Adam Kirsch has a good tragic piece up at Tablet on a conference at Yivo on Jews and the left. Jews aren’t on the left any more, Kirsch concludes, wisely, because of Israel:
For the first two-thirds of the 20th century, from the first immigrant generation through the baby boom, the radical and revolutionary left played a hugely important role in defining how the rest of America saw Jews and how Jews saw themselves….
If the historical Jewish association with the left has become a source of such profound doubt, it is possibly because the current relationship between Jews and the left is so troubled. One reason for that trouble, of course, is the State of Israel, which over the last 10 years has become the target of automatic condemnation and outright hostility on the left.
Well this is true. And Obama is likely to get 62 percent of the Jewish vote, down from 78, Pew says. That’s a big drop. Though Kirsch should mention the sociological rise, too, Jewish success. Success makes people identify with the power structure.
Kirsch is on the conservative team. A Zionist, he wants to wish away the Jewish universalist tradition as a blip of the last 100 years. So does Michael Walzer. The man who helped desegregate the south in the pages of Dissent now says he was only doing it for the Jews:
If the left in Europe and, increasingly, the United States is so hospitable to anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic ideas, what does that mean for the future of “Jews and the Left”? Michael Walzer explained the historical Jewish affinity for the left as a straightforward matter: “We have supported the people who support us.”
We supported the people who support us? This is very cynical. It would upset my mother (who bridles when I say that many Jews supported the blacks in the south as proxies). It sounds like Norman Podhoretz, Is it good for the Jews; and I don’t think he is right. There is clearly an altruistic tradition in Judaism, eloquently stated by Rabbi Hillel, If I am not for others, who am I? Or read Michael Walzer’s 1960 paean in Dissent to direct action and nonviolent resistance in the South:
Everyone seemed to feel a deep need finally to act in the name of all the theories of equality. Once the sitdowns had begun, marching into Woolworth’s or picketing outside became obvious, necessary, inevitable activities….
[Inside the church, t]he chant [was] begun by Martin Luther King: We just want to be free. A religion which seizes upon, dramatizes, and even explains the suffering of the Negro people is joined here to an essentially political movement to end that suffering. Out of that combination, I believe, comes the stamina, the endurance so necessary for passive, non-violent resistance.
Act in the name of all the theories of equality! I see that living altruistic tradition in people like Sarah Schulman, Hannah Schwarzschild, Adam Horowitz. It has been cast aside in favor of the importance of self interest, which Hillel also prescribed: If I am not for myself, who will be?
It seems that Walzer has allowed his Zionism to affect his reading of his personal history and Jewish history– in which he abandons the prophetic tradition, the social justice tradition, for a top-down legalistic one. Kirsch:
In his YIVO speech, he listed six central features of traditional Judaism that made it a conservative force, including the very idea of Jews as a chosen people—an idea that cannot easily be made to harmonize with universalism and egalitarianism.
Where the Greek tradition made room for public decision-making, Walzer argues, the same space in the Bible is filled entirely by God: All historical and legal initiatives must come from the deity, or appear to do so….When the prophets called for justice, they didn’t mean a redistribution of power but a society-wide submission to God: “God’s message overrode the wisdom of men.”
There goes the Jewish enlightenment. As if a fundamentalist reading of the Jewish bible should inform our choices. Graven images, homosexuality? Some traditions get cashiered for a reason. As if the idea of chosenness can survive Israeli militarism and second-class citizenship for Palestinians.
“If I am not for others, who am I” versus if I am not for myself who will be?”
except in a world ruled by the top 1% isn’t it not only stupid but self-destructive for the bottom 99% to abide solely by the maxim take care of number one? certainly many if not most of those of us who have felt the sting of oppression come to realize this almost instinctively, which is why, for example, so many jews, myself included, are siding with the palestinian people, even though they are being oppressed by settlers who, while claiming to be jewish, seem to lack the “memory” of oppression that heretofore has defined jewish culture, such that for us “never again” means never again not just for us but for anyone or any people. thus, the attempt to tie judaism to biblical gobbledegook is nothing but a desperate attempt to stave off the delegitimization of an apartheid zionist entity by substituting the mysticism of ancient faery tales for the logic of modern day life.
Your first link is linking to one of your old articles instead of to the Tablet article. Please fix this. Thanks.
A fascinating article.
It’s interesting that what you find most provocative is that last paragraph
with the “We have supported the people who support us.”
Isn’t it just human ?
A normal human behavior.
Not the behavior of chosen people that somehow have to make
“tikkun olam” or be in the front lines of every struggle for justice
there is.
Historically Jews joined the left because they saw it as chance to change the
repressive and antisemitic world in which they lived in,
an entirely self serving strategy.
Though Kirsch should mention the sociological rise, too, Jewish success. Success makes people identify with the power structure.
so ‘altruism’ isn’t an integral component of judaism? or have these ‘successful’ ‘cynical’ jews stopped being jews? and i hate to beat the dead horse of the meritocracy, but how does a minority which has become closely aligned with the ‘power structure’ conclude that social mobility is a benefit? educational opportunities are becoming increasingly limited, with financing structures ensuring that many qualified students can’t attend elite, private universities, and every indication confirms an increasing generalized lack of social mobility. for all the horseshit talk of no one being turned away from yale, princeton, etc. on account of finances, the numbers don’t support that argument. anecdotally i have had many clients whose children have chosen Northeastern over Cornell, UMASS/Amherst over Brown, etc. on account of the piss poor financial aid packages offered to middle class/lower middle class families from the ivies or ivy-type schools.
as a close a thing to a true meritocracy existed in this country from roughly WWII through 1980, but the corpse isn’t even warm anymore.
This is dissapointing from Walzer. His earlier texts were magnificent creations. It seems his age has made him want to hunker down. Good thing there are those of us who don’t reject the Haskalah.