Rabbi Joshua Waxman: November 2006 Archives

Rabbi Stern’s presentation of the issue of Jewish status as a question of genes vs. identity is right on the mark.

Judaism has been so hard to pin down for so many people because it’s not a religion--you can certainly be Jewish without believing in God or following any Jewish practices--nor is it a race or ethnic group, since you can’t convert into a race but you can become a Jew by choice.

More than 70 years ago, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan first attempted to address this difficulty by proposing a new definition--one I think we can still learn from today. Kaplan said that Judaism was first and foremost a civilization, meaning a cohesive group identity that included shared history, culture, rituals, values, literature and, of course, religion. The shared element that held all Jews together wasn’t genes or religious practice--it was peoplehood, meaning Jews are linked to one another by a common identity, a shared sense of belonging, that transcends any single criterion.

How does any of this relate to the question of how we as Jews welcome prospective converts? Since being Jewish is not primarily a religious identity, I don’t believe that people who convert to Judaism should be forced to jump through this or that particular religious hoop.

I think it’s reprehensible to check up on converts to see if they’re keeping kosher or keeping shabbat as some rabbis do, when these are in no way defining criteria for being Jewish. What I do believe is that those wishing to convert need to affirm and formalize their commitment to having a Jewish identity and being part of a Jewish community, the Jewish story, and the Jewish people.

Does that mean that someone could simply decide to become Jewish without conversion? My answer is no: One person can be born American and exercise all the rights of that identity automatically but another person who had citizenship in another country must go through a process of becoming an American citizen--formally claiming that identity through study and appropriate administrative procedures--before enjoying those same rights.

Becoming Jewish means claiming citizenship in the Jewish people--formally taking on a new identity, culture, and civilization. And I certainly hope that we can be welcoming to anyone who wishes to make a commitment to do that.

At the very beginning of my rabbinical studies, one of my teachers gave me a sage piece of advice: "Don’t let your congregants put you on a pedestal. Then they’ll spend all their time trying to knock you off of it." The point is that clergy are often held up to unrealistic expectations–the "perfect" rabbi is supposed to make only $20,000 a year and give away $30,000 of it to tzedakah!–and then are faulted when they fail to live up to them.

The key, as my teacher was telling me, was not to get caught up in this dynamic in the first place. Don’t let your congregation start believing you’re superhuman (flawless) and don’t let yourself start believing it either.

Clergy are very human, with human strengths and weaknesses. Certainly we should be aspiring to the highest levels of ethical behavior that we can, but we also need to be honest and open about issues that we are struggling with. A rabbi who is "perfect" has nothing to teach his or her congregants, who aren’t. But a rabbi who confronts difficult issues with honesty and integrity can offer congregants a model of how to do the same in their own lives.

As Gayle Haggard, wife of disgraced evangelical minister Ted Haggard, acknowledged in a letter to her former congregation, “For those of you who have been concerned that my marriage was so perfect I could not possibly relate to the women who are facing great difficulties, know that this will never again be the case.”

Ted Haggard, like so many other religious leaders, seemed to believe that he always had to project an image of ‘perfection’ at all costs. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is Rabbi Fred Neulander, who hired a hit man to murder his wife rather than suffer the humiliation of a divorce.

Clergy need to acknowledge that we are not perfect and reach out for help when we need it, rather than trying to maintain a perfect façade that does both us and our congregants a real disservice. Worst of all, we can begin to believe about ourselves what others wish to believe about us, and then we are doomed.

Instead of holding ourselves above the congregation, we must lead from within–showing that even a flawed, imperfect, everyday person has the possibility–and obligation–to strive for honesty, holiness, and the highest of ethical standards.

The AJC Thanksgiving Reader Rabbi Grossman mentions is in many ways rooted in the thought of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. Kaplan claimed that Jews in America lived in two civilizations–one American and one Jewish, and that each informed the other.

As early as 1945, Kaplan’s Reconstructionist prayerbook contained a special service for Thanksgiving, including readings to be conducted in synagogue. The Faith of America, published in 1951, was a collection of readings and songs Kaplan put together to mark civic holidays from Flag Day to Election Day to, of course, Thanksgiving. Kaplan’s belief was that American values such as democracy and egalitarianism could teach us how to be better Jews, and Jewish values such as commitment to community and finding the sacred in the everyday could teach us how to be better Americans.

In our own time, the Jewish story has great potential to revitalize Thanksgiving–both the ancient narrative of the Israelites leaving Egyptian oppression to be free in a new land, and the more recent immigrant experience of seeking safe harbor in America from the hatred and violence of Eastern Europe. The Jewish experience, fundamentally, is an immigrant experience–the English word "Hebrews" comes from the Hebrew root meaning "cross over," and we are constantly reminded to love the stranger for we know what it was to have been strangers in Egypt.

In our own day, when Thanksgiving is in danger of being either a day of turkey and football on the one hand, or of thanks for one’s own personal comfort and well-being on the other, Judaism gives us the possibility of restoring Thanksgiving's core message: an appreciation of this great country and the promise it can hold out for those so sorely in need of hope. It was the Jewish poet Emma Lazarus who penned the famous words at the base of the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Thanksgiving calls us to remember that America must be a beacon of hope and justice to the world, and the Jewish story can help breathe life back into a holiday that threatens to become just another paean to excess and indulgence.

Apparently, the planned gay-pride parade through Jerusalem has been cancelled as a result of threats of violence. I agree with Rabbi Grossman that this is a shame: Capitulating to threats only emboldens those who seek to use intimidation as a tool.

Worse still, reports about the cancellation quote Jewish, Christian, and Muslim leaders denouncing the march. With all the vital issues that need moral leadership in the world–from fighting poverty to working to end bloodshed–the one issue that serves to unite everyone is hate.

It is the victory of fear over hope.

Who does Jerusalem belong to?

At some level, that’s the question at the heart of the conflict between participants in Friday’s planned gay pride parade and haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jewish protestors. An ad campaign planned by the Orthodox Agudath Israel group proclaims, “No one sensitive to the import of holiness, no one who faces the Holy City each day in prayer, can suffer the thought of the planned event in silence.” This language tries to claim Jerusalem as the exclusive province of religious Jews, even to the point of accepting hatred and violence if that’s what it takes to reinforce the claim.

Those who support the parade, on the other hand, see Jerusalem as a city that belongs to all Jews, even those whom the Chief Rabbinate has reportedly labeled “an abominated minority” and “the lowest of people”–namely Israel’s GLBTQ community (given some of the inflammatory language that has been directed at Jews throughout history, these are particularly disturbing charges to hear Jews leveling at other Jews).

For the parade’s organizers, it is important to hold the event in that city precisely because their goal is to assert their legitimacy–not a conditional legitimacy that exists in certain cities and certain places, but an unconditional legitimacy that accepts–or at least tolerates–people of their sexual orientation.

For Rabbi Stern, it appears a given that the parade is an unacceptable intrusion into the life of Jerusalem (even as he rightly denounces threats of violence against the marchers). His approach makes sense only if Jerusalem belongs to one group of people, only if there is one kosher set of ideas or opinions about what is legitimate.

But Judaism has never been that way, and Jerusalem isn’t that way. Jerusalem isn’t a symbol frozen in time any more than Judaism is. It’s a living city, with real issues and real people–people who have to learn to live together without resorting to demonization and sinat chinam (baseless hatred).

No one owns Jerusalem, no one owns Judaism. Those who resort to violence to assert the holiness of their claims only undermine the legitimacy they try to assert.

Rabbi Grossman and some of our respondents worry that the character of Borat will be taken as anti-Kazakh, which in turn triggers a mind-numbing satiric chain to untangle: a Jew mocking Kazakhs mocking Jews…In fact, one of the most salient...