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In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries forward-thinking European Jewish intellectuals welcomed the winds of change that had begun to blow in France and in Germany. They hailed the talk of liberty, equality and fraternity and of the rights of man that were in the air; they looked forward to the prospects of Jewish emancipation and full participation in the wider society, and they recognized that changes would have to be made within the Jewish community to accommodate the new status and the new rights that Jews would enjoy. They called themselves maskilim, “enlightened ones” and advocated, among other things, religious reforms, acquisition of secular knowledge, and adoption by Jews of the vernacular language of their countries (in place of the Yiddish, which set them apart from their Gentile neighbors). Their motto was heyeh yehudi b’veitecha u’ven Adam b’tzeitecha, “that one should be a Jew at home but simply a person, a member of humankind in public.” Their approach raises a number of questions. Is there an inherent conflict between being a Jew and being part of humanity? Should one seek to hide any overt signs of one’s Jewishness when interacting with non-Jews? The larger issue is how one balances the concepts of particularism and universalism, the affirmation of one’s particular ethnic and cultural identity with the recognition of the oneness of humankind that transcends the boundaries of race and nationality. The expectations of non-Jewish society, which was decidedly ambivalent about granting rights to the Jews and attached various implicit conditions to emancipation, certainly played a role in shaping the attitudes of the maskilim, but we will defer the history lesson for another time. Universalism and particularism are just one set of seeming opposites that Jewish tradition seeks to keep in balance. Rabbi Heschel spoke of the keva and the kavana of prayer, the externals of Jewish prayer (the fixed and established liturgy and rules) and the inwardness and spirituality that should characterize worship. On the Days of Awe we speak of God’s justice but we also make reference to Divine mercy which, we pray, will temper judgment. We encourage human initiative in turning to God (teshuva, repentance, actually means turning), but we also stress God’s grace in accepting our penitence, taking account of our resolve to do better, and forgiving our transgressions. The fancy word for this is polarity, as in the opposite poles of a magnet. Polarities enable us to recognize the complicated nature of reality and of the requirements of the spiritual life. Not the one 1 path or concept to the exclusion of the other, not this and not that , but rather both this and that. The classic texts of our tradition are replete with examples of a concern for both the particular and the universal. Both emphases are present as well in the prayers and Scriptures of the Days of Awe. For the most part, our focus is on the particular. We pray to God for blessing in the New Year for ourselves and for kol amcha beit Yisra’el, all of your people, the house of Israel. In the Avodah service, the High Priest’s confessional was recited in behalf of and forgiveness sought for himself, for his fellow priests and for the whole people of Israel. At the other pole, we recognize God as the God not only of Israel but of the entire creation. Rosh Hashanah is judgment day for all creatures. Our earnest prayer is m’loch al kol ha-olam, for God to rule in glory over all of the world. And the most memorable statement of the universality of God’s concern and grace is found in a story, the book of Jonah, the Haftorah for Yom Kippur afternoon. God summons an Israelite prophet to journey to a far-off city, the capital of an empire that was notorious in antiquity for its brutality and that had subjugated all of its neighbors in the region including the northern kingdom of Israel. Jonah is to preach to the citizens of Nineveh in the hope that they will be stirred to repentance and thus avert the destruction that will otherwise befall them as punishment for their sins. The prophet is unwilling to carry out his mission and tries to flee; perhaps he is reluctant to involve himself with these non-Israelites. When finally he arrives in Nineveh and delivers his message, the people heed his words and repent, and they merit God’s forgiveness. Jonah is angry, but God imparts an object lesson, so that Jonah will know that God’s compassion extends beyond the boundaries of Israel and embraces even these sinful foreigners. God is the God of Israel, the people that conceived of its relationship with the Deity as a covenant, recorded its encounter with the Holy One in its Scriptures, and pioneered many of the religious concepts taken for granted in the Abrahamic faith traditions. But God is also the God of all humanity. We are both Jews and citizens of the human community, and we can and should act to affirm these dual identities both in the home and also outside it. At many times in our history and in our own time as well, there were and there are those who tilt the balance excessively toward one of the two poles. The particularistic 2 viewpoint is illustrated by the old story of the Jewish boy in New York in the 1920’s, who came home and told his immigrant grandfather that Babe Ruth had hit three home runs for the Yankees that day. “What this Babe Ruth did, ” the old man asked, “was it good for the Jews or bad for the Jews?” We laugh, but we can perhaps understand. We Jews as a community do have legitimate interests about which we need to be concerned. However, there are more things in heaven and earth than lend themselves to being measured by the yardstick of good or bad for the Jews. Moreover, Jews themselves may have differing ideas about what is good or bad for our people, and there are other yardsticks that may need to be employed. The attitude of particularism flourishes in sectarian Jewish communities that isolate themselves from secular culture and knowledge except insofar as they are instrumental in earning a livelihood and from contact with the non-Jewish world except in the domain of business or for the purpose of influencing the political system. I’m not judging, only taking note and conceding that such a stance probably does enhance the chances for long-term Jewish survival, but at a price that you and I would not want to pay. Much more of a concern to me, because I think it impacts the continuity and survival of a diverse, pluralistic, modern and open Judaism are those who gravitate to the opposite pole. I’m thinking primarily of non-Orthodox Jews, age 50 or younger, not all of them, to be sure, but a sizable segment. They are Americans and citizens of the world and do not differentiate themselves any further. They may respond to a survey question that they are Jewish and that they are proud of it, but there is little content to their Jewishness in terms of ritual observance, religious belief, affiliation with the synagogue or other Jewish organizations, generosity toward Jewish causes, or the pursuit of Jewish knowledge. A Jewish identity that demands active involvement rather than just verbal affirmation may be more of a commitment than they are willing to make and may strike them as too particularistic and narrow. We have a religious tradition which I cherish and which I believe is indispensable to our survival. But we are much more than a religion; we are a people with a shared history and destiny; we are a family, a mishpucheh. And the question that preoccupies rabbis and communal leaders is how you impart to someone who does not already share a sense of family the desire to belong and participate. No family is perfect. I dare say most 3 have some skeletons in the closet, or some family members who are an embarrassment or just a royal pain. As a pastor, I have seen far too many instances over the years of family estrangement and alienation. And I am leaving aside the extreme cases of abuse or neglect. We often speak of dysfunctional families, but I have on occasion heard the question raised, whether there is such a thing as a “functional” family. All of that notwithstanding, I still believe that families are in the best case a source of warmth, love and mutual support that add immeasurable joy and a sense of emotional and spiritual well-being to our lives. Our Jewish “family” is not perfect either. I am sure each of us could come up with a laundry list of what is wrong with our synagogues and Jewish communal institutions and what it is in our inherited tradition that is offensive to us. But let us remember the lesson of the Days of Awe. Adonai melech. God alone is sovereign and perfect, and no human institution is without flaw. We need to revise our expectations and see such imperfections not as reason to disengage but as a challenge to us to adapt, re-interpret and re-shape our traditions and to make our institutions more closely attuned to the mission they espouse and the ideals they profess. But why should someone want to add another family – the Jewish mishpucheh – to the family of origin, the extended family acquired through marriage, the American family, and the human family, to all of which he or she already belongs? There is nothing incompatible in maintaining such multiple family affiliations, and thankfully, this is 21st century America, not 19th century Germany, and we no longer have to downplay the element of peoplehood, the sense that we are an am, a people, a category that is inclusive of religious community but which transcends it. But why take on the additional commitment and the family responsibilities and obligations that come with it? And how can Jewish leaders frame their appeal in order to elicit such commitment and heighten meaningful participation in our communal family? Two caveats are in order at this point. We need to refrain from manipulation through guilt, from invoking the persecution of Jews in recent times or bygone ages. Either Jewishness is meaningful and fulfilling to someone or it isn’t, and the fact that people have suffered to affirm and maintain their Jewish identity should have no bearing on the issue. Let me qualify the business of guilt somewhat. Where someone sees some 4 value in what is offered by a synagogue or a Jewish Federation and takes advantage of it, even to a limited extent, that creates an obligation to contribute either financially or through volunteer effort to the viability of the institution, so that it will be there for them and others in time of need. Secondly, and here I am channeling a friend and counselor from my distant past, before one rejects Judaism, one should at least have a solid knowledge of what one is rejecting. Not, I would add, because of the history of Jewish suffering but because of the richness and depth of the tradition. One should reject based on knowledge and not out of ignorance. My second caveat is that we must refrain from invidious comparisons with other faiths, something I myself have been guilty of in the past and which I now try to avoid. My Judaism works for me as a spiritual community and a source of meaning and it can for others as well, but I feel no need to proclaim Judaism’s superiority, to engage in apologetics, or to stereotype other religious traditions. This caveat too requires some qualification. If we stand for something, there will be times when we have to assume a stance of opposition. Rabbi Sid Schwarz has noted that in an age when technology, profit and consumption reign supreme and human connection and community are devalued, Judaism, to be true to itself, must be counter-cultural. Our Jewish family will have an appeal when it is truly a family in the best sense of the word, when it offers the warmth, the love and the mutual support of which I spoke, when it engages simultaneously the emotions, the intellect and the senses. The beauty of Judaism is that we are a family that offers many outlets for engagement from worship to study to artistic expression to environmentalism rooted in the Biblical concept of humans as stewards of God’s Creation to the struggle for social justice. Judaism is life-affirming, devoted to respect for the sanctity of life and the dignity of the individual, cognizant that injustice and oppression are a proper concern for religious men and women, sufficiently idealistic to reject cynicism and despair, yet realistic enough to recognize human imperfection and reject the temptation of premature utopianism. These values are of course no longer exclusively within the Jewish domain. They are present within other religious traditions, and one can live them out simply as an American who leads an ethical life, contributes to the well-being of his or her community and cares about justice and compassion. What I find appealing, however, about affirming my Jewishness is that these values are part of a context, a package that includes other elements I value such as 5 ritual and a sense of history and community, a community that sociologists would refer to as a mediating structure – large enough to avoid what might be stifling or claustrophobic in the setting of the immediate family, small enough to serve as an antidote to the anonymity of mass society. Jonah replied to the sailors who asked about his origins, Ivri anochi. “I am a Hebrew.” I am a Hebrew and an American and a citizen of humanity, both a universalist and a particularist, a worshiper of the God of Israel Who is also the God of humanity and of the entire cosmos, one who cares about the well-being of the Jewish people and its survival and the welfare of humankind. None of the labels or commitments by which I identify myself diminishes nor dishonors any of the others. May we endeavor to be both better Jews and better citizens of humankind in the coming year. 6