This is part one of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Jewish – a concept I have struggled with my entire life. As in – what does it mean to be Jewish? Of course this is a perennial question in Jewish history. It’s never solved once and for all. Each generation responds. Each generation’s response is – their answer. What is ours?
After the Holocaust, the question arose again. Extreme times heighten the “what does it mean to be Jewish” question. Now there is another after, as in after Israel – and what Israel has done and is doing to the Palestinian people.
In Cape Canaveral, I hoped to put this question behind me for a while. After all, everyone needs some time to rest, especially after a harrowing year of fighting against the powers-that-be. But then on my first walk to the beach, I notice that the last house on the street has a huge mezuzah affixed to the door. Later I learned the home is owned by local congregation. The Rabbi stays there on weekends.
Or so it seems. As far as I can tell there isn’t a synagogue in town. The closest synagogues are in Melbourne and Orlando, at least 30 some miles away. But, strangely enough, there is a Jews for Jesus storefront just a few blocks from where I am staying. I pass by it on the way to the grocery store.
The Mezuzah was part of my childhood. Wherever I have lived I affix them to my doorposts. But to be honest, when I see one now – and right on my way to the beach! – I feel a sense of pain. As if violence is about to come my way. I don’t know the rabbi who stays there so it may be unfair, but in my own experience a mezuzah on the door often means that the occupant of the home is an Israel Firster. Most Israel Firsters don’t want the likes of me around. (This, of course, doesn’t mean that Israel Firsters knows anything about Israel. It is the idea of Israel that is the point. No doubt, it makes undying loyalty easier too.)
What happens when a religious symbol of such importance becomes a sign of violence against you – or at least when that is your first thought when the symbol appears? As if the mezuzah is following you!
Perhaps it’s like the Cross for my Christian friends – a sign of historical contradiction. Or what Palestinians feel when they see Jewish sacred symbols. I would think that they experience what I do when I see a Cross. It seems logical since the Cross became a sign of our oppression and things Jewish are signs of Palestinian oppression.
Speaking of Jews for Jesus, I’ve noticed such a strong antipathy toward these “wayward” Jews that blinds our own waywardness. Perhaps this is purposeful. We deflect outward what we don’t want to see within.
Where I lived previously, the local congregations would get up in arms when Jews for Jesus came to town. Voices were raised. On the Israel front, though, whatever was done to Palestinians was alright, even necessary. Arabs in general were included in this “necessary.” I often wondered if their voices would be as loud if Israel dropped a nuclear bomb on Cairo – or, more immediately, Tehran. I wondered but my wonderment was rhetorical. I knew the answer.
That’s how far we Jews have come. What an arrival! After the Holocaust, we needed power. Now we have it. What do we do with it? Want more power. Has power healed the trauma of the Holocaust? Not at all. The trauma festers. Meanwhile Jewish dissenters are confused and often abused by those who wield power in the Jewish community. So much so that the Mezuzah on the door has become a sign of contradiction. To others. To ourselves.
Where I lived previously, the local congregations would get up in arms when Jews for Jesus came to town… On the Israel front, though, whatever was done to Palestinians was alright, even necessary.
Palestinians are to a big extent Jews for Jesus + 2000 years living in a predominantly non-Jewish Church + Reformist-type attitudes about Torah + a big percent of Muslim conversion.
I don’t see that there was a need for power (if that is what you are saying) extending to all Jewish people after the terrible events of WW2. There was a need for justice and redress extending to all who had been unjustly victimised, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. No one who had not been victimised, Jewish or not, deserved anything that they did not deserve already, that is to say anything other than the human rights that they all deserved in any event. You cannot acquire rights from a bad experience you have not had.
“all who had been unjustly victimised, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. No one who had not been victimised, Jewish or not…”
Exactly. I don’t see how Australian Jews, or British Jews, or American Jews, nor Canadian Jews, or South African, etc., Jews can all themselves “harmed by the Holocaust”. They were safe in Australia, Britain, America, Canada, South Africa, etc.
The Jews of Europe who were caught up in the Holocaust were harmed by it. They can claim a trauma. But their descendants born after the war can not, and they are just kidding themselves if they do.
Millions of non-Jews suffered in the Second World War. Are we going to accept it as reasonable to say a Chinese girl born in 1995 suffers a trauma from the horrors of the Japanese occupation?
(Dammit, I was born in 1946, and I do not claim – or feel – any trauma from the German bombing of Manchester, even though my parents lost one house and had another badly damaged in that bombing.)
Time to stop obsessing about the Holocaust.
Thank G_d it wasn’t a symbol from my childhood (since we were mainstream Protestants), but that fish thingy (Ichthys / “sign of the fish” / “Jesus fish”) that the fundies like to display gives me a really bad case of the heebie-jeebies ! ! !
• Heebie Jeebies / Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five (VIDEO, 02:57) – link to youtube.com
• Louis Armstrong-Eddie Condon-Heebie Jeebies (VIDEO, 04:12) – link to youtube.com
You asked: “what does it mean to be Jewish?
It makes sense that different generations could have different answers.
Isn’t it true that the term first came into use after the Babylonian captivity ended, and referred to those who came to live in the then-restored Kingdom of Judah?
That being the case, isn’t the plainest answer to say that it really refers to an ethnicity, like Italians and Spaniards? Those who can trace their ancestry back to the Kingdom of Judah would be ethnically Jews, just as Americans who can trace their ancestry to Italy and Spain would be ethnically Italian and Spanish. Thus, many Palestinians are actually Jewish themselves.
Speaking of Jews for Jesus, I’ve noticed such a strong antipathy toward these “wayward” Jews that blinds our own waywardness… the local congregations would get up in arms when Jews for Jesus came to town. Voices were raised. On the Israel front, though, whatever was done to Palestinians was alright, even necessary.
Waywardness is measured by loyalty, akin to patriotism. That is the standard by which both embracing Jesus and rejecting Zionism are judged. Bigotry and warmongering, on the other hand, are never perceived as disloyal. As it is (almost) written: And your camp shall be loyal.
You asked: “What happens when a religious symbol of such importance becomes a sign of violence against you – or at least when that is your first thought when the symbol appears? Perhaps it’s like the Cross for my Christian friends – a sign of historical contradiction.
If the Cross broadly means Christianity and the Christian community, it seems it could be a sign of contradictions in historical events, since instances of persecution by the Christian community would contradict Christian teachings against persecuting others, like to forgive your enemies. But this contradiction should be resolved by saying that the community’s bad acts are actually an aberration from the teachings of the community itself.
And you are drawing a good comparison between the religions that better clarifies things. For example, the Torah clearly banned idol worship. Yet idol worship continued for centuries in the ancient religious community. Does that mean symbols of the religious community, like the Menorah from the Temple to worship the Lord, were themselves contradictory because of the idol worship? I think not, because the faith itself- what the Menorah itself symbolized- opposed the idol worship.
So when it comes to Crosses and Mezuzahs, I feel that the best mental reaction in the case you describe would be to observe the contradiction between what those symbols really mean and how they are abused.
In the case of the Cross- the contradiction between the belief in the Cross bringing forgiveness and part of the community’s persecution of others. In the case of the Mezuzah- a symbol of the “crossing over”(passover) from slavery to liberation and the mistreatment this concept contradicts.