Positive Rebellion
“WHAT is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He is also a man who says yes as soon as he begins to think for himself. A slave who has taken orders all his life, suddenly decides that he cannot obey some new command.”
These are the opening lines of Albert Camus “The Rebel” which was written in 1951.
The Rebel is Camus’ exploration of how humans deal with the absurd. The absurd, according to Camus, is the tension between the human need for meaning and the lack of meaning in the universe. This tension was beautifully articulated in his 1942 work The Myth of Sisyphus where he laid out the problem, using the Greek myth and offered that one must find meaning in the meaningless action itself.
Some see The Rebel as a continuation of this philosophical struggle, however momentous world events (WW2 and its aftermath) during the years between the two books influenced Camus’ views on the issues.
The end of the Second World War revealed unimaginable crimes, committed not only by the Nazis, but also by those who fought them - the Soviet Union under Stalin.
Earlier in his work, Camus called those who seek solace and escape from the absurd to Fascism, Nationalism and the likes, “philosophical suicide.”
Here in The Rebel, Camus puts forth a different warning, that of rebellion which can lead to absolutism and renewed crimes. The danger, according to Camus, lies in the difference between revolt and revolution. The first asserts the individual, affirms their dignity and creates solidarity and collective responsibility, and the second attempts to create a utopian impossibility which can only be achieved by violent suppression of the individual.
Camus' work was heavily criticized by his peers at the time and even viewed as reactionary, famously by Jean-Paul Sartre.
I found this work by Camus very important and his warning relevant. I also found it living at the core of the Jewish story as can be seen in our Torah portion Terumah.
Terumah is the portion which begins the building of the Mishkan - the tabernacle, which was the portable holy temple for the Israelites’ use in the desert.
Every year all over again when talking about Terumah, it is important to mention the curious editing of this section of Torah as the tabernacle was constructed after the sin of the Golden Calf but chronologically appears before it happened.
Why were the Israelites instructed to build the tabernacle? Wasn’t the entire monotheistic revolution about ridding the people from a physical manifestation of God?
The Golden Calf ordeal, according to some interpretations, proved that humans cannot worship the abstract for long.
The Rambam and the Italian commentator Cassuto suggested that now after the revelation in Mt. Sinai the Israelites were worthy of carrying divinity within them. According to Cassuto, the more the distance between the Israelites and Mt. Sinai grew, the more important it was to maintain the link to Sinai and not risk it breaking. The tabernacle was that link.
Human societies often experience moments of moral clarity, yet sustaining those insights across generations proves difficult. Camus argued that ideals survive only when they defend human dignity while refusing to become absolute and violent. The transition from Sinai to the Tabernacle demonstrated that moral revelation can endure only when it is mediated through structure, limits, and communal practice.
Mt. Sinai was a communal moment, which regarded all individuals as one entity:
"וַיִּקַּח֙ סֵ֣פֶר הַבְּרִ֔ית וַיִּקְרָ֖א בְּאׇזְנֵ֣י הָעָ֑ם וַיֹּ֣אמְר֔וּ כֹּ֛ל אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּ֥ר יְהֹוָ֖ה נַעֲשֶׂ֥ה וְנִשְׁמָֽע׃"
Then he took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, “All that GOD has spoken we will faithfully do!”
This disregards the individual circumstances of worship. On the contrary, our portion, with the addition of the tabernacle, considers these individual circumstances:
"דַּבֵּר֙ אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל וְיִקְחוּ־לִ֖י תְּרוּמָ֑ה מֵאֵ֤ת כׇּל־אִישׁ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר יִדְּבֶ֣נּוּ לִבּ֔וֹ תִּקְח֖וּ אֶת־תְּרוּמָתִֽי׃"
Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved.”
"Every person whose heart is so moved," could be read as the move from the dangerous absolutism of Sinai to the birth of the individual through the placement of boundaries.
In Camus' words: “Absolute justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradiction; therefore it destroys freedom.”
Just like the Jewish story, a story which begins with slaves who say: “Thus far and no more,” Camus describes the ethical move towards solidarity as an act which begins with rebellion, by saying no. There is only so much humiliation a person can endure before they rebel. That rebellion though — and this is important — is not an absolute destruction of the old order but rather an affirmation of what should never be tolerated. This rebellion is a positive move.
I do believe that what the Jewish tradition offers us should be considered especially in our time. Our portion teaches us that big, absolute and overwhelming ideas, as just as they may be, could not be sustained by human beings without deteriorating into the erasuse of the individual and to violence. Limits, structure and consideration of the individual are what ultimately allow for the carrying on of ideas which sustain human dignity. The tabernacle in which God dwelled was the vessel which was carried forward by the people.
Camus witnessed and lived through the most extreme example in human history of atrocities committed in the name of ideas which were supposed to make the world better.
In his powerful words:
“...The secret of Europe is that it no longer loves life. Its blind men entertain the puerile belief that to love one single day of life amounts to justifying whole centuries of oppression. That is why they wanted to efface joy from the world and to postpone it until a much later date. Impatience with limits, the rejection of their double life, despair at being a human, have finally driven them to inhuman excesses. Denying the real grandeur of life, they have had to stake all on their own excellence. For want of something better to do, they deified themselves and their misfortunes began; these gods have had their eyes put out.”
