(RNS) — In journalist Joshua Leifer’s new e-book, a sweeping historic account of American Judaism, is an impassioned indictment of a fractured and contentious spiritual custom. His central cost is that Judaism is hampered by its embrace of Zionism, which has turn into an alternative choice to the religion itself.
It was due to this fact ironic that final week, a Brooklyn bookstore canceled a e-book discuss with Leifer, the place he was slated to debate “Tablets Shattered: The Finish of an American Jewish Century and the Way forward for Jewish Life,” with a distinguished Reform rabbi. The rationale for the cancellation? The rabbi’s professed Zionism. (The e-book discuss was later rescheduled and came about earlier this week at one other venue.)
In his e-book, which spans a complete century, Leifer, 30, now a Ph.D. candidate in historical past at Yale College, describes what number of Twentieth-century Jews, escaping pogroms in Europe, settled in America and for essentially the most half shed their spiritual traditions and embraced Americanism, changing into extremely profitable hyphenated Individuals. After 1967, they more and more present in Zionism and assist for Israel an alternative choice to spiritual religion and custom.
Over the previous 50 years, a very powerful spiritual Jewish institution organizations, initially set as much as battle discrimination and champion equal rights, shifted their focus to Israel advocacy. Teams such because the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and The Convention of Presidents of Main American Jewish Organizations turned subsumed with an unconditional — and infrequently craven — assist for Israel. The identical turned true of the liberal spiritual traditions which have turn into much less moored in custom and extra in multiculturalism and syncretism.
RNS caught up with Leifer lately to speak about his e-book. The interview has been edited for size and readability.
What lesson did you glean from the sooner e-book cancellation? Do you see a ban on Zionism as antisemitic?
A blanket ban on anybody thought-about a Zionist is in impact antisemitic as a result of it bars the overwhelming majority of Jews from the stage. It additionally displays the elimination of nuance and of complexity from the general public dialogue. Zionism means various things to completely different individuals.
In your e-book you tackle Jewish establishments very forcefully for his or her unconditional assist of Israel. How have they reacted to it?
One of many ironies of the occasion cancellation is that institution teams that had been very reluctant to have contact with the e-book truly started to achieve out. In order that has been somewhat little bit of a shock. Nevertheless it’s additionally irritating, as a result of these mainstream Jewish organizations that seized on the cancellation have themselves solid out critics of Israeli coverage for years, and proceed to disregard what has been on the heart of my work: the immorality and destructiveness of Israel’s occupation.
The thrust of your e-book is that Zionism has turn into the middle of American Jewish life to the purpose that it outmoded the Torah and the Commandments. Inform me why you assume that occurred.
Lots of American Jews had been enthralled with Israel after its victory within the Six Day Warfare, by which it occupied the West Financial institution, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula (which it later gave up). The picture of a robust, militarily highly effective, victorious Israel resonated a lot for American Jews at the moment, partially due to the proximity to the Holocaust and the lived reminiscence of Jewish near-extermination.
Individuals had been additionally searching for a solution to outline their Jewishness in phrases that had not been accessible beforehand. The older types of Jewish identification previous to Israel’s founding — Yiddish secularism and extra conventional Orthodoxy — weren’t actually accessible to American Jews by the Fifties and ’60s. Most Jews who had been born in America weren’t hooked up to conventional spiritual observe. There’s a quote that I used within the e-book by Irving Howe about how Israel and Zionism enabled American Jews to postpone that reconsideration of their Jewishness, which the American situation required.
You write critically of Israel, however you’re not an anti-Zionist. How do you establish?
I’m an anti-occupation Jew who desires to make Israel an actual democracy. Neither Jews nor Palestinians are going anyplace. They’ll have to seek out by hook or by crook to share the land. I consider that Jews have a proper to self willpower and collective self willpower. If that makes me a Zionist, that’s true. Lots of people who describe themselves as anti-Zionists appear to assume that releasing Palestine may require that Israelis go someplace else. I feel that’s improper and I don’t assume it’s life like. These labels obscure greater than they illuminate. Some individuals who describe themselves as anti Zionists are described by different individuals as Zionists.
I learn you’re transferring to Israel. Why?
That’s appropriate. I’m transferring in mid-September. My associate has Israeli citizenship. We spend a good bit of time there in the course of the yr. That’s the place our neighborhood is and in addition some household, and we’re dedicated to creating Israel a democracy. And I feel that’s a very powerful wrestle proper now. A part of it’s ending this horrific warfare, opposing it and attempting to get to a cease-fire. All of that may be a prerequisite for a future the place Israelis and Palestinians can dwell with equality and dignity.
You’ve gone again to embracing the notion of a two-state answer. Is that what you imply by making a democratic Israel?
There was a time when my evaluation was {that a} two-state answer was not very doubtless. It was essential to consider options. Regardless of all of the horrific struggling and violence that’s occurring proper now, I truly assume two states might be extra possible and extra prone to assure equality and justice for all individuals. I’m rather more skeptical a couple of one-state actuality, which dangers devolving into perpetual ethno-religious battle.
You’ve been vital of the liberal Jewish denominations in the US and recommend they haven’t actually developed an alternative choice to Zionism.
As a result of Israel was so central to American Jewish identification for thus lengthy, these previous questions on which means, about what sustains neighborhood, had been type of put to the aspect. Now that Israel will not be a supply of ethical inspiration, however a spot that many don’t wish to be related to, or that they’re ashamed of, due to what it’s doing, American Jewish identification is dealing with a disaster. If it doesn’t have Zionism, however it additionally doesn’t have conventional observe, what does it have?
You grew up within the Conservative motion however at the moment are extra comfy with Orthodoxy. Is that the place you see your self?
I’m very reluctant to comply with any simple labels. I ended up adopting a considerably extra observant spiritual observe — preserving Shabbat strictly in accordance with halakha (Jewish regulation), observing all the vacations, preserving kosher. And so, despite the fact that I used to be doing variations of them before now, I don’t assume it might be true to say I dwell an Orthodox life. The time period that I exploit is orthopraxy. What I imply by that’s, I’m dedicated to dwelling a life inside the framework of the obligations of halakha as a result of I feel that dwelling that type of life provides necessary entry to a neighborhood and takes one out of the type of hustle and bustle of the capitalist market. That’s one of many stunning issues about observing Shabbat is that it’s a whole pause from any industrial change or work.
I feel there’s truly one thing type of radical and countercultural about conventional observance in an American tradition that values being on-line always and being instantly digital and the colonization mainly, of all features of life by work. Jewish custom resists that. And yeah, I feel that’s necessary.
Issues are so bleak now in Israel. Is there any hope?
Sure, it’s actually laborious to have hope when every single day we’re suffused with essentially the most horrific photographs of Palestinian struggling and devastation from Gaza. We all know from historical past that generally very surprising issues can occur and work out for the higher. A part of politics is figuring out methods to exploit these moments of chance.
Simply because it’s bleak now, doesn’t imply that will probably be bleak ceaselessly. I don’t assume it’s unattainable that there might be some type of negotiated settlement alongside the horizon, even when that horizon will not be seen from the place we’re proper now. You will be very pessimistic but additionally be very hopeful. You have got to have the ability to proceed to hope that it may be completely different.
