Nice dodge at the end, Ross. If Israel keeps cozying up to the Putins and Orbans of the world, should US taxpayers continue to fund aid to Israel?
Could you at least address that?
18
I support Israel's right to exist, and I am not a religious Jew, just a Jew proud of the heritage. If Israel continues to exist, it cannot submit to all the demands of Palestinians, like the right of return that would destroy Israel. I want Palestinians to have their own homeland and I've observed over the decades many peace offers. Any one of these offers would have given Palestinians their own country where they would have thrived, if only they didn't act solely from hatred of the very existence of Israel. I don't see any solution to this problem as long as Palestinians refuse to acknowledge Israel's right to exist. And Israel is not going away.
38
There's a divide on what, exactly Judaism is. In America, it's a religion with elements of an ethnicity, and the greater social view in America has traditionally been religious and ethnic beliefs are choices and can be changed at any time, and I would argue some choices are better than others and subject to social approbation or disapprobation. Then there's the Mah Jongg thing which is just weird. Elsewhere, Judaism is a nation and a race - something inescapable and chosen for you, and this is central to Israel's neighbor's thinking. Netanyahu is an interesting character because he is fundamentally American. I think he has a pluralist vision because of the way Jews have thrived in America and have contributed immensely- and they should be proud of this - and there is some hope to wait things out until other countries come around. We see this in the younger generation in Iran. It's strange because the Persian people would be the natural allies of Israel, but the enmity comes from the same identity politics that both oppress from within and also provoke a fight-or-flight defensive response within American Jewry. It doesn't have to be this way.
8
I hope other readers came away with a bit more than I did. It may be my lack of intellectual power, but I don't really get what what Russ is on about here. What little I was able to glean:
The term "liberal" appears frequently with a thinly disguised sneer.
Not surprisingly, Russ is addressing a group of which he is not a member, offering his ingratiating "advice", similar to his columns on "what Democrats should do".
20
I truly appreciate Mr. Douthat's interest in the well being of American Jewry and Israel. I think we -both American Jews & Israel - are still adjusting to our newfound freedom. Most American Jews are related to folks who died in the Holocaust & cannot help but struggle with the questions of what would have become of us if our grandparents or great grandparents hadn't left Europe when they did.
For some, being Jewish is a burden. For them, discarding this confounding complexity feels liberating. After all, we are free to do and to be whoever we choose to be in America. If one can be anything, why be Jewish? Why not melt into the American pot and be free of the past? For me, the beauty of Judaism - yes, both the liberal versions and orthodoxy - is compelling in countless ways. In America, unlike in Nazi Germany, we can choose to be Jewish and find our way in this wonderful country and still be free. That is pretty spectacular in light of Jewish history.
Jews without the spiritual component quickly cease being Jews because Judaism is the core of Jewish identity. The challenge both here and in Israel for Judaism - as well as other religions - is to find a way to balance faith and practice with modern life.
The challenge for both America and Israel is to protect democracy from deeply flawed leaders. We have not chosen wisely. Both Israel & America can do much better. We must take our freedom seriously and vote for ethical, visionary & democratic leaders.
21
Although I am practically a stereotype of the NY, liberal, democrat, artsy, middle aged, middle class, American Jewish female demographic, turns out I despise both leftism and anti Zionism.
So, it dawned on me, why do I have to self identify as a liberal Democrat? What a relief. But, I learned that I have to keep it to myself, which I’ve also learned is not uncommon.
14
Actually, when you bring up the philandering Moshe Dayan as “cool” you DO need to say more!
5
I am struck by the comments to Douthat's column. They are, by and large, the most civil, thoughtful, and serious comments that I have read in a long time. Too often comments quickly degenerates into partisan, narrow-minded bickering.
My own thought is that identity politics and identity thinking are toxic and wrong. Each Jew, just as each Gentile, is a unique individual. To lump all into heuristic categories is simple, lazy, and wrong. Some individuals are selfish, some are generous. Some are intelligent, some stupid. Some are conservative, some liberal. Lets get rid of identity thinking and just regard one another as persons.
20
Roman Catholics have excommunication, and coexist peacefully with other faiths, as the Church now does with ex-Catholics. But among the multi-layers of Jewish identities is the common thread and the goal of Jewish survival. So there is no such thing as an excommunicated Jew no longer a Jew, but belonging to some other ethnic-religious identity. And that distinction has been as much a curse as it has been a blessing for them.
It has also generated both Anti-Semitism and Zionist fantasies of one politically unified Judea, in the rationale for ethnically cleansing Israel of the Palestinian Arabs and their legitimate land claims. Strangely enough, the goal of Anti-Semites, starting with Nebuchadnezzar and Sennacherib, has been to do the same thing to the Jews in the destruction of Israel.
4
Geez, you and the “Liberal Order,” as if there were any such thing. That’s what I really love about conservatives—in one breath you are delighting in the haphazard mess that is the Democratic Party, in the next you are referencing some kind of mighty societal cabal. If this liberal order of yours is so powerful, why does America now resemble a nascent oligarchy? And as far as your assertion that liberals consider “any hint of nationalism as suspect,” I have a simple reply: of course we do; tragic history justifies our conclusion. And I speak as a “liberal” who worked 20 hour days after 911 defending the Capitol from imminent biochemical threats. Nationalism is the true enemy of patriotism. Oh, PS: now that you have addressed Catholicism and Judaism in the fullness of your thought, maybe now you should read the Upanishads , so that you can write some lugubrious cant about Hinduism.
22
I feel as if I am supposed to comment on this column but the existential crisis Douthat describes is one of institutional Judaism. More religiously liberal Jews who would like their denomination to have more spirituality have been criticizing that Jewish establishment for caring only about Israel and making more Jews for at least 10-20 years that I know of. The establishment envies the Orthodox world where heterosexual marriages and families are values instead of survival strategies and it in fact takes a lot of psychological survival tactics to keep a spiritual sense of self when raising 4 or more kids.
1
And thanks, Ross, for offering your critique of Jewish people and culture on a Saturday — the Jewish Sabbath during which observant Jews would not have had opportunity to respond to your article, and a day when even many less observant Jews hope to enjoy a day of peace and wholeness (the shalom part of “Shabbat shalom”).
Perhaps next Christmas, Ash Wednesday, and Easter The New York Times Will ask all of its non-Catholic columnists to critically examine Catholics, starting with the existence of the self-declared and defined Catholic nation-state called the Vatican!
12
Jewish culture has NOT been passed down through the generations, by reverence for "knowledge". As if reverence for knowledge is a peculiarity of only the Jews.
It has been passed down through the millennia through reverence for Judaism. Where that reverence has been diluted, Jewish culture - indeed Jews themselves - have disappeared in a matter of but a few generations. Those who understand this and who see it as an imperative that they transmit this reverence will have great-grandchildren that are for the most part Jewish. Those who don't will only have Jewish great-grandchildren by some stroke of luck. Then again this is likely not to make the least bit of a difference to them, which makes me wonder where all their angst comes from.
6
As I read the subtitle question I eagerly jumped into the article. However I could not connect the que question with the article content. I have not heard before of Steven Cohen who I now can associate with a handful of other academics who have had unbecoming behavior toward women. After reading carefully the whole article I cannot see that the columnist is providing any insight into the question: Can a mix of liberal politics and soft traditionalism survive a militant left and a right-wing Israel?
He has rather created a lot of confusion.
8
@berale8 - agree that the article is incoherent.
But the question doesn't make much sense either.
5
There is only one truism I would ask the younger Jewish population to consider: " Don't think it can't happen here." And by here, I do mean the United States of America. Left wing liberalism today is not at all what left wing liberalism was a scant few decades ago. Today it includes a growing slide towards overt antisemitism. Specifically, your children may need to leave for another place someday, and one of only a handful of choices will be Israel. While Israel may indeed be associated at the Governmental level with a turn to the right, Tel Aviv is the LGBTQ center of the middle east simultaneously. Diversity, feminism, and equality is what Israel truly remains. The move toward the right at the Israeli governmental level is NOT about "nationalism" - it is a response to the neighborhood they live in as a reaction to Hamas, pay to kill PA policy, Hezbollah, and Iran. I wish the younger generation well - and do what you can to at least fight antisemitism hear at home and particularly on our college campuses today.
20
From the Letters of Paul and the Gospel of John Western thought has canonized anti-Semitism, making it acceptable at all levels of society.
Two millennia of European Church and State support and sponsorship of anti-Semitism is hard to ignore. Or forget.
But, I'd still bet on Jewish survival...
16
Religiously rooted in Orthodoxy, complex allegiances in the present, having been a repeated childhood victim of anti-Jewishness, none the less I mourn the present situation in Israel, where I have lived, and ask myself this textual question - "How did we become Amalek?"
6
I came from Russia in 1987. My understanding that American Jews do not exist as a nation in America. Most claiming them self as Jews are actually descendants from Jewish tribes. Conservative and Reform rabbis helped dilute Jewish people to the level of non existence. The only knowledge of Jewish descendants about Jewish Religion and Jewish History is bagel with lox. How they can care about Israel if they know nothing about historical and religious meaning of Israel for Jews. Yes, orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jews will carry torch to the next decades, as American Jews will disappear within one generation or two.
4
Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism are alive and well here. There is assimilation but there is still a thriving community of non/ Orthodox Jews here. We will continue to exist , l’dor va dor.
9
This article ruined my dog walk because it left me fuming at all the stereotypes it perpetuates, the first bing that American Jews are essentially intellectual and are debating articles in the Forward. Nope.
A lot of Jews like me are conscious of one thing and one thing alone: anti-semitism. So, it stinks when I see Jewish Republicans align themselves with Trump and it stinks when Netanyahu aligns himself with Orban. It also stinks from the left, which I’ve experienced personally and so I find it laughable and offensive, frankly, when so many progressives turn a blind eye to it.
What is tragic is that we are guests everywhere but Israel, and that Israeli governments in the clutches of radical fundamentalists have hijacked what could have been a truly democratic, tolerant place. It sure doesn’t feel like home to me except I know it’s the one place to which I have the right to emigrate. And it terrifies and nauseates me that I have to even contemplate that option, but with what’s happening here right now, I do.
21
There has never, nor will there ever be a conflict between my
liberalism and deep, if often critical, love of Israel. But as
an aging American Jew who was deeply involved in the Civil
Rights Movement, the renewal of antiSemitism directed not only
at Jews but at Israel has long troubled me, as has the disaffection
towards it long evidenced by non-Jewish Americans, particularly
through their church affiliations. Bottom line remains that most
here fail to understand Israel, either the monumental hate and apartheid ("separation") directed against it by the entire Muslim World, let alone the simple fact that even Israelis far younger than me have had to go out and fight time and time again to assure their own survival.
The simple fact that the assimilation of a majority of American Jews, over 70% of whom are liberals, has far more to do with America than it does with Israel. This accounts for the inward impulse amongst the Orthodox, but unfortunately not for their growing conservatism. But given that many of our young identify
more with Christians and Muslims than they do with their own
people, while tragic, is not unusual, the courage of two great
Democrats, Cardin and Schumer, to fight for liberal causes
while refusing to vote for the Iran Treaty, is commendable.
In this regard it's too bad the Israeli left didn't give the great middle a viable alternative to Netanyahu.
7
" European Jewry’s old enemy, Christian nationalism, is less dangerous to the Jewish future than the dissolving effects of liberal cosmopolitanism and the threat posed by Islamist anti-Semitism"
That is a no brainer for me. I welcome and am thankful for the political support of Christian friends of Israel whatever the motivation, as long as they don't engage in missionary activity. After 2000 plus years Jews can finally come home and be part of an exciting and glorious, albeit challenging experience. Unless antisemitism in the USA really takes off it seems to me that the vast majority of those who remain will assimilate out while a growing minority will live in ultra orthodox ghettos . Liberal support for Israel is understandably lessening. Nothing new as it's taught that 80% didn't leave Egypt during the Exodus, The vast majority didn't leave Babylon either when give the chance to return during second temple times. True, it's never been easier but it's still very hard leaving one's native land which one loves, and culture where one feels at home in addition to friends and family. . How does one claim that this land is so important to me, but I don't want to even consider living there? Sadly, at present for most Jews the answer is that it's not important enough.That could change either due to persecution, or if their Jewish identity evolves so that they understand the great historical opportunity of the moment.
2
Orban and Netanyahu share similar critics on the left. Hungary is a smallish country with a population of 10 million. The Hungarians are keen to maintain their national identity and preserve their culture. However, they are being told by the elites in Europe that they are racists because they won't accept Muslim immigrants. Orban and Netanyahu are both nationalists. Up to now, Jewish nationalism has been acceptable in the West. However, given the reaction to Israel's recent nationality act, Netanyahu may feel he needs allies.
3
This comment is overly harsh and personal in its critique of Douthat's column, but stating that liberal nationalism is possible and questioning a focus on criticism of Steven Cohen and Netanyahu's worldview as a summary of tensions in the Jewish community is apt. I'm surprised that Mr. Douhat accepts at face value Netanyahu's posing of Christian nationalism as an acceptable counterweight to "liberal cosmopolitanism." This a false dichotomy that ignores liberal nationalism and other alternatives to Christian nationalism and probably reflects more the strains in Netanyahu's coalition government than what Israel and Judaism need to survive.
2
Mr. Douthat, with all due respect, as a Jew, I may or may not be the first to inform you that it is rare to get two Jews to agree, much less a populous. That’s why Jesus failed as a Messiah, and in our own time Rabbi Schneerson, a Lubavitcher Hasidic also declared himself the Messiah, and had the same outcome as Jesus. We have survived 5000 plus years with this personality flaw. It is my expectation that, barring another Holocaust, we will be around for another 5000 joyously disagreeing with one another.
7
Anyone who claims to oppose all discrimination yet defines themselves as Jew, Christian or Muslim is being hypocritical. The very nature of these religions is we versus them. Jews claim to be the chosen people while Christians and Muslims are the only true religion. Fundamentalist Jews, Christians and Muslim are more honest with themselves and others about what they believe but their values conflict with liberal society's values of toleration and equality. The blatant dislike and hostility of liberal Catholics and Jews toward White American Protestants demonstrates a deep negative bias. Why are so many of these individuals so supportive of bringing mass migrations of non-White non-Protestants into the United States? Why are they so tolerant of bias and discrimination in other countries? Hypocrisy is a crime against honesty.
2
The liberal cosmopolitanism wrapped around conservative ethnocentrism Douhat describes was always an unstable combination. It was sustainable only in a particular set of historical circumstances that longer exist. Twentieth-century American-Jewish politics were forged in the crucible of the great socialist movements of the 19th century, especially the revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire. To vastly oversimplify, Jews who were internationalist in their thinking, stayed within the fold of socialist internationalism, while nationalists opted for Zionism. Both commitments were liberationist, and both originally bent toward socialism (see: Labor Zionism). With a turn toward antisemitism in the USSR after WWII, the socialist-internationalist option was effectively foreclosed. Fatefully, Israel was created just in time to replace left politics as the focus of American-Jewish political life, and through 1967, the illusion could be sustained that Zionism was not incompatible with liberation as an internationalist project. 60 years of occupation and the triumph of the ethnonationalist Zionism of Likud has changed that, forcing American Jews to choose in a way they never had to before. Some, of course, will throw in with Netanyahu and his evangelical allies on the American right. Others, repelled by this option, will have to confront the contradictions of wanting to be exclusive and inclusive at the same time, of wanting to be "part of" and wanting to be "set apart."
6
A provocative essay, but frustratingly elliptical and abstract. In my view, American Jewry today is in crisis. It's getting harder and harder to sustain our traditional support for Israel as the country shifts ever further to the right and toward a xenophobic nationalism, and as the plight of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation becomes increasingly dire. But then, on the other hand, we Jews are disturbed by a far left that supports an economic boycott against Israel, that defines Israel as purely a last vestige of Western colonialism in the Middle East, and thus denies Israel's right to exist as a Jewish homeland, a position that strikes us as anti-Semitic. Thus, we're caught in the middle. But the Jewish community, in Israel and the Diaspora, has demonstrated in the past extraordinary resilience in the face of crisis and persecution, and I'm confident we Jews will somehow figure a way out of this conundrum.
8
There's conservative and there's conservative. This is less on the left than on the extreme right of all religions.
In the US conservative Jews grew up believing they were within the mainstream, yet those same Jews visiting/living in Israel realize that they are a tiny minority and aren't considered Jews if their mothers converted according to American Conservative Jewish tradition.
The chokehold that the "orthodox" have on the marriage institution in Israel is antithetical to a democracy, and as the recent laws show Israel is moving away from democracy, denying its non-Jewish minorities the semblance of equality.
Thankfully, the majority of Jews within in Israel are secular. In the states the majority of Jews are more liberal, too, part of the reform, reconstructionist and humanistic Jewish communities. That, to me, is a good thing.
8
Identitarian?
Words schmertz.
"Words schmertz."
Mockery won't make you smarter, however a dictionary might:
"identitarian [adjective]: Relating to or supporting the political interests of a particular racial, ethnic, or national group, typically one composed of Europeans or white people."
"identitarian [noun]: A supporter or advocate of the political interests of a particular racial, ethnic, or national group, typically one composed of Europeans or white people."
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/identitarian
1
I am tired of hearing about Israel and I am tired of hearing about Jewish angst. There are only 13 million Jews in the entire world but more is written about this ethnic group on these pages than has been written about the Chinese who number 1.3 billion or the Indonesians who number 230 million. Israel ,a now officially declared apartheid state is of no strategic interest to the United States and has a European standard of living for Jews Living there, yet we give them more money than we give to any other country in the world. Why? They are the only country in the Middle East which has Nuclear weapons but no one on these pages mentions that. Why?
14
@michael from Colorado, actually the number world wide is around 25 million.
3% of America around 9/10 million .a large portion of that number is dual citizenship American/Israeli.
Israel has around 7 million . Again a lot of Israeli's have dual citizenship in other countries besides America.
Europe, Canada , Australia ,have a growing Jewish population a few million .
The rest scattered around the world .
1
The older generations which support Israel "anyhow" do so because they have some memory of the Holocaust and the ongoing need for Jews to have one someplace safe. The current politics and policies of Israel are revolting to me, and yet... Anti-semitism and fascism yet again rear their ugly heads in Europe and in the US. How can one be against Israel in that circumstance? It has always been necessary in my Jewish lifetime to have a split personality, to be a citizen of "here" and a need to maintain "there."
1
It's not so much "Left vs. Right". It's "Realism vs. Idealism". It's just that Liberals never learn the lessons of history--because they can't be bothered to study it. It's the erroneous thinking which assumes that everyone has good intentions--and if we can just reach an understanding, things can be solved peacefully. Sorry...there are adversaries who simply cannot be reasoned with--because they don't have honorable intentions--and strength is the only thing they truly understand.
We have seen this all before--it was Neville Chamberlain, giving in to and daring to trust Adolph Hitler--and that lead to war. Chamberlain the idealist, was replaced with a Churchill the realist--the guy who warned all along the Nazis couldn't be trusted.
This likelihood of a successful resolution (between Israel and everyone else--but currently the Palestinians), can be gauged by the Israelis asking one simple question of any adversary: "Do you believe Israel has the right to exist?". If your adversary replies in the negative--withdraw from the talks, invest in the latest weaponry, build the wall a little higher--and dig in to protect yourself. It's never going to resolve well.
So, it's not strictly "Left vs. Right"--or at least it doesn't necessarily have to be. It's just when we're talking about the continued existence of the Israeli State, Conservatives are armed with an realistic assessment of their adversaries--and Liberals are armed with a Kool aid smile.
7
It's amazing how people comment on people who follow the Jewish religion who have no idea what the religion is all about.
This goes for people who claim hey are Jewish and these that claim they are not.
People who have no belief there is a higher power that created everything feel they can use their secular values to judge someone who has those beliefs.
They shouldn't.
They do because they feel they have the right to dismiss anything they don't value.
I notice from these comments that some feel they are secular Jews.
There is no such thing as being a ethnic Jew.
All Jews should follow the Torah.
If you don't you are still a Jew.
If Hitler was the father of a child whose mother is Jewish that child would be as Jewish as one whose father was a holy Rabbi.
If a man who has no Jewish relatives and has not converted but follows all the Jewish laws is not a Jew.
This is proof you can not separate Jews into two categories.
One who is a Jew by ethnicity and one by religion.
They go together.
3
I highly recommend to everybody and particularly I recommend to Ross Douthat an absolutely excellent 4 minute video posted on You Tube, entitled "Antisemitism is a Mortal Sin".
possibly posted by the Catholic Church, of course many years after the Holocaust.
2
Do we think the exclusivity and exacerbation of reverse racism will delay another holocaust or demographic crisis indefinitely? Nationalize Gaza and West Bank immediately, integrate all parties as fast as possible, especially into the conscripted army like South Africa, and establish a true democracy from the river to the sea without delay.
4
if by conservative you mean denies opportunity and education to women, denies recognition of same sex relationships, yes, orthodox jews are conservative
6
Modern Orthodox Judaism does NOT deny education to girls or women.
6
It's complicated.
Israel obviously needs and is entitled to protect itself, but at this point the vexing question for them is what exactly are they protecting? That question needs to be answered.
And Jewish people here will continue to drift toward secularism and our cultural bonds with Israel will continue to fray, this I am sure of.
"As for whether this divergence will ultimately be, as they say, good for the Jews — well, that’s a question this Gentile columnist leaves to the chosen people to debate."
Excellent column.
3
The answer, at least here in the USA, is to adhere to our Constitutional separation of religion and state. A Jewish person can be the most traditional in observance of her own religion but at the same time refuse to abide public policies that are discriminatory or tolerate discrimination. A devout Catholic can be adamant in his opposition to abortion, teach and attempt to persuade any woman contemplating terminating a pregnancy not to do so, while at the same time not demanding that the government prohibit her from making her choice, one way or the other. And for those who believe that God will punish us collectively for permitting others among us to live as they choose, I would submit that the Framers made the decision that we as a nation will take our chances when, in the First Amendment, they ordained the separation of religion and the state. As for Netanyahu's belief that Israel, and World Jewry, are better off cozying up to the likes of Hungary's Orbon, and to American fundamentalist ministers who preach that Israel's existence conforms to End Times prophecy, where Jews are given one final chance to accept Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah on pain of death and eternal damnation, he is short sighted, self serving, and dangerous to the long term survival of both Israel and the Jewish Diaspora.
8
I’ll tell you a main reason I’m not turning my bit of conservatism into a vote for the contemporary Republican Party or policies:
It’s called anti-semites of the white supremacy type. They love the new Republic a party and it, or much of it, seems to love them and some of their ideas.
Though, truth be told, the not-so-old guard of the James Baker type weren’t known to think (or speak) too kindly of Jewish Americans either...
Problem now is that many of the allegedly-woke (“enlightened” for those not in the know) neoDeomocratic and Green parties also have swallowed whole a bucket of antisemític swill which many of them have no compunction about, and even have pride in, pronouncing and promoting.
Me, I find myself longing for a strong, humanizing and humane, sound-minded, sure-footed and uncorrupted party to support. And one that wants and welcomes not just my vote, but also my values and my views — regardless my religion-ethnicity and what it means to me
5
This is simpler than Ross maintains. Benjamin Netanyahu has all but destroyed all sympathy and intellectual curiosity about Israel because of his lurching to the far right, his abandonment of traditional Jewish compassion and of course the high level of corruption of his family and government.
At the time Yitzchak Rabin was assassinated, Israel was enjoying an international embrace like few times in its history. Muslim countries were opening up business to Israel and hatred was on the wane because Rabin, a genuine war hero and the architect of the 1967 victory over Egypt, was willing to mix strength and compassion and seek out true peace in the Middle East.
After his death Netanyahu slammed that door shut. This is why conservatives embraced him and why liberal Jews, who love Israel and the idea of Israel, don't support him.
It's also why a lot of conservative Jews make the twisted claim that to support Netanyahu is to support Israel and if you don't like "BB" then you hate Israel.
It's also why a lot of my conservative Jewish friends are blinded to the fact that Trump, by merely stating that he supports Israel, is really a magnet for neo-Nazi groups who would love to rid America of Jews and our influence.
In Charlottesville those groups chanted over and over again, "Jews will not replace us!"
Still my conservative Jewish friends said there was no difference between Hillary and Trump. And they claimed Obama hated Israel despite all the evidence to the contrary.
14
@ Javafutter You are so right! Thank you for articulating this perspective. Good to know other sane and humane people are out there. Kol ha kivod!
8
The short answer is that a mix of liberal politics and soft traditionalism cannot survive a militant American left, even if a shift of five voting percentage points, and/or an alliance of the strong Israeli Arab parties with the Israeli centerist/left parties, led to a change in direction for the Israeli government. The American left hated Israel under Barak and Olmert just as much as it does Israel under Netanyahu today. That left also absolutely hates the idea of a American Jewish people who faced down and surmounted anti-Semitism by putting on American military uniforms, succeeding magnificently in American schools, and turning into leaders in the arts, sciences, economics, and civics. Because if the Jews can do it, and the Asians can do it, why can't any other people? Jews and Asians are proof that the whole "structural racism" thing topples from the weight of its own foolishness.
So, no. The American militant left, which dominates education, is teaching liberal American Jewish kids that their Judaism is disposable. They are learning, marrying out, and reducing Judaism to lox, bagels, and Hanukah bushes. In 100 years, there will be no liberal American Judaism. Orthodoxy will remain for sure, and probably will have a progressive branch, but no liberal Judaism. It will have suffocated itself to death in the warm-appearing, but lethal embrace of the liberal left.
4
@Observer of the Zeitgeist
".... teaching liberal American Jewish kids that their Judaism is disposable. They are learning, marrying out, and reducing Judaism to lox, bagels, and Hanukah bushes. In 100 years, there will be no liberal American Judaism."
.
I couldn't have said it better.
.
My concern is how large - or small - will that Orthodox branch that remains be?
See Mr. Douthat's reference to fecundity for an answer to your question
...that’s a question this Gentile columnist leaves to the chosen people to debate."
The expression "chosen people" must be scrapped. 1) Chosen by whom? God? What god? 2) What difference is there between the Jews claiming to be "chosen" and the Muslims belief that they were (via Muhammetd and the Qur'an), or the Christian belief that their's is the one true faith. 3) It demeans all other religions and their practioners and sets Jews apart from the rest of humanity.
4
Why do others always think no that by “chosen” Jews mean “better”?
I don’t feel or believe that I’m better than my kind neighbors and compatriots, and 10 year’s of religious school and dozens of years of Jewish adult education never once taught me that I was better just by being Jewish.
There’s lots (like centuries’ worth) of debate and scholarship in Jewish communities about what was/is meant by “chosen” — including wondering if Jews weren’t chosen to be the proverbial canary in a coal mine.
To me, at most and if indeed true, the Jewish people were chosen, as some say, to be a light unto the nations — as we have been if you consider the history of the world’s two most popular and widespread religions, monotheistic Christianity and monotheistic Islam.
4
61 year old boomer here. I grew up as a Conservative Jew (a branch of Judaism that's less strict than Orthodox) swaddled in warm and wonderful Jewish traditions: Hebrew school, Bar Mitzvah, Jewish summer camp, 10 week summer trip to Israel. I was even a Hebrew school teacher in my freshman year of college. My Jewish experiences were all good.
Israel was cool when I was young. It had a semi socialist thing going on and women were in the Army. Moshe Dayan. Need I say more?
But I always felt a bit uneasy on the question of how Israel could be both a Jewish state and a democracy. The Palestinians I met in college were great. I always felt a stronger American identity than a Jewish one. And I never bought into the concept of a personal God.
So it's hardly surprising that I married a lapsed Catholic girl and that we've raised our children with a mix of Jewish and Christian traditions. What's a bit surprising is that out of 10 Jewish boys who grew up as I did, seven of them likewise married non-Jewish women and are raising their kids with a hash of traditions.
This all happened before Israel made a hard right turn toward becoming an apartheid state and fellow traveler of rapture seeking Christians.
My children embrace their mixed identity and have awareness that Hitler would have gassed them. That's a weird thing to write, but it's true.
And so, despite many and deep misgivings, I continue to support Israel's existence and donate to J Street to try and save its soul.
6
@Mike Marks
You must realize that after a few generations of your children and their descendents marrying non-Jewish spouses and are raising their kids "with a hash of traditions" - that almost none of them will ever identify as Jewish. And a good number of them will adopt an apathy and even hostility to the future of the Jewish people and Israel.
3
50 years ago, American liberals were the ones supporting Israel.
At that time here in the South, at the time of segregation, Jews were not looked on fondly by the segregationists.
But after 70 years of Israeli existence and never letting the Palestinian refugees return home and the continued building of settlements, American liberals are not supportive of these policies.
And today, the Trump voters are very pro-Israel. Many of that support is from the evangelicals.
Trump is also has the support of the alt-right, neo-Nazi groups.
You are the company you keep.
Many American Jews support Israel to be a Jewish state. I wonder how they feel about Mike Pence wanting to make America an evangelical Christian state.
7
Re Pence making America a Christian state: to many non-Christians, in some important ways it already is.
And European countries and colonies pretty much always were — hence the desire of many, though not all, Jewish people for self-determination in the area of the world where last they had it.
2
@Yiddishamama
What you don't address is how Palestinians are second class citizens in what was once Palestine.
Jews say it was wrong when they are treated as second class citizens but are now doing the same to the Palestinians.
A Palestinian born in Haifa who fled with his family to Lebanon when war broke out in 1948 is not allowed to be a citizen of Haifa where he was born and has roots going back 1,000 years.
But a Jew born anywhere in the World is able to be a citizen of Haifa.
The Palestinians are paying for the sins of the Europeans.
4
The Lutheran Church is the state-supported church of Denmark; the Queen of England heads the Anglican Church. Theocracies? Hardly. The Jewish State, supports its minority faiths no less than they. Obama embraced Cuba and Nixon China - both dictatorships. Israel seeks peace with all; should it prefer war? Israel's democratic pedigree is unimpeachable. When the scapegoat is Jewish, however, hypocrisy has no limit.
Israeli Jews, however secular, are daily steeped in Jewishness by speaking Hebrew, living in the Jewish State, and living out the drama of Jewish return to the Promised Land. For assimilaed American Jews, opting out is always an option, especially if p.c. peers reward it. Why shouldn't Israelis welcome the help that Christians shower on them - whatever their eschatological fantasies - and prefer it to the real-time contempt and enmity of Israel haters, whatever their provenance.
8
My parents must be turning in their grave (in Herzlia)
because of the actions of Netanyahu. Israel is not the land they dreamed of, or worked for, since the turn of 1900.
members.efn.org/~hkrieger/herzlia.jpg
5
No. Israel is dead, partially thanks to Shelly. We won’t go or donate anymore. Not even sure I want to pray, especially now with the Pope telling me I am not one of the chosen. So much for democracy.
2
The future for Israel and its relationship with US and other jews is the real story here. Cohen is a red herring.
The big question is how the now de facto apartheid state can maintain this relationship?
In the era of mass social communication, where companies and multinationals are more responsive and quicker to react to their customer concerns and attitudes then governments it will be very difficult for any theocratic state to counter.
The decline of religion is happening all over the world from Iran to the US, from Turkey to Israel, Northern Ireland to the Lebanon. The use of religion by the state has been co-opted since Mayan and Egyptian times to maintain the power of the incumbents.
Remember nationalism was 'invented' by Garibaldi to counteract allegiance to a king.
The combination of both religion and nationalism into government structure, both backward and declining ideas can only be bad for the people of Israel/Palestine and by the way I am including everybody there in that.
Keep on going. Article ended too soon
Being Jewish, liberal and supporting Israel is not that hard to understand. Especially in the age of Trump. Trump, who dislikes most people(s), sees special value in Jews; he can love and hate them at the same time. Some of his favorite professionals are Jews whom he uses as lawyers, cabinet members, accountants and son-in-laws. On the opposite side, anti-Semitic dog whistles energize his rallies. The dog whistles remind Jews of places like Germany that accepted and welcomed Jews until they didn’t or most countries who tolerated Jews until times got rough, then turned on them. America is no different from any of the other places from which Jews have been chased. The hatred, mocking, jeering, and taunting at any Trump rally could easily fall the way of Jews. Israel is that psychic place of safety; as long as it exists there is hope of survival. That is why Jews support Israel; it’s about survival.
6
It is very sad that so many young American Jews feel no connection with their history, and can't wait to join the ascendant coalition that will spit on them (remember the New York Jewish public school teachers so anxious to support their Black colleagues right up to the point where they got fired for being White and Jewish?). However, I'm one of those American New York Jewish Democratic party voters who defied their own family (which has been painful), voted Republican, and opted for the survival of Israel. I find it reassuring that I can also feel at the same time that I'm supporting America's future by not pretending any longer that we can cozy up to Islamic dictators that hate us by sending money regularly and at the same time cheerfully destroying our manufacturing base as we load up our homes with cheap foreign junk. It's going to be a rough world out there, between overpopulation and climate change: we'll need a reliable ally in the Middle East, and that is Israel. Not Iraq that snuggles up to Iran, not Pakistan that demands money and whines about not getting more of our appreciation and support, not Turkey that puts people in jail and expects us to join their conspiracy fantasies, not poor overloaded Jordan, not Afghanistan poisoning our and Europe's youth with drugs, but Israel. Would someone care to point this out to little Ms. Ortiz and tell her to retreat to programs that might help Americans, not Palestinians?
8
To those Christians in or from Christian-majority states and those Muslims in or from Muslim-majority states who claim that Jewish Israelis or American Jews supporting them act (only) exactly as their oppressors did, I invite you to consider that Jews, Israelis or not, still face prejudice and discrimination by people and governments affiliated with the two most common religions — yours. Before you criticize Jewish Israelis or American Jews who may support them (especially when you do it en masse) because of how you think your coreligionists are treated in/by Israel, try working on change in your own culture and your own psyche. If you think Jewish people are doing true respect for others all wrong, how about getting your own community and nations to show them how it should be done? Maybe start by abolishing Christmas as a national/federal holiday and allowing synagogues to be built and frequented by Jewish citizens of the center if Islam, Saudi Arabia? Oh, right. there are and cannot be any Jewish citizens of Saudi Arabia....
10
@Yiddishamama
Two wrongs make a right?
2
Thanks for the link to the JAP Rap Battle. Made my night.
3
A friendly hi to Ross Douthat. You are a bright fellow and a good writer but you are out of your league in trying to figure out the Jewish people(Jews)
As one of those, let me help you figure this thing out. It really not all that complicated as you project in your piece.
The half baked believers, like me,say to ourselves" Israel is not being fair and they are getting trigger happy. Also, the orthodox are behind the times, praying all day about a bunch of nothings" They should join the army.
That's the kind of stuff we say to ourselves, the half baked(or less) Jews.
BUT, let there occur a few antisemitic incidents right in a row in the U.S. or Europe and we suddenly change our tune.
We say "Lets keep Israel strong. Don't give up the Nuclear things and keep all the drones and the others. We want Israel to remain Safe. Antisemitism seems to be growing here and in other places, We might have to move there one of these days."
Ross, that's about it and not as complex as you have woven for us today.
The fact is, Jews prefer to live than die. Our nutty people are just like the gentiles in that way.
It all doesn't really involve any "centrifugal forces" as you so zestfully point out.
We Jews and Gentiles have one thing in common. We want to survive and then we push a little to have things go our way.
It's really not all that complicated.
For some reason, you seem to want us as your friend.
Maybe because we are much alike in some basic ways. Live.
6
Yes, Jewish Americans are beset from left & right. Jews are not quite so torn in Israel, where the reality is if they let their guards down they become refugees.
9
@Rima Regas
How eloquently put Rima. I say this as an unapologetic supporter of the Palestinian cause.
For the Palestinians, Israel was a teriible mistake. For European Jewish peoples, Israel was a blessing. Until 1967, people in the middle could be forgiven for trying to be objective.
Since then Israel has been on a downward spiral ensuring the eventual destruction of it's Jewish majority by each action it takes. (The long arc of history etc.)
But just as much as its actions, I find it abhorrent how Israel and AIPAC has manipulated the American zeitgeist (nay, bullied) through money and power and the media to create a false equivalence between the foreign invading occupier and the natives of Palestine.
That to me as an American, is the biggest tragedy. The co-option of our morals by a foreign power through obfuscation.
Everything Russia is accused of doing over the past few years, Israel has been doing to us ten times over, for decades.
It is time for American Jews to take a stand and recognize that Palestine was stolen, and now under total apartheid and that supporting Israel is neither progressive, nor beneficial for our national interests
74
@banzai
Stolen?
1. Who was there first?
2. How is it any different than America “stolen” from Native Americans and Mexicans? That’s how ALL nations throughout history have been created.
Get over it. Move on and create a contributing society out of Gaza and the West Bank so Israel sees value in having such a neighbor. Or just get incorporated into existing countries such as Jordan and Egypt as all other refugees throughout history have done. Those are your realistic options. All else is delusional.
8
@James Hiken
You are correct, that is how all nations have done it. Might makes right.
In addition to the native Americans, the US took part of Mexico - California, Arizona, New Mexico, part of Colorado - in the Mexican American war of 1846.
Unfortunately, the Palestinians are fighting back. So that is part of the natural order you describe. Get over it.
And the Mexicans keep coming back across the border here. Get over it.
2
As a teen in the late 1970's, I was a member of the Conservative Judaism movement's United Synagogue Youth (U.S.Y) organization. I vividly remember the relentless programmatic focus on the existential dangers of intermarriage. One term sticks out in my mind: ZPG, zero population growth (the fear the Jewish people were on the road to extinction due to not having enough babies). It was the theme of a weekend long youth conclave I attended. I remember feeling very uneasy with the notion that my chief duty as a Jew, above all else, was to marry a Jewish woman and to produce at least 3, preferably many more, offspring in order to endure the future survival of Judaism. Uneasy, on second thought, does not accurately reflect my feelings at the time. I was deeply revulsed by the heavy-handed attempt by the youth leaders and the Rabbis to scare me into remaining a Jew. I wondered why I was not being encouraged to marry simply for love and to have as many, or few children as I desired. The experience of the ZPG conclave left me with a troubling questions about Judaism: Why the focus on teaching how to mechanically maintain the Jewish people over and above teaching the value and beauty of the Jewish religion? In light of my experience with Conservative Judaism's focus on the risks of ZPG, it seems entirely plausible that Cohen's, and his supporter's research on the issue of how to best ensure the survival of the Jewish people are grossly tainted by a sexist and nationalist agenda.
8
Way to overintelectualized for this mature Jew,while I can appreciate ones views when you express them in a way that negates ones ability to freely comprehend ones content as an author you lose the readers interest by virtue of confusion and over use of hyperbole. While we do question the Torah for many different answers we also know that the Torah is our mainstay and in it’s purest form is a foundation that we trust and strive to understand within our own culturalism.
1
"The Jewish State"?"The Chosen People"?The stark reality is that there is no other "single religion" state amongst the World's democracies. As a Jew and the son of a leader of the Irgun, I get all the reasons for the creation of the State and but cannot accept that the very essence of its Declaration of Independence can be ignored when the demographics no longer suit. Until Israel treats all it's inhabitants equally it cannot be a true Democracy. In fact, Israel's tilt to the Right is largely the result of accommodating the Theocrats price for political support, coupled with changing demographics within the Jewish population that also share an undemocratic, and often racist, perspective. It seems inevitable that Jews in the diaspora will gradually "dilute" their heritage by adopting a more secular/liberal identity while Israelis go in the opposite direction. That is ironic since, for the first 60 or so years of Israel's existence, American Jews were much more "observant" and focussed on tradition than were Israelis.
6
As a liberal-leaning Jew I find the position of this conservative, self-described "Gentile columnist" to be confusing and not indicative of much understanding of Jewish values. Why would our support for Israel lead to conservative positions on other issues?
There are good reasons that Jews have traditionally been liberal on social issues. First, Jews have a tradition of "tikkun olam" (repair of the world) that encourages social responsibility for civil rights and other progressive causes. Second, Jews' long experience with discrimination made them natural allies of other discriminated-against groups, as we saw during the Civil Rights movement when they marched with black Americans.
It is only since Netanyahu and Trump that support for Israel has even been identified with one particular US political party, and that this support has been equated with unconditional support for Israel's right-wing government. While it is true that the extreme left has made unquestioning support of all Palestinian actions a litmus test of liberalism, most liberal American Jews have not bought into that extreme. We support rights for both peoples and find that fully consistent with both support for existence of a Jewish state and for liberal values. This should neither be "news" nor surprising.
4
I resent the insinuation of a Jewish Community . Mr. Cohen has never spoken with me and neither has anyone else. Jewish community- I live in an upper middle class neighborhood where we do not identify people by their religion. My last name is not identifiable as Jewish. What parameters were used for this survey. I am a marketing person and very experienced with skewing questions to upper management . I support Israel as a Jewish State but their treatment Arabs is horrific. and unacceptable. They have short term memory of how Jews were discriminated against.
4
Since Mr. Douthat, a Catholic by choice, and many readers show such interest in “the” Jewish American psyche and political culture, I suggest they carefully read an excellent book exploring some important historical influences on the same psyches: Catholic seminarian-turned journalist James Carroll’s 2001 book titled Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History.
And for those who, like the guy in the Oval Office, prefer video to written word, there is a powerful and fine movie adaptation of the book that is also worth your viewing and reflection.
4
Most religions promote wealth redistribution but also embrace traditional gender models. So you can’t easily pigeonhole any religion into a liberal or conservative camp. That’s for atheists.
2
The problem that Douthat delineates stems, enormously, from the hard right turn that the current regime in Israel has taken, with the help of a majority of Jews residing there. The irony is that we are speaking to a large extent about policies that affect who is and isn't a valid citizen-Jew, all expressed while we know the citizens who can have the least claim on that heritage to be by far the most narrow on this subject.
The irony is advanced even further by the near-exclusion of the voices of the far more liberal-minded American Jews, without whom there would be no thriving Israel.
History shows the future belongs to the liberal-evolving nature of humanity; rightest, nationalist, autocratic 'enterprises' rise but always fall, and generally fall hard.
4
Actually, Bibi cut his political teeth studying, among other things, political science at MIT/Harvard during the Nixon-Ford (R) years and was Israel’s ambassador to the UN, in New York, during the Reagan (R) years. He basically imported trickle-down economics to Israel, which greatly contributed to the country’s wide disparities in wealth and all the ills that come with and from such schisms (for example, homelessness was once unheard of in modern Israel, where now it’s too common).
Oh, and another similarity between DontheCon and Bibi — both had three (count ‘em —- 3) wives, the first two also being short-term and at least one of them immigrating to her husband’s country as part of the deal.
6
For what it's worth, Steven Cohen himself is not rigidly conservative. On Israel-related matters, for example, he is most certainly left of center.
But as to the larger point--US Jews are already deeply split. Orthodox Jewish males are clearly supportive of Trump. The story among Orthodox Jewish females is more mixed, and among most the rest of the Jewish population Trump is roundly abhorred.
Most US Jews throughout the latter half of the 20th century were by and large liberal, "with the exception of Israel" because Israel itself was much more of a liberal democracy in those days (and not nearly as economically or militarily secure).
But the past 10-15 years have seen a distinct change in Israel's government and leadership (both political and rabbinic) which makes it very easy for most American Jews to criticize it.
2
The weird thing about Zionism is you can view it as a liberation movement for a historically oppressed people or as another variety of ethnic-religious nationalism. And you'd probably be right either way. If you're a liberal, you can love Zionism by keeping the liberation movement in the forefront and ignoring the ethnic nationalism or you can hate it by choosing to see the ethnic-religious nationalism as primary and ignoring the liberation movement.
Personally, I am comfortable with the ambiguity of the relationship, but I support all efforts to keep Zionism a liberation movement and oppose all efforts to move it more toward ethnic-religious nationalism.
3
1996, Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress where he darkly warned, “If Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, this could presage catastrophic consequences, not only for my country, and not only for the Middle East, but for all mankind,” adding that, “the deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely close.”
That was 20 years ago.
Testifying again in front of Congress in 2002, Netanyahu claimed that Iraq’s nonexistent nuclear program was in fact so advanced that the country was now operating “centrifuges the size of washing machines.”
Netanyahu said in 2002, "If you take out Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region."
We see how well that worked out.
Why would anyone listen to Mr. Netanyahu?
4
Every step, every measure designed to drive humans apart on the basis of politics or religion is deplorable.
If the history of America, the 17th, 18th, 19th or 20th century didn't get that across, what will it take...extinction?
3
For this Jew it is a tragedy when the once-oppressed become the oppressors, the more so because history has shown that the once-oppressed can easily become the currently-oppressed. "What us hateful to you do not do to others" remains what all good people must live by.
3
The name Israel means "wrestled God" in Hebrew. Jacob was renamed Israel because he wrestled with God. Argument has always been a part of Jewish culture--a way to deal with the complexities and inner contradictions of the world.
Assimilation did not protect German Jews from Hitler. Conversion to Catholicism did not protect Jews in Spain after 1492, even though they were practicing Catholics and, in some cases, may even have been believing Catholics.
What is most puzzling is the fact that Leftists put opposition to Israel above other issues. Gay-rights activists don't have much to say about the executions of gay men in Iran or about Israel's splendid gay-rights parades in Tel Aviv. Feminists are unaware of the fact that Israel's Golda Meir was the first head of government in history who was neither the wife nor the daughter of a previous head of government. The Left sides with radical Islamists against Israel.
11
Whenever I hear people talk about what it means to be a “real” “pick your religion/ethnicity” that’s spells fascism.
Whether it’s Aryan, Muslim, Jewish, Christian or American.
How many times have we seen the “purist” ideological, ie, Nazi, ISIL, Zionist, White Supremacist, kill and seek to annihilate anyone who doesn’t fit the pure narrow definition of being what they claim to to be and defend? This is all a form of fascism based on racism.
I consider myself an American, although many in this country, (ie Trump supporters), do not because I am a child of immigrants, not from the heartland, a liberal feminist and not evangelical.
7
An investigation I'm much more interested in is how Orthodox Jews overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, known Commandment violator.
8
Of all the criticisms of Israeli policies one finds in social forums like this, by far the most offensive is the assertion that Israel has turned into a mirror image of the Nazis. This
charge is so far off the mark it is difficult to understand how
any thinking person could believe such a thing, much less
publish it with a straight face.
Let's see. Non-Jews in Israel may serve in the army, but
cannot be drafted. Israel has established "peace schools" and "peace camps" in which children from both sides can
meet and learn that their opposite numbers are not
demonic . Nothing of the sort exists among the Arabs or
Muslims in General . Ask the Armenians how Christians
are treated by Muslims, or ask the Copts. Ask the Palestinian Christians how they are treated when some
Leftist social commentator safe in the West publishes
remarks about Mohammad that are anything but fawning.
Note that Palestinian teen-ager, jailed for months in an Israeli jail for striking a soldier, was just released this past
week, to comments from Palestinians and other Muslims
that she appeared healthier than when she was arrested
a few months ago, and she was lucky she was in an Israeli jail and not in an Arab prison. Where is the"Nazi-like"
behavior?
arcaneone
PS--my own daughter was a volunteer teacher in a peace
camp
12
The actions of Netanyahu's government have caused young (and old) liberal Jews to be alienated from Israel.
5
So, after muddying up the already-rather-muddy water of Catholicism, you are venturing to do the same for Judaism? With the same tired clear-cut dichotomies? Hey, Ross, don't you ever see some gray hues in-between? TG
4
@TOBY
Will you also endorse and advocate for the dissolution of the Vatican (an independent Catholic state — though hardly a democratic one — right in the middle of Italy)? What about Muslim-only Saudi Arabia? The Islamic Republics of Pakistan, Afganistan, Iran, and Mauritania? How about the 30-plus nation-states, mostly European, that have a Christian cross as a main feature of their national flags (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_flags_depicting_a_cross ) and/or officially self-identify as Christian states (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_state)?
3
The whole question here can be boiled down to one, simple explanation-human nature! For 2000 years the "wandering Jew" had no homeland.They existed in just about every nation in the world, whether it be The Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Australia-you name it and you could find a Jewish identity,sometimes small,sometimes large,usually influential owing to the Jewish propensity for education. Occasionally when some demagogue would stir up "nationalistic fervor" (described more subtle as "patriotism") there would commence a "backlash" against the Jew who would no longer be considered a "citizen" of the host country but rather an "outsider" usually accused of being part of an international cabal intent on "taking over the nation" (ultimately the entire world) via control of education,banking, the press etc. The result was an almost universal "leftist" position that eschewed nationalism,promoted human and civil rights and toleration while attempting to remove some of the more obvious attempts by the host country to identify itself as a "Christian nation", since those feelings eventually led to nationalism and persecution. And then there was Israel in 1948. By the time of the 1967 war, England & the USA bolstered Israel's economy and military to make them a force against the Arabs who threatened the oil supply.Now Israel is a world power, the Jews no longer fear nationalism, they actually embrace it.Liberalism,equality, human rights, now replaced by Jewish nationalism.
2
An Ashkenazi Jew is genetically a mixture of Middle Eastern and European peoples. However Middle Easterners do not accept you as being Middle Eastern, and Europeans do not accept you as being European thus the reason for Israel's existence!
4
This is one weird, farmisht article, reading as a vague, contradictory and rambling justification for staking Steven M. Cohen's sexual misbehavior as the front and center lead. What the heck does this have to do with the rest of the essay? It occurred to me, while plugging through this never-ending piece, that Douthat needed to bring the Jews (his vision of them, anyway) into, ahem, another religion's systemic problem with sexual abuse and pedophilia, as cover. See, we are being told, the Jews do this too, not just Cardinal McCarrick. Hey, if the chosen people can't abstain from the moral abyss of which these violations represent, then who are we Gentiles to get such a bad rap? Bad faith, indeed.
8
I think you nailed.
1
It seems to me that the best thing for peace in the Middle East would be the dismantlement of the modern state of Israel:
Instead of giving Israel a million dollars a day, so that it can even continue to exist, why don't we simply give every Jewish man, woman and child in Israel American citizenship and then relocate them to America. Something which we should have been willing to do after the second World War.
If this were to be done it would only make our Jewish population in this country around 5%. As there are approximately the same number of Jews in America as there are in Israel. This low percentage would not be enough to create any kind of backlash especially since in our post Holocaust world conservative Christians now adore Jews.
Israeli Jews would then be able to view America the same way that American Jews do... as The Promised Land. And if this were to happen it would be an incredible boon for the Israeli Jews as well as for American Jews and also for America itself. Because no minority in this country has ever made a greater contribution than that of Jews.
And besides... who doesn't love the Tanakh, Broadway Musicals and chocolate covered Halvah?
6
Where do I go if there is no Israel?
Jews in Germany were Germans citizens until Hitler took power and stripped their citizenship. My great-great-grandfather was a proud decorated officer in the German military during World War I. That did not save his children from dying in concentration camps.
The question to American-Jews is not whether they contribute to the American society and freely practice their religion and cultural customs; it’s whether they are treated as member of the non-Jewish American society with no suspicion. One needs only to see what is happening to Muslims in America to know the answer Jews have known for centuries - we are tolerated but never accepted.
One time someone asked me what side I would fight for if there was a war between America and Israel. My answer was a question - knowing I am a Jew, would you trust me if I joined the American armed forces? The answer I got was “of course no”, which left me with only one option - fight for Israel.
I am an immigrant and American citizen by choice. But make no mistake, my family knows that if Trump gets a second term and another white supremacist like him is elected in 2024, I may have no option but flee to Israel. Where would I go if there is no Israel?
86
@BWCA -- Even while you write these things, the Jewish right wing is a strong driver of those very attacks against Muslims in both the US and even more so in Israel. They do to others what they say is protection for themselves against the same done to them. There is no justice or right in doing unto others just in case some third party does unto you.
@TOBY Giving Israeli's dual citizenship is an idea, but you haven't really thought it through to the really fantastic idea that it could be. If we are to replace with US citizenship the promise made by the UN to the Jews and Palestinians of two states, one for each, then we really have to offer citizenship equally to both of the people's that were promised a state: the Jews, and the resident Arabs, as well as their descendents. And once all the residents of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, are Americans...wouldn't that make the "Holy Land" the 51st State? And, as a state in the Union...we would have the legal right and power to resolve domestic problems, just as we do here at home...more or less successfully as we have done here at home, probably. Added benefit...the United States would have a state on the Mediterranean. That would be awesome. I've always wanted a villa on the Med.
3
The success of the Jews arose when religious intolerance denied them land and forced them into urban environments where they developed the skilled professionals needed to prosper in the modern world.
The failure of the Jews will come when they secure the land and practice religious intolerance that will drive away the skilled professionals they need to survive in the modern world.
6
"This combination has often frustrated more thoroughgoing conservatives — Jewish ones especially — who don’t understand why more American Jews don’t extend their conservative impulses beyond the tribe and vote Republican."
This over 70 year old liberal Jewish Democrat does not vote for conservatives because:
A basic tenet of Judaism is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
We recite every day in our religious services either literally or in effect that "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." Exodus 20:2
I remember that bigotry and anti-Semitism was why 6 million of my relatives and co-religionists were killed during my lifetime.
People of goodwill understand that if you can do that to me and mine, you can also do that to other minorities, or to people who, for whatever reason, you want to demean or worse.
We see that the present administration, which appeals to conservatives, proudly and publicly supports such bigoted and misguided ideas.
Mainstream Republicans, not to mention the CULT OF TRUMP, stand by quietly or actively incite such bigotry specifically when they enable or support the ignoramus in the Oval Office.
(The allotted space does not permit me to discuss the other illogical and counterfactual positions that the present administration takes on many other issues, with which I do not agree.)
You expect me to vote for that position or its advocates? REALLY?
When (ahem) ... pigs fly.
20
Anyone who defines him/her self by her/his religion, race or ethnicity is living in the past, on the receding side of a rapidly changing world. Our obligation to the improvement of our world and to the lives of our children should be to consciously jettison ancient beliefs in the superiority of our group, which is certain to continue to divide us, and magnify what is most positively human—love, compassion, friendship, inclusion—which is certain to unite us.
3
The Romans said that over 2,000 years ago. Yeah, sure, we believe in your utopia. Not!
Why can’t we simply acknowledge we are all human beings and like it or not we are all our brothers keepers, a hundred years from now, should we survive that long, we will in all likelihood be such an ethnic mix as to be indistinguishable from one another; in the meantime we should do something about our more basic needs such as addressing global warming and the ability of the earth to feed a rapidly growing population.
6
As a kid growing up in NYC and played with Jewsish kids, I never knew why many of them had tottoed numbers on the fore arms! Most of them were non observing Jews, who would eat bacon or lobster occasionally, no big deal. If the orthodox Jews dont approve of them, they would say please dont eat them and leave me alone.
The modern state of Isreal was founded by these survivers of the holocast, not by the orthodox Jews. I dont know the numbers, but I believe most Isrealis are religious liberals. Isrealis need to decide what type of country they want for their kids, strict orthodox or maybe not as strict. Its a decision to be made by themselve, not by American Evangilist, Catholics or recent Russian immigrants!
2
The Times published a revealing detailed map of voting in the last presidential election. The Midwood neighborhood in Brooklyn, where I grew up in the 1950's, was solidly for Trump. This neighborhood, also where Ruth Bader Ginsberg grew up, had once been populated by solidly liberal, middle class, second generation Jews, whose parents had immigrated primarily from the Pale of settlement in Eastern Europe, which was obliterated by the Nazis. Great numbers of assimilated prominent people came from this area- almost all liberal in their politics. Well, this area voted solidly for Trump- by margins of three quarters. It is worth noting that those assimilated second generation Jews have been replaced by the ultra orthodox. When I went back to sell my old family home seven years ago, many of the people in my old neighborhood look liked they had recently stepped out of a shetl. The lady across the street from our house, appearing not much different than any modern American housewife, had nine kids in their home. Even my grandparents were more secular and assimilated, albeit with somewhat larger families of about four children. What I saw across the street was the future of the the Jewish community in America.
3
Trump and Netanyahu are remarkably similar in their policies and personalities. And they are dragging their countries down in strikingly similar ways.
9
Yes. And both countries are losing the admiration of the world and the support of old friends because of the turn they have taken.
1
At this year's High Holidays service, I will pray for the *state* of Israel, the state in which the country finds itself. You don't have to be a Prophet to see which way the wind is blowing.
Secular, liberal Jews like myself can of course be supporters of Israel — without supporting the politics of Netanyahu’s nationalist government and its supporters. Israel itself is divided in the nationalism issue, and there are plenty of secular Jewish Israelis. So why do we have to choose?
12
One of the most valuable contributions that influential Jews could make to improving the quality of American public affairs discourse is to allow intelligent gentiles like Ross to publicly discuss Jewish predilections and paradoxes, since there is so much for all of us to learn. In recent decades, as America's Jewish community has grown in wealth and power, however, the community has been extremely reluctant to allow outsiders to even comment on anything Jewish-related, as the threatened devastation to the careers of Marlon Brando, Gregg Easterbrook, and Rick Sanchez pointed out. Hopefully, the NYT will stand by the writer whom Sarah Jeong called their brightest columnist for daring to write this brave though totally reasonable column.
4
What, in essence, you are saying is that among Jews, like with every other People, there are divergent views. Do we assume that all French People think alike?
5
If history is to be believed, and in this case I think it is. Jews ( I am one) need to make up their own minds without regards to the opinion of non Jews.
Non Jews have shown repeatedly over long periods of time that they would rather we just disappear. So why would I listen to them and it's really non of their business.
Intermarriage? Each should do what they think is right but I'd remind you that once there were twelve tribes of Israel, now there are two.
Israel? I am a Zionist, I lived there for five years and I know because Palestinians have told me that one day they will get rid of us one way or another.
Where the Ultra Orthodox go, sooner or later they will lose their dominance, in the mean time I do as most secular Jews do. I ignore them.
On none of these subjects are Gentiles entitled to an opinion. It's our business we will figure it out.
8
Mr. Douthat:
I believe that you are quite confused. Most Jews, whether secular or modern orthodox tend towards liberalism because of the teachings of the Torah and because of Tikun Olam, the edict of repairing the world. Alternatively, the so-called conservative ultra-orthodox and chasidic sects are grossly racist (as are most caucasion conservatives), whether in the U.S. and other parts of the Diaspra or, in Israel and only are concerned with themselves.
Also, recall that in Israel the ultra-orthodox are free riders! They do not serve in the military, as is required of others. They are also on the government dole. Like the ultra orthodox in Kiryas Joel & Muncey, who are on food stamp, medicade & housing vouchers.
As for Bibi Netanyahu, he is a member of the Revisionist Zionism, the founding ideology of the non-religious right wing in Israel; it has a fascist element.
Additionally, recall that so-called conservatives seek to conserve the status quo. They do not and will not give up their dominant and elitist status. And, that is why they are loathe to have theier wealth taxed or to share/redistribute their wealth, e.g. the Koch Brothers, Trump, Mnuchin, Ross, Norquist or, the Club for Growth.
The same is true in Israel. The 18 richest families (all secular) are anti-tax and, like their American counterparts, and have no desire to help the poor. Their greed, prevents them from Tikun Olam. Moreover, they never have enough money. Always more is betta'.
4
True about Torah. If Mr. D. had been thorough in his scrutiny of Jewish tougher and culture (and heaven knows, there is tons of, centuries of, scholarship in this area), he would have recognized this fact.
1
It is painful to see Jews, who have historically been a marginalized group, treat Arabs so cruelly.
It is painful to see Jews, who were strong supporters of America's civil rights movement, deny Palestinians' human rights.
It is painful to see Jews, who are still scapegoated by far right movements, enact a far right agenda in Israel.
History's lessons teach only those who want to learn from them.
10
And it’s painful to see Jews, many of whom in America devoted so much to civil and human rights of all people, vilified and scapegoated by the Left for wanting some degree of self-determination!
1
It's painful to see mullahs calling Jews pigs, asking for their flocks to kill them at every opportunity, to take joy in martyring themselves to kill Jews, to deny or celebrate the Holocaust, to swear that peace will come when the Jews are removed from the Jordan to the Sea, when "occupied" land includes the State of Israel. I'd say the Israeli military is pretty soft in their approach. I wonder how fair you would be if your country had to deal with this.
1
@NM
Palestinians could have declared independence in 1948. Instead, the West Bank Palestinians asked for union with Jordan. The occupation is the result of the Palestinians attack against Israel.
Every time Israel offers to end the occupation, the Palestinians say “No!”
Even Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia (certainly not a Zionist) said that Arafat’s refusal to accept the January 2001 offer was a crime. Thousands of people would die because of Arafat’s decision & not one of those deaths could be justified.
As Bill Clinton later wrote in his memoir:
It was historic: an Israeli government had said that to get peace, there would be a Palestinian state in roughly 97 percent of the West Bank, counting the [land] swap, and all of Gaza, where Israel also had settlements. The ball was in Arafat’s court.
But Arafat would not, or could not, bring an end to the conflict. “I still didn’t believe Arafat would make such a colossal mistake,” Clinton wrote. “The deal was so good I couldn’t believe anyone would be foolish enough to let it go.” But the moment slipped away. “Arafat never said no; he just couldn’t bring himself to say yes.”
1
These posts peddle the manifestly failing political philosophy that substitutes left-of-center, "progressive" ideology for tried and true tenets of Judaism that, whatever it may be, does not consist of equating Jewish religious values with gay rights (cum same-sex marriage), feminism, disdain for traditional family values, embracing of the socialist-labor agenda, cheering on extreme environmentalism and purporting to disdain business, material success and property rights, even as so many American Jews enjoy the material blessings of American society that have made them some of the most influential and prosperous folks in the world.
The final indignity is the Jewish "progressive" community's rising hostility toward Israel, based on little more than a personal preference for the manifestly failing Israeli Labor politicians' governance and a disdain for their right-center, duly elected government.
In my book, all this is rank ingratitude that does no credit to those who embrace it. Add to that the rising attitude of anti-Semitism (or anti-Zionism if you prefer) of the US Democratic party, and the emerging picture is not a pretty one. To paraphrase an expression of Thomas Jefferson (uttered in another context), "I tremble for my people when I reflect that God is just."
2
It is easy to forget that if you look into the history and the present of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims - the three principle Abrahamic Religions all sharing a common ancestry - you find they are more alike then different. This is particularly apparent in the dominate forces of today that are increasingly hostile to others in the name self propagation.
One would be hard pressed to distinguish the extremism of each from each other in this day and age. The oppressive application of their ancient hate filed theologies on themselves and others is hardly distinguishable.
Jihadists might blow up people here and there but can the level of death and destruction even begin to compare with what Christian Crusaders - aka the US and European Military - has reigned down on the Middle east in modern times; Is the Israeli treatment of Palestinians in Gaza all that far removed from the Warsaw Ghetto. The cruelties, bigotry, and hate inflicted on others and each other in the name of their religion boggles our every sense of decency and humanity.
Whatever, alliances there might now be between one and another of these theologies, does anyone doubt that deep down they all despise each other. For that matter they often reserve their worst animus toward those of their same theology that practice variations separate from their own.
Its time for a new theology built on love instead of these ancient hatreds.
2
Speaking as a liberal progressive of Jewish heritage, I think you left out the biggest sociopolitical issue which is powerfully interacting (at cross purposes) with any cultural desire to retain a Jewish heritage. By any objective criteria Israel has become a humanist - and Jewish - embarrassment, even a pariah. Yes the Arabs do not cooperate, have vicious rhetoric and murderous, existentially threatening, behavior, but Israel has a state sponsored nationalism that denigrates, assaults, ghettoizes and steals from both its Arab population and all Palestinians. This is unacceptable, especially coming from those who espouse the core values of our Hebrew heritage. Shame!
BTW As a Jewish father I am delighted my daughters found good American men as husbands who will love, protect and honor them. Being Jewish was not a criteria -one is even of Ukrainian extraction and who knows what their grandparents did to each other.
8
@paradocs2
Israel was ranked 29 out of 167 on The Economist's Democracy Index.
That's better than Belgium, Greece, Cyprus & at least a dozen other European countries.
Perhaps, these "Jewish people" are simply judging each issue on its' merits and thus forming opinions regardless of labels.
Perhaps this would be a good system for "non Jewish people" to follow as well.
1
So Ross is worried about the Jews
And the cultural heritage he fears we’ll lose.
Our people were displaced
But his concern is misplaced
As long as Bibi does not light the fuse.
3
Bravo!
2
Please stay out of this, Mr. Douthat. The Jewish people will resolve this, one way or another. Christian advice to Jews (and Evangelical 'support' for Israel) has never worked out very well.
22
@gcinnamon I don't think he was giving us advice. HE was just trying to understand the multiple problems we face.
4
Actually, God bless evangelical Christian support for Israel. At least the evangelicals realize that the best place in the Middle East to be an Arab or Christian is i the Jewish state, by a long shot.
Mr. Douthat is extrapolating from a snapshot. Israel will not have Bibi Netanyahu forever, and Americans will not have Trump. My feelings as an American Jew towards Israel have changed and that change is inextricably tied to the election of Donald Trump and the welcoming reaction of Israel's leadership to that election. This American Jew who loves Israel, who opposed the Iran Deal negotiated by Obama (who I supported twice) cannot ignore an Israeli leadership that compared Trump to Cyrus the Great. Neither can I ignore President Trump's playing footsie with Klansmen and Nazis, and his appointment of an Ambassador to Israel who his said that liberal American Jews are "worse than kapos." That man is a pig to me, an evil one. There may be some macro changes in the American Jewish community's relationship with Israel that are readily observable to folks like Mr. Douthat. But in this particular snapshot it's all about the leadership on both sides of the pond.
6
Yup!
As a citizen I contain multitudes. My concerns are a reflection of my age, my gender, my religion, my ethical and political values, my love of literature, my ignorance of scientific theory, etc. relating to me solely as a Jewish voter and assuming that as the single measure I use to make my choices is offensive and small minded.
5
This is not a crossroads. We have been there before. Jewish opinion and political thought is diverse and always has been. Jews affinity to support Israel is an existential one, not a nationalistic one. The disease of antisemitism has been around a long time documented well in the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the Expulsion of the Jews from England (1290), and from Spain (1492). If history repeats itself, Jews don’t want to sail around as exiles begging some country to let them in (MS. St. Louis 1939). As long as Israel exists, all Jews know that they will have a homeland where they will be welcomed and free of ethnic and religious persecution.
110
@Larry Barnowsky -- Yes it is a crossroads. It may be that Jews have faced many crossroads, but this is another one.
3
The contradiction is on your comment though. If Jews intermarried and assimilated into wherever they were there is no need for a homeland. It's kind of wanting to have Nationalism for us but not for thee when Liberal Jews fight against borders, immigration restrictions, and traditional religion for other Nations.
2
@Larry Barnowsky
RE: “...Jews know that they will have a homeland where they will be welcomed and free of ethnic and religious persecution.”
Unfortunately, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and other nonaffiliated non-Ultra-Orthodox Jews are socially and politically discriminated against within Israel due to the strangle-hold the Ultra-Orthodox has on Israel’s government.
2
Denying the Druze recognition is deplorable. Seems Bibi and Donald have similar genes
1
@RimaRegas
I don't support killing Israelis.
I don't support sending box kites and balloons to set fires that raze fields and forests.
I don't support textbooks that advocate for the destruction of my people.
I don't support terrorists using innocent civilians as human shields.
There is a whole slew of things I don't support.
10
"one that defines Jewish identity in exclusionist terms, they complain, while marginalizing “single women, queer people, unwed parents, and childless individuals or couples.”
Normative Judaism, a phrase I use on purpose, has a built-in demographic imperative, heightened post-Holocaust, but always there. Families, children, mean that there is a future. Those who do not see the importance of that might be indeed marginalized (unwed parents are actually much less marginalized than you think Mr. Douthat, for numerous reasons).
Much of the American Jewish community is indeed at a crossroads: exist or cease to exist. Much of American Jewry is committing suicide by inter-marriage and total assimilation. Not surprisingly, this impulse comes from the "progressives" and "liberals". They may remain so and their children, if they have any, but Jewish they will probably not be. They will not have a coexistence problem with liberalism and Jewish conservative impulses.
As the Democratic party veers leftward (and turns eventually into Mr. Corbyn's Labour party, Jew-wise), I imagine that many Jews will turn Republican.
So the combination you describe Mr. Douthat probably cannot survive. The Jewish left will assimilate to total non-Jewishness.
As for pressure from Israel, Israel seeks support from the American Jewish community, not American "Jewish" community.
5
"The Jews" are a small self identified group of about 13M widely dispersed across the globe but with concentrations in Israel, NYC, Etc. They have been persecuted and threatened and killed over the centuries, notably in the last Century and this continues to this day.
My impression is that "Religion" plays a much smaller part in Jewish Life today than in prior decades and centuries and this is true also of nominal Christians in The West. But the latter in the main do not feel threatened as Jews do by latent (sometimes not so latent) anti semitism.
Israel was founded on the Zionist belief that Jews would not be truly safe outside a nation state of their own making.Today its survival is predicated on the support of the United States and thus a unifying theme for American Jews, a notoriously fissiparous people, is the unwavering support of Israel. The latter has become
over the decades identified with more orthodox jewry and a more conservative politics. This is at odds with the position of many jews in the US and hence this "jewish crossroads".
For myself, coming in part from a Continental Jewish family that was assimilated in England in the 19h Century I think that Israel is strategically untenable and that sooner or later it will lose US Support. it is a box canyon!
What then? An orderly evacuation is to be hoped for and the obvious place is N America.
1
The State of Israel should adopt many of the measures the USA Bureau of Indian Affairs currently employs to bottle up and control Native Americans living on reservations, and apply them to the non Jewish population living within the current borders and the aspired borders of Israel. Navajo / Palestinian what's the difference?
1
Um, actually, the more accurate analogy to Native Americans is Jews in Israel, not to others who occupied the area after much its Jewish (or Hebrew or Judean) population was forcibly deported (exiled).
Do you know many (knowledgeable about Judaism) Jewish people? Do you know them well? Have you ever been in Israel?
1
American Jews are as an homogenous group as American gentiles. Which means they’re not. Stop treating them as if they are.
Often when one wants to find a “Jewish” point of view in this country, the writer will quote the words of some prominent rabbi. and proceed to assess the Jewish point of view as if the rabbi’s
perspective is a micro-view of the Jewish population. That is as absurd as assuming there’s “a” spokesperson for all blacks, Hispanics or Muslims. It’s ignorant and offensive. Because minority groups in our country share an ethnicity or color or religion does not make all of these people the same either as potential victims or as having an identical world view.
6
People who definite their nationality or ethnicity by religion could be accused of fanaticism or bigotry. Are Jews who live in a Jewish state any different from born-again Evangelicals or fanatical Catholics who consider themselves the only true believers or the only real Americans?
1
For all those who think Israel should be a Jewish state, Mike Pence thinks America should be an evangelical Christian state.
And, in fact, there has been a definite shift of support of Israel with liberals getting less and evangelicals getting more.
You can be judged by the company you keep.
2
I do believe the new nation-state law passed in Israel needs rewording to affirm Israel's democratic character and reassure its minorities that the Jews of Israel value them highly, especially the Druze, the Circassians, Samaritans, and Israeli-Arabs who don't idealize Palestinian terror or hope for Israel's destruction. But reading through the comments here from people I'd say it's safe to say are progressives, I can help but find the irony here that the some off the types of people here who are so ready to spout the utopia of multiculturalism and moral relativism, accept all other cultures' desire to keep theirs alive and consider it prejudiced or even racist to pass judgment on how other cultures and societies choose to live their lives -- who are we to judge (just look at the uproar over "racists" who question any aspect of Muslim culture as being islamophobic) are always so ready to do the opposite when it comes to the Jews. Now why is that?
4
Explaining the polarities within the modern Jewish world today is fine for intelligent non-Jews to explore. But, why did Mr. Douthat have to state that 1. the ultra fecund ultra orthodox…, as if some Jews having large families are so offensive to him and 2. calling Jews the chosen people. Yep, we sure have been chosen, to be hated and exterminated on one end, and ridiculed and scorned for even thinking we have an obligation to maintain our religion. And didn't Christianity supposedly supplant Judaism as the new and improved chosen?
Aw, come on, you could have found a better ending that isn't so derogatory.
4
The real question is how many Jews will vote for Trump in 2020? Let us hope it will be more than 4 years earlier.
1
Let us hope that it is none of us.
The fact is, most 'Jews' in the U.S. and Canada outside of the orthodox are Jewish in name only. They do not observe basic Jewish religious obligations (shabbat, kosher, etc.). They do not speak Yiddish or Hebrew. Thy are several generations removed from ancestors who were ethnically Jewish and are now culturally American, nothing else. They will never live in Israel. Celebrating Jewish tradition, visiting Israel, fundraising for Israel, occasionally participating in a Jewish holiday, memorializing the Holocaust- these do not constitute being Jewish. This is painful to accept fr a lot of contemporary descendants of Jews but it is true. Israelis and the orthodox Diaspora are the Jewish traditon. The Liberal Judaism by which many continue to define themselves (if they even bother to go that far) is not really Jwish but an academically invented, ideologically driven lifestyle choice. It is Judaism twisted and mutilated into a product to sell the lifestyle consumer. True Judaism is a contract with G-d. It is a set of legal obligations to G-d, which you're bound to fulfill. Judaism is not there for you; you are there for Judaism. If you don't agree with Jewish law and practice and tradition, then why bother? If you find it too conservative or patriarchal or just inconvenient, then leave it for good. The 'Jewish-American', like African American or Irish American is a faux identity, a self-serving myth for Americans who find the ahistoricality of being an American uncomfortable.
4
There is another important force that Douthat misses, rendering his view a bit simplistic as a result: the growing number of American Jews who see in Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people a deep betrayal of the Jewish values with which they were raised.
7
Hard to believe that a column that includes Jewish Nationalism references fails to mention the apartheid state that Netanyahu is beginning to create with the recent passage of Jewish self-determination laws. This will drive liberal Jews even further to the left, and likely create an exodus from Israel of Jewish people who will not tolerate a nationalist homeland.
I have always admired the way Jewish culture is passed down through generations, their reverence for knowledge, and the commitment to never forget the past. Netanyahu and the ultra Orthodox Jews have conveniently forgotten what it was like to be marginalized as people, their property stolen, driven from their lands, and held behind fences, as they are doing now to the Palestinians.
The greatest atrocities in history have been committed under Nationalism or religion. Netanyahu is now combining them.
1
Historical forces are such that eventually American Jews will, in Venn Diagram terms, be a subset of "Americans" not "Jews."
2
Polls show that Orthodox Jews are the religious group SECOND most likely to vote for Democrats rather than Republicans. The religious group MOST likely to vote for Democrats are the more liberal Jews. (Unitarians come third.) So this Op Ed is based on an exaggeration of the division among Jews, encouraged by a few loud voices at either extreme.
1
Somehow we've managed to survive for over 5,000 years and Israel since 1948. Judaism is based on debating laws and their meanings so I think we're good for another 5,000 years. Politics whether Nazism, antisemitism or other isms have all failed to destroy us so a blip on our history like Bibi etal vs liberal humanism won't even make a dent. But thanks for your concern Ross.
2
There is nothing "militant left" about human rights or being morally consistent. Zionism is a virulent form of nationalism that is the antithesis of Judaic values and teachings and the disease that almost wiped us out in Europe. Isreal has, over the last decades, through its oppression of Palestinians and its increased right-wing extremism, sacrificed the last threads of its legitimacy. Decent Jews know this though a history of living with hatred and fear make it hard to admit out loud.
3
It's hard to be a religion, a tribe and a nation state that claims to be democratic. Dump numbers one and two, or dump the third.
2
I grew up orthodox in the non-Jewish suburbs. Raised in Jewish summer camps and day schools, I never heard the word Palestine before college. In time however I could not escape a nagging truth: religious nationalism is inherently anti-democratic, everywhere. There is no way around it. Our response to the holocaust should have been to fight for religious and minority rights in all countries, not try to nationalize our religion and establish our own ethno-nationalist bunker. I now stand with those brave liberal rabbis who continued to oppose Zionism after the war, like Elmer Berger, and am ready to make common cause with my religious neighbors in Williamsburg, the stridently anti-Zionist Satmars.
90
@Matt
Jews have been fighting for religious and minority rights in all countries, but until racism is eliminated, we Jews need Israel.
Jews had been persecuted for centuries in majority-gentile countries. Even when not actively persecuting the Jews, the majority-gentile countries refused to give refuge to the Jews when they needed it. There would have been no Holocaust if majority-gentile countries would have allowed in Jewish refugees who were escaping from the Nazis. The idea of Zionism was that Jews would return to their homeland & have a majority-Jewish country because majority-gentile countries had failed to provide safety for the Jews.
After reading the article and the comments, I'm surprised at the clinging to binary analyses and solutions: right vs left, support Israel or don't, support Palestinians or don't. As a Jew, I can certainly support the right of Israel to exist AND simultaneously find demagogue Netanyahu's apartheid-like policies and bromance with authoritarian leaders distasteful. I want him gone from power post haste. I also recognize that far more Israeli civilians are killed by Arab civilians, than Arab civilians are killed by Israeli civilians, and that attacking Israeli civilians is not an effective way to counter Israeli military actions. What American Jews need to do is apply as much pressure as they can to undermine Netanyahu, including withdrawal of all financial support emanating from liberal Jews. If trump's Jews want to keep Netanyahu in power, let them pay for it and then experience the financial sanctions from the liberal American Jews....the ones who abide by tikkun olan.
103
@GariRae Au contraire about who has killed the most.
Between January 1 and November 6, 2017, Israeli security forces killed 62 Palestinians, including 14 children, and injured at least 3,494 Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, including protesters, suspected assailants or members of armed groups, and bystanders. Palestinians killed at least 15 Israelis during this same time, including 10 security officers, and injured 129 in conflict-related incidents in the West Bank and Israel.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/israel/palestine
2
@GariRae -- "far more Israeli civilians are killed by Arab civilians, than Arab civilians are killed by Israeli civilians"
Israel has a military to do its dirty work, and it does so to the tune of hundreds to one, by design. The Arabs don't. Therefore, the comparison is loaded and unfair.
3
A popular joke making the rounds in Israel: "What is the difference between Donald Trump and a Jewish American liberal? Answer: Trump has Jewish grandchildren."
3
...and what do they have in common? Neither one cares.
2
My story is a very brutal one: Mass societies do not tolerate minorities. This is an old story in history. Since frictions inside society get worse and worse every year, there will come a point when the majority will deny the right of existence to a minority and will shove them aside and kill them, just to get rid of them.
This sounds like a fantasy or like a Nazi pogrom. But it isn't. To get rid of "unwanted" people will become a normality, since everybody thinks of his own welfare due to climate change, joblessness and/or plain hunger. The loss of empathy can already be noticed.
1
When a Gentile (a goy in the vernacular) writes; "As for whether this divergence will ultimately be, as they say, good for the Jews — well, that’s a question this Gentile columnist leaves to the chosen people to debate." That is when the alarm bells go off. You see, Ross, we are not "the chosen people" at least not in the sense that you write. The Jews have been chosen by G-d for observance and upholding G-d's laws. "Chosen people" does not mean special treatment by G_d or a special mission or people with special powers and abilities including the myth of superior Jewish intellect and Jewish wealth.
Regrettably Ross, you are not capable of understanding Jews, Jewish history and tradition. You can't. You're, well, you're a goy. Jews are complicated, frustrating, annoying, successful, mean, married, single, divorced, good, bad, warm, cold and they even engage in internecine warfare leaving Jewish bodies on the battlefield of tribal and clan warfare. Jews and being Jewish is messy business.
So, Ross, don't even try to explain liberal politics, Israel, conservatism, orthodoxy, Judaism or anything else Jewish. I'm Jewish. After 71 years of orthodox, conservative, reformed and now mixed marriages among my own children I don't know any thing. I certainly don't understand Jewish politics or Israeli politics.
Leave this one alone Ross. Just be a good columnist and a good Christian. Trying to understand the Jews will be a train wreck. Let us kill each other. Its safer.
4
As a single mom who is Jewish, I can relate to some of the criticisms raised in this opinion piece. And don’t mind it pointing out conflict within a group that’s not the author’s.
But I am stunned by this author’s apparent utter lack of self-awareness and of historical knowledge and cultural awareness as he speaks of “cosmopolitanism” of the Jews, who he describes as being rather two-faced, or deceiving — to gentiles by presenting themselves one way publicly (in this case, liberal) while internally really being something else (conservative, in this case). All this as he also chooses to depict Jewish Americans as being all about one thing: their own self-preservation via “liberal cosmopolitanism”. I swear, I had to do a double-take to be sure I was still reading The New York Times, and not the Daily Stormer!
Is the author (and the NYT Editors!) so within his own genteel gentile bubble that he’s totally unfamiliar with how the word “cosmopolitan(ism)” and, sometimes, “liberal” often are used by anti-Semitic white supremacists and others who think that dribble like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion isn’t a defamatory danger but common sense??
And then he caps it all off with a thinly-veiled nervous-joke of a disclaimer that he’s not one of those confused, self-destructive and strictly-self-interested “chosen people” (his quotes, not mine), but a clear-thinking, clean-dealing, and “of course not at all hostile to those poor Jewish people” (quotes mine) Gentile!
9
Is this article about tribalism?
1
One cannot overstate the tension for many non-orthodox American Jews - our relationship to Israel is near the breaking point. Our faces flame red with shame and embarrassment as we see Palestinian lives ground to dust and defeat. Each successive government coalition kisses the rings of orthodox madmen, fawns over the most ignorant and mendacious evangelical Americans who only support Israel as a means to hasten the literal Apocalypse, rejects the Jewishness of Jews who can’t prove their religious purity, and now cozies up to dictators. Comparison of today’s Israeli policies to the Israel we learn and pray about is grotesque.
4
In cultivating friends like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, on the grounds that joining an alliance of conservative nationalisms actually offers a surer ground for the Jewish state’s survival, Netanyahu risks becoming like the Finnish Jews who fought for Hitler because both opposed the Soviet Union. It is always dangerous to betray your people in the mistaken belief that it is the only way to save them.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/museums/10682975/The-Jews-who-fought...
1
"This combination has often frustrated more thoroughgoing conservatives — Jewish ones especially — who don’t understand why more American Jews don’t extend their conservative impulses beyond the tribe and vote Republican."
Maybe it's because, conservative impulses notwithstanding, they reject science denialism, idiot economics, kowtowing to the wealthy, anti-Hispanic bigotry, environmental degradation, suppression of minority voters, and other not-very-attractive policies favored by Republicans.
My question is why do you, and the conservatives you are talking about, accept these things and vote Republican?
1
It is interesting that Israel identifies its number 1 enemy as a religious state also. Also with a history of being destroyed. Wonder what else they have in common?
As religion continues to disappear from the Western World, the issue of intermarriage will disappear as well...not only for Jews.
Ross is no longer content with running the Catholic Church. Now he wants to tell us Jews what we should or should not believe.
Who died and made Douthat God?
1
It seems to me that when it comes to Israel, both the ultra-Orthodox Israeli settlers/nationalists and the strident US-based AIPAC types are both useful idiots in service to Netanyahu’s larger project - keeping global suspicion of Jews high enough that the west, and especially the US, will feel obligated to support Israel no matter what domestic policies the country promulgates.
All across Europe, for example, we hear of higher-than-ever rates of bias attacks against Jews, with a major share of blame assigned to an influx of Muslim migrants. It is clear that Palestine is a major motivating factor.
Were Netanyahu to do anything to resolve the Palestine situation, he would be simultaneously dissatisfying his political base and rendering Israel less relevant as a ‘home of last resort’ for the Jewish diaspora. Instead, by helping to perpetuate distrust of Jews and Israel outside of the country, he makes the case that Israel is a necessary bulwark against the destruction of the Jewish people. It is a pro-Israel policy with destructive consequences for the diaspora, myself included.
It will surely accelerate the assimilation and inter-marriage amongst secular Jews. But it will also redefine Judaism into something much more behavioral and ideological, rather than an ethnic category. Frankly, I wouldn’t be shocked if in a few years reform/secular Jews of the diaspora are not considered Jewish by the state of Israel.
5
The current mindset of Israel is nationalist. The same pre WWII nationalist mindset that almost destroyed civilization. That mindset is growing again in European countries, the U.S. and is quickly spreading like the plague across every border. Then we can all get out our nuclear devises and finish the job.
This is not a Jewish problem or an Israel problem. This is a human problem, exacerbated by almost 8 billion humans stressing the planet. The human race has a lot more to worry about than the sex lives and marriage commitments of individuals. That focus, for Jews and gentiles alike, is a weird "Nero fiddling while Rome burned" scenario.
2
It has been 75 years and 2 or 3 generations since World War Two. Making nice with Orban, or Erdogan or even Trump, would be unthinkable to the generation that dealt with Mussolini, Franco, Quisling and Hitler.
From Herod to Bannon, the enemies have always made themselves obvious. Pretending they mean well for the Jews has never ended well.
5
“As for whether this divergence will ultimately be, as they say, good for the Jews — well, that’s a question this Gentile columnist leaves to the chosen people to debate.”
The tongue in cheekiness (pun intended) of Ross’ last line so ignores the long tradition of both scholarship and searching self-reflection by Jewish people about the meaning of being “chosen.” It also seems unselfconsciously to ignore how often nonJewish people have referenced that term with resentment and ridicule and used it as an excuse to demean — or much worse — Jewish individuals, Jewish ways, and the Jewish people as a whole.
In so doing, this opinion piece becomes less a considered analysis of a careful observer, and more an inconsiderate affront by a careless and ridiculing onlooker.
One would have expected more — more awareness and more forethought and more respectfulness — from a New York Times columnist.
2
What, where and why is there a " Jewish crossroads"?
About 80% of the world's 16 million Jews are evenly divided between America and Israel. America's Jews live in a divided limited power constitutional republic of united states that is good safe and secure for the 2% of Americans who are Jews.
While the 40% of Jews who live in Israel deny that the 6 million Christian Muslim Arab Palestinian Israelis living under the dominion of 6.1 million Israeli Jews by occupation, blockade/siege, exile and 2nd class citizenship are divinely naturally created equal with certain unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The Holocaust was not perpetrated in America by Americans against other Americans. There is no American state, territory nor possession named Israel. America does not deserve nor need an ally like Israel. There is no place for American Christians in their Holy Land in the two-state solution.
Israel can be Jewish or democratic. It cannot be both. Israel is no more a democracy than were slave and Jim Crow era America and apartheid era South Africa.
8
My comments are on the comments, not the article. They fall into a few depressingly familiar patterns, including:
1. Yes, you're right! Netanyahu betrays Jewish values!
2. No, you're wrong, you anti-semite! Your critiques are blood libel used by Nazis!
3. You're sometimes right, but, you ignorant lout, if you took the time to read the texts you'd see that the stuff you think is bad is explicitly authorized.
<Sigh.>
Like any other major movement, there's enough in Judaism's fractal teaching to cover the waterfront, from 'welcome the stranger' to 'slaughter the stranger (Amalekite,Canaanite)'. Everything's ambiguous.
What one needs is a way forward - how to preserve the best traditions based on some reasonable consensus (presumably not butchering chickens in a large stone building, though a small, passionate minority may think that's essential) in a manner consistent with the principles those traditions represent. If, for example, that consensus decides those traditions are deeply exclusionary, it should accept that conclusion openly, as well as the loss of a large cohort that won't agree. For example, either welcome the stranger, or don't, or spell out the circumstances when you will; be clear about it, accept the consequences and move forward.
We live in a world where everyone wants to have it both ways: be charitable and accepting, yet safeguard our culture; be radical and uncompromising, but also loving and nurturing.
It's depressing, and prevents serious debate.
3
The uncomfortable rude noise that disrupts the sermon to a congregation sitting reverantly in a house of worship.........the concept of a "Jewish State" is completely out of sync with the Liberal Democratic Ideals of the Modern Age!! It is impossible to avoid the shrill accusations of "anti-semitism!!" "holocaust denier!!" "nazi" "bad person".....but it must be endured.....the Truth shall set you free............Israel is implementing policies that are, truthfully, very much like those of extremely Oppressive Regimes such as Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. It would be instructive for everyone to refer back to Dr. Seuss's texts which should be accepted as part of the Mishnah Torah! "Star Bellied Sneechs" How is possible to deny that so-called "palestinians" are not also "israelis"??? And to claim that israelis are jews and jews only??? this goes against everything ever written in the Talmud, the Mishnah, and everywhere else around the world!!
3
Douthat relies on a false dichotomy here. The call for the full *inclusion* of those who don't match traditional familialism is not a demand to rid Jewish communities of either traditional families or religious devotion. It just asks for an end to stigma and exclusion.
At a certain level, the notion of "continuity" is an illusion: Jewish life in the US is changing as young people become less traditionalist, but Jewish life in Israel is also changing as people become more nationalist and give greater power to the ultra orthodox.
Traditionalism can be radical and disruptive: there is no better illustration of that fact that the rightward turn in Israel.
Anyone else have trouble following the thought path here? Convoluted if not tortured argument here.
8
Dear Ross ,
You have hit upon very sensitive Jewish issues. Assimilation being the most important.I grew up in a Kosher home, where Chinese food was served on Paper Plates with plastic throw away utensils.Where marrying out of religion was
forbidden. My son fell in love with a beautiful Hispanic Catholic,girl.
Based on my own experience with a Gentile girl who I was in love with, my Mother was adamant in preventing this marriage, & being a nice Jewish boy who worshiped my mother , I consented to break off my relationship.The only question I asked my son about his relationship with this Catholic girl is , do You Love Her ? His answer was yes, & with that I gave the relationship my blessing. They have three beautiful children, who are my Pride & Joy. She's an Attorney & he's a Surgeon .To please me she consented to raise the children Jewish, although, this would not have been a deal breaker..
If I knew then, she was a Conservative Republican , I would never have consented to their relationship.
8
The Jewish crossroads is the same as the Christian, Islamic, or any other religion. They are the same in that they are a human construct, much like the lines on a map to denote a certain tribe, much like the idea of one ''race'' over another, or much like the idea of time itself.
The push and pull is merely whether to be rigid in trying to promote or protect an orthodoxy, or to open to an evolving of new ideas which ultimately will bring us all together.
The idea of life is coming full circle, since if you go back far enough, we all come from the same tribe and are brothers and sisters. Eventually we will get back to this idea, after centuries upon centuries of trying to think we are different.
We aren't.
3
Israel, like most Nations, including ours, has let Religion lead the country. Our Country was founded on Separation of Church and State. We have allowed our politicians to cross the line and not keep distance from religious beliefs.
When a Country forgets about this fundamental tenet, freedoms and dignity of its people are jeopardized.
And the next thing that happens is what is happening all over the world right now. Dictatorship. And religious beliefs that become Nationalized. Religious wars pitching Muslims against Christians, Christians against Buddhists and so on. Most religions seem to be about separating people from one another. Most religions believe they are the one true Religion, a false premise if I ever heard one.
When Israel was founded, David ben-Gurion established a nation based on freedom and morality, not religion.
As did the Founding Fathers in the United States.
We all forget this at our peril. This truth is being proven every day.
Morality is getting lost. Trump and Netanyahu are two peas in a pod. Not a moral bone in their bodies. And many other World Leaders have none as well. This does not bode well for humanity, never mind religion.
As far as Cohen is concerned, it is not his Jewishness that has gotten him into trouble. It was his entitled behavior as a man, sexually harassing women, that got him into trouble.
2
This person writes "When Israel was founded, David ben-Gurion established a nation based on freedom and morality, not religion." That is not true.
Israel was founded by the nations of the Allies because none of them wanted to take in the living victims of Hitler from the concentration camps and the ones hiding in Europe. It was founded as a Jewish state and the Jewish homeland, where the Jewish religion was the state religion. At the time, like other countries with state religions, Israel had a policy of acceptance, toleration, and equality toward other religions, since it contained the holiest places of the Muslim, Christian, and other religions. Thus the state has a three day weekend, with a day of rest for each group to celebrate in its way. But it was always by intention a religion based country, the Jewish homeland by clear intent.
2
After reading Mr. Douthat's last paragraph I turned to the comment section to read if anyone else had the same reaction I had. Turns out more than one responder did. "Snide" is the most charitable description that I could come up with.
3
I'm as old as Israel. I'm tired of 70 years of strife and war and staring down everyone who doesn't agree. If we wanted peace, we would have found a way.
But our way is to exclude them from our homeland, and their way is to take back to their homeland. Apparently, we never considered living together.
4
@Occupy Government
A big part of the problem is that Israel has never let the Palestinian refugees return for the 70 years of Israel.
When the Zionist declared Israel out of half of Palestine in 1948 and war broke out, many Palestinians took their families across the borders to Lebanon and Jordan to wait out the fighting and expecting to return. They have never been able to return.
So someone born in Haifa, whose family goes back 1,000 years, cannot be a citizen of where he was born. But a Jew born anywhere in the world can be a citizen of Haifa.
And over the last years now we have the constant increase of Jewish settlements.
So it is not so much they want to take back their homeland, the refugees want to return.
And the West Bank wants to keep the half of Palestine they were left with after Israel took the other half.
Certainly you can find Hamas, etc. who say they want to take back their land, but they make money from that.
Most Palestinians and Arabs recognize Israel is not going away.
@Occupy Government
Question.
Who attacked who.
Answer Israel has never attacked her neighbors.
It was the Muslims who fought to destroy Israel.
You can't have peace if the other side won't let you live in peace.
We want peace.
The other side doesn't.
Israel has only two choices.
They can defend themselves when they are attacked or not fight back and let themselves be killed.
There is an underlying theme in many of the comments here of Israel as oppressor. I wonder to what standard they are being held. Many "artificial" states were authenticated after WWI, and yet no-one questions their authenticity - think Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, etc.
Israel, after its artificial creation, was subjected to homicidal, aggressive invasion, but Israel had the audacity to survive. There is a distinction between survival and oppression. Were Israel to lay down its arms and open its arms to the "oppressed," what would be the result? This is not a religious question, but an existential one. Double standard has always been my first thought, and I wonder how steeped in anti-Judaism that double standard is rooted?
13
@sdc71
A big part of the problem is that Israel has never let the Palestinian refugees return for the 70 years of Israel.
When the Zionist declared Israel out of half of Palestine in 1948 and war broke out, many Palestinians took their families across the borders to Lebanon and Jordan to wait out the fighting and expecting to return. They have never been able to return.
So someone born in Haifa, whose family goes back 1,000 years, cannot be a citizen of where he was born. But a Jew born anywhere in the world can be a citizen of Haifa.
And over the last years now we have the constant increase of Jewish settlements.
So it is not so much they want to take back their homeland, the refugees want to return.
And the West Bank wants to keep the half of Palestine they were left with after Israel took the other half.
Certainly you can find Hamas, etc. who say they want to take back their land, but they make money from that.
Most Palestinians and Arabs recognize Israel is not going away.
There is also a simpler dynamic at work. On the margin, more Jews emigrate to Israel when anti Semitism grows. Therefore, Israelis couldn't care less if anti Semitism grows, in fact it showcases Israel's importance. Conversely, the liberal order promotes intermarriage and reduces tribal tensions, leading Jewish Israelis to flee from the constant conflict with Palestinians to more civilized havens in the US or Europe.
Israel is a foreign country. Younger Jewish Americans are uncomplicated in being Americans first and foremost, and this naturally promotes intermarriage, as with other groups. This is a good thing for America.
The knee-jerk support of Israel Douthat describes translates to unconditional support of Israel's government, which inevitably pushes it to the right. Attaching conditions to this support would motivate Israelis to find better solutions to their problems, and to reach out more actively to their neighbors rather than play eternal victim.
3
Seriously, I can’t believe that the best, most thoughtful and balanced article I have read on this subject is from a right leaning, Christian conservative. Kudos to the author.
1
This rightward-leftward argument disguises perhaps a more important trend: a sharp turn to the right among Americans who identify as Jewish. When the latter historically were concerned about their own individual rights many made common cause with others in the same boat--as in the civil rights movement. Now with rights secure, not so much.
6
As a non-Jewish person, with Jewish friends, I can better understand the various pulls that tug at the tribal trends contained within their "tribe". For that matter, each "tribe" in society feels the same pulls - often over-riding logic and common sense. The word "culture" is often used to disguise or camouflage bad ideas. For any group to be self-critical is not easy - too often, those who criticize bad ideas are accused of being racist or xenophobic, even though their criticism is directed toward a set of bad ideas.
5
I was born Jewish, attended an Orthodox synagogue growing up (although we were NOT religious in everyday life), graduated from Brandeis and a life-long Zionist, I also consider myself a liberal in the classic sense of the word. However, as an adult who subsequently came out gay, married the love of my life (a man) and who is now non-practicing of any faith, I've been forced to confront some serious realities of late. First, although 70% of American Jews are not Orthodox and notwithstanding the fact that Israel survives because of the support of America and American Jews, Israel's religious life is entirely controlled by Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Conservative and Reformed conversions, for instance, aren't recognized. Second, Netanyahu disregarded established precedent by speaking to a GOP Congress, circumventing then-President Obama. Third, Israel has gone back on their promises to recognize same-sex marriages (at least those performed abroad) and grant full legal secular status to same-sex couples in Israel. There are other reasons that I could cite to explain why I am no longer a "at any cost I will not criticize Israel" Jew. Israel is going in the WRONG direction, spurning causes that are close to my heart and embracing reactionary policies in a way heretofore unknown in that country. The threat of imminent destruction is passed so the bellicose policies of the last 15-odd years has damaged Israel's standing in the eyes of those who's support it needs.
370
@ManhattanWilliam Your assertations about Israeli law and orthodoxy aren't accurate. Conservative and Reform conversions performed outside Israel are recognized by the state and can form the basis for a citizenship claim based on "The Law of Return", just as for any other Jew.
Israel does recognize same sex marriages performed abroad and also recognizes same sex couples as "common law" married couples. Same sex couples have the same rights as other couples in virtually every area of law, with a couple of exceptions. Those are likely also to be dealt with positively in upcoming legislation.
18
@DH I am an American Jew, and my wife is a Palestinian American from a Muslim family. Israel does not have civil marriage of any kind, and no religious authority inside Israel on her side or mine would marry us.
Please don't tell me that Israel doesn't have worrying theocratic tendencies. Same sex couples have to leave the country and get married elsewhere and you view this as having the same rights as everyone else?
Then you should move to Israel and vote out Likkud, rather than rant 6000 miles away and only end up giving Israel-obsessed haters who'd find some other reason to hate it if it wasn't backtracking on gay rights another convenient fig leaf to hide behind.
External liberalism is not inherently incompatible with internal conservatism. One can have a strong sense of self without being hostile to those who are different. One can be secure in one’s own values while simultaneously recognizing that not everyone will share those values. Indeed, tolerance to those who are different is a core principle of Judaism. As the Bible repeatedly admonishes, “do not oppress the stranger, for you, too, were strangers in Egypt.”
Assimilation, however, is different from tolerance. I can love and respect my neighbors and defend their rights to live as equals regardless of their color, beliefs or customs, but I cannot adopt those beliefs and customs at the expense of my own without losing an aspect of myself in the process. Tolerance is a virtue, but it is not the only virtue. Judaism is about more than being the Democratic Party at prayer.
9
How is it anti-liberal to support Israel, I wonder? Why are the two incompatible as implied in this piece? And why does a faction of American liberalism support Hamas - which oppresses women, gays and anyone who does not support and agree with Hamas? I see American liberals as having the crisis in intellectual consistency, not Jews. What other nation state in the world is questions about its right to exist when one disagrees with it's democratically elected leader? I've never heard liberals call China "self destructive" or the brutally oppressive Islamic regimes in Turkey or Saudi Arabia as self destructive and question their right to exist. The anti-Semitism that oozes out of the left while claiming to support all marginalized people...except Jews is striking - and it scares me more than the Nazi marchers in Charlottesville. From this faction of the western liberal I see endless demands of what Israel "must do" to exist - but never one demand of Palestinians. The hypocrisy is fuele by anti_semitism - no matter how strongly the denial
35
You can lament the prejudices of liberals all you want, but look out, because the real enemy of Jews and other minorities, as well as the common man in general, are the kleptocrats, the oligarchs, the ones who want to take away our rights and suck us dry. It ain't the liberals you gotta worry about, it's the fascists with a small or large F. Wake up and smell the coffee! They're at the gates and can't wait to sink their teeth in.
@Dana it is anti-liberal to support *the current Israeli administration* because it is enforcing apartheid. Israel is not BB, however, any more than the US is Trump.
@Dana
This is not only wrong but crazy. Liberals do not support Hamas, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, etc. and don't pontificate on a state's right to exist. We just insist that all states behave decently and respect human rights.
The Nazi Nuremberg Race Laws of 1933-34 were patterned on U.S. "Jim Crow" laws, and sought to disenfranchise and disempower German Jews just as the "Jim Crow" laws sought to disenfranchise and disempower freed African-Americans.
This also seems to have been copied into the wording of Pat Buchanan's keynote address to the 1992 GOP Convention, declaring the U.S.A. a "christian nation." This flies in the face of the First Amendment to our Constitution. A little voice in my mind went off when I heard this: "Jüden nicht erwünscht--Jews not wanted," and I realized that the GOP opportunists considered our founding documents toilet paper, and to achieve permanent political and financial power would throw any real notion of Christ's sole commandment into the toilet.
The Netanyahu coalition just passed a statute declaring Israel a Jewish state and effectively disempowering non-Jews residing there. This is against Israel's own founding documents. The Holocaust provided the cause of a Jewish homeland with legitimacy; Netanyahu and his opportunistic coalition just threw that legitimacy away and copied our oppressors. They are worse than an embarrassment.
25
Netanyahu is worse than that. From the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, three years ago:
"In a speech before the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, Netanyahu described a meeting between Husseini and Hitler in November, 1941: 'Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jew. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, "If you expel them, they'll all come here (to Palestine)."' According to Netanyahu, Hitler then asked: 'What should I do with them?' and the mufti replied: 'Burn them.'"
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/netanyahu-absolves-hitler-of-guilt-1...
5
Yesterday the son of your President called democratic platform nazilike, he said Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are nazis. I am a Jew but not an America. It is about time we stopped coddling the right wing in both Israel and the USA with a word more appropriate than conservative. You can't be a Jew or a Christian and support Trump or Netanyahu. Hate mongering is hate mongering and should bring shame to both Republicans and Likudniks who have even a trace of understanding of the difference between right and wrong.
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/trump-jr-says-democratic-nazi-platforms-...
29
A One State Solution is inevitable
Stop the utter nonsense...Israeli Jews who are atheists! Yet...They resent right wing Jews who actually believe in the religion! How can someone be a “non believing Jew” and call themselves Israeli? What’s the difference between a non-believing Jew and a Palestinian?
... A One State Solution is what will happen...
If you are born In Israel, you are Israeli. If you are born in America, you are American. If you live in Israel, you can be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, atheist or any religion. You can be an American Jew, or a Mexican Muslim or an American Christian. Palestinians think Palestine is a country which no one else recognizes. Most Palestinians are Muslim, some could be atheists.
So if you "believe" you're good, and if you don't "believe" you're bad. So I guess you become good by "making yourself" believe. What silliness. How many religions are there? How many denominations within each? Who actually BELIEVES what they read in the Torah or any other holy book? Do you think the Rambam or the current Pope, or anyone with open eyes takes this material seriously? No, they seek meaning in the writings of the past. So what, really, is believing all about? It's about a declaration of identity. It's not really about belief.
1
The true religion of young liberal American jews is total Jewish illiteracy. Only the idea of not knowing your language, your Torah, your history and your culture to such an extreme degree can spawn the hubris of 'tikkun olam', of assuming one knows what is best in order to repair the world. Israel has not so much moved to the right as stood by watching in horror the total spiritual, intellectual and cultural debasement of American Jewry as it adopts its new sacred cow, Bernie Sanders and the intersectionalized miasma that is political correctness. So, yes, the chasm is unbridgeable until and unless there is some unexpected Jewish epiphany in America. It is not with a any great pleasure that we in Israel anticipate the day we have to recite kaddish for a once great Jewish community that willfully died at its own hand.
13
Perhaps it is time that we liberal Jews recite Kaddish for the right wing Jews of Israel.
1
@JJ Gross. While we’re saying Kaddish for us, we’ll be saying Kaddish for you. The most right wing government in Israel’s history. A one-state solution in which non-Jews are third-class citizens. An abandonment of democracy. A rentier class of ultra Orthodox Jews who expect secular Jews to support their yeshivas but won’t lift a finger to defend the country. And on and on. I’ll take Bernie Sanders over Bibi Netanyahu any day. Let’s see how long Bibi can keep the plates spinning before he gets hauled off to jail.
3
As an American Jew, I am also appalled at the ignorance and illiteracy of the younger (and older) generations of Jewish Americans. The Israelis are more literate (as I am) due to the education they received in Jewish history and culture, as well, of course, as their (and my) fluency in the language. I value my Jewish identity and I wish it went beyond nostalgia here in America.
But at the same time, I must add that since the advent of the discoveries of Galileo and everyone following him, I'm really surprised that any organized religion continues to survive. The things one says to God in any religion, the repetitive compliments and endless begging for attention and favors really makes no sense to me. Yet, we continue doing it for the sake of preservation. It's a conundrum. Religion proves that what we're seeing right now politically is nothing new. A large portion of the population will believe things that make absolutely no sense, even when the facts are staring them in the face. Rational thought is more of a tool than a method of understanding our world.
Sorry for the rant!
Worse than Netanyahoo cozying up to Viktor Orban is his thoroughly unholy alliance with Saudi Arabia, in league to demonize Iran. Perhaps BeeBee should check out what those Saudi funded madrassas are teaching about Israel, Judiasm and Jews.
28
Netenyahu cultivating friends like Orban is like Ben Gurionmaking his peace with Mussolini.
Or better still Chamberlain waving his white piece of surrender paper.
Only Netenyahu and his supporters are too drunk on their emotions to see that clearly.
13
The 1st thing to note in Douthat ' piece is his choice, in the last sentence, to refer to Jews using the loaded and suspect term "chosen people". The 2nd thing to notice is his use of the "Islamic antisemitism" in complete ignorance of the fact that in much of Jewish, Israeli, and Palestinian prose the terms "Israeli" and "Jewish" are frequently and often improperly used as synonyms. Thus using analyses that purposefully cast all opposition to Israel's current policies as "antisemitism" he uses the meme of "Islamic antisemitism". Finally, like most Conservatives miffed by the failure of American Jews to vote Republican, he confuses the interests of Israel and all of its residents with the interests of advancing the extreme nationalist and clericalist political agenda of Netanyahu's coalition.
Douthat did get one thing right. The jewish community may not be able to survive the the schism between those that want to make the Jewish community into a support network for the Netanyahu government' and those who who treasure a vibrant diverse and evolving Jewish community.
5
@Benjamin ben-baruch
"The 1st thing to note in Douthat ' piece is his choice, in the last sentence, to refer to Jews using the loaded and suspect term "chosen people". The 2nd thing to notice is his use of the "Islamic antisemitism...."
Benjamin, are you accusing Russ of anti-semanticism?
2
'The 2nd thing to notice is his use of the "Islamic antisemitism" ...'
The first thing to notice is the phrase Douthat actually uses: "Islamist anti-Semitism".
The second thing to notice is that "Islamist" is not the same as "Islamic". In the following sense, there is a parallel with "Zionism":
"Islamism: 2 : a popular reform movement advocating the reordering of government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam" (Merriam-Webster)
"Zionism: an international movement originally for the establishment of a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine and later for the support of modern Israel" (Merriam-Webster)
NB: M-W doesn't give specific definitions for "Islamist" and "Zionist".
I think the matter goes deeper. For the Left politics occupies the place in the psyche that the Right kicks upstairs to Religion. On the Left this impulse vents (and implodes) in activism. The absolutism of the Left demands a shared Palestinian/Jewish state, which would become a Palestinian state within weeks. Voters know this, and vote Right because voting Left is suicide. The Left's impossible utopian rhetoric is both its potency and longevity,: a chicken in every pot (potency), as long as the chickens never come home to roost (longevity). The true doctrine, the masses are always told, has yet to be tried. Well, the doctrine of the Left (and none is to the left of secular Zionism) could be tried in Israel, but too many on the Left see the handwriting on the wall. The Left's chickens have come home to roost, and decided that Paris is worth a Mass. There will never be a Jewish-Palestinian state, and they know this absolutely. It will not end here. The theocracy will now have to take aim at Tel Aviv.
1
This: "Benjamin Netanyahu has embraced the view that European Jewry’s old enemy, Christian nationalism, is less dangerous to the Jewish future than the dissolving effects of liberal cosmopolitanism and the threat posed by Islamist anti-Semitism." is not shifting to the right, it's simply recognizing the truth about who are Israel and Judaism's friends and who are not. Douthat has succumbed to the same anti-Bibi-sm as nearly all the left. Americans and American Jews should simply support the one democracy in the middle east and the only country (except the US) safe for Jews and leave it, Israel, to solve its own problems.
4
In leaving it to solve its own problems, should we stop sending billions of dollars to help solve those problems as it chooses?
5
I am one of those somewhat liberal Democrats who is disgusted with the pandering to Palestinian violence when it is presented as a struggle against an Israeli apartheid.
Nevertheless that doesn't mean I can't see when Israeli politics has resulted in some genuinely apartheid tendencies such as the recent Israeli language legislation.
Palestinians have personal rights that must be observed if Israel is to remain Israel and not fall into the grotesque racist trap that so many ultra-right movements have already done in Europe and the United States.
It may be hard to argue for Israel amongst the recent extremes of Democratic identity politics, whjle keeping the reactionaries amongst the Republicans at bay, but it's not supposed to be easy. It is, however, NECESSARY.
Thank you, Ross Douthat for writing about this issue.
4
Today's the Don Trump Jr article in Haaretz hit me like a ton of bricks.
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/trump-jr-says-democratic-nazi-platforms-...
My family is mostly American and I am descended from many generations of Zionists but my father taught me your worst enemies are the ones that tell you you are one of them.I am as committed against the Israeli right as I am the American right or the Canadian right
I spent some of my life working in Christian churches in the US and Canada and saw the same problem in your churches as I saw among my own people.
In the ultra orthodox and orthodox community (the Lubavitch are too diverse to include in my vision) the further right you were the farther away from historical Judaism you became.
In the USA extreme right or extreme Christian put you at odds with the identity you claimed the loudest.
Tea partiers have no idea the Tea Party was an attack not on government or even taxes it was an attack on ships bearing the flag of the East India Company belonging to the East India Company and tea that was not taxed the power of the East India Company to write laws did not sit well with Boston's tea merchants.
The same seemed to be true of right wing churches the more right wing the church the further away from Jesus their theology seemed to be. The more right wing the less loving and forgiving the church even as for me the essence of My Jesus is loving, giving and forgiving.
2
Ross, you earned your keep with this one!
I am not Jewish, but being in NY and close to this thru friends and business associates...You nailed it. Brilliant!
1
If Mr. Douthat read his Bible more carefully, not skipping over the "Jewish" parts, he would notice that Jews have been disagreeing with, and not seldom fighting with Jews, since before the time when they were Jews, i.e. since the days of being Israelites. I am one of those assimilated, even (horrors!) atheistic, American Jews, who shares the entire cultural and temperamental characteristics of Jewishness, minus the literal belief in supernatural support and with a certain skepticism about what "chosenness" might mean, considering the Holocaust and all. I am a few years older than Israel itself, and regard its metamorphosis with a growing sense of alarm.
I am coming to the opinion that the United States of America has been, with certain lapses, the true Promised Land for us, and am all the more resistant to djt and his alt-right buddies for that reason, besides feeling a real kinship with all the "others" threatened by the abomination in the WH who daily defiles Abe LIncoln's chair. As with all else in human affairs, the saving of the US as a place where the lines on the Statue of Liberty are honored (if too often in the breach) is a daily duty and a daily struggle --- since clearly the darker aspects of our nature have not altered that much despite the fine words of the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance.
17
Born Jewish, bar-mitzvahed, taking Jewish holidays off, bringing a quarter to my Hebrew school class to help plant a tree in Israel, experiencing anti-Semitism in college -- that's me. Also "me" is coming to the realization over 70 years that religion is a nice club for those who need it. All religions. They may not foster hate, but they exist to enable the construction of artificial, invisible walls. Now back to my bacon and eggs.
28
@Bigsutty: Very well said!
@Bigsutty
It's your loss.
The fact that people of any faith want to marry someone of the same faith is not new and is in fact quite "normal" sociologically. And all groups, ethnic, religious, racial, go through "assimilation" angst. It is normal for populations under pressure to want to pull inward, but the alignment with Christian Nationalists is a huge mistake. They have turned on the Jewish people before, and they will again when it is expedient for them.
4
As a member of the tribe I find this fascinating. In my 20s while avoiding the front lines in Vietnam as a liberal in med school, I was vigorously pro-Israeli military. Ultimately I became a conservative Republican, learning that actually that is about one third of Jews. This is not a small minority, but still is one amongst American Jews.
1
So you profited from upper class liberal policies that allowed you to escape Vietnam through medical school, then turned into an "I got mine" conservative. I remember your ilk from the 1970s, the "Jews for Nixon" crowd who were precursors to the current "Jews for trump". Too many Jews are forgetting "from whence they came", and shame the history behind tikkun olam.
1
This column describes a problem that is posed by the title Jewish crossroads. I suggest Mr. Douthat , an ardent catholic should, parri passu ,entertain the following op-ed pieces:
1. The Catholic crossroads, where he discusses abortion and the despoilment of the world by overpopulation, the death penalty, gun control, female priests,trans priests, gay marriage, etc. etc,
2. The Protestant crossroads, where he can discuss of the strident debates between Evangelicals and Episcopalians Protestants over many of the same issues that trouble Catholics. Not to mention the untold rifts between other Protestant denominations.
3. The Islamic crossroads where the pros and cons of jihad, the hijab, the burqa, and female genital mutilation can be articulated. Finish it off with a robust discussion of the centuries long rift between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
Being a proud catholic, he might leave no.1to one of his Jewish associates.
14
Agreed! Glad someone else thinks so, too.
My Catholic friends tell me their church is in disarray, after the pedophile scandal has cost them their automatic adherence to church teaching, that and its absolutism, not only on abortion but contraception. Yet they go to church--for the ritual and the music.
As a Jew who believes in the State of Israel as a necessity, but sees Netanyahu as a disaster, one who if unchecked will destroy both democracy and ultimately Zionism, yet in the hope that that's when I get sanity may ultimately prevail and a reasonable government that actually seeks peace will come, I remain in support. But that support is conditional. A Jewish theocracy is not much different than an Islamic one and that's when I get off the train.
14
Celebrate Israel Parade in New York is a demonstration by the New York Jews, probably mostly Democrats, that Israel to them may be a refuge if the things in the US "go wrong". And in the past, things did go wrong for the Jews in other countries where they meddled in internal politics.
As far as the instantaneous political snapshot of Israel is concerned, the major problem is not the left or the right, but the Parchment Curtain drawn by the Orthodox parties across the land that makes all its inhabitants live in its shadow.
3
Alienated younger Jews? I am seventy-six. I am from a Zionist family. And I am nauseated at the behavior of the current Israeli regime. No wonder the Jews in the US who gravitate to authoritarian policies here also support the current Israeli leadership. I don't like tribalism. Still, I have difficulty understanding Mr. Douthat when he talks about Catholics and even more trouble understanding him when he talks about Jews. To paraphrase Woody Allen, I have trouble understanding how the can opener works. How should I know why there are politically conservative Jews?
9
Ross Douthat has certainly provided much super-intellectual food for thought, and I do mean that adjective as a dig, just as he made a dig at the chosen-people idea, which modern Jews have been struggling successfully to reconstruct for almost a hundred years.
I submit that the realities of a humane Israel are definitive, though under-the-surface, and are experienced by a larger percentage of stakeholders than have been recognized by far.
Readers don't know of the Israeli army's secret rescue of large numbers of Christian Yazidi women from ISIL slavery.
Readers don't know of the thousands of victims of the Syrian civil war being treated in Israeli hospitals.
The support of Israel on the part of the radical Jewish left pales in comparison to that of the evangelical Christian right.
Arab interest in a two-state solution appears to be waning. One of the reasons for that is that Arabs know that the government of Israel is better for them than Hamas.
Arab culture and the Hebraic culture of Israel are sibling. Arabs and Israelis share more in common than many are aware of.
Israel has been gaining the upper hand in the region vis-a-vis Iran and has strong allies in the Arab world working towards this end.
Tom Friedman expressed recently that Prime Minister Netanyahu would not be welcome at American university campuses. So be it. Orthodox Jewish communities are a more important source of American strength to him now.
5
It's strange that after all those centuries of being scattered around the globe without a nation of their own, they will now be just about the only people left who still has one, at a time when everyone else is expected to casually cede what was once theirs to whoever comes knocking.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not an anti-semite, or anti-Israel. I think they should have a nation of their own, particularly after all the horrible things they have been through.
All I'm saying is that I would like one, too.
7
What Mr. Douthat fails to discuss is that the distinction between observing and cultural Jews has often been more important to non-Jews than Jews themselves particularly when their survival is at issue.
When the Nazis and their collaborators were extent in Europe, distinctions such as Mr. Douthat discusses were no factor in the survival of any Jew, regardless of the degree of belief or non-belief they held. Simply to have "Jewish blood" was sufficient to be sent to the death camps while non-Jews, here and in Europe, including all major Christian denominations, were mostly silent.
On a less lethal scale, to be a Jew in a Christian country, such as the US, is usually a significant liability outside of the major coastal cities. And even if you disagree with that, you certainly can't argue that it's an advantage.
For this, and many other reasons, Israel passed a nation-state law stating what has always been true since its inception as a nation, that Israel is the nation of and for the Jews, be they observing or non-observing.
Those non-Jews in Israel who may disagree with this have have many nations near and far that they can go to where they would be welcome as a majority. That is not an option available for any Jew. Only Israel, as a Jewish state, offers a place where Jews can control their own destiny. Any other option where Jews could again be a minority in Israel would be a continuation of the threat to their existence a millennia worth of history instructs.
7
I support Israel. I do not support the current government. I support my home country of America. I do not support our current government.
41
Any country that gives preferential legal status to one group over another is setting itself up for endless civil war.
17
@displacedyankee ... quite right. That's what's so troubling about " affirmative action " and race based policies in general.
1
@displacedyankee Read the NYT last week? One story was about the Labour Party under Corbyn coming under fire for Antisemitism by Jewish newspapers. A second article, on the front page no less, was about the increasing attacks on Jews throughout France.
If liberal Western European nations can't/won't do anything to protect its citizens, maybe it's time they migrate to Israel where their status is protected by law. History, as recently 1933-1945, has taught that the only way for Jews to remain safe is to have their own country where they can be protected by law and if necessary the IDF.
1
Israel started out as an experiment in building a nation state for a stateless people. It was surrounded by enemies and it therefore evolved to fight and persevere. It is a democracy with laws, liberties and rights unknown to its neighbors.
It has always been at a crossroads and at a risk of total annihilation. It may be the strongest today, but just wait until tomorrow or next year, just wait until the next crazy woman who becomes POTUS decides that the Jews are the enemy and she tweets about it 12 times a day. It’s not out of the realm of imagination to see how truly fragile Israel and the Jews are, especially when lies, propaganda and everything toxic are spoken about them.
So it is truly silly and trivial to think why survival would not be the most important foundation of Jewish self-worth. We are liberal only when we are not fearful. And conservative only when we fear the consequences of freedom.
13
As my husband says, you opened the door and I walked in. Even 10 years ago at Ma Tovu, an explicitly Reform blog, I have seen criticism of the Jewish establishment that cares only that Jews support Israel and make more Jews, but doesn't care if that Judaism has content and meaning or in the words of Samuel Freedman if the synagogue attendees are "a bunch of self-satisfied allrightniks." I have the wrong theology to tell Conservative and leftward Jews what they should do but I think that if their rabbis are confident that Jewish values are something unique in the world and not roots for current liberal values they may make their young people want to stay whatever family arrangements they have.
2
This isn't about Israeli politics. It's about Douthat's obsession with winning culture wars and having right-wing hegemony rule the world. Douthat once again draws a false equivalency between a purportedly "militant left and a right-wing Israel." As seen from the outside, there is little militancy and far less power in the Israeli left, while there's plenty of power and authoritarianism in the right which cynically looks for any sign of disagreement from the left as a pretense to institute ever more draconian right-wing policies at the behest of the ruling party's base of religious radicals and nativists. Of course this sounds familiar because it's exactly what Trump is doing to America. It's notable that Douthat talks of Hungarian PM Viktor Orban but never mentions Trump. Checking the Israeli Press is instructive as the right-wing Netnanyu media outlets hilariously describe Orban as a bit "Controversial," while Israel’s Haaretz puts it more bluntly: "It is hard to swallow an official visit by an anti-Semite, racist, Islamophobe, demagogue, provocateur and liar, who is also anti-democratic, hostile to human rights and a hater of law and enlightenment." I know how they feel, as I feel revulsion as Trump fawns over the likes of Vladimir Putin. Then again, most of the descriptors of Orban apply not just to Putin, but to Trump too. Douthat closes by trying to convince us he has no position on whether he finds right-wing authoritarianism or left-wing dissent preferable. Nonsense.
14
The divergence works both ways. As some Jews continue to shift right, they become associated with people (Trump and Netanyahu) and policies (turning away refugees, separating families, racism) that repudiate the basic moral imperatives of Judaism. When your actions are inconsistent with the lessons you teach your children, you insult their intelligence. Unless you cut them off from the rest of the world like some of the more extreme forms of orthodoxy, your children will learn to see through this hypocrisy.
5
@Victor James
The same can be said of Christians. They ignore the very words and teachings of Christ and wonder why people are leaving churches in droves.
As an outsider looking in it seems to me that Israel has become a Theocracy with the medieval Ultra orthodox who do not work or join the armed services and vote in blocs have controlled or are trying to control; most of Israel's cultural life.
In the US the same thing has happened in areas around NewYork city when this community operates outside the laws of the land because of their political clout.
Assimilation of the educated is seen across America with young people of all ethnic groups increasingly marrying outside of their group. The Jewish community is no exception.
12
One wonders if RD is aware that some of the terminology he uses to describe American (maybe all) Jews and the paradigm he described them operating in have been and still are employed by neo-Nazis and other antisemítes to malign, demean, and foment violence against Jewish people.
I’m talking about “cosmopolitan” cosmopolitanism, liberal, and chosen (the latter used in the same mocking way RD does, though with even more rage, resentment and vitriol). And about a paradigm that frames Jews as a conflicted, misleading (though not just regarding conservatism or traditionalism and liberalism), and (self) destructing group:
His observations and insights might be more engaging, and his conclusions more credible, had he displayed the depth of knowledge about and familiarity with his subjects that would’ve made him aware of and, importantly, sensitive to the use of antisemític euphemisms and how they might be interpreted and experienced by both Jewish and antisemític readers, alike.
16
Jews are not the only Semitic people. Sorry.
Ross Douthat may or may not realize that a Gentile calling Jews the "chosen people" is not regarded by many people as particularly friendly to Jews. Ross may or may not intend any harm, but many antisemites call Jews the chosen people as a negative pejorative appellation for Jews.
The concept of the chosen people stems from Biblical Judaism, but many non Jews and Jews have come to realize the concept is offensive to many people.
For most people of every religious heritage the concept of the chosen people in the modern secular world seems arrogant, condescending to others, undemocratic and a sense of unhealthy separateness from the rest of humanity.
For many people the concept of the chosen people is archaic and unscientific, nationalistic, even ignorant.
Similar to predestination and the elect in Calvinist sects of Christianity.
Douthat's use of the term "the chosen people" was for me ill advised and deeply offensive coming from a person not of Jewish heritage.
17
My thoughts as well! A very Well articulated comment, that I hope Ross reads and prays on.
I would add only that the article also uses other antisemític memes to describe Jewish people and/or alleged Jewish goals, such as their supposed “cosmopolitanism” And, as with “chosen people” and the use of (italicized) the oft-used-to-jeer “Is it good for the Jews” the author — who is a member of the dominant (and too often domineering) group in America — misappropriates phrases from Jewish culture. Whether he intended to disparage or not is beside the point in much the same way that it would be if he, a white man, used the “N” word or “Mami” to, with a wink to readers, describe African Americans.
1
@David
Yes, the concept of the chosen people stems from
Biblical Judaism. Biblical Judaism refers to the
earliest Hebrew texts. Translations of the " chosen "
concept in its earliest translations show the meaning of chosen as " responsibility " to follow _od's instructions.
This sense of responsibility forms an important positive element in the survival and influence of Judaism to this day. Any individual and all religions are most welcome
( and many do so ) to appropriate and choose to be
" chosen."
1
@David
Right. The piece is not so much offensive as tone deaf. What was RD thinking?
1
There are scores of ways that Jews are disappearing from the earth: Gas chambers, forced conversion, intermarriage, apathy toward one's identity as a Jew, a feeling of wanting to belong to the larger society rather than a relatively small religious/ethnic group, having a birthrate of less than 1.5 children per couple.
.
The reported census of Jews in the world is between 13 and 15 million, but this overstates the actual number by at least 25%. Further the average age of American Jews is now well over 50. Were it not for the extended life expectancy owed to modern medicine, there would be less than 3 million Jews in the US and less than 9 million worldwide. I'm afraid the term "disappearing Jew" will become more true in the near future.
4
@HH What is your source for the assertion that 13-15 million "overstates the actual number by at least 25%"? Source, please. And the following sentence--the mind boggles. Were it not for the extended life expectancy owed to modern medicine, all humanity would be greatly reduced. But we have modern medicine, so it isn't, so your point is?
3
@Missmypapernyt
There are a variety of ways to measure the Jewish population in the US. It depends on the criteria one uses. Please see the this link:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/02/23/measuring-...
.
If one defines a Jew as someone who practices the religion, Pew counted 4.2 million. Of course if the criteria used is that someone has an affinity for Jewish culture or people - then the number is higher. If the criteria is eating Jewish style food - then the number can be tens or hundreds of millions.
.
There are probably hundreds of millions of people who have some distant ancestor who was "Jewish"; that is a useless benchmark to use for defining who is a Jew today.
.
My comment about life expectancy is based on the well documented surveys that show that over 26% of Jews are over age 65 and 46% are over 55. That is the highest among all ethnic and religious groups. Jews as a group are headed for a demographic cliff. The population will collapse in less than 20 to 30 years.
.
There are abundant studies that show that less than 20 percent of the grandchildren of intermarried any self-identity as Jews.
Each Tribe is a microcosm to the whole. Why is the U.S. currently favored around the world? Because even with all the political chaos from the Trump administration, this country will prevail. It has build in protections. Its diversity is what makes it great! Unbending Nationalism always fails and always will. Israel still hasn’t learned that! Hopefully it time, it will.
1
While parts of the author’s analysis piqued my interest and stirred some internal debate for me, he lost me in the end with:
“As for whether this divergence will ultimately be, as they say, good for the Jews — well, that’s a question this Gentile columnist leaves to the chosen people to debate.”
Which left me with a mix of discomforting alienation and bemusement, rather than the sense of warm, neighborly familiarity and amusement that he perhaps intended. On careful reflection, I think it is Ross’ cavalier, insensitive use of “the chosen people” that did it. It comes across as mocking. And that’s at best — because underneath it lies a snide-ness that hints at or opens the door to, and references, the tragic and too-long history of pernicious and violent anti-semitism and judeophobia to which my people have been subject in the past and, with dramatically increasing frequency, in the present (I just read news that the incidence of antisemitism/antisemític acts in the US have risen a full 70% in the last year or so!).
Even the Jewish reader who gives Ross the chuckle he probably was looking for does so with some self-jeering, whether or not she or he is aware of it (internalized negative prejudice can be difficult to recognize on one’s own, as it becomes internalized precisely because it is experienced as normal and normative by the one who has internalized it).
Ross’ piece shows him to be a disappointingly less gentle gentile than he actually may be. That’s a shame
2
Ross Douthat points out that the inner kernel of Jewish identity (a hard-line conservative approach that wishes to preserve its uniqueness) does not jibe with the outer soft liberalism which reaches out to non-Jews ; in other words, hard on the inside and soft on the outside. Ironically this is just the opposite of the fruit, the prickly or cactus pear, the Sabra, which Israelis have adopted as their symbol for an Israeli born in Israel--hard on the outside and soft on the inside. This clash in self-identity is particularly harrowing for Jews because the existential question of survival is at stake. Whichever approach the Israeli government or Jews adopt in their outreach to the world they face the danger of destruction by neighbors (Hamas in the South, Hezballah in the North, and Iran in the East) who call for their death and elimination. Internally, one faction (the ultra-orthodox) poses a demographic danger for the survival of liberal, secular values and nearby Arab neighbors pose a demographic problem for survival of democratic values. To this varied, complex threat Jews can only respond with a multi-layered defense, which contains differing approaches.
71
@shimr Regardless of what they call for, the danger of Israel being destroyed by Hamas is between 0 and Null; by Hezbollah is not much greater. Yet, this pseudo-danger is constantly used to justify not only Gov’s policies, but this perpetuate state of fear, the greatest tool of propaganda. '...nearby Arab neighbors pose a demographic problem ..' How is that possible, unless you capture the land of your neighbor and make it your land? No, you have to choose between humanistic, liberal values and tribal instinct to protect your 'uniqueness' - at expense of others
1
@shimr -- "the danger of destruction by neighbors (Hamas in the South, Hezballah in the North, and Iran in the East)"
Israel played a major role in creating those dangers, and still plays a major role in keeping up the intense hostility. If it is not the sole cause, it is still a major cause of its own troubles, of its own excuses.
Sometimes a profound philosophical presentation misses the point in it's effort to be sophisticated, like here, but very erudite, thinking...I wish I could figure out what the author is espousing. I suspect there is a simpler, Hemingway-like way to make the case.
4
Should Israel preserve it's Jewish identity? As a non-religious American Jew I'll offer a thought ... although religious Jews, and Israelis (religious Jews, secular Jews, Arab Israelis) might well challenge my right. As long as Israeli Jews (both kinds) face an existential threat from non-Jews within and without, appeasement will only stimulate the appetite of it's enemies for more concessions. So, while traditional Christian countries become more secular, and Muslim countries become more fundamentalist, many of those countries feel that only 1 'Jewish' nation in the world is just 1 too many. Ultimately. when the entire world becomes enlightened enough to become fully secular (another thousand years?) - and Israel is no longer threatened - Israel could hopefully follow suit.
89
@Unconvinced
Mike Pence and the evangelicals feel the same way here in the United States.
They feel they are being persecuted and they want to make the US an evangelical Christian state.
The way I feel about that is the way Palestinians feel about living in a Jewish state.
And most of the Palestinians were there before most of the Jews were there.
1
Most Jews do support Israel, but disagree with some things Israel does, especially in its treatment of non-Jewish citizens and expanding the settlements, which make a two-state solution ever harder to achieve. Of the goals (1) Israel as a democratic state, (2) Israel with a Jewish majority, (3) continuing the Occupation, at most two can be achieved, and most Jews agree the third is the one to let go of. In the end, this is neither liberal nor conservative but pragmatic and prophetically mandated by the ancient sacred texts. (“Do not oppress or mistreat a stranger, for you were strangers in Egypt.”) There are no conservative impulses to extend, because most American Jews support the vision of Israel not of Netanyahu but of Ben-Gurion and Israel’s Declaration of Independence: “The State of Israel ... will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew Prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” Every U.S. president from Truman to Obama has supported that vision, but Netanyahu and Trump do not, and most American Jews are dismayed.
219
@Joel Rubinstein
Jewish settlements make a 2-state solution easier to achieve because Jewish settlers are generally wealthier than Palestinians, so when boundaries are drawn & those settlements on the Palestinian side of the border become part of Palestine & the settlers become Palestinians, the presence of these wealthier settlers will make a Palestinian state economically viable.
it's already a cliché that so many institutions and groups all over the world are becoming more and more polarized, in one or sometimes several ways. The Jews have long been an example in relation to orthodoxy/communalism vs. assimilation. And for the last few decades, as Israel has acted more and more in ways that offend some Jews' morals, we have a split in that dimension.
It's not always easy to be perfect. But to me, the principle at least is clear. Hackneyed, yes, but clear: live your own individual conscience, act your conscience, be the truth. Be open to finding your truth, and as you find it, express it in your life -- what you do, what you say. Despise worrying (or "debating" as Ross says) about what's good for the Jews. Do the right thing, only then can you love and live with yourself, you're more than a Jew, you're a human being.
58
Exactly. You have identified Judaism’s consistent through line: God is One. We are all made in his image, so we are all one. Our traditions all point us toward the goal of becoming one. So do all other Western religions. Many bumps along the way to be sure, but theologically, we have no quarrel with any monotheistic religion. The rest is noise. To quote Rabbi Milton Steinberg, “There are many. Mountaintops, but all of them reach toward heaven.”
@joel bergsman The idea that one's critics demand perfection would be a fallacy that neatly sets up a rationale to ignore them.
@joel bergsman
Well said!
I must admit that I find it confusing that in the current cultural paradigm it is considered commendable to celebrate certain identities and roots--e.g., Puerto Rican, African, native American, gay--while honoring some others, well--actually one other, European--is considered "nationalist" and colonialist, and patriarchal, etc.
8
Not true. Have you ever heard of St.Patrick’s Day or Columbus Day or Oktoberfest? There’s a way you can celebrate your heritage without being racist.
2
@MrNiceGuy
Well actually Columbus Day has often been attacked as colonialist, etc. And--MrNiceGuy-- you appear to be implying that celebrating European culture is inherently racist.
@MrNiceGuy -not really. Columbus Day is now indigenous people's day, and the others are seen as a joke by liberals for whom being "White" is all you are if they deem it so. I think the point is that in certain liberal, PC camps, to be Jewish is, automatically to be racist. In the context where the only possible victims of racism are black and brown people of course.
At times I have second thoughts about leaving institutional religion---then I read Mr. Douthat's running commentary on the arcane belief systems that appear to tie these religious governing bodies and in some cases governments in knots. Not that I am an expert on these topics, but, what I do remember from my journey into formal religion are founders that were focused on making the lives of people--mostly the poor, the ill, the forgotten---better. Yes, along with this mission, others documented these efforts, but, sadly, where we are today, are intense battles within religious bureaucracies over documentation rather than concentrating on the founder's central mission.
9
Many Jews feel a strong connection with Israel. Even if they do not live there, they feel an allegiance to a country similar to that felt by an actual citizen. Having such nationalistic feelings, Ross argues, is a "conservative impulse". To be consistent, Jews with nationalistic feelings should be voting conservative, not liberal/progressive.
Really? Nationalism is conservative, liberalism is anti-nationalism? By this logic, if I support the USA, then to be logically consistent, I must vote conservative. And if I do *not* vote conservative, then I do not love my country?
Do I have that right? Or maybe you are saying something different. Israel's chief executive is a Nationalist, not at all progressive or liberal. Is your argument that support for Israel is tantamount to support for Netanyahu, and therefore support for Israel is incompatible with liberalism? By this logic, if I love and support the USA, then I must approve of Trump's policies, and to be logically consistent, I should be voting for him.
An aside: Why do you introduce an article about liberal versus conservative impulses by talking about a sexual harassment case against an academic? Are you trying to disorient your readers from the start so they will be less likely to think logically about the remainder of the column?
61
@larry
1) At least 60 per cent of Israelis are to the right of conservative. That is why Netanyahu has become "prime minister for life". Not much different from Putin or Xi. In America, a president is limited to two terms.
2) Nationalism has always been strong in the United States. Recently, it has become stronger with such powerful politicians as Dick Cheney and Donald Trump.
3) Older American Jews feel a connection to Israel. Younger American Jews who have no memories of the Holocaust and who are bothered by the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians feel less attached and more critical of Israel.
4) As a whole, the views of the American Jewish community have changed a good deal since 1948 and 1967. Many are beginning to see the once outcast American Council for Judaism as prophetic.
Note the difference between Nationalism and Patriotism—two very different things.
The phrase "My religion is better than your religion." should never be uttered in a civilized society. Civilized societies should eschew religion. I'm no more comfortable with a Jewish state than I am with a Muslim state or a Christian state. Get with the program. We're global now. This tribalism must stop. I'm not sure about anything in the future but establishing, and fortifying, a strictly, religious compound in the Middle East seems counter productive. Your short term victory may be your demise. Your narrow reading of scripture may narrow your understanding of God. I don't pretend to know the mind of God, but how could he be against sharing?
13
Rick, Israel was never established as a religious state. Jews are a people first, with a culture, language and attachment to a land. Judaism is their faith. And like you can have French or German or British atheists, so, too are there Jews who are atheists. The point is Jews returned to their own land and within it, their own future.
1
As an American Jew I applaud the complaint that Jewish organizations have evaluated American Jewry through a misogynistic lens. I look forward to reading more of Rosenblatt et al's work.
As to the question of whether American Jewry can survive the pressures of the current era, of course it can. The pressures of political vs religious ethics, assimilaton vs proliferation, and even misogyny vs equality have been with us since the time of Abraham. I do not fear for the continuation of Judaism, Jewish culture and identity.
1
A confusing column by Douthat that left me scratching my head and asking “What is the point of this piece?”
Instead of narrowly opining on a Jewish crossroads, Douthat might just as well have been speaking of the crossroad all liberal (in the old fashion sense of Adam Smith et al, not today’s concept) seculars states are facing. That is - how do we balance individualism v communitarianism, secularism v religion, especially extremism, and progress v those being left behind.
It’s trite and has been overstated, but the manifestation of extreme partisanship in so much of the world today is being driven by the transformation of the economy and society from one built around a manufacturing economy to one that is now dominated by technology. We are all still learning to adapt and in many instances badly, especially our purported leaders.
Douthat, like so many others, is wandering in the wilderness crying out to a God who, while s/he may be listening, s/he is definitely not answering.
17
We all reach that fork in the road, and some take the road that makes most sense, the one labeled "Mainstream America This Way." Life begins anew and for real when we shed the chains of "old country" emotional bondage that our immigrant ancestors dragged with them. We know that has happened when we cease thinking of ourselves as hyphenated Americans. It is a liberating moment.
We are free at last from the neurotic need to cling to ethnic-ghetto identity, and above all the tyranny of ethnically-binding religiosity. We leave Little-Whatever and become full-fledged unhyphenated Americans. Ah, that feels good!
8
When poor, uneducated migrants bring their culture, prejudice and faith to a new environment, there is a clash. A lot of the Jews who emigrated to Israel after World War II, fit that description and there have been clashes.
We also see the conflict between rural Turkish Muslims and their urban counterparts and, right here in the good ol' USA between rural Christian fundamentalists and urban "globalists"
demonstrating that the phenomenon extends beyond immigration.
It's not just a question of assimilation; it's a question of assimilation into what culture. The irony is that both the traditionalist "conservatives" and the more secular "liberals" are both changed by the experience. The culture that emerges from clashes is different.
Sometimes, by some measures, it's better, but there are a lot of examples of the experiment going bad.
2
In the 21st century intermarriage is the existential threat to Jewish survival. You don't have to follow the orthodox ritual to understand that. The "younger generation" has little or no understanding of the history, legacy or contributions that Jews have made to western civilization , because being Jewish was not important to their parents. You can live in and succeed in the American mainstream and still be Jewish. The ancient civilizations Romans, Greeks, Egyptians etc have faded into history. After almost 4000 years we Jews are still here and if that's an accident it's a 4000 year old accident. As for Israel I don't support the
Netanyahu government or it's policies. Hamas terror and rockets have done much to keep Mr. Netanyahu in power. A little fairness and reality by Israel's critics, particularly the EU, is also called for. The fact is the PLO and Hamas hate each other and Gaza is not only blockaded by Israel but also by Egypt. There is little hope for peace or understanding under these circumstances. In the scheme of things I support Israel and the continued existence of the Jewish people and I am proud to be Jewish. Israel's existence and success is something we Jews can be proud of, warts and all.
As a progressive American , I am still stunned at the election of Donald Trump and will work very hard to see that he is impeached.
15
I know two people who converted, one Orthodox, upon marriage. It can go either way. Other than that, excellent comment.
A hilariously simplistic distillation of our tribe, which it turns out is as complex as all those others.
24
The US Constitution rewuires that government not be beholden to any religion. That does not suggest the US Government distances itself from fundamental moral obligation. It means the ritual and doctrinal idiosyncrasies, that distinguish one religion from another, are not relevant to or enforced by government. It means that moral principles, applicable to government, are followed for their own sake; not because an unidentifiable person in history or a claimed deity directed them.
Some say that separation of religion from government is an option for the powers that run each country. I disagree. Separation of religion from government is a good, in and of itself, because it discourages the inevitable dictatorial trend that religion imposes.
It is good that Israel seeks to create a unique refuge for the historically persecuted religious or cultural or genetic Jews. However, it is not good for Israel to make itself a religious state, and even less so for Israel, to enforce the dogmas of some branches of Judaism. Israel and all other countries ought not to be beholden to any religion.
By consistently underlining, in speech and action, the difference between the observant or “chosen” US, and the non-observant or non-chosen THEM, a foundation is set for violation of human rights, under the cloak of revealed truth.
What I say here is equally applicable to any country that makes itself beholden to a religion, whether it be Jewish, Christian, Islam, or any other religion.
6
This case involving Cohen is not a Jewish issue. There are men of all backgrounds who put themselves in a position of influence in academia and use it to commit sexual harassment. The issue is sexual harassment and discrimination against women in academia, not any particular religion or ethnicity.
31
@Linda Seltzer
Anymore than Bernie Madoff, was a Jewish issue. He did target Jewish individuals and organizations. But Jewish people tend to ruminate on scandals.
Douthat is reading too much into this. The voice of visible liberals tends to overwhelm the wide range of political views among Jews. I am sorry Ross didn't meet the Jewish Trump voters at a party I went to after the election.
People join Reform synagogues because services are short and they accommodate people with looser rules. The same people will then send their kids to Chabad (ultra-orthodox outreach) Hebrew School or Bar Mitzvah lessons when convenient.
2
Yes, Ms. Seltzer, I'm sure there are no women going and blowing their way down the halls of academe; it's just the men. All the colorful lip-stuck seltzers just sit on the shelf seeping the fizz that got them there.
Yes, Ms. Seltzer, I'm sure no women are going and blowing themselves down the halls of academe. They're ALL men; the lip-stuck bottled up seltzers growing flatter by the day.
Anyone who believes that only people in a particular group have the expertise to write about that particular group needs to study this article as a mentor text. Thank you Ross for not staying in your lane, this is illuminating.
4
Netanyahu "cultivating friends" like Viktor Orban "in an alliance of conservative nationalism" like a dance macabre with no tangible benefits for either of them. Hungary and Poland seen as rebels by the European Union. Hungary with some justification fears George Soros meddling as his hobby. Israel appears perfectly satisfied with the current status quo not really thinking about Palestinians in the newly declared Jewish state. No room for them in the Zionist equation? Eventually new leaders will arrive to address these tears and fears because the pendulum swings from time to time.
5
The problems facing American Jews vis a vis Israel flow directly from the crude and distorted model they are immersed in by our media and State Department.
Here are a few facts that hopefully will help to correct this:
The majority of Jews in Israel were expelled from nearby countries and are primarily Sephardic, not the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe.
Israel alone in the region provides not only security but financial support for every faith.
There is a great variation of color in Israel from European white to Ethiopian black.
Israel alone in the region supports freedom and equality for the LGBTQ community.
Given the number of Iranian sponsored and armed personnel surrounding Israel from Lebanon to Syria to Gaza, it is a miracle that Israel’s government is not much more paranoid and militant.
All religions and ethnic groups participate in the IDF except Arabs do not bear arms.
The primary source of disputes in the Middle East are tribal in nature and can best be resolved through commercial ties and interdependence. This is exactly what Israel is implementing in the West Bank and what BDS and others are trying to stop.
American Jews should understand that their future depends on Israel much more than they realize and Israel’s future depends on the United States much more than Israelis realize.
18
If you are born Jewish, it's hard to abandon the culture no matter how you feel about the religion. Likewise, it's difficult to forget the need to give post-war Jews a home no matter how you feel about the governance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and rule of arch-orthodox rabbis.
I am, therefore, a Jewish atheist who supports the continued existence of Israel, seeing it rushing toward calamity and abandoning its special status by taking up the behavior of the oppressor.
Nothing about either is logical or easy. The "reform" rabbi I knew and was friendly with wouldn't marry me and the non-Jewish woman I loved. Nor would her minister. A federal judge felt no such conflict. There is something to be said for separation of church and state.
But Israel is leaving behind such a separation and rushing headlong toward theocratic and oppressive rule. By so doing, their leaders are abandoning their history as a people.
This is not an easy time for Jews, for Israel, for the world. All you need do is look to those guiding us from moment to moment toward the moments to come.
How could it not be difficult?
43
As a liberal Jew, I do not need myself explained to me by a conservative who is constantly performing his Christianity in this column. Mr. Douthat displays his ignorance in failure to even consider the religious roots of American Jews' liberalism - tikkun olam (heal the world), hospitality to strangers, a communitarian ethos.
What's more, one of the oldest tropes of anti-Semitism is that Jews are always Jews first, and their other national and political identities a distant second. Mr. Douthat's framing Jews' political preferences (in both liberal and conservative directions) as driven entirely by tribalism to the exclusion of all principle or citizenship may be a polite form of it, but it's still pure anti-Semitism.
66
The always fascinating Ross Douthat weighing in on a subject that has always puzzled me as well--as a member of the tribe, by the way.
You accurately point out that Israel, a thriving democratic state with a paucity of friends, chooses to cuddle up with evangelicals (who apparently want to be sure that Jews have a place to go to disappear from to in order to facilitate the Second Coming,) African and Eastern Bloc strongmen and dictators and, of all things, Trump.
Little of this is readily explainable (except with reference to the Arabic conceit that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend') and none of it comports with Israel's founding ethos.
Nevertheless.
What is clear to me is that anti-semitism (and the continuing danger of annihilation) will long outlive any attempt to make the disparate elements of Jewishness cohere. Too many of us, even nearly 80 years after the Holocaust, can still remember the tattooed arms of our parents and grandparents.
On that basis alone, Jews of all stripes must and should be strong defenders of Israel--even when Israels sometimes isn't the best example of what Jews imagine Israel should be.
It's not an intellectual argument. It is an emotional one.
48
Israel is not a, "thriving democratic state"; that's a lie. Israel is a "Jewish" state, which, by definition (I don't care WHAT the meaning of "Is" is!) is exclusionary and NON-democratic! It's called having your cake and eating it too! Like Mnuchin standing by Trump praising Neo-Nazis then decrying WWII.
4
I would defend Israel more staunchly if I didn't see its treatment of the Palestinians as being in conflict with my Jewish values.
@Lkf
it is existential.
1
I'll take up your challenge, Ross, although we are not a "chosen people".
First, the Jewish people have survived for 5,779 years, because of the opposing forces of anti-Semitism and assimilation. Anti-Semitism makes us conscious of our identity and draws us together. Assimilation keeps us from devolving into a narrow sect, a "fossil".
Everything changed in the 19th century, not just for Jews but for other nations and groups, when people started to lose faith in God. When you stop believing in God, you don't stop believing. You transfer your beliefs to nations: to the United States, to Germany, to France, to Italy, and in regard to the Jews, to Zionism and a land of their own.
A belief in a Nation is a poor substitute for a belief in God, but it is a powerful belief. It results in a belief in Zionism but also National Socialism.
The state of Israel is not murdering Palestinians and Arabs on an industrial scale, but it is depriving them of their rights, limiting their freedom to move and settle where they want to, their educational opportunities, their privacy. Historical analogies are misleading and the past holds no simple lessons. Nevertheless, Jewish nationalism is causing Israel to become a narrow sect. We as a people need to re-embrace prophetic Judaism.
34
@Diogenes The Jewish people have not been around for 5779 years -- neither historical nor theological authorities would assert that.
2
@jonathan
There is plenty of evidence for my assertion. Just look at any Jewish calendar.
I am not Jewish, but this article confounds me.
what if Mr.Cohen were Italian or Irish or any
other nationality, if he is guilty of harassment,
he should be called out and the proper legal
or disciplinary actions taken. what does being
Jewish have to do with it?Mr.Douthart calls out,
and properly so,priests and cardinals without
ruminating on the broader identify of Catholicism. he ought to let a sexual abuser's
ethnicity be very,very seperate from his alleged
acrions.
23
Mr. Douthat’s thoughtful piece presents a valid question, which will undoubtedly be answered in a multitude of subjectively deduced responses, of which only a fraction will have any basis in the actual history of the Semitic people, beyond the irrelevance of mythological interpretation.
That said, having been “clued in” to enough family history, it’s a bit difficult not to be extremely cynical regarding whatever it is that Judaism is meant to stand for. The ark of antiquity which courses through my veins is now just another reason to be sanguine. Being a a Jew matters as much as it always has, which matters about as much as anything else does. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
“The love of money is the root of all evil.”
1
I've never heard of this guy (is he Trump's former assistant?)? What is he accused of? What evidence is there?
2
Agreed. Douthat left that crucial piece out and bluntly detoured to a wholly different issue.
“Treating any form of nationalism as suspect “ sounds principled, but there seems to be an exception for 3rd World nationalism— especially of the Palestinian variety—that undermines any claim to maintain a consistent principle regarding nationalism. What is honored for some people is denied to others.
3
The kind of forces that Douthat says is pulling apart the Jewish community are also pulling apart peopl eof other faiths - Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians. When people use religious scriptures and books unthinkingly and uncritically, no matter the religion, they have surrendered to zealots. There is a rather simple recipe to prevent such surrender - start to think, read more articles in science, and follow your own common sense.
4
I think that Mr. Douthat gets something very wrong here - liberal Jewish support for Israel was always fundamentally hypocritical and supported by massive cognitive dissonance. Where this was not the case, it required Jewish supporters of Israel to construct a myth around that state that portrayed Palestinians and Arabs as simply another in a long line of oppressors who hated Jews just because they are Jews. This simplistic belief allowed many American Jews to never know or never engage with the uncomfortable fact that the Palestinians are the original inhabitants of the land that is now Israel and that their dispossession and displacement is the reason for their conflict with Israel - the state that was created on the ruins of their homes and culture. I am amazed at the number of even young Jews who don't know this and who are often shocked to discover, for the first time, the real reasons for Palestinian anger towards Israel. The fact is this: there is not and never was any good "liberal" argument in favor of Israel; it was always a problem of how to justify/rationalize the act of creating a state on someone else's land. Someone cannot be a liberal and support the rights and oppose the oppression of native Americans while, at the same time, supporting Israel as it brutalizes the Palestinians and takes every inch of their land. It is long past time that this hypocrisy/ignorance within the Jewish community ended. Tribalism and justice are most often at odds.
35
Tell me, have you put in your will that all of your assets are being left to Native Americans as you live on "stolen" land? And, by the way, if you knew the history of the Middle East, King David moved the capital of a Jewish state from Hebron to Jerusalem in biblical times, long before there were any Christians or Muslims. The word "Palestine" was the Roman designation of the area and "only" goes back a couple of thousand years. Judea predates that by more than a thousand years.
11
@Shaun Narine
Thank you for the excellent summation.
@Henry Fellow
I always find it remarkable that the genocide committed against the indigenous residents of America can be thought to excuse the essential injustice of the Zionist enterprise. Surely the cognitive dissonance must be very painful on some level.
Ross, "divergence" is happening everywhere, and the "debate" you hope will bring betterment in our time has has shown to be only more fractionating. There is so much shouting in the world now that the CO2 rising from the billions of yapping mouths has made our warming climate even worse. We were at a crossroad 50 years ago when McLuhan warned us that the "Medium is the Message." What he should have said was the media are the message. Sadly, for all of us, Jews too, all this shout-out debate is itself the message. The one-way message is the new medium.
2
50 years ago a client of mine was a highly qualified candidate for a position at JP Morgan, and his interviewer was so upset that the company had already filled their "Jewish quota" that he offered to make a phone call to any other bank in NY to get him a similar position.
Jews have not been fully integrated in America for a very long time and were kept out of elite universities well into the '50's, not to mention country clubs and so forth.
However, Americans have very short memories- especially intergenerationally speaking, so, of course young Jews tend to be less identified to their heritage and "tribe".
Personally, I'm a gentile who welcomes the day when superstitious beliefs based on thousands of years of ignorance hatred and violence ceases to divide us, whether the divisions involve Muslims, Jews, Christians or Buddhists.
Our ancestors were around long before these religious divisions existed and hopefully will survive long after they disappear- why should they define us? In the end, the actual differences have always been mythological.
11
Assume for the sake of argument that there is no god. Doesn't that make concerns about the future of Jewish culture, Christian culture and, yes, Muslim culture irrelevant? Yet, I doubt very much that the political leaders of Israel, Russia, Hungary, the U.S. or Turkey have any belief in god whatsoever. Their interest is only power. Are truly religious people being duped, or do they see some sort of benefit in godless people championing their cause?
The grand illusion of religion, which has built every great civilization, is on the verge of destroying all civilization in the name of piety and culture.
4
By definition, a right and a left wing, whether it be positioned on the spectrum of national politics, or the body of a species of bird, are peripheral to society's critical mass, those being the essential organs of belief that pump life into the cultural mainstream. A political system, like that existing in modern day Israel, thrives despite it's broken wings...in the same manner that the United States maintains it's core identity, despite the noisy flapping of it's political wings of conflict.
And, to gentile Ross Douthat, I'll say what I say to all of my non-Jewish acquaintances, " Jews aren't politically monolithic voters. Yet, the majority of Jews, like the majority of Americans, are situated slightly to the right or left of center. And, Judaism is a mixed bag of religious subsets, just like Christianity, with many disparate member groups: Catholic, Protestants, Episcopalians, Baptists, Evangelicals, Methodists, Mormon, Holly Roller, et al."
3
For better or worse, the evolution of ethnic groups is more and more toward assimilation. This is both a great sadness and a great joy for me. In any case, it is a process that I must watch from the outside.
While not Jewish, perhaps I feel a bit of what Moses did, looking across Jordan to the destiny of his people, which he could never share.
My émigré Russian family suffered, on the other side of the trenches, a not dissimilar 20th century history of degradation, torture, mass murder, exile, and deracination.
I was of the next generation after the horror. Being Ethnic Russian was and is the defining reality of my life, as being Jewish must be for so many of the next Jewish generation after the unthinkable devastation of their families, culture, language, and home.
We children of both tribes, Holocaust Jews and "Class-enemy" Russians seek, I think, the rebirth of our peoples and cultures. To me at least, we of the youth were spores, bits of life that might spread, and join with the reborn Russia of other spores to deny ultimate victory to the abomination that had sought to exterminate us.
I had hoped that my children, and grandchildren, and on, might be essentially Russian, Russian in their souls as we say, for perhaps five more generations.
This will not happen, as it might not happen for Jews. But, perhaps the kids know more than I do, and in assimilation also seek our rebirth.
Greetings to you, new relatives.
Guess who's coming to dinner.
5
No thoughtful person can observe the corrupt Netanyahu government and efforts by Likud to deny Israeli Palestinians full citizenship and establishing a Theocracy in Israel. Yet, Douthat, more Catholic than the Pope, distracts everyone with gibberish and hair splitting sophistry. Why? Douthat’s agenda is a form of “conservatism” that died in America in the 1950s when McCarthyism burst like a festering boil. American exploitation of terror is well known to historians and political scientists but not taught in our Public Schools (thanks to Texas). American fascism has consistently been funded by American oligarchs. Today it’s Kochs, Mercers, and Adelson. Adelson is a big funder of Netanyahu. Douthat distracts us from rational solutions and empowers would be dictators: Netanyahu and Trump. Why?
35
I am not quite sure where this fits into the discussion, but the question of who is a Jew seems appropriate.
Paul Ryan was just found to have "Jewish" genes. I am appalled by the idea that a religion is baked into the genes, for that way lies madness (and genocide, a form of madness).
The Jewish Orthodox tradition, that a Jew is a child born of a "Jewish" mother, may have made sense from about 5,000 BCE to about 1800 CE, but does it make sense now?
Israel was one response to the assumption of "inborn" religion, and an attempt to protect the victims of that assumption. I am conflicted about whether it is an idea whose time is past. With the rise in anti-semitism around the world, with the assumption on full display, isn't some refuge needed?
9
I would cite Hillel, but a short commentary is necessary.
By being a people without land and state, the Jewish communities spread all over benefited not a little in the respect that not having the burden of armies and war and building defense fortifications they could devote time to culture, law, education, commerce. Rabbis could afford to feed and educate sons whereas the Christian and Muslim aristocracy sent their sons to war and death...This is a known fact and it should be used to argue for life without war.
The Jewish State now should take note of both the ancient Jubilee and the tenements of Christian justice which stress on proportionality. Overt and disproportional use of force is a non-starter.
Liberal or Conservative, a Jew cannot escape such historical causation nor can they progress towards peace with Arabs and therefore with themselves. This is a difficult proposition some would argue, but can subjugation and injustice prevail?
15
@Nicholas
So "nu"? How long do we have to wait since 1948 and the UN two state solution? The Arabs have been offered both a Palestine and peace and have rejected them every time. "By the way, the offer is still out there. Please, find me the next Sadat among the Palestinian leaders.
5
@Nicholas
Jewish communities benefited from not having the burden of armies?! Jewish communities had a terrible burden precisely the result of not having armies: murderous antisemitism against which thy could not defend themselves. Moreover, why would Jews ever need to consult Christian or Muslim notions of justice? They've experienced first hand how Christian and Muslim justice works- in the case of Jews, they offer no justice whatsoever. The Jewish law is justice enough and Israel does not need to justify defending itself to Christians or Muslims.
@Nicholas: the word is "tenets", not tenements. Tenets are beliefs or fundamental principles; tenements are groups of apartments, often in poor condition.
1
Rima Regas, whom I know from communicating directly with her, has the background to be highly credible in laying out a comment that, as Stu Freeman notes, relieves him and me of the need to file our own, even though we finally do.
The question: What human values does each of us, first express and then practice and also help to implement?
Rima makes so very clear why Netanyahu does not meet our standards as concerns human values and why we cannot understand how so many, whether in Israel or the USA, can support leaders so visibly lacking in those values.
We will never know, because those who profess to be good Jew or Christian will never tell us in simple declarative sentences how they can support leaders who so openly express thoughts and display behaviors so in conflict with principles we thought were basic to being a good Jew or Christian, Israeli or American.
Thanks Rima, one of your very best.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
3
look who's talking about Jews....lol..he even used "tribe" ha!
Anyway, culture and religion and nationhood are all human constructs.., designed to give order to our world, and provide security that we are part of a larger group, and not, in fact, living in complete chaos, but that there is some underlying order or meaning to events and even tragedies.
Culture is a living thing, though, and is not intended to remain the same for millennia, frozen like an ill-fated bug in amber...resistant to adapting to new times and contingencies.
Culture moves to serve humanity's needs, hopefully, but not always, for the good.
22
Ellen! You should be the one writing for the NYT.
I guess I don't understand why any modern progressive would care to self-identify by either ethnicity or religion. Neither seems very significant to modern life.
25
@617to416
Bravo - The problem is ethnicity and religion shouldn't be significant to modern life, but are. Hence we still fight wars for those labels and still win elections by touting our loyalty to one or the other. It seems we humans, even many progressives, still cling to those identifiers. How many more generations and wars will it take to make such concepts obsolete? A lot, I'm afraid.
3
@617to416--they may say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one!
2
A lot of words with little meaning.
51
@Stephen Kurtz
Agree. The subtext of Douthat's rambling, inchoate essay appears to be an apologia for systemic sexual abuse within his Catholic church. You see, Cohen and the Jews do it too... not just Cardinal McCarrick. This writer employs the same insidious strategy when focused on Trump - Obama was just as bad. Bad faith, indeed. And poor writing.
1
@Stephen Kurtz
Also confusing, and trite
@Stephen Kurtz
I admire your critical skills, Stephen, although "Blah, blah, blah" seems equally expressive, if not as articulate.
It is easy to imagine that the world around us — the cultural air we breathe — is a neutral, universal one. I’ve been asked by non-Jewish friends “why hold on to the old” as if a contemporary, mainly Christian, cultural inheritance is the only possible modern human expression. We don’t live in a neutral place where our children and grandchildren who assimilate will become some combination of all the cultures that come here. Without exposure to the legacy of Jewish history and thought, assimilation will mean an acceptance of Christian ideas about life. I love being in a diverse place and would not want to live somewhere homogeneous. I disagree that we have only two choices — it is much more satisfying to live with a layered identity.
58
@SB
Hey, Christianity is not the alternative to Judaism. Its root is a clear atheism, which then can add on all the good qualities out thetr--Jewish, Christian, and others.
1
@SB
I agree but:
We are also defined by society. I was bar mitzvahed but there were only 2 other Jewish boys in my high school graduating class of 700.
On my Army dog tags, I did not identify as a Jew because Jewish prisoners may/may not be singled out. In Vietnam, I was the only Jew in my unit.
I worked for the same employer the past 29 years. Almost all of my co-workers are Christians, at present there are no other Jews at my level. Although the others in my office socialize on weekends, and attend the same churches, I am not invited.
I can't estimate how many times I have been approached by well meaning but ignorant "Christians," who are certain that my soul automatically goes to hell unless I am "saved."
When my wife and I were married, some of her co-workers told her that her soul would burn in hell.
I am not religious, but as soon as some people find out I am Jewish, I am asked to attend prayer breakfasts and even Sunday school.
I have to travel for my job, usually to small towns, like my home town, where once there were Jewish communities that no longer exist.
We have tried to join Jewish congregations, but do not fit in.
At the same time, we contribute to Jewish charities and if asked, support Israel, but not that flamer, Netanyahu.
I try to tell people that I am just like everyone else, only more so.
I am an Orthodox Jew, but am liberal politically. I am not alone here and is common in Israel. The current right wing government reflects the political situation existing at the time of the last election. Governments in Israel are usually multi-party coalitions representing multiple interests. In many cases, the inclusion of religious parties into coalitions is required, even for liberal governments. The founders were not only liberal, but socialist. In the beginning, religion followed historical traditions - everyone was nominally Orthodox. The reason was Jewish unity. The level of observance was a personal matter. Without a standard, Jews of different origins, observances and political orientations would have resulted in a fragmented society. While most people see the influx of European Jews only; they ignore the estimated 800,000 Jews from Muslim countries expelled from their documented, historical homes, some over 2,000 years old when Isreal was founded. Add to that, the immigration of Jews from the USSR. As a result, many Israeli Jews have a history of family expulsion. To ignore the cultural, religious and political diversity in Israel and impose an American model does not address Israeli society historically, currently and in the future.
103
@Mike A wonderful explanation for the diversity and the historical areligiousity of Israel. But you do not speak to the complete highjacking of the country by the ultra orthodox who would deny the diversity that the founders - socialists all - wanted recognized. Sad day and the founders must be spinning in their graves.
@Mike
When I visited Israel (along with our neighborhood temple, Catholic parish, and ELCA congregants), we celebrated Shabbat at dinner at a kibbutz. Israeli families vacationing there for the weekend were puzzled, but not because we were interfaith & intergender--but actually holding a Reform service. Our tour guide explained: "80% of Israel's Jews do not practice Judaism; but the Judaism they don't practice is Orthodox."
In the end, Douthat asks, is the divergence of cultural values among Jews good for the Jews? I believe that that question answers itself by the way it is phrased. If you think of Jews as a people whose welfare depends on sharing an identity, then of course losing that identity is bad. I am sure my ancestors from the ghettoes of Europe would have answered No! (And I have relatives who would agree even today. ). But many people of Jewish heritage have already lost that identity. I grew up in the 50’s, a pro-assimilation time. I embraced the multi-culturalism of the time, and never looked back. I cannot begin to understand a single-cultural state, and consider it a dangerous fantasy which can only increase anti-semitism in the world.
The real question is whether Israel’s attempt to become a single-identity state is good for the Jews of Israel. I do not see how, but only time can reveal the true answer. In the meantime, if the divergence Douthat describes causes more Jews to assimilate, I do not believe that sharing a common cultural past gives any of us the right to judge.
42
@NeilG First Israel is the country that has the most multiculturalism in the world even if everyone was Jewish.
Jews come from practically all the corners of the world.
From North and South America.
From Russia.
There are Jews who can even trace their ancestry from Arab countries.
Their are a significant number coming from Africa and from India.
Most of them are converts.
So even just counting Jews you have more cultures there than any other place.
In Israel you don't just have Muslims you have all kind and you know what.
They don't kill each other like they are doing in Syria.
In Israel you just don't have just Catholic Christians like in Italy.
You have Protestantism Baptist and Greek Orthodox.
You even have Mormons.
https://www.deseretnews.com/images/article/hires/700515067/700515067.jpg
You might not Israel and like any other place their are reasons not to like it.
Not being multicultural is not one of them.
The new laws does not make Israel less cultural.
It just gives the Jewish religion a special status.
This means things like the right of return law or the fact their are no public buses on Saturday .
In many places in the Arab world Jews are not even allowed to enter.
In Israel the temple mount the most holy place on the planet for Jews is controlled by Muslims.
They allow Jews to visit but they don't allow them to pray.
Do you know what this means.
The only place in Israel where there isn't multiculturalism
is a place where Jews are not allowed.
I am perplexed by Mr. Douthat's binary thinking and reductionisms toward a people he thinks he understands but doesn't. I am ethnically and religiously Jewish, a male of 68 years. My experience of my people is that we are diverse and often frustrate easy categorization. I remember back in the '60s, at the height of the Vietnam War, I stood fiercely against the conflict while still considering myself an American patriot. Still a Jack Kennedy era liberal, I challenge Mr. Netenyahu because he is corrupt, and advocates a one state solution that ultimately could be the undoing of Israel because it cannot sustain indefinitely as an occupying power. There is no confusion here, no blurring of principles. Mr. Douthat grew up as Pentecostal and is currently Catholic; perhaps his expertise might be better directed there.
228
@Glida I would disagree on the point of suggesting that Douthat refrain from weighing in on Jews and Israel because he is not Jewish. Precisely the opposite.
It is time for non-Jews to speak up, where their Jewish friends cannot for fear of being ostracized. There seems to be a pact that criticizing Israel is not permitted because of its fragility. In fact, being "pro Israel" now requires the opposite.
Israel has special privileges in the US, and AIPAC enforces these. These privileges should be questioned openly and in public without fear of being called anti Semitic or anti Israel. Americans should claim their right as free people to speak up in any form they wish, about a foreign country. Without this feedback, the "moral hazard" of unconditional support will continue to corrupt the Israeli government.
@Glida
Yes, what was the point of this column? The author is writing about something he knows nothing about.
Mr. Douthat raises interesting questions of cultural identity in America. These are questions not only for the Jews but can be ask for all immigrant groups. More importantly, the rise of Trump is largely fueled by the cultural insecurity of some people in the white Christian subpopulation. Therefore, these universal and critical questions address the identity of America as a whole. These are difficult questions but, as an recent immigrant myself, I believe that we must affirm that we are Americans first and foremost. Our "American" heritage is more important than an individual's other racial and cultural identities. The founders wisely established this country by declaring that all "men" are created equal and by establishing a firm separation of church and state. Today, the meaning of "men" is greatly, and rightly, extended. Therefore, America CAN be home for people of diverse backgrounds. What are our cultural heritage of being an America? I believed what we have inherited the most enlightened form of human community in the world based on ever improving Constitution that guarantees ever great human rights. What about our other cultural identities? They are also important, of course. As people of different cultures join the American family, our cultural fabrics becomes richer with new strands of their histories and their worldviews.
As I have will a bagel for breakfast today, I will think about the broader culture of my Jewish brothers and sisters.
34
I think it was Herman Wouk who wrote the basic problem for American Jews is that Mr. Abrahmson wakes up one day and has turned into Mr. Anderson.
I think this is basically true for non-orthodox American Jews. My wife and I are both liberal Jews, but I can't imagine that all 3 of our children will marry Jews. Mixed marriages often work, but by and large things get watered down (the Christmas tree in the living room) and a generation further down the road it's all over.
I don't have an answer. No one does.
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@Sparky
Is it really so bad that people lose old religious and ethnic traditions that frankly don't matter anymore? I grew up in a Protestant family, but my two siblings and I have spouses who are Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim. It's interesting to learn something about the various different traditions, but all of us live similar secular lives now and the traditions of our grandparents are mere curiosities, irrelevant to the way we live between the holidays and no longer even so significant during the holidays.
15
Throughout history, Jews have assimilated (sometimes at the point of a sword) with enough Jews practicing the traditions and holding onto identity enough to survive another generation. During the middle ages, Judaism flourished in eastern Europe and there were many conversions to Judaism. During the Holocaust, a total world population of 15 million Jews was reduced by over a third, and over the course of less than a century is now back to pre Holocaust levels.
Our world history of nations and cultures explains how local identities form and why nationalism was necessary for survival. But while culture and history have left us all with a rich inheritance of art and knowledge, we have also inherited primitive, traditional values which block us from addressing worldwide problems, marginalize others, and yet still offer useful guidance on raising families and living an ethical life.
Human populations evolve and our collective survival depends on it. Traditions well be lost and new traditions will form as long as there are families and communities. Alarmist hand wringing is not productive.
My family survived the Holocaust and died in the Holocaust. I was raised as a reform Jew, and now I consider myself a secular Jew. In my extended family, we have been choosing every path including atheism, orthodoxy, reconstructionism, reform/conservative, and Zionism. Judaism has survived for 5000 years and will continue as long as there is value in religious observance and identity.
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@Sparky
I think the appropriate question that hasn’t been raised is “What does it mean to be a Jew”? I grew up in a non-religious family of Jewish parentage from Russia, the Middle East, and Europe. To me being Jewish is a cultural identifying label and I am proud of it. As for the religion, this one or that one, they all seek to impose their own ways of thinking and living and I believe we are better off assimilating the best that mankind has to offer, period.
1
We seem to be living in an age of leaders for whom short-term political gain is everything, and long-term principles mean nothing. This is true for both Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu. No wonder they like each other.
As for the "numbers game," in my view, Judaism has rarely been a proselytizing religion. It is at its best when it pursues quality, integrity, and continuity, not quantity.
I hope the "chosen people" choose principles and ethical long-term survival and sustainability, when push comes to shove. And let there be no doubt, there's no people in the world that knows better, from millennia of experience, that push always comes to shove.
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This Op-Ed is timely for me.
Last evening I, a liberal secular Jew, hosted a long lost ultra-orthodox cousin to dinner at my New York apartment (which we made kosher to his exacting standards although at the moment of truth he refused to eat).
Sadly, my cousin chose to raise political issues during our conversation. He said that President Trump was the greatest US president ever and the best supporter of the Jewish people while President Obama was a grotesque disappointment.
I am perplexed. President Trump’s environmental policies are directed to accelerating climate change and could conceivably lead to the extinction of the human race. On this issue my cousin has a lot more at stake than I do.
I have one child. She was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and her anti-cancer drug therapy has rendered her sterile. Through enormous strength of will and personal determination my daughter had eggs harvested prior to drug treatment and the possibility exists for her and her husband to have a child through surrogacy.
In contrast my cousin has five children, well over 30 grandchildren and great grandchildren in the offing. Yet for him the existential threat of climate change is not a problem.
Go figure.
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There are I’ll-informed and gullible people in every large group. This may be especially true for people who already define themselves as true-believers, such as your cousin. Also, the ultra-orthodox, like the ultra-fundamentalist Christian or Mormon or Muslim or any other group, tend to be (purposefully?) insular and shielded from all but their leaders’ preferred information and interpretations thereof. Nothing Jewish-specific about that.
You did good by showing welcome to your long-lost cousin by, among other things, making the effort to kasher your kitchen. Rest easy that at least you lived the true spirit of Judaism by welcoming your cousin, a stranger to you in many ways, it seems; and by your concern for all of the world’s people and creatures. I thank you for that, and I pray for your daughter’s and (hopefully!) future grandchildren’s well-being.
5
@DK If your cousin is anything like a strain of evangelical Christians in his belief that things like the climate are beyond man's control and in God's hands, then its all-too-easy to see how he can justify supporting someone like Trump despite the fact that his many offspring are the ones who will bear the brunt of what's coming...
3
@DK -Like the overwhelming majority of the GOP who support party over country, or should I say re-election over even a shred of personal integrity, your cousin has decided to give preference to his religious allegiances over the health of the planet all of us must live on. I doubt his grandchildren and great grandchildren will thank him.
2
"don’t understand why more American Jews don’t extend their conservative impulses beyond the tribe and vote Republican"
To help you understand why so many Jews strongly reject, indeed are horrified by, Republican policies (and reject ripping up Palestinian olive trees), read this:
"Increasing the well-being of humankind is one of the key elements of repairing the world. Helping those who are in need, no matter in what capacity, is crucial and "holy" work. Tikkun olam, as it relates to practical methods, applies to working in all communities, not just Jewish communities. Jews are members of greater society, and as such, their actions are not limited to their own communities. Social welfare and volunteer work, as well as the donation of monetary and physical resources, are ways in which people can be philanthropically involved, and at the same time, be involved in tikkun olam."
https://www.learningtogive.org/resources/tikkun-olam
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On the other hand, you may find this column interesting as an analysis of so-called "tikkun olam" and the leftist ideologues who have used it to turn an incidental phrase in an ancient Jewish text into a progressive Left movement that tries to conflate a 4000-year old culture and faith into whatever the latest version of the US Democratic Party platform happens to be as it shifts further and further to the Left ... a phenomenon we don't see among any other Jewish community in the world, as a matter of fact -- which speaks for itself.
https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Judaism-under-attack-The-Orwellian-hijack-...
1
@Lynn -- Only a few right-wing extremists here in Israel are tearing out Palestinian olive trees, and they are condemned by the vast majority of Israelis
Any group of people who feel threatened will cling together for mutual protection, and also seek understanding and acceptance of themselves despite differences.
As they feel they've gained that understanding and acceptance, they won't cling together with such urgency nor seek so urgently.
It is a question of fear becoming a sense of safety.
The fears were real and well justified in an era of real redlining and exclusion. For Jews in America today, things may not be idyllic, but they are a lot better than they were two generations ago.
We see reality reflected in behavior.
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@Mark Thomason
Sorry, typo. Meant "Jews" not "Jew", but still the same question.
From what wealth of personal experience does someone from Clawson, MI speak about the condition and fears of Jews?
Yes, who would have guessed that the destruction of the American Jewish community also numbering 6 million was not presaged by a Kristalnacht or series of pogroms caused by a spreading blood libel ... or even a Far Left inspired series of purges against the ideologically impure; but it all started when an exclusive restricted American golf resort finally allowed Jews in as guests. Who knew?
I'm sure that Ross will realize that just as there are cafeteria Catholics--people who identify as Catholic culturally while rejecting much or even most of the religious catechism and creed--there are plenty of Jews who are analogous, seeing themselves as culturally Jewish without paying a lot of lip service to the traditional religious dogmas.
And, of course, Judaism has a fairly long history of rather varied approaches to the identity--Orthodox, modern Orthodox, Chasid, Kabbalist, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform. In that sense it is more like Islam, or Protestantism, then the more ecclesiastically rigid Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy.
The problem, as others here have hinted at, is a story so old it barely has the strength to be told--that of those who, oppressed for thousands of years, suddenly, upon gaining a full measure of national self-determination, becoming behaviorally too much like their oppressors. Israel has strayed considerably from the ideas of its founders, not only by increasingly oppressing the non-Jew, but by increasingly narrowing the definition of who a Jew can be. And those with the temerity to define themselves as Jewish differently from the official Israeli religio-government position are considerably disquieted.
Ross may have some points to make on where this leaves various "types" of Jews politically, but the internal fight as to who defines Jewish identity is the issue here--and that's an issue of long standing.
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Maybe because Israel is still surrounded by enemies still sworn to its destruction who in contrast haven't changed their ways in centuries? What would any other nation on this earth do if its border communities were continually rocketed, threatened with murder by fanatics controlling the other side of a border, its civilians continually at risk of terror strikes, its very existence questioned, enemies vowing to destroy it and wipe out its population, even a percentage of its own minorities sympathizing with its enemies. Be honest now. If it was the US, or Russia, or Turkey or any Muslim country or the Palestinians if they had the means, they'd have done their best to wipe out their adversaries long ago. Japan never vowed to annihilate the US; but that didn't stop liberal god FDR from ordering the incarceration of the entire population of Japanese-Americans who never expressed any sympathy for Japan -- unlike part of the Arab population in Israel who defends Palestinian terror continuously. Whatever Israel's sins, they are minor in comparison to what any other nation on this earth would do under similar circumstances. The fact Israel's actions are minor in comparison speaks to the great morality of Israel overall. What other nation ever sent out warnings to a civilian population of impending attack and risking the element of surprise before a strike on an enemy as Israel does in Gaza? Did the US and Britain do this in WWII? Russia in Chechnya? The Turks against the Kurds?
5
Yes, the last time the Jews were faced with the conundrum of universal inclusiveness vs. if and where the line should be drawn, we ended up with Christianity.
I can imagine some "unyielding" orthodox Jews 2000 years ago saying: "I can accept the Pharisees, the Sadducees, I can even accept the Essenes. But this bunch who are demanding more inclusiveness to people who want to include the goddess Isis virgin birth cult, or the Manichean's story of their savior born under a shooting star with their Sunday day of rest, and no need for circumcision to make it easier to convert adult pagan males? No way! I can just picture it.
Ross’s value to this newspaper is undervalued, at least by the readership. More than any other pundit here, including David Brooks with his eternal justifications for the sacrifices a people must make to foster “community”, Ross is willing (and able) to offer a frank, transactionalist analysis of an issue that assumes that adult readers are capable of drawing their own conclusions if presented with facts and clear reasoning. And his reasoning often is irrefutable – at least if not filtered by strong interests.
Of course, his primary motivation is transparent: Ross is an observant Roman Catholic. Anyone NOT embracing that status is condemned anyway to hellfire eternal; so why NOT be honest about things? He may as well deploy his analytical skills while making a buck at it, because relative sophistication won’t matter a hill of beans in the end anyway. (Now, you didn’t really think I could wax so ruthlessly practical about David and NOT treat Ross equally, did you?)
But if you’re interested in reading illuminating insight on many issues, Ross is the guy to read.
The schism that he describes between the opposed views of Judaism, apparent today and perhaps dominant tomorrow, really DO (at least to me) present the existential challenge to Jews. Do you satisfy the demands of identity, or do you lose that identity in the resolve to embrace Kumbaya? Those who do likely will become Republicans; and those who don’t likely will assimilate, become secular … and swell Democratic ranks.
26
Either or are not the only choices. Your choices are falsely restrictive. One can embrace the best moral teachings Judaism offers, which are largely consistent with those of other religions (including Islam), and push to change Israel to live up to those ideals in a more inclusive state. A more open, democratic, and inclusive state. The thing to do is fight for change. I remain hopeful.
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@Mike
I don't remain hopeful. Israel has shot its bolt, for decades, on the Palestinian issue, and I don't think there remain any mulligans left for Hamas OR for Abbas. Much of what is going on there on other issues has to do with what is clearly their resolve over THAT issue, and is simply leaking-over into this one: Israel will be for Jews, and others inside and outside the country (but still dependent) will be merely passengers.
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@Richard Luettgen
Why do the demands of identity have to preclude "embracing Kumbaya," as you put it?
The Jewish people as a whole, despite millennia of persecution and assimilation, have not surrendered their identity, be they Hasidic, Orthodox, Reform, politically liberal or conservative, etc.
Why should they start now? Why in particular, should they do so when they have Israel?
Far right wing extremism is infecting the entire world, it seems, with its fear and its malice. Israel is no exception.
It, like the US, is embracing the reactionary, the ultra-national, the tribal siren song of demagogues who gain power by scaring people into believing that their identities are in jeopardy.
But it doesn't have to *be* that way.
One doesn't have to give up one's identity to embrace Kumbaya, because try as they might, the far right wing extremists can't wipe away the one part of our identities that we all share - the part that is human.
2
Ever since I was a child, growing up in Israel and abroad, raised by a Bible-teacher mother, and living in NYC since 1992, I've been puzzled by one thing: a big portion of the assimilationist angst you describe could be resolved by one change the rabbis are *free* to make, as they have changed many things over the last 2,000 years. Decide that a Jew is the son of a Jewish mother OR a Jewish father, and the whole equation changes dramatically. But no, let's all complain about the dangers of mixed marriage etc. while refusing to change the one thing that is up to us.
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@Ami Dar Reform Judaism already accepts those who have a Jew as either parent. All Israel needs to do is accept all major branches of Judaism.
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Is there a point though where branches are so extended that a line needs to be drawn? Isn't there a point in any approach to life that if you include everything, in effect you have become nothing?
@Ami Dar
You like most do not understand why The Orthodox only accept it when the mother is Jewish and not the father.
Maybe now you might know who the father is by doing a DNA test but at the time these laws were made these test did not exist.
You knew who the mother was for obvious reasons.
Unless you knew that this women could not have any relations with any other man you could not be sure the man claiming to be the father was the father.
Why would any one think they can determine religion based on the religion of the man claiming to be the father when this man might not be the father.
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Here is one simple rule to follow:
Do not support fascists, be they Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, or atheist.
All the rest is just commentary.
660
How about Communists?
2
One can be a Jew, secular, intermarried, a parent, accepting of Jewish and gentile minorities, in favor of the two-state solution and still be a good Jew. One can be all of those things and be the child of a Jew and non-Jew.
What irks liberal Jews about conservatives is how, in times like these, with the rank corruption that is out in the open, conservative Jews continue to faithfully support a conservative party that has run afoul of every single last Jewish principle.
What pains liberal Jews who support the idea of Israel, who used to know a much different, much more principled Israel, is how to love an Israel that has fallen to such a moral low. How to love an Israel that has become the spitting image of its people's former tormentors.
That is what liberal Jews grapple with today, in my opinion. Many among us who learned the Tanakh in childhood know this passage:
“For My people are foolish, They know Me not; They are stupid children And have no understanding. They are shrewd to do evil, But to do good they do not know.””
Jeremiah 4:22
In the age of Trump, Jews must choose whose values they will be judged by. In the age of Netanyahu, Jews of a certain kind are being pushed away, deemed less Jewish. There are many ways to be a good Jew, and no one owns the formula.
===
James Baldwin Was Right: Being A Jew In The Age of Trump
https://www.rimaregas.com/2017/08/14/james-baldwin-was-right-being-a-jew...
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@Rima Regas: Having read this comment, I literally have no need to post one of my own. Actually, I was under the impression that you were supportive of Israel's policies towards the Palestinian Arabs. Glad to learn that I was mistaken. Insofar as I'm concerned, a "good Jew" (i.e., one who takes to heart the principle of righteousness that's so intrinsic to the faith) cannot possibly support the confiscation of Arab property or the denial of human rights- including the right of self-determination. Nor can a "good Jew" extrapolate from the Holocaust the expression "Never Again" and believe that it applies only to those who share our faith. As for "good Jewish" Americans supporting the racism and nuanced anti-Semitism of our own feckless leader- as my grandparents would have put it, "Feh!"
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@stu freeman
I don't support killing Palestinias
I don't support taking or razing people's homes
I don't support turning Palestinian Israelis into non-citizens
I don't support turning the Druze, Samaritans and all of the other non-Palestinian Israeli into anything less than a full citizen.
I don't support starving Gaza's economy
I don't support preventing Gazans from living in human conditions
There is a whole slew of things I don't support.
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@stu freeman
You're about to have more likes in reply to me. How hilarious is that?
Do you still have trouble seeing replies?
This is essentially part of the debate about what it means to be Jewish. Israel has found a striking, and I believe self-destructive, answer to this question by limiting full rights of Israeli citizenship to only those with Jewish ancestry - the new “nation-state law”.
In terms of finding a long-term solution to the perennial Palestinian issue, it is a shot in the foot. Even in terms of Israel without the Palestinian territories, it legitimizes "apartheid" - a new form of the South's "separate but equal' doctrine.
It is also a close relative of Hungary's new nationalism and Trump's "Make America Great Again" doctrine. It is Naziism reborn.
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@Claus Gehner What debate? Do not treat others as you would not have them treat you. All else is commentary. Once we lose site of our core values, what's left?
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@Claus Gehner....And now that we know that DNA, archaeology, anthropology and recorded history shows that those who believe that they are Jews with family, DNA, historical and bloodlines originating in Palestine have been absolutely mistaken, we have to face a new reality. Palestine does NOT "belong to the Chosen People." Our Jewish Ancestors never lived there. We are Eastern European stock, with NO ties or claims to Palestine, in any measurable way. Jews claiming Palestine is as illogical and unlawful as Texas claiming New York, because "God said so."
Notice the impertinent, destructive racism with the religious delusion of being The Chosen People. Especially when everyone knows that God chose the United States to be a Christian Nation.
See the racist irony there?
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@Claus Gehner
YOu can call the assassinated Meir Kahane a spokesman for this type of rhetoric. I saw him live delivering this talk. In the 1970s there were daily school bus bombings in Israel and the JDL tried to respond to attacks in the USA. However, after 1948, all middle eastern Jews were forced and harassed to leave their ancestral homelands in the millions. No doubt anti-Semitism has become synonymous with anti Zionism according to many including Alan Dershowitz. Throwing out names from monstrous regimes and their followers to present day actions is irresponsible. Would the Nazis allow arab Israeli citizens and Knesset members to remain in the country? Would apartheid people rescue Ethiopian Jews to be repatriated Israeli citizen flying them ou within an inch of their lives. Would apartheid people rescue victims of the Haitian earthquake or their children rebuilding Puerto Rico or New Orleans. Would apartheid people give enormous trade and technological assistance and water to Soth Africa.