This is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Does it matter what boundaries we cross to find the truth we need? If we can’t find what we need in the place we’re born we might as well cross the sea.
Take every survey you want. Multiply them until the end of time. The reason for Jews going out is because the Jewish establishment can’t stretch beyond empire. This is the fundamental flaw inside the establishment. It’s been there for a long, long time.
Sure the flashpoint has been about Israel and the Palestinians. It still is. But there’s more, much more, rotting the heart of Jewish life.
Perhaps it’s the same in Christian life. Surely, the rotting there is of longer standing. Islam, too. Christians and Muslims of Conscience have a long, long road to travel.
“Don’t go that route,” a voice in my head wants to shout. Let Christianity and Islam rot from the inside out. Why dedicate your life to that which cannot be redeemed? Let your life – including your Christian and Muslim roots – nourish the future. Your exile will be haunted. It won’t be in vain.
On the Jewish score, Judaism – as a religion, including the Conservative movement but without leaving out Reform and Orthodox – is a huge mistake. Mainstream Judaism is the wrong turn we have to declare our freedom from. The surveys tell us this is exactly what Jews do. Jews leave Judaism.
The surveys don’t poll conscience. They don’t survey those who leave because the system is so hypocritical there’s no way to remain and retain your ethical sanity. The same system Jews of Conscience leave is the one that trains our religious leaders – to be ignorant, reluctant and afraid.
So Jews leave and become born-again Christians and Muslims and Buddhists. The majority of Jews who leave become secular in ways only Jews become secular. But that is true of Jews who become Christians, Muslims and Buddhists as well. Jews reinvent their new-found identities – Jewishly.
I’m traveling to Korea in a few days with folks from all corners of the globe. I’ll have more in common with them – and at the deepest levels – than with most Jews right down the street. They will have much in common with me.
This commonality tells us something significant beyond shared rituals and symbols. It tells us how little truth claims bind. How identities can be traps. How empire builders are one and the same wherever they hail from. How people of conscience share exile and a new diaspora.
Why do Jews turn away? The surveys don’t have a clue.
Wow — just wow. I am amazed that Marc Ellis has dared to open up this issue:
I have been trying to argue now and then on Mondoweiss that the greatest problem facing contemporary Jewish civilization is the fusion of mainstream Judaism with Zionism — and have run into a great deal of flak, much of it emotional, angry and (in my opinion) uninformed.
I agree with Marc that Christianity and Islam face the same problems — as does the entire Abrahamic tradition:
(No need for the qualifying “perhaps” there.)
But I think Judaism could be easily redeemed with a bit of ideological reengineering — simply start emphasizing the universalist strains in the tradition and turn down the volume on the ethnic nationalist strains. One could do that without necessarily jettisoning Zionism — but Zionism will have to brought into alignment with modern Western democratic norms. Theoretically this is doable — but real-world cultural and political indicators in Israeli society do not inspire much hope.
Marc,
For some interesting historical background on why the Jewish establishment now finds itself at the center of a serious mess, see this:
article; Sue Hoffman; Lecture highlights Abba Hillel Silver’s legacy; Cleveland Jewish News; October 16, 2013 http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/features/article_58eb98e8-361a-11e3-9185-001a4bcf887a.html
Silver, apparently, was a key figure in engineering the fusion of Judaism with Zionism and laying the groundwork for the Israel lobby. Future Jewish historians may not view his efforts as an “important political achievement” in the positive sense — it is more likely that they will categorize him as a false prophet.
Regarding a time when “the Reform Movement was against Zionism” — that now seems like ancient history. A wrong turn on the road was taken.
Why do Jews turn away?
Marc H. Ellis who are you to speak in the names of the Jews all over the world.
Be specific, speak for yourself and your close community
Where do Jews turn away ?
In the US? in your community?.
Now go ahead and write your thoughts again, maybe it will have some sense.
Marc — are you saying that Judaism was ‘pure’ or not ‘rotting’ until after WWII? and then made a strategic mistake? Are you saying that the problem was that after WWII, Judaism & Jewish identity attached itself to a nation-state — and that it then started to rot, because that State was inevitably part of Empire (because of the nature of it’s historical founding as a settler nation, in a post-settler time)? I think people like Hannah Arendt took a longer view of Jewish history in Europe, which continues to be helpful — discussing how the experience of being problematically disconnected from States in Europe (yet also connected) led to challenges — and that the experience of connecting to Israel after the war, let to other challenges, but ones that built on the tragedies & contradictions of the European experience.
If you make it sound like the problems of ‘rotting’ just started like a new reality w/ Israel, you lose so much of the prophetic. It seems like a key theme running thro most of the prophets is a brilliant, empassioned discussion of the ethical dangers in the relationship between Religion & State. That’s the big lesson that I took from my (Christian) teachings — that there’s a difference between what we call the Beloved Community (in Christianity) & national or ethnic or state or Empire-based identity — and that God gets angry when they are confused. Am I missing something about the prophetic?
If you’re locating the problem of Judaism as post WWII, then you’re creating another problem (which I do think you’re prone to) — which is an essentializing of both Islam & Christianity. Both have had long running traditions of resistance to Empire & the State — the ‘rot’ you talk about in Christianity & Islam is in some areas & not others. I frankly think Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and all religions have been both rotting & healing from their very beginning. It’s a problematic exceptionalism, to say that the rot just started for Judaism post WWII & after the formation of Israel (if that is, in fact, what you’re saying).
Marc Ellis does get more bizarre with his bigotry by each day.
It’s not the first time you’ve had this kind of belching racism spilling out, wrapped in progressive foil.
Also, Ellis, you said you were ‘going to Korea in a few days’ last week.
I’m hatereading Ellis’ columns now, gathering his bigotry like stamps. I’m looking at a fossile.