After the Flood, After the Rainbow

...people's eyes...

...In the light of the third generation Jewish consensus, one might have predicted that Jews would follow this trend lamely if at all...

...The students are not interested...

...But these are vicarious emotions...

...It makes slight enough impact even upon the American Jewish scholars who read Hebrew and can mediate the results of Israeli scholarship to the American Jewish public...

...mostly, it implies a shift in cultural and social ambience...

...Nor is that choice any longer attended by the guilt and recrimination which it invariably invoked a short time ago...

...But American Jews of the third and fourth generations know about such experiences only in books...

...Indeed, the differences between ourselves and our non-Jewish neighbors have become so trivial that we do a better job, on the whole, of assimilating non-Jews into our midst than of assimilating Russian and Israeli Jews...

...During those weeks, we feared the worst...

...We trembled, and we knew, out of our own experience, the fear of destruction...

...Ciy and feel saved...

...Unlike others whose fears are born of fantasy, ours are born of memory...

...So they organize their ghoulish trips to Auschwitz and to Jerusalem, make the memory of dead people into an instrument for the guilt and coercion of the living, and represent Judaism as a religion for cemeteries and battlefields...

...They do not even know the meaning of anti-Semitism in its political sense, and their knowledge of racism is gained in newspapers...

...Why "Be Jewish...

...For if they do agree and yet stay just where they are, then their Jewishness will atrophy and die...

...We knew the sense of Auschwitz...

...We had entered the post-Holocaust era...

...The answer lies in the 1967 War and in the weeks that preceded it...

...How did the Holocaust become so powerful a symbol...

...Anyone who could cite a few passages from Scripture and put on a good cry in public became a Judaic theologian, and the more tears, the more profound he seemed to be...

...Where We Are: The Redemption There is, yet, the other half of the Holocaust-and-Redemption theory of Jewish existence, the Redemption part...

...Apart from our deep concern for the welfare of the State of Israel and its people, we really are not much interested in the State of Israel or in Zionism...

...The Jews in this country are not weak and persecuted...

...We have now sent tens of thousands of young people to study in Israel for summers or for whole school years...

...Blacks want soul food...

...So we are told we should be Jewish not because God has called us into being but in order to spite Hitler...

...phor, and to view the world through its lenses...

...But the Judaism of Sinai has not been heard from much these days, and the life-giving symbols and signs of Torah have been obscured by clouds of death and hot air...

...Thus: to what extent does American Jewry make use of modern Hebrew...

...Where We Are: The Holocaust The adoption of superficial religious symbols is only one form, and not the most popular, for the new Jewish self-expression...

...So if we American Jews are Zionists, that does not mean we want to say more than that we are Zionists...

...And then, even as we were feeling terror, we knew triumph...

...Assimilation is no longer an interesting or an attractive ideology...

...For to understand our people's long history of nay-saying in the face of false messiahs, both Jewish and gentile, we have to know our people's equally long history of yea-saying to Torah and its claim to sanctify the present and to regain in the here-and-now a foretaste of eternity...

...We have a name for our worst fears, and the name we have is Auschwitz...

...our heads by every medium of Jewish communication...

...American Jews over the past decade have entered a period of Jewish assertion, but have yet to make up their minds about what it is that they propose to assert...

...How We Got Here Ours is the fourth generation...

...to cease to be Jewish would have been dishonorable...

...This tale, with its obvious moral, is drummed into How is it that so suddenly, there is a genuine popular response to Jewish theologians who create what they call "Holocaust Theologies" and who hold solemn meetings in cathedrals on "Judaism after Auschwitz" and the like...

...The Flaw My thesis is clear...

...Do we gain access to Jewish classics through Israeli scholarship...

...How is it that we have come to receive the non-Jew into our midst with such ease...

...It is because to join The issue for this generation of good intention was not Judaism but instead, the visible symbols and signs of "being Jewish...

...A more spurious argument has never been put forth onto the stage of Judaic thought, a more ignorant and a more destructive conception of the wellsprings of Judaism has never been drawn before our Hitler is represented as a negative symbol, rather than Moses as a positive one...

...Judaism, a religion of the present and the future, affirms life and looks not to Auschwitz but to Sinai...

...The emotional commitment of the community surely was tested and found authentic and real...

...Make a trip to Israel and be forever saved...

...because that would mean barring access to the American dream...

...On the other hand, when we transcend the emotional concern and begin to ask about cultural and intellectual aspects of American Jewish affairs, the picture is very different...

...Nor will American Jews continue to concede that the true and authentic Jewish life is possible only elsewhere...

...What does it mean to be an American Jew these days...

...In those weeks of May and June, we foresaw the end of the Jewish State, and even— some thought—the end of the Jewish People...

...So we are told we should be Jewish not because God has called us into being but in order to spite Hitler...

...In all of Jewish time, there are not a dozen dates that will be remembered so long as there are Jews to remember things, and two of those dates occured within our own living memory...

...For the third generation, which flourished from the end of World War II to the end of the Vietnam War, had adopted as its working slogan, "Be Jewish—but not too Jewish...

...Then it was that the Holocaust— theologians, journalists, publicists, fund raisers, organizers, speakers, novelists—the whole phalanx of Jewish public relations—took up the theme of salvation through politics, the fantastic and hopeless pronouncement of beginning of redemption...

...to marry a Jew is to marry up...

...In the vast growth of Jewish studies in American universities, the study of Israeli society and culture (when we omit reference to a semester of conversational Hebrew) is minimal...

...A coupling in time that reflects with uncanny accuracy the contemporary Jewish understanding, an understanding that has come to inform virtually every aspect of our communal life—that Jewish life is the story of Holocaust-to-Redemp-tion...

...They talk about experiences we have not had, except in our nightmares, and ask us to accept a redemption which does not save us from anything from which we need to be saved, nor promise us a salvation which solves the real problems we must confront...

...it was over, it would no longer be the central theme of Jewish life...

...Apart from a few scholars of European origin and a handful of archaeologists and other biblical specialists, Israeli scholarship makes virtually no impact whatsoever upon American Jewish intellectual life...

...The issue for this generation of good intention was not Judaism but instead, the visible symbols and signs of "being Jewish...

...And that, plainly, is because being Jewish is not nearly so distinctive as once it was...

...These then are the parameters of theory...

...Further, the powerful appeal well serves the interests of people who know -precisely what they want from our community—the fund raisers...

...At the same time, oddly, marriage to non-Jews has become an open (and increasingly popular) choice for those who have stayed, who have stayed Jews...

...What Then...

...For to a very real measure our Jewish lives respond first and foremost to what is happening in Jerusalem, and Judaism, as well as contemporary Jewish politics, surely teaches that that is an authentic and healthy Jewish emotion...

...First, whatever theory of Jewish existence we propose to shape must be relevant to our situation as human beings, as Jews, as a distinctive group of human beings who choose to be Jews...

...Or what of a group of American kids wearing kippot riding the bus in Tel Aviv on Shabbat...

...It could scarcely be otherwise...

...No theory of Jewish existence will speak to us which says only, "Give and be saved...

...The reason is that their basic goal and direction do not relate to the realities in which American Jews live out their lives...

...Just as grotesque as are the Russian refuseniks, who dance in the streets on Simchat Torah, because they know it is a holiday, but are not quite sure what to make of it, so grotesque are we in our ways...

...And the striking modes of Jewishness they have adopted show clearly the results of the assimilation that has gone before...

...Why "not too Jewish...

...The promised land cannot be entered by those with foreign accents...

...They can be asked to pretend they were there, they can make pilgrimages and shiver in Auschwitz, or dance at the Wall...

...That is why our theories of what it means to be a Jew in contemporary America all emerge as flawed...

...The Holocaust was not merely averted...

...the Jewish group is to join a world not very different from the world the non-Jew has left...

...That too is a difficult fact, which we of course take for granted: as deeply as we are part of the common life, so profoundly do we exhibit signs of being a distinctive group...

...Hitler is represented as a negative symbol, rather than Moses as a positive one...

...And what is that era save the time of salvation, of the Messiah...

...Do we follow the everyday events of their politics and institutions...

...If Hebrew were going to be a significant factor in our community, the opportunity is here...

...When we returned to the Wall, Jewish history as we had known it came to an end...

...The response to the 1967 and 1973 Wars is very profound...

...Normally, when we see a kippah, we feel entitled to assume many other forms of observance—at least, one would suppose, eating kosher food and observing all aspects of the Sabbath...

...Because anti-Semitism was still a problem...

...Others chose instead to be massively and militantly Jewish...

...Before 1967, it was not...

...I find the answer ambiguous...

...Yet it also is the best evidence for my thesis that we are both ethnically assertive and profoundly assimilated...

...But the anti-Semitism which led inexorably to Auschwitz—and therefore, also to Jerusalem—is not part of our experience, and theories of Jewish existence which explain a world of metahistorical evil and eschatological redemption simply do not refer to our humble reality at all...

...True, they do know discrimination and have experienced social and cultural anti-Semitism of various kinds, even the religious sort...

...To what extent is American Jewiy involved in the inner life of the Israeli Jewish world...

...When we get past the fund raising (and, it is clear, no successful Jewish fund raising in America and Canada is possible without a massive Israeli component), we must ask: to what extent does the State of Israel, its religion, culture, intellectual life, shape, or even contributing to the shaping, of American and Canadian Jewish life...

...But many were served, ignoramuses pretending to be learned, fund raisers seeking easy access to emotions, but, too, people of good intention who had no clear notion of what they had to do to achieve their good intention: to be Jewish again...

...These apparently contradictory trends describe the world of the fourth generation: unashamedly Jewish, unselfconsciously American, open to whatever the world has to say, but still unclear about what to listen for or even how to hear...

...For many people, the definition is remarkably straightforward: it means to accept the Holocaust-to-Redemption myth as central to one's theology, even to one's psychology...

...Then we shall have kosher food, and if that proves too difficult, then at least bagels on Sunday...

...Holocaust-and-Redemption theories of Jewish assertion, chugging along with all the power of the mighty engines of Jewish organization life, on the one side, and fed by the fuel of those deep Jewish emotions to which they appeal, on the other, lead nowhere...

...We are confronted with a theory of Jewish existence which speaks of the world we do not know, and which carefully ignores the world we do inhabit...

...It is different from what we have known until now...

...We have lived in a peaceful, progressive, and reasonably prosperous country...

...We need not mince words...

...A messianic fervor swept over the Jewish people, both there and here, and on that fervor were built the flawed structures of consciousness and culture which today we see about us...

...What, then, are we to make when we see a kippah-ed head bent over a hamburger at the local McDonalds...

...More often than not, the non-Jew is received into the Jewish family with relative ease...

...Our character as highly educated men and women, our careers at the upper levels of society and politics and economy and industry and education, our commitment to freedom and free thought, our acknowledgement of ouf independence and our respect for our own judgments—these traits cannot be ignored when we undertake the quest, in the sources of Judaism and of Jewish culture, for a usable past and a credible future...

...I do know that theories of Jewish existence which ignore who and where and what we are will never serve us for very long...

...By and large, those who wanted out of Jewish life are gone...

...Whatever the blacks could do, they could do better...

...And yet, assimilated as we are, we do choose to be Jews, and to assert our Jewishness and give shape to our lives through Judaism...

...Thus: one sign of "being Jewish" which many of the young have adopted is the wearing of a kippah under all circumstances...

...Some resolved it by not being Jewish at all, a more attractive option during a time when anti-Semitism did not appear to be a clear or present danger...

...Only in the public press, along with other Americans...

...But the children of the third generation could not fail to see the contradiction...

...But like the Russian Jews who want to be Jewish, their motive has outstripped their competence...

...Once more it is obvious that that idea has well served the practical administrators of Jewry...

...Holocaust-Redemption theories speak of a world of historical events, of upheaval, a world destroyed and recreated, a human experience of degradation and restoration...

...If there is anything pernicious in the Holocaust-and-Redemption theory of Jewish existence, it is that it leaves the ordinary folk with no worthwhile tasks, no meaningful assignments...

...It is entirely natural that our lives have been shaped by the events which those dates mark...

...But it is difficult to discern a renaissance of Zionist theory, a reconsideration of classical and perennial issues of Zionist thought, in the current renewal of Zionist loyalty...

...And what they do assert turns out, on close examination, to be a superficial and assimilated thing, even while it looks on the surface to be the most Jewish thing of all...

...Neither are their parents...

...I do not know how we shall fill those outlines with color and meaning...

...We are all aware of how much the Arabs have done to make Zionism an important issue for the Jewish people, and for that we are grateful...

...How is it that so suddenly there is a genuine popular response to Jewish theologians who create what they call "Holocaust theologies" and who hold solemn meetings in cathedrals on "Judaism after Auschwitz" and the like...

...So here we are, in a time of renewed enthusiasm, profound and completed acculturation, substantial non-ideological assimilation, and genuine social integration—a mass of contradictions that provide the context for the next decade of American Jewish life...

...Instead, the majority of newly revived Jews—of whatever age—have adopted as their central path of access to Judaism the Holocaust-to-Redemption myth...

...The best they have been able to do is to experiment with the forms of "being Jewish," an experiment which is often religious in its style and empty in its substance...

...It comes as something of a surprise, of course...

...On the one side all of us come to life when the State of Israel is in crisis...

...It means to be seized by the death-and-resurrection metaJacob Neusner, University Professor, Professor of Religious Studies and the Ungerleider Distinguished Scholar of Religious Studies at Brown University, is a contributing editor of moment...

...When, in the cru-v cible of Vietnam, American young people turned against that white, Protestant, middle class conventional conception of our society which had in their eyes proved its moral bankruptcy, substantial numbers turned instead to their own ethnic roots—with the blacks leading the way...

...The shift, on the whole, is to a higher social, economic, and cultural status...

...It has become our fixation, the source of our metaphor as of our self-understanding, the primary energizer of Jewish life and the primary axiom of Jewish logic...

...It is a mark of the assimilation expressed through ethnic assertion that the old Jewish reservation about messianism is scarcely remembered...

...Apart from a few novels in English we certainly do not...

...For let us face honestly and squarely that very difficult fact, which we pretend to ignore: we are deeply assimilated to this country and its life...

...Do we read its books and talk about them...

...This, of course, has been expressed in the notion that the State of Israel has solved the Jewish problem, has given us reason to be Jewish and therefore serves as the center and the focus of Jewish consciousness...

...We do not for one minute propose to shape our thinking about ourselves in response to the issues of Zionist theory, past or present...

...But it also has spoken to, and for, the Jewish masses, among whom I include myself...

...The particular point of relevance, moreover, must be to those profound human problems which all of us must solve, and which we have to confront together, if our being Jews is to matter at the deepest levels of our fives...

...No theory of Jewish existence will persuade us of its sense which says only, "Listen and do what you're told...

...They are not in need of a refuge...

...Yet with all the investment of young peoples' lives in study of Hebrew both here and there, we may say that Hebrew is not part of American Jewish culture...

...Israeli studies do not form a considerable part of what we understand as Jewish studies, because, I suspect, they do not answer questions we propose to ask when we undertake Jewish studies...

...We can hardly expect that those still in the thrall of the events will manage the perspective that only distance permits...

...Second, however we propose to explore the meaning of our Jewishness and ask what it means to be a Jew here and now, the exploration—the hard work of learning and discovery—must be done by all of us, not only by a few on behalf of many...

...The fact that the 1967 War created as many problems as it solved, that the triumph of arms led to a spirit of imperial triumphalism for which, in the end, both the State of Israel and the Jewish People are still paying the price—these facts were seen only by a few...

...And to marry a non-Jew is to bring to the Jewish fold people whose knowledge, background and commitment are not much different from the prevailing norms of the Jewish community, sometimes even to provide fresh energies for the community...

...Holocaust-and-Redemption-the-ology is easy and appeals to people with no access to Jewish piety, learning, tradition...

...And it is entirely understandable that in the shaping, there has been distortion...

...But that does not free us from the need to ask not only what it means to be a Jew in contemporary America, but also what it might mean, what it should mean...

...Before us all is the task of framing a vision and a hope, of shaping a purpose and a dream, worthy of our situation as Jews, relevant to our lives, appropriate to our condition as free and self-reliant men and women, and above all authentic to our calling as part of the Jewish people, the Israel which forms the center of human history and destiny...

...A whole generation had refused to pay attention, to be reminded, to confront...

...It hardly involves profound changes of outlook or behavior...