The other day I saw a friend whose kid or kids go to a Jewish day school. I generally think that's great/fine. Everyone do their own thing, make their own choice. I don't tell young Jews to do what I did and marry a gentile. Assimilation has produced a counter-movement of Jewish revival, and I say, fine, more power to 'em. The same way I feel about the Amish.
That said, the Jewish day school movement isn't strictly a Jewish revival, it draws on the larger idea of "culturalism," in which per Clifford Geertz, people's cultural background is supposed to be "thick," while their personal identity is "thin." David Bromwich of Huffpo/Yale (a new brand) wrote a famous essay for Dissent some years ago, forever defenstrating this stuff, calling Culturalism the "Euthanasia of Liberalism," and taking on Michael Walzer et al and saying–I can't find my copy of the thing right now–that the idea that we are defined by our tribe or culture more than say our individual choices in a liberal democracy is a confining claustrophobic idea. I agree; and so for myself: I'm a writer, a husband, I love the outdoors, stories, great music (saw Ray Davies last night!), a few close male friends, leftwing political polemics, and I dip into a very sophisticated city once or twice a week… You don't see the word Jewish on that list. Though yes, I'm also a proud Jew and reader. But my identity is pretty diverse; and I can weep reading Nakba tales, and weep for civil rights/Obama, as I wept over the Holocaust when I was a mere sprat.
This is going somewhere. The other day I was watching the bailout discussion on television in the afternoon, then Chris Matthews, and I did my usual tribalist thing of counting the Jews. In the congressional discussion, I saw a guy named Altman from a school in New York, Felix Rohatyn, someone named Friedman, and ye olde Barney Frank. Then Andrea Mitchell and I forget who, a Jewish guy, then later, Chris Matthews with my old friend Jim Cramer, followed by Howard Fineman and Ron Brownstein.
A lot of Jews. We're all over the new establishment, it goes without saying. Or at least the media always goes without saying! My point here is, What if all these guys sent their kids to separate Jewish schools (as NY Congressman Jerrold Nadler did with one of his sons anyway)? It would be unsupportable. What if Obama just announced that he was sending his kids to public school–something I wanted him to do–because he wanted his girls to grow up with other black kids so that they would identify black and marry black? I think it's problematic. That's all. I'm not saying, Tear the schools down or anything. But it's problematic to have a lot of political/cultural power and be ethnocentric. It doesn't wash. Just something to think about. And I would say that Obama's atribal values are going to forever alter these cultural politics, in my direction.
