Introduction to the Round Table Discussion

Double Identity

Pietro Adamo

Tens of volumes have been written on the religious roots of political choices and activism.  In the modern era, in particular, when theological doctrine and political theory are mutual influences, becoming the principal vectors of secularisation, the interweaving of these two elements has come to be seen as a determining factors in the formation of philosophy and of the “powerful” ideas of modernity.  The common paths of politics and religious have developed on various different levels: in the first place there was a process of theoretical osmosis, where the doctrinal presuppositions of a particular theological system have provided a source of generalisations and assumptions applicable to living together in society. Secondly, particular forms of antagonism which are intrinsic to a particular religious culture (radical Protestantism, evangelical Methodism, Ashkenazi Judaism, Islam, etc.) have been transposed to the political sphere.  In some cases there has also been the phenomenon of  a “return”, when the impact of a political paradigm on a certain religious culture has been disruptive.  This was the case with, for example, the meeting of liberalism and Protestantism in late-nineteenth-century America, with the development of a liberal modern theology on the one hand and of the fundamentalist and anti-modernist form on the other.

The encounter between anarchism and Judaism has basically been of this type.  It shows in the reflections of the activists of Jewish origin who have populated the course of the anarchist movement.  On the one hand, the spirituality of Judaism provides a powerful impulse towards equality and in its prophetic aspect towards the construction of a reign of justice and freedom, providing the cultural basis of Jewish activism.  On the other hand, secular Jews - i.e. those who had renounced their faith - brought to their political activity the antagonism of a whole community (the Ashkenazi) and of an oppressed and persecuted tradition, that over the course of centuries in which it was a pariah, had reacted to marginalisation and segregation by developing a culture of resistance and rebellion.

The interaction between anarchism and Judaism therefore raises the question of a double identity, which is particularly evident in the “secularised” activists.  Paul Goodman, a likeable atheist whose writing was at times emphatically religious, laid conscious claim to the various different identities which made up his character of dissident (anarchist, Jew, homosexual) to the point of asking Leroy Jones to bestow upon him the honorarium of a “negro”.  It is however undeniable that the encounter also presented irreconcilable elements.  In what varying senses, therefore do those anarchist activists coming from the ethos of Judaism live out their dual belonging, bearing in mind that the Jewish elements tend to emerge on the cultural level, rather than on the purely religious one?  To what degree is the Jewish matrix indeed present and to what point has it been avoided?  The participants in the round table discussion will be attempting to answer these questions, drawing on their own wealth of experiences of both life and politics.