Surviving with our identity intact

[me]

Some of us are concerned with the fact that we are loosing our identity. That we no longer know who we are, where we are coming from and what our culture is. We often see that the younger ones in our community no longer speak the Somali language and have values that are different then that of our elders. This identity crisis is one of the by products of us leaving our home land. As the age old Somali proverb goes. ‘Dad kaa badan, iyo biyo kaabadaniba weyku liqaan.’ One wonders what we can do and if there is actually anything that can be done to turn this tide.

 

Can we survive? We have been in this exile for 16 years now and we can all see the results.

 

The choices we have are either we surrender and assimilate or create a new identity that can mix both the cultures of our host nations and the values that we would like to hold on to.

 

Doing nothing will leave us ‘stuck in the middle’ with confusion and no identity.

 

Below I have posted an article about the importance of ‘territory in the formation of identity’

 

The Jewish nation has gone before us in the exile and they are the perfect example of an identity surviving against all odds. Maybe we can learn from their experience in the exile.

 

 

TORAH AS MOVABLE TERRITORY

 

EMANUEL MAIER

 

ABSTRACT. Territorial behavior in humans, if it is to be considered analogous to similar behavior in animals, must be deeply rooted in the regions of the human unconscious that appear to control instinctive behavior. The ethological concept of “movable territory†may be applicable to Jewish mythological symbolism collected about the Torah. Torah as movable territory may have developed as a symbolic substitute for the loss of real territory. After the Age of Reason had dissolved the mystic ties of Torah and people, real territory once again became central to the survival of the Jews.

 

For the longest period of man's existence human groups remained in rather stable numerical equilibrium with their environment, controlled by, rather than controlling, their niches, as was any other animal group. Association with, and defense of, territory resulted in an inherited behavior pattern as thoroughly genetically determined as is physical structure.’

It is only in comparatively recent times that improved technology, driven by population increase and limited space, has led to the growth of what Calhoun refers to as “conceptual space,†a new way of perceiving and utilizing space.’ “Conceptual space†has led to increasing control of environmental niches, so that a limited territory can be organized to support greater numbers and, conversely, a group can effectively control larger territories and still maintain itself as an identifiable group by the ability to form governmental structures and federations.

 

The particular conceptual superstructure, or iconography, and accompanying social institutions developed upon a territorial base, we call culture. When a culture-territory system has been disrupted, that is, the group has been separated from its territory, if such a separation is survived at all, a different culture-territory system may develop, in the course of time, in connection with another support base. If the support base is radically different from the original one, then institutions and social relations will change radically in adaptation to the new environment.

 

A displaced group that fails to find a new territorial base will eventually lose its identity, usually by absorption into other cultures. No politically organized group has been known to exist any length of time without its territorial base. How did Israel manage to exist as an identifiable political entity during thousands of years of exile? Jung has developed a hypothesis, and a schematic representation, of the relationship between phylogenetically determined behaviour and that of the individual (Fig. 1).3

 

A central psychic core (H) goes through all living matter. It can be considered analogous to the evolution of the central nervous system. In some respects the central nervous system in man functions the same way as it does in animals (G) ; other properties are common to humans only (F). The progression from animal ancestors to human ancestors suggests a continuity of evolution of the nervous system culminating in the development of consciousness in symbolmaking modern man (E).

Each individual (A) is endowed with a personal unconscious, the contents of which can be recalled to consciousness. The deeper layers of the unconscious, however, are referred to as the “collective unconscious,†wherein the individual resembles the group and, ultimately, the species with respect to the behavior that is controlled by it (4 and 5 in the ontogenetic representation). The contents of the collective unconscious appear as the mythologies of nations.

That means, according to this hypothesis, that the deeper layers of the unconscious produce archetypal symbols which are universal to the experience of man. Lorenz spoke, with reference to the psychology of dogs, of the “feeling of responsibility that has its roots in the deep instinctive layers of his mind,†a surprising similarity of description.

 

 

 

Jung believed there is a progression of symbols culminating in the most basic and compelling symbols that deal with immortality, perfection, and unification of opposites because these symbols represent the life force itself. The Orient has developed symbols of perfection that are referred to as “Mandalas.†Pictorial representations of mandalas tend to have centers of high and intense value, such as brilliant light or the image of a radiant divinity. The Torah (the handwritten parchment scrolls) appears to be such a symbol of perfection. Every Sabbath the orthodox Jewish community removes the Torah from its ark and places it in the center of the synagogue for all the people to hear and to see (Fig. 2).

 

THE CONCEPT OF MOVABLE TERRITORY

 

Ethologists have observed that dominant individuals in a socially organized group of animals usually occupy a central space with the group dispersed radially in descending order of hierarchy until the lowest ranking individuals occupy the margins of both group and terrain. This distribution pattern is maintained even while the group is in motion. In the case of the greylag goose, when mating bonds have been established between “monogamous†partners, wherever they happen to be, each goose “behaves toward her triumph partner just as a resident animal does toward the center of its territory. . . . Near the center of the territory, not only intraspecific aggression but many other autonomous activities of the species reach their highest intensity.†Many a dog owner knows that he carries “territory†about his person as far as his dog is concerned; automobiles are the most universally experienced movable territories defended by dogs. In order for territorial behavior in humans to be analogous to similar behavior in animals such behavior must be deeply based in the unconscious of man, in regions of the unconscious that appear to control instinctive behavior. I suggest that the Jewish mythological symbolism collected about the Torah represents that kind of phenomenon. The role of Torah as movable territory developed as a substitute and in compensation for the loss of actual territory. The unconscious, according to Jung, is compensatory: upon external specific reactions of consciousness it answers with a typical reaction toward the inside, a reaction which is founded upon the collective experience of mankind.6

 

The Talmud (i.e. Torah and commentaries) gave the landless and persecuted Jew of the diaspora another world into which he could escape and survive when the vicissitudes of the real world had become too great to bear. “It gave him a fatherland, which he could carry about with him when his own land was lost.

 

Since Exodus, the irrational, mystic tradition of the Torah developed simultaneously with the rational, oral tradition, beginning a new chapter with the period of the Second Temple. The mystic tradition is referred to as Kabbala; its outstanding exposition is in the Zohar, which was written about the thirteenth century. Its most recent flowering was the Chassidic (pious) movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Eastern Europe. The oral tradition became codified during the fourth and fifth centuries under the collective name Talmud, meaning the “teaching.†Important additions to the Talmud were made from time to time, notably that by Rashi, a French Rabbi who lived in the eleventh century. The relationship of the Kabbala is to the Talmud as the realm of the unconscious is to consciousness. The teachers of the Talmud feel uncomfortable about, and often hostile to, the imagery and language of the Kabbala-with its atmosphere of secrecy and shadowy magic which is so elusive to rational analysis. The Kabbala contains the symbols which combine the psychic experience of the mystics in response to the historic experience of the Jewish community. The central theme of the symbol of the Torah is its feminine nature (the grammatical gender of the word is also feminine). The scrolls are traditionally dressed in gorgeous garments, bedecked with lace, breastplates, and jewels, and crowned with bell towers of silver and gold. Only men are allowed to handle the Torah (and never directly upon the uncovered parchment). It is customary to kiss the scrolls upon taking hold. There are special festivals when men take turns in dancing publicly with the Torah scrolls in their arms. Sholom Asch in his tragedy basedon the historical Zabbati Zevi, has the pseudo-Messiah joined in holy wedlock with the Torah in an elaborate wedding ceremony under the canopy. As the Shekhina, or the female aspect of God, which was separated from God in order to provide the materials for the physical universe, the Torah is the very material out of which the universe has been created. When the people of Israel went into exile, the Shekhina accompanied them as token that they were not entirely abandoned by God. The Shekhina, the soul of God, longs to be reunited with God in her proper abode-the land of Israel. The theme of exile is repeated a number of times in the Torah and represents an archetype that deals with separation and reuniting of opposites, such as the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, the removal of Noah from the earth by means of the ark, and the expulsion of Israel from the Promised Land.* Then comes the Messianic theme of redemption, of the uniting of what has been separated, when lion and lamb will lie down together and the dry bones arise again.

 

In accompanying the people of ‘Israel into exile, the Shekhina-Torah is the promise of eventual return, when land and people, Torah and God are reunited in their proper dwelling place. Rabbi Jacob Emden put the relationship as follows: Israel and the Land of Israel are called God’s heritage, the Torah is connected with both, with the people of God and the heritage of God; whoever abandons the one abandons the other. The weekly Sabbath ritual calls for the reading aloud of a portion of the Torah. In orthodox synagogues the reading is conducted from a pulpit in the center of the synagogue, thus forming a living mandala symbol, which Jung has termed a “temenos,†the Greek word for a holy place with a holy center, or as the holy city in the center of the universe. The synagogue, since the destruction of the First Temple, and even more so after the destruction of the Second Temple, has become the center of the Jewish community. It is the fortress which protects the people. In its center takes place the “holy wedding†of the exiled people to the Shekhina-Torah, which is the link to the Promised Land. This “unio mystica†is performed every Sabbath, and the song of “the coming of the bride†is sung in every Jewish community throughout the diaspora. As the people of Israel have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the people. If this symbol, arising from the soul of the people, can stir the beholding Israelites, it seems to perform the function of territory, standing upon which the people, like Antaeus, are constantly renewing their strength. This kind of symbolic territory gave rise to the social and political structure of the ghetto, so typically internalized and isolated from the political reality of the outside world. According to Martin Buber, the Kabbalists and the Chassidim preserved the inner unity of Israel. The Chassidim, in particular, made the Torah live in the soul of the common people, the Am Haaretz.ll “Enoch the Cobbler†symbolized the soul of the people-every stitch that sewed together the upper and the lower leather served to bring together God and his exiled Shekhina. The greatest teacher of the Chassidic movement, the Baal Shem Tov (Master of the Good Name, who lived from 1700 to 1760) has himself become Torah rather than being a student of the Torah. He continued in the stories of his pupils, few of whom were learned in the Law. He did not leave behind him a single written word of his teachings.

 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TORAH SYMBOL

 

Prior to taking possession of the Promised Land, the people of Israel travelled through the desert under the leadership of Moses, who instructed them in the ways of the Law. The Law, received directly from God, was carried in a portable ark. During periods of rest, the ark was housed in a tent at the core of the encampment, and the people gathered about the temporary territory identified by the symbol of the new nationhood. During this period, a new nation came into being with an iconography built up

about the Divine Law. Incessant wars with neighboring tribes and kings eventually welded the Israelites into a people identified with a territory ranging from the Lebanon mountains in the north to the cities of the Philistines in the south, and a sphere of influence going considerably beyond. The Torah then became permanently installed in a permanent Temple. The subsequent history of Israel became that of a territory defending nation and did not differ much from the nations about it. Power and identification based on territory weakened the spiritual hold of the Torah-to the lament of the prophets. In fact, the Law of Moses had disappeared entirely. Not until the eve of the Babylonian captivity were the scrolls again “miraculously rediscovered,†almost seven hundred years after they were first received.

 

For the brief period of existence in Babylonian exile, the “holy remnant†of the Israelites was sustained by the treasured possession of the “rediscovered†Torah. The revival of the Torah and its embellishment by means of the oral teaching was like a grand preparation for the time of the exile after the destruction of the Second

Temple. Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai left the doomed fortress of Jerusalem to seek permission from the Roman general Vespasian to set up bible schools. The rabbi somehow felt that reverence and study of the Torah would sustain the people better than any fortification. The shift from fortress to the Divine Law as the keeper of the people endowed the Law with charismatic power. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 69 A.D. the Jews scattered into the diaspora with the Torah as their most precious possession, more precious than life itself. While the Talmud maintained law and order in the practically self-governing Jewish communities in exile, the Kabbala kept alive the spirit and the hope of a Messianic deliverance and return to the land. The young man that was learned in the Law became the most desirable husband for Jewish maidens. He was as attractive in the possession of the Torah as was the African kob in possession of a mating “arena.â€

 

RETURN TO TERRITORY

 

The late eighteenth century witnessed the destruction of the ghettos by the spirit of enlightenment and the Age of Reason. The new scientific method seemed to provide all the answers for the problems that confronted man. Jews were invited to integrate into the social structure of the nations in which they lived. The spiritual hold of Torah as substitute for territory was weakened. Emancipated Jewish intellectuals looked upon the study of Talmud as sterile scholasticism, and the mystical tradition with its obscure mythology as utter gibberish. At the same time that assimilation gained momentum, political Zionism was born. It is as if the founders of the movement instinctively felt that only a return to the Promised Land could save the identity of the people. War and persecution hastened the realization of a national territory in a region of the world that was sanctified by tradition.

 

It should not be surprising that the modern state of Israel is a secular state. The identification of modern Israel is with land; the Torah does not dominate the life of the people (although there are many orthodox Jews who, like the ancient prophets, accuse the government of Israel of having neglected the teachings of the Torah). Apparently real territory is better suited to rally the people than the “movable territory†which did well enough for two thousand years.

The present conflict between Israel and the surrounding Arab nations is reminiscent of the original arrival in the Promised Land. The conflict is a good example of territorial behavior. The particular bone of contention is the determination of the boundaries. Boundaries will tend to become stabilized at the distance from the vital core of each nation that provides acceptable security for all concerned.

 

CONCLUSION

 

Before they had any land the Israelites became a people identified with a Divine Law around which they rallied in peace and war. Wherever they carried the ark with the Law in it, there was home. Then they captured land and enshrined the Law in the Capital. The land supported them as they tilled it, and they defended it against all comers. The land was named after the people and the people after the land, and the Law was almost forgotten, though the prophets rebuked the kings for it over and over again. When the Babylonians removed the people from the land, they meant to destroy the people, for they knew that no people can exist without a land. The Romans knew it, too, when they removed the Jews from Jerusalem (and the North Americans knew it when they removed the Indians from their hunting grounds). The relationship of a people to its land is a condition of existence. Both a people and the land it occupies develop into a living unit. Then how was it possible for Israel to exist all these years without territory? It appears that the people were not without territory after all. They had taken the land with them, portable, as they had first come upon the Promised Land three thousand years ago.