J.J. Goldberg’s Forward column today is bound to give the Israeli Absorption Ministry a measure of satisfaction. In late 2011, Immigrant Absorption Minister Sofa Landver’s office released a series of videos depicting American Jews as overly secularized, bereft of a religious Jewish identity, and having essentially surrendered any Jewish connection in the name of total assimilation. The ads were offensive and obtuse–any country with Tel Aviv within its borders has some nerve lecturing foreigners about embracing secularism–and were roundly condemned and pulled off the air.
But Goldberg’s column this morning is the boldest defense of the thesis of those ads–albeit unintentionally and too late for the ad campaign. Ostensibly, the column is about the supposed “silencing” of Jewish voices by the Jewish right, as demonstrated by the recent cancellation of a speech by DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz at a Florida synagogue. Leave aside the fact that the real reason the ill-conceived speech was called off was because shul members were told no Republican voices would be permitted to speak as well. (An actual silencing, by which Goldberg isn’t bothered.) And leave aside the incongruity of Goldberg touting the Jewish communities’ “national struggles for tolerance” while in the same column dismissing non-liberal Jews as a “noisy minority” that should not be catered to. The most telling line in the piece is when Goldberg says that integrating non-leftist concerns into the community, thereby diluting the social action efforts of America’s Jews, presents us with the following threat:
We are in danger of becoming, in classic Seinfeld fashion, a religion about nothing.
Ironies abound. Judaism’s increasingly “noisy minorities” consist of politically conservative Jews and Orthodox Jews, though there is a fair amount of overlap. So in Goldberg’s telling, integrating observant Jews into the conversation will risk American Judaism being “about nothing.”
Religion, while communal, has a personal element to it, and in a free country it is certainly up to each person how he chooses to practice (or not practice). But the idea that traditional Judaism would destroy American Judaism is a shockingly poisonous concept, as is the implication that those who observe Judaism’s laws and traditions and those who have gravitated toward political movements and parties that respect those traditions–instead of, for example, those who write columns attacking them–haven’t the same right to be heard.
Real diversity of opinion in the Jewish Community – anathema. n nMunching a bagel on a Gaza-bound Flotilla – priceless.
Points well taken. But consider the source where these intolerant and illogical views were published.
If Heaven forbid!, this J.J. character has his way, Judaism will become a religion about chicken soup.
"Noisy minority"? If this is not an instance of the pot calling the kettle black (in spades), I do not know what is. Wasserman-Schultz is certainly noisy, but I am not so sure she represents only minority Democrat opinion. Way too many, perhaps even a majority, on the left believe that only "pitchfork wielding rubes" (as one poster described us today online) can be against deficit spending. His argument was that it was simple arithmetic. n nIt never seems to occur to him those like him that the mathematics of systems as complex as the economy are far removed from simple arithmetic and can certainly lead to European style disaster if the spending goes beyond a tipping point. If our arguments are met with such disdain, how can there be a "civil" discussion? n n n n n n
You say the ads were offensive and obtuse because Tel Aviv is so secular? That's not the point, the point is that Israel has a de facto Jewish authority to define what observance is. The problem is not that secularism exists, but that it chooses to become the authority on Judaism and there's nothing stopping it.
The answer to the question is YES! There are only very large majorities of secular Jews in America….in my opinion, after WWII, they thought it best to to so assimilate that they lost their nidentity…it was, in their opinion, better to be one of the whole and avoid the Nazi type of hate. nThey, never understood what America was all really all about and now with the progs having rammed their unhealthy views on the people via executive orders, activist judiciary, laws, regs, etc., etc., it is too late for them. For the progressive movement it is about control…not totally unlike Hitler but for now, vitriolic hate in words only.
Reform and Conservative Judaism have been about nothing for decades. Luckily, those folks are disappearing, due to very low birth rates and intermarriage. A generation from now the Orthodox will constitute the majority of active Judaism.
Dear God what an idiotic comment by Goldberg. Leftist Judaism isn't even a religion. It's a community center organized around bake sales for the SPCA or Darfur or gay marriage. It has little to nothing to say about anything, least of all about faith or ethics apart from its insipid unassailable platitudes such as "It's nice to be nice." Leftist Judaism waters down Judaism to the level of elementary school.
the long overhang of classical German Reform's take on the task of "prophetic Judaism"–the politicized utopian flipside of the coin to the "Moshiach now!" campaigns back in the day…why live a life of meaning in the actual present when you can play out your days in fantasies of days yet to come?
Fortunately, the overwhelming number of comments at Forward are critical of Goldberg's thesis, and most of the few comments that take issue with the criticism are transparently silly, disparaging or emotional.
"He complained that she chairs the Democratic National Committee, forgetting that she’s first of all an elected lawmaker." Huh?! The chairs of the Democratic and Republican National Committees are usually current or former elected lawmakers. Goldberg can't really be so obtuse as to miss the partisanship issue at the center of this. n n"The synagogue then canceled the congresswoman’s talk, citing 'security' concerns. Wasserman Schultz correctly blamed the temple’s 'internal politics.' 'It is unfortunate that some would allow politics to stand in the way of citizens’ ability to interact with their representative,' she told the Sun-Sentinel." Wasserman Schulty doesn't represent the district in which the temple is located.____Goldberg has proved himself a tool many times over before now, e.g., when he defended MJ Rosenberg for his promotion of the "Israel Firster" meme. Just reaffirmation. ________
Folks,__the REAL irony is that in the same hard copy issue of the Forward in which Goldberg's piece appears, there is another op ed piece by Dana Evan Kaplan, taking the Reform movement to task for letting kids such as Mark Zuckerberg, product of a Reform Jewish education, get away. Kaplan writes that Reform Judaism–standard bearer of political liberalism–is "too amorphous". He writes "We (Reform Jews) failed Zuckerberg and will continue to fail young people like him because the pluralistic theologies of Reform Judaism articulated since the 1960s make it difficult to grasp what we Reform Jews believe on any given issue." I read this as saying that Reform Judaism is "a religion about nothing".
Liberalism must by definition exclude Judaism. Why would anyone ask such a question? They are mutually exclusive. n nThat is why Liberal Jews are always voting for their own destruction. nTorah and Karl Marx just don't mix. But then ANY AND ALL Life and Karl Marx don't mix, either.
Liberal tolerance, NOT! They are the ones who silence anyone who doesn't march in goose steps with their agenda and label them 'fascist', 'racist' or any other epitaph they have in their arsenal. n nJudaism and liberalism are diametrically opposed ideologies. n nThe 'reform' movement has self destructed. In Cincinnati the former headquarters of their movement they have imploded as their children intermarried out of Judaism. They worship the Baal of liberalism that they no longer need to be Jewish. No wonder so many of the reform 'rabbis' take a stand against Israel and the right of Jews to live in Yehuda and Shomron and support the Fakestinkians.
Liberal tolerance, NOT! They are the ones who silence anyone who doesn't march in goose steps with their agenda and label them 'fascist', 'racist' or any other epitaph they have in their arsenal.