Seeing through the Haze
It is never easy to be a Jew in a non-Jewish world, especially in places
where there are so few Jews that the rest of society has no way of recognizing
you for what you are and, when they do, it is through a haze and filter of
caricatures and hostile clichés.
Sometimes, it seems, you have to tell people why it is that they feel
uncomfortable in your presence, what makes them misunderstand what you are
saying to them, and why they mistake your appearance and way of arguing with
them.
Even when you are not trying to express your own Jewishness in any
particular situation, it comes across to them in a form that can be
unexpected—they think that you are fooling them about what you really think is
going on in the encounter, they assume it is a joke, a form of mocking irony,
or that you are crazy; then they look at you with disbelieving eyes or with a
blank stare. If you are showing them a book
you have written—a pamphlet of poems, a collection of stories, a scholarly
study of some literary figure—they hold it in their hands in the way they would
receive a piece of dog poo or rubbish, shocked, their nose curled up, and try
to hand it back at once and nervously, for they cannot imagine you have created
something interesting or had any ideas worthy of their serious attention.
Sometimes, though, when you tell them you are Jewish, they stop for a
moment, then hold out their hand to shake yours, to congratulate you for this
remarkable and unexpected achievement, and say something about how wonderful it
must be to belong to the Chosen People.
Then they ask you what you think of Jesus Christ, whether Jews have
their own Church, and ask why your people are so intelligent. If your answer
comes in the form of your own real feelings or thoughts, they are confused,
frightened, and back away. That’s not
what they meant. They do not want to
know what you believe or what you really think about their religion. They want
you to convert or to go away.
On the other hand, there are non-Jews whose attitudes and beliefs are
quite different, and with them a Jew can do more than just live in a tolerated,
relatively safe way: it is possible to enrich, expand and deepen one’s sense of
Jewish identity and cooperate in making the world a better place too. Here it is useful to think of the bravery of
wives, those converted and those not, who when their Jewish husbands were
arrested by the Nazis not only objected and petitioned for their release, but
put their own lives on the line in order to rescue them; not successful in most
cases, they nevertheless stand as among the Righteous among the gentiles for
their efforts. One who succeeded was the
elderly French novelist Colette whose husband Maurice Goudeket managed to
survive his interment by the collaborationist government. There is also the case of Gustave Kahn’s wife
who when, during the Dreyfus Affair saw her husband being vilified in the press
and attacked in the streets for his defense of the Captain’s innocence and the
call for a retrial, converted to Judaism herself and changed her name to Rachel
as an act of solidarity with him, a defiance of the anti-Semites, and
manifestation of her Jewish soul. In
less drastic circumstances, many shiksas,
to use a Yiddish term for non-Jewish women who supported their husbands, have
helped guide their families in a Jewish direction, urged their children to
become knowledgeable in rabbinics and show loyalty to Israel, and in their own
lives, whether they chose to undertake formal conversion or not, created kosher
homes.
Sometimes those who have dug their heels into the ground or stiffened
their necks against the compromises and softness of their environments have
seemed to be the best representatives of the Law. Perhaps not.
Perhaps they have forgotten or denied the dynamic ability of Judaism to
challenge the world through imagination and creativity, and thus lost their
souls in the filthy mud-pits of pilpulism,
hysterical ritualism, and contradictory dogmas.
They have started to worship mezzuzahs
and tsitsit, mumbled their way
through prayers and meditations without consideration of their meanings, insulted
so many people who have tried to keep up and thus brought the Name into
disrepute amongst the nations, and alienated their own children and
neighbors.
It has never been easy to be Jewish or Hebrew or Israelite—historically
these terms have meant slightly different things and geographically they also
mark diverse cultural situations—in a hostile, unjewish world, and, while it is
admirable to adhere strictly to the Laws of Moses and rabbinical traditions,
there are often periods in which we live and places where we find ourselves for
no particular reason when this principled stand would require sacrifices too
great to ask of most ordinary men and women.
Nevertheless, Judaism has survived and learned to recreate itself not
only because of a few willing to go the extreme of Kiddush ha-Shem, but also on account of the larger numbers—who dares
say a majority, or what size the minority of troubled souls taking this option might
be?—who have sought ways to accommodate themselves to the realities of the
world without totally giving in to paganism, idolatry and epikorist cynicism and skepticism.
Sometimes for several generations—hundreds of years even for this is the
probably the real miracle of our history—Jewishness seems to fade away but
then, when circumstances have transformed into more amenable terms, Jews have
re-emerged from out of the darkness, families and communities have
reconstituted themselves by means that make no rational sense, and the people
of Israel prove their durability, resilience and flexibility. It goes against all logic. It makes no sense. It cannot be explained by the usual
historical paradigms. It doesn’t fit
with what religious leaders want us to believe.
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