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What We Learned From the 1970's

(Sh'ma 10/184, DECEMBER 28,1979)

At Sh'ma's annual meeting of the contributing editors last June, a symposium was held on the implications of the past decade on Jewish life. Opening, prepared remarks were made by Nora Levin, Arnold Jacob Wolf, and David Novak. A lively discussion followed. As we now wind up the 1970's and move forward into a new decade, we would like to share with you the highlights of last spring's exchange. Although recent world events have been such that if the symposium were held today it would undoubtedly include additional material, the contents of the June discussion remain current and provocative.

We will present the symposium in two issues. This issue features the three initial presentations as well as the first part of the discussion which followed, remarks by Michael Wyschogrod. Further discussion by Balfour Brickner and Eugene Borowitz, and the concluding remarks of the three speakers will appear in our following issue, 10/185.

What we learned from the 1970's

David Novak

The previous two speakers, Nora and Arnold, have alluded to a problem that I would like to discuss in a bit more detail because I think that it colored the entire period of the 1970's and will, to even a greater extent, color the 1980's. It is the relationship between Israeli Jewry and on Israeli Jewry - American Jewry in particular -- but not exclusively American Jewry.

I always thought that somehow, beneath the surface, there was a recognition by Israelis that the Jewish people transcended the political issues of the state of Israel. That was continually belied by experience. Granted the Israelis whom I met during the 1970's, were mostly people who were not terribly reflective or people who had undergone intense experiences and therefore considered the state of Israel to be the be-all and end-all of the existence of the Jewish people. I recall one saying that there is no such thing as Galut. According to him, the Jews who are living in the Galut are living an unreal existence!

For Too Many The Golah Has No Validity

To speak personally, this past week I had what for me was a devastating experience because it belied my expectations. One of the truly great scholars of the state of Israel happened to visit my community for four days. Professor Ephraim Urbach, is a man of tremendous Jewish learning, he's certainly steeped in European culture, and he is a deeply committed Israeli. (As many of you know he was actually a candidate for the presidency of Israel.) In public and also in private conversation where we spoke in Hebrew, there was basically a notion, a mind-set, that was no different than the most uneducated, parochial Israeli. When he was asked by a colleague of mine, "Professor, do you negate the Golah (lit. Exile; figuratively, Jewish life outside of Israel)?" He indicated to us that the Golah is a contradiction in Jewish terms; that we cannot affirm its existence in any way. I was almost embarrassed to throw Talmudic texts at him which contradict him. (Who am I to throw Talnudic texts at Ephraim Urbach?) So I said to him "Professor, then obviously your view of the Golah is a sort of an Aristotelian view in that the Golah at best is a potential for the state of Israel: either a potential to send money or a potential for aliyah, but there is no chance of a viable Jewish life in the Golah." He affirmed that.

Now it seems to me that this has been the mindset of virtually every Israeli that I have had contact with from very parochial sabras to people of broad culture, broad learning, both humanistic and Jewish. I don't think we can continue in that posture in the 1980's. One of the problems which has been a historical one in our relationship with the state of Israel is that every time we have just about reached the point where we can discuss these issues, there's another crisis and who's in the mood to do it?

Israel and Diaspora are Both Vital

The relationship of American Jewry to the state of Israel has been a festering problem in Zionist ideology, and I consider myself a Zionist. Zionist ideology told us continually - Nora alluded to it - that the state of Israel is the solution to the Jewish problem, and what we have discovered for better or for worse (maybe it's better to have this kind of problem) is that the state of Israel is the Jewish problem. It is the only Jewish problem in the full sense - at least the only Jewish problem that is being discussed. It seems to me that what is called for is the assumption that this type of a relationship where Israel is the actuality, and we Golah Jews simply exist as something to feed into it. This assumption has been bought by the majority of American Jews, where we had hoped, and still hope, that the state of Israel would be a vitalizing factor in Jewish existence. This assumption has been a negative factor especially in American Jewish life. There are American Jews in all positions - and especially important positions - who basically don't believe the Jewish life outside the state of Israel is possible in some sort of independent posture. This has had an extremely negative effect on funding for Jewish education on all sorts of other things.

It can be put another way. After the emotional investment in Israel, there just doesn't seem to be time or energy for much of anything else. Most of us would agree that the state of Israel plays a very important indeed crucial role in our Jewish life one that excludes the viability of a Jewish life outside of Israel. That type of thinking should be called what it is: pseudo-Messianism. I think there's a pseudo-Messianism which regards everything outside of Israel as Golah and obviously if the Golah is what is outside of Israel then the Golah, Redemption, is inside of Israel. Now it seems to me that that's a false assumption on Jewish grounds. I'm glad Arnold mentioned Martin Buber because I consider Buber's most important book, though it is the least read of all of his books, Israel and Palestine, (now re-titled by Schocken). In the first line of that book, he said that anybody who considers Zion to be simply a political idea doesn't know what it means.

Jewish Universalism Exists on Two Levels

I think that our agenda in the 1980's is going to have to reaffirm Jewish universalism. It will be Jewish universalism on two levels: number one is that the reality of the Jewish people and Judaism transcends the political borders even of a Jewish state, the state of Israel. It's a time for us to revitalize, certainly among Jewish intellectuals, the thinking of Yehezkel Kaufman who negated Jewish particularism of the present type in his book Golah ve'Nekhar, Exile and Alienation. He certainly was a Jewish nationalist, but he also affirmed Jewish universalism. We need a similar view, one which deals with the Jewish people as a universal entity which has a political factor, but which is not reducible to the political structure of the state of Israel. Within that Jewish universalism, I think that we also have to discover humanistic models in the Jewish tradition which enable us, on Jewish grounds, to participate in the social movements of our day critically. I think that one of the problems of the '60's, was that many Jews were uncritical in their social involvement. They simply affirmed whatever was au courant.

I consider a total and complete rethinking of our relationship with the state of Israel to be the main agenda of the 1980's. And if that alone happens, if that is one benefit of the peace, or at least a lessening of the danger of hostilities, then I think that we're in for a very exciting decade in Jewish life.