Spirit and Story Archive

Welcome to Spirit and Story, where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the contours of our contemporary spiritual journeys. Every other week you will find something new and (hopefully) engaging here!

To access the CLAL Spirit and Story Archive, click here.

To join the conversation at Spirit and Story Talk, click here.

Red, White and Blues: Jews on July 4th

By Daniel S. Brenner

Each year, as my family vacations in a small Jersey shore town and we sit on the porch and watch the July 4th fireworks blast overhead, I have the same thought running through my head: "Here I sit, another homeless Jew, living in another great empire, longing for homeland, and doing nothing about it."

For my father, who proudly served in the U.S. Army alongside other Jewish boys from Brooklyn, the fireworks and the democratic ideals they stand for are sacred. But for my generation, which has been exempt from national service to the State, and votes at the abysmal rate of 12-and-a-half percent, "American" has become a rather irrelevant concept. Our world is global and virtual. Any sense of patriotism that remains has been deconstructed by the artists and academics.

That may be why my thoughts often turn to Israel on July 4th. I think of the two times in my life when I have celebrated Yom Ha’atzmaut in Jerusalem. I remember, in between being walloped by plastic hammers and sprayed with silly string, how elated I felt to witness the celebration of my people’s return and rejoicing in the land—and feel so much a part of the story. And though I’ll never be a naďve flag waver in any land, at least I felt that waving a flag with a big ol’ Magen David wasn’t so bad.

This year I was asked to write a July 4th mailing, and to prepare a two-hour learning event, for CLAL, the pluralist think-tank in Manhattan of which I am a faculty member.

We’ve been producing mailings on various other "secular" events, such as the Millennium celebrations and Mother’s Day. The idea is to provide people with thoughts and new rituals that help them see all aspects of their lives, not just the prescribed moments and celebrations, through a Jewish lens. But could we write a piece on July 4th without sounding like a bunch of Boy Scouts?

The first person I spoke to was Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a renegade Lubavitcher out in Boulder, Colorado who is the godfather of Jewish Renewal in America. He spoke of his experience coming from an internment camp in France in 1940 to the shores of America. When he reached the land, he said a shechiyanu, the blessing thanking God for having brought us to this time and place. He said to himself, "Thank God that there are places where Jewish life can flourish, and America is such a place."

Inspired by this idea, I wrote the July 4th piece. It took the form of questions about the events and places where the Jewish story became the American story, and vice versa. I asked readers and participants: Do you know who was the first in your family to come to America? Where did they come from and where did they arrive? What else do you know about them? Who were the first in your family to have American-born parents?

Next, name a major historical event or trend in America and recall its impact on your family.

And because America has sometimes seemed a mixed blessing, reflect on the divisions in American life, between and within races, classes, genders, ideologies. What can you, alone or in community, do to foster a more diverse, pluralistic America today?

After three, and sometimes more, generations, American Jews have a profound sense that America is home. And though we may not be patriotic in the flag-waving, George M. Cohan mode, and we may still look to Israel as our homeland, our roots are deep in American soil, and getting deeper.

So we celebrate America. For all of its flaws and false airs of importance, this is still a land of opportunity and promise, especially for Jews. America has given us gifts of religious freedom, social acceptance and unprecedented economic security, not to mention jazz, the Constitution and the NBA. We also got the pulse of New York, the dreams of L.A., and the amber waves of grain in between.

So this year I’ll go out and watch the fireworks again, with a bracha, or blessing, in mind. I might even invite my Israeli cousins who are planning to move to Jersey. And though they may not want to recite a bracha, it seems like they, too, have made America’s story their own.

To join the conversation at Spirit and Story Talk, click here.

To access the Spirit and Story Archive, click here.