Years in the past, an Israeli colleague informed me concerning the youngsters’s ebook “Rivka’s First Thanksgiving.” Set in 1910, it tells the story of a 9-year-old Jewish immigrant persuading her household and her rabbis that she must be allowed to have fun the vacation. The younger woman writes: “You don’t appear to grasp that immigrants got here to America to flee from imply, depraved folks. … The Pilgrims have been grateful and I feel that we must be too.”
My colleague mentioned one thing clicked for her: For American Jews, the US was the promised land. Not simply one other exile to endure, however a different finish to Jewish historical past. Rivka introduced herself as a modern-day Pilgrim, seamlessly built-in into the American story. Rising up, I by no means considered myself as a Jew who occurred to reside in America. I considered myself as a Jew, and as an American, and I by no means imagined it another method.
As we arrive at the US semiquincentennial — the 250th anniversary of the nation — American Jews have been upended. Surging antisemitism — measurable as separate from anti-Israel activism — and a fractured political panorama have left us unexpectedly susceptible. Many go searching and surprise if this distinctive land is popping into simply one other chapter of persecution.
To grasp the place we go subsequent, we should understand how deeply America upended our aggadah (rabbinic folklore) and halacha (Jewish regulation). For millennia, Jews considered the world by means of a easy framework. As we be taught from midrash — historical rabbinic commentary — we skilled 4 kingdoms, 4 eras of time: Jewish sovereignty within the land of Israel adopted by Babylonian exile, Persian anti-Semitism, Greek erasure of Jewish id and eventually Roman subjugation, rendering the Jews a disfavored minority in a sprawling empire. We have been destined to stay second-class residents ready for steadiness to be restored and the fourth kingdom to fall.
Even the European Enlightenment was encumbered. In France, Jews have been admitted as equal residents provided that they renounced their id as a definite folks. They might be French residents of the Mosaic persuasion, however not a nation of their very own. Jews may transcend their historical past of oppression solely by transcending their very own historic understanding of themselves.
The Holocaust was the ultimate, devastating act of that outdated world — the fourth kingdom.
However America was different.
The founders of the US have been not solely in reforming their outdated nations, however creating a brand new one. They held sure truths to be self-evident, amongst them that “all males are created equal.”
This new actuality was captured in 1790, when Moses Seixas, a synagogue sexton, welcomed George Washington to the Newport Synagogue. Seixas famous how Jews had lengthy been disadvantaged of the rights of free residents, however now loved a authorities “which to bigotry offers no sanction, to persecution no help.” Washington famously echoed these phrases again to him.
Whereas making use of these ideas selectively and sometimes grudgingly to the enslaved, their descendants, girls and Native People, America by no means demanded that Jews buy equality on the value of their collective id. For Jews, this nation has by no means been an oppressive empire, neither is it a spot that occurs to be sort. It has merely been, in a very unprecedented method, a rustic during which Jews are full and equal residents. And it created a tradition during which Jews have been not ready for the final exile to finish.
This distinctive atmosphere essentially modified Jewish regulation and follow. America offered citizenship to Jews as a pathway right into a society that might be outlined by its residents, with none authorities involvement in selling dominant types of non secular or cultural expression. This wide-open atmosphere has meant that American Jews have the untrammeled freedom to accentuate, attenuate or remix their Jewish commitments as they see match.
Sociologist Charles Liebman way back identified that each one Jews in America are Jews by alternative. Nothing in American society binds you to your Jewishness. Household pressures are actual; insular communities can usually effectively coerce folks to stay inside them. However Jewish life in America performs out in an unpressurized cabin, even when many Jews discover methods to placed on their very own oxygen masks.
Which means Judaism in America has needed to domesticate a Judaism constructed on avodah mei-ahava — service that flows totally from love, moderately than concern, reverence or social stress. Maimonides emphasised this as a vital part of non secular dedication: doing what’s true as a result of it’s true, out of pure conviction and enthusiasm.
We are sometimes preoccupied with demographic continuity and skyrocketing intermarriage charges. This concern is cheap, and leads some to dismiss the American experiment as a kind of non secular churban, or disaster. However that very same America pressured us to construct a Judaism that individuals solely follow as a result of they wish to.
That is maddening for rabbis and educators. It’s inefficient to the purpose of madness when it seems like it’s a must to entice folks to take part. However for many who do keep it produces one thing exceptional: Jewish life that’s embraced for its personal sake, shifting us from a discourse of guilt to a discourse of aspiration.
One could be grateful with out being naive. It is a fraught second. The nation is split and pleasure in being an American has steadily slid downward. We’re confronting realities we thought wouldn’t manifest right here.
As a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I’ll by no means assume anywhere is an impregnable fortress towards hate. However as an American, I refuse to categorise this nation as the newest manifestation of an oppressive empire. People could be merciless like anybody else, however America’s DNA is different.
President Invoice Clinton proclaimed in his First Inaugural Deal with: “There may be nothing unsuitable with America that can not be cured by what is correct with America.” This stays true. The beliefs on which America was based, the Structure that continues to control it, stay pathways to respecting human equality and defending non secular liberty.
Extra importantly: America’s issues are our issues. We aren’t dwelling below the safety of a international sovereign. We’re a part of the sovereign folks by whose consent the federal government governs. Passive pessimism will not be an choice.
As residents of this nation, we now have one thing to offer. We stroll by means of the world with the conviction that human beings are created within the picture of God — and America wants that conviction proper now. We all know how one can disagree with out fracturing — the Talmudic rivals Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel fought for generations and by no means stopped studying from one another — and America wants that mannequin too.
The Talmud reminds us that merely following the principles of the covenant can maintain us for a thousand generations, however serving out of affection creates a bond that lasts 2,000.
I’m not a politician; and although I’m, in a way, the son of a politician, I nonetheless don’t fake to know if America’s finest days are forward of us. However I do know this: So long as there may be hope that they’re, we should do our half to make it so. After we construct a tradition of service from love, we must be constructing on a scale that thinks in 1000’s of generations. The thought of America is just too valuable to desert. That is our democracy as a lot as anybody else’s, and internalizing that ought to gear us up for not less than the following 250 years of answering George Washington’s name.
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is president and rosh yeshiva at Hadar.
The views and opinions expressed on this article are these of the creator and don’t essentially mirror the views of JTA or its mother or father firm, 70 Faces Media.
