Exceptional Israel

Explores how exceptional conditions surrounding the state of Israel—its suffering of existential insecurity—predisposes its citizenry to the virtue of moral attentiveness.Paying "moral attention" to the world has been exhorted philosophically by the likes of Emmanuel Levinas, Simone Weil, and Iris Murdoch. This entails attending to the true nature of being, to the individuality of life—its sublime particularity—and transcending a habitude of cultural convention and a self-centered consciousness. Discerning reality in this way would further entail an ethical engagement with the Other: discerning the practice of a true goodness. Exceptional Israel aims to understand Zionism as an expression of such moral attentiveness, exploring Zionism historically, ethnographically, critically, and personally. Author Nigel Rapport argues that the abjection of Jewishness through the millennia—a suffering that includes the state of Israel (up to and including October 2023), a state whose existence has never been assured—causes Israeli Jewishness and moral attentiveness to be linked to an exceptional degree.

Nigel Rapport is Professor Emeritus of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St. Andrews and Founding Director of the St. Andrews Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies. He is the author of "I Am Here," Abraham Said: Emmanual Levinas and Anthropological Science and Cosmopolitan Love and Individuality: Ethical Engagement Beyond Culture.