The Vulnerable Colony

 

It wouldn’t be surprising if students of the Bible and the general history of the Middle East would see parallels between the Israel/Gaza conflict today and the Biblical conquest of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Under Moses, and then Joshua, the Hebrew ethno/religious nation dispossessed, routed, killed indigenous tribes and clothed the genocide in the robes of manifest destiny foretold in Jehovah’s promise to Abraham to give them a dedicated homeland. [i]

As a Mennonite with a Prussian/Russian sojourn in my heritage, I recognize both the advantages and the hazards implicit in the choice of living and dying in ethnic and/or religious, homogenous colonies.[ii] Historically, Mennonite colonies tended to thrive economically because a common belief, common meeting places, parochial schools and institutions enjoy general support, and co-operation facilitates progress. But that very success made Mennonite colonies targets for the disadvantaged population surrounding them when hardship and hunger drove the mass to desperation.

The conquered Palestine gave birth to a successful “nation state” after the Hebrew conquest. Its defence, however, would prove to be a continuous concern because it too had—as an ethnic colony—enjoyed the advantages of co-operation and internal solidarity—relatively speaking. Having to repulse constant military threat can consume resources and in due time, the Babylonian Empire did to Israel and Judah what the Hebrew nation had done to the indigenous tribes of Palestine: the “promised land” was seized, resources were routed, its temple destroyed, and leadership marched into captivity.

And therein lies my main point: one price to pay for establishing and living in a homogenous colony lies in the fact that by its nature, it makes of itself a visible target. The antagonism and frustration that’s bound to accrue when hardship besets a general population will find you easily. The markers you displayed to demonstrate your solidarity with your community will become symbols drawing negative attention, even hatred: long skirts, yarmulkas and hijabs, overalls and Stetsons, horse and buggy as requirements of religious piety, a refusal to participate in the military, etc. I might think about antisemitism writ large as a model for such an eventuality.

After the Russian Revolution, Mennonite colonies saw their populations scattered to the winds, their resources confiscated, their institutions co-opted or destroyed. Those of my ancestors coming to Canada hadn’t the option of resettling in ghettos, as had their predecessors in Prussia/Russia. Land was divided into 160 acre plots in Canada, homesteaders were required to live on them, work them in order to benefit from the homestead settlement program. Solidarity in the Mennonite faith would henceforth have to be preserved in the establishment of central institutions of worship and learning while adherents might well find themselves surrounded by Catholic, Ukrainian, British, indigenous, etcetera neighbours. This, along with compulsory public education, literally forced Mennonites to live cooperatively with non-ethnics while maintaining as best they could the faith imperatives by forming a “virtual colony.” We became “less Mennonite” and “more Canadian” by outlook. [iii]

History tends to indicate that if Israel of today continues to function as a religious/ethnic colony, it might well be preparing its own destruction. This is not an antisemitic comment, but Realpolitik pertaining to the prospects of maintaining a bordered colony with citizenship tied to religious/ethnic background in the world as we find it today.

Mennonites don’t have a homeland. Neither do Gypsies, Kurds, Uyghurs, Hutterites: this list could be very long. Some Christians sing, “This world is not my home, I’m just a’passin’ through …,” even as they participate fully in the economy of “this world.” For people of faith, whatever they’re born into, the question of “in” but “not of” this world is relevant, but often ambiguous. And as communication and transportation become faster, freer and less regulated, we had all better be thinking clearly about our places in worldwide humanity. [iv]

For many, the threshold between personal freedom and the responsibility to live cooperatively is fuzzy, and they begin to see the two as either/or, so that requirements of their faith trump national and/or international convention and vice versa. For Mennonites in Latin America who have achieved a right (for now) to settle in self-determining colonies, the consciousness of being “in the world,” but not “of the world” may be satisfied for now, but they, too, are finding that living in colonies doesn’t guarantee immunity from outside influence, nor from creeping apostasy, even rebellion, from within. As necessity makes colony borders ever more porous, there’s finally no way to prevent Jacob Dueck from falling hopelessly in love with Tasha Samborski, or her brother Ivan, perhaps.

It's tempting—but probably appropriate—to invoke the natural law called entropy here, namely that every system decays, falls back toward randomness. Building a house is the gathering of materials from the random environment and forming therefrom a “system,” which in the passage of time will be rendered unusable due to entropy. A nation, municipality, church denomination, even a family or clan are all constructed systems in a process of decay, the elements of their construction returned “in dust and ashes” to whence they came. The vibrant, exciting “downtown” invariably becomes the slummy, decaying urban core.

Seeing nations, municipalities, church denominations, colonies as existing somewhere in the continuum of entropy can help us visualize our future, and prepare for it.

One can list the conditions under which life on the planet is enhanced or rendered bearable: social acceptance; enough good food; comfortable temperatures; safety from aggressors, disease, storms, floods and fires; a positive, self-respecting identity; variety, etc. Most certainly, a bordered colony provides promise of better chances than the alternative … until it doesn’t. Mennonites now living scattered among the general population in Canada mostly live lives hardly distinguishable from the general population—the “world.” Except that they find themselves—arguably— far better positioned to provide charitable, peacemaking influences than they would have had, had they settled and lived in bordered colonies like their Hutterian Brethren.[v]

That Israel was conceived of and functions as a religio-ethnic nation/colony is not in question. There are parallels to be drawn historically, even with the Mennonite experience, but there is another “truth” that can’t be ignored: nothing like the genocide of all ethnic Jews by the NAZIs had ever been attempted before, at least not in its coldly calculated magnitude. The juxtaposition of these simultaneous truths poses a quandary for many: for North American Christians, for instance, it’s as simple as praying for—or campaigning for—either Palestinians or Israelis knowing that “success” for one may mean “failure” for the other.

In Christianity Today, October 7, 2023, editor Russel Moore writes an article under the byline, “American Christians should stand with Israel under attack.” He bases his argument on a government’s right and duty to protect its citizens (the just war), not on the “Promised Land” sensibility central to parts of the Old Testament. He fails to—or chooses not to—qualify any of his comments with reference to Israel’s illegal occupation of lands by deposing residents. One wonders if his mind has changed after three months of deadly warfare.

Sometimes, models sharpen issues and whet our imaginations. One of my favourite models has been the visualization of the earth as a ship, the people as either crew or passengers, the destination the shores of the Peaceable Kingdom. As a crew member, I cooperate with the captain, the engineering, kitchen and hospitality personnel, while at the same time functioning collaboratively with the passengers in order to maintain goodwill, peace, and the well being of all. It’s not in my or anybody else’s interest to separate passengers into blocks of cabins based on their skin colour, ethnicity, religion or ideology; landing safely is everybody’s overriding interest.

All crew members and all passengers realize by the peculiarity of their situation that they are, after all, all passengers. If the ship sinks or becomes unliveable through neglect or quarreling, all will experience the same fate.

Some, of course, will always be found to be saboteurs, willing to jeopardize the ship and contents in their grasping for more than their share of the food, the comforts, the influence. There will invariably also be mutineers who seek to displace the captain and crew because all on board are of the living species known as humans, the most complicated and unpredictable of creatures. Still others will be disciples of denial: the predicted consequences of selfishness will probably never happen, so follow  the advice alluded to by the Old Testament prophet to “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will die anyway.” (See, for instance, Isaiah 22:13)

Because I was born into a Christian family in a Christian community, I quite naturally see myself as having been called by Christ to join the ship’s crew, although not without the perils and frustrations of being an on again, off again, sometimes generous, sometimes selfish servant of a captain who himself has the insight to know that washing the feet of fellow humans is the epitome of leadership. I’d rather just be a vacationing passenger, sunning in a deck chair with a mug of cold beer.

Others are welcome to reach back in their story to explain their place on the ship.

Or—if you prefer—imagine Canada to be the ship, or North America, or the Middle East, or continental Europe, or your dwindling-membership church.  

(Sorry, I appear to have worked this metaphor to death.)

Unless and until the understanding that humanity is not a myriad of competing “us-es” sinks in and ethnicity, race and colony-dependency are subjugated to the “common weal,” all ships live in peril, the very next storm might well be more than can be survived. We are evolving in that direction and the hiccups we call wars illustrate the enormous resistance to the changes this evolution infers.

But:

 Given the variety of languages, religions and life options on earth today, and the apparent propensity of the human species to clump together with those who understand and can be understood, it’s hard to see how any world could exist without tight communities—like colonies—forming. I’ve lived for the better part of two years on a Canadian first nation, for three years in the heart of Germany. These experiences taught me both how resistant I can be to adopting new cultural ways and languages, and revealed to me the sheer volume of emotional energy that assimilation, even adaptation, can exact. Imagine shuffling the world’s population like one does a deck of cards and then scattering the lot onto one land mass, say, Australia. I suspect the first order of business for you and me would be to search for someone, anyone of the same language and culture as us.

The simultaneous realities of wars, famines, economic fluctuations and now, global warming effects and the migrations they necessitate, open the door to a broader discussion about literal and virtual colony formation and disintegration. That discussion, although relevant, is too large for my purpose here, namely to show how the Jewish nation/colony we call Israel shares vulnerabilities with similar structures historically.

And for another day, the topic of virtual colonies, the kind of clumping together in militant community around an opinion, a prejudice, a hatred or an ideology. Religious denominations, Naziism, Maga, conspiracy theories strike me as colony formation ... sort of.  Somehow, I intuit that the material colony informs the virtual, but like I said … that’s for another day.

 

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[i] That is, if we read these Old Testament accounts as if they were factual histories without the colouring of a mythology that supports the chosen self-image of a people.

[ii] The word, colony, is used in the sense of the Cambridge Dictionary definition: “a group of people with a shared interest or job who live together in a way that is separate from other people.” (COLONY | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary)

[iii] This description refers quite specifically to the “Rosenort Mennonites,” primarily immigrating and settling in the Saskatchewan Valley area in the 1890s. In the immigration in the 1870s to Southern Manitoba, not colonies but villages similar to those in Russia were developed, as they were in the Hague/Osler area of the Saskatchewan Valley. They also declined and largely disappeared as Mennonite communal settlements, a consequence of the grid survey system and gradual but persistent acculturation.

[iv] Similarities can be drawn between ethnic homelands and colonies as they’re used here. A valid argument in equating them might be that both imply homogeneity, a shared ethnicity, religion, culture if you will. My Mennonite experience informs me that shared ethnicity, religion and culture does not automatically imply common land/location ownership. Islamic worship, language, cultural markers are practiced openly in Saskatoon, for example; the only problem I’m aware of has been with occasional racist outbursts and Mosque attendees parking in residential areas. (See: https://islamiccenter.sk.ca/)

[v] My friend, Ted, brought up the case of Hutterites living successfully in colonies in North America as possibly being antithetical to the thesis posed here. I think we agreed that their success as colonies persists because they remain a relatively benign presence and show efforts to be good, unthreatening, cooperating neigbours. 

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