Tsvi Bisk – The Evolution of Jewish Identity
There is no such thing as Authentic Judaism
There is no such thing as authentic Judaism let alone normative Jewish identity. I differentiate between Judaism (the religion of the Jewish people) and Jewish peoplehood. Identity is evolutionary for every people. To be English today is different from being English in the time of Queen Victoria, Elizabeth I, or Alfred the Great. Similarly, being Jewish in the 21st century is different from being Jewish a hundred years ago, five hundred years ago, or two thousand years ago. Modern Jewish identity is a consequence of thousands of years of cultural evolution from The Fathers (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), to the Judges, to the Kings, to the Prophets, to the Sadducees, to the Pharisees, to Rabbinic Judaism, to post-Enlightenment Judaism. After the Scientific Revolution and the European Enlightenment (which enabled the Emancipation of the Jews) Jewish identity became pluralistic. Reform and Conservative Judaism undermined the faith monopoly of Orthodoxy and eventually spun off Reconstructionist and Humanist Judaism. Bundism, Territorialism and other ‘secular’ Jewish identities stirred 19th century European and American Jewry. Israel centered Zionism has been the most recent iteration of the ever-changing character of Jewish identity.
The most significant post-Enlightenment development for the Jews has been the shift from a primarily religious identity to a primarily ethnic or national identity[i]. The Enlightenment gave birth to human agency as a cultural value: active messianism replaced passive messianism. What we call The Idea of Progress produced political ideologies dedicated to changing society for the betterment of all people and every person. In the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson best expressed the idea that the betterment of the people is the only purpose of government and that government is only legitimate when it serves the will, needs and wishes of the people.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, (italics mine) deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
When the Enlightenment transformed Jewish identity from religious to ethnic, it eventually gave birth to a yearning for national self-determination which gave birth to Zionism (as well as Bundism and Territorialism). At first the Enlightenment diluted Jewish attachment to the old unifying religious forms, creating divisions. Ironically the ethnic and romantic nationalisms which were born out of the Enlightenment inspired modern anti-Semitism as well as Zionism as the response to anti-Semitism. Nationalism became manifest in nation-states which found the presence of a large minority of Jews, with customs and religion different from the majority ‘authentic’ nation, disconcerting if not intolerable. Paradoxically, emancipation made the Jewish problem more rather than less acute. Unless they assimilated, Jews were seen as alien growths in the healthy body of the authentic nation; yet Jews who did assimilate were viewed with no less suspicion. T.S. Eliot, that personification of the urbane anti-Semite, expressed the opinion that too many Jews of ‘that sort’ (assimilationist) were undesirable as they, by the very nature of striving to be part of the ‘authentic’ nation, upset social stability and cultural uniformity. In his book After Strange Gods he wrote:
The population should be homogeneous; where two or more cultures exist in the same place they are likely either to be fiercely self-conscious or both to become adulterate. What is still more important is unity of religious background, and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking (italics mine) Jews undesirable.[ii]
Free-thinking Jews bothered Eliot more than Orthodox Jews, who tended to ghettoize themselves and thus not “adulterate” the authentic culture. The double irony was that Zionism and the creation of Israel as a nation-state trying to be part of a world community of nation states became an outlier at its very birth, and has been seen by many in the world community to be an artificial invention and not an “authentic” national entity, not a true colleague of the other “authentic” nation states. Anti-Zionism has become the new (postmodern) anti-Semitism. Postmodernists claim that Jewish identity per se is an artificial “construct”, since it does not fit into the neat anthropological, sociological or theological definitions favored by academia. From this, Zionism and Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel are also “constructs” (artificial inventions) and thus undeserving of respect as compelling ethical positions.
But this view can very well be defined as a philosophical Bill of Attainder[iii] because when analyzed, all modern identity had been invented: Bismarck invented Germany, Mazzini and Garibaldi invented Italy and the Founding Fathers invented the United States of America. By the year 2000, over half the member states of the United Nations had been “invented” out of the postcolonial experience – including almost every Muslim country (excepting Iran and Egypt which have been identifiable states since antiquity). A case could even be made that modern English identity was invented by an Italian Jew (Disraeli) defending a German Queen (Victoria) in the name of “our ancient English traditions rooted in the mists of time”. Israel’s indignant reaction to this global double standard has resulted in a resentful political psychology that often leads to irrational decisions.
Identity as an ongoing evolutionary/reinvention process is especially applicable to the Jews. A normative, restricted definition of what it means to be Jewish became impossible after the Enlightenment: is it a religion, a nationality, an ethnic group, or a civilization. Even the Jews cannot agree. A well-known Jewish joke is that a Jew is someone who persistently asks the question “who is a Jew?” This self-identity confusion has complicated the world’s attitude to Israel. The Jews are an ideologically and culturally pluralistic people. It is time that Orthodox Jews and the Zionist political parties in Israel recognize and respect this self-evident fact. It is time for non-Orthodox Diaspora Jewry to take a much more militant position regarding the contempt with which they are treated in Israel.
Ideologically, Jewish religious identity includes ultra-Orthodox, modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Humanist and trans-denominational Judaism. Jewish ethnic identity also includes secular atheists and agnostics, such as some of the greatest Jews of modern times: Einstein, Freud, Herzl, Ben Gurion, Weizmann, and Jabotinsky. Even prior to the Enlightenment, Jewish identity had been modified by the non-Jewish cultures the Jews had lived in. These Jewish identities included Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Middle Eastern which further subdivided into German, Yemenite, Russian, Iraqi, Moroccan and American Jews. The only universal norms of Jewish identity were the prohibition against idolatry and the requirement of unqualified individual responsibility. Judaism is an ‘ism’ – an ideology about life that contained a religious tradition. It is a tradition and a worldview dependent on individual behavior. It has little place for the vicarious ‘salvation’ inherent in the principle of grace or ‘right belief’. Jews are instructed to be ‘partners with God’ in the ongoing act of creation; it is an active, not a passive belief system – you have to do things, not just pray.
In a way, this pre-Enlightenment attitude anticipated the Enlightenment human-agency mindset that rewards human energy and might explain the tremendous achievements of individual Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries. It might also be an explanation for disproportionate Jewish involvement in the great reformist political and social movements of the 19th and 20th centuries; changing society for the better found a natural home in a mindset conditioned by a culture that advocated “being a partner with God in the act of creation”. The way one behaved (Derech Eretz) has always been fundamental to Jewishness, not one’s ideological belief system.
The recent hijacking of Jewish tradition by a politicized right-wing religious establishment dedicated to land idolatry and presenting itself as “authentic” Judaism has alienated many Israelis and Diaspora Jews from Jewish religious tradition and ultimately from its quintessential secular expression – Zionism. This has caused an ongoing de-vitalization of Jewish identity both in Israel and in the Diaspora (weakening Jewish communal life and support for Israel in the Diaspora).
The test for Jewish survival had always been empirical. If a form of Judaism endured, it was because it had contributed something of value to a critical mass of Jewish individuals, not because it had some inherent abstract theoretical value. It was the spiritual equivalent of the survival of the fittest. What survived did so because it answered a need and gave value to real human beings. Culture, after all, is not a museum dedicated to preserving artifacts from the past, nor is it a cemetery dedicated to eulogizing the heroes of the past. It is a dynamic, future-oriented creative process; it is a living thing that evolves as a consequence of its dynamic interaction with other cultures and other cultural environments. What does not interact does not evolve; what does not evolve dies.
The land idolatry and culture of self-righteous indignation that has characterized the most recent stages of the Zionist project are driving ever growing numbers of Israelis into a culturally isolationist frame of mind. Many Israelis are actually taking pride in being a people who dwell alone; take pride in being indifferent to evolving global values, and see this indifference as a badge of Jewish authenticity. Zionism has become inert; it has ceased to interact with other cultures. Because of this, Zionism, the most recent iteration of Jewish identity, is in danger of eventually failing the empirical test and taking the entire Jewish people down with it.
Perhaps it is time for a new evolutionary iteration of Jewish identity – away from the Israel centered model that has dominated Jewish life since World War II. Perhaps it is time for non-Orthodox Diaspora Jewry to assume a much more creative/initiating role regarding the future of Jewish peoplehood. Israel, as it is presently constituted, culturally and politically, is incapable of filling that role.
[i] This was essentially a return to a more biblical identity. The words Jewish Religion do not appear even once in the Bible while the term Nation of Israel or People of Israel or Children of Israel appear scores of times.
[ii] Eliot, T.S. After Strange Gods, New York; Harcourt, Brace and Co; 1st edition (1934) pg. 19
[iii]Bills of Attainder are laws especially designed to impose legal sanctions or disabilities on a particular individual or class of people. They have been unconstitutional in the Anglo Saxon legal tradition since the Magna Carta and are specifically banned in the English Bill of Rights and in the American Constitution.
Tsvi Bisk is an Israeli-American Futurist and Author. His most recent book The Suicide of the Jews is available on Amazon
