I am both overjoyed and overwhelmed by how well the discussion is going in this thread. The depth, breadth and quality of the comments has far exceeded what I dared hope for, and the thread hasn’t begun to dwindle yet.
Reading all your comments, one thing has really struck me: if this is what today’s Judaism is, what people today want Judaism to be — and it clearly is just that — then contemporary Judaism is awesome. Contemporary Judaism is progressive, pluralistic, and respectful, engaged, just, and amenable, participatory, responsive, dynamic, inclusive. So many common themes ring through all of our requests: we want a Judaism that is egalitarian, that addresses sexism, heterosexism, racism and other forms of oppression. We want a Judaism that is accessible to people of diverse beliefs and backgrounds. We want a Judaism that is able to change and grow without losing its meaning and its rituals. We want plural Judaisms, diverse communities and spaces that are able to dialogue, to respectfully disagree and to act as allies. We want inclusive Jewish communities that are welcoming, that don’t shame people for their supposed level of Jewishness or constantly recreate painful and absurd “who is a Jew” contests. We want a Judaism that speaks of God in both male and female language. We want a Judaism that recognizes culture as coequal with religion, and that acknowledges and embraces that diverse cultures and ethnicities that Jews embody. We want a hundred more beautiful, commendable things.
To those of us who have felt left out, at odds with our own people, strangers in our own communities (and I daresay this is all of us): look around you. Here in just a few short hours have appeared dozens of people like you, people who have also felt left out, people who also struggle, people who like you want and need our community, culture and religion to be radically accepting, to be egalitarian, justice-centered, evolving and conversational and here, now, alive today among us. I do not doubt that there are hundreds of us, thousands, even millions perhaps, and that together we can create exactly the Judaism that we want. We can establish a resplendent, vital, just and sustainable Jewish culture, one that does all the things we’ve asked for here and more. We can do this because there is no one but us. This thing is ours. It our birthright, our inheritance, whether we we born to it or not — whether we came to it by blood, by choice or by coincidence, it is ours now. We will claim it.
So what next? Faith asked whether I was planning to use these responses for a larger project. I don’t know what that project will be, but I feel desperately that this conversation should continue. I don’t know how exactly, or what form it will take. I’m hoping that among us we can continue asking questions and offering answers (what more Jewish way to proceed?), and link together all the conversations in one place (I offer a page at my blog) in order to allow everyone to follow along, new people to join in and catch up, etc. — in order to keep track of where we’re going and where we’ve been.
Is that something that sounds interesting to all of you? Any other ideas or suggestions? I can certainly think of more questions, write more posts, but I think it will only work — will only grow and continue — if other folks also write posts and ask questions. The conversation would, that way, be, perhaps, endless, each question generating more questions, and countless people encountering them, taking the words with them forever into the world. Words and stories are deathless and unkillable. Our conversations would have no one home, no ruler, no single location, but would merely multiply, freely and with joy, spreading out in every direction like music, like wildflowers, like the Jewish people ourselves.
(I respectfully request that this thread be restricted to the Jewish community, broadly defined, because I’d like to create a space for focused, intra-communal discussion. As I said before, I’m focused on Jews because I’m Jewish; I’m 100% in favor of others doing this kind of thing for whatever groups they belong to.)
July 16, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Daisy:
After a long odyssey of feeling extremely alienated by the left, I can’t tell you how much I’ve been comforted by your thread at Feministe. By creating a space for that discussiong, you’ve made a difference in this wandering liberal’s life. Thank you.
-Flash
July 16, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Barry, I cannot tell you how much your comment means to me. I am so glad that you have been comforted.
July 16, 2009 at 9:45 pm
RE: Barry Allen:
I have to say, I feel a lot of the same pain you feel. There’s not so much space in the Western Liberal community for Jews….the left has really fallen back on Jews as the good ol’ standby scapegoat thanks to Evangelicals’ hijacking of American-Israeli relations for their own religious purposes. I’m sick of hearing people spit venom about how they’re “not antisemitic, they’re antizionist.” I’m sick of hearing the New Atheists telling me that the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened if only my ancestors stopped following their obsolete religion and got with the fucking program.
July 16, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Oops, hit submit early.
I think there’s a disconnect between Jewish liberals and the rest of the liberal movement. For example, most of the GLBTQ Jews I’ve met have had extremely supportive family situations, whereas most of the GLBTQ non-Jews I’ve met have not. Most liberal Jews I’ve met have liberal parents. Most liberal non-Jews do not. Most atheistic Jews do not face pariah status in their homes and communities. Most atheistic non-jews do. I’ve come across a LOT of suspicion that Jews are not real liberals because we don’t face a lot of the same hardships within our community, and because rejecting any given idea floating around the Jewish community does not require rejecting the Jewish community at large. Non-Jews seem to be much more polarized; if you reject an ideal of your church, you change churches. If you reject an ideal of your religion, you have to face the very real possibility of losing your family. If you reject normative gender or sexuality….god forbid.
I also think that some of it really is old fashioned antisemitism. “Anti-zionism” is full-on Jew-hatred. The only people who should have a right to discuss whether Jews have a right to a sovereign state are Jews. Being a Zionist does not preclude being in favor of an independent Palestinian state, and the goyische idea that Zionism preaches subjugation of Muslims is simply an updated form of the Christian sport of Blood Libel.
You should probably add “Zionism” to the list of things we should all like to see Judaism become. We as Jews should try to export the idea of Zionism to other stateless minorities around the world. Zionism is [i]not[/i] just for Jews. It is for Darfouris, American First Nations, Roma, Tamil, Kurds, Palestinians, Uighirs, Chechnyans, East Timorese, Basques, etc, etc, etc. Have the Jews suffered more than any other people in history? Perhaps, perhaps not, but we have certainly suffered more than any people has a right to. And we still gathered the strength to carve ourselves out a place that is ours. We should encourage others who are suffering without a place of their own. We should back them, and if need be, we should fund them, train them, and arm them. Judaism should be a leader in the fight against forced assimilation worldwide. If we’re not, what are we?
July 17, 2009 at 1:26 am
We don’t need to export Zionism to other stateless minorities. It already exists and is called nationalism. We can blame two world wars on it.
I like the idea of Israel and a secular Jewish state. The execution sometimes leaves something to be desired, but that’s a problem with any democracy. I might one day like to live in Israel, I thoroughly enjoyed the months I’ve spent there when I was younger, and the weather is just like San Diego. If you get on the plane in San Diego and off in Tel Aviv, it’s almost like you didn’t go anywhere at all. The flora is just the same.
It would be better if democracies protected minorities from the tyranny of the majority better. That’s what we need more than nationalism. People want nation-states because minorities do not feel properly represented by the government. They don’t feel that their interests are being considered. A democracy should act in the best interest of all citizens, not simply the majority. This however, does not seem to be simple to achieve.
Judaism is not a unified front on anything, and that’s part of the beauty.
Judaism can and will proceed in every direction at once. Wheresoever you wish to go with your faith within Judaism, you will find people waiting there to meet you, or arriving there just as you do.
July 19, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Zionism is not really nationalism sensu stricto because it focuses on minority liberation and non-assimilation rather than enforcement of a national norm via forced assimilation and imperialism. More importantly than that, it is worth recognizing that the Eurocentric World Wars were about existing empires trying to expand their spheres of influence rather than marginalized minorities trying to establish sovereignty.
Compare WWII and pre-WWII treatment of Jews worldwide (it wasn’t significantly better in Allied countries) to the modern status of Jews in most of the world. Compare that to the complete lack of improvement in the lives of Roma, Native Americans, Ainu, etc. It certainly seems to me that Israel, for us, has been a major part of the equation. I think it would be wrong for us to not speak plainly about that to others who are in the same position as we were. For American Jews, especially, I feel like the places to start are the ghettos and concentration camps called reservations.