Overcoming the Paradox

And yet there is a paradox here, too. When American Jews speak of making religion relevant, they usually mean that it should address contemporary issues in the mode in which these are addressed in the cultural and

"My dear friends, there is a great difference that we dare not underestimate, the difference between the family that lives here and whose son or daughter went out to fight in Sinai and a good, sincere Zionist family living in New York or in Buenos Aires or in Johannesburg that looked on from afar. Yes their hearts beat warmly, I am convinced of that, and in their own fashion they prayed to God for our success, but there is a difference, and one cannot do away with it." Golda Meir 1959

intellectual circles they themselves inhabit. But if this is already the mode in which these issues are addressed, who needs Judaism to address them? Contemporary values are doing well on their own; if all Judaism has to say about them is that it, too, now subscribes to them, what is irrelevant is Judaism itself.

Judaism - so I argued in "Letters to an American Jewish Friend" and would argue far more strongly today - has something to say to American Jews only if it is prepared to be unsparingly adversarial. And, a severely classical religion in a giddily neo-romantic age, it is adversarial by nature. Most of what it has traditionally stood for - obedience to divine and human authority, subordination of the individual to the community, unremitting self-discipline and self-restraint, devotion to textual study, the necessity for endless repetition, vigilant regulation of bodily functions, the supreme importance of the family and procreation, consistent gender differentiation, hierarchical distinctions in all walks of life - is profoundly antithetical to the values of contemporary liberal American society.

The majority of American Jews will want nothing to do with this. And as Jews, they or their children will disappear.

Quiet only to Keep Peace

Of one thing, then, I still remain convinced: there is no better alternative for a modern Jew than Israel. And as a modern Jew, only Israel strikes me as quite real. In this respect, Zionism has not only given Jews a home, it has made of them an honest people.

...I say, I have mellowed; there is no point in being rude, or hurting feelings. I have never thought that living in Israel made me a better Jew, only that it made me a Jew living in a better place.

Still, the old anger persists underneath. How much so, I myself did not realize until one evening not long ago when my wife and I were sitting with friends. The subject arose of the revival of Jewish life in Eastern Europe; a mutual acquaintance of ours is currently there, devoting himself to this cause. I found myself remarking heatedly that Jews living in America were one thing, but deliberately to start Jewish life all over again in a part of the world where Jews had been reviled and massacred for centuries - the only word I could think of for it was "shameful."

"Well," someone said with that cheerful Israeli cynicism that passes for humor in these parts, "when we here are all dead from Arab nerve gas, you'll be happy there are Jews in other places." That was too much for me. "If we're going to be dead here, I'd rather they were dead there, too," I said.

On the way home, my wife remarked, "That was a terrible thing to say. I hope you didn't mean it."

I thought about that. Did I mean it?

Yes. I meant it.

Not literally. I'm not that vengeful. But if Israel should ever go under - and I do not find it inconceivable - I would not want the Diaspora to continue. I would not want there to be any more Jews in the world.

It would be too shameful. That is the only word for it that I can think of.

Secularly Speaking

"Your problem of identity," I said recently to a well-known American Jewish feminist and religious activist, "is that you don't live in Israel. If you did, you wouldn't have to assert your Jewishness by fighting for a place on the podium of an ancient patriarchal religion that has always wanted you in the kitchen. You could fight your battles where they belong, in a modern, secular society."

"I'd rather fight with tradition than lose its riches," replied the feminist. "And your tragedy is that you think that living in Israel makes you a Jew. Oh, you yourself are one, all right; you grew up in the Diaspora. But how about those children of yours for whom Zionism is so irrelevant? Are they and secularly-raised Israelis like them any more than Hebrew-speaking goyim?"

Put a committed American Jew on the defensive, and sooner or later that is what you will hear. Hebrew-speaking goyim! An entire country of them! So much for your secular Israel!

I could have answered polemically. I could have said:

Look here, secularly-raised Israelis may not have the Jewish literacy of your own children who attend a good American Jewish day school, but that's entirely the wrong comparison; it's comparing the least with the most. Suppose the least Jewish Jews in America spoke Hebrew and read Hebrew books and studied (poorly, I admit) Jewish history, religion, and Bible for several years in school - and lived in totally Jewish neighborhoods and had only Jewish friends - and often spent Sabbath and holiday meals with their families, at which at least some Jewish rituals were performed and served in a Jewish army and risked their lives to defend their fellow Jews - and, of course, married only other Jews. Would you not bless your good fortune in having such a Jewish community?

The difference between being a Jew in a secular Israel and in America is the difference between a ball on an ordinary table and one on a billiard table. When a ball on an ordinary table gets to the edge, it falls off and rolls away. On a billiard table, it comes back and stays on the table.

But having lost my taste for polemics, all I said to the well-known feminist was: "You're right. There's a problem."

Perhaps I was conceding too much. My children, it so happens, grew up as Israeli Jews of the type I have just described: not the kind of Jew I am, to be sure, and not exactly the kind of Jew I might have liked them to be, but Jews. Watching them has made me realize the limitations of a secular Jewish identity in Israel. This saddens me, but it does not strike me as a cause for despair. I do not think that the kind of minimal Jew that most young Israelis are is quite the indictment of secular Israeli culture that it is commonly interpreted as being by Diaspora Jews, by religious Jews in Israel, and even by many secular Israeli educators and intellectuals.

The Bottom Line

Culture is about creating minimals; it is the safety net that catches everyone somewhere close to the ground. The product of an average Israeli home and school cannot parse any but the simplest parts of a Hebrew Bible and would not know what to do in a synagogue? No, he cannot and would not. Would the average young Frenchman do any better with Racine and a Catholic mass? I forbear to ask what the average young American would make of a page of Shakespeare.

They will do, these Hebrew-speaking goyim. I have watched them head with their army packs for Lebanon and I have watched them head with their backpacks for India; as long as they come home and stay home, none will be lost to the Jews. Beyond that, everything is a question of background and inclination. Some will go farther than others; a few will go far enough to create Jewish culture themselves. That is the way it works everywhere.

Full Text; Copyright American Jewish Committee, The Library Institute of Human Relations, June 1997.

Hillel Halkin is an essayist, critic, and translator. Beginning in May 1972, with "Americans in Israel," he has contributed articles on Israel regularly to Commentary, including "Zionism Revisited: The Historic Enterprise" (May 1973), "Driving Toward Jerusalem" (January 1975), "Whose Palestine?: An Open Letter to Edward Said" (May 1980), "Israel Against Itself " (November 1994), and "Israel and the Assassination: A Reckoning" (January 1996).

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