This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
When thinking through Jewish identity and exploring the outer layers Jews need to jettison, know they are just that – outer layers.
The outer layers – empire, colonialism, capitalism, whiteness.
Jews of Conscience know these have to go. The question remains: Are these outer layers only?
The question is posed from outside in the conspiracy theories that went global in the pre-historic pre-Web age. They continue as we advance into our post-livable Global Warming age.
The question is posed inside by Jews who’ve had it up to here with the Jewish establishment in America and Israel. The Jewish establishment strikes the pose of innocence and redemption while using empire violence and Jewish ascendancy as cover-ups.
Is there any other identity analyzed from inside and out as much as Jewish identity? The Jewish Identity Network (JIN) is like 24/7 cable news. It never shuts down.
JIN can be frustrating at times, for sure. There’s too much time to fill. But, if you like to be where the identity action is, there’s no better place to be than Jewish.
“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” – the old maxim applies here but with a twist. As a Jew, you’re in the kitchen whether you can take the heat or not.
There isn’t any way out of the Jewish kitchen. That’s one of the lessons of Jewish history.
Is that why Jews are always trying to find a way out or around the kitchen, constantly expanding and contracting its width and depth and remodeling its features? But no matter how hard we try – the new cabinets look fantastic, don’t you think? – the long and short of it all is that Jews are still having more or less the same Jewish identity discussion we had three thousand years ago.
So, after the external and internal probing – what can be said about Jewish? Are the outer layers add-ons or are they part of the package we desperately want to escape but can’t?
If the outer layers are inner layers, too, and we can’t escape either, perhaps it is the inner struggle with the outer layers that defines us as Jews. Wrestling with the inner and outer is the essence of what it means to be Jewish.
Empire, colonialism, capitalism, whiteness aren’t new issues when their larger contextual meanings are factored in. Like Jewish identity itself, the struggle against oppression is perennial. Therefore Jews and Jewish identity have a memory of these struggles that can be applied to the present.
Why jettison our muscle-memory?
Even the mode of address, the escape routes and fate of the Biblical prophets and the prophets throughout the ages is important to consider.
If you think we’re reinventing the Jewish identity wheel, forget it. Sure, the rims need attention and the tires are low. Reinvention is a conceit.
To many Jews, Jewish history seems anachronistic. Like reading the Hebrew Bible as a primer on the discussions we’re having – that originated in ancient times.
I find it fascinating talking to Jews who were attracted to Latin American liberation theology in the 1980s and the role it played in the struggles in Central America. In part, the Nicaraguan revolution was fueled by liberation theology. Many Nicaraguans’ resistance to injustice was rooted in the very Bible most Jewish activists wouldn’t crack open if they were stranded on the proverbial desert island.
Yet just because we don’t read the Bible, doesn’t mean it isn’t woven into our Jewish DNA.
When a commentator on Jewish identity recently wrote “J” is for justice rather than Jewish, I couldn’t agree more. Except if she wrote that they’re inseparable. Or should be.
There isn’t an identity out there where that claim could plausibly be made as the essence of what it means to be part of a tradition. Christianity and Islam have their own special claims but the inseparability of Christianity, Islam and justice is not one of them. At least, it’s not their primary claim.
That justice isn’t practiced in our time by many Jews, especially those who hold the levers of power, is the perennial conundrum of being Jewish.
The real – essential – Jewish question.
Re: Your whole thesis, and your conclusion:
Why so wordy? There’s an ancient adage, I forget its originator: “The test of virtue is power.” All you have to do is accept that as a litmus test, it does not require further waxing on about tribal identity politics. Nothing Jewish or non-Jewish about it. And, BTW, and in accordance to what I say here,
the peeling-the-onion-analogy was used by an individual fairly well, by Gunter Grass (of Tin Drum fame, inter alia, including Peeling The Onion). It does not point to a special, essentially uniquely Jewish seeking and/or conundrum.
Also, Re: “Is there any other identity analyzed from inside and out as much as Jewish identity?” Why don’t you talk with Dick Cavett; he’s still alive–ask him about the WASP identity wrestling. And, on a more macro level: Ask him about Western identity. About white male identity, etc.
MARC ELLIS- “The outer layers – empire, colonialism, capitalism, whiteness….The question remains: Are these outer layers only?”
All four of your “outer layers” are different aspects of power-seeking by the dominant elites. Elites have been seeking to accumulate power throughout recorded history and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Dealing with elite power-seeking is critically important if the species is to survive. If I read you correctly, your question becomes ‘to what extent is Jewishness inexorably linked with power-seeking?’ You seem to be describing a Jewish identity outside the Judaic religion, and questioning the source of group bonding and its malleability.
“…Jews are still having more or less the same Jewish identity discussion we had three thousand years ago.”
I seriously doubt that. I am guessing that the current discussion began with the enlightenment and questions of assimilation which were then strongly influenced by Zionism, Israel and the Holocaust. Throw in current Jewish imperial success. Many new and different strands to sort out. Yet, one must not get so absorbed on this particular question as to give inadequate attention to the overall political economy and the dramatic changes taking place.
for all but people of conscience aren’t empire, colonialism, capitalism & whiteness the outer layers of identity?
not so for the exploited? then how to explain the rise to power of the Palestine authority, a phenomenon of collaboration with the colonizer that’s only too common among colonized people?
why believe that empire, colonialism, capitalism and whiteness are only the outer layers of human identity?
because if these were at the core of identity, how to explain the emergence in every society of people of conscience, sometimes many, sometimes few, depending, it seems, upon existing conditions and social climate? and don’t such fluctuations in the numbers of people of conscience suggest that beneath the outer layers of human identity, there’s an inner identity (conscience) that’s waiting to be expressed?
if so, rather than getting tied up with probing the outer layers of identity in this or that group, wouldn’t the cause of building a better world be best served by our finding ways to expand the numbers and reach of people of conscience?
without accomplishing this can we attain the goals we seek?
Good job in your encouraging report about the Church of Scotland document, Marc.
You bring up a good point in this article, too. There are alot of people, Palestinian-Americans, other non-Jews, and independent-minded Jews who are afraid to put themselves out there due to the network, fear that their pro-State employers will see them. Since you were able to overcome this and point to the prophetic, you are encouraging to me too. Thank you.