Smile when you say 'Jewish issue'
What’s a “Jewish” issue? I was putting that question to various national Jewish leaders who happen to live in New Jersey when I got an urgent e-mail from my wife.
Apparently, the state’s Public Health Council had just put off a vote on whether to support adding fluoride to public water supplies.
The fact that state policymakers still seem to buy into Dr. Strangelovian arguments against fluoridation is an affront to her professionally (she researches public health reforms for a living) and personally (she fights with the kids every night about taking their fluoride pills). She hinted that oral health might be a fine topic for an editorial in, for instance, a weekly Jewish newspaper.
Or would it? Jewish newspapers and organizations are facing the question of what constitutes a “Jewish issue” as never before. Some issues of course, are no-brainers: Israel, anti-Semitism, religious freedom, civil rights. Liberals and conservatives only argue over what positions to take on these issues, not whether they should take them up in the first place.
After that, things get dicier. Should Jewish organizations get involved in the debate over the Bush budget, Social Security, Medicaid, or the tax code? In years past, the top Jewish organizations and umbrella groups tended to be liberal, in both senses of the word, about the causes they took on. And truth be told, most organizations still are.
However, with Republicans in firm control of the White House and Congress, and bipartisanship a fading ideal, the liberal Jewish agenda is on the defensive — from within. Orthodox and Republican Jews — overlapping minorities within a minority — insist that the “Jewish agenda” be defined more narrowly. They suggest that traditional Jewish positions on, say, church and state and abortion, either be reversed or modified to reflect their dissenting votes, or to cultivate support in the red states for the Jews’ core issues.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently described the growing debate this way: “On one side are longtime liberal activists who believe that Jews must maintain their historic role in promoting domestic programs that provide a safety net for those in need. On the other is a growing chorus of Jewish communal leaders and donors who suggest that it is time to abandon the longtime Jewish advocacy for social welfare programs, and focus exclusively on Jewish needs.”
Picking and choosing
Steven Flatow, chair of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ’s Community Relations Committee, is one who would argue for a narrower definition of “Jewish issues.”
“I’ve noticed over the last 10 or 15 years that everything is a Jewish issue,” he told me, disapprovingly. “The problem with this is that there are Jewish issues which reflect upon Jewish values, and some things that have to be opposed.” Flatow also objects to those who say they are basing their advocacy on “Torah” values, but pick selectively from the Torah itself — for instance, advocating for gay rights on the basis of “tikun olam,” or repairing the world, while ignoring the Torah’s unambiguous injunctions against homosexuality. Similarly, as an Orthodox Jew, he objects to Jewish groups who invoke traditional Judaism’s leniency on abortion to support what he calls “abortion on demand.”
“Tikun olam has replaced Torah as the religion of Israel,” he said.
And yet Orthodox Jews total less than 10 percent of the American Jewish body politic, according to most surveys. For most American Jews, picking and choosing within the Jewish tradition is a way of life — Torah has a vote, but certainly no veto. For them, tikun olam is not a replacement for Torah, but a way of articulating the broader impulse that they say grows naturally from the place where Jewish law, the prophetic tradition, history, and sociology combine.
So when June Walker, the national president of Hadassah, tells me that “everything we do as a Jewish organization is moved by tikun olam and Jewish values,” she is not speaking about Halacha, or rabbinic law. Hadassah’s core “Jewish values” are Zionism and pikuach nefesh, or life-saving, and the two come together in the state-of-the-art medical facilities it sustains in Israel.
In turn, the public policy stands Hadassah takes in Washington are based on what Walker calls a “synergy” between its core mission and domestic politics. For example, “Science should be unfettered by politics and religion, and as Zionists we have an enormous stem-cell effort” in Israel, she said. “Our doctors are recipients of NIH grants which are being hampered by questions of which stem cell lines are available to work on.”
That single-mindedness of mission has kept Hadassah from becoming a lightning rod for those who think Jewish liberalism is obsolete, if not a distortion of “Jewish values.” No one wants to be seen as opposing the cause of scientific progress in Israel.
The National Council of Jewish Women is not so lucky. The group is a fierce defender of Roe v. Wade, and is fighting hard to oppose judicial nominees who do not “evidence a commitment to fundamental rights, including reproductive rights.”
And while Marsha Atkind, who last Sunday finished her three-year term as president of NCJW, also invokes tikun olam in defining a Jewish issue, she does not pretend to be the voice of all Jewish women or points of view.
“We are a major voice of the progressive Jewish community,” she said.
But, I ask her, why “Jewish?” Aren’t there already women’s groups and liberal groups who support reproductive rights and quality child care? Who benefits from defining either as a Jewish issue?
Atkind’s offered a classic rationale for at least 100 years of Jewish political activism: coalition-building.
“It’s important that Jewish people act in the general community and not be seen to be concerned only about our own ethnic group and own religious brothers and sisters,” she said. “When people are segregated, people are afraid of each other and all of those ugly stereotypes become very believable. When they see you as human beings the stereotypes disappear.”
The difference between NCJW and the groups with which it is often at odds — for example, the Orthodox Union — is a question of how they define the community whose interests they have been organized to promote. Every group talks of “klal Yisrael,” the entire Jewish people, but each supports policies that are likely to alienate segments of that people, large and small. The Orthodox groups will most strongly support those issues that allow their constituents to develop and sustain the religious lifestyle: school vouchers, workplace accommodations for the observant, and government funding for faith-based institutions. The liberal groups speak for a constituency that places freedom of choice among its highest values. Their enemy are policies that in the past seemed to have limited choices available to Jews: restrictions on abortion, government endorsement of Christianity, bans on gay marriage. The essence of liberalism, they would say, is freedom of choice, and Jews flourish where choice is least curtailed.
Spirit of the Law
So how do you define a Jewish issue?
First, if you hope to build a pluralistic Jewish constituency and are going to invoke the Torah, you need to be speaking about the spirit, not the letter, of the Law. Too few Jews consider the Torah as a legal document for it to be used as a basis for them to support a public policy.
Second, acknowledge your self-interest. Is there a particular way Jews will benefit if a policy becomes law, and is there a particular way they will suffer if it does not?
Third, ask who else benefits. (This is another question of self-interest.) Do the other groups supporting this policy have the best interest of the Jews at heart? Will they be with us for Israel and against anti-Semitism?
Fourth, be prepared to define Jewish “community” in the broadest possible terms. Maybe that means swallowing attitudes and viewpoints you could live without, but there is strength in numbers.
And fifth, if you care about Jewish continuity, welcome the political causes that engage Jews as Jews, especially young Jews. When it comes to global warming, we won’t sweat more than the gentiles, but young Jews may be excited by a Jewish environmental effort that fuses tradition and the causes they find engaging.
So do we need a Jewish position on fluoridation? Sure: We’re for it. Because my core Jewish value is shalom bayit, or peace in the house.