Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving-A Jewish Holiday
An American Yom Tov
JEAN LEON GEROME FERRIS‘The First Thanksgiving’
By Dennis Prager
Published November 18, 2009, issue of November 27, 2009.
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Thanksgiving has always been my favorite national holiday. In fact, although I am a religious Jew (or rather, because I am a religious Jew), it rivals my favorite Jewish holidays for my affection.
It does so because it is quintessentially American, it is deeply religious without being denominational and it is based entirely on one of the most important, and noble, traits a human being can have — gratitude.
Gratitude is the foundation of both happiness and goodness. Neither happiness nor goodness is possible without gratitude. If all human beings were grateful, there would be little evil in the world.
It says an immense amount about America and its value system that it long ago began, and later officially enshrined, a national holiday just for the purpose of giving thanks.
It speaks to the centrality of God in American history (something many Jews, being deeply secularized, may not be happy about, but which is nevertheless a fact), and it speaks to the optimistic, happy and goodness-producing spirit that has been at the core of what I and others call Americanism.
American Jews should celebrate Thanksgiving with particular enthusiasm.
First, and most obvious, nowhere in Jewish history have we had it is as good for so long as we have had it in America. No individuals or groups have better reason to celebrate Thanksgiving in America than we Jews.
Second, Thanksgiving is the one day of the year in which we Jews celebrate the same religious holiday with the rest of America. By definition, Jews do not share a religion with the non-Jewish majority of Americans. But we do share our God (the God of Creation and the God of Israel) with the Christian majority. And this holiday alone affirms that.
Third, while all Jewish holidays are family-based, the Christian majority has only two national holidays that are family-centered — i.e., holidays in which a multi-generational meal is expected and for which people travel to be with their family: Christmas and Thanksgiving (the latter is the busiest travel time of the year). Obviously, while Jews may honor their non-Jewish friends’ celebrations of Christmas, Jews do not celebrate Christmas. So Jews share with the rest of America only one day a year of a family-based holiday — Thanksgiving. This day therefore joins us with our fellow Americans in a unique way.
True, some ultra-secular Jews may be uncomfortable with the idea of invoking God during the celebration of a national holiday. But even if one is opposed to thanking, or simply cannot thank, God, he should thank fate or luck or his ancestors for moving here, or the founders of this blessed country. Only good can come from having people get together to declare their gratitude as Americans. Indeed, given the overwhelming importance of gratitude in inculcating goodness and happiness in people, Thanksgiving is arguably America’s most important day of the year.
On the other end of the religious spectrum, some among the ultra-Orthodox deem it un-Jewish to celebrate a non-Jewish holy day. But a religious Jew who refuses to celebrate Thanksgiving ought not tell anyone — it would most likely constitute a chilul hashem (a desecration of God’s name before others). Just imagine how it sounds — “We religious Jews refuse to celebrate a day thanking God for our blessings because non-Jewish Americans celebrate it.”
In 1789, George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving proclamation with these words: “Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be….”
What could possibly be un-Jewish about that?
I recall with pride that in my Orthodox parents’ home on Thanksgiving we ritually washed our hands before the Thanksgiving meal and sang the Birkat Hamazon — the grace after meals — afterward as if it were a yom tov meal.
Indeed, Thanksgiving is literally a yom tov, a good day. The best there is.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host and columnist. His latest project is the online Prager University, which can be accessed at prageru.com
JEAN LEON GEROME FERRIS‘The First Thanksgiving’
By Dennis Prager
Published November 18, 2009, issue of November 27, 2009.
Print Email Share Author Archive Forward Forum
Thanksgiving has always been my favorite national holiday. In fact, although I am a religious Jew (or rather, because I am a religious Jew), it rivals my favorite Jewish holidays for my affection.
It does so because it is quintessentially American, it is deeply religious without being denominational and it is based entirely on one of the most important, and noble, traits a human being can have — gratitude.
Gratitude is the foundation of both happiness and goodness. Neither happiness nor goodness is possible without gratitude. If all human beings were grateful, there would be little evil in the world.
It says an immense amount about America and its value system that it long ago began, and later officially enshrined, a national holiday just for the purpose of giving thanks.
It speaks to the centrality of God in American history (something many Jews, being deeply secularized, may not be happy about, but which is nevertheless a fact), and it speaks to the optimistic, happy and goodness-producing spirit that has been at the core of what I and others call Americanism.
American Jews should celebrate Thanksgiving with particular enthusiasm.
First, and most obvious, nowhere in Jewish history have we had it is as good for so long as we have had it in America. No individuals or groups have better reason to celebrate Thanksgiving in America than we Jews.
Second, Thanksgiving is the one day of the year in which we Jews celebrate the same religious holiday with the rest of America. By definition, Jews do not share a religion with the non-Jewish majority of Americans. But we do share our God (the God of Creation and the God of Israel) with the Christian majority. And this holiday alone affirms that.
Third, while all Jewish holidays are family-based, the Christian majority has only two national holidays that are family-centered — i.e., holidays in which a multi-generational meal is expected and for which people travel to be with their family: Christmas and Thanksgiving (the latter is the busiest travel time of the year). Obviously, while Jews may honor their non-Jewish friends’ celebrations of Christmas, Jews do not celebrate Christmas. So Jews share with the rest of America only one day a year of a family-based holiday — Thanksgiving. This day therefore joins us with our fellow Americans in a unique way.
True, some ultra-secular Jews may be uncomfortable with the idea of invoking God during the celebration of a national holiday. But even if one is opposed to thanking, or simply cannot thank, God, he should thank fate or luck or his ancestors for moving here, or the founders of this blessed country. Only good can come from having people get together to declare their gratitude as Americans. Indeed, given the overwhelming importance of gratitude in inculcating goodness and happiness in people, Thanksgiving is arguably America’s most important day of the year.
On the other end of the religious spectrum, some among the ultra-Orthodox deem it un-Jewish to celebrate a non-Jewish holy day. But a religious Jew who refuses to celebrate Thanksgiving ought not tell anyone — it would most likely constitute a chilul hashem (a desecration of God’s name before others). Just imagine how it sounds — “We religious Jews refuse to celebrate a day thanking God for our blessings because non-Jewish Americans celebrate it.”
In 1789, George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving proclamation with these words: “Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be….”
What could possibly be un-Jewish about that?
I recall with pride that in my Orthodox parents’ home on Thanksgiving we ritually washed our hands before the Thanksgiving meal and sang the Birkat Hamazon — the grace after meals — afterward as if it were a yom tov meal.
Indeed, Thanksgiving is literally a yom tov, a good day. The best there is.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host and columnist. His latest project is the online Prager University, which can be accessed at prageru.com
Sands book a lie
Home / Articles / Jewish Peoplehood Denied, While Israel’s Foes Applaud
Jewish Peoplehood Denied, While Israel’s Foes Applaud
Opinion
By Hillel Halkin
Published June 24, 2009, issue of July 03, 2009.
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Although there is probably no book too foolish to go un-admired by someone, there are subjects for which the market for foolishness is especially large. Any list of these would have to include “Jews” and “Israel” near its top, as has once again been demonstrated by the granting of this year’s prestigious Aujourd’hui Award to the French translation of Israeli academic Shlomo Sand’s book “The Invention of the Jewish People.” (This is the title of the English edition, due to appear in September from left-wing publisher Verso.)
Sand’s book, which argues that there was no such thing as a Jewish people until one was “constructed” by Zionism and Jewish nationalism in the 19th century, would have attracted little notice had it been written by a professor of history at the University of Damascus. As the work of a supposed historian at the University of Tel Aviv, it is a scandal, a fashionably phrased political screed against Zionism that cherry-picks its data while pretending to be history. Alas, it will be accepted as history by many readers who are as dutifully impressed by its 568 footnotes, as were, it would seem, the French journalists on the Aujourd’hui panel.
Not that Sand gets everything wrong. His book is full of perfectly correct and quite unoriginal observations: some elaborating why today’s Jews are not all descendants of biblical Israelites and stem in part from ancestors who joined the Jewish people by religious conversion over the ages (although Sand’s treatment of the considerable genetic research on the subject is shockingly shoddy, he is not wholly wrong about the matter); some pointing out that Diaspora Jews never shared a single spoken language or material culture, let alone territory, as do most peoples; and some dwelling on the problematic nature of the State of Israel, which aspires to be Jewish, democratic and secular while denying non-Jews certain privileges extended to Jews and defining Jewishness in terms of traditional religious law. These are all issues worthy of discussion, and there is nothing wrong with raising them.
And yet to go from there to Sand’s absurd conclusions that the Jews, who considered themselves a distinct people from their early history, were “invented” as one in modern times; that their historical connection to Palestine is “imaginary,” because they are not descended in their entirety from ancient Palestinian Jewry; or that the idea of a Jewish state is therefore less acceptable than the idea of a French or Spanish state, demands a thoroughly dishonest manipulation of the facts. Indeed, if one is talking about the “construction” of national identities, an enterprise that numerous post-modernist historians of nationalism to whom Sand is indebted have written about, it is the French and Spanish who are the parvenus, having undertaken the task only in the late Middle Ages. And if you are looking for peoples who accomplished this even later, in the last two or three centuries, say, you might consider the Italians, the Germans, the Americans, the Brazilians, the Indians and a host of others (including those latest of latecomers, the Palestinians). You would never, unless you wanted to flaunt your ignorance, mention the Jews, who had a fully developed national consciousness at least 2,500 years ago.
But of course, no one would ever write a book challenging the idea of an Italian, German or Brazilian state, much less win any French prizes for it. It is only the Jews in regard to whom it is nowadays increasingly bon ton to argue that a country of their own is not for them. And should you have the bad manners to object that it is antisemitic to deny them a right that is granted to other peoples, you can now look forward to being answered: “Ah, my friend, the Jews have only imagined they are a people! If even a Jewish professor of history says so, it must be true.”
And yet the embarrassment of Jewishness has always made certain Jewish intellectuals not the last, but the first, to seek to discredit the idea of Jewish peoplehood. From the age of the French Revolution, a time at which few European gentiles doubted for a moment that the Jews were a separate people (and on the whole, a heartily disliked one), there were plenty of Jews who insisted that they were really just Frenchmen or Germans or Englishmen of “the Mosaic faith,” with no national ties to other Mosaicists living elsewhere. And by the same token, in the 1940s, when Hitler and his legions were confident that they were exterminating a people and not a mere religious profession, the so-called Canaanite movement, born in the bohemian cafés of Tel Aviv, made similar claims for the Jews of Palestine — who, it was said, were proud, sun-bronzed “Hebrews,” not to be confused with the pale-skinned juifs, Juden and zhidi of Europe then meekly trooping off to the gas chambers.
Shlomo Sand is in this tradition, a post-modernist Canaanite who need not, he thinks, suffer the indignity of belonging to the Jewish people because — what a relief! — no such people exists. No doubt, not a few of the thousands of Israelis who helped put Sand’s book on the best-seller list in Israel experienced a similar epiphany upon reading it. Even in a Jewish state, we now know, there will always be Jews who would rather be something else. You can, to paraphrase an old Zionist witticism, take the Jew out of the non-Jewish environment into which he dreams of assimilating, but you cannot take the assimilationist out of every Jew.
Unfortunately, there are even larger numbers of non-Jews who will be happy to believe Sand’s nonsense. Once upon a time, antisemitism consisted of the belief that the Jews were an incorrigible and pernicious people who could never be absorbed by other peoples. Today, it is trendy to hold that they are a non-people masquerading as a people in order to justify stealing another people’s homeland. Le plus ça change, le plus ça reste le même chose. As discouraging as it is to see Jewish intellectuals like Shlomo Sand aiding and abetting their people’s enemies, this too is not new under the sun.
Hillel Halkin is the author, most recently, of “A Strange Death: A Story Originating in Espionage, Betrayal, and Vengeance in a Village in Old Palestine” (Public Affairs, 2005) and “Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002).
Jewish Peoplehood Denied, While Israel’s Foes Applaud
Opinion
By Hillel Halkin
Published June 24, 2009, issue of July 03, 2009.
Print Email Share Author Archive Forward Forum
Although there is probably no book too foolish to go un-admired by someone, there are subjects for which the market for foolishness is especially large. Any list of these would have to include “Jews” and “Israel” near its top, as has once again been demonstrated by the granting of this year’s prestigious Aujourd’hui Award to the French translation of Israeli academic Shlomo Sand’s book “The Invention of the Jewish People.” (This is the title of the English edition, due to appear in September from left-wing publisher Verso.)
Sand’s book, which argues that there was no such thing as a Jewish people until one was “constructed” by Zionism and Jewish nationalism in the 19th century, would have attracted little notice had it been written by a professor of history at the University of Damascus. As the work of a supposed historian at the University of Tel Aviv, it is a scandal, a fashionably phrased political screed against Zionism that cherry-picks its data while pretending to be history. Alas, it will be accepted as history by many readers who are as dutifully impressed by its 568 footnotes, as were, it would seem, the French journalists on the Aujourd’hui panel.
Not that Sand gets everything wrong. His book is full of perfectly correct and quite unoriginal observations: some elaborating why today’s Jews are not all descendants of biblical Israelites and stem in part from ancestors who joined the Jewish people by religious conversion over the ages (although Sand’s treatment of the considerable genetic research on the subject is shockingly shoddy, he is not wholly wrong about the matter); some pointing out that Diaspora Jews never shared a single spoken language or material culture, let alone territory, as do most peoples; and some dwelling on the problematic nature of the State of Israel, which aspires to be Jewish, democratic and secular while denying non-Jews certain privileges extended to Jews and defining Jewishness in terms of traditional religious law. These are all issues worthy of discussion, and there is nothing wrong with raising them.
And yet to go from there to Sand’s absurd conclusions that the Jews, who considered themselves a distinct people from their early history, were “invented” as one in modern times; that their historical connection to Palestine is “imaginary,” because they are not descended in their entirety from ancient Palestinian Jewry; or that the idea of a Jewish state is therefore less acceptable than the idea of a French or Spanish state, demands a thoroughly dishonest manipulation of the facts. Indeed, if one is talking about the “construction” of national identities, an enterprise that numerous post-modernist historians of nationalism to whom Sand is indebted have written about, it is the French and Spanish who are the parvenus, having undertaken the task only in the late Middle Ages. And if you are looking for peoples who accomplished this even later, in the last two or three centuries, say, you might consider the Italians, the Germans, the Americans, the Brazilians, the Indians and a host of others (including those latest of latecomers, the Palestinians). You would never, unless you wanted to flaunt your ignorance, mention the Jews, who had a fully developed national consciousness at least 2,500 years ago.
But of course, no one would ever write a book challenging the idea of an Italian, German or Brazilian state, much less win any French prizes for it. It is only the Jews in regard to whom it is nowadays increasingly bon ton to argue that a country of their own is not for them. And should you have the bad manners to object that it is antisemitic to deny them a right that is granted to other peoples, you can now look forward to being answered: “Ah, my friend, the Jews have only imagined they are a people! If even a Jewish professor of history says so, it must be true.”
And yet the embarrassment of Jewishness has always made certain Jewish intellectuals not the last, but the first, to seek to discredit the idea of Jewish peoplehood. From the age of the French Revolution, a time at which few European gentiles doubted for a moment that the Jews were a separate people (and on the whole, a heartily disliked one), there were plenty of Jews who insisted that they were really just Frenchmen or Germans or Englishmen of “the Mosaic faith,” with no national ties to other Mosaicists living elsewhere. And by the same token, in the 1940s, when Hitler and his legions were confident that they were exterminating a people and not a mere religious profession, the so-called Canaanite movement, born in the bohemian cafés of Tel Aviv, made similar claims for the Jews of Palestine — who, it was said, were proud, sun-bronzed “Hebrews,” not to be confused with the pale-skinned juifs, Juden and zhidi of Europe then meekly trooping off to the gas chambers.
Shlomo Sand is in this tradition, a post-modernist Canaanite who need not, he thinks, suffer the indignity of belonging to the Jewish people because — what a relief! — no such people exists. No doubt, not a few of the thousands of Israelis who helped put Sand’s book on the best-seller list in Israel experienced a similar epiphany upon reading it. Even in a Jewish state, we now know, there will always be Jews who would rather be something else. You can, to paraphrase an old Zionist witticism, take the Jew out of the non-Jewish environment into which he dreams of assimilating, but you cannot take the assimilationist out of every Jew.
Unfortunately, there are even larger numbers of non-Jews who will be happy to believe Sand’s nonsense. Once upon a time, antisemitism consisted of the belief that the Jews were an incorrigible and pernicious people who could never be absorbed by other peoples. Today, it is trendy to hold that they are a non-people masquerading as a people in order to justify stealing another people’s homeland. Le plus ça change, le plus ça reste le même chose. As discouraging as it is to see Jewish intellectuals like Shlomo Sand aiding and abetting their people’s enemies, this too is not new under the sun.
Hillel Halkin is the author, most recently, of “A Strange Death: A Story Originating in Espionage, Betrayal, and Vengeance in a Village in Old Palestine” (Public Affairs, 2005) and “Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002).
Conservative kosher- ethical meat-will it reach gentiles?
Magen Tzedek: Model of the Jewish Future or Show Without an Audience?
The Polymath
By Jay Michaelson
Published November 18, 2009, issue of November 27, 2009. Forward
Now, along come the Conservative movement’s efforts to create a Magen Tzedek, a seal for food products that would certify conformity not to the ritual particulars of kashrut, but to the deeper and more profound requirements of Jewish social justice law.
I think the Magen Tzedek is a fantastic idea — if it works. It makes a strong case for Judaism’s ethical relevance, a 21st-century update of the old Hebrew National advertisements — “We answer to a higher authority.” In fact, the Magen Tzedek is even better than the original, which, after all, was a ritual “authority” only tangentially related to contemporary health or sanitary concerns, It is a “higher authority” on values that really matter, to religious Jews, secular Jews and non-Jews alike.
Imagine if Jews were known in America to be the super-ethical people instead of the super-ritual ones. We’re the people who won’t eat a hamburger unless the workers at the restaurant are paid a fair wage. We’re the ones who consider environmentalism to be a matter of religious concern. Because doing the right thing matters to God.
This is good P.R., to put it mildly, both “outwardly,” in terms of the wider population, and “inwardly,” in terms of the Jewish community. This is a Judaism that stands for something meaningful, something more compelling than Jewish survival, or the ritual purity of cloven-foot animals. (Full disclosure: I keep kosher myself.) I’m not saying that the Magen Tzedek would end antisemitism and assimilation, but it would be a potent weapon against them.
And, contrary to the objections of some, it’s grounded in authentic, ancient Jewish values. Of course, the specific details of living wages and green production are new, just like the details of how to kasher a microwave. These will, and should, be debated: Many current Magen Tzedek requirements do seem to be needlessly obscure and overly strict. But the basic principles are indubitable. And I would suggest that in the Age of Madoff, making our ethical reasoning as current, comprehensive and mandatory as our ritual reasoning is, itself, a Jewish obligation. As many Orthodox rabbis said this past Yom Kippur, we need to be glatt yosher (ethically ‘straight’) even more than glatt kosher.
But it’s that pesky adjective — mandatory — that will be the biggest obstacle to the Magen Tzedek’s success. Practicing Orthodox Jews simply will not eat food whose preparation wasn’t properly supervised, even if they’re really hungry and there is no alternative. Will practicing progressive Jews be similarly strict? Or will this be yet another optional practice that, like my egalitarian minyan at school, has the right values but no followers?
... But such behaviors are still on the fringes. Will they ever become mainstream enough to make obtaining a Magen Tzedek worth the financial and administrative costs of doing so? Will progressive Jews care as much about progressive values as traditional Jews care about traditional ones?
I am both despairing and hopeful.
Within the Jewish community, I have my doubts. Conservative Judaism probably has the largest gap between ideology and practice, and it’s not clear how the Magen Tzedek will be any different from the 100 other Conservative rules and regulations that most laypeople ignore.
But if the Magen Tzedek proceeds in its current direction, it will be of value far beyond the Jewish community. According to sources quoted in the Forward, the Magen Tzedek has the potential to be the most comprehensive “green seal” in America, and such seals matter economically. If the Magen Tzedek were to capture a share of this market — though, to be sure, there is already plenty of competition — it could indeed reach critical mass.
The dirty little secret of kashrut certification is that it works the same way. The kosher food industry has boomed in recent years: a 15% annual growth rate (compared with 4% for the food industry in general), and a $9 billion market. But according to a 2007 survey, 55% of kosher food consumers buy kosher because they believe it is healthier. And the majority of them are not Jewish.
This has to be the model for the Magen Tzedek — although not on the half-truth that kosher food is healthier, but on the whole truth that Tzedek food is more just. The takeaway is clear. If the Magen Tzedek gains traction among non-Jews who care about how their food is produced, it is sustainable. If it relies on Jewish observance patterns, it isn’t.
In a way, this is an unfortunate result — that a Jewish seal is of more value to gentiles than to Jews. But maybe it’s not so unfortunate at all.
In the coming century, sociologists tell us, Judaism will become less like an all-or-nothing proposition — ethnicity, identity, culture, nation and religion, all wrapped up in one — and more like one source of values, identity, spirituality and culture among many. We should get used to someone practicing Jewish dietary laws, Buddhist meditation and secular ethical values, whether that someone is born of a Jewish mother or not. Jewish culture and religion are going to survive not because of endogamy, but because they remain relevant to people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds who find them to be meaningful. Like it or not, the Kabbalah Centre, Matisyahu and the Magen Tzedek are the future of Judaism; they thrive not because the Jewish tribe maintains them, but because they appeal to a wide range of people.
This is a meaningful transition in the way Jewishness is understood. For some, it is terrifying. But for me, it represents a compelling model of how particularism can survive without ethnocentrism and despite assimilation — not quite a Judaism without Jews, but Judaism beyond the confines of the Jewish population. Yes, there will always be things that only Jews do: I don’t see the lulav and etrog suddenly holding universal appeal. But in the 21st century, progressive Judaism’s survival depends on its relevance to the other 99.9% of the world.
Thus, rather than seeing the Magen Tzedek’s dependence on non-Jews as a liability, I see it as an asset. Imagine an evening in which you enjoy African-American music, a Japanese-American car and Chinese-American food, and it’s all certified according to American Jewish ethical values. Could be worse.
The Polymath
By Jay Michaelson
Published November 18, 2009, issue of November 27, 2009. Forward
Now, along come the Conservative movement’s efforts to create a Magen Tzedek, a seal for food products that would certify conformity not to the ritual particulars of kashrut, but to the deeper and more profound requirements of Jewish social justice law.
I think the Magen Tzedek is a fantastic idea — if it works. It makes a strong case for Judaism’s ethical relevance, a 21st-century update of the old Hebrew National advertisements — “We answer to a higher authority.” In fact, the Magen Tzedek is even better than the original, which, after all, was a ritual “authority” only tangentially related to contemporary health or sanitary concerns, It is a “higher authority” on values that really matter, to religious Jews, secular Jews and non-Jews alike.
Imagine if Jews were known in America to be the super-ethical people instead of the super-ritual ones. We’re the people who won’t eat a hamburger unless the workers at the restaurant are paid a fair wage. We’re the ones who consider environmentalism to be a matter of religious concern. Because doing the right thing matters to God.
This is good P.R., to put it mildly, both “outwardly,” in terms of the wider population, and “inwardly,” in terms of the Jewish community. This is a Judaism that stands for something meaningful, something more compelling than Jewish survival, or the ritual purity of cloven-foot animals. (Full disclosure: I keep kosher myself.) I’m not saying that the Magen Tzedek would end antisemitism and assimilation, but it would be a potent weapon against them.
And, contrary to the objections of some, it’s grounded in authentic, ancient Jewish values. Of course, the specific details of living wages and green production are new, just like the details of how to kasher a microwave. These will, and should, be debated: Many current Magen Tzedek requirements do seem to be needlessly obscure and overly strict. But the basic principles are indubitable. And I would suggest that in the Age of Madoff, making our ethical reasoning as current, comprehensive and mandatory as our ritual reasoning is, itself, a Jewish obligation. As many Orthodox rabbis said this past Yom Kippur, we need to be glatt yosher (ethically ‘straight’) even more than glatt kosher.
But it’s that pesky adjective — mandatory — that will be the biggest obstacle to the Magen Tzedek’s success. Practicing Orthodox Jews simply will not eat food whose preparation wasn’t properly supervised, even if they’re really hungry and there is no alternative. Will practicing progressive Jews be similarly strict? Or will this be yet another optional practice that, like my egalitarian minyan at school, has the right values but no followers?
... But such behaviors are still on the fringes. Will they ever become mainstream enough to make obtaining a Magen Tzedek worth the financial and administrative costs of doing so? Will progressive Jews care as much about progressive values as traditional Jews care about traditional ones?
I am both despairing and hopeful.
Within the Jewish community, I have my doubts. Conservative Judaism probably has the largest gap between ideology and practice, and it’s not clear how the Magen Tzedek will be any different from the 100 other Conservative rules and regulations that most laypeople ignore.
But if the Magen Tzedek proceeds in its current direction, it will be of value far beyond the Jewish community. According to sources quoted in the Forward, the Magen Tzedek has the potential to be the most comprehensive “green seal” in America, and such seals matter economically. If the Magen Tzedek were to capture a share of this market — though, to be sure, there is already plenty of competition — it could indeed reach critical mass.
The dirty little secret of kashrut certification is that it works the same way. The kosher food industry has boomed in recent years: a 15% annual growth rate (compared with 4% for the food industry in general), and a $9 billion market. But according to a 2007 survey, 55% of kosher food consumers buy kosher because they believe it is healthier. And the majority of them are not Jewish.
This has to be the model for the Magen Tzedek — although not on the half-truth that kosher food is healthier, but on the whole truth that Tzedek food is more just. The takeaway is clear. If the Magen Tzedek gains traction among non-Jews who care about how their food is produced, it is sustainable. If it relies on Jewish observance patterns, it isn’t.
In a way, this is an unfortunate result — that a Jewish seal is of more value to gentiles than to Jews. But maybe it’s not so unfortunate at all.
In the coming century, sociologists tell us, Judaism will become less like an all-or-nothing proposition — ethnicity, identity, culture, nation and religion, all wrapped up in one — and more like one source of values, identity, spirituality and culture among many. We should get used to someone practicing Jewish dietary laws, Buddhist meditation and secular ethical values, whether that someone is born of a Jewish mother or not. Jewish culture and religion are going to survive not because of endogamy, but because they remain relevant to people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds who find them to be meaningful. Like it or not, the Kabbalah Centre, Matisyahu and the Magen Tzedek are the future of Judaism; they thrive not because the Jewish tribe maintains them, but because they appeal to a wide range of people.
This is a meaningful transition in the way Jewishness is understood. For some, it is terrifying. But for me, it represents a compelling model of how particularism can survive without ethnocentrism and despite assimilation — not quite a Judaism without Jews, but Judaism beyond the confines of the Jewish population. Yes, there will always be things that only Jews do: I don’t see the lulav and etrog suddenly holding universal appeal. But in the 21st century, progressive Judaism’s survival depends on its relevance to the other 99.9% of the world.
Thus, rather than seeing the Magen Tzedek’s dependence on non-Jews as a liability, I see it as an asset. Imagine an evening in which you enjoy African-American music, a Japanese-American car and Chinese-American food, and it’s all certified according to American Jewish ethical values. Could be worse.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Anne Roiphe foolish on Israel
From a colleague:
In the Nov. 3 issue, (Wandering in the desert of occupation) Anne
Roiphe once again infuriates me. She speaks gently of a gentle Israel
which "would show the world how to be strong and good," and then goes
on to accuse Israel, especially its right wing, and people like me, of
being like cruel Brittania (with a picture of a British uniform
with the Star of David replacing the British head by the side of a
sword) ruling the weak world. Does she really believe that Arab
unfriendliness towards us began with her
so-called "Occupation?" What was the Mufti of Jerusalem doing in
Hitler's office in the forties? Why did seven armies invade us after
the UN gave us our birth certificate with the Partition Resolution?
What was Nasser trying to do to us before 1967? And Sadat in the Yom
Kippur War? Does she really think we are trying, even the yeshiva boy
settlers she loves to hate, to take over the West Bank and drive the
Palestinians out? She admits fearing suicide bombers. So what does
she want us to do? Accept Arab demands that we not be a Jewish State?
Go back to the lines of 1967? Allow Tel Aviv University professors
to deny us the right to national identity, and retain their tenure?
Stop building in Gilo? Tear down the wall that has kept suicide
bombers out of Israel? Bow to Obama's love-making with the Muslim
world and do exactly as he says? Study the peaceful visions of Isaiah
but not his predictions about Israel being served by the nations and
having its children nursed by gentile women?(see Isaiah 49.23 and
61.6)? We may be wandering in the desert of occupation, but that is
better than drowning in the sea.
In the Nov. 3 issue, (Wandering in the desert of occupation) Anne
Roiphe once again infuriates me. She speaks gently of a gentle Israel
which "would show the world how to be strong and good," and then goes
on to accuse Israel, especially its right wing, and people like me, of
being like cruel Brittania (with a picture of a British uniform
with the Star of David replacing the British head by the side of a
sword) ruling the weak world. Does she really believe that Arab
unfriendliness towards us began with her
so-called "Occupation?" What was the Mufti of Jerusalem doing in
Hitler's office in the forties? Why did seven armies invade us after
the UN gave us our birth certificate with the Partition Resolution?
What was Nasser trying to do to us before 1967? And Sadat in the Yom
Kippur War? Does she really think we are trying, even the yeshiva boy
settlers she loves to hate, to take over the West Bank and drive the
Palestinians out? She admits fearing suicide bombers. So what does
she want us to do? Accept Arab demands that we not be a Jewish State?
Go back to the lines of 1967? Allow Tel Aviv University professors
to deny us the right to national identity, and retain their tenure?
Stop building in Gilo? Tear down the wall that has kept suicide
bombers out of Israel? Bow to Obama's love-making with the Muslim
world and do exactly as he says? Study the peaceful visions of Isaiah
but not his predictions about Israel being served by the nations and
having its children nursed by gentile women?(see Isaiah 49.23 and
61.6)? We may be wandering in the desert of occupation, but that is
better than drowning in the sea.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
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