Activism and Jewish Science

The folks at 36 Under 36 are an accomplished bunch, but The Jewish Week is laboring within a limited definition of Jewish activism: viz., stuff which yields a creative product or institution immediately appreciable by the Jewish lay public. But (with the exceptions of Ethan Tucker and Adam Kirsch) what this definition leaves out is the intellectual effort of Jewish academia, which never got anyone to make aliyah or become a mikvah habitué but - for all that - is of value. I wonder if the assumption might be that activists Act, while pure intellectuals don't. But that would be wrong.

Breaking News: Obama Cabinet Selection

Secretary of Jewish-American Literature.

Fuftsik Sent and Madona
Yiddish rap in the Jewish state.

Check out this article in Yediot Acharonot. I haven't heard the sound files yet. (Thanks to reader MJ for pointing this out.)

Update: As usual, I'm about three to four months behind the curve -- the disk came out in May. I just listened to some clips. Lipa it isn't, just saccharine frumification of perfectly good music. (Why would you need an ultra-O version [track 5] of La Isla Bonita?)

(Speaking of Yiddish and Madonna, the new issue of Afn Shvel has a great article by Marc Caplan on Ms. Ciccone Ritchie and her practice of Kabbalah.)

Defining the WikiJew
The ethnoreligious identity that anyone can edit: an article of mine in this week's Forward.

Who is a Jew? Let’s see what Wikipedia says about it. Or, rather, what the Wikipedias say, since the online encyclopedia is available in more than 100 languages. The answer to our question in English neither offends nor omits anyone: “[A] follower of Judaism, or [a member] of the Jewish people, an ethno-religious group descended from the ancient Israelites and from converts who joined their religion. The term also includes those who have undergone an officially recognized formal process of conversion to Judaism.” The Hebrew version (“Jews are an ethnic group of Semitic origin, in which membership is based on the Jewish religion”) is clearer, with a refreshing Israeli directness, but one will look in vain for the word “convert” — it isn’t mentioned in the article. And in Yiddish: “A Jew is a person who belongs to the Jewish people.” QED.

The English Wikipedia includes more than a million articles, and the Hebrew version about 45,000. Yiddish Wikipedia includes a little more than 2,000 articles, which makes it bigger than its counterpart in Tajik but smaller than Limburgian. So comparisons between these versions are not entirely fair.

Even so, the differences are illuminating. The English Wikipedia is a collaboration of thousands. Entries on non-trivial topics generally converge to a quasi-official style, with any unconventional stand revised out of existence. For its part, Hebrew is a Jewish language — but as far as Wikipedia (and modern Israel) are concerned, it is a national language, unceremoniously banishing to the sidelines the cozy bits of culture that Diaspora Jews hold dear. “Kugel” has no entry of its own, but languishes in the general entry “Pastries,” rubbing elbows awkwardly with “lasagna” and “pie.” Click on “Period of the Exile” in the Hebrew article “Jewish People” and you will be urged to (in Wikipedia-speak) “Edit ‘Period of the Exile.’” In other words, there’s nothing there.

And the Yiddish version? It’s Wikipedia moonshine, brewed by a bunch of bloggers, mostly Hasidic, with too much time on their hands. (I’m among the contributors.) Its entertainment-to-reliability ratio is far and away the highest of the three.

But there’s more to this comparison than clichéd Israel-Diaspora differences. The readers of each language have the benefit of a view denied to the others, so one can triangulate a version that benefits from all. What is Israel, for example? Says the English version, with overtones of propaganda: “The Middle East’s only parliamentary democracy and the nation state of the indigenous people of Eretz Yisrael.” Hebrew: “[A] parliamentary democracy found in the Middle East… defined as a Jewish, democratic state.” Yiddish Wikipedia reminds you first — before you’re even told about the State of Israel — that Yisroel can refer to a Jew, someone not of priestly lineage or a member of the Ten Tribes of the Kingdom of Israel. There is also a separate Yiddish article on what it means for there to be a Jewish state (a subject, as far as this reader can tell, undiscussed in the other Wikipedias).

Or, to take another example of a topic that gets different treatment, what is secular Jewish culture? The indulgent English-language article on the topic is apparently meant to catalog every movie, symphony, novel and TV show that Jews have had a hand in, while “Judaism as Culture” (in Hebrew) is a bare-bones — but useful — comparison of three philosophies of Jewish cultural peoplehood.

Other subjects, though not intrinsically Jewish, might be considered Jewish by association. “Homosexuality in Judaism” (English) is by and large given over to the positions of the three major Jewish movements, with obligatory hat-tips to Orthodox struggles with science, Conservative back-and-forthing and Reform cutting of the Gordian knot. Let us thank Herzl that there is no such article in the Hebrew Wikipedia. Homosexuality in (Israeli) Judaism is, in great measure, what the Jewish state makes of homosexuality. The items on the agenda in the United States are also matters of discussion in Israel. (The Yiddish reader looking up “Homosexuality” in her Wikipedia must first click through a notice that the content is only suitable for adults, before being told flatly that homosexuality “is not a Jewish concept.”)

The reader who uses these Wikipedias for Jewish research realizes that each of them has its particular virtues. The English Wikipedia is broad and detailed. The Hebrew version is relatively solid as a source for basic information on Israeli culture, literary and otherwise. The Yiddish version could be called Charedipedia. If you want the latest information on the Satmar succession struggle, the life history of the rabbis Teitelbaum, or diagrams of Hasidic dynasties, look no further. (Its treatment of religious topics, though fundamentalist, is also informative.)

But, as with any encyclopedia, Wikipedia (for Jewish topics as for anything else) should be used with care: There are large parts of the Jewish world that are ignored, glossed over or misunderstood in its pages. Hebrew Wikipedia knows nothing about the Jews of North America; until very recently, English Wikipedia was ignorant about Yiddish literature (as the Hebrew version still is); and Yiddish Wikipedia says little about nonreligious Jewish creativity, or intellectual endeavor in general. In the final analysis, the response to the user coming upon these deficiencies should not be a list of complaints, but a paraphrase of Hillel’s famous words to the convert: “Go and edit.”

Zackary Sholem Berger is a frequent contributor to the Forward. Wikipedia can change fast; some content referred to here might have changed since the article was written.

Secular conversion to JudaismOr Israelism?

The Head Heeb discusses the matter.

Jewish geopolitics
Not paradoxical anymore.

I can't think of anything to blog. We're leaving for China next Monday, and I'm occupied with traveler's questions (will my bottles of Passover wine explode in my baggage? will my two-year-old daughter have to translate for us? will I learn to speak only a smattering of Mandarin, in a thick Fujianese accent?).

So I'll throw an article your way by someone who davens and teaches at my shul. I think it's very reminiscent of Michael Walzer's political philosophy.

Israel again [in the modern era] faces political decisions, such as to how to deal with other peoples and/or nations that critically affect their national security. Consider, for example, the following question: Is Israel obligated to construct the security fence, and/or otherwise to pursue policies, so as not to foreclose the possibility that a viable (and peaceful) Palestinian state can emerge in the West Bank? And, whether or not international law, or general moral principles applicable to Israel as a state, would so require, is there some, or any, particularly Jewish value that bears on this
question?

[. . .]

[. . .] Israel’s claim is not that it itself is a just, liberal state. Rather, Israel’s claim is that a state fostering Judaism (but still protecting the basic rights of all citizens) islegitimate within the context of a pluralistic international order that includes both other states dedicated to pure neutral-liberalism, and other states dedicated to “decent” particularist visions, e.g., to Islam, or to Christianity.

Such a pluralistic vision of the place and role of Israel vis-à-vis other nations has, I submit, very deep Biblical roots. Thus the vision of the end of days at the conclusion of Isaiah Chapter 19 is not a vision of an end to all nationalisms, nor a vision of Israel dominating other nations, but rather a picture of Israel co-existing with Egypt and Assyria:

In that day, Israel shall be a third partner with Egypt and Assyria as a blessing on earth. For the Lord of Hosts will bless them, saying, “Blessed be my people Egypt, my handiwork Assyria, and my very own Israel.”

Permissible criticism, or O-bashing part II
Second in an intermittent series of friendly, well-meant criticism.

What do we talk about when we talk about what's wrong with Orthodoxy? A commenter on my previous post suggested that what I'm trying to do here is a "tit-for-tat" in response to Avi Shafran's Moment article "The Conservative Lie." I hope not. Shafran's argument can be summarized as follows: Conservative Judaism claims that it adheres to halachah. However, Conservative Jews and their leaders are predictably lenient, lax in observance; and cavalier about the importance of halachah to their movement. These facts show, says Shafran, that Conservative Judaism is a failure.

I doubt Shafran's interpretation of the evidence. But even taking these claims at face value, Shafran is only applying Orthodox criteria to the Conservative movement, finding the two don't match, and exclaiming, "See! Conservative Judaism is a failure!" It is a failure in Orthodox terms, but these terms are not the only valid ones. Conservative Judaism's approach to halachah is multi-faceted, and Conservative Torah scholars do not speak with one voice -- that very fact makes it very difficult to say how halachah plays a role in Conservative Judaism. (The same could be said about Orthodox or Reform Judaism, as far as that goes.) That Conservative Jews are lax in their observance, or even that they do not recognize the importance of halachah, is a problem to be solved, not an indictment of Conservative Judaism. Laxness of observance and halachic ignorance have afflicted Judaism forever. They might even be the status quo.

Shafran understands halachah according to its ultra-Orthodox interpretation: strict constructionism. But Conservative Judaism can be (and, I think, tries to be) both halachic and lenient. This dichotomy is unfathomable to Shafran, but does not make it any the less true.

The reason I'm rehashing Shafran's old essay is to try and make a stab at what I have to do to criticize Orthodoxy in useful ways. A commenter on my last post suggested that I should not judge Orthodoxy by Conservative standards. Certainly not. But, on the other hand, I can't judge Orthodoxy by Orthodox standards, for two obvious reasons: first, I'm not Orthodox; and second, because Orthodoxy might be too various to define usefully. A possible way out is sociological. Clearly, Orthodoxy plays a necessary role in Jewish society. (Not the only necessary role, or the most authentic role, but a necessary role. I make this claim because it's defensible.) If we can figure out what makes Orthodoxy necessary, and (further) point out where Orthodoxy is departing from this necessary role, this might be a useful beginning for outside criticism of Orthodoxy. In short: not to criticize Orthodoxy for what can't be by its very nature, but for what it should be and is departing from.

Maybe I've set myself too hard a task, because there's not just one necessary function which Orthodoxy performs. Let's try anyway. One definite function of Orthodoxy is to present itself as a uniquely authentic, traditional Jewish religious culture. I'm using the term "present itself" not to be snide, but to recognize that Orthodoxy is mythic (in the positive sense of myth popularized among Conservative Jews by Neil Gillman), fervently believing in its own authenticity. Whether or not that authenticity is unique is not germane to our present discussion. What matters is that Orthodoxy itself is unique by its belief in that authenticity. It's a self-creation through mythogenesis.

Call this the Myth of Religious-Cultural Authenticity. The hyphenate is important, because it's the subject of my first criticism -- which, like much else I'm saying here, is not original. Today's Orthodox Judaism is in danger of ignoring the "cultural" half of its motivating authenticity myth, and focusing exclusively on the "halachic." Not that Orthodoxy should (God forbid) change its fervent adherence to its own halachic standards (though what those standards are, how they're articulated, and how they're actually observed, is a fascinating, fraught, and ultimately very confusing terrain). But halachah to the exclusion of culture can drain Orthodoxy of what makes it convincing and meaningful not just to its followers but to its non-Orthodox observers: a central myth of traditional living as carried through the generations. (Alan Brill wrote about this in scholarly fashion in an article in Edah, which I discussed here. Also here, here, and here.)

I'd like to suggest that the sector of Orthodoxy which is managing to preserve both ends of the authenticity myth is the Charedi (and in particular the Chasidic) sector, and that modern Orthodoxy, though it is well-nigh tangent at times to my own Conservative Judaism, is most susceptible to this over-halachization I'm criticizing here.

Obviously, this is all a footnote to Rupture and Reconstruction.

Abundant kibitzing
In which I half-articulate what might be wrong with the Conservative movement.

This Shefa list I talked about earlier is turning out to be pretty interesting: a lot less personal bellyaching and a lot more considered and creative thought about where the Conservative movement should go from here. Here's an e-mail I sent to the list that might not make the moderator's cut:

1. One distinction which might be helpful is between LIBERAL and LAX. Conservative Judaism is very much a liberal movement, for the following reasons (all of which are discussed, or at least adumbrated/hat-tipped, in Emet veEmunah): recognition of the importance of individual decision-making as something which can't be coerced into homogeneity by communal institutions; or, relatedly, the notion of religious responsibility (mitsves) as intertwined with individual religious progress cum exploration and contingency. There is a connection to be made between the looser, layperson's meaning of "liberal" and liberal political theory, but "this is no place to be lengthy."

In general, C. Judaism is liberal because it tends to be meykil rather than makhmir. It is important to understand what "meykil" does not mean; it is NOT to be equated with laxity, lack of stringency for its own sake. (Those who equate laxity with the term "kule" [leniency] do not understand the latter.) Ideally, the C. movement should be a rigorous application of both liberal and (this is where we've differed
from our friends on the left) halachic ideas. Liberal *and* rigorous Judaism -- isn't this what we want?

2. However (and this is perhaps where rubber meets road, or theory meets Action Plans), this liberal stringency (or stringent liberality) must be based on a wide range of possibilities for vibrant Jewish life. For the past few years, I have harbored a suspicion that dare not speak its name: that the C. movement's loud protestations of its "halachic" nature are meant as a response to our critics on the right. Of course, halachah is the blood of our Jewish being, but it is not the all. There is much more in addition to halachah which goes into living a God-fearing and humane Jewish life. A convenient term for it is "culture." I don't just mean books on Jewish topics, or Woody Allen, or Jewish music (though all these have some role to play). I'm talking about the ways in which a Conservative sensibility can inform a Jewish religious culture. In other words: the Orthodox have their sub-culture, so why don't we have one? Why are we satisfied to participate in secular Jewish culture when Conservative Judaism has something both religious and worldly to bring to the table?

Let me give an example of where culture can play a role. (There are many other ways, of course.) Mishnah Yomit is a worthwhile initiative of the USCJ. But where's the promotion? Where's the advertising? Where is the pop-culture soupcon of kitsch which has made Daf Yomi a "smash hit" phenomenon among the Orthodox? (To head off an expected comment: adopting this strategy of the Orthodox does not at all mean agreeing with their religious approach.) Or another example: what does Conservative Judaism have to say about American secular Jewish culture? Is there any alternative to provide? I think our answers might be at once more congenial and more convincing than those provided by modern Orthodoxy.

yoIn Envisioning the Future of American Jewry, Leaders Emphasize the Past

Leaders of the four major rabbinical seminaries made a rare joint appearance on October 13th at Yale University, on a panel titled “Envisioning the Future of American Judaism.” Though the speakers agreed on the most pressing problems facing the American Jewish community, they did not propose any new approaches – rather, each presented his own movement’s philosophy as framed by the history of the American Jewish community. The event, sponsored by the Program in Judaic Studies and the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, was held in connection with the 350th anniversary of the arrival of Jews in North America.

Rabbi David Ellenson, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, pointed out that the American Jewish community found success even in its earliest years (ballooning from three thousand Jews in 1790 to almost a quarter million at the end of the 19th century), despite the fact that the first ordained rabbi came to America only in 1840. Thus the layperson plays an outsize role in American Jewish life, bringing to the table her instinctive “doubts about the inherent validity of halachah” and the authority of the rabbi. Furthermore, today’s American Jewish community is thoroughly acculturated, sharing, for example, the mobility of the average American family, which upends traditional ethnic-religious allegiances based on kinship. While the core of the community is healthy, enjoying “a renaissance of the Jewish tradition which has been unprecedented,” the periphery “barely identifies Jewishly.” The role of HUC, concluded Ellenson, is to train rabbis who can both satisfy the core and attract the marginal.

Rabbi Yosef Blau, the Director of Religious Guidance at Yeshiva University and a leader in various modern Orthodox institutions, began with the observation that “a hundred years ago no one would have predicted that Orthodox Jewry would participate” in such a panel. After a summary of Orthodox American Jewish history (crediting Orthodoxy’s post-war resurgence to the day school movement), Blau cataloged the problems of Orthodox Judaism in America, and of modern Orthodoxy in particular: the very diversity of the movement; the attraction of newly observant Jews to ultra-Orthodoxy; the status of women; and the need to strike a “proper balance between tradition and modernity.”

Dr. Ismar Schorsch of the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary attempted to “extract the meaning” of the arrival of Jews in America. His main, somewhat strident emphasis was that the Jews “came [to America] as a group,” not merely as a collection of individuals, and that Jewish identity, flowing from the “wellspring of the Torah,” is “in deep conflict with the notion of autonomy and the sovereign self” which holds that “nothing is sacred.” Said Schorsch, “Unaffiliated Jews are not social capital for the Jewish community.” Rather, the goal should be to create more “serious Jews” – otherwise, the organized Jewish community is “at risk.”

Schorsch did not mention the Conservative movement per se in his remarks, the only one of the speakers not to put his own institution front and center. He mentioned only briefly, in response to a later question from the audience, that the movement is often passed over by its own members, who must first tend to the needs of the wider Jewish community.

Perhaps the most programmatic comments were made by Rabbi Dan Ehrenkrantz, president of the youngest rabbinical seminary represented, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (founded in 1968). “We are a small movement with a large agenda,” said Ehrenkrantz; since “Judaism is a product of the Jewish people,” future Jewish leaders must appreciate “the entirety of Jewish experience,” being “non-judgmental, yet exercising good judgment.” “We want people who can care for the entire Jewish community,” he said, “committed to Jewish history and the Jewish people without being triumphal or bigoted.” Ehrenkrantz implied that the Reconstructionist movement, whose ordained rabbis serve various functions in communities across the ideological spectrum, is well-placed to determine the direction of Jewish communal leadership: with “profound tolerance and respect for diversity, innovation, and the capability to develop communities” which give “meaning to the lives of Jews.”

Additional remarks were made by John Butler, a Yale expert in the history of American religions. “Religion in America has a doubtful future,” he began, quoting the consensus of experts in the late 19th century. Ever since the beginning of the modern era, religious leaders in America have worried that religion can’t compete with the attractions of high technology, urbanism, youth culture, and everything else beckoning from outside the walls of the church (or synagogue). According to Butler, they needn’t have worried, and they needn’t worry today. American religion (and Judaism as an exemplar of this tendency) remakes itself in just those ways necessary to succeed in time of transformation: from immigration to urbanization, and from city to suburb. The importance of religion in this year’s presidential election, and its near-absence from, say, French political campaigning, point to religion’s solid place in American public life, and should help to place in context dire rabbinical warnings of Jewish communal collapse.

Also worthy of note is what was not represented on this panel. In the introductory remarks, it was pointed out that a similar Jewish communal meeting of the minds occurred some forty years ago, at a Yale-Harvard-Princeton Hillel colloquium. At that event, however, there was a representative of “humanist Judaism.” The fact that no such representative, or indeed, any voice from outside the Jewish religious establishment, was present at this year’s panel might bespeak either a shrinking of American Jewish intellectual diversity, or (more probably) reveal the roots of the event itself, which was originally planned to inform Yale students interested in ordination about the different programs available. In any case, established, institutional voices are unlikely to propose bold suggestions for solving the Jewish community’s future problems.

Postscript: The new issue of the YU Commentator, Yeshiva University's student newspaper, features the text of Rabbi Blau's prepared remarks, as well as a write-up of the panel itself by Menachem Butler.

What Jewish culture is: a modest proposal

There have been a number of posts on this blog about Jewish culture -- it's high time we try to define it. (Yet another topic that's relevant in the run-up to Arrival Day 2004.)

0.1. Jews are those who define themselves as such.

0.2. Culture encompasses any product meant to inform, entertain, inspire, horrify, etc.

1.0. Jewish culture is culture produced by a Jew or meant predominantly for Jews.

Corollary 1. Not everything created by those of Jewish parentage, or those who others recognize as Jewish, is necessarily Jewish culture.

Corollary 2. Not everything created in a Jewish millieu, or in a Jewish state, is necessarily Jewish culture. For example, not every cultural product of the State of Israel is Jewish merely by virtue of being Israeli.

Corollary 3. Not everything that meets the criteria above for Jewish culture is necessarily Jewish themed, or concerns itself mainly with traditionally Jewish topics.

I don't mean to say that this is the best or even the only plausible definition of Jewish culture. Heck, people might prefer not to define it at all, since (I'm guessing) that might tamper with its indefinable whatness. Me, though, I think it's more helpful to try to stake out our positions on the issue. For example, the definition I suggest here is reasonably conservative, and possibly helpful, when treating 19th and 20th century cultural products: musical compositions, novels, poetry, political treatises, music-hall banter, and the like. Many of these can be traced to individuals, who in turn generally possess some sort of self-identity, Jewish or no. This definition fails when we ask, say, whether CNN is Jewish.

Perhaps I can rephrase. I'm trying to understand what it means when we talk about American Jewish culture. One popular route is to say that all American culture, since it has benefited so substantively from the Jews, is in some sense Jewish. I say, yes, but in a way that's so broad as to be rather unhelpful. Another is to say that Jewish culture necessarily involves Jewish languages or traditionally Jewish themes (Jewish religious texts, halachah, etc.). But I find this too narrow. To take a non-American example, many readers find Kafka to be "intuitively" Jewish (even if they have at best a foggy notion of his own ethnic allegiances).

This definition is not primarily meant to say who's in or who's out, but to help me draw comparisons and contrasts between similar sorts of cultural creations.

Postscript: I corrected a couple of egregious stylistic and factual errors on the basis of some helpful comments.

What should the American Jewish community look like?
Thoughts before Arrival Day

In the run-up to Arrival Day 2004, The Head Heeb has been productively speculating about the future of American Jewry. I think it’s also necessary to engage in some exhortation. How should the American Jewish community reframe itself in the next 350 years – or the next 50? Of course the next decades will bring uncontemplated changes, but that’s a truism. No one can foresee the future – even the Biblical prophets did not have that as their main charge. Rather than reacting to unforeseen changes, let’s imagine an American Jewish community we would like to live in.

To that end, I want to address something that’s been missing from Jonathan’s posts: some understanding of how Jews, or any other ethnic-religious group, fit into American society. With such an understanding we can more clearly lay out what we would want our community to look like.

My wife recently got me a copy of Michael Walzer’s What It Means To Be An American, a slim collection of eloquent essays which treats the relationship between our patriotism and civic virtue (national and public) and religious, ethnic, and cultural allegiances. In his essay “Pluralism: A Political Perspective,” first published in 1980, Walzer makes some observations worth quoting at length.

The growth of state power sets the stage for a new kind of pluralist politics. With increasing effect, the state does for all its citizens what the various groups do or try to do for their own adherents. It defends their rights, not only against foreign invasion and domestic violence, but also against persecution, harassment, libel, and discrimination. It celebrates their collective (American) history, establishing national holidays; building monuments, memorials, and museums; supplying educational materials. It acts to sustain their communal life, collecting taxes and providing a host of welfare services. The modern state nationalizes communal activity, and the more energetically it does this, the more taxes it collects, the more services it provides, the harder it becomes for groups to act on their own. State welfare undercuts private philanthropy, much of which was organized within ethnic and religious communities; it makes it harder to sustain private and parochial schools; it erodes the strength of cultural institutions.

All this is justified, and more than justified, by the fact that the various groups were radically unequal in strength and in their ability to provide services for their adherents. Moreover, the social coverage of the ethnic communities was uneven and incomplete. Many Americans never looked for services from any particular group, but turned instead to the state. It is not the case that state officials invaded the spheres of welfare and culture; they were invited in by disadvantaged or hardpressed or assimilated citizens. But now, it is said, pluralism cannot survive unless ethnic groups, as well as individuals, share directly in the benefits of state power. Once again, politics must follow ethnicity, recognizing and supporting communal structures.

What does this mean? First, that the state should defend collective as well as individual rights; second, that the state should expand its official celebrations, to include not only its own history but the history of all the peoples that make up the American people; third, that tax money should be fed into the ethnic communities to help in the financing of bilingual and bicultural education and of group-oriented welfare services. And if all this is to be done, and fairly done, then it is necessary also that ethnic groups be given, as a matter of right, some sort of representation within the state agencies that do it.

[. . .]

America’s immigrant [and religious-cultural: ZB] communities have a radically different character [than their counterparts in other countries]. Each of them has a center of active participants, some of them men and women who have been “born-again,” and a much larger periphery of individuals and families who are little more than occasional recipients of services generated at the center. They are communities without boundaries, shading off into a residual mass of people who think of themselves simply as Americans. Borders and border guards are among the first products of a successful national liberation movement, but ethnic assertiveness has no similar outcome. There is no way for the various groups to prevent or regulate individual crossings. Nor can the state do this without the most radical coercion of individuals. It cannot fix the population of the groups unless it forces each citizen to choose a single ethnic identity and establishes rigid designators among the different identities, of a sort that pluralism by itself has not produced.

[. . .]

The survival and flourishing of such groups depends largely upon the vitality of their centers. If that vitality cannot be sustained, pluralism will prove to be a temporary phenomenon, a way-station on the road to American nationalism. The early pluralists may have been naïve in their calm assurance that ethnic vitality would have an enduring life. But they were surely right to insist that it should not artificially be kept alive, any more than it should be repressed, by state power. On the other hand, there is an argument to be made, against the early pluralists, in favor of providing some sorts of public support for ethnic activity. It is an argument familiar from economic analysis, having to do with the character of ethnicity as a public good.

Individual mobility is the special value but also the characteristic weakness of American pluralism. It makes for loose relations between center and periphery; it generates a world without boundaries. In that world, the vitality of the center is tested by its ability to hold on to peripheral men and women and to shape their self-images and their convictions. These men and women, in turn, live off the strength of the center, which they to not have to pay for either in time or money. They are religious and cultural freeloaders, their lives enhanced by a community they do not actively support and by an identity they need not themselves cultivate. . . . Nor is there anything unjust in their freeloading. The people at the center are not being exploited; they want to hold the periphery. Freeloading of this sort is probably inevitable in a free society.

Some observations on this excerpt of Walzer’s essay. First, it seems unlikely that large-scale government support of ethnic-religious groups, such as the author envisions, will become a reality anytime soon. In the absence of this support, and accepting as plausible Walzer’s account of the “center” and “periphery” of the Jewish community (in our case), we should try to propose an American Jewish communal structure which broadly speaking does the following:

1. Funnel funds away from those Jewish communal services which, as Walzer points out, are better, more consistently, and more equitably provided by Federal, state, or local governments, including anti-discrimination and –defamation organizations; welfare; and education. (Not every school which defines itself as Jewish is equally worthy of Jewish communal support.)

As a corollary, the American Jewish community should try to sharply define the limits of its support of Israel, so that this support is justifiable in broader Jewish terms. That is to say, the American Jewish community should attempt to provide for Israelis services which are not being provided by the Israeli government, or which are not being provided in Jewishly defensible ways.

2. Use communal funds (and, it goes without saying, Jewish intellectual and spiritual creativity of the past and present) to emphasize those Jewish cultural and religious institutions which can reinforce the center while attracting, however intermittently, the periphery.

3. Construct a model of American Jewishness which recognizes that communal Jewish interests will not necessarily overlap, and might at times even contradict, broadly civic interests in the well-being of American society at large.

More on this in a future installment, starting with a stab at the notion of Jewish culture in general and American Jewish culture in particular: what they are and what they are not.

Authorial intent: Still more construction of Jewish culture

Alan Brill, author of the Edah article we've been picking at, shares his comments.
[Typo now corrected - my apologies.]

A shaynem dank for the close reading of my article, but as the scene in Annie Hall where Marshall McLuhan shows up to explain himself, the internet allows me to comment and exert authorial intent.

First of all, I was not writing to invent anything new nor was I writing to teach anything to professors. I was writing for a modern orthodox audience, a small enclave. Yes, some of the ideas go back to Bialik and Scholem among many others, but those ideas were not considered in modern Orthodoxy because of its acceptance of the German milieu definitions. I wanted my modern Orthodox reader to consider a broader palette for
defining culture. I wanted the reader to consider (1) that culture is not outside of Judaism (2) that Judaism is richer than the bifurcation model allows (3) that halakhic analysis is a thin description (4) that we are constructing using the past (5) and that Judaism plays itself out in a concrete way. While these ideas may be self-evident to some, they are less evident to a community that treats ideal halakhic frameworks as
reality.

Second, Marc grasped my intent better than Ken. I do not endorse any all-encompassing approach. I am not relinquishing the positive gains of the Enlightenment project in either ethics or science for an Evangelical worldview. I am closer to Robert Christigau (wow, what a long forgotten influence) than German essentialism. I have no problem letting things remain fragmentary, unresolved, and mediated. And when we construct, I
have no problem with different rubrics for the narrative, communal, and universal levels.

Marc, I do not think we live in an unauthentic age. I do not work with the before and after scenarios of Enlightenment, modernity, or reform. I do not consider contemporary Rabbinic Judaism less authentic than those of 19th century Vilna, 17th century Padua, or 15th century Posen.

Marc, the integration of popular culture within high culture was already accepted by 1992 when the New Republic had an important article accepting the social link between Rilke and Elvis Costello, both are considered as high culture, or in your terms Rabbi Soloveitchik and Lou Reed (see Herbert Gans or Michael Kammen, American Culture American Tastes). My questions were more geared for accepting these weaves in our lives and then asking how a Rabbi Soloveitchik/Lou Reed weave differs from a Rabbi Soloveitchik/ Mordechai ben David weave. And on the utopian quest in popular culture, while I did not pursue a Walter Benjamin utopia, it is worth discussing.

For Marc and Zackary, I treat the Rabbinic culture as authentic. I accept the standard orthodox criteria of the halakhah as the definition of authenticity as an a-priori. My goal was just to give it a greater inclusiveness and to treat halakhah in a less rarified way. There are a wide range of Rabbinic texts, (including rabbinic, ashkenaz,
mediteranian medieval, early modern, ottoman empire and Eastern Europe) and the communities that created them to serve as guides and models. These texts have statements on psychology, politics, and cosmology that need to be placed in conjunction with modern Western texts. I do not have a preconceived notion of which elements from either corpus will be accepted, rejected, mediated, or reinterpreted. But, I would like the discussion to occur.

Finally, while Yiddish authors in interbellum Warsaw may have had an expansive view of Judaism, my concern was only with Orthodoxy, which did not have an articulated expansive view in Warsaw, Tel Aviv, or the West side.

Yours,

Alan Brill

Excuse our dust: More construction of Jewish culture (IV)

Another round of comments on the Jewish tradition as applicable to the present day. The next - and last - post in this series will be Alan Brill's comments.

Dear Benyomin,

Thanks for your answer. But as a historian, you have, I believe, overlooked one of my points: of course both the Germans and German Jews like Hirsch thought that Culture meant Schiller and Religion meant Maimonides. All I'm suggesting is that we are not limited by their categories. Hirsch had more in common with Rambam than with Schiller in the sense that both kept mitzvot and learned Torah, while at the same time he had more in common with Schiller than with the Rambam in that he spoke, wrote, and lived in German. Which connection is more important, more authentic - it's not relevant. He had a great number of connections and influences, as we all do, and I propose we emphasize the multiconnectedness itself.

So I don't understand exactly what you mean when you say that our tradition is weak in democratic thought in comparison to the European humanists. Our tradition also begat Moses Hess, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and Peretz himself. And because our tradition also gave birth to Spinoza, the Humanists are in debt to us as much as we are to them.

One more thing: since you mention Kant, I'm right to answer that he believed that Judaism isn't a religion because Jews lack a metaphysical system, and that he wrote that blacks are intellectually incapable of formulating abstract thoughts. This doesn't mean that I'm proposing to "oppress" the Enlightenment (as some of figures of the Enlightenment wanted to keep down the Jews, never mind the inheritors of Kant's thought in Germany itself) and say "good night, world." I'm just saying that mentioning what Jews - and Africans - made out of the Enlightenment, how we made a Haskalah out of the Aufklarung, is a way to repair the errors of the Enlightenment itself . . .

I'm sure that you are as disappointed as I am when non-Jews talk about their interest in Jewish culture as far as Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx, but fall asleep when you start talking to them about Peretz, Avraham ben Hananiah Yagel, or Rashi. And I'm even more sure that you get as upset as I do when a frum person says that yidishkeit only has to do with the Gra, the Besht, and Hirsch, thereby dismissing Kafka, Scholem, and Mendele. I think it's our responsibility, as researchers and just plain Jews, to bring Rashi together with Kafka, Benjamin together with Mendele, and so on . . .

See you later,

Marc

Dear Marc,

Regarding your broader objections to my first note: on the one hand I accept them, but on the other I have to retain my skepticism. That is, if you have the confidence in yourself and in the power of [Jewish] "particularity" to make Spinoza or Marx (and why not Jesus Christ, who had a lot more interest in Judaism than those two did!) "ours," in spite of how weak their own connection with any sort of historically concrete Judaism actually was, then more power to you. But I ask myself, in a sociopolitical sense, if the people who have influence today (if only it were you and not them!), however "liberal" they might be, would be able to include Marx + Spinoza in the framework of the "tradition" which according to them should serve as a resource for modern Jewish politics or ethics. Considering the situation in Israel -- and this is finally the main thing if we are talking about the political/all-encompassing uses of tradition -- I would wonder what the very idea of a Jewish political tradition has done for the State. Unfortunately, it has been harmful more than anything: no constitution, no full civil rights in certain areas of life, and its influence will be even worse in the quite near future if Mafdal or Shas or the settlers take control (because these groups say clearly and openly on the basis of their not-at-all ignorant constructions of tradition that democracy itself is not of importance. And it's something of an irony that you cite Leibowitz, isn't it? Because he himself clearly stated that the State must be secular, based on Kant, if I'm not mistaken.

Said differently: it might be that creative and progressive people like you would be able to make our tradition into firm ground on which to build a democratic system. But first of all, why do we need to make these somersaults of "recombination" when we could just derive the system from modern political thought? Secondly, and more important, there's a danger in the idea that we must have a Jewish tradition to construct our politics, precisely because we have so many undemocratic and unprogressive elements in our tradition (as in all religious traditions), and one could easily construct just the opposite, an ugly, authoritarian-theocratic system according to the same principle of "our own sources." You wouldn't want that, and Brill wouldn't either, probably, and Ben-Gurion didn't either, thank God -- I don't want to suggest that fault lies only with the "religious" because it also definitely lies with the very secular nationalists (like me, actually) who play even to this very day with ideas about "authentic" national traditions -- but the great rabbis and rebbeim and leaders who really have the power of influence, what have they done and what will they still do?

Constructing Jewish culture, III

Just to refresh your memory, we're talking about the article by Alan Brill in Edah. (See the original post.) My friends are dissecting and ruminating like the humanities professors (or assistant professors) they are. Today it's the turn of Ken Moss (whom I know by his Jewish name, Binyomen), a member of the history faculty at Johns Hopkins.

Oh, and to repeat: any stiltedness is due to my translation (we correspond in Yiddish).

Well, I'm not so thrilled by the article. But:

First of all, it's a little bit like reinventing the wheel, because the very idea of creating an all-encompassing Jewish culture is the leading idea of Jewish thought in the 20th century, from Peretz (Vos felt in undzer literatur [What's Missing in Our Literature]) and Bialik (Ha-sefer ha-ivri [The Hebrew Book]) to Rosenzweig and Scholem. The modern Orthodox and the Reform are only today coming to an old idea because they both (and here I disagree with Marc) grow out of the same German milieu in which Kultur had to mean Deutschtum, Schiller, Goethe, and Beethoven, and Judentum meant only "religion." But if this article can lead to your more creative ideas, I'll thank Brill too! It might also be true that we here in America need to rediscover what was already known in Eastern Europe in 1910 and in Germany in 1920, and that we need to discover it by means of "religion," however frum or fray that religion might be.

But there's a more basic objection which I should mention: the fact that Brill sees among the evangelical Protestants a model for the creation of culture outside the framework of "liberalism." His entire style, at the end of the day, with all his theories of anthropology and cultural practice, is to construct "culture" as an all-encompassing concept, in which one can fit all fields and areas of human creativity, among them the natural sciences, ethics, etc.

But in this way he's deliberately removing the division between "is" and "ought." Empirically speaking it's true, of course, that every individual and society swims, so to speak, in a sea of culture, and that there's no field of life which is beyond or over culture (in the sense of a system of discourse, or of communal meaning). But -- and here I'm demonstrating that I'm an adherent of Englightenment a la Kant -- I would say that ethically and philosophically one must make a distinction between different areas of culture which have very different demands and rules.

Ethics and science, for example, in a concrete context, are empirically speaking culturally specific. But cultural specificity should not dominate them - quite the opposite. Science must be brought under the control of rational, trasnparent, human reason, and ethics (and politics as well) must derive from general human grounds. Otherwise we have barbarism, "Deutsche Wissenschaft," "democracy isn't suited to the Chinese," etc.

To say it differently, I will teach my child that one mustn't rob or kill not because our tradition teaches this, but because humanity teaches it. We should familiarize ourselves with the Jewish ethical tradition in its various forms, but our ethics is not dominated by this or that tradition, by this or that culture. Or let's talk about politics: politically speaking, the democratic foundations of our tradition are quite poor no matter how creative you get, and even poorer with regard to non-Jews (an urgent matter in the State of Israel) -- but this is only a problem for those, like Brill, who want an all-encompassing Jewish culture.

In this sense, I'm stuck in the 19th century, but with the point that if "civilization" must belong to all humanity, culture (everything, that is, which has to do with the development of taste, esthetic, and distinction outside the framework of politics, ethics, and culture) must not be German, nor French, but a Jewish culture which is both well-established and open.

Yours,

B.

Constructing Jewish culture, II

I forwarded the article by Brill to two friends of mine, and we've been back-and-forthing about it over e-mail. Today's comments are from Marc Caplan, now a faculty member at Indiana University, soon to be a post-doc at Penn. His dissertation compared Yiddish and African literatures. Also relevant is that he (and his wife) are both modern Orthodox, and were members of KOE, a modern Orthodox synagogue, when they lived in New York. Oh: we correspond in Yiddish, so any spelling errors are due to my translation.

Thanks to you both for involving me in this imprtant and interesting discussion.

Let me begin by saying that I'm not a disinterested party, since Edah is ideologically connected to the shuls I davened at in New York [. . .]

I believe the first thinker who first truly considered these questions is the rock critic Robert Christigau, who at the beginning of his career, about thirty years ago, wrote that we must create a theory of modern esthetics which includes both Marcel Proust and Chuck Berry—culture with a big C and culture with a small c (though Christigau would never say that Berry represents small-c culture!).

But to create such a concept of culture for (or among) Jews, one must overcome quite a few conceptual difficulties:

1) The divisions between frum and non-frum, tradition and modernity, and even Jewish and non-Jewish are imaginary. The Rambam derives from Aristotle no less than he derives
from Saadia Gaon; Samson Raphael Hirsch probably took more from Schiller than from the Rambam, and so on. Both "the Rav" and A.J. Heschel read philosophy in Berlin (!)
while the Lubavitcher rebbe studied science in Paris. Ovadia Yosef demonstrates his North African roots no less than his Sefardic and Kabbalistic influences, and the fact that he never studied in Berlin or Paris is the first sign not of an "authentic" Sefardic Judaism, but rather of the political situation of the North African populace in his generation . . . Admitting that we're all connected to the eternity of human civilization is no mystical fantasy, it's just a fact of living in the world [. . .]

2) Although there's no authentic culture in the world - though all cultures are a sum of purposeful decisions by people, and so don't develop organically in nature - the problem of "authenticity" for modern Jews is even sharper because both frum and Yiddishist cultures are both separated not from their "natural" roots, but their historical roots, which were torn out by immigration to America and Israel and by the Holocaust.

3) Since our culture is particularly unauthentic, we must deal with ideological and historical influences which come between us and the culture which we would like to reconstruct. Therefore there is no true reconstruction which we could accomplish. Everything is starting from square one, both for modern Orthodox Jews and for the so-called secular Yiddishistrs. Considering how underdeveloped both cultures are to this very day, this "beginning" must begin more or less with our own generation.

If we understand the liberating possibilities of our inauthenticity, we can recognize that modern Jewish culture can really be what we make of it, and say that the purpose of building such a culture is not either on the foundation of Torah u-mitzvot, nor on Yiddish language or humanism, that is, a parallel development, but that the two are connected goals. As the rabbi said to the "weak man": everything is in the Torah. If so, the question for us is no different than for Christigau: creating a Jewish culture which comprises both Rabbi Soloveitchik and Lou Reed - with Barnett Newman, Irving Howe, and
Malke Heifetz-Tussman somewhere in the middle. What would we call this? I suggest "utopia"...

This is all by way of introduction [. . .]

By the way, it's very ironic that Brill writes in his article: "Modern Orthodoxy has adopted a Protestant division between faith and culture” (apparently on the side of Faith against Culture). Reform Jews also adopted a Protestant differentiation between Faith and Culture, mostly on the side of Culture! This reminds me precisely of what my professor Arthur Hertzberg once said about Yeshiva University itself - it's not a true Orthodox institution, but the radical-right wing of the Reform movement!

Under construction: Modern Jewish culture as understood by Alan Brill

The Iyyar issue of Edah includes an important article by Rabbi (and Dr.) Alan Brill which tries to navigate the relationship between Judaism and culture.

Its point of departure is the modern Orthodox concept of Torah u-Madda (Torah and science, where "science" is used its older sense of general knowledge). According to Brill, this ideology is predicated on nineteenth-century notions of culture as something external to religion. But in reality, according to modern theorists, culture is by definition the substratum in which all life, the life of Jews included, is embedded. Jews have always been creators and consumers of culture - asking whether the Jewish community should be "engaged" or "distant" from non-Jewish culture misses the point entirely. The question is: what sort of culture should be sought by American Jews? More specifically, Brill asks: how should one understand the Judaism of the lay, suburban Jew in America?

Simply put: what sort of culture do we, American Jews, want? (Note that Brill uses "Orthodoxy" throughout his essay, but I think his line of thinking is relevant to many American Jews. In fact, this is exactly the sort of topic which should be the bread-and-butter of, say, Conservative Judaism, both the movement and the journal. But stop me before I complain again . . .)

Brill's essay is more devoted to the problem than its solutions, but he does, near the end, advance a certain approach. Other religious communities in America, he says, have "reconstructed" various fields of intellectual thought (physics, literature, philosophy, psychology) in their own image. Just as we construct our religious approach ("there is no given of Torah," says Brill), so we construct our intellectual sphere in concert with the spiritual.

There is much to think about here, but two difficulties come to mind.

1. What criteria are to be used in "rewriting" those parts of "liberal culture" which do not conform to Judaism? What does it mean to say, as Brill does, that "[w]e can criticize Romanticism as having values against the Torah"? Which part of Romanticism, Don Juan or "Ozymandias"? And which values? Certainly some views of divine inspiration (to take one example) held by the Romantics are not wholly alien to Jewish notions, I would think. To say the following is very bold indeed, and I wonder how it is to be done:

Jews need the creation of Jewish psychology, education, philosophy, political science, and sociology similar to the works produced by Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims.

The problem with such a "rewriting" is that it requires criteria for what a "Jewish psychology" is. I have my own ideas - which I hope to post about in the future - but this leads me to the second difficulty, viz.:

2. Brill understands the creation of Jewish religious culture as, in essence, a rabbinic project - not only for rabbis, that is, but based on rabbinic literature. His examples of the broad spectrum of Jewish culture are thus drawn from the many rabbis and religious leaders who have written works of literature and science. But Brill overlooks a fruitful source for the construction of a (sub)urban Jewish culture which is both religious and modern: our predecessors and contemporaries, who have created, and are engaged in creating, precisely that! In an important sense, Jewish modernity as an embedded cultural endeavor began in Eastern Europe and continued in the State of Israel, while American Jewry has become afflicted by what Brill points out is the Protestant, nineteenth-century view of culture as opposed to, or a seducer of, the religious tendency.

Unfortunately, in what I think might be an overreaction to ultra-Orthodoxy, Brill tends to characterize Eastern European Judaism as "narrow" or "simple." I find this imprecision perplexing in what is otherwise a thoughtful and important essay. Even the rabbinic culture of Eastern Europe, it should go without saying, is not faithfully represented by the minimally thin cross-section that has survived and thrived as modern-day Haredism.

The project of Jewish cultural construction must draw on a number of sources, both rabbinic and non-rabbinic. Medieval sources seem far afield when one can look deeply into the Jewish culture of Vilna, Warsaw, and Berlin, not to mention modern-day Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

What is Jewish culture? How will we know we're constructing it? I'll get to that in my next post - not to solve the matter but to tilt at it.

I just received the new issue of the Jewish Quarterly (London) with a new article of mine in it. (With other interesting material as well, of course.) Unfortunately, I doubt anyone in this country has heard of it, and their web site is sorely lacking. Please buy the new issue (Spring 2004, Number 193), but failing that, here's my piece.

New York’s Jews, religious and secular: Some unwelcome questions

The most popular synagogues in Manhattan are those that bestride the bounds of denominational identity with verve, creativity, or brazenness – or out of sheer necessity, because they have no other choice. Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the “gay shul,” is liturgically too traditional for the Reform movement, and too homosexual for the Conservatives. B’nai Jeshurun, which packs hundreds of single young worshippers on Friday nights into the sanctuary it shares with a church on the Upper West Side, is definitely not Orthodox (look your best for the attractive davener next to you), and, since it uses musical instruments at the Shabbat service, can’t be Conservative either.

Then there are the grass-roots mini-minyanim which have sprung up so that like-minded young people can find friendly faces to daven among. Perhaps the oldest of such minyanim, Kehilat Orach Eliezer (KOE), is an Orthodox prayer group meeting on Saturday mornings and holidays, which seems to tremble chronically on the edge of schism and ideological transformation, too liberal for other established Orthodox synagogues and too conservative for the other smaller groups that have sprung up. For example, Kehilat Hadar, a minyan of some hundred attendees, coming together regularly in temporary quarters, is marked by liturgical conservatism and a love of singing. Darchei Noam is a minyan that calls itself Orthodox, and indeed there is separate seating at its services – but its extensive women’s participation would be out of place at most Orthodox synagogues. Kol Zimrah, a minyan that takes its inspiration from the Reconstructionist and Chavurah movements, is another newcomer to this scene, not to mention a couple of other such groups in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Why do so many twenty- and thirty-somethings find a need to daven outside the strictures of organized, denominationally centered synagogue life? What does this say about Jewish life in New York, both among religious Jews and among those still hardy and independent-minded enough to identify themselves as secular?

There are two reasons for the mini-minyans, one prosaic and one philosophical. The first is demographic homogeneity. Many of these new prayer groups are frequented by twenty- and thirtysomethings who prefer to socialize – and to pray, sing, and enjoy a kiddush – with those of similar age and marital status. Anyone over the age of thirty-five who attends such a “demo-homo” minyan will often feel out of place, not because the daveners themselves are unfriendly, but because they are not in the in-group. But what will happen to those currently active in such mini-minyanim in five or ten years, when they are either older and married, or, worse still in the Upper West Side taxonomy, older and unmarried? Will they still feel comfortable presiding over a second-generation, newly arrived crop of fresh-faced, Conservadox Ivy League graduates?

But there is a more charitable explanation for this phenomenon. Committed, intelligent young New Yorkers are more and more coming to find that the institutional orientation of American Judaism does not overlap with their own interests and commitments. Luckily for them, New York is preserving its reputation as a sort of laboratory, where beakers of young Jews, bubbling away in dark, hip corners, produce innovative substance that can be exported to the rest of the country.

Each of the large denominations has justified its existence to the present day on the basis of a handful of issues. The Reform movement liberated its members from the yoke of halachah, only to refashion that yoke according to the individual will, and then, most recently, to place that new yoke over its own necks, a la Sinai, with communal consent. But where do social action and the ethical imperative, the highest and irreplaceable mitzvot of Reform Judaism, fit in this new rightward tilt? The institutions of Modern Orthodoxy came out of an urge to prove the success of strict halachic practice within the framework of modern American life. But neither the strict halachists (who are attracted to the fundamentalist Orthodox groups of Brooklyn), nor the adherents of modern scholarly-intellectual practice (who are splitting off into their own minyanim and seminaries) are satisfied with the trends of their movements. Will there be a modern Orthodoxy in fifty years? And the monkey in the middle, Conservative Judaism, is having its strength sheared from it by Reform on the left and Orthodoxy on the right; egalitarianism, the burning issue of Conservatism’s 80s and 90s, is now taken for granted even by the movement’s neighbors on both sides. Is there a Conservative passion left for the next millennium that will not consume the bush planted by Schechter and Heschel?

It goes without saying that many lay Jews are not proficient in the inside-baseball differences that characterize Jewish interdenominational squabbling – after all, it’s pretty late in the century, and somewhat late in American Jewish life, to blame the widely recognized American Jewish apathy and ignorance on one particular group of Jews. But many involved New York Jews go one step farther: their flexibility and experimentation in matters doctrinal, halachic, and cultural are precisely at those junctures where organizations and institutions have planted red flags. They walk across the minefield not even looking at the danger signs. So Maimonides’ thirteen principles, the authorship of the Torah, and the binding nature of mitzvot are topics freely discussed by Orthodox and non-Orthodox scholars at a number of forums. Recognition of intermarried couples and of homosexual relationships, a danger zone for the Conservative movement, is approached more and more often, albeit quite gingerly and only in lay organizations. And the Reform leadership, seemingly heedless of a disconnect with the membership such as is bedeviling the Conservatives, is inching ever closer to an appreciation, if not a binding understanding of halachah.

If committed, religiously observant New York Jews don’t respect the denominational boundaries of the last fifty years, how can they be pinned down? While their principles vary, of course, one can try to summarize their approach. Institutions require strict divisions between “in” and “out” – an intermarried Jew must be thrown out because there is a chance that his or her spouse might find their way into the community, which would then, ipso facto, no longer be Jewish, or at least be less so. The truth, individuals and communities know, is somewhat more complicated, because those intermarried couples who bother to associate with a Jewish community are often more committed than couples in which both members are Jewish. This explains why New York’s Jewish cultural institutions, which play the role of venues for ideas that synagogues cannot entertain without unlooked-for repercussions, provide myriad discussion and support groups – not to combat intermarriage, as Jewish communal leaders would characterize the main goal of American Jewry, but to integrate such couples into the larger community.

At the same time that denominational boundaries are being crossed, the influence of two very large, nearly homogeneous communities is strongly felt. The fact that most Jews are to be found under the influence of one or both of these groups will determine to what extent post-denominational Judaism will succeed in the city. On the one hand, fundamentalist ultra-Orthodoxy, a group notable both for its internal power struggles (one would not be amiss in classifying Brooklyn Chasidim, for example, as three, six, or even ten “denominations”) and for its sociocultural homogeneity, like a giant mini-minyan. On the other hand are the Jewish secularists, who would probably not acknowledge, even if it were pointed out to them, their affinity with both Eastern European and Israeli mass-market, urban Jewish cultures.

Most of the Brooklyn ultra-Orthodox, though not all, are Chasidim, and many of the Chasidim, though again not all, are Yiddish-speaking. Though their oft-proclaimed adherence to the traditions of their ancestors occasions much admiring or scornful comment about the “shtetls [sic] in Brooklyn,” such statements betray an ignorance of the thoroughgoing yet disciplined innovation that is the source of these communities’ energy. Mass communication, popular culture, best-selling merchandise, rock-star personalities: the success of the Chasidim in creating a new culture on American soil, and their ability to convince themselves and others of their absolute fealty to the “old ways,” owes everything to these modern phenomena. At the same time, however, the uniquely Chasidic home-family nexus made possible by these modern walls of Yiddish (or merely English-language ultra-Orthodox) mass communication and consumption is also liable to be influenced precisely by the accoutrements of modernity that have made it possible. Chasidic rebbeim, for example, are ever more frequently inveighing against the influx of non-Chasidim into their communities, and the use of the Internet to popularize extra-fundamentalist tendencies. These troublesome tendencies, however, are either already used by the Chasidim or are about to enter their repertoire.

Surprisingly, then, the ultra-Orthodox communities of New York, who the city’s other Jews view with a mixture of fascination, envy, and trepidation, are confronting the same problems as the by now well-established, even traditional, American Jewish denominations. Institutional success leads to cooptation of the institution’s elements by those who would not have been originally allowed inside the tent, at the same time that looser boundaries of definition give rise to the fear that the institution will lose its native constituency. Add to this that Brooklyn’s Chasidic population is growing the fastest of any New York Jewish population (and therefore of any group of American Jews), and the question for New York Jews is obvious: if the Chasidim maintain their bloc, how will that affect the rest of us? And, by the same token, what can we expect if the Chasidim fragment, as has happened in other historical circumstances?

There are a number of Jews in New York who will understandably complain at being left out of the above summary. They call themselves by a variety of names – “just Jewish,” “cultural Jews,” “secular Jews” – but what they aren’t is clearer than what they are. They neither attend synagogue regularly, nor participate frequently in religious ritual, nor involve themselves in the minutiae of traditional observance. What, then, does a cultural or secular Jew do in New York? All manner of things, because New York is possibly the only city in the world where a non-religious, Jewish cultural diet can be pursued twenty-four hours a day, six (or even seven) days a week. Flyers and schedules for concerts (from Jewish hip-hop to klezmer to folk-inflected classical), lectures, classes, discussions, art exhibits, theater, readings, etc., etc., lie thick as manna upon the Manhattan ground.

Though it was only in the twentieth century, in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, that Jewish secularism became a live option, it has quickly become the modus operandi that feels most familiar to the Jewish urban dweller. Early in the twenty-first century, however, it appears that such an option cannot live on for long as an independent choice on the committed Jew’s menu. This observation is made with regret, for a counterbalance is sorely needed to the tendency of American Jews to see their Jewish life as primarily “Judaism” – a religion bled dry of extra-legal content found somewhere between Protestantism and Catholicism. However, Jewish culturalism (if one can call it that) suffers not just from this Americanizing tendency, but the very assimilating nature of urban cultural life. That is, the questions cultural Jews have to answer include not only the same one that all Jewish religious denominations have to answer: what makes their Jewish life different and valuable in comparison to other groups? As they produce and consume an enviably rich and varied cultural output, Jews who identify themselves predominantly with non-religious Jewish culture must ask themselves: what makes their cultural life Jewish? If the denominations find it difficult to deal with their one question, rare is the cultural Jew who bothers to answer both. Let’s hope, for the sake of Gotham’s Jews, that they forthrightly discuss these matters across their picket fences, subway lines, and bagel counters.

Tony Judt is not entirely wrong

I am reluctant to write about matters Israeli-Palestinian: first, because of all the incoherent shouting on the right and left; and second, because the mammoth Middle East overshadows other, more subtle questions which are perhaps more important to leading a considered Jewish existence. Occasionally, however, an opportunity for staking out the middle ground presents itself. Thanks to Kesher Talk for providing a link to the relevant material.

Tony Judt's original essay in The New York Review of Books received much hostile press, and I can't say that it was undeserved. In defending himself against his critics, he repeats his main claim, which (as I discuss below) I find wholly false. On the way there, however, he makes some worthwhile points which are not commonly addressed by those who care about Israel. It is a pity that those points can only be made from those on Judt's end of the spectrum.

The core of his argument (as Judt himself states) is this: "This, then, was the core of my argument: it is not the state that is anachronistic (pace Walzer's misreading of me), but the Zionist version of it." I suspect that Walzer's "misreading" (actually quite a plausible reading) was an attempt to find the least objectionable construction of Judt's argument. For if we are meant to take Judt at the face value of this, his newest claim, there is something about the Zionist state which is "anachronistic" enough (read: "immoral enough," for the "anachronistic" state is one which does not conform to modern notions of political right) for the world to be rid of it.

It is theoretically possible (though, of course, quite improbable, and one pales at the thought) that a Zionist state, by the very immorality of its foundations, could cede the right to exist -- just like there have been actual states in history which should not have existed. Judt errs, however, in thinking that Israel, in its present incarnation, is immorally constructed. The important error in his argument is this. Israel is indeed flawed, and deeply so, but not in a more fundamental way than all nation-states are flawed. Michael Walzer, whose thought I am happily biased towards, makes this point in his response to Judt.

Let me explain further. According to Judt, while the European nation-states do indeed discriminate among applicants for citizenship, they do not discriminate in a fundamental way among all those who become citizens. It is only Israel, he writes, which discriminates between citizens based on their ethnic origin.

I don't think this is true. The alarm bells start ringing when one reads his description of the nature of Frenchness, a rush-job at the speed of special pleading ("But if someone is a citizen of, e.g., France, he or she is French and that is all there is to the matter, at least as far as the law is concerned."). As Daniel Boyarin pointed out in a talk of his I attended today, the French view of different minority religious communities is precisely that: a French view, strongly conditioned by Christian ideas of religion as distinct from ethnicity and nationality. For example, in its recent outlawing of "religious symbols" in schools, the French government made a serious category mistake, assuming that yarmulkes and head-scarves for Jews and Muslims serve just the same function as crosses for Christians: religious symbols. This Christian approach in the name of the French government (which does not even realize that its policy is conditioned in such a way) puts the lie to Judt's naive assumptions of a "neutral" Frenchness. Indeed, as Michael Walzer points out, it is only the United States which attempts to create in its political-cultural sphere a "neutral space," not beholden to any particular founding religion.

This is only one, comparatively minor example. The point is that many of the European states do indeed discriminate among their citizens -- and that Israel can do so in the same way, without jeopardizing the fundamental moral nature of its society.

Israel discriminates between Jews and non-Jews in two different ways. The first way, and most troubling, is discrimination not in keeping with any fundamental political values appropriate to a democratic state -- I mean those stated quite clearly in Israel's declaration of independence, according to which citizens are granted rights without regard to race or religion. It is in this category that Judt makes necessary points, for there exist those forces in Israeli society that would discriminate against Arabs in a fundamentally unjust way -- e.g., by denying them the right to live where they choose, through unjust search and seizure, through unjustifiable military persecution of innocents.

Judt is wrong in his assumption that such unjust discrimination is at the very foundation of Israeli society. The vital political culture that includes energetic defenders of and advocates for Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, and the political institutions which guarantee Arab participation, make it clear that such unjustice is the system's imperfection rather than its goal. Judt is right, however, to point them out. As we see in the unreflective Israel cheerleading of Abraham Foxman (who also responds to Judt), there are far too many leaders of the Jewish community who cannot bring themselves even to admit that Israel's political culture is capable of injustice!

There is another way in which Israel discriminates. "Discrimination" is perhaps not the right word for this activity, the characteristic of most nation states and one that Judt wishes to deny. France gives special treatment to French Catholics -- not in granting them a higher class of political privilege, but in granting them the status of majority. Those French who are defined this way, in terms of their culture and nationality (and who can deny that this is what comes to mind when thinkng of "the French"?), are differently treated by the political culture than French Muslims. Similar observations can be made about other European nation-states, including Poland, Spain, Italy.

Israel is founded on democratic, majority-Jewish principles, a nation-state in the tradition of other nation-states. It is also imperfect and capable of injustice. It is disheartening that so few public intellectuals seem able to accomodate these multiple truths.