What’s Good for the Jews

If you read nothing else in this issue, let me urge you to look carefully at J.J. Goldberg’s column on page 6. It touches on matters that stir the waters — or so it did for me — beyond this week’s news. It points in fact to the past and the future; and to a crisp and focused moment of change, today. In the process, Goldberg raises a number of questions about who we are as Jews in America, and who we are becoming, or want to become, in the first decade of this next century.

The starting point for J.J. Goldberg is the conflict at The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). Their problem: Not enough Jewish refugees. Anyone who has visited New York City recently, or examined the faces at Los Angeles’s schools and universities, could have told them that.

Not surprisingly, HIAS does not want to go the way, say, of the March of Dimes foundation and vote itself out of business. But to the surprise of its board (and me as well), Goldberg reports that a broad spectrum of non-Jewish organizations have pleaded with Jewish leaders not to jettison HIAS. Here is Goldberg: “Each offered the same plea: The Jewish community must stay involved in immigration work. Help the Kosovars, help the Vietnamese, do more for Russian Jews — just stay in the game. If you don’t, neither will America….HIAS’s visitors reminded their listeners that Jews live in society, that others depend on us. It makes you think.”

What appears to have taken place is that our concerted stands on Jewish immigration — but also more broadly against social injustice, primarily on behalf of Jews, but also for civil rights, religious freedom, freedom of speech, a tolerant society — have helped cast us as the conscience of America. It may not be a role we have sought; indeed it goes directly against the stance of some of those first generation Jewish immigrants in the U.S. whose whispered injunction was always, “shh, don’t call attention.” But over the past fifty years, it is a reputation we have earned, Jewish republicans and democrats alike, and not without a little deserved pride.

Now with acceptance and relative prosperity, when many of our earlier Jewish struggles in the U.S. are behind us, it is not surprising that we might want to hand the responsibility over to other groups. Our Jewish concerns, or so we are told, are better served by combating inter-marriage, encouraging the expansion of Jewish education, speaking to the bewildered needs of Jews who lack an inner Jewish cultural and/or spiritual life. Let the black community, the Latinos, the Asians pick up where we have left off. After all, it is their struggle now.

J.J. Goldberg provides an overview and an analysis; he does not venture a strong opinion about these arguments. But I will. I believe that to some degree, these narrower, exclusively Jewish issues mask a political and social shift in our status as Americans. More of us have become part of the Establishment; and many of us now can aspire and have access to influence and wealth within the institutions that govern this nation. In short, we have arrived.

To that extent, we are not always so quick to promote social change; we have something to lose. Nor are we quite so comfortable when Judaism is linked in the public mind constantly with political challenges to the status quo. That becomes one way to galvanize political enemies, or foster anti-Semitism, along with subtle efforts to topple us. Why court or risk this when today Judaism is mostly preoccupied with religious identity; cultural history and faith; a spiritual and biblical path that we are now enjoined to discover. It is not necessarily that we must choose one or the other, but time and resources are limited, and politics after all is something else; not necessarily connected with Jewish identity, or with Judaism .

This set of suppositions constitutes one direction in which we are heading; and some of our rabbis and Jewish organizational leaders have been quick to marshal our energy and goals behind a personal growth agenda. It seems to me short-sighted and more than a little deceptive.

Don’t misunderstand. I am all for paying attention to Jewish interests in the United States. But I happen to believe that the interests of some Jews in America — probably many, though, certainly not all — are best realized by assuming the gladiator role, by taking on the causes of the downtrodden, the victims of social injustice, regardless of their religious or ethnic identity.

It is of course possible to cite the Torah for justification, but then I find you can probably cite the Torah to corroborate most ardently held beliefs. And anyway, I am talking about politics, about what some of us call tachlis.

My point is: it is not in our interest to function as the American conscience simply because it is the noble or just or right thing to do. Rather, we should consider this our responsibility: In addition to furthering Jewish education, identity and commitment, it is important for us to push this Republic to measure up to our best ideals. In the long run, it is perhaps the most sensible way to safeguard the lives of future Jewish generations and to guarantee that we and our progeny live in a relatively just society. I would hope that such a stand might serve to make some Jews proud, and to lead others to find a connection with the larger Jewish community.

Another way of saying this might be: What’s right and just for all Americans is good for the Jews. —Gene Lichtenstein