Rejewvenate!

I wanted to comment on Scott Perlo in the Jewish Journal

January 5, 2012 at 12:04 pm | Posted in israel, politics | 2 Comments

But when I blew past the 700-word limit, I figured I could just post here. By the way, JewishJournal, if you have a word limit, let me know about it up front, not when I click to submit.

Anyway, Rabbi Perlo’s piece suggests that we’ve had a failure of leadership in articulating and disseminating a vision for Israel’s importance. I agree with him that our discourse has become stale, and revolves around left-right politics and a post-Holocaust justification for Israel’s existence. We certainly do need to reformulate the Zionist project, and with it, the Diaspora-Israel relationship. Where I part with Perlo is that he believes that Rabbi David Hartman may have hit on such a formulation. In Perlo’s summation of Hartman,

Israel is the grand experiment of Judaism. It is important, critical, because it is the only place where the totality of the religious, cultural, political and social ideas of Judaism and Jews are expressed through a body politic. Israel is the only place in the world where Judaism is the civilization, and the ideals we claim to hold apply to a living country. For this reason, if for no other, Israel is of central importance to anyone who loves Judaism.

In Rabbi Hartman’s formulation, Israel is Judaism’s grand experiment, and as appealing as that claim is, it has no support. Secular Israelis continue to be alienated from and hostile towards Judaism. Liberal Jewish movements haven’t had much success in convincing Israelis otherwise. Many of the ultra-Orthodox reject the legitimacy of the state, or at least deny its religious validity. And the religious Zionists have placed the Land of Israel above the State of Israel in their thinking.

The idea of the State as an entity where Jews govern themselves was once a powerful organizing principle. Today it is a tired reality, and a fragmented reality at that. Governing the Palestinians for forty years is one aspect of the problem, but even within Israel proper, the role of non-Jewish minorities poses questions as yet unanswered about the Jewish character of the state. American Judaism’s struggle for recognition, respect, and freedom of worship has deflated the positive feelings of American’s most talented young Jewish leadership towards Israel. And as Israel’s power has grown to regional super-power status, both Israelis and Americans are less willing to give Israel a free pass to use security concerns to justify any course of action.

Why is Israel important? The question itself is outrageous. Millions of people live in Israel, under Israeli rule. Some are members of our tribe, some are our coreligionists, some are ideological fellows. And some are none of these. Israel is another human effort to create a just, happy, and productive society, springing from Jewish thought, culture, and heritage. The question we need to pose is not why Israel is important, but what values should Israel commit itself to, and how should it express those values. In America we value, freedom, democracy, and economic opportunity. Do we value the same in Israel? Should we? If not, how do we explain why our values in Israel are different? Those are questions we have elided for too long, questions that young people are not hearing answers for, and ultimately, questions that we are not too sure of ourselves.

We Interrupt the Holocaust to Bring You…

July 22, 2010 at 11:59 pm | Posted in dating and marriage, holocaust, israel | 7 Comments

A chilling story about an Arab man sentenced to 18 months in prison by and Israeli court for rape of a Jewish woman because he posed as a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious relationship. The court ruled that the consent of the woman to have sex was obtained under false pretenses, and therefore the sex was non-consensual.

Let’s put that in plan English. In Israel, only Jewish men are allowed to lie to get a woman into bed. An Arab man doing the same is a rapist. I wonder how this applies in other situations. Let’s say the man was a Christian? What if he said he was Jewish, but it turns out he had a reform conversion? What if only his father was Jewish, not his mother? What if he was a Mischlinge of the second degree? What if he said he owned a villa in the south of France, when in fact the villa was more centrally located? What if that wasn’t his real hair? What if that story about her college roommate wasn’t the most interesting story he’d ever heard?

Maybe this isn’t an interruption of the Holocaust series, maybe this is a reflection of how the racial policies of Nazi Germany have left a deep mark on the Israeli pysche. The court’s argument doesn’t hold any water, legally speaking. There is no legal duty of honesty in dating, as we well understand. Rather, what the court did was establish a racist principle as Israeli law: that an Arab must declare his racial identity or risk prosecution for otherwise legal acts. Let’s say that a Jew sold an Arab posing as a Jew some land. Could that Arab now be charged with theft, because the Jew would not have sold him the land if he knew the buyer was an Arab? At what point do you just have Arab citizens sew yellow crescents onto their clothes, so that Jews will know for sure to treat them differently?

When my wife heard the story she said “I’m so ashamed of being a Jew right now.” I responded “I’m fine with being a Jew, I’m ashamed of being an Israeli.”

Yom HaShoah and Tisha B’Av

July 20, 2010 at 8:21 am | Posted in culture, holidays, holocaust, israel, jewish denominations, tisha b'av | 4 Comments

In 1951, the Israeli government declared Yom HaShoah u’Mered HaGetaot (Holocaust and Ghetto Uprisings Day) to occur on the 27th of Nissan. Many know the story by now: The Israeli government, and many Israeli survivors of the ghettos and partisan groups, desired to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising that began on the 14th of Nissan. However, because of the conflict with Passover, the date was delayed by two weeks. Nevertheless, the Orthodox community objected to creating a day of mourning during the joyous month of Nissan. They had previously suggested the 10th of Tevet, a day of mourning that was part of the mourning cycle for the destruction of Jerusalem. Another option was Tisha B’Av, for which Hareid rabbis had written Holocaust kinnot (elegies and mournful poems). Many countries adopted different days for Holocaust commemoration, with January 27th being the most popular by far thanks to its adoption in 2005 by the UN and EU.

For some, the question about when to commemorate the Holocaust deals with the halachic feasibility of establishing a new and perennial day of mourning, the standing of the secular state and its holiday, and the related issues of liturgy and ceremony. For me, the questions go deeper, and I think they emerge out of a central tension: is the Holocaust a singular event in Jewish history that may only be understood on its own terms, or is the Holocaust part of the larger sweep of the tragedy of exile?

There are many arguments for the first position. Elie Wiesel and Claude Lanzmann (director of the critically acclaimed documentary Shoah) are only among the most famous to stake the claim that the Holocaust is fundamentally a rupture with time, history, and civilization. It creates its own apocalyptic world and is bounded by a “ring of fire”, per Lanzmann, that cannot be crossed. The Holocaust has no lessons to teach, in this view, other than the depths of man’s cruelty. The only responses to the Holocaust are revulsion, horror, mourning, and remembrance. No pre-existing day of mourning can encompass this unique tragedy so a day must be set aside to visit this dark place and commune with the deepest emotions and memories that it stirs.

Although I am deeply moved by the Holocaust, I don’t think I agree with the above position. I believe that in the historical moment of memory – that is, in that period of time when eye-witnesses of an event remain – an event like the Holocaust takes on an exceptionalist character. Its survivors attain an unassailable moral stature in our eyes, and the events themselves are a touchstone in their lives that colors everything. In this, events that actually happened become, as they recede in time, larger-than-life, even as those who lived them bear witness to the utter reality that these events were life-sized. In time, as memory turns into history, much that was forbidden to think or to say will be permitted and required if the Holocaust is to remain relevant.

Commemorating the Holocaust as part of Tisha B’Av gives the events an eternally relevant context. As the most recent and well-documented of the tragedies memorialized on this day it provides us with visual memory and intimate contact with the horror, brutality and absence of meaning that mark all of human suffering, and particularly Jewish suffering. The Holocaust gives us access to pogroms, to inquisitions, to blood libels, expulsions, and even to the distant destruction of our Temples and homeland thousands of years ago. But in return, we acknowledge that the Holocaust is not primary in the canon of lamentations. Always first is the destruction of the Temples. The scroll we read will always be Eichah, not Megillat HaShoah. The day will always have a religious character, not a historical one, which means that it will be tied to a notion of repentance, and an understanding of the cause of evil as sin. It will assume God and struggle over His role, rather than present the question of Evil, ot be struggled with anew each year.

I don’t accept the Holocaust as suspended in air, emerging fully-formed from its own head, exceptional and ahistorical. But I also deny that it can be shoehorned into pre-existing tragedy. I certainly reject the triumphalist “out of the ashes” notion that the Holocaust and the founding of Israel are a continuity. Yom HaShoah is its own day, but it needs to be moored to Jewish history and tradition through fasting, prayer, ritual, and ceremony. As of yet, Yom HaShoah’s observance has not felt, at least to me, as authentically and deeply Jewish as I need it to be. That’s why for me, Tisha B’Av will remain a day of Holocaust remembrance.

Tisha B’Av and the Holocaust

July 18, 2010 at 7:09 pm | Posted in books, culture, holidays, holocaust, tisha b'av | 3 Comments

Over the next few days I’m going to write about Tisha B’Av from various perspectives. For those of you who have read my previous pieces in 2008 and 2009, you’ll probably recognize similar themes. This year though, I will focus on the Holocaust as my primary lens for looking at Tisha B’Av.

A couple of months ago, I read Avraham Burg’s poignant and painful book, The Holocaust is Over, We Must Rise from its Ashes. The book echoed my sentiments that the Holocaust as currently understood and as currently intertwined in the Zionist narrative was unhealthy for the continued development of the Jewish people in Israel and in the Diaspora. Burg cited liberally from Hannah Arendt’s controversial report on the Eichmann trials, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, so I read that too. Arendt’s focus on the complicity and passivity of Jewish victims made her book difficult to read, but her point that the Holocaust was not unfathomable and incomprehensible rang true. To confirm her point, I looked to Raul Hilberg’s masterwork, The Destruction of the European Jews. Though Hilberg corroborates Arendt’s points, his work occasioned much less debate.

Spending my leisure reading in this dark period has been really strange. Engaging in the Holocaust not to memorialize, but to understand and analyze, has been refreshing and invigorating. Rather than pulling on a solemn face and grave attitude, as we typically do when confronting the Holocaust, I looked forward to it. I read about the Holocaust on the train and on the subway, and in bed before I went to sleep. For me, a grandchild of survivors and child of Sabras, it was my first encounter with the Holocaust outside of its religious, nationalist or personal dimensions. This was an exploration of the Holocaust as a historical phenomenon, free, for the moment, of the need to position it within a broader narrative that could give it meaning, or that could exceptionalize it, and place it outside the realm of meaning. I tried to simply learn what happened, and how it happened, holding everything else in abeyance.

At a certain point, I’m not sure when, an idea began to take shape though. I guess you can only live in that place of suspended judgment for so long. I started to sense the shadow of Tisha B’Av creeping closer, and I began to contextualize my reading around that. I had some idea that I would use this reading experience to write, and that it would culminate on Tisha B’Av – even though I never saw that as the day for Holocaust remembrance. But once that idea took hold, another interesting thing happened. I began to grow more aware of the mourning practices of the Three Weeks and the Nine Days – the lead-up to Tisha B’Av itself. The rituals I chose to observe took on greater meaning, even as my confusion over the relationship between the Holocaust and Tisha B’Av grew.

Over the next few days, I’ll try and cover some interesting ground, starting with Yom HaShoah and Tisha B’Av, and moving on to questions of Israeli and Diaspora narratives, and the changing nature of Holocaust remembrance, as we shift from preserving memory to teaching history, and as we escort our last living survivors to their final rest. I welcome your comments and feedback.

The Gezerah of Zionism

April 2, 2010 at 2:05 pm | Posted in beliefs, books, holidays, israel, jewish denominations, pesach, politics | 6 Comments

Reading Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg’s The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus in preparation for Pesach, I came across her elucidation of the concept of Gezera – a Heavenly Decree. The servitude in Egypt is considered in Jewish theology a gezera. As Zornberg explains,

In the gezera view of the world, reality is perceived in freeze-frame mode. Things are what they are, what they must be. There is no other basis for decision, for evaluation… The way of those who live in the gezera mode is to limit knowledge, vulnerability, empathy…

Zornberg writes repeatedly of the heaviness of gezera, of its inevitability, inertia, and static nature. This was the nature of the bondage in Egypt. But it made me think about the religious Zionists.

Of all different Jewish ideologies, religious Zionism was the only one to see in the founding of the State of Israel a Divine redemption. The Satmar rejected the possibility that this secular state founded by anti-religious Jews could embody some aspect of a Divine deliverance from exile. And the Zionists themselves agreed! They saw their project as a project of self-redemption, without help from God or anyone else. It was the Religious Zionists who identified a reishit tzmichat geulateinu, a first flowering of Divine redemption.

At first, the story unfolded well, from the victory of 1948 that made the state a reality, to the miraculous 1967 war that became an instant near-Biblical myth. Yet since that time, and particularly from 1973 on, redemption has stalled. Today, Religious Zionists, the only ones to see in the State of Israel a Geula, a Redemption, are now stuck in the world of Gezera. They have no answer for the Palestinian question. They do not believe peace is possible, and the only solutions to the status quo are too terrible for them to consider. They are stuck, they are frozen, they are laid with the heaviness of Gezera. There is no basis upon which to make different decisions or new evaluations. Instead, Religious Zionists limit information, reduce perspectives, and avoid empathy or other human dimensions of relation.

The metaphor for redemption in Judaism is that of birth. When a birth is stalled, when a redemption flounders and runs aground, a forceps delivery is the answer. So too, we see in the Torah that at the end of Parshat Shemoth, the deliverance from Egypt is stuck. Pharaoh won’t listen to God. The Israelites won’t listen to Moses. And Moses himself resists God’s message, complaining that so far he’s only made it worse for the Israelites. At this moment, God introduces the forceps and delivers the Israelites by bringing on the plagues. Though today we don’t relate to it as such, there is no doubt that the plagues were traumatic for the Israelites as well as the Egyptians – and traumatic for God as well!

Zornberg poses the question in her exploration of the Exodus, but I think it applies today as well. “[I]s there any other solution to the problem of impasse, of stalled birth, than the invasive solution of a forceps delivery? Is the Exile… a fate for which there exists a more organic form of release?”

I believe that the answer lies in the human capacity for narrative. The main Mitzvah of Pesach is just that, to tell a story, l’saper. Pesach has no fixed text for us to recite. The Hagaddah is not the Megillah of Purim, whose every word must be recited clearly to fulfill one’s obligation. Rather, we must tell a story that can be understood by our children. In telling that story, we have tremendous liberty to meet our obligation. We can tell a halachic story like the Chacham desires, we can tell a story of redemption and punishment, like the one we tell the Rasha, we can tell the story of our ongoing relationship to God through worship, like we tell the Tam, or we can tell the broadest outline of our national origin, like we tell the She’eino Yodea Lishol. Or perhaps some other story to some other child. But the story creates the possibility for a different kind of future, and we must construct a story of our own redemption in this day that doesn’t end with us waiting for the forceps of redemption to inflict their terrible price on all involved.

Pride and Jewish Identity in the Diaspora

February 26, 2010 at 2:31 pm | Posted in education, israel, politics | Leave a comment

Following up on Wednesday’s post on Jewish identity, check out Eli Valley’s terrific article suggesting a Birthright Diaspora. Lots in here I agree with. Here’s a quick excerpt.

It’s time to expand our notions of positive Jewish identity and at long last move beyond an ideology that fretfully masquerades self-hatred as Jewish empowerment. By digging through centuries of Jewish life, Birthright Diaspora will help transform Jewish self-awareness and break the dichotomy of “hero” and “victim” that has handicapped internal Jewish intellectual inquiry for decades. The goal is not merely widespread experiences in Jewish communities around the world, but a renewed understanding of Diaspora as a birthright that underlies roots of Jewish consciousness. If implemented effectively, Birthright Diaspora can lead to an existential transformation in the way Jews and Israelis view themselves and the world.

Valley goes even further in taking on the sacred cow of Israel’s intrinsic superiority to the Diaspora, which he refers to as “geographic supremacy.” And he delivers a strong rebuke, by implication, to Israel’s current political realities:

Imagine the possibilities of Israelis learning about Jewish life in countries that have rights enshrined in constitutions; in societies that protect the freedom of religion and the integrity of the state by scrupulously separating the two; or in nations that guard the democratic and human rights of citizens and non-citizens.

Check out some of Valley’s politically satirical cartoons in The Forward

Alt-Neu Jewish Identity

February 24, 2010 at 11:29 pm | Posted in beliefs, culture, education, israel, politics | 5 Comments

In a brilliant post, Daniel Septimus, Executive Director of MyJewishLearning.com, suggests that we discard the concept of strengthening Jewish identity to frame the work of engagement of Jewish young adults, or of Jewish continuity.

“What do organizations mean when they say they want to strengthen or cultivate Jewish identity?” asks Septimus. He goes on to say, quoting Dr. Erica Brown, that the Jewish world today “aggressively emphasize[s] the emotional.” This desire to get young Jews to feel good and proud about being Jewish is a shallow and meaningless educational goal that has no roots in Jewish tradition. Septimus suggests that we replace Jewish identity as a concept with a much older rubric, composed by Shimon HaTzaddik, who says in Pirkei Avot that the world is sustained by three things: Torah, Temple service (avodah) and acts of kindness (gemilut hassadim). Septimus reads in Torah all of the study and intellectual and cognitive aspects of Judaism; into Avodah, the religious, ritual and spiritual aspects; and into Gemilut Hassadim the ethical demands of Judaism and the conduct among human beings.

Needless to say, I heartily agree with Septimus. While many theories of identity exist, including the aforementioned Dr. Brown’s schema of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional components of identity-building, I think we can settle on a layman’s simple and direct approach. A person’s identity is composed of those things that he does, those things he refuses to do, and the intentions behind those choices. The problem with the non-Orthodox Jewish institutional community is in its own identity! Jews fifty-five and up, who sustain and captain Jewish institutions, have largely chosen not to commit to regular Torah-study, nor to observing very much ritual or spiritual practice. I’ll grant the ethics though, and will salute this generation for defining as primary the ethical role in Judaism.

When this generation talks about strengthening Jewish identity, I’m not sure that they are just talking about emotions. I think they are talking about some real choices. The makeup of their own identity rests on the choice to support Israel and Zionism through unblinking solidarity, to affiliate with synagogues (but not to attend much), and to donate to Federations. These choices simply do not resonate with young adults, many of whom don’t suffer a sense of shame around being Jewish and don’t need Israel to feel strong, or impressive synagogues to feel proud, and who especially don’t feel like they need an ethnic social safety net to be cared for like any other American.

The Judaism of the previous generation was an expression of their cultural and spiritual needs. Those needs were the needs of an immigrant community to take care of its own in the face of active discrimination, to build institutions and establish itself as a legitimate part of American society, and to support the state of Israel as a point of pride, but also as a potential safe haven.

None of these cultural and spiritual needs are in play today. Young Jews in America feel safe, and they feel as though they belong. They want to express theiur values by giving of their time, not their money. They don’t fear Judaism will be destroyed, they seek to understand why it was so important to preserve it. They don’t want to draw pride from Israel because Jews there fight back, they want to support and be proud of Israel because Jews there make peace. Those are the actions and intentions of the next generation of Jews. That’s their Jewish identity, that’s their Torah, Avodah and Gemilut Hassadim. Let’s support that.

Was Vashti a Victim?

February 22, 2010 at 11:00 pm | Posted in holidays, purim | 8 Comments

For all you folks cruising the internet for something to say at your Seuda, here’s a thought (hat tip to Mrs rejewvenator).

Vashti really gets piled on by the rabbis. In the Megilla, she lasts all of ten verses. She throws a party for the women, is summoned to appear before Achasverosh wearing the royal crown, refuses, and thanks to Memuchan, is banished from ever appearing before the king and is replaced by Esther. So far, she sounds like a victim of Achashverosh’s cruelty and temper. Maybe she’s even a feminist heroine, who, like Mordechai, refused to obey the commands of the king.

When we turn to the midrash and the gemara, Vashti comes of a lot worse. First, we’re told that she’s the granddaughter of Nebuchadnezzer, who destroyed the First Temple and exiled the Jews. Second, she’s the daughter of Belshazzar, the Babylonian king who threw a party just like Achashverosh did, and also drank out of the vessels of the Temple. At that party, the dismembered hand wrote on the wall (yes, the famous “handwriting on the wall”) that his kingdom was ending, and that very night the Persians and Medes attacked, killing everyone, except Vashti. We also learn that Vashti would kidnap Jewish girls and make them work for her in the nude, and that she’d force them to weave for her on Shabbat. She also either grows a tail or gets leprosy, thus refusing to appear before the king naked, as per the Midrash. The rabbis finally tell us that Vashti is executed, not simply banished, for her refusal.

But c’mon rabbis! Tell us how you really feel!

Looking deeper into the Megilla, we see an interesting trend. There are many people who could be considered victims in the story of Purim. The Jews, most obviously, but lots of other folks as well. Vashti, Bigtan and Teresh (who were plotting against an evil king, after all), Haman’s ten sons, and the people killed by the Jews during their uprising were all victims. One could even argue that Haman and Achashverosh were victimized by one another!

The rabbis are very careful to make sure that nobody else gets to play the victim besides the Jews. Vashti is assigned an awful backstory and terrible actions are ascribed to her as well. She deserves her death! Bigtan and Teresh, according to the Midrash, were actually trying to set Mordechai up to take the fall for ~~Haman’s~~ Achashverosh’s death. so they too deserved their fate. And of course, all those non-Jews who the Jews killed were planning to kill the Jews as per Haman’s plot, so that’s that. Haman’s ten sons? Well, Haman is descendant from Amalek, so they have a Divine death sentence hanging (no pun intended) over their heads, and in any case, they were actually killed in the battle, and their corpses were hanged. As for Haman and Achashverosh, they cancel each other out. Haman manipulates the drunken Achashverosh and basically takes all the king’s power for himself. Achashverosh casually has Haman executed in a moment of (feigned?) rage. We don’t feel pity or sympathy for any of them.

The story that we’re left with is one in which the great personal sacrifices and risks of Mordechai and Esther, their selfless devotion to the Jewish cause and fearlessness in the face of personal harm are the only truly good, noble, and altruistic acts in the whole story.

Judaism Under Threat

February 18, 2010 at 10:00 am | Posted in israel, politics | 13 Comments

Ask your average American Zionist about the challenges facing Israel
today, and he or she will no doubt tell you that Israel faces an
existential threat from Iran. The looming threat of Iran gaining
nuclear weaponry is perhaps the most serious, but Iran’s ongoing
funding of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and it’s control over Syria and
Lebanon are also very grave challenges to Israell’s ongoing security.

American Zionists respond to these threats by supporting Israel both
financially and politically, just as they have for decades, going back
to before the founding of the stae in 1948. Massive institutions
including AIPAC and the American Jewish Federations system were
esttablished to facilitate this kind of support, and they have been
extremely effective in bringing dollars to Israel and bringing Israel’s
political cause to Washington.

Now let’s flip the question. If you ask the average Israeli about the
challenges facing the American Jewish community, without hesitation
Israelis will respond that American Jews are assimilating and
intermarrying into oblivion.

To stem this tide, Israelis individually don’t really do very much.
Instead, the government acts as their representative. The Jewish Agency
encourages Americans to make Aliyah. Birthright Israel, which is
heavily funded by the government, helps to strengthen the Jewish
identities of Americans, and brings them into a closer relationship
with the land and people of Israel. Masa encourages Jewish college
students and young professionals to visit Israel for extended stays and
develop new educational or professional skills and ties in Israel and
with Israelis.

This bilateral relationship has existed for a long time. Americans gave
money and political support to defend Israel from political and
military threats; Israel gave pride and purpose to Americans to bolster
them against assimilation into an increasingly welcoming American
melting pot.

Looking back over these relationships, it’s stunning to think that,
basically, both sides think that the other would cease to exist, but
for their efforts. Normally, an agreement based on this kind of
mutuality would be highly durable and even admirable. But there’s
something inncredibly egotistical and solipsistic about the
relationship. It’s not that each side agrees that there is an
interdependence. It’s that each side believes that it alone holds the
key to Jewish survival, and that it is under some obligation to agree
to save the other.

I’m not sure that the contours of this agreement remain as relevant
today as they once were. Increasingly, Israelis resent and wish to
reject American dollars. They no longer wish to be beggars, and the
strings attached to the money have begun to chafe, especially as it
relates to policy towards Palestinians. Israelis are excited to welcome
new American immigrants to Israel, but conversely, feel that if you
don’t live in Israel and share in the burdens and sacrifices of
citizenship, you have not earned the right to participate in governing
and policy-making for the state. Moreover, Israelis have a deep-seated
unease about American religious denominations that continue to try and
make inroads into Israeli society.

As for Americans, they suffer a much greater sense of ambivalence about
the state of Israel. The problems and shame of a 40-year occupation
weigh heavily, and the polarizing nature of debates about Israel and
antisemitism in general discourage any engagement with Israel
whatsoever, particularly among the younger generation. Israel’s role as
a refuge or safe haven, which still has great currency in other parts
of the Diaspora, doesn’t resonate with Americans, who are largely safer
and more free to practice their (non-Orthodox) Judaism in America than
they would be in Israel. Moreover, with Israel having emerged as an
economic and military titan in its region, Americans are increasingly
questioning why they should send 50 cents of every philanthropic dollar
rasied by their Federation to Israel, especially in the face of growing
needs at home.

Israel today says to America “support me politically, and without
question, because we are family, and the core of both of our identities
is this land which we must defend at all costs and never lose.” To
which Americans reply “be better! I can’t support your actions when
they violate the core Jewish values that are the bedrock of our shared
identity. Better to lose all our land, and save our souls!”

Where can we go from here? Fortunately, the medicine to cure our
disease exists. What we need to do is increase the personal
relationships between Americans and Israelis. Programs like Birthright
and Masa are part of the solution, and so is outreach to the
ever-growing communities of Israeli expats living in America. The
explosion of social networking has created the space for broader and
deeper interactions between Israelis and Americans. We should seek to
support these personal connections because the only way to resolve th
argument that is splitting our shared house is through meaningful
conversation, through seeing ourselves reflected in the eyes of our
brothers and sisters, and through speaking clearly about what values we
share, and what values divide us.

The American and Israeli Jewish communities are the largest in the
world. And surely we are an ever-dying people if both of these
communities, more prosperous, more powerful, and more populous than
ever before in history can be considered to be under existential
threat, to be facing utter destruction. But if it’s true, than our
future is indeed precarious, and we must come together to face our
challenging future in a mutual partnership.

Back to the Future with Jonathan Sarna

August 13, 2009 at 6:41 pm | Posted in beliefs, culture, dating and marriage, economics, education, israel, orthodox, politics | Leave a comment

The more I read of Jonathan Sarna, the more impressed I am with him personally, but the more I fear for institutional Judaism. Sarna is intelligent, considered, insightful and articulate, but he’s also an historian, and my feeling is that movements led by historians and sociologists rather than activists and entrepreneurs are already moving into their exhibit space at the museum.

I bring this up to comment on Sarna’s recent article in Reform Judaism Online, published by the URJ. Sarna has some thoughts to share looking backwards, and a few predictions for the future Judaism, inlcuding:

In the past, economic crises have caused American Judaism to turn inward and away from Israel and its troubles. It has also gutted educational spending, with terrible consequence.
Jewish institutional life tends to benefit from expansions in government services and social safety nets, as these free up significant funds and manpower for Jewish charities and social service organizations.
Expect to see lots of Jewish organizations go under, particularly in the hard-hit Orthodox sector, as we finally learn whose been swimming naked as the tide goes out. Mergers between Jewish instutions will increase, as will mergers between Jewish and non-Jewish institutions.

He’s got quite a few others, but I particularly want to focus on Dr. Sarna’s prediction that, as in the 1930s, American Judaism will turn inwards, and disengage to some extent with Israel. As evidence, Sarna cites the fact that fewer Jews are attending summer-long or semester-long programs in Israel.

My main objection to that piece of evidence is that it discounts Birthright Israel, which has sent over 200,000 Jews to Israel over the last decade. Much of the decline in summer and semester programs in Israel can be attributed to the fact that participants in those trips are ineligible for a Birthright tour, and many high-school students in particular have declined to go to Israel with their youth movements, synagogues, or schools precisely because they prefer to go on Birthright for free.

In any case, Sarna also points out that entirely endogamous Jewish couples are outnumbered nearly 2-to-1 by intermarried couples. If roughly 50 out of 100 Jews marry other Jews, you get 25 endogamous couples. That leaves another 50 Jews marrying 50 non-Jews, and thus you get that 2-to-1 ratio that is simply astonishing. Judaism in America has already been redefined on the ground, and we’re still left sorting out exactly what that might mean.