Exile and the prophetic: (Jewish) gatekeepers

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.

It’s getting messy in America.  The pariahs of European and American history – including women – are becoming parvenus.  The elite of the outcasts are now sitting at the head table.

It’s even messier when the former pariahs, now parvenus – that is Jews – are the gatekeepers for the more recently arrived.

The ticket to the empire dance in Europe was Christian for so long most Jews stopped knocking on empire heaven’s door.  Now everyone – including Muslims in America – is knocking on the Jewish door.  Jews have become the way in to the American dream and, for Jews, it feels good. 

There are many ways to even the historical score.  Being a gatekeeper is our ultimate revenge against those who kept us out.

Fair enough, the gloating, but where has it brought us? 

Jews were the hunted, fleeing here and there, refugees par excellence, refugees before there were nations, refugees before there were medieval kingdoms, then fast forwarding, refugees on the way to the death camps.

We were refugees before refugees went global.

Now we create refugees without blinking an eye, without noting their existence or admitting complicity in their plight.  We know what needs to be done, so we do it and turn a blind eye to what it means for the innocent.  The same accusation we made against others – they didn’t want to know or they knew every well – those perpetrators and bystanders of history – are what we Jews have become.

Jews have assimilated to power, which is the ultimate assimilation, and is more than simply having power.  Power can be used for the good of others.  When you assimilate to power, power is used for your benefit. 

Power becomes an addiction.   You have to have more and more power just to feel good.

Assimilation is what Hannah Arendt’s conscious pariahs refuse.  Strange, though Arendt and others like her are accused of wearing their Jewishness too lightly or not at all, perhaps wanting to rip Jewishness out of their being, wearing Jewishness on our sleeves is the ticket of tickets to being inside the power belt.  

Which way, then, is Jewish and how is Jewishness to be defined?

We enter the twilight zone of Jewishness.  When less Jewish is more and more Jewish is less, Jewish gets harder and harder to explain to others – and ourselves. 

So, for example, we continue to laugh at the Jewish jokes that had bite when we were down and out.  They mean something else once we arrived.  Jewish aphorisms and a few sprinkled half-understood Hebrew words function the same way.  Instead of being subversive they confirm our arrival. 

It reminds of the time when my oldest son, Aaron, attended a national Hillel conference.  Afterwards we chatted about his experience.  His comment remains with me:  “I was never surrounded by so much Jewish and so little at the same time.”

Have you ever had that feeling?

But with war after war and the continual threat of war against Israel our mantra, it’s dangerous for everyone involved.  

Those others who laugh with us, the even newer arrivals we vet, aren’t doing us any favors.  They, too, want to grab as much as they can.  This includes those women and African Americans and Latinos who are eating at empire’s trough now or might be able to if they just pass the (Jewish) power elite test. 

The crucial question is Israel as we know from many, the latest being Samantha Power, Susan Rice and John Kerry.  Before them were Barack Obama and his challenger Hillary Clinton.  The list stretches back decades.  It’s interesting, too, that especially Power – and before her Chuck Hagel – were seen as out-of-the-box, stick-it-to-Israel Presidential picks.  President Obama wanted to send a message to Prime Minister Netanyahu and AIPAC reminding them who is President. 

Yet everyone knows, including the President, that this revenge is pure symbolism.  The policy of supporting Israel hasn’t changed one bit.  The opposite is the case.  Hagel was confirmed and soon Power will be too with some pro forma disciplining by Senators and confessional statements by the appointees.  Israel gets more arms and aid.

For those of you non-Jewish pariahs on the upswing, it should be obvious.   You can prep all you want but if you fail to affirm unconditional, overly embellished, support for Israel your preparation is in vain. 

On the one hand, if you’re a nay on the Israel question you might as well walk back to the majority of the community you came from.  On the other hand, if you’re a nay on the Israel question you’re in the same boat as Jewish pariahs on the upswing.  Jews have to affirm their Israel right or wrong credentials otherwise they’re out too.

When you have to pledge the same loyalty oath to get ahead you’re in the same boat.  Does that make us everyone who raises their right hand and those don’t – Jewish?  Non-Jewish?  It depends how we define our terms.

That’s the Civics lesson of our time it seems.  On Israel, we’re all Jewish or have to become so, even when more and more Jews want to leave the Israel box unchecked.