I agree with David. It takes a lot of heavy lifting to deconstruct a civilizational habit of claiming moral authority through distance, supposed analysis and the backwards imposition of modern viewpoints on religious source texts. Then to reframe and re-contextualize the whole endeavor back into a vertical dimension that is almost entirely excluded from modern life and discourse. And then having to use the only tools available to make the case, while understanding that it is those very tools which have been part of the problem! I appreciate the "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" from time to time, directing us to look at where he is pointing to, not the finger he is using to point.
"The centrality of the Jews, both for ill and for good, in the culture and history of primarily post-Christian and post-Muslim nations is indeed the consequence of the centrality of the Jews to our religious history. Anyone who does not start with this point is wasting your time." This line is nearly halfway down, so are you admitting to wasting our time? I used to be a big fan of your writing but lately it's descended into self-absorption. I don't know if it's even worth ploughing through to the end. It's a real shame because there's still some incredibly insightful stuff and so I persist but I'm starting to think you are deliberately messing with us for your own amusement. Honestly you need the discipline of an editor imo to steer you away from ever more self-indulgent Substack essays.
First, I deeply thank you for your following and readership. I assure you, I take it seriously.
I appreciate the bluntness, even if I obviously think the criticism is misplaced. Let me try to clarify something, because what you quoted and what you inferred from it are not actually connected.
The line you pulled “Anyone who does not start with this point is wasting your time” is not a meta-confession that my essay itself is a waste of time. You mistook a statement about method for personal motive. The methodological point is that if one tries to analyze the Jewish question in purely sociological or political terms, without recognizing the gravitational weight Judaism has exerted on the civilizational imagination of Christian and Muslim worlds, then that line of inquiry will never get anywhere. That is what I meant. Nothing more exotic than that.
As for the charge of self-absorption, I understand why some readers react that way. I think what you’re responding to is not narcissism but a deliberate stylistic choice. I write in such a register because the material I’m dealing with, religion, interpretation, moral responsibility, cannot be approached as if I were a neutral, disembodied analyst. The entire point of the essay is that interpretation is never neutral, especially when dealing with texts that claim moral authority. So I make my own position visible rather than pretending to float above the argument. That isn’t “messing with you,” and it certainly isn’t amusement. The fragmentary style also reflects the fact that I'm thinking through the material rather than delivering pre-packaged conclusions. And perhaps the writing shows that work more than it should, that hesitation, those false starts and detours. Clean academic prose creates the illusion of mastery. I do not claim mastery. I'm merely feeling my way forward.
You’re right about length: Substack tempts writers, or at least myself, toward excess. I’m fully aware of that. I do need an editor. But I also refuse to confine these essays to a shrunken op -ed format where the only acceptable tone is the efficient, forgettable, professionalized voice of the pundit-god from nowhere and nowhen. What I’m trying to do is different, to enact the kind of reading I'm describing, to respectfully invite the reader into active participation rather than passive consumption. That's only partly self-indulgence but also a pedagogical commitment (even if it's sometimes pedagogically frustrating). It requires detours, context, framing, and an occasional admission of my own limitations as I think through the material.
Some readers enjoy that, others don’t. That’s entirely fair.
You raise another question worth thinking about: where is the line between difficulty that serves the argument and difficulty that becomes a habit? Where does density illuminate, and where does it obscure? These are real questions for me, and your comment forces me to examine them rather than shrug them off.
In any case, I appreciate that you’re still reading even when the writing tests your patience. You’re not shouting into the void, and neither am I. Thank you!
So... you're meta except where I suspect something meta. You're deep except when suspect so, and then you're not saying "anything more exotic". You don't claim mastery but also have a "pedagogical commitment".
I don't remember any of this frustration when I first came across your work. I was a big admirer. Yes the articles were long but they were worth it. A little while ago there was some sort of break with the former (readable) style. You appeared to suddenly get more and more self-absorbed - around the time you changed the title to include the word meta, which is perhaps not a coincidence.
You need to have a bit more trust in your readers - that we will understand that you want your writing to be read a certain way - without disrespecting us by labouring the point and only actually starting the substance of the article 2000 words in!! Maybe some people enjoy this, but most people don't and most of us don't have the time for that. I'm a former editor and so I have the ability to spot which parts can be cut without harm to the overall meaning - in fact it enhances understanding. I'm not suggesting you should be writing short op-eds. You can still do long form writing and go deep into a topic without including every thought and doubt you have along the way. Most people will give up reading if you continue that way.
I would suggest that you share a link at the top of each article including all the caveats about how to read your articles. Then write the article however you like but go back and edit out most or all of the stuff that relates to that. You need to trust and respect your readers - trust that we will read it the way you want it to be read, and respect us by not asking us to read 10K words where 3K would suffice. Or maybe ask a friend to read it before publishing.
Btw I did understand your point about the "wasting your time" but with all your literary shenanigans lately I thought "hang on - is this a coded message?" Such are the consequences of writing this way and expressing such disdain for the whole liberal intellectual enterprise. One becomes suspicious of true intentions. This is a (hopefully) unintended consequence of writing the way you are right now.
Actually, I disagree with the above comment. As I’ve grown accustomed to Hussein’s style, I’ve actually come to appreciate the way the apparent digressions slowly knit together; it usually only becomes clear later how much of it adds up in the end, and for me that’s part of the reward as a reader. I also genuinely enjoy the humor running through these essays
In the context of “Christian hatred, persecution, and theological hostility toward Jews across centuries,” you ask two important questions:
“First, are these theological attitudes foundational to Christian theology itself? Is anti-Judaism structurally necessary to Christianity as such? Second, are these attitudes the origins of modern antisemitism? Is there a direct line of causation, or are we dealing with something more complex—perhaps even a rupture disguised as continuity?”
I believe you demonstrate convincingly that the prophetic critique in the New Testament is vertical, intra-Jewish, and covenantal, and therefore that the answer to the first question is no: Christian anti-Judaism is not structurally necessary to Christianity.
For the second question, however, I don’t think scripture can offer an answer. The attitudes under consideration took shape not in scripture but in the early Church.
Once the Church ceased hearing its own critique as addressed to itself (that is, to use your language, once the vertical “Thou art the man” became the horizontal “They are the Pharisee”), the Jew’s refusal ceased to be the mirror in which Christians recognized the universal human capacity for unbelief and became instead the obstacle to Christian truth. In that very failure, the Church unwittingly rehearsed a structural pattern that modernity would later realize in its purest expression once the vertical frame was intentionally discarded. Call it a sort of *anticipatory mimicry*.
This, I think, is the sense in which one can speak of an “origin.” It is the first moment in history when the Jewish refusal of a supposed truth acquired metaphysical weight.
When Jews said “no” to Antiochus, they were a bone in his throat only because no ruler likes being told “no” by anyone. But with the early Church, for the first time, it was because of who Jews *were*. It was of consequence to the vision that Jews *in particular* were saying “no”. The story had been framed such that *Jews of all people* were supposed to say “yes.”
Here is where we locate the bridge to modern antisemitism. The early Church became the archive of symbols that modernity would later raid once God was removed from the frame.
The continuity is not causal but symbolic: Christian failure generated a stock of images and accusations that modernity would later empty of God and refill with anthropology, race, psychology, and metaphysics. In this sense, Christian anti-Judaism did not “become” modern antisemitism; rather, modern antisemitism discovered in Christian history a ready-made negative vocabulary and hardened it into ontology.
So while the Christian attitudes in question did not *cause* modern antisemitism, they are its *origin* in the sense that a long history of failed verticality left a symbolic residue that modernity could seize once transcendence collapsed.
Each failed attempt to hear “Thou art the man” made it easier for later ages to imagine that the Jew is always “the man *over there*.” And over centuries, these failures accumulated symbolic density – not causal momentum, but conceptual inertia: a snowball of imagery and accusation that solidified into a recognizable repertoire.
This seems true to me but really - what options do you have when you start with a Christian religious experience born in oppression and rooted deeply in humility and you need to turn that into a religion fit to rule an empire and to conquer new worlds? Religion, like any ideology, becomes what people need it to be. Empires require enemies. Religion cannot do what it is meant to do - connect humans both vertically and horizontally - while also being used as the point of a spear. The prophet cannot join forces with the king and the moment he does he is no longer a prophet. The further Christianity moves from empire, the more it can become the best of what it can be. The larger problem of how to prevent good ideas from being used to do bad things remains.
This is the best analysis of "antisemitism" I have ever read. The scare quotes are needed, because the word needs to be questioned -- a rectification of names is in order. As Hussein so clearly shows (the Sterne-esque digressions at the beginning of the essay should put the reader in the mode of openness to the unexpected and challenging God-based argument to follow), the ontology of the Christian-Jewish dialogue (however violent and inadequate) is totally different -- only the texts and the words are the same -- from that of the non-believing post-Christian and the Jew-as-race-holder (place-holder for whatever is defined as evil). The repeal of the Axial revolution does not take the world back to paganism, as Comte (in some of his madder moments) and Hitler (or some of his followers) wanted. In paganism, the divine is immanent, while in secular humanism it is eliminated, replaced only by our all too human oscillation of hate, fear, and occasional love.
And yet, I propose a perhaps more optimistic reading of the position of the Jews. The premodern Christian compromise included many pogroms and much hatred, as well as some protection and various signs of respect -- its own oscillation in the drama of "You are the man" that Hussein develops so well -- but that compromise could not, even conceptually, allow Christians to see the Jews clearly, as current co-workers of salvation. The modern repeal of that compromise has let loose the hatred that the fear of God held in check, but it has also allowed believers (and perhaps a few secular humanists in their most universal mode) to do what Hussein (a modern man, to be sure -- we all are) does so well: to recognise that the mystery of Salvation history and the mystery of evil are inextricably linked in the Christian response to the "labourers of the last hour" (Matthew 20.1-16) -- that is to the Jews whose conversion will close the Age, and who will receive the same reward as the Christians, because of God's unmerited generosity. Modernity is not only the worst of times; it is also, for those who have ears to hear (the Word of the Lord), the best of times. [This paragraph recapitulates the argument of a book I am currently unwriting (cutting down a much too long manuscript) about modernity.]
To me Jew hatred is something very concrete: my 3 year old Grandmother being hidden in a jar so she wouldn’t be raped by Polish drunkards; my other Grandmother’s brother, a Jewish Chaplain in the Polish army who was murdered along with his beautiful family in Auschwitz; the Jews returning after the war back from the camps to my Father’s hometown Rzezow, only to be murdered in a blood libel-fueled pogrom. Not to mention the countless times in the course of my life I have been exposed to snide remarks and insults for the crime of being a Jew. So I must confess I began reading your essay with a great deal of wariness and weariness.
At first I was annoyed. Your “set up” of going back to the prophets was (purposefully no doubt) a bit of a sleight of hand. But honestly, by the time I finished reading, I was truly astonished at how much truth I found in what you wrote, and how much I agreed with you. Even more astonishing was how satisfying it is to see someone brilliantly lay out truths most people don’t want to hear, even though, as you say those truths are “useless.” For in looking unblinkingly at Jew hatred, one must also admit it isn’t going to be “solved” by seminars, or conferences or education. In fact, it can”t be solved and so isn’t going to be “solved” by anything at all, certainly not anything we Jews or our Gentile supporters do.
But that doesn’t make me despair. Despair is not an option on the Jewish menu. Three times a day this prayer reminds us not to despair, the no-gods will fail:
On you we therefore wait, LORD our G-d,
speedily to see your mighty glory
when you will remove idols from the earth
and the no-gods shall be utterly destroyed,
when you will establish the world under your almighty rule,
all children of flesh shall invoke your name
and all the wicked on earth shall be turned unto you…
Speedily rule over them evermore,
for yours is the dominion,
and evermore will you reign in glory,
as is written in your Torah,
“The LORD shall reign for ever and ever.”
PS While I am not familiar with Christian prayer books, I do have to say the Jewish prayer book is a wonderful tool to remind us daily that “Thou art the man” and not let us slip into self-congratulation
Brilliant. Absolutely breathtaking in its astute originality.
I think the vertical will not come back until the bottom falls out, when there is only violence, cruelty and misery, when there is nothing left to hope for but the possibility of G-d. And unfortunately we're on the way there.
Hussein’s writing always makes me think of Levinas’ and Blanchot’s endless waves forever pounding on the shore of a question. What strikes me so wonderfully here is how he’s using this “Thou art »The Man«” as a way of bringing how Carl Schmitt became the darling of post-modern thinking into relief—which, personally, always strikes me as being very weird. More to the point is the joy of reading Hussein’s waves pounding on the question’s shores—and he brings us to an understanding, while avoiding falling into the trap of resorting to an »explanatory mode«.
Though women were made full equal members of our Republic the day it was formed, and they became fellow republican-democrats with men 11 years, 11 months, & 7 days later when our Constitution was ratified (June 21, 1788), representation among our public servants in Government has not kept with the times. This is how we change that:
FWIW, I agree entirely on appreciating the slow discussion, the digressions into history, and the careful argument. I disagree that the caveats at the beginning contribute to that in their current form. They seem more like conventions that one is obligated to clear away before beginning. Something similar to a medieval writer starting with two pages of "I know I am nothing and Gd is everything and I am not worthy of speaking His Great Name but I had some musings which are surely worthless which I am daring to put to paper ...". Or the standard caveats at the end of a scientific paper "In conclusion, we are seeing this result but of course in theory we could be wrong because we were limited by <time, resources, other constraints here> and more research is needed, specifically <cool things I would love to do if time and money were unlimited>.
What I read in the first part of the essay can be boiled down into a few disclaimers (1) I am better at deconstructing than constructing. I do not yet have something definite I wish to say. If that annoys you, sorry. (2) I'm telling the truth as I see it and pointing out things that others seem not to see - this will not save anyone. If that annoys you, sorry. (3) I'm not joining your political project and I am not planning to launch my own - unless that project is thinking more clearly about the history of ideas that had led us all to this moment.
I guess my advice would be to reflect on why these disclaimers feel necessary - what is the concern - and then consider writing a standard disclaimers page that can be referenced at the start of each essay.
Thank you Hussain: I found this a very powerful teaching, a midrash or what we used to call a 'drosha' which I think means simply a teaching. In other words you are not writing for the same purpose that most ideological writing is made to propagandise for one side against another, or to display your intellect, or to convince or to persuade, but as one of your readers has commented to point towards something that we barely have a language for any more: the transcendent/the sacred. And the rhetorical skills that you employ in the piece, including all the apparent digressions, restarts, circular reasoning, asides, skills that are no longer recognised, and that some would edit out in favour of linearity and time-saving succinctness, all add to the emotional power of the story-the tale of King David and Nathan the Prophet-when you finally, but exactly at the right dramatic moment, get to it.
By "Modern Antisemitism" I think you mean "conspiratorial Judeophobia"
"Modern antisemitism depends on this mode of reading, the flattening of the theological into the sociological, the translation of vertical relation into horizontal conflict. It is not simply hatred of Jews but a habit of interpretation, a grammar of suspicion, a way of making all meaning tribal and all transcendence political. In this sense, antisemitism is not only a hatred but an epistemology—a way of reading the world that ensures its own necessity. Jew hatred, and by virtue of being the hatred of the people of the Book, is fundamentally a very particular, critical way to read texts"
I haven’t had much time to read you lately. But somehow I was hooked by the beginning of this essay and I am so glad I made the time to read the whole of it. It was illuminating, electrifying even.
I am not sure what I am going to do with all this now, except pray a little harder, hope for grace with renewed ardor.
Maybe I need to go read the Bible, closely. And ponder the fact that the guilt is within us, and the Grace comes from Him. Without both these truths, accepted together, we risk either hubris or despair.
So yes, I ought to pray more… Thank you.
(As an aside, where exactly is the wilderness of Sin? Wikipedia, and the Bible, tell me it is *between* Elim and Mount Sinai, is the sacred Mount our destination then? Or are we doomed to err in the desert, thirsting for Truth but getting drunk on clever words instead?)
I wrote a response to this excellent essay. https://open.substack.com/pub/elderofziyon/p/a-critique-of-hussein-aboubakr-mansours?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=loen
I agree with David. It takes a lot of heavy lifting to deconstruct a civilizational habit of claiming moral authority through distance, supposed analysis and the backwards imposition of modern viewpoints on religious source texts. Then to reframe and re-contextualize the whole endeavor back into a vertical dimension that is almost entirely excluded from modern life and discourse. And then having to use the only tools available to make the case, while understanding that it is those very tools which have been part of the problem! I appreciate the "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" from time to time, directing us to look at where he is pointing to, not the finger he is using to point.
"The centrality of the Jews, both for ill and for good, in the culture and history of primarily post-Christian and post-Muslim nations is indeed the consequence of the centrality of the Jews to our religious history. Anyone who does not start with this point is wasting your time." This line is nearly halfway down, so are you admitting to wasting our time? I used to be a big fan of your writing but lately it's descended into self-absorption. I don't know if it's even worth ploughing through to the end. It's a real shame because there's still some incredibly insightful stuff and so I persist but I'm starting to think you are deliberately messing with us for your own amusement. Honestly you need the discipline of an editor imo to steer you away from ever more self-indulgent Substack essays.
First, I deeply thank you for your following and readership. I assure you, I take it seriously.
I appreciate the bluntness, even if I obviously think the criticism is misplaced. Let me try to clarify something, because what you quoted and what you inferred from it are not actually connected.
The line you pulled “Anyone who does not start with this point is wasting your time” is not a meta-confession that my essay itself is a waste of time. You mistook a statement about method for personal motive. The methodological point is that if one tries to analyze the Jewish question in purely sociological or political terms, without recognizing the gravitational weight Judaism has exerted on the civilizational imagination of Christian and Muslim worlds, then that line of inquiry will never get anywhere. That is what I meant. Nothing more exotic than that.
As for the charge of self-absorption, I understand why some readers react that way. I think what you’re responding to is not narcissism but a deliberate stylistic choice. I write in such a register because the material I’m dealing with, religion, interpretation, moral responsibility, cannot be approached as if I were a neutral, disembodied analyst. The entire point of the essay is that interpretation is never neutral, especially when dealing with texts that claim moral authority. So I make my own position visible rather than pretending to float above the argument. That isn’t “messing with you,” and it certainly isn’t amusement. The fragmentary style also reflects the fact that I'm thinking through the material rather than delivering pre-packaged conclusions. And perhaps the writing shows that work more than it should, that hesitation, those false starts and detours. Clean academic prose creates the illusion of mastery. I do not claim mastery. I'm merely feeling my way forward.
You’re right about length: Substack tempts writers, or at least myself, toward excess. I’m fully aware of that. I do need an editor. But I also refuse to confine these essays to a shrunken op -ed format where the only acceptable tone is the efficient, forgettable, professionalized voice of the pundit-god from nowhere and nowhen. What I’m trying to do is different, to enact the kind of reading I'm describing, to respectfully invite the reader into active participation rather than passive consumption. That's only partly self-indulgence but also a pedagogical commitment (even if it's sometimes pedagogically frustrating). It requires detours, context, framing, and an occasional admission of my own limitations as I think through the material.
Some readers enjoy that, others don’t. That’s entirely fair.
You raise another question worth thinking about: where is the line between difficulty that serves the argument and difficulty that becomes a habit? Where does density illuminate, and where does it obscure? These are real questions for me, and your comment forces me to examine them rather than shrug them off.
In any case, I appreciate that you’re still reading even when the writing tests your patience. You’re not shouting into the void, and neither am I. Thank you!
So... you're meta except where I suspect something meta. You're deep except when suspect so, and then you're not saying "anything more exotic". You don't claim mastery but also have a "pedagogical commitment".
I don't remember any of this frustration when I first came across your work. I was a big admirer. Yes the articles were long but they were worth it. A little while ago there was some sort of break with the former (readable) style. You appeared to suddenly get more and more self-absorbed - around the time you changed the title to include the word meta, which is perhaps not a coincidence.
You need to have a bit more trust in your readers - that we will understand that you want your writing to be read a certain way - without disrespecting us by labouring the point and only actually starting the substance of the article 2000 words in!! Maybe some people enjoy this, but most people don't and most of us don't have the time for that. I'm a former editor and so I have the ability to spot which parts can be cut without harm to the overall meaning - in fact it enhances understanding. I'm not suggesting you should be writing short op-eds. You can still do long form writing and go deep into a topic without including every thought and doubt you have along the way. Most people will give up reading if you continue that way.
I would suggest that you share a link at the top of each article including all the caveats about how to read your articles. Then write the article however you like but go back and edit out most or all of the stuff that relates to that. You need to trust and respect your readers - trust that we will read it the way you want it to be read, and respect us by not asking us to read 10K words where 3K would suffice. Or maybe ask a friend to read it before publishing.
Btw I did understand your point about the "wasting your time" but with all your literary shenanigans lately I thought "hang on - is this a coded message?" Such are the consequences of writing this way and expressing such disdain for the whole liberal intellectual enterprise. One becomes suspicious of true intentions. This is a (hopefully) unintended consequence of writing the way you are right now.
Actually, I disagree with the above comment. As I’ve grown accustomed to Hussein’s style, I’ve actually come to appreciate the way the apparent digressions slowly knit together; it usually only becomes clear later how much of it adds up in the end, and for me that’s part of the reward as a reader. I also genuinely enjoy the humor running through these essays
Thank you for writing, Hussein.
In the context of “Christian hatred, persecution, and theological hostility toward Jews across centuries,” you ask two important questions:
“First, are these theological attitudes foundational to Christian theology itself? Is anti-Judaism structurally necessary to Christianity as such? Second, are these attitudes the origins of modern antisemitism? Is there a direct line of causation, or are we dealing with something more complex—perhaps even a rupture disguised as continuity?”
I believe you demonstrate convincingly that the prophetic critique in the New Testament is vertical, intra-Jewish, and covenantal, and therefore that the answer to the first question is no: Christian anti-Judaism is not structurally necessary to Christianity.
For the second question, however, I don’t think scripture can offer an answer. The attitudes under consideration took shape not in scripture but in the early Church.
Once the Church ceased hearing its own critique as addressed to itself (that is, to use your language, once the vertical “Thou art the man” became the horizontal “They are the Pharisee”), the Jew’s refusal ceased to be the mirror in which Christians recognized the universal human capacity for unbelief and became instead the obstacle to Christian truth. In that very failure, the Church unwittingly rehearsed a structural pattern that modernity would later realize in its purest expression once the vertical frame was intentionally discarded. Call it a sort of *anticipatory mimicry*.
This, I think, is the sense in which one can speak of an “origin.” It is the first moment in history when the Jewish refusal of a supposed truth acquired metaphysical weight.
When Jews said “no” to Antiochus, they were a bone in his throat only because no ruler likes being told “no” by anyone. But with the early Church, for the first time, it was because of who Jews *were*. It was of consequence to the vision that Jews *in particular* were saying “no”. The story had been framed such that *Jews of all people* were supposed to say “yes.”
Here is where we locate the bridge to modern antisemitism. The early Church became the archive of symbols that modernity would later raid once God was removed from the frame.
The continuity is not causal but symbolic: Christian failure generated a stock of images and accusations that modernity would later empty of God and refill with anthropology, race, psychology, and metaphysics. In this sense, Christian anti-Judaism did not “become” modern antisemitism; rather, modern antisemitism discovered in Christian history a ready-made negative vocabulary and hardened it into ontology.
So while the Christian attitudes in question did not *cause* modern antisemitism, they are its *origin* in the sense that a long history of failed verticality left a symbolic residue that modernity could seize once transcendence collapsed.
Each failed attempt to hear “Thou art the man” made it easier for later ages to imagine that the Jew is always “the man *over there*.” And over centuries, these failures accumulated symbolic density – not causal momentum, but conceptual inertia: a snowball of imagery and accusation that solidified into a recognizable repertoire.
This seems true to me but really - what options do you have when you start with a Christian religious experience born in oppression and rooted deeply in humility and you need to turn that into a religion fit to rule an empire and to conquer new worlds? Religion, like any ideology, becomes what people need it to be. Empires require enemies. Religion cannot do what it is meant to do - connect humans both vertically and horizontally - while also being used as the point of a spear. The prophet cannot join forces with the king and the moment he does he is no longer a prophet. The further Christianity moves from empire, the more it can become the best of what it can be. The larger problem of how to prevent good ideas from being used to do bad things remains.
This is the best analysis of "antisemitism" I have ever read. The scare quotes are needed, because the word needs to be questioned -- a rectification of names is in order. As Hussein so clearly shows (the Sterne-esque digressions at the beginning of the essay should put the reader in the mode of openness to the unexpected and challenging God-based argument to follow), the ontology of the Christian-Jewish dialogue (however violent and inadequate) is totally different -- only the texts and the words are the same -- from that of the non-believing post-Christian and the Jew-as-race-holder (place-holder for whatever is defined as evil). The repeal of the Axial revolution does not take the world back to paganism, as Comte (in some of his madder moments) and Hitler (or some of his followers) wanted. In paganism, the divine is immanent, while in secular humanism it is eliminated, replaced only by our all too human oscillation of hate, fear, and occasional love.
And yet, I propose a perhaps more optimistic reading of the position of the Jews. The premodern Christian compromise included many pogroms and much hatred, as well as some protection and various signs of respect -- its own oscillation in the drama of "You are the man" that Hussein develops so well -- but that compromise could not, even conceptually, allow Christians to see the Jews clearly, as current co-workers of salvation. The modern repeal of that compromise has let loose the hatred that the fear of God held in check, but it has also allowed believers (and perhaps a few secular humanists in their most universal mode) to do what Hussein (a modern man, to be sure -- we all are) does so well: to recognise that the mystery of Salvation history and the mystery of evil are inextricably linked in the Christian response to the "labourers of the last hour" (Matthew 20.1-16) -- that is to the Jews whose conversion will close the Age, and who will receive the same reward as the Christians, because of God's unmerited generosity. Modernity is not only the worst of times; it is also, for those who have ears to hear (the Word of the Lord), the best of times. [This paragraph recapitulates the argument of a book I am currently unwriting (cutting down a much too long manuscript) about modernity.]
To me Jew hatred is something very concrete: my 3 year old Grandmother being hidden in a jar so she wouldn’t be raped by Polish drunkards; my other Grandmother’s brother, a Jewish Chaplain in the Polish army who was murdered along with his beautiful family in Auschwitz; the Jews returning after the war back from the camps to my Father’s hometown Rzezow, only to be murdered in a blood libel-fueled pogrom. Not to mention the countless times in the course of my life I have been exposed to snide remarks and insults for the crime of being a Jew. So I must confess I began reading your essay with a great deal of wariness and weariness.
At first I was annoyed. Your “set up” of going back to the prophets was (purposefully no doubt) a bit of a sleight of hand. But honestly, by the time I finished reading, I was truly astonished at how much truth I found in what you wrote, and how much I agreed with you. Even more astonishing was how satisfying it is to see someone brilliantly lay out truths most people don’t want to hear, even though, as you say those truths are “useless.” For in looking unblinkingly at Jew hatred, one must also admit it isn’t going to be “solved” by seminars, or conferences or education. In fact, it can”t be solved and so isn’t going to be “solved” by anything at all, certainly not anything we Jews or our Gentile supporters do.
But that doesn’t make me despair. Despair is not an option on the Jewish menu. Three times a day this prayer reminds us not to despair, the no-gods will fail:
On you we therefore wait, LORD our G-d,
speedily to see your mighty glory
when you will remove idols from the earth
and the no-gods shall be utterly destroyed,
when you will establish the world under your almighty rule,
all children of flesh shall invoke your name
and all the wicked on earth shall be turned unto you…
Speedily rule over them evermore,
for yours is the dominion,
and evermore will you reign in glory,
as is written in your Torah,
“The LORD shall reign for ever and ever.”
PS While I am not familiar with Christian prayer books, I do have to say the Jewish prayer book is a wonderful tool to remind us daily that “Thou art the man” and not let us slip into self-congratulation
Brilliant. Absolutely breathtaking in its astute originality.
I think the vertical will not come back until the bottom falls out, when there is only violence, cruelty and misery, when there is nothing left to hope for but the possibility of G-d. And unfortunately we're on the way there.
A tour de force.
Deecribe the shape of our impisonment and wait ... another name for prayer.
Here the actor forgot his lines and wept./
Here the art of prayer.
Arthur Tze
Hussein’s writing always makes me think of Levinas’ and Blanchot’s endless waves forever pounding on the shore of a question. What strikes me so wonderfully here is how he’s using this “Thou art »The Man«” as a way of bringing how Carl Schmitt became the darling of post-modern thinking into relief—which, personally, always strikes me as being very weird. More to the point is the joy of reading Hussein’s waves pounding on the question’s shores—and he brings us to an understanding, while avoiding falling into the trap of resorting to an »explanatory mode«.
Though women were made full equal members of our Republic the day it was formed, and they became fellow republican-democrats with men 11 years, 11 months, & 7 days later when our Constitution was ratified (June 21, 1788), representation among our public servants in Government has not kept with the times. This is how we change that:
https://open.substack.com/pub/republia/p/for-the-preservation-of-freedom-and?r=4ucf6d&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
FWIW, I agree entirely on appreciating the slow discussion, the digressions into history, and the careful argument. I disagree that the caveats at the beginning contribute to that in their current form. They seem more like conventions that one is obligated to clear away before beginning. Something similar to a medieval writer starting with two pages of "I know I am nothing and Gd is everything and I am not worthy of speaking His Great Name but I had some musings which are surely worthless which I am daring to put to paper ...". Or the standard caveats at the end of a scientific paper "In conclusion, we are seeing this result but of course in theory we could be wrong because we were limited by <time, resources, other constraints here> and more research is needed, specifically <cool things I would love to do if time and money were unlimited>.
What I read in the first part of the essay can be boiled down into a few disclaimers (1) I am better at deconstructing than constructing. I do not yet have something definite I wish to say. If that annoys you, sorry. (2) I'm telling the truth as I see it and pointing out things that others seem not to see - this will not save anyone. If that annoys you, sorry. (3) I'm not joining your political project and I am not planning to launch my own - unless that project is thinking more clearly about the history of ideas that had led us all to this moment.
I guess my advice would be to reflect on why these disclaimers feel necessary - what is the concern - and then consider writing a standard disclaimers page that can be referenced at the start of each essay.
thank you for this.
Thank you Hussain: I found this a very powerful teaching, a midrash or what we used to call a 'drosha' which I think means simply a teaching. In other words you are not writing for the same purpose that most ideological writing is made to propagandise for one side against another, or to display your intellect, or to convince or to persuade, but as one of your readers has commented to point towards something that we barely have a language for any more: the transcendent/the sacred. And the rhetorical skills that you employ in the piece, including all the apparent digressions, restarts, circular reasoning, asides, skills that are no longer recognised, and that some would edit out in favour of linearity and time-saving succinctness, all add to the emotional power of the story-the tale of King David and Nathan the Prophet-when you finally, but exactly at the right dramatic moment, get to it.
By "Modern Antisemitism" I think you mean "conspiratorial Judeophobia"
"Modern antisemitism depends on this mode of reading, the flattening of the theological into the sociological, the translation of vertical relation into horizontal conflict. It is not simply hatred of Jews but a habit of interpretation, a grammar of suspicion, a way of making all meaning tribal and all transcendence political. In this sense, antisemitism is not only a hatred but an epistemology—a way of reading the world that ensures its own necessity. Jew hatred, and by virtue of being the hatred of the people of the Book, is fundamentally a very particular, critical way to read texts"
I haven’t had much time to read you lately. But somehow I was hooked by the beginning of this essay and I am so glad I made the time to read the whole of it. It was illuminating, electrifying even.
I am not sure what I am going to do with all this now, except pray a little harder, hope for grace with renewed ardor.
Maybe I need to go read the Bible, closely. And ponder the fact that the guilt is within us, and the Grace comes from Him. Without both these truths, accepted together, we risk either hubris or despair.
So yes, I ought to pray more… Thank you.
(As an aside, where exactly is the wilderness of Sin? Wikipedia, and the Bible, tell me it is *between* Elim and Mount Sinai, is the sacred Mount our destination then? Or are we doomed to err in the desert, thirsting for Truth but getting drunk on clever words instead?)
What was the conference you spoke at and is it on YouTube? Thank you