You won't be surprised that I admire Ruth Wisse's writings enormously. First in and about Yiddish literature which she teaches at Harvard and for which she has been a great illuminator to me. Second, and not really second at all, are her essays on politics, about Zionism and Israel, about the enemies of the two, about the ellipses of Jewish history and about America as a great power that feels and is paradoxically under great stress. Here, we agree on perhaps 90% of her positions, maybe 75%. Now we are quibbling. The fact is that Wisse has almost by herself recast the discussion of Jews and Power, the title of her newest book. In her terms, Jewish power is neither the money Jews have or the influence to which they may aspire--even to help Jews in distress. The power which she addresses and which she embraces is the power of Jewish sovereignty: in the sovereign country itself and its meaning to those Jews living in the all but entirely voluntary diaspora. Not exile, mind you, but dispersion. Or at least that's how I think of it. Let others ponder what Jewish sovereignty has done to Jewish innocence. After all, Jewish innocence was the given circumstance, perhaps the necessary circumstance of the Gentile torment of the Jews. So the kind of Jewish power that Wisse examines is the power that has been denied the Jews for two millenia. Or, as Kadia Molodowsky, the great Yiddish poet, wrote:

God of Mercy Lift up your fiery brow, Look on the peoples of the world, Let them have the prophecies and Holy Days Who mumble your words in every tongue... ...And O God of Mercy Grants us one more blessing-- Take back the gift of our holiness.

There's an exquisitely written little review of Jews and Power in Sunday's New York Times book section by Anthony Julius. He and Wisse share common ground because he understands the false equation between suffering and morality. And here's his approving summation of Wisse's text: "This book is both an acknowledgment of that openhearted, clearsighted desire for peace, but also--and so to speak--in the meantime, a celebration of the new Jewish ability to await its arrival. If there is not to be peace, Jews at least will be able to defend themselves against their self-declared enemies. This, in the end, is what it means for Jews to have power." Another elegantly powerful review appears in the current issue of Commentary. It is by Bret Stephens, a writing member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, who is always cogent and never hypothesizes an illusion. He is about as clear a writer on foreign policy in America today. He puts Wisse in the middle of the controversy in which morally lazy people have been able to carve out for themselves an ethically superior position. Let me translate this in a way these people would not accept. But it is this: Jewish innocence is preferable to Jewish survival. If readers are at all interested in this struggle about the Jewish future, they will know the eminences who are on the aforementioned flank: Tony Judt, George Steiner, Daniel Boyarin, Tom Segev and if, as perhaps we should, stoop to the most desperately unlearned of the auto-didacts (of which I do not include the previous four), George Soros. In Jewish law, one's lineage descends from the mother. And so there is a maternal line to the near-hysterical antagonism of Jews to Zionism, and it goes back to Hannah Arendt who, despite all the ponderous flim-flam, was ignorant of these matters. It is ironic --isn't it--that Arendt should have been in opposition to those who would have rescued her friends and colleagues and family from the fire. But, then, of course, they might have put Martin Heidegger into prison. In any case, in the historical contest, it is Wisse over Arendt, a shutout.