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Keynote Address: Plenum 2000 Goldman
Scholar-in-Residence
Introduction The Aaron and Paula Goldman Scholar-in-Residence for Plenum 2000, the annual conference of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, was Professor Arnold Eisen of Stanford University. In his probing address to the JCPA delegates and Hillel Spitzer Forum participants, Professor Eisen challenges the Jewish community to engage a meaningful public affairs agenda, one that embraces our values as Jews even as it reflects our interests as Americans. Professor Eisen asks us to acknowledge the paradoxes and dilemmas of modern American (and Jewish) life: the very conditions of American Jewish life that imply acceptance in the mainstream (education, wealth, influence) also make possible our disappearance through intermarriage and assimilation; the individuality on which Americans pride themselves undermines the idea of tradition on which Judaism is nourished; opportunities for voluntarism, through which people help other people, actually limits options for a vital Jewish community; Jews crave normalcy, but Judaism requires a commitment to covenant that distinguishes us from others. To resolve these dilemmas, Eisen insists on involvement in issues of the broader community. Normalcy requires involvement in issues of public affairs, but covenant demands that we view these through the prism of our history, tradition, and culture. While there can be no Jewishness without Torah, Eisen wonders what Jewishness would mean if it were only Torah. With regard to Israel, Eisen outlines a process of engagement whereby American and Israeli Jews can rediscover their relationship within a framework that acknowledges our mutual political and cultural relationship. At the same time, he insists that our shared agenda value our mutual dependence on the principles of normalcy and covenant. The JCPA is grateful to Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life for partnering this year in the Scholar-in-Residence program, and we are particularly grateful to the Aaron and Cecile Goldman Foundation whose commitment to Jewish values and American ideals has made this program possible. Steven Schwarz
My aim in this paper is to reflect upon the meaning and shape of Jewish politics in contemporary America, and by extension, upon the character of the Jewish public agenda in this country as we embark on a new century. The analysis will be both descriptive and normative. I will draw, on the one hand, upon my work as a scholar of modern Jewish thought and practice, particularly as these have evolved in the United States. I will draw as well upon my personal commitments as a modern American Jew who is trying to live life well in keeping with the demands of Torah and the ethical imperatives of our pluralist American democracy. This is, I think, a particularly challenging time for Jews (and so for Jewish politics) in this country, the challenges we face resulting in large part not from obstacles placed by enemies in our path but from the immense and unprecedented opportunities at our disposal. Our affluence is without parallel in Jewish history, our educational attainments unmatched. Our political influence, while far from decisive, is also far from negligible, while our social acceptance—arguably more important still—is near universal. We have built a truly amazing array of Jewish organizations and institutions in this country, both religious and secular. Last but hardly least, we benefit directly and indirectly, spiritually and politically, from the incalculable blessing of the State of Israel. All of this to my mind makes renewed reflection on the Jewish public agenda all the more urgent—and all the more difficult. The fundamental questions are these: What goals do we want to pursue as a community? Toward what ends do we want to mobilize our influence and shape our institutions? How shall we direct our public agenda? In other words, how should we understand the interests of Jews and the imperatives of Judaism? I want to outline a position on these issues, first briefly setting forth my own notion of what it means to think about and engage in Jewish politics, and then outlining an approach to a number of issues high on the American—and American Jewish—political agendas in recent years. I do so in order to stimulate rather than to foreclose conversation, to offer example rather than proof. Other positions arising out of the sources of our tradition have been and will be forthcoming. That is all to the good. My aim is not to have Jews in this country speak with one voice about any issue but to have us bring the tradition to bear on as many issues as possible, in as many voices as are needed. Normalcy and Covenant2 Let me say explicitly before proceeding further that for me the adjective "Jewish," modifying the noun "politics," refers both to Jews and to Judaism: to Jewish interests as well as to the commandments of Judaism. The two are for me inseparable, as they were until the modern period for almost everyone. The phenomenon of Jews who identify subjectively with the Jewish people and its culture, but do not observe any of the tenets or practices of Judaism and do not affiliate in any tangible way with the Jewish people via its local organizations and communities, is to my mind quite worrisome. In the long- term this tendency spells disaster. I cannot imagine a thriving Jewish culture or community in this country without a live relation to Jewish history and traditions. (Recent data concerning assimilation lend strong support to this position.) And I cannot picture a live relation to Jewish history and tradition without a live relation to Torah, the book which has stood at the center of the variety of distinctive ways which Jews have lived and taught over the centuries, and with the help of which Jews still live and teach as Jews today. There is no one correct way of maintaining this relation to Torah. Every Jew brings different gifts and needs to its study and to its life. The decisions that we make for Judaism are highly individual. One never signs once and for all on the bottom line of a contract entitled "Judaism," thereby agreeing to abide by a specific set of truths and behaviors entailed therein. That is one reason, I think, the Torah begins with Genesis—with stories of the human and Jewish ancestors who set out paths which we can follow—rather than with Sinai: the detailed promises we make for life, the specific set of commitments which define us. The most important Jewish decision facing each one of us in the year 2000, certainly the first decision which faces a young Jew who is just entering on the tortuous path of adulthood, is the one which has faced Jews in every generation: not the articulation of specific beliefs or the determination of fixed behavior, but rather resolution on where we will stand in relation to the tradition we have inherited (Torah in the broader sense): how we will live it and so make it live through us every day, what the place of the community will be in our lives, what chapters we will add to the story that began at Sinai, what contribution we will make to the conversation initiated there and pass on to our children and students in turn. In the absence of the paths of Torah, I have a hard time imagining Jewish survival, let alone Jewish thriving. What would Jewishness mean without Torah? What, frankly, would be its point? In the presence of such Torah—practiced and taught in palpable communities; animated and transmitted in compelling interpretations addressed to present needs—the future of Jews and Judaism in this country seems assured. Thus, while I would oppose anyone who tried to prescribe a single path for teaching and living Torah—there is not and cannot be only one Judaism—an engaged relation to the Five Books of Moses and to the larger set of texts and observances which have grown out of and around the Five Books seems to me utterly crucial to any definition of Judaism in any time and place, including ours. It has unquestionably been the ground of almost every Jewish past and remains, I firmly believe, the cornerstone of every Jewish future. Both the Torah itself, and the modern project of adapting it to the political, economic and social orders we still inhabit, insist that the political and cultural/religious aspects of our existence cannot be separated. It is well-known that the covenant at Sinai binds the Israelites to one another at the very same moment that they agree, as a group thus bound, on their obligations to God. The "kingdom of priests" cannot be such unless it is a kingdom: a distinct political entity. The "holy nation" cannot be holy unless it is a nation, with a communal life directed by the norms and laws which make up the covenant. The portion of the Torah read in synagogue on the Sabbath of this year’s JCPA Plenum, Ki Tissa, contains not only a profound theological meditation on the problem of imagining or speaking about God, the story of the golden calf, but a conception of political reality which is in keeping with this theology, depicted in the census and taxation at the outset of the parsha and responsible for its name. "Ki tissa et rosh b’nei yisrael." "When you ‘raise the head of the children of Israel," i.e. number them for purposes of knowing who is in the group, as well as who is available for battle. Such political concerns are pervasive in the Torah, and one can read the entire middle section of the Tanakh, Nevi’im or Prophets, as an extended conflict between political leaders on the one hand and the carriers of God’s demands for Israel on the other: an inevitable struggle, foreshadowed in the Torah, between the way things are meant to be and the way things are and have been. Jews have always cared inordinately about politics. We have had no choice but to care about it, for reasons rooted both in normalcy and in covenant. The interests of a perpetual minority—first concern of normalcy—demand constant vigilance. Rights and freedoms garnered from the powers that be must be protected. No less, the raison d’etre of the Jewish people—arguably not merely an ideal but what has kept Jews alive for two millennia against all odds—is the prophetic demand that justice sit at the very top of the Jewish communal agenda. A right social order—the goal of covenant—is not simply one among many things Jews are meant to strive for but the essential thing, the completion of creation for which God "elected" Israel in the first place. When Jews fail to carry out this command, as they often do, of course, the tradition is unsparing in its condemnation. Normalcy—the world as it is, was and shall be—is for the Torah’s raw material meant to be raised up, sanctified, redeemed, according to the covenant. As a consequence of that unchanging demand, the nature and goals of Jewish politics must change repeatedly, and have done so over the centuries. Normalcy requires constant adaptation to new circumstances—and so too, therefore, does covenant, which must be imposed on the only reality there is. These adaptations have constituted one of the principal tasks of modern Jewish thought, known as such not only because it has arisen in the period of time we call modernity, but because it responds to a very different set of conditions than Jews knew in the preceding two millennia. Changing social, political, and economic orders suddenly promised individual Jews a degree of participation and opportunity never before achieved in the diaspora, at the same time as they put into question both the viability of the Jews as a people and the value of Judaism as a religious tradition. The book by Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza which first posed the political and religious questions with which we still contend as modern Jews was significantly titled A Theologico-Political Treatise (ca. 1670), the title itself signaling the dual character of Jewish thought forever after, and the necessary relation between the two components which comprise it. Moses Mendelssohn, in the first substantive response to the challenges Spinoza posed to the continued existence of Jews and Judaism, dedicated the first half of his book Jerusalem (1783) to political theory: a notion of social contract which precluded coercion where religion is concerned. The second half of Jerusalem is devoted to a redefinition of Judaism—essential if the tradition, denied its power to coerce allegiance, would prove able to persuade Jews to remain in the community of their own free will. This voluntarism, with all its attendant blessings and curses, is of course our inheritance as well, the terms of the contract under which we still live and think as Americans and as Jews. It is also the source of the greatest challenge confronting us. Modern Jews have succeeded in imagining and achieving precisely two and only two viable paths to Jewish existence in the modern world. We might call the first path emancipation. It seeks to take advantage of individual liberties and the persuasive power of Judaism to compete in the marketplace of ideas—even as we recognize that our political clout will always be limited because we make up only a tiny percentage of the larger population, and our ideas will have to compete against cultural forces likewise for more powerful than Judaism—more influential than any book, school, synagogue, organization, or website we can muster. The other option for Jewish existence, Zionism, enables Jews to find their place in the world as many other nations do: through sovereignty over a piece of the earth’s surface maintained by force of arms and the might of a powerful ally. That sovereignty affords a measure of cultural influence unavailable in the diaspora—control over time, space, calendar, and media, though none of these have proved impervious to Western cultural norms and societal. Neither of the two options now in place is terribly secure where Jews and Judaism are concerned. Both evince the troubled mixture of covenant and normalcy that has marked all of Jewish history. In America, Jews enjoy full participation in the larger society: a degree of attainment and at-homeness new to Jewish history. With full benefit of emancipation, and ample use of the influence that has come with economic clout and other achievements, American Jews today work with allies (and against opponents) through the normal democratic process of give and take, bargaining and leverage. Like other groups, we act both to protect communal interests (variously defined) and to pursue (one version or another of) a distinctive societal vision. Israeli Jews, possessing actual sovereignty over a piece of territory for the first time in two millennia and maintaining one of the finest armies in the world, of course enjoy a far greater degree of control over their society, economy, and polity. Normalization—a primary goal of Zionism from the outset—has to that extent been achieved. Its consequence is that Israelis practice a still more revolutionary Jewish politics than American Jews, and face all the more of a challenge in fulfilling covenantal duties. It is one thing to call for social justice in the name of Isaiah, or cite the Torah’s demand to "seek peace and pursue it," when one has little or no power to act on such demands and bears no direct responsibility for the outcome of decisions once they are made. Jewish politics is quite another matter when Jews are forced to weigh competing needs or goods, can use state power to counter other groups and their traditions, and justify both the use and abuse of power in the name of God and Torah, and often enough must decide to settle for no good at all but only for the lesser of several evils. Normalcy and covenant, then, stand in tension where Jewish politics is concerned now as ever before in Jewish history—and both continue to stand before Jews in large part as aspiration rather than achievement. "Normalization" is not complete in either country. American Jews cleave to a unique self-definition as both religion and ethnic group, and maintain a unique relationship to a sovereign state overseas. We are aware that the freedom we enjoy as Jews is extraordinary and our opportunities both fragile and hard-won; the anti-Semites must be kept in mind; the community’s overarching responsibilities to the Jewish people as a whole and its enduring commitment to the covenant must always be considered. Israel for its part is hardly a nation like all others. It has existed in a near-constant state of war for more than fifty years now. What is more, the "Jewish State" acts in the name of a people who still live mostly outside its borders as well as in the name of its own citizens—many of whom are not Jews. It derives legitimacy, finally, not only from the will of those it governs but from the age-old quest for Zion, site of the covenant’s fulfillment. Both Israelis and American Jews, moreover, in a very real sense await and depend upon the coming of messiah: Israelis because, given the normal course of power politics, the odds are heavily stacked against their state’s long-term survival in the Middle East; American Jews because our vitality, if not our actual survival, depends on the achievement of a true pluralism and tolerance that until now in the world’s history has been a utopian dream rather than a political reality. That perhaps explains why the proper balance between covenant and normalcy, the theory and the practice of Jewish politics—elusive among every group, in every time and place—has been particularly difficult for Jews to locate in recent decades. I assume, in keeping with the Torah’s own wanderings, that in political as in "religious" matters unity will continue to elude both Israelis and American Jews (though it has sometimes been forthcoming when dictated by common threat or interest). Leaders continue to prove elusive and disappointing; golden calves of all sorts continue to be fashioned and celebrated; good intentions produce bad outcomes; imagining God is impossible, and knowing what God wants not much easier. But I also believe, again following the Torah’s lead, that Jewish tradition has and must have a great deal to say about issues of the day, and that the point, now more than ever, is not agreement on what Torah demands but political argument in the framework of Jewish tradition. It is a heady time for Jewish politics: a time for Jews, Torah in hand, to stand up and be counted. Jewish Politics in America Many American Jews mistakenly tend to think (and act) as if Jewish politics is merely an Israeli concern. Church and state (so goes the argument) must remain separated in this country. Jews constitute a tiny minority of the American population. We cannot agree with one another on what the Torah wants from us. It would therefore be wrong, and probably hopeless, to try and transform the society, polity and economy of the United States in accordance with the perceived demands of covenant. Normalcy counsels another course, the one by and large followed by the Jewish community: protection of undeniable communal interests; advocacy on behalf of Israel; personal achievement and philanthropy inside the givens of the current order; association as individuals with causes bent on gradual reform. Once again, I see some merit in these objections to the exercise in which I am about to engage. In fact, I remember challenging Abraham Heschel with similar arguments when I met him in his office (my only extended conversation with Heschel) in 1970. With youthful arrogance I demanded to know what gave him the right to pronounce the Vietnam War a moral atrocity when the President of the United States, who knew far more about the facts, had decided the war was necessary. Many American Jews, supporters and opponents of the war alike, had looked askance at Heschel’s leadership role in anti-war efforts. The former saw his activism as a case of chutzpah, pure and simple, while the latter worried that he would provide anti-Semites with ammunition for years to come. In response to my doubts Heschel invoked his responsibility as a teacher of Jewish tradition not to remain silent. He explained to me that Judaism holds it a "profanation of God’s name" when things are done in God’s name that must never be done, according to God’s Torah, and Jews are silent. It is a "sanctification of God’s name" when Gentiles are led to praise Judaism and Judaism’s God because of the righteousness Jews stand for and perform. Heschel reminded me that silence and aloofness are not traits that Jews have ever particularly valued. The most important religious issue of our time, he said pointedly, was not the number of kosher butchers in Philadelphia (my hometown). It was to end the Vietnam War. I do not mean to imply, in reporting this, that Heschel (much less I) have the only "Torah-true" position on difficult issues of the day. One could (and Jews did) formulate powerful Jewish positions in support of the war. My point is that we dare not avoid such positions for fear of anti-Semitism, nor should we do so out of genuine humility before the enormity of our tradition and the complexities of the dilemmas we face. Jewish normalcy demands involvement in the larger societal issues of America, because Jews will not be able to survive and thrive in this country if certain social, economic and political conditions are not in place. (True pluralism and genuine multi-culturalism are for example absolute requirements.) Covenant, moreover, requires, as Heschel taught, that the teachings of Torah be heard to speak to issues of the day—lest Jews and non-Jews come to presume the Torah’s irrelevance. Jewish silence on controversial matters has done incalculable damage to the standing of the tradition in the eyes of young Jews who—if they saw Judaism at the forefront of battles that need fighting—might well not have kept their distance. They will certainly not be brought near by a Jewish politics which is merely a copycat version (and generally watered-down at that) of either liberalism or conservatism. That has too often been the case in this country. "Why bother being Jewish? One already votes Democratic. Aren’t Jewish values such as freedom and justice universal? Shouldn’t liberalism then suffice?" The answer—negative—must be uncompromising. At times Jewish interests and principles overlap existing positions, or combine them. In other respects, however, they provoke a stance very different from anything the major parties have yet formulated—and almost always supply a different rationale. Liberals, for example, too often lack the Torah’s tragic sense of limits. They trust too much in rational solutions to intractable problems. They too often seem ready to sacrifice particular traditions or communities in the name of abstract universal goods. Conservatives, when they invoke tradition, seem to have in mind a past that had no room for Jews and so cannot attract me now. When conservatives picture human beings as autonomous agents who come together only for specific purposes in limited associations, but otherwise seek above all else to protect individual liberties and privacy, they deny the fundamental truth of Jewish politics and Jewish history: that we are bound to each other in communities. Only through them, like it or not, will we find fulfillment. Jews and Judaism of whatever sort, it seems fair to say, have a strong vested interest in a set of orientations to tradition and authority that have for good reasons or bad became identified in America in recent decades with conservatism. Authority is in principle not a bad thing in my eyes but rather a necessity and a good. It arouses my suspicion but also my respect. Conversely, blind faith in either "human decency" or "progress through enlightenment" seems to me misplaced. We will always need the guidance of authority—parents, teachers, leaders, sages if we can find them—to protect us from the worst in ourselves and elicit the best of which we are capable. We will need to call upon experience as much as expertise. Local wisdom may well count for more than abstract knowledge. Particularist loyalties and norms matter no less than universal goods. Tradition and precedent, while hardly infallible and always in need of scrutiny and correction, should be trusted in the first instance rather than cast aside in the name of freedom or the future. As a Jew, I of course treasure freedom, have more than one holiday dedicated to its virtues, but also recognize all sorts of obligations to my Creator and my fellow human creatures. Every form of Judaism I know, including Reform and Reconstructionism, speaks the language of obligation along with that of freedom. I value autonomy as much as the next person, and detest coercion. But I also know that we must not be permitted to "do our own thing," or to "let it all hang out." A society in which "anything goes" is one in which not much good will be accomplished. "Feed the poor? How boring! House the homeless? Sure, if that’s your thing; me, I’m into conspicuous consumption." I exaggerate, of course, but from where I sit in the heart of Silicon Valley materialism—whether in its yuppie or Generation X varieties—not by all that much. A Jew cannot endorse the equality of all urges. Golden calves of one sort or another always beckon. The temptation to imagine gods in accordance with our needs, and follow those who call us to worship them, is eternal. Jews have learned from bitter experience the effect of undermining one authority after another, as we in America are wont to do of late. The loss of authority does not result in greater freedom for the majority or the minority but in greater sway for individuals, movements and corporations who know what they want and single-mindedly pursue it. When those people try to exercise power openly and without restraint, we had better have authority available to hold them in check. If not, we’ll be left only with the rule of interest and brute force. The balance of justice and mercy must be pursued steadily in the face of the quick fixes of the moment. Untrammeled liberalism, letting loose the self in the name of autonomy, inevitably plots its own demise. But so does unalloyed conservatism, whether of the individualist or the traditionalist variety. I cannot as a Jew, blessed with freedoms and opportunities in the West during the past two centuries as never before, condemn modernity as some aberration from a right road last walked in the middle ages. Nor can I attack post-modernism, with its respect for minority traditions, as a steep decline from the golden ‘fifties. I cannot view culture as an elite preserve, a gentleman’s club, from which the riffraff are excluded lest the straight and narrow be obscured. How then can I generate enthusiasm for a core curriculum that has no room in it for Jews—or women, or blacks? I cannot—anymore than I can support opposition in principle to all canons. The Torah, a canon if ever there was one, is the very center of my life. Ki Tissa in particular is a text for which I will ever be profoundly grateful. You can’t tell me that no books are more important than others, no teachings more right than others. I stood with neither left nor right in the curriculum debates of the ‘eighties, as I stood with neither side in the continuing culture wars of the ‘nineties. As a Jew I want and need vital traditions (in the plural), just as I require and desire strong communities. The same dissatisfaction with left and right outlined above holds when we turn from the cultural to the social issues so prominent in recent campaigns, though this time the political Jew in me tilts left rather than right. Jewish commitment of whatever sort begins with the command to take care of other people’s bodies, and only then permits us to proceed with the improvement of our own souls. The reverse path is mistaken. The Talmud insists in Tractate Baba Batra that no social arrangement, however worthwhile, can be permitted to prevent the cries of the poor from being heard. I am reminded of this first principle of Jewish politics every time I visit leisure complexes surrounded by walls and secured by guards who, I am sure, would never permit a poor person to get inside. The rabbis arranged the Jewish liturgical calendar so that no Yom Kippur ever passes without reminding Jews, in the midst of their fasting and atonement, that God does not want their fast alone. God rather wants them to "share bread with the hungry . . . when you see the naked, clothe him, and do not ignore your own kin." This is basic stuff to Judaism, inculcated in many of us since childhood. The poor are our "own kin." There is no excluding them. They eat only if we feed them. The morning blessings which thank God for clothing the naked and raising up those who are bowed down summon us, every day, to do the same. The divine attributes of justice and mercy proclaimed in Parshat Ki Tissa command our imitation. Many American Jews have been raised on these imperatives and almost all are proud of them, even if few Jews, as few Gentiles, actually carry them out most of the time. One can of course disagree about which welfare policy best ensures that the poor will be housed and fed. The Torah offers no brief for the platform of either major party. Neither the prophets nor the rabbis calculated the acceptable poverty level or mandated a specific distribution of the wealth. Their concern was that no one be hungry or homeless and that everyone be provided with basic human needs so that they could pursue a good life in accordance with Torah. But no traditional Jewish ethic can sanction unbridled individualism: greed made virtuous, the self glorified, the drive to consumption freely indulged. The rabbis did not conceive society as a collection of individuals bonded together by self-interest and coercion, but as a federation of integral communities. The self not part of such communities would in their view be stunted and unhappy. It would do more wrong than it should, and not do enough right. America on this Jewish view is and should be held together by more than a common system of government and a shared popular culture of consumption. Our nation is founded on a vision—freedom, equality, opportunity, diversity—underwritten, as the Pledge of Allegiance reminds us, by God. We are bound by a sort of covenant. The country’s legitimacy is also underwritten, as the Torah would want it to be, by the way its least powerful citizens (children, the poor, the elderly) are treated as well as by the spiritual richness of the lives that our society makes possible. If the country’s founding vision is seen repeatedly to be mocked, the bonds which hold its people together are weakened, just as God’s providence is mocked when the aged and the weak are cast aside: a major problem in American society today. Jews are driven to their pledges of American allegiance by interest and principle alike. Normalcy and covenant both depend on this union. Jewish politics cannot but bend in its direction. There are therefore times when, as Jews, we must withdraw from either the establishment majority or other minorities and stand alone, resisting compromise in order to remain true to covenant. There are other times, however, where alliances are possible and necessary. This is the real world, after all, and not the promised land. Politics demands shifting coalitions. Life as a minority involves perpetual and precarious balancing. I hope we can educate our students and our children to be comfortable with their status as perpetual minority in America—and teach them, as full citizens of this country, not to fear either the power and influence of the majority or the aspirations to power and influence voiced by minorities who have less of both than we do. I want to see a variety of traditions and communities coexisting and competing in this country, a pluralism of commitments in tension with and borrowing from one another. I also want innovation and autonomy within my own tradition directed, challenged, and checked by a past that we cannot dismiss and by a higher authority which we cannot easily slough off. This balance too will not be easy to find, of course. But both normalcy and covenant demand we seek it. There is, finally, the question of Israel. I leave for another occasion a discussion of the ways in which normalcy and covenant should and do interact in the foreign policy of the Jewish State. The moment—with the peace process once more in jeopardy, the negotiations with Syria and Palestinians at yet another delicate stage—is not appropriate for detailed agendas arrived at far from the scene of risk and sacrifice. The more urgent question for American Jews is how we can refashion our relation to Israel, now that its desire for our philanthropy is vanished or diminished, its Jewish population is equal to or larger than our own, and its economy is one of the most dynamic in the world. My sense of the relation between us begins from the fact that Israel and North America arguably comprise the only two viable and thriving centers of Jewish life in the world today. Each depends upon the other politically as well as culturally. That is all the more true of the Jews in each community who wish to lead serious Jewish lives in the variety of paths for Torah which have been developed in the past two centuries, some of them in the past few decades. There are too few of us to ignore, or remain ignorant about, any of us. Our interests and imperatives intersect—one reason they so often collide. I take it that the most important item on our shared agenda is therefore to know each other better, countering the immense ignorance of the other which prevails on both sides of the Israel-diaspora divide. Visits and curricula are both important, the latter devoted to in-depth knowledge (age-appropriate, of course) of the actual rather than the mythic Israel. Jews in this country need to hear more about the real society and how people live in it and what forms of Judaism they have developed, rather than receiving the usual mythology, however true that myth may be, about ingathering of the exiles, making deserts bloom, and fighting impossible military odds. Israeli Jews need real knowledge of our Jewish paths and not merely the stereotypes born of the ideology of "negating the diaspora." Visits to each other’s communities should also link Jews with individuals and families who share something important with them besides their Jewishness—a profession, for example, or shared participation in the worldwide youth culture. This is already occurring in many visits by American Jews to Israel. Most Israeli visitors to America, however, still fail to set foot inside a Jewish home or institution. There is much room for improvement. The second imperative on the agenda is actual cooperative efforts on the ground—projects combining the expertise of Jews from several communities, whether undertaken in Israel or in other parts of the world or in this country. This means rethinking the concept of sh’lihim (a process already underway) as well as redefining and enlarging projects like Partnership 2000 which connect particular communities in America with counterparts in Israel. I assume, too, that the Jewish people requires an international organization of some sort—my preference is a reformed Jewish Agency—to symbolize, articulate and act upon our status as one people. There are things we can only do together, particularly where emigration to Israel is concerned. Even beyond these practical tasks, however, we need to see ourselves meeting and acting together so that we do not lose the sense of our common peoplehood or the recognition that we share both political interests and political ideals—normalcy as well as covenant—despite the strong tendencies which have for decades pushed and pulled us apart. Greater connection will not always mean greater harmony. American Jews drawn closer to Israel are likely to be vocal about the course Israeli society (and the practice of Judaism) are taking, particularly when these are legitimated by appeal to a tradition we too hold dear. Israelis have repeatedly challenged American Jewish mores and institutions, and—particularly in the Orthodox world—have for some time exercised a decisive influence. The boundaries of legitimate involvement by each community in each other’s affairs will continue to be contested. One can only hope for and urge respect for the differences between the two Jewish paths, and the avoidance of absolutism in the name of either covenant or normalcy. Conclusion For the proper balance between grand vision and programmatic detail can never be specified in advance, never located once and for all, and never stated simply or unequivocally. That is the built-in difficulty of Jewish politics, the challenge that can never be conquered but only met. It demands a constant effort of investigation and reflection on our part comparable to the Talmudic learning which has for centuries gone into traditional responses to the issues of the day. We need medical ethicists and Jewish policy planners, inter-disciplinary collaborations of all sorts, multiple centers for social action, community planning on a high level and a plurality of institutes for Jewish research. These resources are imperative. Only the proper balance between covenant and normalcy, located after painstaking reflection, can prevent covenantal politics from trampling people underfoot in God’s name and prevent normal politics from sending us in a hundred different directions and hence leading us a nowhere in particular. The Torah never sets forth the truth, point by point, neatly packaged. One can’t feed in the "facts" of a dilemma at one end and pick up the verdict on what to do at the other. The text rather tells stories, and gives laws that grow out of them. In wilderness politics, our politics, here or in Israel, ultimate answers are never available. One of my favorite passages in the Torah, (Exodus 33:13) shows Moses pleading with God to tell him what he has been doing right. "Now, if I have truly gained your favor, pray let me know Your ways, that I may know You and continue in Your favor." All one has is the proper framework in which to pursue goals worth living for, guidance in the asking of right questions, directions for the building of just communities, the unceasing demand for justice, a sober realism where politics is concerned, and the command that one never give up hope. This is precious knowledge indeed. Left as mere ideal, the promised land would quickly degenerate into noble sentiment. Tracked in the real world, however, as in the Torah, promise can be realized, albeit imperfectly. That is all the text, committed to normalcy as well as covenant, can ask, and it is more than enough to fill our days with enough goodness and meaning to last a lifetime. NOTES 1. This essay is based on Arnold Eisen’s book, Taking Hold of Torah: Jewish Commitment and Community in America (Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 108, 111, 131-137. Excerpts have been reprinted by permission of the publisher. 2. The terms are adapted from their use by Allan Silver in Are Normal Politics Possible for Jews? and Political Agency in Jewish Thought: Biblical Kingship, Diaspora, Israel. Both manuscripts are unpublished. The political scientist Daniel Elazar has long worked towards a modern Jewish political theory framed in terms of covenant. See for example his recent book, Covenant and Polity in Biblical Israel (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1995). Biographical Note Arnold Eisen is Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at Stanford University and is the author of numerous books and articles about contemporary Jewish life and thought in the United States and Israel. Recent publications include Rethinking Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment, Community; Taking Hold of Torah and Galut: Modern Jewish Reflection on Homelessness and Homecoming. |
Rethinking
Jewish Politics in America
Rethinking
Jewish Politics in America