and in practice. In his article Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State, Philip Abrams observes that the state is a slippery object and difficult to observe and theorize (2006). He suggests an analytical distinction between the state system, which is the system of institutional practices that constitute the state, and the state idea, which is the symbolic identity of the state, often the way people imagine it almost anthropomorphically. Timothy Mitchell warns that “The network of institutional arrangement and political practice that forms the material substance of the state is diffuse and ambiguously defined at its edges, whereas public imagery of the state as an ideological construct is more coherent. The scholarly analysis of the state is liable to reproduce in its own analytical tidiness this imaginary coherence and misrepresent the incoherence of state practice” (2006: 169). For example, as we see in the parliamentary discussions, the state is embodied by different politicians and bureaucrats who carry out its functions and understand its purpose differently. I agree, however, with Mitchell’s conclusions that the problem is not solved by trying to hermetically separate the material forms of the state from the ideological forms. Rather, he suggests, “the state-idea and the state-system are better seen as two aspects of the same process” (2006: 170). I try to take up both and their intersections. The Jewish state carries immense symbolic importance for my interlocutors, who both react against it and participate in the state system as soldiers. The acts of the state can be seen to have consistent and predictable appetites, for power, for sovereignty, for territory, but those who carry out these goals—including soldiers, military personnel, state bureaucrats, and the prime minister—each have their own understanding of these intentions and their role in them (for an excellent account of bureaucracy and its rationalities in Israel, see Handelman 2004).
A central organizing idea of this book is my interlocutors’ varied participation in the economy of sacrifice in Israel. When I talk about the economy of sacrifice I am referring to the ways that sacrifice can be exchanged for honor and authority in society. Sacrifice is a public demonstration of investment in society and its welfare. The basic principle of sacrifice is substitution, giving something valuable that represents the person making the sacrifice, the sacrificer.10 In an economy of sacrifice there is an expectation of return. Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss explain the principle of substitution: “The sacrificer gives up something of himself, the victim, but does not give himself. Prudently he sets himself aside. This is because if he gives, it is partly in order to receive” (1981: 100). What is returned is the transformation of moral and social status. As in a gift economy, sacrifice is not purely an economic exchange. Sacrifices, like gifts, are considered unique, and decorum prevents direct quantification of worth. Thus the economy of sacrifice always maintains some ambiguity as to the worth of the sacrifice and the appropriateness of the social rewards. In my understanding of sacrificial economy, I build on a number of insights of other theorists of sacrifice, and three are especially prominent. The first is Michael Lambek’s assertion that sacrifice is ethical. He argues that sacrifice is made for a life-giving purpose, and sacrifice must be understood by its practitioners as good and productive. At the same time, however, a tradition of sacrifice carries specific ethical values, which we cannot refuse or reinterpret as individual participants. To participate in the economy of sacrifice, one must accept the ethical framework of the sacrifice and the effects produced by it. Sacrifices “are performative acts that sanctify the conventional and moral states they initiate” (2007: 30). In Israel, the dominant economy of sacrifice is the military, by which people gain social status and moral authority through service as soldiers for the state. The ethics of service in the IDF are problematic to some, among them my interlocutors. In Chapter 1, we see that though many try for a time to both serve and reinterpret the moral meaning of their service, they are unable to control the ethical effects of service as individuals in a larger system. When engaging with the sacrificial economy, people face a tradition whose meaning, though not unchangeable or unchanging, is not open to broad individual interpretation. This is an important point when addressing issue of conscience and the expectations of moral autonomy that accompany it.
The second theoretical commitment I want to make follows Abdellah Hammoudi, who shows that sacrifice is fundamentally social. Some recent treatments of issues of sacrifice have examined sacrifice from a textual perspective. Such accounts mine theoretical accounts to extract an inherent symbolic architecture of a sacrificial tradition. Actual social phenomena are then presented as the inevitable manifestation of logics originating in philosophical structures. Following Hammoudi’s approach in The Victim and Its Masks (1993), I reverse the order, looking first and foremost at the social practice of sacrifice, and in doing so also make a claim about anthropological priorities. Texts are far from irrelevant, but they do not determine the social. The personal and social ambitions of individuals and groups who engage with sacrificial traditions drive the interpretations, understandings, and deployments of sacrificial tradition. This is abundantly clear in this case, wherein the myth of Abraham’s binding of Isaac, the guiding metaphor of military service in Israel, does not manifest any clear social organization based on the inherent structure of relationships. Rather, the myth is publicly manipulated, pushed and pulled and torn asunder in a struggle to determine the legitimacy of the sacrificial economy of military service, a thoroughly contextual tug of war.
The last insight I want to bring into my theoretical discussion of the economy of sacrifice concerns one of the most painful aspects of this ethnographic exploration, which is the rejection of sacrifice. Moshe Halbertal examines the biblical story of Cain and Abel, who both brought offerings to God. God accepted Abel’s offering of meat, and rejected Cain’s offering of fruit of the soil. There is no reason given for this rejection, and this upsets Cain greatly, ultimately driving him to kill his brother out of jealousy. Halbertal concludes that “the story stresses the expectation of the giver that his sacrifice be accepted, and the utter devastation that results from its rejection” (2012: 8). Likewise, “the exclusion from the possibility of giving is a deeper source of violence than the depravation that results from not getting” (2012: 20). What characterizes my interlocutors as a group is their struggle for efficacy in the Israeli sacrificial economy, but they have highly varying degrees of success. Military service does not value all sacrifices equally, thus does not value all sacrificers equally. Although sacrifice is a central way of accruing social capital, not everyone is able to sacrifice or have his or her sacrifice recognized or accepted as such. Throughout this ethnography we will see attempts at sacrifice rebuffed, either because the offering is not considered valuable, or the person is not able to give what is desired, or is not trusted to enter the economy. This rejection excludes individuals and groups from influence and authority. Indeed, an alternative way to measure marginality might be to consider whether someone is in the position to make a valued sacrifice. Palestinian Israelis are for the most part outside the sacrificial economy in Israel and suffer greatly for the loss in social capital. Likewise, we will see how women, who have less to offer the military than men, are similarly excluded despite desperate attempts to sacrifice publicly (Chapter 3).
I consider sacrifice to be fundamental to society. I take a critical look at the sacrificial economy of military service, but do not call for the end of sacrifice or sacrificial politics, which some recent philosophical accounts do. A cross-cultural look at sacrificial traditions reveals how sacrifice is often part of the cycle of cultural life, how it conveys meaning to the group, and how it allows people to invest in their societies and form relationships much in the same way that gift economies function. Sacrifice moderates the relationship between the individual and the collective, creating and circumscribing mutual obligations. In the liberal imagination, such obligations are often seen as communal constraint and limitations on self-authorized freedom. However, the denial of such obligations reflects a liberal impasse and is neither possible nor desirable. If sacrifice is not the problem and liberalism is problematic, where does this leave military service as the sacrificial economy? I believe the dilemma lies in the relationship of the sacrificial economy to the state. The ethnography that follows suggests that sacrifice organized in relation to the state, as military service clearly is, is extremely problematic for a number of reasons. Michael Lambek has shown that sacrifice is ethical. It is guided by ethical values and suggests that the goal of the sacrifice
