Jewish Republicans

Yesterday, I read an article for my class "The Jewish World Today: U.S. Jewry" that really agitated me. It was called "The Jewish Social Welfare Lobby in the United States," by Joel M. Carp, from a book called Jewish Polity and American Civil Society. The article was basically celebrating the organized Jewish community, and the Federations in particular, for successfully lobbying on the side of various social welfare issues -- against the tax cuts of the evil Reagan administration and the "draconian provisions" of later pieces of Republican legislation.

As my green highlighter whipped furiously across the pages, I kept thinking to myself, who decided that government social welfare programs are the realization of the imperative of tikkun olam? Moreover, who elected the Federation spokesperson for all American Jews? What about those of us who believe in limited government, free enterprise and personal responsibility -- do we have a voice (as Jews, that is) in Washington?

Not having the time for more than a token protest, I added a new link to this blog, right. (J, thinking of you!)

Food for Thought

I had an interesting experience in class today. My professor was lecturing about the concept of competing identities (e.g. national identity, ethnic identity, religious identity, class identity, etc.). To illustrate his point -- and to wake us up, as it was a very theoretical lecture -- he put the following statement on the board:

We're Jews, as opposed to they, who are...

The students were supposed to finish the sentence. The range of responses was fascinating! Some people said non-Jews, while others said Christians, Muslims, Arabs, goyim (not sure if the slightly pejorative connotation was intended), "Reformim," "potential Jews" and -- my personal favorite, from a fellow immigrant -- Israelis.

Then we did a similar exercise. This time, the statement on the board was:

We're Israelis, as opposed to they, who are...

This time, we got Arabs, Palestinians, Americans, new immigrants, Ethiopians (immigrants to Israel, that is), Russians (ditto), foreign workers, Diaspora Jews, "חוצניקים" (which I don't really know how to translate, but it means people from outside of Israel) and even Haredim.

Then we talked about the fundamental assumptions underlying each response. Are the Jews primarily a national or religious group? Is being Israeli a matter of citizenship, culture or adherence to a particular political ideology?

I wonder, if the statement has been, "We're Jewish, as opposed to they, who are..." the answers might have been different. Is it an adjective-noun thing?

Immigrant Takeover

Yesterday, I went to the first meeting of one of my new classes for this semester, called "Who Are We? Diaspora Jewry." There were about a dozen students in the class, many of whom I recognized from my department. As we were going over the readings on the syllabus, the professor, who is always sensitive to language issues, told us that many of the readings were available in both Hebrew and English. Then he asked for a show of hands: how many people had difficulty reading Hebrew?

To my surprise, all but three hands went up.

Soft laughter ensued as the immigrants in the room suddenly realized our majority status. But one of the native Israelis was not amused. "Difficulty reading Hebrew?" she asked, consternation in her voice, perhaps wondering whether she had misunderstood the question. As we nodded, her face registered an expression that can only be described as horrified.

I decided to take it as a compliment that, over the course of the individual introductions that had preceded the syllabus discussion, she hadn't recognized us by our accents.