This is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Where should Jews of Conscience be on Yom Kippur? Should we fast as we are commanded to on this day of confession and judgment?
The most soul obstructing place for Jews to observe Yom Kippur is in our lavish synagogues. When fasting masks injustice it is false piety, a barrier to God.
Unaccountability and pretense is the norm in synagogues across the nation. The most pressing issue facing Jewish life – the willfully ignorant and terribly belligerent attitude toward Palestinians to whom we owe justice as justice was once owed to us – remains unspoken.
In synagogues on Yom Kippur the oppression of Palestinians is unspeakable.
What is the confession Jews need to make on Yom Kippur? Simply put and without equivocation: What we as Jews have done to you, the Palestinian people, is wrong. What we as Jews are doing to you, the Palestinian people, is wrong.
Jews are not alone in our vehement ignorance. By our side are our new found friends, enabling Christians, erstwhile lovers of the Jews after more than a millennium of hate. Today we are joined at the empire hip.
This form of Jewish-Christian rapprochement means that the most soul obstructing place for Christians to observe Christmas and Easter is in their lavish churches. Like synagogue for Jews, Christians attending church fulfill their religious obligation by remaining willfully ignorant and terribly belligerent toward Palestinians to whom they owe justice as they once owed justice to Jews.
Some Christians of Conscience have finally arrived at a mature and, for them, revolutionary reflection about Jews. Even more revolutionary, Christians of Conscience have arrived at this reflection in dialogue with Jews of Conscience.
Christians of Conscience differentiate between myths of Jewish conspiracies and the reality of what Jews are doing to Palestinians. They come to this distinction belatedly but their arrival is important. Arriving together, a new stage of the Jewish-Christian journey is at hand.
The dual confession that Christians need to make is incredibly difficult. First is their crime against the Jewish people. Second is their crime against the Palestinian people.
The startling feature about Christians is how they are able to deal with the endless hypocrisy of Christian history and still attend Christian worship. Jews are different. Once religious hypocrisy enters the Jewish realm, it’s over. Jews leave Judaism, never to return.
For most Jews of Conscience exile from synagogue is beside the point. When the subject of worship and God is broached, Jews of Conscience flee the scene.
Nonetheless, Yom Kippur remains the day of days. The Jewish calendar haunts Jews who haven’t set foot in a synagogue for decades. By refusing to pay lip service to Yom Kippur, Jews of Conscience display their primal colors.
As has often been the case in Jewish history, Jews need to mourn and move on. Jews of Conscience might have been able to benefit from Christians of Conscience and how they reacted when their ethical tradition came to an end. But since that end occurred more or less in the 4th century when Christianity became the religion of the empire, many Christians have never experienced a vibrant ethical tradition.
Ironically, Christians look to Jews for guidance. At least, they did. Now we seek them out. But it’s too late. Our Arks are empty.
There’s no use looking to Islam for help. Like Jews and Christians, Muslims have little left of their ethical tradition. The interfaith dialogue that seeks to incorporate Islam is a ruse. Who will benefit if the Muslim clergy end up like the rabbis, priests and ministers Jews and Christians are stuck with?
Some say that our religions have been hijacked by neo-conservatives and extremists. This holds open the possibility of a return to a sense of innocence and redemption if right thinking can be restored. Unfortunately, our religions haven’t been hijacked. They’ve been squandered.
What to do at the end? On Yom Kippur, Jews of Conscience should marvel at how close people of conscience from every faith and secular orientation are to one another. We should appreciate and embrace those we find around our ethical table.
Instead of fasting on Yom Kippur, perhaps we should break bread with those we journey with. After all, the Biblical injunction against false sacrifice as idolatry, always linked to injustice, remains.
Many good points in this essay, except there is this:
“But since that end occurred more or less in the 4th century when Christianity became the religion of the empire, many Christians have never experienced a vibrant ethical tradition”
This kind of statement about Christianity and christians can only come from a place of deep ignorance and dismissiveness of a rather rich and varied ethical history. An unwarranteed generalization, ignoring the many revivals and attempts to return Christianity to its place of origin where humility, service to fellow men, and seeking a state of grace were the ruling principles. St Francis of Assissi comes to mind, among others, too numerous to name.
And then to brush aside the rise of Protestanism that explicitly sought to overthrow the empire of popes and other church goblins is really a strange over-sight. Ultimately, I believe that, in their American manifestation, it is the universalist ethical traditions of protestanism that gave rise to the so-called “Jewish values” in the first place. the entire concept of Tikkun Olam is borrowed from the best of Protestant traditions , in that a very minor, universalist-sounding value in jewish tradition, was elevated in its American version to a major principle. Then Jews, even those of conscience, have the temerity sometimes to shove it back in the faces of Christians as if to say – see’ we were first, as always.
I never fail to note, with some amazement – how willfully ignorant jewish people, even the best, most conscientious and learned of them – are of Christians’ history, development and traditions. Probably Ellis doesn’t even realize how deeply offensive this throw-away statement is, that I quoted above. No matter how well intentioned, Jews still approach Christians and Christianity from a place of perceived superiority coupled with indignance over injustices committed against them over millenia of rule, basically by overlords. Jews do expect christians to forever pay penance on behalf of a religion that some of them parted ways with over 500 years ago, for the reason that the catholicism became a religion of Empire rather than of the people. Yet even when it comes to Catholic christianity, let’s face it, there were many Mother Thresa’s that religion produced – not nearly enough and not where most needed – but there were quite a few over the centuries. Where were those in the jewish tradition (yes, i know one can name Albert Schwitzer, though there’s that little “hitch”)?
i present that, at its foundation, it is the sin of supreme arrogance that jews, including those of conscience, must repent at Yom kippur. Every year, and this year more than others. Far more so than the average well meaning christian, it is this sin that led directly to the disgraceful abhorrent sins of supreme injustice perpetrated against the Palestinian people; a sin ongoing that Jews, not Christians, have to atone for. Alone in their torment, as their so-called “ethical” edifice crumbles all around them. An edifice that perhaps, despite centuries’ worth of work from good people, great rabbis some, has now come to be seen as nothing more than a house of cards. That vaunted “Tikkun Olam” was just so many words, wasn’t it?
As for Marc, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to look deep in his soul to find that place where the offending sentence came from, and having taken full measure of just how wrong it is, confess that which beget it, and no more. Therein, real conscience lies.
Yom Kippur sermon over.
Dude if you are hungry just admit you don’t have the fortitute to fast. But please don’t try to make big drawn out arguments for why you want a sandwhich. Sheesh.
Why attack religious Jews on this day? This isn’t a good form of protest and it is offensive.
Responding to Danaa – Historically speaking, whether you like it or not, Marc is correct. There have been, without question, flares, brilliant flares even (Bonheoffer and members of The White Rose Society immediately jump to mind), of the ethical and the prophetic since Christianity capitulated to Empire. However, in terms of a consistent and contiguous “vibrant ethical tradition,” “vibrant” being the operative word, Christianity (or more precisely, Churchianity) has been/is lacking. Marc’s volleys aren’t isolated attacks on Christianity – they are attacks, and rightfully so, on all institutionalized religions, their obeisance to Empire, and the expedient abandonment of ethical traditions. Judaism does not escape unexamined or unscathed, nor does Islam – Marc’s criticism is aimed at empire-serving religions, not people of conscience.
As for “willfully ignorant,” (in terms of Marc Ellis in relation to Christianity) you are, yourself, ignorant of his background and his work. In terms of “how willfully ignorant jewish people” are in relation to Christianity, and that Jews are guilty of “supreme arrogance”, you have just broad-brushed an entire religion – this is how stereotypes are created, nurtured, developed, and transformed into bigotry, racism and genocide.
“Unfortunately, our religions haven’t been hijacked. They’ve been squandered.” This is the statement of a person who believes there was (ethical) value in each religion at one time or another.
Christians and Jews of all countries, unite! You’ve nothing to lose but the chains of the false religions (and social manipulative systems) that have in each case replaced the ethical elements in both religions.
Now we know what “redemption” might mean — recovery of that which was squandered. But be wary of the priests, the rabbis, and the imams.