response to gary erlbaum
i think many important points were raised this week during mr. erlbaums's discussion. what is the "obligation" of the jewish cause? adam raised the obvious question of how can we value one struggle over the next, even to the extent of saving one jew over three non jews. elisheva gave the poignant answer that no one would "morally" fault the saving of one's brother,sister,mother,etc. over a stranger. no one is necessarily making a qualitative statement about the value of one life over another, rather there does exist some means by which we can define our concentration of attention and action.
one may argue that there are plenty of non-jews to care for their concerns, but by mere virtue of the fact that they would not as quickly care for the jewish concerns, it is fundamentally our responsibility. we all know that were israel attacked by the arab nations, we would feel far more for the israeli plight than a rebellion in the ivory coast or uzbekistan. is that wrong? are we a people likened to a family? is that just social conditioning but false, or is the apologetics for the universality of humanity simply an intellectual game we play because we're in college and we can. and of course, the issue was raised that philosophically, we believe that the most successful way to truly right the world is through the perfection of the jewish people, and thus fulfilling the pre-requisites for being "a light unto the nation".
i mentioned that we all need to answer these questions for ourselves and find our own voices. perhaps the dialectic of friends could help strengthen that search.
personally, i remember having a dilemma which sent my liberal sensitivities off the deep end. i was in l.a. during the riots. my friend and i sat on the roof of his house, his gun fully loaded (i, of course, was more frightened of the gun than the riot)and watched as the mass of rioters made its way up la brea blvd, burning shopping plazas and looting stores. we had an interesting discussion about how we completely intellectually understand their predicament - the hatred, the oppression, the angst, pent-up frustrations, etc.. we would have been sure to write a phenomenal sociology report and would have otherwise strongly identified with their plight (even invoking similarities to the jewish historical experience) and done our uptmost to actively contribute to bettering south central LA. BUT, if one of those blacks or mexicans stepped one little toe on this property, we would have put a bullet between his eyes. that simple. they were not interested in being invited in for a cup of coffee and have us explain our liberal jewish views and love for them as human beings. we were only given one option - save ourselves, or die trying to be liberal. i hated being in that position, but there was no way out. i think that's when i began to first fulfill churchill's dictum.
one may argue that there are plenty of non-jews to care for their concerns, but by mere virtue of the fact that they would not as quickly care for the jewish concerns, it is fundamentally our responsibility. we all know that were israel attacked by the arab nations, we would feel far more for the israeli plight than a rebellion in the ivory coast or uzbekistan. is that wrong? are we a people likened to a family? is that just social conditioning but false, or is the apologetics for the universality of humanity simply an intellectual game we play because we're in college and we can. and of course, the issue was raised that philosophically, we believe that the most successful way to truly right the world is through the perfection of the jewish people, and thus fulfilling the pre-requisites for being "a light unto the nation".
i mentioned that we all need to answer these questions for ourselves and find our own voices. perhaps the dialectic of friends could help strengthen that search.
personally, i remember having a dilemma which sent my liberal sensitivities off the deep end. i was in l.a. during the riots. my friend and i sat on the roof of his house, his gun fully loaded (i, of course, was more frightened of the gun than the riot)and watched as the mass of rioters made its way up la brea blvd, burning shopping plazas and looting stores. we had an interesting discussion about how we completely intellectually understand their predicament - the hatred, the oppression, the angst, pent-up frustrations, etc.. we would have been sure to write a phenomenal sociology report and would have otherwise strongly identified with their plight (even invoking similarities to the jewish historical experience) and done our uptmost to actively contribute to bettering south central LA. BUT, if one of those blacks or mexicans stepped one little toe on this property, we would have put a bullet between his eyes. that simple. they were not interested in being invited in for a cup of coffee and have us explain our liberal jewish views and love for them as human beings. we were only given one option - save ourselves, or die trying to be liberal. i hated being in that position, but there was no way out. i think that's when i began to first fulfill churchill's dictum.
posted by Rabbi Lynn at
2:40 PM
11 Comments:
While I was struck by the extremity of what mr. erlbaum said. I do agree with him in the sense that we need to care for ourselves because (and to be blunt) no one else really cares about our unique issues. For the most part non-Jews aren't going to seek out Jewish causes to donate money to- of course there are exceptions but they are not typical.
The Jewish causes will diminish if the Jews do not donate to them- because we are such a small percentage and because most other people have no reason to seek out our causes. That is not to say however that all of us have to adopt a 98:2 % ratio of Jewish to non Jewish causes in terms of our donations. I think it is important to support other causes and can do so by maintaining the idea that we have to help our community before we help the world. ( I am defining the term community loosely as being your school, the city you live in, etc. even though I am not sure that the intention is such in the text we studied) And, I additionally think we need to recognize the needs of people completely outside the scope of our community and fight for money to be given to international causes like the Sudan, tsunami, etc. But we have to recognize that those fights (in terms of convincing people to donate to them) are much easier and much more universal.
Pragmatically we have to atleast admit to the fact that if we do not donate to the Jewish causes then they will have no other foundation of support. After that it becomes a question of personal commitment to ensuring that those particular Jewish causes survive. It is not about being exclusionists or narrow minded , the need to donate to these causes is strictly based on sheer numbers.
Since tonight for me was basically spent listening to the speaker, I
thought I would focus on that a lot. I did sort of get into the Torah
stuff at the end but, unfortunately, meetings for classes call.
Basically, I liked his style but I don't think I liked what he had to
say. It seemed to me that he was advocating helping a Jew in some
far-off country instead of helping my neighbor here in Philadelphia.
It's funny because I just ran a retreat for sophomores in which I asked
that same question and no one identified with doing it. I definitely
understand the call for Jewish advocacy and self-determination, etc. My
parents had three kids because of the shrinking Jewish population. I
may do the same. I don't know. The basic problem I find in all this can
be summarized in one question: Why the Jews? What made us so special
that we should not help our non-Jewish neighbor in favor of some Jew in
a distant country? I don't think I could ever agree to that.
However, I do also believe that every ethnic group should protect
itself and not assimilate completely into the surrounding population.
Jews do have a distinct "flavor," as it were, and we must try to retain
that. That doesn't mean we can't care about others, however.
I think he was being overly harsh and oversimplifying many cases and
he didn't convince me of his point. He just made me want to research
more to refute it.
Brian
In bio 2 there is something that we read that supposedly proves the
willingness of animals to put themselves at risk in order to save
their genes in the form of offspring or relatives. for example, (if i
remember this correctly) i would summit myself to 4 times the chance
of death if it meant saving my brother as opposed to my cousin,
because by brother shares half of my genes, whereas my cousin only
shares an 8th. something like that. so if you extrapolate that to
all the Jewish people, according to the bio book that penn uses and
the fact that Jews share more of their genome due to a higher degree
of inbreeding over the ages, it makes sense why we should want to help
out other Jews because we share 99.998% of our genome as opposed to
99.996% that we share with the rest of the population (or whatever the
numbers are).
But it makes sense to me even more than that. It makes sense that we
should want to promote the welfare of people who will pass on the same
way of thinking (at least more so than a random person) that I have.
Another thing that caught my attention was the similarity between how
we can better the world by perfecting ourselves, and then our families
and then communities and then the world, and how once we perfect
ourselves, then our relationship will be perfected.
The speaker last night was hilariously dry and cynical, which made him all the
more engaging. But his final message came off, at least to me, as rather
cliche: don't stand by -- go out and do something and make a difference. Then
again, this program is titled the "Maimonides Leaders Fellowship," with one of
its goals to prepare us to be Jewish leaders in both the Jewish community and
outside, and so Mr. Elbaum's message of action should be especially pertinent
to us. It's just frustrating to hear it over and over and wonder whether I
should be doing more, what I'm supposed to be doing, what I'm responsible for,
what difference can I make, etc. It's a bit of an immature way to look at it,
but then again, I'm still fairly immature, and selflessness does grow with age.
The issues Mr. Elbaum raised about the soft support for Israel, as well as the
stagnant growth of Judaism, were very thought-provoking. To understand it, I
think one needs to look at Jews as an ethnic group and the way that Jews
perceive themselves. There is certainly not the pride or camaraderie that
certain other groups have (e.g. Blacks, Italians), and I'm not sure whether
it's a result of the humility of Jews, feelings of inferiority, some
combination of the two, or another reason entirely. This, in turn, may
partially account for the lack of support for Israel; if Jews don't care to
think about themselves as a strong, united people by which all Jews esentially
become brothers, then Israelis become citizens of a different country and not
much more. Elisheva's point to think of Jews (including Israelis, of course)
as extended family becomes moot if the general Jewish population doesn't feel
this way, and so Israel becomes a country far away, too distant to concern the
international Jewish community.
I have to be honest and say that I was a little frustrated with today's program.
I feel like a lot of the speakers we hear, though it's great that they're
successful and are willing to take time out of their busy schedules to come
talk to us, I feel like they're all saying the same thing. The plot lines for
most of them are essentially the same-they were brought up with little to no
Jewish background, they were successful and made lots of money, and then they
decided to become more religious. Or, in this case tonight, their kids became
more religious. Anyway, I keep thinking about how this Jewish leadership value
of modesty and humility plays into what many of the speakers have said.
Especially today, when Mr. Earlbaum talked about how important it was to take
care of Jewish causes because we as a people are getting smaller in number etc.
Later in the session we learned that it's important to make sure that we stay
humble and don't let self-interest get in the way of doing good deeds and being
a good leader. And if we are supposed to think about Jews as a whole as our
family, then how does saying that we should first take care of Jewish causes
not play against the notion of humility and not being self-serving?
I think giving to Jewish causes, like Mr. Erlbaum said, is right on target. That is not say it is inappropriate to also contribute to non-Jewish causes, but we must look out for ourselves first and foremost. Jews must start to realize that it is up to us to preserve our people, and, like you quoted, “to be a light unto the nation”.
But, a question popped into my head as Mr. Erlbaum spoke. Completely playing devils advocate here, as terrible as “assimilation” and intermarriage is to our population numbers, don’t we have faith in the preservation of our people. We are the “eternal people” and post Holocaust, Inquisition, etc, etc one can’t help but be dumbfounded by the perseverance of the Jews. So why are we so consumed with number anxiety? But then you pretty much answered this for me toward the end of class. It is not so much the numbers we are concerned with but rather the ability to carry on our duty in the world, to be that “light”.
M
I think the issue Mr. Ehrlbaum raised for all of us is extremely important. I too, have my hesitations about it being "better" to help Ethiopian Jewry than to help our local West Philadelphia community. This sits uncomfortable for me, the humanist, the liberal...
However I must say that I do agree to a certain extent. I think what it all comes down to is the Jewish activist we are discussing. Does he identify himself as a Jew? Where does that fall on his list of identities... is it before American? Is it after Activist?
Feeling a sense of close identification with the Jewish community will, in my opinion, simplify this issue for many people. No, we dont think we're better than anyone so we should help ourselves first. But I do think it is extremely important to stabilize your own community before you look elsewhere. There is SO much to do in this world. Where do we begin? I hate to once again make Jews the victims, but we are in fact a minority that has been persecuted for thousands of years. We MUST take care of ourselves. Who else will? History has given us our answer: at the end of the day we are on our own. Pessimistic? Maybe.
I think there is a natural defensiveness inherent within the Jewish culture. (This is a reason we so poorly present ourselves in the case of Israel. We naturally feel the need to defend ourselves, and end up hurting our image in the process.) In a similar way, we feel almost guilty strongly identifying with our fellow Jews lest we appear elitist or exclusive. I think every minority struggles with this at some point in their history. It took years for the Civil Rights Movement to grow into a movement for Black Power. When will it be ok for us to feel our own sense of pride and celebrate our uniqueness rather than shy away from it?
I will just finish by commenting on what Elisheva said in class regarding seeing other Jews as your family. I could not agree with that more. Perhaps it is a product of my involvement in the Jewish community that I am able to feel the connection between myself and other Jews. But I DO feel it. It does not mean I feel like I can be friends with all Jews, or have fun with all Jews, or have alot in common with all Jews. But I must admit that when I travel to foreign places where nothing is familiar to me and then I suddenly 'spot a Jew' - there is this natural reaction I have that makes me want to run over and say: "hey! me too!"... it is a strange commonality that I feel with them, no matter where they fall on the religious spectrum. And I know from experience that I am not the only one who feels such a connection. I have learned this through extended invitations for a place to stay, a meal, a little extra help with something...
It might be possible to call this exclusive. But I wholeheartedly believe that it is not just our ideology that connects us, but our history and our heritage. And I must admit that I am only now beginning to understand that I can be comfortable feeling this familial connection with fellow Jews. As a group, however, I think we all - myself included - have a long way to go before we are comfortable enough to stand firm in our Jewish pride and proclaim our own 'Jewish Power.'
I would like to know who posted this last comment. Would you email me, please? the other two "anonymous" postings were copies of emails sent personally to me that I posted myself. I wasn't sure if they wanted their comments publicized, so I entered them anonymously. I felt your entry was particulary insightful and I would like to continue, if not deepen, the discussion with you. thanks.
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