, not merely toward a trait or a value. One should hate a person because of the wickedness within him, not merely hate wickedness itself. The prayer that Let sins cease, not sinners (let sins cease, not sinners) does not mean that the feeling of hatred is not supposed to be directed toward the person. Of course it is. The wicked person should be hated, and we should long for him to disappear. To be sure, it is preferable that the disappearance come through repentance, but so long as that has not happened, the attitude toward him should be an attitude toward a person and not only toward a personality trait or a value. In our aforementioned book we gave this topic a not-simple logical analysis, involving the issue of Platonic ideas and the resolution of various paradoxes (such as Aristotle’s “third man”), and I will not enter into that matter here.

We can now return to the discussion of the way Noam’s people relate to others.

Back to our subject

It seems to me that my late grandfather’s quip hits the mark here. It is not merely a joke. In Column 19 I explained why the group called “the Kav” is a kind of cult. One of the characteristics I described there was the Marxist way of seeing the world. People from this cult have become accustomed to seeing the world differently from the way a normal person sees it (these are the dimensions of “depth” that I mentioned above). From their point of view, there are no people around them, only ideas and concepts that battle one another and operate in the global arena. When they receive the chief of staff or the prime minister with song and ecstasy on Jerusalem Day, those feelings are not directed toward the person who entered there but toward the role and the idea that he represents (and here, in my eyes, that is actually the lesser evil). When those same people who today support the Noam Party sent a letter of support to President Katsav after his rape conviction, they did not see before them a man who raped, but an idea: an office and an Israeli symbol. In their eyes there is no human being of flesh and blood before them, but an idea. The person does not exist at all, because the idea has swallowed him up. But by the same token, even when they love people, it seems to me that what they really love are ideas, abstract entities; and when they fight people, what they are really fighting are ideas.

If I am right, then that is not because of righteousness and overcoming the inclination and love of humanity, but because of Platonic epistemology. They do not really see people in their surroundings. In their eyes, what exists in the world is ideas, concepts, and plots that move people. This is of course a Marxist attitude (in the sense I described in the series of columns from 178 onward, and in the interview with Reuven Seidler here), which is the result of the Platonic attitude I described. Human beings, in their eyes, are puppets moved like marionettes on the stage of the world by cosmic forces that pull the strings (all the world’s a stage). In their eyes there is no physics in our world, only metaphysics (which is revealed only to those with the “penetrating gaze,” namely the leaders of the cult). The people before them are realizations of ideal shadows, and of course the shadows are the main thing (cf. Plato’s allegory of the cave, but with the roles reversed: the people prove the existence of the shadows). No wonder they speak mainly about the shadows and not about their human embodiments, which are merely collections of molecules and cells, a marginal and trivial matter.

These Platonists love the Jewish collective with all their heart, but that has no necessary connection to flesh-and-blood people (concrete Jews), only to the idea of the Jew. They are lovers of humanity, but here too the meaning is the idea of the human being. They do not see that before them stand flesh-and-blood people, with complex motives and strange and varied values. For them there is evil against good, and their world is focused from Atzilut upward. They are five hundred parasangs away from the world of action, but in a very negative and detached sense of the term. One must understand that an idea is usually not complex. It is perfect, simple, clear, and well defined, and therefore it is very easy to make sharp distinctions regarding it: absolute wickedness versus sublime good. People, by contrast, are complex creatures, and therefore probably there are no wholly righteous people in them, but to the best of my understanding there are no absolutely wicked people either. Someone who sees ideas around him can see everything in black and white, and interpret this collection of phenomena as a coordinated metaphysical war of evil (the “they”) against the idea of the good (= us).

In my estimation, this Platonism is an extreme expression of the metaphysical and demonic—or really Marxist—thinking that I described in the previous column, according to which people and cultural currents are nothing but carriers of ideas. I will mention here again the second novelty of Platonism that I raised there: not only are there demons behind people, and not only are they the main thing, but people too are to be judged according to the ideas and demons that drive them. Our positions and attitudes should be determined mainly by metaphysics and not by concrete reality. Therefore this cult relates to the archetype of a Jew and not to concrete Jews, both when they love them and when they hate them. So take comfort: they do not hate you, but only ideas and archetypes reflected through you. What is less encouraging is that even when they love, and as I said, in my estimation their feelings of love of the Jewish people are sincere, it seems to me that their love too is directed toward ideas and archetypes and not toward people. This is Platonic love and hatred—not in the sense that they are not dependent on anything, but in that they are directed toward ideas and not toward flesh-and-blood people. This is the dark side of Platonism.[1]

Back to the opening question

The conclusion that emerges from all my remarks is that these ugly and bizarre expressions of the Noam Party and its cult are wild offshoots of the metaphysical turn discussed in the previous column. As stated, this explains why they have a sincere feeling of love of the Jewish people and love of humanity, and why this does not interfere with their hurling filth at every concrete person around them. Now perhaps we can also find here a possible answer to the question with which I opened: why one must not insert metaphysical considerations into the framework of decision-making in our world. The results of such a Platonic relation are a Marxism that sees demons behind every person, movement, or event in the world. Note that this is not merely a simple fear of error in assessing reality, though that exists here too. Even if the metaphysical analysis were correct, we would still be obligated to relate to reality itself, and especially to the people who operate within it as they are, and not only to the demons that move them. We must attend to physics and not the metaphysical shadows behind it, to people and not to archetypes and ideas. I think that if we see the world this way, we will discover that there really are no wicked people in it. There may perhaps be ideas and archetypes of wickedness, but not wicked people. I assume there is no need to say that my remarks are not meant as pious moralizing and recommendations from a righteous man like me for improving the traits of the faithful reader. I simply think that this is how one ought to proceed, epistemically and ethically, in order to act correctly.

By the way, if I return to the European Union and the New Israel Fund (which were mentioned in the previous column jokingly, but as I explained in a response to a comment, there is a real extension of my argument there), the members of this cult tend to interpret in a Marxist way every move made here (the Ministry of Education, the army, LGBT people, the Women of the Wall, academia, the media, and more), as if the conspiratorial hands of those two bodies were at work in it. This is a problematic view, not only because it is exaggerated and distorted (though of course there is a kernel of truth in it), but also because even if those two bodies really were behind everything that moves here—the formation of positions toward these phenomena should be done on the basis of substantive attention to the phenomena themselves, and not only on the basis of attributing them to the demon behind them. Sometimes, if only by chance, even these wicked bodies can do something positive, or at least something they themselves believe in and not merely a plot for our destruction. Determining a position in such a detached way is invalid and distorted, not only because the analysis is incorrect, but because even if it were correct, the attitudes derived from it are liable to be mistaken and distorted. Bodies, people, events, and phenomena of every kind deserve substantive treatment.

In short, Earth to Noam! Please come down to the ground of reality! There is a world here, and in it flesh-and-blood human beings (the contraction is literal). We must judge, love, and hate human beings, not the windmills behind them. Even if we decide to disqualify them, or to mount Rocinante and go out with Sancho to wage a vigorous war against them, this must be done on the basis of substantive considerations and by seeing them themselves before us, and not by acting with the feeling that before us stand windmills—that is, various ideas and demons reflected through people. The Marxism of the “Kav” cult is invalid simply by virtue of being Marxist.

The conclusion from this strange and ugly phenomenon brings us back to the previous column. It is proper to relate and form positions primarily with respect to processes and people, and to pay less attention to the demons that supposedly drive them. The attitude that, according to the members of this cult, exposes the “depth dimensions” of reality is nothing but an infantile and detached flattening of it, and, as noted, there is in it something akin to speaking with demons or one who inquires of the dead (consulting the dead) (see Rav Kook’s remarks in the previous column).

[1] In this context, it is very interesting to read Karl Popper’s monumental book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, which is entirely devoted to the dark side of Platonism and its implications for Marxism (not for nothing is the first part of the book devoted to Platonism as such, even though the subject of the book is historicism and Marxism). Popper describes there exactly the phenomenon I described here (though I remembered him only after writing), about whose connection to Marxism I will add a few more remarks shortly.