When our so-called leaders say they know what’s best for “The Jews,” and what they stand for is anathema to me, I have to ask: “Which Jews?” It makes me disclaim the Jewish “we” and retreat into the “I,” and that becomes my Judaism.
I’m having a pronoun problem, a problem with the Jewish plural. The more vibrant my relationship to our tradition, the less comfortable I seem to be with the collective known as “the Jews.” Put plainly, as my Jewish “I” has flourished, my Jewish “we” seems to be floundering.
Negotiating the tension between the “I” and the “we” is a healthy human dynamic, that helps individuals shape a meaningful identity. But when a diverse people is coerced into speaking with one voice, then the “we” risks becoming a “they.” When our so-called leaders say they know what’s best for “The Jews,” and what they stand for is anathema to me, I have to ask: “Which Jews?” It makes me disclaim the Jewish “we,” and retreat into the “I,” and that becomes my Judaism.
Ideally, before representing us, our spokespersons would have a record of mitzvah-based activism and a minimal level of Jewish literacy. But after observing some of today’s organization leaders, I wonder what it is that entitles them to speak for “the Jews?” I hear them spout received doctrine rather than fresh ideas or nuanced analyses of communal problems. I don’t see many moral exemplars or political visionaries. I see money, power and ego.
And I see mostly men. Decisions affecting Jewish females are still being made by male religious or communal cabals. Witness the latest Orthodox push for abstinence-only programs that denigrate realistic sex education. Or the willingness of some men to sacrifice women’s reproductive rights to anti-choice candidates who mouth the “pro-Israel” line. When those men say “we,” they’re not speaking for me. Nor are the men who convene conferences on “The Jewish Future,” without inviting one woman to the table. Nor the men who never deign to come hear a woman speaker or a panel on women’s concerns.
To complicate matters of collective Jewish identity are the sensitive rarely acknowledged nachas and shande factors.
Like every parent, I shep nachas (take prideful pleasure) in the accomplishments of my children and grandkids. But I also feel proud of the achievements of Jews I don’t know; call it “group nachas.” When Joseph Stiglitz or Nadine Gordimer wins the Nobel prize, or Shawn Green dons a Mets uniform, or a new book by Allegra Goodman or Jonathan Safran Foer gets critical raves; when a rabbi breaks ranks and speaks out against domestic violence in our community or publicly supports the rights of agunot (women chained to husbands who won’t grant them a religious divorce); when Jews showed up at last year’s Washington, D.C., demonstration against the Darfur genocide far in excess of our proportion to the population, carrying signs with Jewish messages and Hebrew writing—I shep nachas.
But there is also shande, the scandal or disgrace that makes a Jew feel ashamed as a Jew because of another Jew’s behavior. If you’ve ever been moved to say, “I can’t believe a Jew could do that!” you were responding to a shande.
In the 1950s, my immigrant mother always read the papers with an eye to Jews who either burnished or besmirched the image of our people. Bernard Baruch and Fanny Brice were “good for the Jews.” Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel were “a shande far di goyim!” (Translation: They made us look bad to the Rileys next door.) Israel, of course, was pure nachas.
Today, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Spielberg are good for the Jews; Jack Abramoff and Paul Wolfowitz? A shande. Israel is more complicated. I’m proud that its doctors perform organ transplants without regard to the religious or national identity of donor or recipient. When the Winograd commission issued its bold assessment of Israeli errors in the 2006 Lebanon war, I was proud of the Jewish State’s capacity for self-criticism and the vitality of its democracy. But Israel’s shandes shock me. Eighty thousand Holocaust survivors live below the poverty line in the Jews’ purported haven in a heartless world. One-third of all Israeli children live in poverty. Rolling scandals have rocked Israel’s government—charges of rape, sexual harassment and corruption at the highest levels. Last spring, an Orthodox rabbi, Reuven Hiller, and his Sephardi synagogue members threatened to disrupt Israel’s Memorial Day ceremonies if a Reform rabbi was permitted to say a prayer—and the Reform rabbi, Micky Boyden, who had lost a son in combat, was silenced.
A new study by Steven M. Cohen and Ari Kelman found that 82 percent of American Jews regard themselves as “pro-Israel” but only 28 percent call themselves Zionists. Some of this distancing is surely a result of the shande factor. Many of us are uncomfortable with the government’s kowtowing to the Orthodox rabbinate; many take issue with Israel’s military and political response to the Palestinians. While every nation has the right to defend itself, we find it impossible to Jewishly justify collective punishment, illegal settlements, house demolitions, systematic humiliations of Arabs at checkpoints, inadequate public services to Israeli-Arab villages, a 20-foot wall that divides Arabs from their fields, schools and jobs.
The Talmud teaches, “Kal Yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh”: “Every Jew is responsible, one for the other.” Thus are we directed not just to safeguard each other’s well-being but to make our fellow Jews proud with behavior so exemplary that a gentile observing us in everyday life will think well of the whole Jewish people and, by extension, the Jewish God. The sages understood that when one Jew’s acts are shameful or embarrassing, another Jew might take note of it, and use the shande to justify Jewish self-hatred or alienation from the community.
In other words, each of us has the power to either enhance or tarnish the Jewish “we.” My Jewish identity is as much in your hands as yours is in mine. We’re in this together.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin is at work on her tenth book, a novel entitled The Man in the Playground.
