Today marks not only my second blogiversary (and apparently Google's 6th birthday), but Arrival Day, the 350th anniversary of the landing of the first Jewish settlers in New Amsterdam on September 7, 1654. Each year, Jonathan Edelstein spearheads an Arrival Day blogburst, and this year's theme is noted in the headline. As I'm not an academic like Jonathan and some of his esteemed peers who've already done their blog entries, I'm afraid my post on the topic will be pretty stream-of-consciousness and speculative and gut-level; I don't claim to be knowledgeable at all on this subject to any great degree.
I think many American Jews are quickly approaching, if they haven't already reached, the Last Straw in terms of support for certain Israeli (and Jewish-American) policies. I remember my first Last Straw, the day I decided I wasn't going to be a "good practicing Jew." I saw the signs leading up to it - the trips our yeshiva would take to various Lubavitcher communities, with me shuddering at the women's stiflingly-hot clothing and wigs and multiples of babies in tow; the fact that I was put in the "dumb class" because my parents were Conservative and not Orthodox; the way the other girls shunned me because my best friend at the time was a shiksa - but it didn't all come to a head until the incident I blogged about last November, with my rote response to a rote essay question about the future of Judaism which the rabbi teaching the class felt needed a snarky personal remark attached to it when he graded my paper. I realized then that the decision I made to retain my Jewishness but actually live in the non-hermitically sealed world outside of any specific Jewish community was the right one. I didn't want to be a part of any cult that held the belief in different levels of Heaven depending upon not only your merit as a human being but whether you were a practicing Jew (fortunately this does not appear to be the case according to actual rabbinical scholars who have no interest in brainwashing impressionable young girls).
In the intervening years, I've found it much easier to be true to many traditional Jewish principles (charity, a belief in equality and justice, the quest for knowledge) by staying away from most Jewish-identified social and religious groups. When I first learned about the JDL, I was in high school and someone told me enthusiastically about this terrific group that was actually fighting back against everyone who hated us etc. etc., and my immediate response was "eww, leave me alone, I'm a pacifist." It was an early lesson that one person's freedom fighter was another person's terrorist, and I've never since thought of the JDL as anything but a bunch of thugs. Likewise, AIPAC (much in the news of late) has always creeped me out as well, as does just about any organization purporting to speak for all Jews. And as the Israeli government has become more and more barbaric in its dealings with the Palestinian population, I've held less and less belief in the concepts of Zionism and aliya.
I must imagine I'm far from the only American-born Jew who feels a historic tie to Israel (in the same way I feel an ancestral pull towards Eastern Europe) but no driving need to live there or support its current government's policies. I feel much more of a connection to those Jews who've marched for civil rights and continue to march against injustice anywhere in the world. And I hope, as techology continues to shrink the barriers of misunderstanding between the world's peoples and faiths, that this is the direction in which diaspora Judaism keeps moving.
When I was in yeshiva, "assimilation" was a dirty word, it implied a slippery slope eventually leading to the loss of identity altogether. Nobody talked about the concept of "broadening," of bringing all that's good and right about Judaism to this here-and-now existence, of mingling with other cultures and respecting them the way we want to be respected. If the only face of Judaism seen by non-Jews is that of the oppressor and the xenophobic isolationist, it's no wonder anti-Semitism is still the very real, very horrific problem it is. One look at the current Palestinian situation ought to be enough to convince anyone that you cannot combat irrational hatred with more irrational hatred. It's not only the preferred future, it's the only future possible. It doesn't mean Judaism will disappear; in fact, emphasizing the humanity of the religion and its curiosity about people outside of itself will do more to ensure its continuance than keeping to "one's own" in secluded enclaves.
I think many American Jews are quickly approaching, if they haven't already reached, the Last Straw in terms of support for certain Israeli (and Jewish-American) policies. I remember my first Last Straw, the day I decided I wasn't going to be a "good practicing Jew." I saw the signs leading up to it - the trips our yeshiva would take to various Lubavitcher communities, with me shuddering at the women's stiflingly-hot clothing and wigs and multiples of babies in tow; the fact that I was put in the "dumb class" because my parents were Conservative and not Orthodox; the way the other girls shunned me because my best friend at the time was a shiksa - but it didn't all come to a head until the incident I blogged about last November, with my rote response to a rote essay question about the future of Judaism which the rabbi teaching the class felt needed a snarky personal remark attached to it when he graded my paper. I realized then that the decision I made to retain my Jewishness but actually live in the non-hermitically sealed world outside of any specific Jewish community was the right one. I didn't want to be a part of any cult that held the belief in different levels of Heaven depending upon not only your merit as a human being but whether you were a practicing Jew (fortunately this does not appear to be the case according to actual rabbinical scholars who have no interest in brainwashing impressionable young girls).
In the intervening years, I've found it much easier to be true to many traditional Jewish principles (charity, a belief in equality and justice, the quest for knowledge) by staying away from most Jewish-identified social and religious groups. When I first learned about the JDL, I was in high school and someone told me enthusiastically about this terrific group that was actually fighting back against everyone who hated us etc. etc., and my immediate response was "eww, leave me alone, I'm a pacifist." It was an early lesson that one person's freedom fighter was another person's terrorist, and I've never since thought of the JDL as anything but a bunch of thugs. Likewise, AIPAC (much in the news of late) has always creeped me out as well, as does just about any organization purporting to speak for all Jews. And as the Israeli government has become more and more barbaric in its dealings with the Palestinian population, I've held less and less belief in the concepts of Zionism and aliya.
I must imagine I'm far from the only American-born Jew who feels a historic tie to Israel (in the same way I feel an ancestral pull towards Eastern Europe) but no driving need to live there or support its current government's policies. I feel much more of a connection to those Jews who've marched for civil rights and continue to march against injustice anywhere in the world. And I hope, as techology continues to shrink the barriers of misunderstanding between the world's peoples and faiths, that this is the direction in which diaspora Judaism keeps moving.
When I was in yeshiva, "assimilation" was a dirty word, it implied a slippery slope eventually leading to the loss of identity altogether. Nobody talked about the concept of "broadening," of bringing all that's good and right about Judaism to this here-and-now existence, of mingling with other cultures and respecting them the way we want to be respected. If the only face of Judaism seen by non-Jews is that of the oppressor and the xenophobic isolationist, it's no wonder anti-Semitism is still the very real, very horrific problem it is. One look at the current Palestinian situation ought to be enough to convince anyone that you cannot combat irrational hatred with more irrational hatred. It's not only the preferred future, it's the only future possible. It doesn't mean Judaism will disappear; in fact, emphasizing the humanity of the religion and its curiosity about people outside of itself will do more to ensure its continuance than keeping to "one's own" in secluded enclaves.
0 comments:
Post a Comment