June 21, 2022

A.B. Yehoshua, one of Israel’s most revered authors, died on Tuesday last week at the age of 85. As a member of the 1948 generation, his struggles with the transformation and redefinition of Jewishness has gone through several intellectual stages, and is concisely described in the essay below, which he contributed to the book “I am Jewish, Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl” ( Jewish Lights Publishing, 2003). His emphasis on a secular, choice-based national Judaism, in the spirit of Ruth’s “Your people is my people”, reflects the attitude of most Israelis, but has acquired new dimension in light of the appearance of psuedo-Jewish groups such as
“Jewish Voice for Peace” and other anti-national or anti-Zionist movements that American Jewry has spawned. “To be a Jew means to belong to a national group that can be left or joined.”

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We discover an astonishing fact in the classic Halachic definition. According to the Halachah, nothing is said about the Jew’s conduct, his thoughts, or basic principles of behavior.  There is nothing indicating his homeland or language, or even the nature of his affiliation to a specific collective (such as maintaining solidarity with the Jewish people).  A Jew is nothing more than a child of a Jewish mother, not even of a Jewish father.  Is this biological fact really so compelling and binding?  Not at all!  Jews are not a race and never viewed themselves as such.  They viewed themselves only as a people. According to the Halachic definition, a Jew, the son of a Jewish mother, who converts to Christianity ceases to be a Jew.  That the Halachah enables someone not born of a Jewish mother to become a Jew also indicates that the Jews do not constitute a race.

To be a Jew means to belong to a national group that can be left or joined, just as any other national group is left or joined.  Countless Jews have abandoned the Jewish people, and the struggle now and in all generations against assimilation indicates that it is possible to leave the Jewish people, that the individual is not compelled to retain
his membership in it.

We are now approaching the root of the matter.  If we delve deep into the logic of the religious definition we see at its base another definition:

A Jew is someone who identifies as a Jew.

Someone born of a Jewish mother is no longer considered a Jew if, for example, he converts to Christianity or to Islam.  It is of no importance where the Jew goes.  What matters is his desire to leave. It must be understood that in the past, when everyone had a religious identification, Judaism ruled that passing to any other religion turns the Jew into a non-Jew.  But today, when the individual is not obliged to maintain a religious identity, a person can leave the
Jewish people without having to pass through a religious corridor, even if according to the Halachah it seems that he must.  The determining factor is not the technical step of formal religious conversion but his desire no longer to identify with the Jewish people.  A Jewish atheist can become a non-Jewish atheist; the passage through another religion is a dispensable formality.

The same holds for joining the Jewish people.  The determining factor is the act of identification, free will, and not the formal conversion, which may be altogether meaningless for the convert who, let us assume, is a confirmed atheist.  These religious corridors (for entry and exit) may be good as a salve for the conscience of religious establishments, but they are irrelevant and meaningless for someone who wants to enter or leave, and does so as a freely chosen act.

The definition I am proposing, that a Jew is someone who identifies as a Jew, is not one I would want to be maintained always, but his definition has been the realistic, correct, and genuine definition until now.  It is the base definition underlying the Halachic definition.  The Halachic definition, born in the recesses of Jewish history, was suited to a world and situation in which religion was the decisive element of a person’s identity.  The secular identity taking shape before our eyes in the world and in Israel (which always existed as a potential) exposes the deep and true definition at the foundation of the Halachic definition, that which declares that a Jew is someone who identifies as a Jew.

All the pseudo-Sartrean theories that would base Jewish self-identification on the existence of the Gentile (in the best circumstances) or the anti-Semite (in the worst circumstances), who forces the Jew to identify as such, are ridiculous.  I don’t need the Gentile’s perception or the anti-Semite’s hostility to establish my Jewish identity.  Even if there weren’t an anti-Semite in the world I would still want to identify as a Jew.  How demeaning to present Jewish identity and belonging as a kind of trap from which there is no escape.  Hundreds of thousands of Jews have left the Jewish people for good, as a matter of their own choosing, and have been lost forever among other peoples.  To be a Jew is a matter of choice. This element of freedom in the act of Jewish identification has of late been obscured, but it is an element of tremendous importance, for it brings with it responsibility.  If I identify as a matter of free choice I assume certain responsibilities.   When young people repeatedly ask, as they have been doing with increasing frequency since the Yom Kippur War: Is it possible to cut one’s ties with the Jewish people?  Is it possible to carry out a “disengagement of forces” with the Jewish people?  Or, in the words of a soldier, is it possible to be just a person?—to all of these questions my answer is clear:  It most definitely is possible.  But if a person decides to identify as a Jew he assumes responsibility for his identification, since his decision was freely made.  I do not ignore the social, cultural, and family influences a decision about identification, but these are not sufficient to determine the identification.  It requires willed choice.  The dimension of freedom, which always formed part of Jewish identification and which has recently been obscured by notions of Jewish “fate” and by the experience of the Holocaust, needs to be highlighted once again.  The sense of freedom immediately lightens the sense of responsibility.  A man is capable of mighty actions if he has a sense of freedom, while feeling coerced only depresses and incenses him.

The element of freedom in the act of identification is also what makes possible change and reinterpretation of Judaism.  I do not dismiss those who think only of continuity, who want to keep alive the “ember” they imagine has been passed on to them.  But no less legitimate is the desire of those who want to introduce change in Judaism, with which they identify as an act of free will.

Reprinted with permission from “I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl.” Based on excerpts from AB Yehoshua’s book, Between Right and Right.

Los Angeles parents and teachers recently announced they are suing the Los Angeles Unified School District teachers’ union to keep antisemitism out of California high schools. How and why would antisemitism ever be taught and promoted in our state’s high schools, you might ask? Despite being outlawed by the California Legislature and Governor Newsom, a group favoring what it calls Liberated Ethnic Studies is trying to re-introduce antisemitic and other controversial content by selling an ethnic studies curriculum “under the radar,” as they themselves put it. Allow me to rewind.

In 2016, the California Legislature asked the State Board of Education to design a model ethnic studies course for use in public schools, with the aim of teaching students about and celebrating the contributions of California’s many ethnicities. But the job of drafting was undertaken by a group promoting a narrow and extreme form of ethnic studies, Liberated Ethnic Studies. Liberated seeks to castigate “privileged” white and minority students and set them at odds with other minority students. It became clear early on that is not what the Legislature envisioned. But Liberated remains determined to promote its agenda, even if it must now do so “under the radar.”

Public reaction to Liberated’s first draft, published in 2019, was overwhelmingly critical, in part because of its flagrantly biased and antisemitic content. California’s Board of Education agreed with the critics, stating that any “model curriculum should be accurate, free of bias, appropriate for all learners in our diverse state … The current draft model curriculum falls short and needs to be substantially redesigned.” Governor Newsom concurred. He rejected the second draft a year later for the same reasons.

The third draft, scrubbed of its most objectionable content, was accepted by the Governor, who signed AB 101 in October 2021. AB 101 requires public high schools in California to include ethnic studies as a graduation requirement. It provides school districts leeway to create their own curricula, but it prohibits use of the extreme discriminatory content excised from the first two drafts.

Unfortunately, Liberated has now packaged and is surreptitiously selling a “new” version of its curriculum to California school districts. In fact, Liberated has gone to great lengths to keep its curriculum secret from the public, although California law requires, at a minimum, that any proposal be publicly disseminated, with an opportunity for the public to respond before it is used by schools. So far, however, Liberated training events are by invitation only, and not open to the general public.

And here’s how we get to the lawsuit, filed by The Deborah Project, which reveals that Liberated is secretly working to restore the discriminatory content rejected by the California legislature and Governor Newsom, in a patent end run around AB 101.

The clandestine new curriculum generally denounces capitalism and the traditional family, but its particular obsession is with the State of Israel, not the State of California. Liberated promotes anti-Israel propaganda on the ground that California is home to Arab Americans, whom they classify among “Asian and Pacific Islanders.” If the Middle East is considered part of Asia, one would expect Jews from the Middle East to fall in this category too, but they do not, even if they have the same color skin as their Arab counterparts.

The clandestine new curriculum generally denounces capitalism and the traditional family, but its particular obsession is with the State of Israel, not the State of California.

According to a teaching guide taken from the Liberated website (and since removed), Liberated urges ethnic studies teachers to “fly under the radar” if that is what it takes to expose elementary and high school students to its virulent political agenda. “Teaching the truth about Palestine is a liberatory act, for teachers and for students. It’s a political decision. But … you want to be strategic. The goal is for your anti-racist teaching to be sustainable, and to be part of a larger movement.”

The Liberated teaching guide also counsels teachers to resist opposition from mainstream American Jewish groups like the ADL and the Jewish Community Relations Counsel, which it labels part of a “Zionist” conspiracy, although it denies that its anti-Israel venom is antisemitic.

The Liberated curriculum, if adopted, would flout not only AB 101 but a legion of state and federal laws, including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits institutions that receive federal funds from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. According to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), “national origin” discrimination includes discrimination against Jews, who are not only members of a religious group, but also have a shared ancestry or ethnicity.

It follows, as OCR guidance makes clear, that Jewish students may not be discriminated against on the basis of their actual or perceived identification with the State of Israel. School districts engaging with Liberated and considering adoption of its furtive curriculum, in California and elsewhere, should be aware that once it comes to light—as it must—they will face suits on many grounds, in state and federal courts, and under Title VI, which permits victims of bias to file suit with the Department of Education.

The Deborah Project lawsuit brings to light Liberated’s shady attempts to reimpose its politically motivated curriculum. Sunlight may prove the best disinfectant after all, as Justice Brandeis once said.

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Rachel Lerman is vice-chair of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a non-profit that conducts research, education and advocacy to combat the resurgence of antisemitism on college and university campuses.