Diaspora Judaism’s spirituality was a defensive feminized redefinition of loss

Evidence

Dov Chomsky, writing for the Beitar Guide, similarly argued that Zionism must try to dissociate the Jewish nation from the term that came to symbolize it in the Diaspora: Am ha-Sefer (the People of the Book). The reduction of the Jewish experience to that of the messengers of the moral teachings of the biblical prophets, he claimed, was but an attempt to justify the anomaly of the Jewish condition in the Diaspora in which a nation that had lost its territorial base had had to relinquish its historical self. Judaism in the Diaspora had to reinvent itself as a spiritual (feminine, defensive) entity devoid of any nationalistic or territorial aspirations. Zionism, then, in order to overcome this deviant historical condition must cease to emphasize the spiritual (and holy) nature of the Jewish people and instead cultivate its nationalistic and virile heritage. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 527 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Fromm carried secularized Jewish themes into his later work — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 164; Fromm read Jewish tradition, especially Hasidism, as preserving matriarchal elements. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1156; The feminization of religion was blamed for driving men from the church — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 648 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Revisionists framed Diaspora Judaism as a feminized spiritual defense mechanism #corroborates (0.97) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 527
• Revisionists gendered Jewish Diaspora identity as feminine, passive spirituality #corroborates (0.95)