The other day I went on the New Republic site and saw some commenters dismissing me as an assimilationist Jew in connection with criticisms I’d made about the Gaza War. I’m not sure why my Jewish identity should affect the reception of my statements about Gaza, but so be it; this is part of my reputation. My assimilationism is a subject I haven't visited in a while. A few thoughts:
I call myself an assimilating Jew because it seems the most honest
description of choices I’ve made, to marry outside the tribe and
generally decrease my Jewish cultural/religious adherence. Yes, the term "assimilationist" is a little stroppy, as the Brits
would say, and hurts some people's feelings. Why can't I just say
"assimilating"? I think I should take responsibility for my
choices and even honor them.
The derision for my choices comes from strongly-identified Jews and no other quarter. Unaffiliated Jews are not likely to criticize me for this– because they know so many other people who are intermarrying and giving up forms of Jewish observance. And as for other Americans, they don't think there's a problem. My wife thinks assimilationism is fine; of course, we wouldn't have much of a relationship if not for assimilation. And most Americans think of assimilation as a goal for immigrants.
The only ones who write me off are other Jews; the commenter Suzanne calling me an Uncle Tom. Not that this doesn’t have power for me. But it's about power within my original community only.
That said, I'm very Jewish. My complete absorption these days in Kafka–a failed Talmudist by his own description–is a consecration of my Jewish inheritance.
Assimilationism is obviously a threat to Jewish numbers. Of
course no one can predict the future, but at some level a person who
makes my choices places less value on maintaining the tribe than on
a lot of other things in life. True, but assimilation is happening all around us. We have a self-described "mutt"
president whose racial identity today is largely indecipherable.
I could argue that Zionism is hurting Jewish numbers more than
assimilationism. This isn't the place for that argument; but I know that my own
alienation from Jewish life, which has been a factor in my
choices, has to do with the forced association with a militaristic nation practicing Jim Crow and calling it democracy. In fact, one pleasure of the last few
months has been meeting so many non-Zionist Jews who stir me with the
renewed understanding that Jewish intelligence does not have to be
subservient to nationalism.
Assimilation is an ancient pattern in civilization, and in Jewish life. It went on in Spain, in Germany, in central Europe. Many of those assimilating Jews converted to Christianity, something I would never do. In fact, in any other era, I couldn't be both assimilating and Jewish. That contradiction is really at the heart of this post.
The changing status of Jews is at the heart of this post. For hundreds of years we have been a people within a nation, and that was the essence of the Jewish problem/question in Europe. History has tried out lots of answers: different language and customs; ghetto walls; anti-Semitism; the Holocaust; Jewish genius; Israel; the promised land of the United States. And so forth.
Jews were innovative "strangers" in central Europe 100 years ago, Kafka wrote, considering anti-Semitism. "From early on they have forced upon
Germany things that she might have arrived at slowly and in her own
way, but which she was opposed to because they stemmed from strangers."
Of course the reaction to these changes almost wiped out
European Jewry, in addition to a ton of other people. But America has
prospered by accepting these changes.
Zionists say that it could be 1938 all over again here in no time. I think they're nuts, and we're at an unprecedented moment in Jewish history, one of incredible power in a liberal western democracy. The Israel lobby is just one reflection of that. We achieved this power due to what Slezkine calls "the Jewish century," a period in which Jewish language/legal/investigative gifts transformed modern systems.
Jews have less derived incredible status from these gifts. Larry Summers,
Rahm Emanuel, David Remnick–very powerful men. And this power has had an incredible effect: other people want to be like us. As Slezkine says, Everyone wants to be Jewish now, to emulate the ways of learning and prestige that were so essential to becoming a Jew.
At the risk of repeating myself, I would say that the divisions and real differences between elite Jewish life and elite non-Jewish life in America are less than they ever were. Today I see the outsider intellectual values of my own youth embodied in Jews, Arabs, and gentiles too. Without getting into the genetics business, it's plain to me that many Jewish gifts were transferrable gifts. Ideas are transferrable.
The question is How much I should do to deter the assimilation process or encourage it and I've chosen to encourage it. It's not a program of mine. People have an absolute right to their own values and customs and beliefs. But when I see young people reaching to one another across the religious/ethnic divides, not just romantically, but intellectually, politically, it's something I encourage. In that sense I promote assimilation somewhat. Not a lot, but now and then, to
those who are interested. Never been much for proselytizing. That's Jewish
law.
My wife said not long ago that she doesn't lament the end of the WASPs because she figures that whatever group replaces it will have taken the best from her group or improved on it. I feel that way about the Jews. I love what I came out of but I figure the next model, the assimilated model, may well be an improvement, if only on the ethnocentrism issue which has fed the occupation. So yes, call me an assimilationist.
