CHAPTER II

BELIEF, ETHNICITY AND NATIONALISM

The Case of Judaism

SIDNEY SCHWARZ

Washington Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values

            David Little has provided a very useful framework within which we can better understand the issue of faith, nationalism and ethnic conflict. Several of the concepts that he uses, emerging from Max Weber’s work, strike very important chords within the context of Jewish faith and Jewish history. The first concept is that of providential mission; the second is the issue of transcendent continuity; and the third point speaks to different manifestations of nationalism in the 20th century. I would like to use each of these ideas as a way to better understand the place of Judaism and the Jewish people within the larger context of ethnic conflict and nationalism.

            The Jewish version of providential mission is the concept of the chosen people. Given the very central place which "chosen-ness" plays in the Jewish religion, it is interesting to note that it rests on a very thin scriptural reed. In fact, it is only in the post-Biblical period that chosenness becomes a major form of self-identification for the Jewish people.

            There are two major references in the Bible that are used as a basis for the Jewish concept of chosenness. Deuteronomy 7:7 states: "Not because you were the greatest of people, that God set upon you and chose you; you were the smallest of people." The other classic reference is Amos 3:2, "You only have I known from all the nations of the earth; therefore will I punish you for all your wrongdoing." In neither of these citations for chosenness does there exist the notion of chauvinism that the concept takes on in later history.

            There are two ideas presented in these citations. The Deu-teronomic passage sees Israel as a small, select people, bringing God’s word into the world. Amos suggests that Israel will be judged by God by a higher, double standard. Jews are supposed to fulfill all 613 of God’s commandments in order to merit a place in the world to come. Gentiles, on the other hand, can achieve the same reward by fulfilling the seven universal laws of Noah.

            It is clear that early on there is a self-perception of the Jewish people as a distinct unique people. It is more classically framed in the Hebrew term goy kadosh, a "holy people." The Hebrew term "holy" carries the notion of separateness. In the same way that the priests were separate from the rest of Israel in the desert, and later in the days of the Temple, so too Israel would be to the nations of the world, some kind of a spiritual vanguard representing God’s truth.

            This clearly is part of Jewish self-perception from the earliest point on. Ironically, it is not only conservative or fundamentalist approaches to religion that emphasize this chauvinist element of the Jewish tradition. In the 19th century, the founders of Reform Judaism believed that Jews possessed traits that made them ethically superior to other peoples. According to this view, this explains how Jews not only brought the concept of ethical monotheism into the world, but how they were destined to teach this concept in the future as a "light unto the nations." This came to be known as "the mission of Israel" concept and it is a central tenet of Reform Jewish theology to this very day. Not all forms of liberal Judaism accentuate the providential mission theme. Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, totally rejected the notion of religious-ethnic chauvinism and he did so on several grounds. First, he thought that the choosing of the people Israel at Sinai was unsupported by theology. Kaplan did not accept the belief that a personal supernatural God appeared to Israel at Sinai. Kaplan posited that God was a transnatural entity which was an extension of the collective consciousness of the Jewish people.

            Second, Kaplan understood better than most thinkers in the twentieth century that a large part of the Jewish self-perception of being chosen was an expression of folk religion and not of elite religion. That is to say that the Jewish folk went much further in expanding the concept of chosenness than Scripture ever intended. The end result was that Jews came to see themselves as superior to other people even though the real intention was to convey the sense of greater obligation.

            Third and finally, Kaplan would not make the claim than any religion, Jewish or other, could or should make the claim of exclusive truth. He thought that religion was meant to be a source of greater harmony among people, and greater wholeness in the world, symbolized by the word Hebrew word shalom. It would be unseemly to have the religions of the world staking competing claims to possession of absolute truth. As perhaps the oldest faith tradition that makes the claim of providential mission, Kaplan urged the Jews to forego that particular pretension. In one of his books, Kaplan envisioned a world parliament of religions in which all would gather together, and Jews would be the first to stand up and repudiate the notion of chosenness. Presumably, other religions would then get up and eschew the same claim thereby ushering in some messianic age in which religions would live in harmony with one another.

            It says a lot about the power of the idea of providential mission that Kaplan’s recasting of the idea of chosenness was almost totally rejected by contemporary Jews in the twentieth century. While much of Kaplan’s thinking has been embraced in Reform and Conservative Jewish circles and has made its way into the larger stream of Jewish life in contemporary America, his rejection of chosenness is mostly ignored.

            Arnold Eisen in his, The Chosen People in America, makes the point that while almost all other concepts of Judaism have moved from the particular to the universal in the twentieth century, the concept of chosenness has not been similarly transformed. In large measure we might attribute the Jewish tenacious hold on the concept of the chosen people to the Jewish historical experience.

            The loss of one third of the Jewish people during the Holocaust was not only one of the great tragedies in human history but it has forever scarred the Jewish psyche. In a peculiar way, the idea of providential mission came to have two sides in the Jewish experience. On the one hand it suggested that the Jewish people were specially loved by God. On the other hand, the experience of Jewish persecution throughout history became an attendant phe-nomenon of chosenness. Both the Christian Church and the Islamic world adopted a level of animus towards Jews as a result of the Jews rejecting their respective doctrines. While the treatment of Jews varied based on time, place and the ruling power, the overall experience resulted in the Jews seeing themselves as perpetual pariahs, a status memorialized in Hannah Arendt’s book, The Jew as Pariah.

            It is interesting that in contemporary America, many people see Jews as a privileged group. Certainly all the evidence of educa-tion, income, positions of influence and power would suggest that Jews have done as well, if not better, than any ethnic sub-group in America. Yet there is a serious disconnect between this recent history of achievement and Jewish self-perception. Jews continue to think of themselves as outsiders.

            Several years ago there was a study done among Jews which asked the question, "In your view, how many gentiles do you suppose would automatically oppose a Jewish candidate for pre-sident?" Some 75% of Jews said that gentiles would dismiss out of hand a Jewish candidate for president from their own party be-cause they were Jewish. When the same question was asked from a random sample of gentiles, only 21% said that they would reject a Jewish candidate out of hand. That difference, between what Jews think people think of them and what in fact people think of Jews tells us something about the tremendous sense of victimi-zation that Jews still feel.

            This phenomenon is also evident in Jewish political behavior. It is a general rule in politics that as ethnic groups move up the socioeconomic ladder, they become more politically conservative. Essentially, as one acquires more wealth, there is a vested interest in keeping that wealth as opposed to redistributing that wealth to those who have less. Jews have defied this pattern all along. It is unusual that a group that has achieved as much success as have American Jews continue to vote in decidedly liberal ways similar to other marginal ethnic groups.

            When one looks at the history of the last 30 years of the Jewish-Black alliance, it reveals once again the Jewish sense of victimization which perpetuates the notion of chosenness. Jews have eagerly pursued alliances and relationships with the Black community and in recent times it has taken the Black community by surprise. To Blacks, the Jews look like white males, in fact, like rich white males. But to the Jewish community, Blacks look like kindred spirits. In other words Jews see Blacks as fellow travelers on a road of discrimination and persecution. This ongoing sense of victimi-zation has had a profound impact on Jews and explains why they preserve their particular sense of providential mission.

            The second category that sheds some light on the Jewish relationship to issues of belief and ethnicity is that of transcendent continuity. Above David Little has made the point, quite con-vincingly, that to realize a policy of nondiscrimination in the nation state, there is a need to create a public sphere that is, presumably, religiously impartial. This is a reasonable assumption, though I think it reflects an American bias towards the importance of the separation of church and state. I suggest that we need to take a closer look at countries like England, Sweden and Denmark to see if a symbolic entitlement in certain states that elevates one religious group over the rest in fact leads to discriminatory policies. I don’t think it is necessarily true.

            At the same time, it is clear that the entanglement of religion and state in Israel is problematic and it is evident in facets of the contemporary Jewish condition that fall under the rubric of transcendent continuity. When the State of Israel was created, there were numerous connections to the history of the Jews in the diaspora. Essentially, when the Jews were banished from Israel in the year 70 of the Common Era, the rabbinic leadership of that community understood the need to have a national identity take on a religious guise. Supposedly, this transformation would make Jewish survival easier as guests in a variety of countries through the centuries. The return to Israel in the 20th century reframed Jewish identity in nationalist terms but there were conscious attempts made to keep numerous symbolic linkages with the pre-nationalist phases of Jewish life, not to mention the communities of Jews around the world which would continue to exist as religious communities alongside the emerging Zionist state.         

            Because religion specializes in symbolic language it is there that one finds some linkages. There is a prayer that says : "May our eyes see the return to Zion. . . ." This prayer, said every day by Jews for centuries, reflects the ongoing urge of Jews to return to Zion. At the seder on the holiday of the Passover, there is a key line in which the participants articulate the desire that next year we may be in Jerusalem. This too suggests the very special place that Zion, now Israel, has in the Jewish spirit. Judah Halevi, the medieval Jewish poet, framed a line that is often quoted and appears in many, many places in contemporary Hebrew literature and poetry: "My heart is in the east, though my body is in the west." A contemporary prayer, written by the chief rabbinate of Israel which the Jews now say with their grace after meals, talks about Israel as the "first bud, of the flower of redemption". We understand from this that Israel represents the beginning of the messianic era and that Israel represents the first bud appearing after the harshness of winter, winter representing the exile of the Jewish people in the Diaspora.

            I offer some of these liturgical examples of transcendent continuity to suggest the power of the Zionist movement to Jews, not only historically, but even until today. This powerful sense of connection exists whether or not a particular Jew plans to move to Israel or not. Even the word aliyah, the term used by Jews to denote emigration from the diaspora to Israel, means "going up," movement from a lower spiritual state to a higher spiritual state. I’m not sure that there’s any precedent in the twentieth century for a Diaspora community to feel so totally linked to a nation state which embodies a several thousand year old religious heritage.

            There are other symbolic connections between Jews in the diaspora and the state of Israel. The most powerful symbols of the state of Israel are Jewish in content. The seven-branched Jewish candelabra, the Star of David on the flag, religious objects on postage stamps, biblical verses used by political leaders. Some years ago Jack Cohen, rabbi of the Hillel at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, made a proposal that if Israel were to become a true democratic and liberal state, it would need to eschew all those forms that tied the state to Jewish forms. He was so bold as to suggest that certain lines come out of the Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem. That particular line says that for thousands of years Jews have yearned to go back to Israel. Cohen claimed that only by dropping such a line could Jews and non-Jews live side by side as equal citizen. In the 1930’s Martin Buber showed similar sensitivity to non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine when he created a group called B’rith Shalom, whose platform was a bi-national state in Palestine. There was as little sympathy for that idea then as there is today in eliminating the Jewish elements of the democratic state of Israel. All of which points to the large investment that Jews have in those aspects of Israeli society that do connect with Jewish history and the rest of the contemporary Jewish world.

            While Jewish religious entitlements in the state of Israel are not without problems, it is hard to know how to pull these strands apart. It is precisely in the areas of overlap that Israel is most compelling -- at least for Jews -- as a homeland for the Jewish people. Transcendent continuity makes for a strong civic fabric. It is just such a civic fabric which is so lacking in America. Nor is it hard to extend the observation to say that what we miss here in America is precisely that kind of civic fabric. Part of what is happening in America with its tribalization is that we no longer find ourselves to have the kind of strong civic fabric that makes for a cohesive society.

            The third and final point that I want to respond to is the observation about liberal and illiberal nationalism and how it applies in the case of the Jewish people and, more specifically, Israel. Israel is a good example of a country that combines elements of both liberal and illiberal nationalism. Its political and judicial institutions are rigorously democratic, and de jure, you have a hard case to make to suggest that there are overt forms of discrimination in Israel. This is not to say than non-Jews do not experience the feeling of being second class citizens in Israel. But if one looks at the cases that have come before the Israeli Supreme Court, it is remarkable how often some act of state sponsored discrimination will get overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.

            It is unfortunately true that, in many quarters, Israel has come to be characterized as an oppressor nation, owing to its long-term occupation of lands captured in the Six-Day War. Military occu-pation of any territory produces antagonisms and brings out the worst in both occupier and occupied, and the case of Israel is no exception. The irony is that Israel has long perceived itself as a besieged nation, a survivor nation of a people decimated by the Holocaust. And it is this siege mentality, I submit, that has both driven the country to build its defenses, as well as served as the justification for using its not insignificant might to protect its per-ceived security needs.

            Because Jews perceive themselves as a marginal people in the Diaspora and have felt themselves to be a besieged nation in Israel, the labelling of Israel as a human rights violator or as an oppressor nation has been jarring. A very large part of Jewish ethical behavior is driven by the Biblical injunction to "protect the stranger." Jews tend to identify with the downtrodden and under-privileged in every society because they have so often found them-selves in the same circumstances.

            The transition from powerlessness to power is not an easy one. The history of 20th century politics is replete with examples of oppressed minorities coming to power through revolution only to become more authoritarian and intolerant than the regime they toppled. In the spectrum of such examples, Israel’s case is not so extreme. Nevertheless the juxtaposition of Israel’s circumstances over the past several decades with a country that Jews envisioned as a "light unto the nations" has taken its toll. Many Jews who once looked at Israel with pride found ways to distance themselves from the Jewish state both in terms of financial support as well as in terms of their emotional attachments. Other Jews tried to make the distinction between being lovers of Israel while not supporting specific policies of the government of Israel. Even within Israel, many voices were raised which pointed out the great price Israel was paying in terms of its ethical character by ruling over one and a half million Arabs. In large measure, while Israel might have been able to maintain its control over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip indefinitely, it was the psychic costs that propelled the Rabin government towards an agreement to transfer these territories to the PLO.

            The interweaving of Judaism, in its religious formulation and the evolving nature of the state of Israel, a political manifestation of the Jewish people, is most complex. While the success of the Zionist movement in providing Jews with a refuge from persecution is unquestioned, it also has provided an unprecedented context within which the values of Judaism have come to be tested. It could be argued that it was easy for Judaism to be a liberal tradition during the period when Jews were powerless to victimize anyone else. With the acquisition of power in Israel, the Jewish people will have their greatest test. Can a people continue to affirm their unique role in history and in the world while recognizing the le-gitimacy of competing claims for truth or territory.

            I would like to close with a quote from Rabbi David Hartman, an orthodox rabbi who moved from Canada to Israel. He is one of the most important thinkers on the Israeli political scene today trying to fuse Jewish and Biblical values with the contemporary realities of the State of Israel. He writes as follows:

The turn towards independent political existence affords us the opportunity, as the earliest bearers of Biblical faith, of becoming the first religion to acknowledge that revelation never exhausts the plentitude of creation. The dream of history should not be the victory of one community over others, but that each should walk before God in the way that He taught it. No community can claim to exhaust the will of the universal God of creation . . . (Conflicting Visions: Spiritual Possibilities of Modern Israel [New York: Schocken, 1990]).