When I was young, Jewish organizations put their feet down about the use of the terms "good Jew" and "bad Jew." It was too divisive. But that didn't make the issue go away. I always felt like a bad Jew: I was interested mainly in non-Jewish culture, rarely went to synagogue, tried to be hip, and dated some non-Jews, married one. When I started writing on Jewish issues, my critics always said, "Why do you consider yourself a Jew?" or "The correct response to you is, 'Sayonara, go away.'" One editor said I should write a book called, Being a Bad Jew.
My guilt about this is not strictly my problem. I believe that Leon Soros got maumaued out of playing a leading role on Jewish politics because he was made to feel that he was not strongly-enough identified as a Jew. Good Jews hold their goodness over bad Jews. I just got a press release from the Rabbinical Assembly, the Conservative rabbis, bragging that the new Israeli ambassador to the U.S., is a Conservative Jew and so are the lion's share of AIPAC Jews.
At this week’s AIPAC conference in Washington where Dr. Oren spoke, the
overwhelming majority of rabbis who were in attendance are
Conservative.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” said Rabbi [Julie] Schonfeld. “On matters
of Israel, as well as the other pressing issues of the day,
Conservative rabbis predominate in public life."
I noticed this myself. A lot of people wearing yarmulkes. I don't think there's a lot of intermarriage among the AIPAC faithful. The alternative lobby, J Street, is aware of this too. A few weeks back, Jeremy Ben-Ami said at the 92d Street Y that his efforts are welcomed by "unaffiliated" Jews–people who didn't know where they could put their feelings about Israel because those feelings weren't welcome in the official Jewish community.
The point I'm getting at is that culturally and politically, the trend we're heralding on this site and embodying too, is the reclamation by bad Jews of their Jewish identity. Jewish identity used to be officially circumscribed. How many Jewish friends you have? Do you have a Christmas tree? Do you date non-Jews? And so forth. All questions drawing on Jewish law. And bad Jews became bad Jews because Jewish law had little bearing on their modern problems. (Or much of Jewish law anyway.) Which is why a lot of modern American Jews fell away. Especially with the horrifying occupation and the Iraq war, which had Jewish religious endorsement. A lot of neoconservatives are good Jews. Bill Kristol is. Jeffrey
Goldberg is an observant Jew, too. So is Tom Friedman, who wanted to
smash something in the Arab world, when he supported the Iraq war.
But the bad Jews were afraid to speak up about the Occupation. Because deep down, they felt guilty; they knew they were bad Jews. And the better Jews were taking care of things. That's what's changed. Now the bad Jews aren't getting pushed around so much. They know that the good Jews screwed things up–and maybe one reason they screwed things up was their definition of Jewishness, which is ethnocentric. (Though in fairness, a lot of good Jews, like Jerry Haber, have been leaders here.)
Bottom line. In the process of taking their political power, the bad Jews are going to remake Jewish identity on universalist terms. Being Jewish doesn't have to mean wearing a yarmulke and lighting candles on Friday night or even marrying a Jew. It could mean working for the American Jewish World Service. Or even just reading Kafka all the time and studying Jewish history and thought. So I guess I'm not really an assimilationist. AIPAC got me to take my stand, inside Jewish life.
