Alana Newhouse, the editor of the new online Jewish mag, Tablet, (pictured) has a pretty good piece on Jewish exceptionalism in the latest New York Magazine, pegged to those rabbis selling kidneys and Madoff tearing out people’s guts. The heart of it:
The fact is that Jews are exceptional. There can be no debate that various historical factors—including a communal reverence for intellectual acuity, along with centuries of marginalization—primed Jews for, first, survival, and then uncommon achievement. The rub is that those very same factors might have predisposed them to distinction in less-savory domains. Maybe we can’t have Philip Roth and Leonard Bernstein without Bernie Madoff and the informant behind the Jersey busts, Solomon Dwek.
…That the sight of a Jewish criminal on the front page gives heartburn to Jews comprehensively disconnected from the crimes—including even those who profess to be comprehensively disconnected from any form of Jewish identity or culture—is the truly exceptional thing. This ethnic attachment is a consequence not simply of fanatical closeness but of a long history in which Jews were judged collectively for everything they did, beginning with the crucifixion they didn’t do.
Indeed, it was precisely this quality that perhaps predisposed them to become victims. Madoff’s many Jewish clients trusted him because he was Jewish, and the Ashkenazic organ broker was willing to hear out a Syrian Sephardic Jew precisely because there was a yarmulke on his head. But this very set of qualities, this instinct to trust because of a shared tribal history, is also what has inspired, among other things, a uniquely effective network of charities that serve tens of millions of Jews and non-Jews alike. Here, too, exceptionalism works both ways.
Smart. My problem with this argument, typified by the charity bit, is that it’s self-congratulatory, it valorizes the exceptionalism by looking backward at Jewish history as an outsider people. This is simply no longer the case. Philip Roth is in his late 70s, Leonard Bernstein is bye-bye, and the new Jewish reality is Wolfowitz and Larry Summers, full participation in the belligerent American establishment, wealth beyond all other religious groups, and blind support for a state that has denied self-determination for 4 million indigenous people for more than 60 years. We learned to govern ourselves without land or sovereignty for 2000 years, Michael Walzer said; we’ve done a lousy job of governing others. No examination of Jewish exceptionalism is complete without the Palestinians.
The challenge to Jews, which this piece fails, is to break free of ethnocentrism. Speaking of which, does Newhouse’s online magazine, "A new read on Jewish life," employ any non Jews? If not, why not? Imagine WASPs organizing an all- WASP magazine all about WASPs back in the heyday of the WASPs, right after Vietnam, talking about all the charities they support. Ish.
