5774, the year of communal concerns

Almost a year ago, not long after Rosh Hashanah, I wrote an article under the catchy headline: “Are We All Jewish, Or Are We Just a Bunch of People Bundled Together By a Poll?”

It was an article about the just-released Pew study of American Jewry – this seems now like decades ago – and about the many questions stemming from its definitions of Jewishness and its findings on the trends that make Jewish Americans tick. “Saying that being a Jew has no meaning other than calling oneself Jewish is a borderline tautology,” I argued in that article. I then tried to extract possible answers to the what-is-a-Jew question from the Pew data – an impossible mission. Pew gave us numbers, but not answers. It gave us numbers from which to conjure up more questions about what it means to be Jewish, and what it means to be a community.

Large majorities among those interviewed by Pew identified “remembering the holocaust” and “leading an ethical\moral life” as “an essential part of what being Jewish means to them.” Does this mean that it suffices for a person to remember the holocaust and lead a moral life to be considered Jewish? Let's complicate the question: In the Pew study, “a sizable minority (34 percent) says a person can be Jewish even if he or she believes Jesus was the messiah.” Do we agree with such a contention? Do we count people who believe Jesus was the messiah as Jewish? And what if I remember the holocaust and believe that Jesus was the messiah?

I'm reading that article again on the eve of yet another Rosh Hashanah, as part of a ritual of rereading articles from the past year on every eve of every Rosh Hashanah. Last year I read them all, and thought that 5773 was not a year of conclusion, but rather one of transition – “but transition toward what is still unclear,” I wrote. I could write a similar summary of the past year — 5774 — the Middle East is certainly still in transition towards something, the year proved not to be the “year of decision,” neither on Iran nor on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But thinking about this passing year, and attempting to put a fresh headline to it, I think this should be named “the year of communal concerns.”

Communal concerns were the main intention behind the Pew study. Whether the community can still hold and grow, when the substance of what “Jew” means becomes unclear; and when suddenly there is a need to accommodate (or not) Jews of “no religion”; and when there is a fast growing sector of intermarried Jews; and when some young Jews no longer see a need to connect with Israel; and when Jews dump denominations when a substitute has not yet been discovered; and when they leave Jewish institutions. 

Communal concerns were also a focus of Israeli life in many instances this year. In October of last year I wrote about Israel's “anxiety of exodus” – “Israel's not-always-rational fear of emigration.” That was my reaction to the headlines made by a number of Israelis who decided to leave the country for better lives in Berlin. Media reports left Israelis under “the impression that Israel is being fast abandoned by a growing number of youngsters – a claim that is not supported by the data we have.” Israelis were furious – Berlin, of all places? – and concerned – are we losing our best and brightest? I wrote at the time, and still believe to be true, that “economic considerations make people move from one country to another, and Israel can't escape this fate just by being 'the only country that the Jews have,', as Minister Yair Lapid seemed to suggest” in his response to the revelation that young Israelis were choosing to live in Berlin. Strangely, the year that began with thinking about departing Israelis ended on a similar note – only this time I wrote about Israelis who threaten to leave the country for political reasons, and not because of economic hardships. “For educated, liberal Israelis, it’s easy to air one’s frustration with the country and grab a headline by declaring their intention to leave,” I explained.

That is because of our inclination to have communal concerns.

It is almost been a year since a new plaza was built at the Kotel, an interim solution for the Western Wall that still provodes ongoing debate. Preventing a fissure between a “progressive” Diaspora (and some Israeli) Jews and Israel is a task that the government seemed to be taking more seriously this year. It allocated more funds this year to bolstering Jewish identity abroad and with it also to strengthen Israel-Diaspora ties. The government had other pressing communal concerns this year, when it debated and then approved the new draft law that aims to gradually integrate Charedi men into Israeli society, as well as when a proposed plan to advance the lives of Israel's Bedouin community failed to overcome the “volatile political atmosphere” that prevents most such sensible plans from completion.

The Charedi challenge and the Bedouin challenge represent two circles of community with which Israel has to deal – two of the three circles of communal partnership that make Israel “Jewish and democratic.” These three circles were repeatedly discussed in a long report I wrote this year on “Jewish and democratic: perspectives from world Jewry.” One circle is the “intra-Jewish tensions” – that is, the communal tensions between different groups of Israeli Jews. A second circle is what we called in the report “the majority-minority sphere” – that is, the tensions between Jews and Arabs to which the Bedouin proposed plan fell prey. A third circle goes back to the Pew report and its findings: That is the communal partnership of Jews all over the world.

Communal concerns over the Israel-Diaspora circle were raised many times during the year on matters large and small. In December of last year, Swarthmore College’s Hillel, when it invited anti-Zionist speakers, caused a controversy that renewed the debate – not exactly a new one – about the right way to talk about Israel in American colleges and among American Jews. There are students who want to have what they consider a “more critical” debate about Israel in Hillel houses. There is a policy that Hillel does not allow Hillel houses to host speakers who object to Israel's existence as a “Jewish and democratic state”.

In April, this issue of debate on Israel came up again, when the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations refused to accept J Street as a member. In a long discussion, I wrote at the time on possible ways to reform the Conference, I tried to explain why an attempt to be “more representative” of the Jewish community – as proponents of J Street acceptance urged – doesn't give easy answers to serious questions: “Representing 'all Jews' gives equal voice to the people with a low level of engagement and little interest – and that is both unfair and discouraging for those who are highly engaged. Representing 'organized Jews' only gives power to the established Jewish community over its less organized but not necessarily unengaged parts. It gives a voice to those who can pay dues and doesn’t give as much voice to those who can’t – young Jews, less wealthy Jews, immigrants etc. It also exposes the Conference to further allegations that it is unrepresentative of 'all Jews'. Representing 'those who have interest in being represented' sounds good, but raises many questions: What do we count as having 'interest'? You can set a very low bar – if a Jew didn’t say 'no,' this means he wants to be represented – or a slightly higher bar – all a Jew needs to do it say yes (maybe by signing a document) – or an even higher one – a Jew has to do something, pay or act, to prove his 'interest'”.

What people don't always understand is that debates about Israel are often debates over community rules and boundaries. In January, I wrote about a book by Brandeis' Prof. Ted Sasson on “The New American Zionism.” Jewish Americans, Sasson writes in the introduction, are going through a “paradigm shift” in their engagement with Israel. It is a shift, he writes, that has “been widely observed but generally misunderstood.” The decline detected in some fields of engagement are usually a testimony to the decline in communal engagement – what Sasson refers to as the decline of the “mobilization model that characterized American Jewish engagement with Israel.” Yet along with this decline, a rising “direct engagement” model “has emerged”.

Is there a lesson to draw from looking back at a year of so many communal concerns?

The summer that just ended gave many Israelis pause, as its dramatic events proved to have a unifying power like never before. In polls and conversations with friends in the political arena as well as in the public square, the summer of abduction and war was also a summer of hardened feelings of kinship and a shared destiny. Surely, as the summer heat wanes, these feelings also gradually fade, but they have not yet disappeared. Thus, as the year comes to a conclusion, the future of one circle of community looks somewhat brighter today than it seemed a couple of months ago. Jewish Israelis strengthened their bonds with one another, or at least proved to themselves that their differences as not as great as news headlines and hyped political talk make them seem.

But the stronger the bonds within this circle, the greater the concern about the other two: Jewish-Arab relations in Israel are not in good shape – I would even assume that many Israelis don't see these two groups as a “community” (but they are – the community of Israeli civilians). Israel-Diaspora relations are also having problems – as Israel seems to become less fashionable among leading elites of the Jewish liberal left.

So there is Lesson One: It is tricky to handle one circle of community, and much trickier to have to handle three.

And there is also Lesson Two: Having communal concerns is currently a big part of being Jewish – because Judaism defines a community, but one without clear boundaries.

Are we “just a bunch of people bundled together by a poll?” I asked almost a year ago. I have an answer: No, we are a bunch of people bundled together by a concern for a community that we can't quite define.