Reading Comaroff set off fireworks in my head as some of the questions pondered are those which I have struggled with for years. Thinking about my potential dissertation topic, I keep coming back to (and avoiding) the topic that would be easiest to connect to: me. My Jewish upbringing and background has always been a source of pride and wondering (not wandering as the stereotype reads). But being Jewish, especially in America, means struggling mightily with what the label means. Not that Jews are a monolithic phenomenon- we are as varied as any group- however, because of such small numbers, there seems to be a line of thinking that many Jews subscribe to that always looks out for that which will lead to our extinction. An inside joke among us is the perennial question: but what does it mean for the Jews? Jew 1: I found a great new Italian restaurant (I could have used Chinese on Christmas Eve, but no...). Their lasagna is really good! Jew 2: But, is it good for the Jews? Corresponding laughter from Woody Allen filmgoers. For better or worse, being Jewish today is also to take pride in our influence that belies our tiny demographic. This influence is not arguable. But, why and how did it come about? I've heard the typical and stereotypical reasons from members of the tribe: we value education more than others; we're better in business than most; we're naturally smarter. I have a hard time believing any of these although I certainly have in the past. Subjectivity and agency do not exist in a vacuum. In a sense, throughout our history, the non-Jewish world has painted us into a corner.
Although not always the case, Diaspora (not in Israel) Jews were a landless people that were afforded a quasi-liberty economically, geographically, and politically. This is mostly true of Europe where the vast majority of Jews migrated following Roman conquest of what is today Israel. The quasi-libertied experience took on even larger and more pronounced dimensions when the Jews were kicked out of Spain in 1492. (In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and it was a really bad time to be a Jew.) I'll mention two contexts: religious and economic. The dominant form of political and economic context was religion. Spain was influenced, maybe defined, by the three main "Western" religions. Jews had a kind of influence and position not to be seen until the 19th century in America. Our numbers were smaller than the Muslim and Christian populations, but we had basic liberties. The Spanish Inquisition changed all that and when Jews scattered all over Europe (mostly North and East), the concentrated populations dissipated somewhat. What followed for Medieval Jews was life in a ghetto (an Italian word meaning walled-off town- never a mention of poverty like today's connotation). Life in the towns was life outside of the towns, a separate existence where Jews engaged in commerce with their Christian neighbors and also formed their own semi-sovereign political entities. I say semi-sovereign because the Jews in Europe were always at risk of political/religious violence based on a variety of factors. Massacring Jews didn't need complicated reasoning (the crowding of the cities- the Black Death, etc.). What was clear and convenient was the Jews needed to be separate because they were non-believers responsible for the death of Jesus. A by-product of this religious separation was economic independence. In many cases, Jews could not survive just dealing with their Christian neighbors, especially in politically xenophobic moments. The Jews were scattered across Europe and were able (allowed?) to trade with each other- national boundaries aside. This gave rise to another powerful stereotype- the International, wandering Jew that has no country. Another convenient excuse for violence over the centuries, the culmination being Nazi Germany. Jews were inherently mistrusted because you couldn't figure out who we were loyal to.
So, what does this mean for the Jews...I mean...today? A somewhat mean-spirited question posited by Jews in America is why other groups can't do what we did. Why can't African-Americans be self-sufficient and pick themselves up? Why can't Latinos just be American if they want to come here so bad? We did. We did. We did. (Imagine a child sticking out her tongue!) Comaroff raises the possibility that this can happen- if one ignores historical context. Jews, African-Americans, Latinos, and others share the collective human trait of resilience. Why are Jews good at business? Maybe because our choices were limited. In many cases, we couldn't own land. In many cases, our options for making a living were limited to doing business, often internationally. This is not to claim that all Jews were good at this. There was always widespread poverty among Diaspora Jewish populations in Europe. What happens when you don't have a right to till your own soil and have to frequently move because of violence? You hang on to cultural values and artifacts that are quite mobile: one being a religious dream of a return to the land embodied by a constant adherence to remembering that story- hence, a value on education. A less than stable existence held the ancient (more stable) religio/historical texts as the primary sources for both business (how to conduct daily life) and education (learning and remembering the story).
Another contextual point is demographic. Jews have not had to fit their overarching philosophies to large groups of people. The African slaves in the past and the Latino immigrants in the present were brought in and come today in much larger numbers. There were more Native Americans in this land than Jewish immigrants. When Jews immigrated en masse from Eastern Europe to this country, they encountered an economically independent Jewish population that was able to sponsor them to some degree economically in ways the African slaves never could and that Latinos can't by sheer numbers. Nor are groups today (in order to share the American Dream) allowed to live a separate existence economically and socially. Our melting pot myth is sustaining.
When the melting pot myth became a way of integrating massive numbers of immigrants from Europe, Jews capitalized on the last context I'll mention: Whiteness. Unlike African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans, Jews have been afforded the luxury of being White. This wasn't always so, but it has been for the last half-century. More fortunate, Jews as humans, can retain a collective memory of "the way things have been done" while assimilating into American society politically, economically, and socially. As much as it's politically incorrect to say, Jews benefited politically from a worldwide guilt about the Holocaust that was one factor that led to the formation of Israel. Whiteness has more to do with the dominant culture's gift and circumstance than any kind of Jewish exceptionalism in the DNA.
What Comaroff describes different cultural groups doing in the modern age has been done most successfully by Jews. The Jewish brand endures, superseding the differences among our sub-cultural groups. While I might not have much of anything in common with a Chasidic Jew in Brooklyn, we share a brand, and it works. The Jewish success with branding our people leads me to wonder if economic power is ultimately the only power that matters. The institution of African slavery is equally as horrific as the Holocaust. Perhaps Freud's (a Jew- see, we do the same thing as Adam Sandler does in the Chanukah song) theory of mourning and melancholia is merely an economic construct. Perhaps melancholia is tantamount to mourning without an economic means of moving on. In order to move on from the pain of the Holocaust, Jews branded it. I am very critical and uncomfortable with the modern process of claiming the Holocaust as our own (I wrote my Master's thesis on this subject),. In a different context before the Holocaust, Eastern European Jewish immigrants gained power by universalizing the painful human lessons of Europe. Look at Hollywood, an industry created by and governed by these Jewish immigrants. In Hollywood, power was gained by hiding Jewishness. Film topics promoted by these Jewish power brokers were not explicitly Jewish topics, but the values were branded Judeo-Christian and therefore American. In positions of less power, film actors changed their names to sound less Jewish.
I hear my own voice criticizing my Jewish forebears while puffing out my chest at our accomplishments- a habit so characteristically Jewish. In Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, his character tries to shed his Jewishness in hopes of being more accepted, but one gets the sense that Judaism in New York equals power, which makes his attempts that much more comic. My worry is that we have to wait for another paradigm shift. Race dominates American discourse. Money dominates American discourse. As I said in class, Jews try to gain credit for a liberal humanistic outlook that is shared by African-Americans and other groups. But, this is not our circumstance. It was, but it is not now. Hitler was able to expand the definition of Jews to include race and we saw the results. By not correcting "definers" who narrowly refer to Judaism as only a religion, we are complicit in embracing a modern paradigm to our advantage. Does this come at the expense of others? In a leap of logic and feeling, does this make us more likely to produce a Bernie Madoff than a MLK? I offer no solution, just a perspective that you can agree or disagree with. As a Jew, I take full advantage of the new paradigm (and the American Dream) while hoping for some kind of change that will allow others to do this as well.
Although not always the case, Diaspora (not in Israel) Jews were a landless people that were afforded a quasi-liberty economically, geographically, and politically. This is mostly true of Europe where the vast majority of Jews migrated following Roman conquest of what is today Israel. The quasi-libertied experience took on even larger and more pronounced dimensions when the Jews were kicked out of Spain in 1492. (In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and it was a really bad time to be a Jew.) I'll mention two contexts: religious and economic. The dominant form of political and economic context was religion. Spain was influenced, maybe defined, by the three main "Western" religions. Jews had a kind of influence and position not to be seen until the 19th century in America. Our numbers were smaller than the Muslim and Christian populations, but we had basic liberties. The Spanish Inquisition changed all that and when Jews scattered all over Europe (mostly North and East), the concentrated populations dissipated somewhat. What followed for Medieval Jews was life in a ghetto (an Italian word meaning walled-off town- never a mention of poverty like today's connotation). Life in the towns was life outside of the towns, a separate existence where Jews engaged in commerce with their Christian neighbors and also formed their own semi-sovereign political entities. I say semi-sovereign because the Jews in Europe were always at risk of political/religious violence based on a variety of factors. Massacring Jews didn't need complicated reasoning (the crowding of the cities- the Black Death, etc.). What was clear and convenient was the Jews needed to be separate because they were non-believers responsible for the death of Jesus. A by-product of this religious separation was economic independence. In many cases, Jews could not survive just dealing with their Christian neighbors, especially in politically xenophobic moments. The Jews were scattered across Europe and were able (allowed?) to trade with each other- national boundaries aside. This gave rise to another powerful stereotype- the International, wandering Jew that has no country. Another convenient excuse for violence over the centuries, the culmination being Nazi Germany. Jews were inherently mistrusted because you couldn't figure out who we were loyal to.
So, what does this mean for the Jews...I mean...today? A somewhat mean-spirited question posited by Jews in America is why other groups can't do what we did. Why can't African-Americans be self-sufficient and pick themselves up? Why can't Latinos just be American if they want to come here so bad? We did. We did. We did. (Imagine a child sticking out her tongue!) Comaroff raises the possibility that this can happen- if one ignores historical context. Jews, African-Americans, Latinos, and others share the collective human trait of resilience. Why are Jews good at business? Maybe because our choices were limited. In many cases, we couldn't own land. In many cases, our options for making a living were limited to doing business, often internationally. This is not to claim that all Jews were good at this. There was always widespread poverty among Diaspora Jewish populations in Europe. What happens when you don't have a right to till your own soil and have to frequently move because of violence? You hang on to cultural values and artifacts that are quite mobile: one being a religious dream of a return to the land embodied by a constant adherence to remembering that story- hence, a value on education. A less than stable existence held the ancient (more stable) religio/historical texts as the primary sources for both business (how to conduct daily life) and education (learning and remembering the story).
Another contextual point is demographic. Jews have not had to fit their overarching philosophies to large groups of people. The African slaves in the past and the Latino immigrants in the present were brought in and come today in much larger numbers. There were more Native Americans in this land than Jewish immigrants. When Jews immigrated en masse from Eastern Europe to this country, they encountered an economically independent Jewish population that was able to sponsor them to some degree economically in ways the African slaves never could and that Latinos can't by sheer numbers. Nor are groups today (in order to share the American Dream) allowed to live a separate existence economically and socially. Our melting pot myth is sustaining.
When the melting pot myth became a way of integrating massive numbers of immigrants from Europe, Jews capitalized on the last context I'll mention: Whiteness. Unlike African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans, Jews have been afforded the luxury of being White. This wasn't always so, but it has been for the last half-century. More fortunate, Jews as humans, can retain a collective memory of "the way things have been done" while assimilating into American society politically, economically, and socially. As much as it's politically incorrect to say, Jews benefited politically from a worldwide guilt about the Holocaust that was one factor that led to the formation of Israel. Whiteness has more to do with the dominant culture's gift and circumstance than any kind of Jewish exceptionalism in the DNA.
What Comaroff describes different cultural groups doing in the modern age has been done most successfully by Jews. The Jewish brand endures, superseding the differences among our sub-cultural groups. While I might not have much of anything in common with a Chasidic Jew in Brooklyn, we share a brand, and it works. The Jewish success with branding our people leads me to wonder if economic power is ultimately the only power that matters. The institution of African slavery is equally as horrific as the Holocaust. Perhaps Freud's (a Jew- see, we do the same thing as Adam Sandler does in the Chanukah song) theory of mourning and melancholia is merely an economic construct. Perhaps melancholia is tantamount to mourning without an economic means of moving on. In order to move on from the pain of the Holocaust, Jews branded it. I am very critical and uncomfortable with the modern process of claiming the Holocaust as our own (I wrote my Master's thesis on this subject),. In a different context before the Holocaust, Eastern European Jewish immigrants gained power by universalizing the painful human lessons of Europe. Look at Hollywood, an industry created by and governed by these Jewish immigrants. In Hollywood, power was gained by hiding Jewishness. Film topics promoted by these Jewish power brokers were not explicitly Jewish topics, but the values were branded Judeo-Christian and therefore American. In positions of less power, film actors changed their names to sound less Jewish.
I hear my own voice criticizing my Jewish forebears while puffing out my chest at our accomplishments- a habit so characteristically Jewish. In Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, his character tries to shed his Jewishness in hopes of being more accepted, but one gets the sense that Judaism in New York equals power, which makes his attempts that much more comic. My worry is that we have to wait for another paradigm shift. Race dominates American discourse. Money dominates American discourse. As I said in class, Jews try to gain credit for a liberal humanistic outlook that is shared by African-Americans and other groups. But, this is not our circumstance. It was, but it is not now. Hitler was able to expand the definition of Jews to include race and we saw the results. By not correcting "definers" who narrowly refer to Judaism as only a religion, we are complicit in embracing a modern paradigm to our advantage. Does this come at the expense of others? In a leap of logic and feeling, does this make us more likely to produce a Bernie Madoff than a MLK? I offer no solution, just a perspective that you can agree or disagree with. As a Jew, I take full advantage of the new paradigm (and the American Dream) while hoping for some kind of change that will allow others to do this as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment