On Being a Bad Jew
A lot of this process, of course, involves my hot-button relationship with my Jewish roots, and my self-description as an "assimilator." I get active comment on this score, a lot of it judgmental. Frankly, I am even grateful to these people.
They are taking time to engage with me, and to comment to me. Some of them want to excommunicate me, but I believe there's also a generosity in their actions. Heck: I doubt they'll convert me, and meantime I will learn to make better argument for myself.
This is apropos of an anonymous commenter providing the following on my reflections about sitting next to my liberal Protestant, West-Bank-Arab-hospital-visiting mother-in-law at Andover commencement:
Israeli Arabs receive better, free health care than US citizens and low-cost, high-quality childcare, are represented in the Knesset, have a higher standard of living than citizens of any other Arab country, don't serve in the Israeli military, and pay 275 Million dollars in taxes and receive 1.6 billion dollars in benefits.Rabbis give brachot not benedictions...tribe members don't inter-marry, however, your still more-or-less in the tribe until you have your non-Jewish children.
I admire his dispassionate tone. For my side, I just want to say that the program for the Andover commencement (what they call, fustily, Order of Exercises at Exhibition) states that the "Benediction" was done by Rabbi Neil Kominsky, D.D. So: talk to the rabbi about that. I think the difference may reflect real differences in Jewish custom between Reformed and more conservative Jews (I grew up Conservative, by the way, or so my father fashioned it; we didn't like the Reformed suburban megatemples).
As to my being out of the tribe—I can't fight that; I really am assimilating, though I will always be Jewish and Jewy in character—this gets to the heart of my Jewish problem. Can you achieve great success in America, indeed a place in the Establishment that "runs" America, and maintain a tribal identity that is so separate as to, for instance, require in-marriage? For myself, the answer was No. That's for myself: I don't offer a program for others to assimilate as well. But I would repeat something I've said before: Joe Lieberman had the same answer. When he was running for vice president, he lied on Imus, saying that his Jewish religious organizations (conservative ones) did not place a bar on intermarriage. Lieberman surely felt this misrepresentation was politically necessary. Maybe to counter antisemitism, which I believe was a real and unspoken factor in the 2000 race (resulting, for instance, in Gore-Lieberman losing Tennessee). Maybe another reason was that he wanted to present Jewish culture to the nonJewish public as a democratic one—or, in the parlance of modern America, accessible. My commenter and I agree: the tribe is not accessible.This tension between the values of tribe and polity, experienced by both Lieberman and myself, is important. For him, politically, it could mean that antisemitism will still be a fact of high political existence: that Jews will not be trusted with the presidency (especially after the wreckage of the neocons!). Myself I feel a need to resolve it intellectually in ways that go beyond the judgment, shared by myself and many of my commenters, though maybe not by my mother-in-law, that I'm a bad Jew. I love my Americanness. When I got married, a good Jewish friend said, "You know the only question: Will they hide you?" He meant, Would my goyische relations hide me from enemies (and of course he meant the holocaust). The answer is Yes.
Along with mentioning your sitting next to you mother-in-law who went to a West Bank Arab Hospital you stated:
"Israel, yes a democracy, but also a Jewish state that, I'm told, treats Arabs as second-class citizens."
You referred to Israel treating 1,000,000+ Israeli citizens as second-class citizens.
This is why you were corrected with some facts:
"Israeli Arabs receive better, free health care than US citizens and low-cost, high-quality childcare, are represented in the Knesset, have a higher standard of living than citizens of any other Arab country, don't serve in the Israeli military, and pay 275 Million dollars in taxes and receive 1.6 billion dollars in benefits"
What you here one Jew say on Imus, is not what Judaism is about. Two Jews, three opinions....
Reform Judaism was a bad idea. It started so German Jews could look and act like Church-going Lutherans. As many have observed "there are no third generation reform Jews" the ones in Germany were killed in the camps and the Americans have intermarried or become more traditional.
Your not really cheating yourself, your cheating your kids and your parents (when they have to sit at their grandchildren's weddings at a Church). Not that there is anything wrong with Christianity, it's just you parent's and grandparent's culture. Ask your parents how they are going to feel about that. Honor thy father and thy mother (a Noachide law).
3000 plus years of Jews preserving their values identity and traditions comes to end with your "Americanness". Judaism is not about being part of the American Establishment or being a neo-con or whatever. It's about learning Talmud and following it- that't it.
Being Jewish means being different- not being part of the Goy (the world). It's a tough responsibility, too tough, obviously, for you.
Israel is a safe place for Jews, and if the s#$t hits the fan again (as it has repeatedly for the past 1000 years) is the place that will give you citizenship and security. As the current law stands, it will even do so for your wife, children and grandchildren, because they all would have been killed under the Nuremberg Laws. However this clause may be changing soon.
If history is any guide, Judaism will be around a lot longer than America.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...read up!
Oi. At least your previous commenter knew enough to call it "Reform" and not "Reformed" (which would imply a closed process, which it is not). But as for the assertion that there are no 3rd-generation Reform Jews -- on the contrary, there are many of us. And some of us can lay claim to much more than that.
Nice piece. I don't agree (obviously), but as long as you're honest with yourself about the tradeoffs, assimilate away.
Sorry, that comment came off a little strong.
53% of Reform Jews intermarry... look around at your Reform friends and cousins...look at the declining Jewish population in the USA...Reform Judaism does not seem to work outside of Israel...I was not referring to the ideas of Reform Judaism only the demographic reality...Am Echad!
Interesting comments. Nearly half of the Jews in the US will accept your children as Jewish if you raise them as such. Still, no matter how observant you might be, you'll always find another Jew to tell you you're not observant enough... Anyway, the reason I'm writing is to give you a little hint: if you'd like to "make better argument" for yourself, the name of the movement is Reform, not Reformed. It makes a BIG difference, for those of us in the know. (Unless you were purposely trying to be facetious, in which case, jolly good, carry on!)
I'm an Orthodox Jew, but I grew up Reform and it really irked us when people used the term "Reformed." Or maybe it didn't. We didn't really care about much.
As far as I know, "benediction" is just a high-falutin' term for "blessing," which is the English translation of brachah (pl: brachot). So I don't see what the big deal is about that.
For us Orthodox Jews, okay, maybe just for me, intermarriage is not forbidden because the tribal identity is so precarious that it can't withstand intermarriage. I mean, I agree with you that it's true about the precariousness. So for us it's not about tribal identity at all. It's about following the laws of God (and other fun, light kind of stuff like that). Not only is the act of marrying a non-Jew "illegal" (it's not even recognized, really), but the lifestyle is so regulated (and I mean that in a good way) that no non Jew (or even non religious Jew) would be able to stand being married to a religious Jew.
(No, there are no laws about using parenthetical statements so often.)
That said, yes, it's undeniably, irrefutably true that intermarrying will eventually take out all of the "Jewiness" from one's lineage - your kids might retain a little Woody Allenness but that's probably about it. So if you do care about the identity thing then, yeah, probably not the best move. You are a bad Jew.
But then again, so am I. Just in different ways.
"You know the only question: Will they hide you?" He meant, Would my goyische relations hide me from enemies (and of course he meant the holocaust). The answer is Yes."
Ask him what he meant- my guess is that the question was "will they hide the fact that the non-believer, who will die in sin, and is a 'you-know-what' married into the family."
Next time you attend Church, please share with us any disparaging obeservations that you have, the same way you freely disparage your intolerable Jewish experiences.
BENEDICTION [benediction] [Lat.,=blessing], solemn blessing usually administered in the name of God by a priest or a minister. Christians have always given them an important place in ceremony, especially at the end of a ritual. Protestants have abandoned many of the blessings of the Roman Catholic Church, such as the apostolic benediction by the pope and his delegates and benediction of the dying. Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, a popular extraliturgical service of Roman Catholics, consists of a blessing of the people by the priest with the Host exposed in a monstrance.
It's like calling a 'rabbi' a 'minister' or a 'priest'- simply not accurate.
A bracha is not "administered in the name of God". There is a difference.
Another bad Jew
There are no bad Jews, only Jews. We don't recognize those who have completly renounced the covenant as Jews, but maybe G-d is not so forgiving. (Who knows?) Being Jewish isn't about self-loathing. It's about community, covenant, G-d. If you don't want to be a part of this relationship, you are lucky, because you can bow out. But if you don't want to play, why do you need to comment from the sidelines? Why do you need to explain your dissatisfaction to yourself?