FRANCINE KLAGSBRUN
FRANCINE KLAGSBRUN The doomsayers warn us that assimilation is paralyzing our community. But we cannot forget that assimilation also energizes us. Nothing had prepared me for the emotion I would...
...But we cannot allow ourselves to forget the other side, the energizing side of assimilation, the one in which a young Jewish woman, graduating from a major American university, can sing in the original and with full understanding words taken from the Hebrew Bible...
...3* Journalist Francine Klagsbrun writes and lectures on such Jewish issues as family, social change, ethics and feminism...
...They would die all over again...
...Nevertheless, except for the most extreme Orthodox, Jews have also had a healthy appreciation for what it means to be part of a larger community even while holding tight to one's identity...
...What does it say about us, as Jews, that our children can now attend prestigious universities that once excluded the likes of us and that numbers of those children are openly committed and knowledgeable Jews...
...I cried as she marched in for graduation ceremonies, laughing and talking to her friends while my husband and I tried to catch her attention, tried to catch and hold onto her just a little longer...
...For minority students, multiculturalism may provide a degree of racial and ethnic pride...
...The doomsayers today would speak of assimilation as paralyzing ourcommunity...
...The singing lasted just a few minutes...
...Her book, Voices of Wisdom—Jewish Ideals and Ethics for Everyday Living (David Godine, 1990), was recently published in softcover...
...Instead of recognizing a culture of the majority, multiculturalism focuses on the distinct cultures of various ethnic groups...
...Ultimately, however, it will deprive them of that deeper, more lasting source of pride: the creativity that comes of having a foot in two worlds...
...The late Gerson Cohen, brilliant and much loved former chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, wrote an essay on assimilation in 1966 that easily applies to life today...
...My observation about the trustees, especially, has sparked some serious thoughts in my mind...
...But mostly I cried—I wept—during one charged moment when her glee club performed at the Baccalaureate service in the school's magnificent Gothic chapel...
...As a result, the Scriptures remained accessible to the masses of Jews and at the same time became known to Hellenistic society...
...Not only a woman graduate singing in their chapel, but a Jewish woman, and not only a Jewish woman, but one who knows and understands Hebrew...
...And they would be right, of course...
...Yivarechicha hashem v'yishmirecha (May the Lord bless you and guard you), she sang, and we bawled...
...Certainly the educational establishment has largely ignored the accomplishments of minorities, presenting history essentially through the eyes of white Anglo-Saxon men...
...When ethnicity is raised to the pinnacle of cultural life, not only does the general culture suffer, but individual ethnic ones become poorer as well...
...Students can surely use a great deal more information on the achievements of women and of such ethnic groups as black Americans, Hispanics, and Asians...
...The performance took place directly after the main address of the day...
...Dismantling the whole to emphasize only its parts is quite another...
...Assimilation can be dangerous and threatening to any minority...
...Much can be said for the goals of multiculturalism...
...But when I heard my daughter sing in Hebrew in her school's Gothic chapel, I understood how it could also be a blessing...
...We cried with pride and joy and all the parental feelings that take over when we see our children become more than our children...
...What does it say about Jewish assimilation in America at the end of the twentieth century...
...The early trustees must be turning over in their graves," I whispered to my husband...
...Called "The Blessing of Assimilation," it argues that throughout the centuries Judaism has remained vital because Jews have been able to adapt to the societies in which they lived and to turn some of the challenges of assimilation into assets...
...Having absorbed the culture of her society, she can, in turn, transmit her own culture, benefiting both herself and her society in ,the process...
...The blessing comes of incorporating into oneself the best of what the outside has to offer while contributing from that core self to the broad mainstream of humanity...
...Assimilation, wrote Cohen, "is not a one-way street...it is a drug capable of paralyzing or of energizing, depending on how we take it...
...Instead of a commitment to common values and ideals, it emphasizes separatism and the unique beliefs of each group...
...With the festivities—and the tears— long since behind us, I have relived that special moment many times...
...The tension between the two, in fact, has been an impetus for some of the greatest writings of American Jews—Saul Bellow and Philip Roth being only the tip of the iceberg...
...Closed off from a broad pool of thought, ethnic teachings become stagnant, feeding on themselves, unnourished by the richness of ideas around them...
...Immigrant parents fought tooth and nail to keep their offspring within the fold...
...Alexandrian Jewry, for example, had assimilated to the point of knowing Greek better than Hebrew, leading eventually to the translation of the Bible into Greek...
...I cried as I watched her and her classmates lift their newly acquired orange and black caps in tribute to "Old Nassau...
...This issue of assimilation and the larger society has become particularly pertinent recently with the increasing emphasis in American education on multiculturalism as an antidote to assimilation...
...Nothing had prepared me for the emotion I would feel at my daughter's graduation from Princeton last June...
...the tears somewhat longer...
...Suddenly we heard our daughter's voice in a solo, strong and sweet to our ears, singing in Hebrew the words of the Priestly Blessing...
...But providing balance is one thing...
...They would argue that the universities that now admit our children in unprecedented numbers are the very places in which those children meet the non-Jews whom they are marrying in unprecedented numbers...
...It is true that Jews have always been wary of the melting pot ideal of American life...
Vol. 16 • December 1991 • No. 6
