Dr Ami Bouganim, The Research and Development Unit of the Department of Jewish-Zionist, Education, 2007

Initial Comments

With the exception of the Jews of Iran and a handful of Jews who have chosen to continue living in Arab countries, most Jews live in Western countries, or countries subject to Western influence. Close to half of them live in the State of Israel, and slightly over half are scattered among different communities, including the large and strong American community. In Europe, the Jews are far from being homogeneous and appearing on the Jewish scene as a single unit. Each community has its own character, institutions and language, its own rate of growth, awakening or shrinkage, and even its own Jewish cultural heritage. A Jewish Europe does not exist any more than a political Europe, except in the eyes of international Jewish organizations such as the Jewish Agency, the JDC or the World Jewish Congress, and among a handful of intellectuals and rabbis who cultivate the illusion or the ideal of a Jewish Europe for various needs, sometimes noble and sometimes trivial. When people talk about the Jewish people, then, they are referring to the State of Israel, to the American Jewish community and the rest of the communities in Europe, from England to Russia, in South America and in other countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The spread of the Jews throughout the world is gradually shrinking, and widespread regions – including Asia and Africa, with the exception of the remnants of the communities in Morocco, Tunisia and South Africa – do not have Jewish communities. In other words, the overwhelming majority of the Jewish people is divided between Eretz Israel, which is located in the Levant, that is, on the crossroads between East and West, and the rest of the communities, almost all of which reside in the West. In Israel and in the West as well, the Jews are exposed to worldwide processes that are characteristic of what some call “globalization.” The definition of Judaism, the demarcation of the Jewish people’s status and the clarification of its mission must take these processes into consideration, if only to adhere to the Jews’ living conditions, as individuals and as communities, and to offer them a theological-political perspective of the Jewish people – for this is what we mean in our use of the concept “Jewish Peoplehood” – that meets or disappoints their quest for meaning. We believe that it is possible to point out five main processes that together form a global worldview, originating in the West, which tends to bring to bear a global perspective on problems facing humanity:

Processes of globalization

A. The victory of Western science and the extensive spread of its technological applications to all fields of life tend to impose a uniform regime of life on all of humanity. Western science, as it has evolved in the indefatigable quest of philosophical thought for truth and its fulfillment, presumes universal causality and is fully engaged in uncovering it. It demands a reason from everything, searches for a reason behind everything and will not rest until it finds a reason for each and every thing. Heidegger, one of the most thorough critics of Western science, presents its victory as the outcome of treating man as a rational being and defining his environment as a pool of resources standing at his disposal. Every scientific theory is intended to increase his control over natural resources, utilize them for his personal benefit and fortify his status as the creature conquering all of earth[1]. The victory of science is the victory of the principle of reason, which imposes a regime of clarity, precision and consistency, and since its method is based on mathematics, it does not reach achievements unless it “strips” reality of its content, turns the phenomena into ideals, particles or concepts, real or symbolic, and undermines the foundations – spiritual, cultural and moral – upon which the various attempts to give life meaning are based. Science has a logic of its own, which propels it to break through all restrictions – including moral restrictions – and all borders – including geopolitical borders. For example, the cloning industry is in its infancy, and no ethics board nor legal legislation will halt it. Science does not bear a special meaning that undermines the systems of traditional symbols serving people as spiritual footholds, existential anchors or moral compasses, so much as it alters their natural environment, their behavior and even their nature as living creatures. The uniformity of science will ultimately make humanity uniform, in one form or another, despite its ecological hazards, the ethical warnings of the world’s sages and the devout objections of religious leaders. The irreversible rush of science into the unknown constitutes the only phenomenon upon which humanity agrees, even if it disagrees on its consequences, its promises or its dangers. Usually, science appears or even imposes itself as the bearer of redemption – even if it brings disastrous risks.

B. The creation of a market economy enveloping the entire world, as though it were one large market. The global economy has no rules, besides those stemming from encouraging growth at all costs on the part of the authorities and maximum profitability on the part of the investors, whether private or public. The new economy is based on exploitation of the workforce under the best conditions for the employers – to the point of slavery, on the mobility of goods and on consumer habits that change at a dizzying rate. Stripping market forces of all limitations threatens social achievements and protections, tends to turn business success into a criteria for all human and moral judgments, and encourages the growth and entrenchment of an international plutocracy controlling all realms of life, including the media, politics and culture. Economics has the power to set the agenda in research, art and even politics in societies that view themselves as liberal democracies. The new economy finds expression in new breeds of industrial or tourism colonialism of a particularly ugly nature.

C. The spread of the leisure and recreation culture and the dissemination of the values it embodies constitute compensation for a life of hardship. It undermines the status and the role of work, which is gradually losing its pseudo-religious trappings and being reduced to a means of livelihood which can, thanks to savings, enable the momentary and very earthly redemption embodied in the possibilities of leisure and recreation. Work-based morals are no longer convincing, whereas the leisure and vacation culture offers hedonistic or semi-hedonistic morals that are alluring to the masses. This culture encourages the wildest forms of freedom – freedom of speech, behavior, fulfillment – and any activity that offers immediate satisfaction. The reduction of working hours and the lengthening of life affords particular importance to the culture that glints from every corner, tempts everyone and projects only enjoyment and pleasure. Leisure and recreation constitute the earthly wages of the working person, a sign of wealth and a condition for happiness. The change in the status of work in liberal societies has resulted in a change in the ethic, which was based to a large degree on work as a social norm, if not as a value that lies at the basis of all other values. Many researchers are asking whether the development of the leisure and recreation culture is not leading to a change of values and giving rise to a new ethic:

“The growth of what may be labeled a leisure ethic, stressing the quality of life’s experiences and environment rather than possessions and occupational prestige.”[2]

If the leisure and recreation culture has an ethic of its own, it is of a hedonistic nature. Often it is the expression of a partial or full religious disillusionment, not to say disavowal. The wages are not in the world to come or in a different world; they are also in this world. Even the most devout do not do not gamble, as in the past, on the promises of the world to come, but rather tend to take an advance payment in this world on what they have coming to them. The sun worshipping that is renewed every day on the beaches, the massive rush to the leisure spots, the tourist pilgrimages to historical sites, the crowded or relaxed processions down museum corridors, the adulation of stars-idols, both actors and singers… all these appear at times as the characteristics of a pseudo-pagan religion that is subverting the various monotheistic religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity, or making use of them, just as they in the past made use of the ancient idol worshipping. More precisely, this is the present stage of a new syncretism that brings the masses out into the heart of nature, for sensual thrills and physical excitement. The holidays, to take one example of many, are losing their religious meaning, their festive nature, their ceremoniousness and dignity, and gradually becoming days of vacation and enjoyment. To cite a French scholar, entertainment shunts aside all theological seriousness and leaves room only for light entertainment of a religious nature.[3] We live in a twilight period, in which the gods contend amongst themselves, both within us – the God of Israel with the gods of Greece in their new guise – and in the global political arena – the gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The new pagan gods give no rest to the gods who based their authority on a demand for exclusiveness of faith, monastic or semi-monastic morals of abstaining from the pleasures of life and demands that at times affront reason. Heidegger himself proposes to return to paganism without gods. He advocates a poetic life dedicated to inquiring into the meaning of man’s integration into nature – as the integration of Nothing into Being.

D. The spread of communication networks enables an ongoing, worldwide dialogue without borders or censorship of any kind. Everyone talks to everyone about every possible topic, and everyone communicates with everyone for every possible purpose. Barriers fall, cultures exchange ideas, people meet, preserved areas gradually disappear – both cultural reservations and nature reserves. Humanity mingles and gradually becomes, along with phenomena of fleeting setbacks and short-lived bouts of conservatism, an English-speaking mixed multitude on one hand and masses that are hungry for bread and crying out for healing on the other. It is true that everyone talks about multiculturalism, but their intentions are purely declarative. In the West, Western culture’s liberal-universal ethos is prevalent, and it is interpreted mainly in English. Some critics identify hypocrisy or condescension in talk about multiculturalism: Western culture recognizes the legitimacy or other cultures, mostly undeveloped, defensive, entrenched minority cultures, without questioning its own hegemony.[4]

These phenomena and others have consequences for Judaism and the Jewish people even before the necessary thorough examination is made of prominent historical events and internal upheavals that have come over us in the past decades. The Jews are exposed, as individuals, as communities and as part of the State of Israel, to the immense forces at work in globalization. They belong to the researchers and scientists who are revealing the secrets of the world and of human existence, and belong to the leaders of the new economy; they feature prominently in the media and are among the generators of global culture. Most of us stand helpless in the face of intermarriage – at least those of us who view it as a first step towards assimilation. The battle against this phenomenon becomes increasingly pathetic from one year to the next, particularly in light of the fact that in the environments where Jews now live, such marriages are in fact a routine matter and even an ideal, at least according to the lights of the post-modern sociologists who speak in favor of all hybrid actions that can obscure cultural, religious, racial and social boundaries that separate human beings. Demographers observe a slow and non-coerced assimilation among Jews, as individuals, within Western culture. The Jewish way of life is evaporating and Jewish languages are vanishing. The Jew does not understand why he must separate himself from his non-Jewish neighbor, with whom he spends his most interesting hours; why he has to reject love in the name of loyalty to the heritage of his forefathers, with which he is not familiar and does not know its contribution to humanity; why he has to undertake any kind of yoke of Torah and religious commandments, particularly if he finds no interest in the Torah and no point in the commandments; why he should learn Hebrew when English is sufficient for him, even to communicate with other Jews around the world. As mentioned earlier, the transformations of globalization have not passed over the State of Israel. In addition to the economic, cultural and social processes, a new de-legitimization has arisen in the world of the Jewish state as a nation state, both among the proponents of globalization and on the part of the movements battling it. Both sides tend to regard Israel as a colonialist state, in the traditional meaning of the word, or as a Jewish Crusader state.

Survival for the sake of survival

The Jewish response to the temptations of the assimilated surroundings was in the past, and is in the present, survival in the name of various ideals and various loyalties. Leo Strauss, to take the most prominent of those who preached survival for the sake of survival, finds in the Jewish perseverance the virtue of loyalty, of faith, of nobility of spirit. He does not offer many reasons; he rallies behind Judaism. One does not renounce the religion that has nourished or continues to nourish us. He rejects assimilation as tasteless and offensive to good taste. He criticizes the possibility of a person, after a long line of generations, rising and giving up the spiritual assets, the psychological resources and the promises of the “world to come” that a 3,000-year resistance has bequeathed to him. He comes out sharply against the poet Heine, who viewed his Jewishness as a curse:

“Our past, our heritage, our origin is then not misfortune, as Heine said, and still less, baseness. But suffering indeed, heroic suffering, suffering stemming from the heroic act of self-dedication of a whole nation to something which it regarded as the infinitely highest. No Jew can do anything better for himself today than to live in remembering this past.”[5]

In Strauss’s eyes, investing thought on the issue and constructing justifications will not lead to anything concrete, just as this does not lead to any defined place in other similar matters. Strauss is an unaware or inconsistent nihilist, who seeks to overcome the nihilism lurking for any meaning that we might propose for human life. He finds a religious home in Judaism, which fascinates him due to its contortions, its contradictions and its ability to withstand – for the sake of heaven – the upheavals of history and the metamorphoses of humanity. He views himself more as a disciple of Spinoza than of Maimonides, Yehuda Halevy or Hermann Cohen. With his keen political instincts, he realized that Judaism cannot be more than an eternal religious sect in the marketplace of monotheistic and pagan religions. At the very least, its mechanisms of survival are those of a sect that view survival, in the spirit of Franz Rosenzweig, as the aim of its mission on earth. The truth is that since he uses ambiguous language and tends to contradict himself deliberately and scatter hints, it is difficult to identify his real intentions. We do not know if he toys with the idea that Judaism is no more than a sect or raises the possibility in order to refute it. In any case, for Strauss, rejecting an idea, particularly when it is not explained, means nothing. The affirmation of religion in general and Judaism in particular as an incubator of meaning should not mislead us. In the eyes of the natural and universal religion, the only one that a rational person can accept, and in the ritual of the one God, the unperceivable and non-appearing – any historical religion, including Judaism, can only be a sect:

“Judaism would be understood as a sect like any other sect; I say advisedly, understood as a “sect,” and not as a “religion.” A sect is a society that is based on an entirely voluntary membership, so that today you belong to sect A, and if you change your mind you leave sect A and enter sect B; and the same applies, of course, to all members of your family.”[6]

Even survival for the sake of heaven – whatever its outcome – requires a reasoned explanation, and every such explanation is based on a response to pressure to assimilate that is applied to the Jews. The response can be one of two kinds: A resistance response and a renewal response. In the first case, one questions the intellectual and universalism and epistemocentrism of the West and secludes oneself – in separate neighborhoods, in Torah study, within the boundaries of Halacha, in a pseudo-tribal family environment – in order to survive. If it is possible, particularly in a period saturated with free media that penetrates all walls and circumvents all prohibitions, seclusion is not devoid of a real religious-spiritual tremor, and can lead to real sanctity and absolute righteousness. In the second case, one gambles on the renewed revival of Judaism, which in any case requires a renewed interpretation of Judaism – a new Midrash – and a renewed definition of the Jewish people’s theological-political status, with its history and missions. In my eyes, dealing with Jewish Peoplehood, in the footsteps of Mordecai Kaplan or irrespective of his views, constitutes an attempt for self-determination of the Jewish people in an age of globalization, taking into consideration the transformations that it underwent in the recent past, its new geographical-political distribution and the spiritual challenges it faces.

Choosing Judaism

A theological-political inquiry into the status of the Jewish people deals, now as in the past, with the choosing of the Jewish people. Relinquishing the status of being chosen – whatever its meaning – will ultimately lead the Jewish people into assimilation, whether in Eretz Israel or outside it. It is hard for me to think of a Jewish story that does not address the topic or the sense of being chosen. Whether this is perceived as a divine choice or a human illusion. Whether it takes the form of Kabbalic-cosmic meaning or an ethnological remnant. Whether it grants privileges or imposes obligations. Whether it is limited for various reasons to the Jewish people or requires its expansion to all of humanity. Whether it is inborn or acquired. Whether it is moral or tribal. Being chosen is intended to clarify the status of the Jewish people and determine its mission and purpose. This status deals first and foremost with the question of the Jewish people’s existence as a people separate from all other peoples, and the question is only heightened as universalism – one humankind, under one God, subject to one law – materializes in multinational, multi-religious and multiracial societies such as the United States, which heralds or symbolizes, from several aspects, the future global humanity. The choosing of the Jews clarifies the motives for maintaining Jewish particularism in a world where the prevalent ideal – despite ethnic, tribal and religious wars – is that of a mixed multitude; an ideal acceptable, incidentally, to most religions, including Christianity and Islam. Judaism survived in the past thanks to a sense of calling that inspired the Jews, which was anchored in their status as a chosen people. Part of that calling, whether we like it or not, whether we are pleased with the results or not, was fulfilled: The belief in one God passed on, through Christianity and Islam, to many peoples and nations. The positions taken up by the prophets, including those touching upon the internalization of faith, justice and charity, passed on to more than a few theological and social doctrines. Today, Jewish chosenness is forced to contend with its theological negation by Christianity and its political negation by Islam. In every generation, Judaism is called upon to justify its uniqueness in the face of universalistic worldviews that it brought into the world. And particularism, no matter how noble survival is, does not constitute a value in and of itself. In most cases it deteriorates into a meaningless pseudo-ethnicity or pseudo-tribalism. Schweid is correct to say that “only religion can safeguard strong particular selfness. However, one does not accept a religion solely due to the desire to justify particular existence. Religion is accepted only out of faith, in other words, out of persuasion of the truth of its metaphysical content.” [7] The Jewish people cannot forego its chosen status and Judaism cannot forego the concept of chosenness without exposing the individual Jew to assimilation and disappearance. [8]

In most cases, the persistence of Judaism is not perceived as a natural or routine phenomenon. At times it appears to be a burden, at times a challenge and at times both at once. In most cases, the Jew is called upon in each and every generation to re-affirm his Jewishness. Two thousand years of abandonment in exile, two hundred years of emancipation, a terrible Holocaust and competitive ways of life – from a cultural, religious and economic standpoint – require a careful examination of chosenness, which gradually becomes peculiar and even scandalous. Besides, in pointing out the high frequency of the phenomenon of chosenness among primitive tribes, anthropological research has somehow impaired the Jewish uniqueness of the concept. It increasingly appears to be an ethnological remnant, unless it is interpreted as a debt of moral obligations towards one’s fellow person, both near and far. The status of being chosen is gradually stripped of all theological meaning, except among the ultra-Orthodox, who treat it as a choice that was imposed upon them as a people, dangled over their heads like a cask, a choice that endows them with powers, imposes obligations upon them, grants them advantages if not virtues, and more. It is perceived by them as an inescapable fate, not a real choice. In general, in the special religious atmosphere that exists in Western countries, emphasizing chosenness shows poor taste and offends the sensibilities of members of other religions.

Despite this, the masses of Jews have continued to perceive Judaism as a binding choice – either in the meaning of “election” and “chosenness,” or in the meaning of “choice.” It continues to reverberate faintly in the sense of family cohesion that is prevalent among the Jews, that is, in their patterns of response and behavior. When Freud himself turned to interpret the secret of Jewish survival and collectiveness, he saw nothing else but the sense of superiority and nobility stemming from the act of being chosen. Without their isolation, which results from their chosenness and is anchored in a great many customs, the Jews would not have survived and would not feel that they are one people. Freud pays particular attention to circumcision – in its psychoanalytic interpretation, a simulation of castration – and presents it as a voluntary act that re-affirms the Jew’s affiliation with the Jewish people, in other words, the acceptance of the authority of the supreme Father, or in terms used in religious circles, the acceptance of the heavenly yoke. Moses gave his people a religion that instilled in them a sense of superiority over the other peoples – irrespective of whether this sense is real or imagined, supported by deeds or only by aspirations. [9] Erikson, one of Freud’s pupils, who completely rejected the concept of being chosen, already spoke about the Jews as a pseudo-species, which developed apologetics in the form of pseudo-logic. [10]

In the United States, Cohen and Eisen base the sense of intimacy shared by Jews on the mutual accountability that they show one another and the reserved, if not disparaging, attitude towards the non-Jew. [11] This refers more to pseudo-ethnic ties, which are anchored in an vague and legendary story of being chosen, and in shared historical memories, which fit to one degree or another into a plethora of personal stories, than the strong bonds of a nation. The weakening of these bonds, which serves as a measure for moving away from Judaism, does not necessarily depend on renouncing an poorly-based ideological-religious worldview. Ethnic identity is not surviving in the United States, despite the post-modern talk about multiculturalism, multi-ethnicity and multi-religiosity, and is fated to disappear in the American melting pot, which compresses and crushes differences that are not supported by religion. The special ethnic background of the Jews, who consider themselves the most successful ethnic group in the United States, is fading away, in the implicit atmosphere of assimilation in American culture. Even “das pintele Yid” [12] is vanishing. As the generations go by, a quiet revolution is taking place in the self-perception of US Jewry: Being a Jew is not the decree of fate but rather the outcome of choice. And if one is born a Jew, he remains a Jew only if he decides to remain within Judaism.” [13]

The truth is that Jewish ethnicity is so shaky and the sense of family ties so weak, “escaping” any widely used definition in anthropological circles, that more than a few of them question its very existence. At times it would appear that the emphasis on ethnicity covers up the difficulty to explain the continuity of the Jewish experience and anchor it in a universal mission and purpose, which will be acceptable both to the Jewish people and to humanity. Here and there, original thought is invested in order to cover up particularism that lacks motive and at times lacks meaning as well. Jewish ethnicity somehow combines a covenant of fate (one that is increasingly vague) with the rest of the Jews in the world, including Israel, with a covenant of generations, with the previous and coming generations. These sentiments, mostly wondrous, sometimes thrilling, sometimes burdening, bear or transmit vague warnings against intermarriage, moral precepts for repairing the world and an additional variety of impressions, fears and wishes. It is possible to speak of “symbolic ethnicity” as opposed to “traditional ethnicity.” [14] In symbolic ethnicity, the individual constitutes part of a group that shapes his personality, poses demands to him and views him as a representative for all intents and purposes, as among the ultra-Orthodox or even the Orthodox, where imitation, absorption and replication serve as the main mechanism of continuity. [15] In traditional ethnicity, the identification with the group is softer, largely emotional, and lacks clear obligations:

“Symbolic ethnicity is “pick and choose” ethnicity, much as modern religion has become pick-and-choose religion.”[16]

After the undermining of the theological choice that determines the collective Jewish story and grants it divine legitimacy, the Jew is forced to tailor for himself a personal-family story out of the stories, Jewish or otherwise, and the rest of the material at his disposal. He tries to somehow relate it to the 3,000-year old historical Jewish story and with the worldwide global story. This is much more a post-modern work of bricolage than pre-modern tailoring. The question of God does not demand nor does it tolerate an absolute answer. The Torah is placed in a corner and waits, in the manner of the Sadducees, [17] for someone to come and interpret it; chosenness takes on and discards forms – social, cultural, artistic – despite its negative connotation; observing the commandments is not as distinguishing and crucial as we had become accustomed to think over the past decades under the pressure of Orthodox Torah scholars, whether it was rabbis such as Soloveitchik or positivist thinkers such as Leibowitz. Many other questions are not as fateful as educators and activists have tended and tend to think. For example, the question of the attitude towards the non-Jew is neither as discriminatory or as distinguishing as it has been for centuries, and the question of assimilation is not so fateful. In general, theological and philosophical questions are of concern only to scholars, mostly more confused than practical. Only questions that deal with the meaning of life, here and now, are of interest to the general public. Beyond its functional merits, its ability to construct the family framework and determine communal ways of life, Judaism must first of all speak to the individual before “extracting” from him loyalty to the previous generations, commitment to the following generations and mutual accountability towards other Jews around the world. In general, it would appear that instilling Judaism, more than studying, interpreting or teaching it, constitutes the most common preservation mechanism. Jews remain Jews more by the power of impregnation than by the power of theological inquiry and religious persuasion or family-ethnic loyalty. Impregnation requires role models – such as charismatic summer camp counselors, or figures of respect and love – such as grandparents who are tied inextricably to Judaism. This may indicate that the Jews have moved away from the sources of Judaism, but also signals the shallowness of the public Jewish discourse, and the great confusion existing in contemporary Jewish thought, which finds it difficult to cope with painful and difficult theological challenges, such as the presence or absence of God at Auschwitz, the multitude of religions speaking in the name of one God, the attitude of Judaism to the non-Jew who believes in a Creator, the difficulties of the Zionist-Israeli reality and more. Most of the questions are asked at a personal level, while most of the answers are given at a collective level, and this is discordant in a post-modern era, where the personal story is what confirms or refutes the general story. [18] Individualism has cleared itself of the suspicion of egoism, and is increasingly appearing as the axis around which the American civil doctrine is woven and around which the personal life of each and every individual is realized, including their aspirations, achievements and commitments. [19] We can complain as much as we like about the loneliness, the distress and the alienation that individualism involves. [20] This does not contribute much to the preservation of collective-ecclesiastical systems. The communities are composed of lonely people who choose to reaffirm or reject their affiliation with them. Cohen and Eisen highlight, in their own way, the tension, if not the incompatibility, between the personal nature that the yearning of meaning has assumed and the collective storyline of Jewish meaning:

“American Jews today are relatively more individualist and less collectivist. Taken as a group, their patterns of belief and practice are more idiosyncratic and diverse, less uniform and consensual. No less important, they regard the ever-changing selection of Jewish activities and meanings from the broad repertoire available as part of their birthright as Jews. They celebrate the autonomy of this choosing and do not worry about its authenticity. Indeed, they welcome each change in the pattern of their Judaism as a new stage in their lifelong personal journeys.”[21]

In this context, intermarriage has become one of the most controversial issues in Jewish communities. For close to 100 years, intermarriage has been hounding the Jews. Everyone sees it as a danger; everyone finds it difficult to battle against it. Marriage is both a test and a challenge. In our choice of spouse, we decide many questions such as our relationship with our parents-forefathers, and our future relationship with our children-successors. The choice is shown to be even more fateful in light of the fact that the family is generally agreed to be the most sensitive place where the questions regarding the preservation of all the hallmarks of private Jewish life are decided, from Kashrut to lighting Sabbath candles. [22] The Jews have not succeeded in making their assimilation in contemporary Western society compatible with their distaste for intermarriage. Even an incisive thinker such as Kaplan cannot solve the conundrum:

“Nothing is so contrary to the ideal of cultural and spiritual cooperation as the unqualified refusal of one element of the population to intermarry with any other.”[23]

The attention paid to the topic, in my humble opinion, constitutes the remnants of dealing with the topic of chosenness at the most common existential level. Intermarriage certainly unravels the remnant of divine chosenness and diverts personal choice towards the innermost inclinations of the heart. I fear that in the absence of a compelling theological story, which deters against intermarriage, the romantic stories, which are devised within the heart and open it before its visitors, Jewish or otherwise, will only become more numerous. The accepted policy among all circles, including the Reform, despite their relative openness, has been and remains to disqualify intermarriage on the grounds that it leads to losing at least one Jewish soul. It is possible that in a different paradigm, one more determined and bold, intermarriage will have the power to bring new Jewish souls to Judaism…

The theological-political standing of the Jewish people depends to a large degree on the political relations that it can develop with other religions, including Christianity and Islam. It finds itself – after 2,000 years in the political underground – at the heart of the theological-political bind in which humanity is clutched. It has the power to be a bone of contention between Christianity and Islam or to be a mediator between the two. Receptions by the Pope do not solve the severe legacy problems between Judaism and Christianity, and do not attenuate the “Christian fate” that lies in wait for certain developments of messianism in the Diaspora or the “Christian seal of approval” given to Jewish works that inadvertently speak the language of Christianity. Similarly, disengagement from parts of Eretz Israel without repairing the relations with the Palestinians, signing a comprehensive peace agreement and having the Muslim world accept the State of Israel’s existence, will not change the agenda of the Jewish people, which is much more affected by the Jewish presence in Hebron than by… a renewed clarification of the issue of chosenness. In other words, the theological-political standing of the Jewish people depends on the development of the relations between Jews and Christians in different countries, including the United States, and on the developments in the Levant – the geographical-cultural region encompassing Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, northern Sinai and Israel – which serves as a crossroads between East and West, Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam. However, in both cases, these external developments depend to a large degree on the desire of the Jews to live, and this desire depends on their ability to cope with internal theological challenges previously unfamiliar to them. This does not refer to the appointment of committees in Israel – for examining pupils’ achievements, the state of crime or the level of the Kinneret – and implementing their recommendations; neither does it refer to the expansion of networks of all-day Jewish schools or summer camp networks throughout the Diaspora, not even to the renewal of the dialogue between Jews around he world. This refers to a religious realignment, in Israel and in the Diaspora, which is necessitated by a courageous and original effort to cope with fundamental questions that are so challenging and frustrating that they are quite daunting to even the most brilliant of theologians. The sober person of our age can no longer content himself with a theology of repression, which justifies God at all costs, nor with a theology of deferral, which postpones the divine reward to other worlds or the world to come. [24] Two new events are constitutive, for better or for worse, of Judaism and the contemporary Jewish reality: One is the occurrence of the Holocaust and the silence of God; the other is the founding of the State of Israel, and the disruptions it causes in the distribution of the “messianic deck of cards.” On one hand, God’s voice was silenced at Auschwitz; on the other, the Messiah will no longer come or will no longer return. These two facts do not pertain to Judaism alone. The silence of God seethes underneath the different religions, and threatens to make God a naturalistic-Spinozistic God, who both imprints and is imprinted, and knows man only to the extent that the latter regards himself as his embodiment, or a pagan God without hands, eyes or ears; the coming or the return of the Messiah will not take place, and man has encountered a fate of his own making. The Messiah will not come and will not return, except in the form of eccentric figures who aspire to a throne that has lost its glamour, attesting more to disillusionment than to despair; only primitive beliefs produce supernatural messiahs, and Judaism, like Christianity and Islam, is too sophisticated to toy with supernatural redemption. [25] Furthermore, the Messiah will not come because he is no longer awaited, and he is no longer awaited because people are no longer acting, under the pressure of the liberal economic-political doctrines, to create a different world or work for the world to come. Redemption is increasingly appearing as a personal matter, and is increasingly taking place in this world. One cannot be an advocate of pure liberalism, which rewards success and success only, which reserves for the rich a paradise on earth and urges the unfortunate to make efforts to acquire the right to work even more – and dedicate oneself to the coming of the Messiah. We live in a period that acknowledges only this world, and every religious doctrine must take this change into account, if it wishes to speak to the masses vacationing on the beach and the mountaintops. Every religious doctrine must take into account, as Kaplan says, repeating this point like a veritable motto…

“… the changed emphasis from other-worldly to this-worldly life.”[26]

The new Jewish story

The collective Jewish narrative is interlaced with many memories that have been preserved in the collective-national consciousness. The enslavement in Egypt and the Exodus; the revelation at Sinai; the Babylonian exile; the Hasmonean revolt; the destruction of the Second Temple and the destruction of Jerusalem; the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. These are some of the events that have been cast over the years into the Jewish calendar, which educates in its own way, both passive and active, to communion with the past generations. The Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel have recently been added to the compendium of events that are constitutive of the contemporary Jewish reality, and are so important that they change the alignment of Jewish consciousness. This is particularly so of the Holocaust, which draws into it the other harsh memories: “The memory of a historical event,” write Eliezer Schweid, “which rose in its extraordinary dimensions beyond the plain of ordinary relativity and became an object for the absolute memory of an absolute event, an event that absorbed the memory of the Jewish people’s entire path of suffering in the past, throughout its entire historical path, from the days of Abraham to our time, as well as the absolute direction leading this people towards the future: Its redemption and the redemption of humankind.” [27] The Holocaust was elevated to the degree of a constitutive event, joining other events such as the Exodus and the revelation at Sinai. There were those who commanded each person to view himself as if he had been at Auschwitz – as Gershom Scholem put it, a “potential victim” – and others who tempered the voice of God on Mount Sinai with his silence at Auschwitz. Upon our success in dealing, as Jews, with a theological challenge of such magnitude, rests to a large degree the stability of all humanity and the positioning of the Jewish people within it. An innocent faith and a persistent faith can certainly make up even for the silence of God at Auschwitz, can come to terms with it, present it as one form or another of the hiding of God’s face and persist in the faith of the forefathers as of old. I fear that the gap that Auschwitz opened up in human civilization is ultimately filtering down to religious belief, and demanding that we settle accounts with God. Scholem tends to present the Kabbalah of Safed as a reaction to the trauma of the expulsion from Spain; Moshe Idel describes the founding of the State of Israel as a reaction to the trauma of the Holocaust. In the finest tradition of conducting a polemic with God, the Jews are the ones who will lead the debate. Some will search for alternative meaning in non-religious channels and gradually abandon their heritage; some will even revive their God who will once again admit: “My sons have defeated me.”

As mentioned earlier, the founding of the State of Israel disturbs the messianic scripts held by the Jews. Particularly among US Jewry, which views itself as residing in a land that is no less desired and promised than the State of Israel. The Zionist ideology of negating exile does not reverberate in the ears of the North American Jews, since they have not and do not see themselves as being in exile. They left the exile behind them in Europe and chose to immigrate to the United States – the land of promise – in order to fulfill a dream of their own, one different than the Zionist dream. Exile vanished from their lives, or was at least weakened, as an existential mold. The United States appeared as the promised land from many aspects. It enabled a new life. It guaranteed freedom and equality. It also enabled, to Jews more than others, freedom of worship. [28] What happened, therefore, was that for decades, Israeli emissaries conducted a dialogue of the deaf with their counterparts in US federations. The American Jews feel at home on the banks of the Hudson no less than do Israelis on the banks of the Yarkon, perhaps even more. They feel at home in New York, Boston and Dallas no less than other immigrants who arrived and continue to arrive at these cities. The United States is not the possession of one nationality alone, but rather the possession of a nation emerging from a mixture of nationalities and taking shape at a crossroads between different religions, where Christianity is prominent and Judaism enjoys special affection. The at-home feeling is evident in American public life, not only in neighborhoods populated by Jews. Cohen and Eisen base themselves on the ethos upon which American society was built in order to state:

“Jews who were at home in America, or wished to be, could not affirm either to themselves or to others that they were essentially “strangers in a strange land”, exiles awaiting a return to Palestine, or God’s one true chosen people. America was, after all, a society which, thanks to the Puritan legacy, conceived of itself as a “city on a hill”, embarked on a providential mission involving all humanity.”[29]

Writers, film producers and other artists do not deny their Judaism; Jewish politicians are not averse to commenting on topics on the American agenda from a Jewish perspective. [30] The political activity of the Jews is a manifestation of outgrowing the sense of exile, and of their integration – to the point of assimilation – in the all-American reality.

However, for many years, Israel represented for US Jewry, who are as accustomed as other Americans to viewing America as a religious and democratic creation – a quasi-messianic vision come true: The new Jew, the new community, the new society, the new army. The new Jerusalem developed before their eyes as a heavenly Jerusalem, with a wall around it that encircled the Western Wall. For a certain period, Israel even outshone the United States, on a mythical level. A small country composed of the remnants of a divine setting, populated by the last survivors and by figures preserved from Second Temple times at the very least. The distance – in both geographical and media terms – kept Israel in the inaccessible skies. Even when the American Jews visited Israel, they did not really rub shoulders with the gray reality of the development towns and the disadvantaged neighborhoods, with broken hearts and shattered dreams, with the nationalistic fervor and settlement dispossession that followed in the wave of the Six-Day War. They continued to tour the heavenly Jerusalem, in organized groups sponsored by the Jewish Agency and hospitality programs sponsored by institutions of higher education. They did not really immerse themselves in what was happening in Israel, and every time someone became involved, they would quickly retreat in the face of the classic Zionist warning not to intervene unless one makes aliyah, and in face of the policy of the American Jewish organizations, which undertook to refrain from any criticism.

The situation gradually changed along with Israel’s political entanglement with the Palestinians, with the growing media exposure of the social reality and with the undermining of the myths that protected Israel in the American Jewish consciousness. A new generation arose that did not experience the founding of the State of Israel, the War of Independence, the mass absorption of immigration, the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars, and the Entebbe operation. The images held by young people are mainly fed by negative events, from the Lebanon War to the Intifada, from the collapse of the kibbutz to the new poor, from the Rabin assassination to the messianic-political turmoil. In such a situation, Israel could be removed from the consensus that was created surrounding the principle of Jewish mutual accountability, and become a controversial topic. Aliyah is almost not a viable option, even in the circles – mostly religious – where Israel enjoys unreserved political support. Israel constitutes, at most, just another cause in the series of Jewish causes for which US Jewry has been mobilized since the end of World War II. In any case, Israel’s political situation clouds the public-political inter-Jewish discourse. Cohen, who holds dual citizenship, and Eisen, an enthusiastic supporter of Israel, reveal:

“Israel, in short, does not force itself on American Jewish consciousness, except as a source of political and religious turmoil.”[31]