{"id":1700,"date":"2017-11-05T19:04:04","date_gmt":"2017-11-05T23:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/?p=1700"},"modified":"2017-11-05T19:04:04","modified_gmt":"2017-11-05T23:04:04","slug":"on-the-rabbinic-narrative-and-threats-to-judaism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/?p=1700","title":{"rendered":"On the Rabbinic Narrative and “Threats” to Judaism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Some weeks back, The Forward <\/em><\/a>introduced a rabbi round table to its readers with this question: What most threatens the Jewish people?<\/p>\n

Only one rabbi, Scott Perlo, asked readers to think about the subtext. \u201cCan we think clearly about who the Jewish people should be, what the Jewish people could be, if our frame of reference is what threatens to end us?\u201d<\/p>\n

But most spoke to well-worn narratives about the dangers of assimilation, apathy, and indifference. What was at stake in the answers? A definition of Judaism that rests on rabbinic influence and rabbinic power.<\/p>\n

Rabbis generally adhere to a mythology about the Jewish past that insists that Jews used to live a halakhic, rabbinically defined, life. They equate this \u201chalakhic life\u201d with Jewishness, per se. In their imaginations, this life included daily observance of rituals, Shabbat practice and regular prayer, and concrete knowledge of the mitzvot governing Jewish thinking and action. For even the most liberal rabbis, those things constitute \u201ctraditional\u201d Judaism.<\/p>\n

Rabbis thus assume that their role is to find a way to inspire Jews to be \u201cmore Jewish\u201d by knowing more \u201ctradition.\u201d \u201cTradition\u201d here is a code word for rabbinic Judaism.<\/p>\n

It is, of course, a form of Judaism that grants rabbis authority and power. No wonder that it is this Judaism that rabbis cling to, this Judaism, they lament, which evokes only apathy and indifference in today\u2019s Jews. Once upon a time it was this Judaism that gave us knowledgeable Jews who appreciated their traditions. Now\u2026<\/p>\n

Rabbis (and other Jewish clergy) need to feel that what they know and what they long to give is vital to Jewish life. Whole rabbinic conferences generate, so it is hoped, new ideas and fresh ways to get Jews to recognize the value of what rabbis think today\u2019s Jews have \u201clost,\u201d to get them \u2013 please God \u2013 to walk through the synagogue doors, to appreciate the riches of their inheritance, to embrace their traditions.<\/p>\n

Such laments are expos\u00e9s of rabbinic vulnerability and insecurity. The complaints naturally follow: Today\u2019s Jews are all about themselves. They could care less about Judaism or Jewish community.<\/p>\n

It is interesting, as one reader noted, that rabbis<\/em><\/strong> were asked about what is endangering Jewish life. What might have happened had\u00a0The Forward<\/em> asked some of those \u201cignorant\u201d and \u201capathetic\u201d Jews the questions they put to rabbis?<\/p>\n

As a teacher of the history of European antisemitism, I am not na\u00efve enough to claim that the world is without its dangers for Jews. But the question The Forward <\/em>asked and the answers the rabbis offered presupposed a rabbinic narrative about what constitutes a \u201cthreatened\u201d Judaism.<\/p>\n

That narrative is recent, modern, and does not speak to a great deal of Jewish life and Jewish history. It ignores the existence and history of Jews outside of Europe who knew not Talmud. It completely jettisons the history of Judeans in the Second Temple period and Late Antiquity \u2013 a history which was not defined by rabbinic ideas about what constituted Judaism and Jewish practice and featured all sorts of practices the rabbis would likely have condemned. And it assumes that rabbis are the spokespeople for the Jewish people when the truth is that rabbis of any age are often prone to speaking for themselves.<\/p>\n

I suspect that a good many of those ignorant, apathetic, and indifferent Jews the rabbis so worry about are, in fact, fully identifying themselves as Jewish and reveling in that fact. Many of those Jews are deeply interested in social and communal action and moral and ethical issues of the day. Plenty of them see these issues as related to their Jewish identity and Jewish inheritance.<\/p>\n

Rabbis may prefer to bemoan the ignorance of today\u2019s Jews about what they studied in seminary and what they love and think defines Judaism. But my questions for my fellow rabbis are these: What makes you so very certain that your definition of Judaism, a definition that relies on a mere piece of Jewish history and hardly reflects the diversity, the richness, and the power of multiple ways of creating and living Jewish lives is the one you must defend and guard and keep \u2013 even in spite of the real Jews before you? How much of your insistence is due to your own need to be respected, honored, and appreciated? And if this need is any part of the wisdom you want to offer The Forward, <\/em>might you want to sit quietly with your egos and ask whether they are the best guide to the actual condition of Judaism and real Jews?<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t about us, the rabbis. Or at least, it shouldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of the rabbis spoke to well-worn narratives about the dangers of assimilation, apathy, and indifference. What was at stake in the answers? A definition of Judaism that rests on rabbinic influence and rabbinic power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,458,457],"class_list":["post-1700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-halakha","tag-rabbis","tag-the-forward"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1700"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1704,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions\/1704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}