People who need peoplehood, part two
A few months back I wrote about a Commentary magazine article by Stephen M. Cohen and Jack Wertheimer that lamented the decline among American Jews — and especially the community’s younger members — of collective responsibility to the Jewish people. The authors see the fall-off in federation giving, the rise in “universalistic” groups like American Jewish World Service, and the failure of Jewish leaders to emphasize distinctively Jewish needs as signs that “peoplehood” is becoming an obsolete Jewish concept.
The Commentary article clearly touched a chord, and in this month’s magazine there’s a lively back-and-forth between a half dozen Jewish activists and scholars and the two authors. I’m in there, too, repeating my objection that, in identifying a very real challenge, the authors present all the symptoms of declining Jewish peoplehood without emphasizing that today’s younger Jews have no memories of the Six-Day War, that there are no Soviet Jews left to be rescued, and that Israel appears to have emerged from its decades of struggle as a strong and thriving country. Leave out that part of the story, and you sound like Paul Lynde, blaming “kids today” for what ails the Jewish community.
A few of the other letter-writers take up this theme and suggest that today’s challenge is to create a sense of Jewish peoplehood in the blessed absence of existential crises. As Steven Bayme of the American Jewish Committee puts it, “Although real dangers should not be trivialized, a language of Jewish woes hardly forms an effective base on which to construct sustained and meaningful identification with the Jewish people.”
Cohen and Wertheimer, to their great credit, concede this point in their response to the letters. They praise those writers who suggest programs and approaches that would contribute to the “re-invigoration of Jewish peoplehood.”
And they pose a challenge of their own: Will American Jews live up to this summer’s crisis in Israel and Lebanon? “The generous financial contributions American Jews have made in the last few months notwithstanding,” they write, “where is the volunteer engagement of the most socially-conscious Jews in relieving the suffering of Israelis? Why are the leaders of the Jewish organizations who nobly organized efforts to aid the victims of natural disasters in Asia and the southeastern United States now suddenly struck dumb in the face of Jewish victims?”
They can’t be referring to the major Jewish fund-raising groups. United Jewish Communities, Jewish National Fund, Israel Bonds, Hadassah, and the American Friends of Magen David Adom have all launched aggressive fund-raising and relief efforts since the war broke out. And they can’t mean the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which only works outside of Israel and anyway is a beneficiary of UJC.
They probably mean the AJWS and actually single out the group in their response when they wonder why it includes among its featured projects only one with specifically Jewish beneficiaries. Ruth Messinger responds in the same issue that “[w]hen Jews mobilize to help victims of a hurricane or to stop genocide” — AJWS is leading the ecumenical effort on behalf of the victims in Darfur — “one might argue that they are being the most Jewish.”
I think the AJWS has made the right decision in not stepping on the toes of the groups that are already organizing relief for Israel — indeed, I doubt those groups would welcome what many would see as competition. The better test of leadership, I think, is how leaders without a specific mission statement are responding to the war and what they are telling their followers.
In that regard there is some good news for Cohen and Wertheimer: The Synagogue Transformation and Renewal Foundation, or STAR, surveyed 140 mostly Reform and Conservative rabbis recently and found that 72 percent planned to focus their High Holy Day sermons on the need to support Israel in its time of emergency. Getting involved in Israel — perhaps the main measure of Jewish peoplehood, according to C and W — was named by 98 percent of the rabbis surveyed as something they encourage throughout the year.
“Ninety-four percent say their congregation raised money for Israeli charities this past year, and 79 percent say their congregations took part in pro-Israel rallies,” according to JTA. “Almost 90 percent of the rabbis say they have increased their efforts to get congregants to visit Israel.”
At the same time, 91 percent said they will urge personal involvement in Darfur, 88 percent said they asked congregants to contribute to Katrina relief last year, and 68 percent urged donations to relief efforts after the Asian tsunami.
I think you’ll also find signs of Jewish peoplehood trumping “universalistic” impulses in Jewish officialdom’s response both to the war in Iraq and the detainee legislation. Although poll after poll shows American Jews are overwhelming critical of the war, and while Jewish organizations might in normal times be agitated by legislation that could erode the Geneva Conventions, their criticism of either has been muted. (Only 5 percent of the rabbis in the STAR poll said they planned to speak about Iraq during the High Holy Days.) STAR’s executive director, Rabbi Hayyim Herring, tells JTA that this reticence perhaps “stems from rabbis’ reluctance to come out against an administration that is so supportive of Israel.”
Whether you agree with that choice or not, it’s another indication that, when history demands, Jewish leaders accept the challenge of Jewish peoplehood. Whether their followers will is, I grant you, another story.
And that’s where the real debate belongs. We’re not the same Jewish people we were 20 years ago, or 50. And yet, as in any epoch, we need to learn from the experience of previous generations and apply those lessons to changing times. That’s the power of Jewish history and the secret to Jewish peoplehood.
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