OK, so it’s more like the classic cartoon spoof short, Godzilla vs. Bambi, but on Tuesday morning I am debating Rabbi Chaim Bravender in front of 80 Jewish educators for the Melton Mini School program, at Hebrew University. “Conflicting Visions of Jewish Peoplehood,” is the session. A success will be instilling relevant questions into the equation of the educators. Am just honored to share the platform with such a leading light of the Jewish religion. Below appears the likely text of my presentation. Feedback welcome at YosefA@aol.com
Draft Peoplehood With Purpose
Melton
Mini-School Conference, Jerusalem January 8, 2008
By Yosef
Israel Abramowitz
Every once in a while, mostly when I’m feeling like the Jewish people are drifting, I reach into a small basket next to my bed, pull out a small black velvet bag, open it and hold in my hand a heavy coin, 200 years old. It is French. Napoleon is on one side; flip the coin over and Napoleon is also there, but this time receiving the Ten Commandments from a weakened and humbled Moses. The coin celebrates the acceptance by the Jewish people of a New World Order under the Rights of Man. The historic choice made by the French Sanhedrin in answering Napoleon’s challenge—to define themselves as “Frenchmen of the Mosaic Faith,” rather than as part of the Jewish people —ushered in a new era for humanity and for the Jewish people. Eviscerating our national characteristics paved the way for Jewish individuals as well as for Judaism to be both in law and in the public imagination equal to Christians and to Christianity.
The culture of individualism that is so defining of
America accelerated the equality of Jews and of Judaism. The greatest public relations coup of the 20th century for American Jewry was the mainstreaming of the term “Judaeo-Christian”, which meant that 2% of the population had not only equality with the super majority of Americans, but even top billing. This served our community’s public policy interests and assimilationist yearnings.
This remarkable achievement must now be undone. And the artificial Napoleonic split of the essence of our People must be mended. There is a drastic need for a paradigm shift in planning for a strong Jewish future. With American Jewry having the highest attrition rates of any religious group as well as the lowest belief-in-God-quotient, the 200 year compact the Jewish people have had with western civilization, and each other, needs to be altered.
Jewish peoplehood – and its universalistic, noble purpose – must replace the eroding definition of Jews as essentially a faith community.
While there are indeed values that are shared by Judaism and Christianity, Christians have been far more aggressive in defining them in the public square and for everyday use. This blurring between Jewish and Christian values has eroded the unique purpose and identity of the Jews not only in the public’s eye, but among Jews themselves. If indeed Judaism and Christianity are similar, then creating a Jewish-Jewish household is less a priority than is finding a partner who shares basic values that can be loosely termed “Judaeo-Christian”, which has also often been a substitute for what many people may mean when they say “American.”
So we inherit a history and people that must be mended. And appeals to religious solidarity are ineffective in a Jewish values vacuum among the people, our institutions and in the public imagination. We have to set our sights higher than those of most of our demographers, sociologists, community planners and philanthropists and become inspired advocates for a vision of inspired Jewish Peoplehood in the 21st century.The Enlightenment era spawned many great thinkers about the Jewish condition. Perhaps the one least understood, most ignored and most relevant for understanding Jewish Peoplehood today is Ahad Ha’am. Let’s dispense with the ideological battle about the urgency of Jewish settlement, which history correctly gave to Herzl and his successors. But listen closely to some other writings of Ahad Ha’am that can help us win the larger war for the entire Jewish people.** “If, as we hope, there is to be a third (Jewish commonwealth) its fundamental principle, on the national as on the individual plane, will be neither the ascendancy of the body over spirit, nor the suppression of the body for the spirit’s sake, but the uplifting of the body by the spirit.”** Ahad Ha’am warned that Jewish communities outside of
Israel do not have “any defense against the ocean of foreign culture, which threatens to obliterate our national characteristics and traditions, and thus gradually to put an end of our existence as a people.”** “Judaism… shall have as its focus point the ideal of our nation’s unity and its free development through the expression of universal human values in the terms of its own distinctive spirit. This is the conception of Judaism on which our education and our literature must be based.”Enlightened Peoplehood belongs to Ahad Ha’am–and to us. All movements need its heroes, ideological founding parent, and source texts. (Unmarked by world Jewry, Ahad Ha’am’s 150th birthday just passed by.) Faith or nationalism can no longer be the grand unifying field theory of world Jewry. Only Peoplehood can because it is inherently inclusive and encompasses religion, nationalism and culture.The goal should be for a critical mass of our institutions, endeavors, philanthropists and leaders to be engines and agents of Peoplehood.How to do that?By recognizing that Jewish values are the building blocks of vibrant Jewish Peoplehood. Jewish values must be the new DNA of our religion, nationalism and culture. It’s always been there but we usually fail at crystallizing what they are, where they came from, how they can be expressed in every day life and how they inform the actions of our people. Or link them to a larger mission for the Jewish people.Shared values are a trademark of a people and can be equally relevant to those who consider themselves faith Jews as by those who are nationalists or cultural Jews. And Jewish values are not “owned” by any denomination or political party or kind of Jew. We will need to define Jewish values in order to have them be shared.What are Jewish values?There are two kinds that the AVI CHAI-sponsored BabagaNewz educational team has been teaching to Jewish kids in 3500 classrooms: Distinctive Jewish values and those values that are shared with other faith communities or western civilization. (BabagaNewz is an award-winning Jewish values-based Jewish kids magazine, website and teacher’s guide) There are actually very few distinctive Jewish values—Talmud Torah, Yediat Eretz Yisrael, Areivut, etc—so most values are those we seem to share with others.Yet we must be moral archaeologists and dig deeper into those values to find the distinctive Jewish differentiation in either defining, understanding, or, most importantly, expressing and acting on those values–particularly in the context of community. Aligning the educational institutions, or at least messages, across world Jewry’s institutions and instruments of communication to promote Jewish values is a necessity.And Jewish values are most effectively lived not only in the context of inter-dependency of people, but also in relation to Jewish time and also to Jewish action. When Christianity elevated the place of belief over action, it divorced values from obligation. When Jews come together to marry values, time and action, our moral contribution is most powerful and it is an expression of Jewish Peoplehood’s greatest attributes. Our struggle for communal re-definition is not an isolated struggle but is mirrored in the State of Israel and in other Jewish communities around the world. This would suggest the need for a core curriculum of Jewish values upon which all educational endeavors could draw from and from which to hopefully coordinate (”Peoplehood time”) would be a strategic asset to build. Making the celebration each year of global Jewish Social Action Month during Cheshvan is another example of Peoplehood Time in this new era. A word of caution: Peoplehood will not work as a rallying cry to the Jewish public, which is post-tribal in its inclinations and commitments. Peoplehood is, rather, an organizing principle to recalibrate and synchronize the Jewish enterprise and philanthropy. It is our future blue-print.And because the centripetal forces of western civilization are more powerful forces on the individual than the gravitational force of Peoplehood, then we must increase the density of Peoplehood in order to increase its gravitational pull. The density is created certainly by promoting shared Jewish values and particularism (without parochialism) through formal and informal education. And this education must look anew at every ritual, every holiday, every Torah portion, every law with a view to redefine it in the context of rededicating the Jewish People toward a purpose. I argue that the purpose of the Jewish People—the essence of Jewish Peoplehood– is to be an on-going, distinctive catalyst for the advancement and evolution of morality in civilization.It is “on-going” because I am not so faithful to the religious messianic idea in Judaism and believe civilization will always need us to be its moral nudniks. It is “distinctive” in that we are a unique people, with a unique reading of the human condition, with a unique history, religion, heritage and culture. Maintaining our distinctiveness in an era of cultural globalization is a prerequisite for maintaining our place and role in history. And on a planet heavy with close to 7 billion souls, we can only realistically be a “catalyst” toward systemic changes rather than the giant implementers of change (Which, frankly, is how it basically has worked for four thousand years). In a digital age, we can connect more. The more Jews are connected, the more they will express, at the very least, a familial Areivut—mutual responsibility—toward each other. And if we are able to mobilize the collective Jewish imagination to not only helping ourselves, but the world, then we will have something durable to pass along to the next generations of Jews. We will be able to answer the age-old question of “Why Be Jewish?” for at least our era and maybe the next. I believe the Jewish People are the Cult of Life, rejecting the Cult of Death of Egypt and every oppressed empire since. And I believe the test case of the Soviet Jewry movement—which was both particularistic and universalistic in its goals— demonstrates how collective Jewish action has affected modern history. Tthe planet is out of time, so the Jewish people (and others) have to get busy quickly. Only global, collective action can save the planet from global warming to nuclear annihilation.Only global, collective action can feed the hungry, comfort the widow and take in the orphan and make a systemic impact (read=justice) rather than only an individual one (read=charitable).Global collective moral action in a global world magically connected digitally should be our trademark.If we can do it on small things, like getting a Prisoner of Zion out of solitary confinement, the perhaps the world can act collectively to cut carbon emissions radically before it is too late or prevent genocides.Napoleon’s gift to the Jews of individual equality has played itself out. We need to inspire the next generation, and our policy makers, toward collective identity and action. For ourselves. And for the world. Religion is too narrow to do this; only Peoplehood can.
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Jewish Social Action Month, BEST OF PEOPLEHOOD.org, Essays/Ideas, Jewish Education, Speeches, Writings
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