A while back I said that Avraham Burg, the former speaker of the Knesset, is an assimilationist. I did so because I sensed early on in his new book that he was nostalgic for the mixed Germany before the rise of the Nazis (in the way that other German Jews also are, including W. Michael Blumenthal and Fritz Stern). That Germany before the nightmare, in which Jews did so well, and felt such a part of the society. The son of a Holocaust survivor from Germany, Burg grew up in a German section of Jerusalem, and loves Hannah Arendt and Moses Mendelssohn and Heinrich Heine. Heine and Mendelssohn were assimilationist: they felt safe in western societies and did not want to stay in the ghetto.
Zionism, which Burg wants to transcend, goes against the assimilationist idea. It says that Jews are unsafe in western societies. At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, there is an exhibit dedicated to a Berlin household, a room depicting privileged, happily assimilating Jews. Oh, the folly of thinking they would ever accept you! Ergo: Israel is the refuge to the Jews.
Burg is struggling with that isolationist strain in Jewish life. His book takes on "the groundwater of Jewish identity and the segregationist, confrontational nature of our national existence for ages." He continues:
There is a built-in element of discrimination, arrogance, and preference for anything that comes from Jewish genes. It is much more present than deniers wish to see…
I spoke at one of Israel's finest universities. The conversation revolved around Jewish identity, assimilation, and humanism. At the end of the lecture, a professor stood up.
"I agree with you in theory," he said, "but in reality, it would be very difficult. What would I do if my son brings home a gentile woman? I am secular, but it is difficult for me."
I pondered for a moment whether to dodge the subject or inflame the discussion. I decided to inflame it. [Burg loves polemics.]
"I don't think that our generation's choice is linear and one-dimensional, as was the decision of our parents and elders," I said. "In the past, such a decision was binary, either a goy or a Jew… Your choice today is much more difficult and sophisticated. What do you prefer, that your son marry a gentile woman or a Jewish man?"
…he lowered his head and said, "A Jewish homosexual is preferable to a gentile bride."
For me, it is important that the person that my child marries is good, ethical and moral. I don't care whether he or she is a Jew or a gentile, homosexual or heterosexual. My standard is goodness and morality, not a person's origins or sexual preferences.
I think my parents felt that way too.
