There have been a lot of comments on my Michael Walzer post. I want to deal with one right off. Realistic Dove has taken me on, saying that the "far left" has a problem with Jewish identity, and accusing me of intolerance bordering on antisemitism, when I question the idea of Jews turning inward, toward religiosity.
My first defense is that I feel that I speak for a lot of liberals I know when I say that There is too damned much religion in the public space. That is an acceptable and conventional position when it’s secularized blue-staters , say the New York Times, blasting right-wing Christian evangelicals who want to stop abortion and stem-cell research. Or blasting Islamicists who stone adulterers and kidnap brothel owners. I’m with the seculars. I want all those religious people to back off and stick to their churches. But clearing religious visions from the public space also involves looking at Zionist ideology and understanding what a historical-mythological-biblical understanding of Jewish identity has done to the Holy Land, and Jerusalem.
Realistic dove would separate the Zionist crazies from the good liberal Zionists like himself. He may be more realistic in the end than I am. That is to say, the Saudi solution to the mess would have an end to the occupation and a tidy two-state solution along the ’49 armistice lines in Israel and Palestine. It is gaining adherents, and would seem to have its political moment, what with the Sunni-Shi’a tension, and the Sunnis wanting to make common cause with Israel. Ori Nir of Peace Now is excited; he says that Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia are "almost enthusiastic to engage Israel."
The issue for me is whether such a 2-state solution is achievable, sustainable, or desirable. Israeli settlers have cherrypicked the best land in the West Bank; they will not go quietly. Arab nationalists are not pleased with a partition of historical Palestine that is 78-22 percent (compared to far more equitable divisions that they rejected years ago). There are powerful rejectionists on both sides. Of course anything is desirable that would achieve peace, but I am wary of these religious nationalists on both sides; in the long run the best solution is integrating Israel into its region, ending its delusion that it is a "western" country (500 miles east of Istanbul), causing it to rely on its neighbors not a distant superpower. Such integration ultimately will involve some federal solution of Palestine, with Arab and Jewish entitites. (Though I’m influenced by Elik Elhanan, who calls for separation for the time being…)
Anti-Zionist, integrationist Jews like myself, along with Zionists who opposed a Jewish state, said 60 years ago that creating a Jewish state would create endless violence in the Middle East. We were right about this, and we got rolled by the Israel lobby, back then. They were better at politics. That doesn’t make them right; and the contradictions of their position continue to roil the region.
Something else anti-Zionists said was that a Jewish commonwealth would create issues of dual loyalty in western society, and affect Jewish identity here. Prophetic. Which brings me to the second large point.
Realistic dove says I am being harshly judgmental (bordering on antisemitic) toward Jews who are merely turning to their own religion. Why? he asks. The fact is, I have no problem with people turning to religion. That’s their business. I’m a religious person myself, though exploring that has involved shedding a lot of the doctrine I grew up with. I recognize that I’m an assimilationist Jew in my personal choices. Who am I to proselytize the Walzer Jews to assimilate?
The problem here is that this new Jewishness has a strongly political component. As Walzer himself indicates, religion serves temporal, political purposes: Israel’s religiosity, he says, got dialed up in the last 30 years in order to serve the state.
I believe that the religiosity Walzer now extols has a strong political flavor too. It serves two larger corporate programs: Jewish population sustainability in the intermarrying U.S., and support for Israel. The first goal, sustaining Jewish population numbers in an assimilationist society, is an OK thing in my view–and none of my business in a sense, cause I’m going the other direction. The Orthodox do it beautifully. And they do it by self-separation, ala the separation of Jews throughout European history; and they do it by sacrificing certain worldly aims.
But that separation is problematic in my view when you are as integrated into the political and social structure as Jews are. You can’t be simultaneously calling for Jewish separation and Jewish high counselors at the White House on foreign policy. Michael Steinhardt is supporting institutions whose aim is to influence American foreign policy re the Middle East (Manhattan Institute, New York Sun) and also supporting Jewish day schools to keep Jewish kids apart from non-Jewish kids. Elliot Abrams writes that Jews must stand apart in all societies except Israel, and go to Jewish madrasas, sorry, day schools, and meanwhile he gets to help run American middle east policy. This is wrong. I feel that Walzer’s answer to these contradictions– hey guess what, we’re anomalous, get used to it, we’re citizens of two nations and that’s fine– is naive and politically inappropriate, especially at a time when America needs to sort out its own interests from Israel’s, and when the neocons helped to get us into Iraq with a hidden agenda. We need less confusion on this score, not more.
Let me plain about my emotional bias here. I am an assimilationist, and Jewish, and pluralist, and something in me bridles when I hear Jews calling for all the privileges of American society (economic, statuswise, political) and not wanting to mix in. I don’t think it’s sustainable in a democracy. Democracy can abide strong corporate minorities–absolutely. Utah is run by the Mormons, and we seem to abide by it (though the New Republic argues (and I’m prepared to agree) that Mitt Romney’s Mormon-corporate interest disqualifies him from high office). Monsey, N.Y., is run by the Hasidim and that also is tolerable. I think it’s great that Ruth Wisse is at Harvard and Michael Walzer at Princeton. But assuming high position in society and maintaining a program of separate corporate identity; that’s when it gets dicey. I wouldn’t want Walzer or Wisse as president of Harvard. Rightwing Christian evangelicals also should pay a price for their religiosity…
I feel that realistic dove and Walzer are both failing to understand this moment in Jewish history. Something new and astonishing is unfolding in the U.S. I say that privileged Jewish Americans should share their gifts with this great society, and accept some of the risks therein, that privileged Jewish writers should write for American readers. Walzer wants to reseparate, and be anomalous. O.K., you can do it, but I would say there’s a price to be paid in political power for such conduct.
