Menorah and Meaninglessness

While the conflict Shai writes about between the Jews and Arabs in a tiny plot of land between two continents may seem intractable, and though the current (and past) position of the Israeli government may strike him as wholly lacking in vision and even a spur to more conflict ....

.... we can, in the Jewish world, at least all agree that what goes on in that Land is certainly something worth caring about.

Imagine caring about what happened in Seattle last week.

I am not intimately aware of the details of the story, so I will stick to the basics. A Rabbi Bogomilsky asked that a Menorah be erected next to a Christmas tree at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, citing the need for equal representation of faiths if the wall between church and state was to be violated anyway.

Rabbi Bogomilsky's request was turned down. Apparently in the confusion that followed, the Christmas tree was taken down by authorities and the Rabbi was accused of threatening a law suit if it wasn't. As it turns out, the Rabbi made no such threat --- the city most likely took the tree down in order to avoid the silliness of ongoing controversy or legal action.

This is hardly a novel December story in America, it seems to recur yearly. And I will bet you that the Rabbi had good religious motivations for requesting the Menorah take it's place beside the (pagan) Tree. There is a mitzvah, after all, to "advertise" the miracle, not just in homes but in public places as well.

But ... must we advertise it in Tacoma, Washington?

Here we encounter the basic dilemna of American Judaism. This country's Jewish population is assimilating at an astonishing rate. The reasons are not mysterious, nor are the Jews who fall by the wayside necessarily to be scorned.

I was recently in the State of Washington on vacation. It is an astonishingly beautiful place. It is also an obviously gentile place. Like most of America, it is a culturally Christian land, based on Christian and Western-settler ethos. If there is to be a non-Christian influence in the next 500 years, it will be from Asia, and will likely not be a religious influence. This is a Christian country.

Most Jews recognize that we live in a Christian country. I do, and as a result I suffer no schizophrenia. I do not pretend that my faith merits the slightest public consideration. I consider the new greeting of "Happy Holidays" to be absurd; even in Los Angeles, most of the people mouthing those words will celebrate Christmas -- not Hannukah, not Kwanzaa, not Ramadan. I don't fight Christian hegemony here, because to do so would be pointless and guarantee that I live in an irrelevant dream-bubble of my own making.

What will give a shrunken Jewish population vitality and meaning in America in the 100 years to come will not be legal fictions such as Menorahs sitting next to Christmas trees on the White House lawn, or any of the other vainglorious and empty public legal battles waged by organized American Jewry to put Judaism falsely on the same podium as Christianity. Nor do the lawsuits every year to elminate any vestiges of Christianity in public schools, for that matter, do anything to pump life into our people.

Our numbers will inevitably shrink, but such is the cycle of Jewish history. What matters is not how many we are but how well the remnant here embraces our historic mission. How do we create a Judaism and a Jewish culture that has such strength and energy that the unnafiliated will be attracted to the core of what is us? If there are but 3 million of us in 25 years, will it be the 3 million hearts that beat as one at the foot of Mt Sinai, or will it be the 3 million led by Joshua who inherited the Land and couldn't wait even a week to abandon any sense of mission or peoplehood?

That is the question for American Jews, whose Menorah "controversies" thankfully lie outside the arena of life and death, but unfortunately generate some heat but shed no light.