Ancient History
By Jeffrey Goldberg
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2000, at 10:34 AM ETDear Hanna,
Let me state at the outset that I'm not sure why Slate has asked us to do this. You would think they would want a couple of Jews to talk about Sam Freedman's new book, and not us goyim. But I'm game if you are.
Before we go any further, I would like to say a word about the word "Jew." As in "Jew vs. Jew," or, more to the point, as in the phrase "the first Jew to be nominated for national office." (Aren't you proud of me? I went four sentences before mentioning Lieberman, which is some kind of record for Jewish journalists this week.)
I don't know about you, but I get a chill down my spine whenever I hear the word "Jew" spoken by a non-Jew. Maybe because when I was in junior high school, it was usually preceded by the word "fucking." I especially don't like hearing it from Hanan Ashrawi's ex-boyfriend (Peter Jennings, for those of you who don't monitor anti-Jewish conspiracies for a living). The word "Jew" has a very harsh, Germanic ring to it. I much prefer the term "Jewish person," though I recognize that it doesn't easily fit into a headline, and that it isn't terribly punchy-- "Jewish People vs. Jewish People" doesn't really cut it as a sensational book title.
Oh, the book. Jew vs. Jew is a troubling book that is gaining a good deal of attention in part because Freedman is a justifiably admired journalist, and in part because Al Gore went to our tribal councils in search of a running mate. I'm familiar with Freedman's work, and I'm an admirer of his, so I'm going to assume that the title of the book, which implies the existence of a civil war that simply ain't, and the thesis of the book--that the American Jewish community is hopelessly and tragically riven by factionalism--are the fault of Simon & Schuster, and not the author.
Maybe I'm wrong, though. Maybe Freedman thought he found a good story. He traveled America and found that the Orthodox hate the Reform, the Reform hate the Orthodox, the Orthodox hate each other, Jewish women hate Jewish men, Likud supporters hate Labor supporters, and that the whitefish at Barney Greengrass hate the Nova at Zabar's.
Freedman is a veteran reporter best known and admired for his work on urban issues (I don't know if you read his book Upon This Rock, about the life of a black church, but you should). He is, however, apparently new to the Jewish story, and it shows. The impression I get from reading Jew vs. Jew is that he was genuinely surprised, dismayed, even, to find that Jews fight with each other, over liturgical issues, over politics, and especially over the placement of synagogues and mikvahs in secular neighborhoods. But you know what? Saying that Jews fight is like saying that water is wet. We fight, therefore we are. This is an old story--3,000 years old--and its American variation isn't that interesting: In Israel, when Jews fight, they really fight. Sometimes they even kill each other. Here in America, we yell a little, we sue each other, we even move out of neighborhoods that begin to sprout kosher pizzerias. But all this is normal, and Freedman treats it like it's Northern Ireland.
Not only is it normal; in fact, it's healthy. Fighting is good. Better ideas come out of fighting. Many of the best synagogues I know were born in fury. It's what we Jews do; when we don't like our synagogue, we leave and start our own. Freedman tells one story about a husband and wife in California who become upset when their congregation chooses to allow a variation of an important prayer to be read as a concession to women. So what do they do? They leave.
Maybe Freedman never heard the following joke, a chestnut if there ever was one: A Jew (sorry) has been shipwrecked on an island. After 10 years, a passing ship spots him, and its captain comes ashore to rescue him. Before they leave, though, the Jew asks the captain if he could show him around. He's quite proud of the life he built for himself, and the captain agrees to take a tour. "This," the proud Jew tells the captain, pointing to a wooden building, "is the smokehouse. And this treehouse is where I sleep. And this is the well I dug. And this," he says, pointing to a shack, "is the synagogue, and that," he says, pointing to another shack on a far hill, "is the other synagogue." The captain is confused. "Didn't you say you were here alone?" he asks. "Yes," the Jew replies. "Then why do you have two synagogues? "Ahhh," the Jew says. "This synagogue over here is my synagogue. And that one, over there, I wouldn't join if you paid me."
Thank you. I've always wanted to tell that joke online.
Nothing much in Freedman's book is new: He notes that America's freedom poses unique challenges to Jews; he notes that American Jews have turned the Holocaust into a bit of a crutch; he notes that the Conservative movement could cleave in two in the coming years, as some of its members move toward more Orthodox-style adherence to halacha, or Jewish law, and others move in the direction of the newly spiritualized Reform movement. He notes that intermarriage is a real bitch of a problem, and he notes that many Jews just don't care.
Maybe I walked away from Jew vs. Jew unexcited because I believe that, in very real ways, none of this matters much. At a certain point in the not-distant future, there will be more Jews in Israel than there will be in the entire Diaspora, America included. What happens in America is not immaterial to the future of Judaism, but it's not terribly central, either.
OK, enough. There must be something here you want to fight about.
Peace, love, and understanding,
Jeff
Ancient History
By Jeffrey Goldberg
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2000, at 10:34 AM ET
This week, a discussion of Jew vs. Jew
, Samuel Freedman's examination of escalating tensions among American Jews (click here to buy the book). Jeffrey Goldberg is a regular contributor to Slate and the New York Times Magazine
. Hanna Rosin is the religion correspondent for the Washington Post
. Reader Comments from The Fray:
[Reaction to Tuesday's entry]
I also feel the sting of the word Jew, but I'm not so thin-skinned as to hold it against the user. It falls into the same category as adjectives-used-as-nouns, like "he's a black" or "she's a gay," though in this case Jew is a noun. People don't like what they see as a rich, deep, everlasting heritage reduced to a single, one-syllable word; they believe the complexity of their people must be reflected in the term used to label their identities. I find this to be wrongheaded and kind of chickenshit. Because Jewish American is far-less evocative--because it's so specific, it reduces a person even more than just plain Jew--I prefer the one syllable; it's more open-ended. Words, especially identity labels, are so much more abstract than more descriptive words anyway; why try and make them say more than they can? Please use Jew and not Jewish-American, Mr. Goldberg, because each of us is capable of more than two adjectives.
--Simon
(To reply, click
here.)
I haven't read Freedman's book, but from a couple of reviews I gather there is big news for Jews in the book. the news is that after decades of decline, Orthodox Judaism is making a strong comeback, and that the newly-revitalized Orthodox are in some sense, according to Freedman, winning the battle against the much larger and more loosely organized Reform and Conservative factions.
What I don't know is whether this Orthodox resurgence is strong enough to seriously curtail the decline of Judaism in the United States. I doubt it. Some figures I got from an organization that keeps track of such things indicates that the Jewish population of the U.S. has declined from 3.5% of the population in the 1950s (5 million Jews), to 2.2% in 1990 (5.6 million Jews in a much more populous country), and that most of that population increase is due not to more Jewish births here, but to immigration.
I find the resurgence of Orthodoxy fascinating. the new Orthodox are often young, well-educated people, doctors, lawyers, educators, even college professors. In the old days, Orthodox Jews were generally older and less well educated. A lot of them had trouble speaking English. They were looked down upon by other Jews as hopelessly ignorant and out of date.
More than that I find it fascinating that, after the Holocaust, any Jew could take his/her religion (as opposed to Jewish peoplehood) seriously, much less well-educated people. After centuries of persecution climaxed by the slaughter of the 6 million, how can any Jew take seriously the Bible's notion of a just and merciful God? Where was that God during Auschwitz? Did he take a few years off in Miami Beach? I've been told that Orthodox Jews believe the Holocaust was god's punishment to all Jews for the growing number of non-observant Jews. But how can bright, educated people believe so fervently in a God who would permit the slaughter of helpless old women and little babies, among others?
No, I think, there is no god. but the Jews who invented the Western world's notion of God have been very much a presence and an influence, largely for the good, for more than four thousand years. and I hope they will continue to be for another four thousand years and, I hope, many more.
--samg
(To reply, click
here.)
Geez, Louise, why is this e-zine obsessed with Judaism and Jews? It seems nary a week goes by when we aren't treated to navel-gazing by various people about their or their friends' Jewishness, ruminations about it, reflections about it, ad nauseam. This Jew, for one, is tired of it - and I'm affiliated, and take my religion seriously. I wonder what others must think. Please, please, write about the interesting goings-on in the Dominican community in NY. Or the Irish Catholics in the suburbs. Or the growing Bengali community. Or recent immigrants from West Africa. Or those radical Norwegian-Americans who populate Minnesota. Arent' any of those other ethnic or religious groups worth writing about? Or is this all just confirmation that journalists, like most people, are self-centered--lots of Jews on the staff of Slate, so we get lots of articles about their ethnic angst. Sorry, guys, but it's getting really tiresome already.
--Stuart
(To reply, click
here.)
To Stuart:
One of the things I enjoy about this e-zine is the fact that sometimes there is a dialogue on Jewish issues in which Jews and non-Jews from different points of view can communicate. Many Jewish sites don't offer the same degree of interchange due to some of the factors discussed in the book we're discussing. There are plenty of other issues in Slate if you want to avoid this one.
--Jill42000
(To reply, click
here.)
[Reaction to Wednesday's entry]
Jeffrey Goldberg is certainly entitled to his sophmoric opinions that seem to dominate his discussion of Freedman's book. He is even entitled to dislike the Orthodox Jews who move into his neighborhood, or into neighborhoods like his. But he is decidedly not entitled to do anything to keep them out. That is just plain old fashioned bigotry of the sort I'm sure Goldberg would condem were those being kept out of the neighborhod African-American. And while Goldberg conveniantly says that he "is not talking about the modern Orthodox," let's not forget that it was a Modern Orthodox synagogue that the Reform Jews in Beachwood, Ohio were trying to prevent.
Oh, and by the way, in my more than thirty-years living in Brooklyn's "black-hat" neighborhoods I have never come across a "mezuzah store"; we do, however, have many dry cleaners
--Avi Schick
(To reply, click
here.)
To Avi Schick:
Jeff Goldberg poses the exact right question about Sam Freedman's book. As the brother of a (brilliant, loving, endlessly curious) black-hat, I still would react with alarm if my neighborhood were invaded by the Orthodox. Am I a bigot--someone who refuses to live and let live? Not exactly. The issue is that many of the Orthodox won't live and let live. The new arrivals observe the Shabbos--mazel tov. But for some of them, that observance includes walking down the sidewalk and hollering insults at longtime Jewish residents who choose not to--or, as Freedman reports, walking with their strollers in the middle of the street to discourage car traffic. (That seems a rather nutty risk to take with a baby, don't you think? I'd question those parents' fitness to raise children.) Pretty soon they're hissing at women with bare arms and picketing the theaters that show movies on Friday night and then--oy, there goes the neighborhood.
--David Edelstein
(David Edelstein is Slate's film critic.)
(To reply, click
here.)
I think Mr. Goldberg may be eliding a crucial distinction between Israel and America. I also lived in Israel and shared the fears of the secular Israeli majority about a creeping fundamentalist takeover. Here's the thing, however: In Israel, the combination of parliamentary horse-trading and the absence of separation between religion and state has meant that the ultra-Orthodox have a powerful say in determining the laws. Some results: only Orthodox Jewish marriages are recognized, and Israeli Jewish women must receive a religious divorce (get) from their ex-husbands in order to remarry, opening the door to all sorts of blackmail. The ultra-Orthodox also get to impose Sabbath blue laws and sundry other inconveniences on the secular majority; and when they move into a neighborhood, they will throw stones at cars driving on the Sabbath, harass "immodestly dressed" women, etc.
None of this holds true in America, so the justification for "keeping them out" of any neighborhood vanishes. According to the excerpt from Freedman's book published in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, one of the Reform Jewish leaders of the movement to deny the Orthodox Jewish residents of Beachwood, Ohio the right to build a religious center became devoted to the cause after an Orthodox woman chided him for digging in his garden on the Sabbath. I'm sorry, but I just don't see this as on a par with the massive violations of civil rights the ultra-Orthodox impose on secular Israelis.
--Martin J. Gidron
(To reply, click
here.)
[From the Fray Editor: Stuart responded to Gidron here.]
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Reader Comments from The Fray:
[Reaction to Tuesday's entry]
I also feel the sting of the word Jew, but I'm not so thin-skinned as to hold it against the user. It falls into the same category as adjectives-used-as-nouns, like "he's a black" or "she's a gay," though in this case Jew is a noun. People don't like what they see as a rich, deep, everlasting heritage reduced to a single, one-syllable word; they believe the complexity of their people must be reflected in the term used to label their identities. I find this to be wrongheaded and kind of chickenshit. Because Jewish American is far-less evocative--because it's so specific, it reduces a person even more than just plain Jew--I prefer the one syllable; it's more open-ended. Words, especially identity labels, are so much more abstract than more descriptive words anyway; why try and make them say more than they can? Please use Jew and not Jewish-American, Mr. Goldberg, because each of us is capable of more than two adjectives.
--Simon
(To reply, click here.)
I haven't read Freedman's book, but from a couple of reviews I gather there is big news for Jews in the book. the news is that after decades of decline, Orthodox Judaism is making a strong comeback, and that the newly-revitalized Orthodox are in some sense, according to Freedman, winning the battle against the much larger and more loosely organized Reform and Conservative factions.
What I don't know is whether this Orthodox resurgence is strong enough to seriously curtail the decline of Judaism in the United States. I doubt it. Some figures I got from an organization that keeps track of such things indicates that the Jewish population of the U.S. has declined from 3.5% of the population in the 1950s (5 million Jews), to 2.2% in 1990 (5.6 million Jews in a much more populous country), and that most of that population increase is due not to more Jewish births here, but to immigration.
I find the resurgence of Orthodoxy fascinating. the new Orthodox are often young, well-educated people, doctors, lawyers, educators, even college professors. In the old days, Orthodox Jews were generally older and less well educated. A lot of them had trouble speaking English. They were looked down upon by other Jews as hopelessly ignorant and out of date.
More than that I find it fascinating that, after the Holocaust, any Jew could take his/her religion (as opposed to Jewish peoplehood) seriously, much less well-educated people. After centuries of persecution climaxed by the slaughter of the 6 million, how can any Jew take seriously the Bible's notion of a just and merciful God? Where was that God during Auschwitz? Did he take a few years off in Miami Beach? I've been told that Orthodox Jews believe the Holocaust was god's punishment to all Jews for the growing number of non-observant Jews. But how can bright, educated people believe so fervently in a God who would permit the slaughter of helpless old women and little babies, among others?
No, I think, there is no god. but the Jews who invented the Western world's notion of God have been very much a presence and an influence, largely for the good, for more than four thousand years. and I hope they will continue to be for another four thousand years and, I hope, many more.
--samg
(To reply, click here.)
Geez, Louise, why is this e-zine obsessed with Judaism and Jews? It seems nary a week goes by when we aren't treated to navel-gazing by various people about their or their friends' Jewishness, ruminations about it, reflections about it, ad nauseam. This Jew, for one, is tired of it - and I'm affiliated, and take my religion seriously. I wonder what others must think. Please, please, write about the interesting goings-on in the Dominican community in NY. Or the Irish Catholics in the suburbs. Or the growing Bengali community. Or recent immigrants from West Africa. Or those radical Norwegian-Americans who populate Minnesota. Arent' any of those other ethnic or religious groups worth writing about? Or is this all just confirmation that journalists, like most people, are self-centered--lots of Jews on the staff of Slate, so we get lots of articles about their ethnic angst. Sorry, guys, but it's getting really tiresome already.
--Stuart
(To reply, click here.)
To Stuart:
One of the things I enjoy about this e-zine is the fact that sometimes there is a dialogue on Jewish issues in which Jews and non-Jews from different points of view can communicate. Many Jewish sites don't offer the same degree of interchange due to some of the factors discussed in the book we're discussing. There are plenty of other issues in Slate if you want to avoid this one.
--Jill42000
(To reply, click here.)
[Reaction to Wednesday's entry]
Jeffrey Goldberg is certainly entitled to his sophmoric opinions that seem to dominate his discussion of Freedman's book. He is even entitled to dislike the Orthodox Jews who move into his neighborhood, or into neighborhoods like his. But he is decidedly not entitled to do anything to keep them out. That is just plain old fashioned bigotry of the sort I'm sure Goldberg would condem were those being kept out of the neighborhod African-American. And while Goldberg conveniantly says that he "is not talking about the modern Orthodox," let's not forget that it was a Modern Orthodox synagogue that the Reform Jews in Beachwood, Ohio were trying to prevent.
Oh, and by the way, in my more than thirty-years living in Brooklyn's "black-hat" neighborhoods I have never come across a "mezuzah store"; we do, however, have many dry cleaners
--Avi Schick
(To reply, click here.)
To Avi Schick:
Jeff Goldberg poses the exact right question about Sam Freedman's book. As the brother of a (brilliant, loving, endlessly curious) black-hat, I still would react with alarm if my neighborhood were invaded by the Orthodox. Am I a bigot--someone who refuses to live and let live? Not exactly. The issue is that many of the Orthodox won't live and let live. The new arrivals observe the Shabbos--mazel tov. But for some of them, that observance includes walking down the sidewalk and hollering insults at longtime Jewish residents who choose not to--or, as Freedman reports, walking with their strollers in the middle of the street to discourage car traffic. (That seems a rather nutty risk to take with a baby, don't you think? I'd question those parents' fitness to raise children.) Pretty soon they're hissing at women with bare arms and picketing the theaters that show movies on Friday night and then--oy, there goes the neighborhood.
--David Edelstein
(David Edelstein is Slate's film critic.)
(To reply, click here.)
I think Mr. Goldberg may be eliding a crucial distinction between Israel and America. I also lived in Israel and shared the fears of the secular Israeli majority about a creeping fundamentalist takeover. Here's the thing, however: In Israel, the combination of parliamentary horse-trading and the absence of separation between religion and state has meant that the ultra-Orthodox have a powerful say in determining the laws. Some results: only Orthodox Jewish marriages are recognized, and Israeli Jewish women must receive a religious divorce (get) from their ex-husbands in order to remarry, opening the door to all sorts of blackmail. The ultra-Orthodox also get to impose Sabbath blue laws and sundry other inconveniences on the secular majority; and when they move into a neighborhood, they will throw stones at cars driving on the Sabbath, harass "immodestly dressed" women, etc.
None of this holds true in America, so the justification for "keeping them out" of any neighborhood vanishes. According to the excerpt from Freedman's book published in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, one of the Reform Jewish leaders of the movement to deny the Orthodox Jewish residents of Beachwood, Ohio the right to build a religious center became devoted to the cause after an Orthodox woman chided him for digging in his garden on the Sabbath. I'm sorry, but I just don't see this as on a par with the massive violations of civil rights the ultra-Orthodox impose on secular Israelis.
--Martin J. Gidron
(To reply, click here.)
[From the Fray Editor: Stuart responded to Gidron here.]