For the Symposium on Roberta Kwall, The Myth of the Cultural Jew
Many Americans consider themselves cultural Italians, cultural Jamaicans, cultural Koreans or the like. They celebrate ethnic holidays, eat ethnic foods, dance ethnic dances, socialize with other members of their ethnic group and cherish the values of the mother country. Cultural Italians, cultural Jamaicans and cultural Koreans feel no obligation to obey Italian, Jamaican or Korean law. They are Americans bound by American law, even as they may consciously and unconsciously interpret American law in light of their original or ancestral legal culture. Their cultural Italian, cultural Jamaican and cultural Korean identities are predominately American identities. Italians, Jamaicans and Koreans recognize that their former countrymen are citizens of the United States, even as they buttress those cultural identities when urging their cultural brethren to support Italian, Jamaican and Korean causes and offering paths back to Italian, Jamaican or Korean citizenship not available to persons with different ancestry.
Many Americans consider themselves cultural Italians, cultural Jamaicans, cultural Koreans or the like. They celebrate ethnic holidays, eat ethnic foods, dance ethnic dances, socialize with other members of their ethnic group and cherish the values of the mother country. Cultural Italians, cultural Jamaicans and cultural Koreans feel no obligation to obey Italian, Jamaican or Korean law. They are Americans bound by American law, even as they may consciously and unconsciously interpret American law in light of their original or ancestral legal culture. Their cultural Italian, cultural Jamaican and cultural Korean identities are predominately American identities. Italians, Jamaicans and Koreans recognize that their former countrymen are citizens of the United States, even as they buttress those cultural identities when urging their cultural brethren to support Italian, Jamaican and Korean causes and offering paths back to Italian, Jamaican or Korean citizenship not available to persons with different ancestry.
The obvious non-mythological existence of cultural Italians,
cultural Jamaicans and cultural Koreans in the United States highlights how
Professor Roberta Rosenthal Kwall’s wonderful analysis of Jewish legal culture is
beside the point when thinking about the phenomenon of the cultural Jew in the
United States. American cultural Jews
are not confused about the inextricable connections between law and culture in
Jewish (or any) legal culture. Professor
Kwall has confused predominantly Jewish identities and predominantly American
identities, and she may be confusing a lack of commitment to Jewish religious
observance with a lack of commitment to Jewish law. The origins of American cultural Judaism and
similar identities primarily lie in the legal and cultural struggles
responsible for the development and acceptance of cultural pluralism in the
United States and only secondarily in the evolution of Jewish legal
culture.
The The Myth of the
Cultural Jew: Culture and Law in Jewish Tradition powerfully describes how Jewish
law and Jewish culture have historically evolved in tandem so that one cannot
be understood in the absence of the other. Professor Kwall provides a rich
analysis of how the interaction between and interdependence of law and culture
have shaped Jewish practice throughout history.
Her point that one cannot have a predominantly Jewish identity in the
absence of some commitment to Jewish law, however, hardly requires that
detailed history. No legal culture
sanctions participants who declare that while they identify with the culture
they are not bound by the law. Italy
mandates that Italian citizens obey Italian law. Italian law does not give Italian citizens
(and American cultural Italians while in Italy) the option of eating pasta,
enjoying opera at La Scala, but not obeying the speed limits. Jewish law mandates that Jews be guided by Jewish
law, even though, in sharp contrast to Italian law, no human being is the
authoritative interpreter of Jewish law.
Jewish practice permits disputes over whether Jews may drive to religious
services on Saturday morning and perhaps whether Jews must attend religious
services on Saturday morning, as long as both sides to the dispute are
grounding their positions in Jewish legal culture. There is a difference, as Professor Kwall
recognizes and documents, between claims that Jewish law, properly interpreted,
sanctions same-sex marriage and claims that, as a non-observant Jew, one is not
bound by Jewish law on marriage.
Kwall’s discourse on legal culture in general and Jewish
legal culture in particular does not capture the nature of American cultural
Jewish identity. American cultural Jews
are Jews in the same sense as American cultural Italians are Italians. They celebrate Passover, eat bagels, go
Israeli folk dancing, tend to socialize with other Jews, and cherish what they
regard as Jewish values. American cultural
Jews, at least as they are defined by Professor Kwall, are nevertheless not
guided by Jewish law when they express their Jewish identity. They may celebrate Passover but not fast on
Yom Kippur because the former feels more satisfying that the latter, not
because they have concluded that celebrating Passover is more central to Jewish
legal culture than fasting on Yom Kippur.
What appears random practice from the perspective of the Jewish legal
culture that Professor Kwall details at great length is makes far more sense
from the perspective of American cultural pluralism that is largely (not
completely) absent from The Myth of the
Cultural Jew.
The primary path to American cultural Judaism was forged
during the debates in the United States over the nature of American national identity. For much of American history, immigrants were
expected to assimilate. “Hyphenated-American”
was a term of opprobrium. Immigrants
were not fully American to the extent their identities remained partly rooted
elsewhere. A person who was twenty
percent Jewish could only be eighty percent American. Over time, cultural pluralism, developed by
such Jews as Horace Kallen, achieved a foothold in American legal culture. Cultural pluralists insisted that immigrants
could best contribute to the United States by retaining their cultural
commitments, as long as those cultural commitments were not inconsistent with American
values and law. One could be one-hundred
percent American and twenty percent Jewish, provided that twenty-percent Jewish
made a positive contribution to American legal culture. American cultural pluralists were not
concerned with whether that twenty or even fifty percent Jewish made any sense
from an internal Jewish perspective. One
could identify as a cultural Jew as long as the fragments of Judaism one
retained were internally consistent with one’s American identity.
Cultural pluralism provided American Jews with various options
for balancing American and Jewish commitments.
Many observant Jews are guided by both American and Jewish law. Jewish legal culture sanctions such dual
identities. An elaborate body of Jewish
law concerns Jewish obligations to obey the laws of the land of their
residence. American legal culture sanctions
this dual commitments to American and Jewish law as well. The free exercise clause of the First
Amendment and such measures as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act provide
all religious believers with an ever changing space in which they may be guided
by their religious commitments. Other American
Jews choose not be guided by Jewish law.
American legal culture sanctions this option as well. Cultural pluralism lets individuals choose
the degree and manner of their cultural expression. No Jewish organization may prescribe how an
American may express their Judaism or any other cultural heritage. Americans who identify as culturally French
may make coq au vin with wine from the Napa Valley, even though all true
Frenchmen would insist the wine come from Bordeaux. So American cultural pluralism allows
cultural Jews to choose whatever facets of Jewish identity they find
satisfying, even if those choices seem incoherent from the perspective of
Jewish legal culture. One may
dance the hora and eat a cheeseburger, or get drunk on Purim while eating bread
during Passover.
Jewish law and contemporary Jewish practice buttress cultural
Judaism, even as many Jews find that practice (and the practice of Jews they
believe less observant then themselves) inconsistent with traditional
Judaism. Jewish law does not make a commitment to be
guided by Jewish law a condition of being Jewish. You are Jewish if your mother was Jewish or,
if you are Reform, if one parent was Jewish and you were raised in that legal
culture. Jewish organizations adopt highly
capacious understandings of who count as Jews.
Neither the United Jewish Appeal
nor AIPAC ask Jews about their commitment to Jewish law or their degree of
religious observance before they ask for monetary contributions or political
support. The state of Israel welcomes
Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet
Union and throughout the world without paying strict attention to their level
of Jewish commitment and enthusiastically champions ”birthright” programs
directed at luring Jewish youngsters to visit Israel that are indifferent to
whether the potential immigrant speaks Hebrew,
attends religious services regularly or keeps kosher. American cultural Jews who are regularly
solicited as Jews by other Jews whose Jewish identity is unassailable naturally
conclude that their Jewish identity is similarly unassailable. If the United Jewish Appeal, AIPAC and Israeli
immigration policies do not distinguish between the cultural Jew and the Jew is
guided by Jewish law, who is Professor Kwall to say otherwise?
Contemporary Jewish legal culture may also provide the
foundations for a secular Judaism that is guided by Jewish law, but does not
regard religious observance as central to that law. Professor Kwall details at great length how
Jewish legal culture has evolved in light of broader ethical commitments. She praises various Jewish denominations for
interpreting Jewish law in ways that permit congregations to celebrate same-sex
marriages and encourage women to play an active role in Jewish religious
observance. Kwall regards congregations
that support same-sex marriage as being guided by a living Judaism that adjusts
religious practices in light of more general Jewish commitments and the best
ethical commitments of the broader society.
Given how many adjustments many contemporary observant Jews have made to
their religious practices, some Jews might conclude that a living Judaism
requires that all forms of Jewish religious observance be maintained only if
consistent with more general principles of Jewish ethics. The
Myth of the Cultural Jew does not make clear whether Kwall thinks Jewish
legal practice is consistent with this (my) position that a person guided by
contemporary Jewish law could eschew most religious observance. If so, then the debate between the secular
and traditional Jew is over the best interpretation of Jewish law and not over
the binding nature of Jewish law.
The darker path to cultural Judaism was forged by
anti-Semites during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During the debates over Jewish emancipation,
many assimilationists concluded that the Christian goal of suppressing Judaism
was better achieved through carrots than sticks. Jews wanted to fit in just like everyone
else, the reasoning went. By
dramatically increasing Jewish economic opportunities and increasing the dating
pool for Jews by approximately 5000 percent, moderate anti-Semites counted on
market forces to weaken Jewish identity far more effectively than repression.
Cultural Judaism in the United States and elsewhere often seems a waystation
between a strong Jewish identity and no Jewish identity because that was partly
the intention.
We might derive three conclusions from these paths to American
cultural Judaism. First, American cultural
Judaism is likely to be a weak form of Jewish identity, in part because American
cultural Judaism is predominantly an American identity and in part because such
identities were created to weaken Jewish identity. Second, many American Jews are far more
attracted to the secular/cultural dimensions of Judaism than the legal
dimensions, even as students of any legal culture remind us that those
dimensions cannot be fully disaggregated.
Third, efforts to buttress Jewish identity should focus on the
secular/cultural dimensions, given their important to persons whose Jewishness
is at least a part of their identity.
The Myth of the
Cultural Jew provides strong foundations for American Jews willing to adopt voice
and loyalty strategies rather than choose the exit option. The resources exist in the Jewish legal
culture, Professor Kwall argues and I agree, for liberal American Jews to engage in a liberal
religious observance that is both consistent with Jewish practice and their
commitments to liberalism. Indeed, the
resources may exist in Jewish legal culture for secular Jews to place liberal
values at the center of Judaism, decentering more than is presently the case
religious observance as a central pillar of Jewish legal culture.
Cultural American Jews are likely to need more to strength their
Jewish identities. Young persons born of
Jewish parents may want demonstrations that the Jewish community or at least
important Jewish communities are committed to their liberal Jewish values, and
not merely that Judaism is open to those values. They must be able to see that being an active
participant in the Jewish community or a Jewish community is a means for
deepening and realizing what they believe are the best understanding of their
Jewish values. Whether liberal Jews can
make this leap of faith has become increasingly problematic, given the nature
of contemporary Jewish and Israeli politics.
Consider the difference between Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who Kwall
celebrates, and Benjamin Netanyahu, who is never mentioned in The Myth of the Cultural Jew. Liberal Jews of my generation were inspired
by Rabbi Heschel. When we saw Heschel
arm in arm with Martin Luther King, we were proud to be Jewish and, at least
for some of us, we thought that participation in some Jewish community was an
importance means for realizing and deepening these our Jewish values. Liberal Jews of my children’s generation are
ashamed of Benjamin Netanyahu and his American Jewish allies. When they see Netanyahu arm in arm with John
Boehner and what they regard as the most repressive forces in American
politics, they question whether the Jewish community is really committed to
what they regarded as Jewish values. Liberal
American Jews may not want a Judaism that is merely a big tent in which
progressives peacefully coexist with those who think the appropriate response
to the murder of innocent Israeli civilians is the murder some innocent Arab
civilians when doing so is collateral damage in strikes in which some guilty
terrorists are also killed. My friends who support Netanyahu are
certainly correct that the world applies a double standard to Israel. Moreover, the place of Israel in the identity
of cultural Jews who live in Israeli is surely different the the place of
Israel in the identity of cultural Jews in the United States. Cultural Jews is Israel may regard a Jewish state as the best place on earth for Jews to avoid persecution. Nevertheless, American cultural Jews are likely to want more and need more. If the best argument Jewish
citizens of Israel and their American allies can make for Israel policies is
that Israel has the right to be a nation just like any other nation, then many
liberal Jews is the United States are likely in the long run to conclude that no
good reason exists for automatically preferring Israel among all of these
nations or even retaining a liberal Jewish identity. For better or worse, Israel is a prominent marker
for Jewish identity in the contemporary United States and unless young
Jewish-American citizens in the long run can identify with the values of the
Jewish state, they are unlikely in the long run to identify as Jews, cultural,
secular, or otherwise