Long before the Beat Generation boasted its
countercultural credentials, there were 17th century Romanticists and 18th
century Bohemians. Today both are considered countercultural phenomena, even if
terming Romanticists and Bohemians counterculturists is anachronistic. The term
came into common parlance when Theodore Roszak published The Making of Counter Culture in 1969, the heyday of
hippies, the civil rights movement, opposition to the war in Vietnam, and a
tidal wave of changes in sexual and social mores. The countercultural movement
of the 60s had the patina of universal religion, complete with moral values
(e.g., anti-materialistic, pacifistic), social values (e.g., communal,
egalitarian), and spiritual values (e.g., introspective, mystical).
Judaism has always been imbued by a countercultural
streak. Parshat Acharei Mot provides the template:
וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר. דַּבֵּר אֶל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם: אֲנִי, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם. כְּמַעֲשֵׂה אֶרֶץ-מִצְרַיִם אֲשֶׁר יְשַׁבְתֶּם-בָּהּ, לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ; וּכְמַעֲשֵׂה אֶרֶץ-כְּנַעַן אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי מֵבִיא אֶתְכֶם שָׁמָּה, לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ, וּבְחֻקֹּתֵיהֶם, לֹא תֵלֵכוּ. אֶת-מִשְׁפָּטַי תַּעֲשׂוּ וְאֶת-חֻקֹּתַי תִּשְׁמְרוּ, לָלֶכֶת בָּהֶם: אֲנִי, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם
Adonai spoke to Moses: Speak to the
Israelite people and say to them: “I am Adonai your God. You shall not copy the
practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, or of the land of Canaan to
which I am taking you; nor shall you follow their laws. My rules alone shall
you observe, and faithfully follow My laws: I am Adonai your God. (Leviticus
18:1–4)
In four tightly constructed verses, Torah sets
forth a philosophy: Don’t do what you’ve seen in the past in the land of Egypt,
nor what you will see in the future in the land of Canaan. Don’t follow their
laws; follow only My laws. Sounds like a call for Jewish separatism, doesn’t
it? And some have, indeed, read it this way.
The icon for this philosophy might be Abraham as
viewed through the lens of the Rabbis. A classic midrash imagines Abraham not
only living in a culture organized around idolatry, but as the son of a
professional idol-maker, Terach. Once, when Terach was away and Abraham was
minding the shop:
…a woman came with a plateful of meal
and requested of him, "Take this and offer it to them." So [Abraham]
took a stick, broke them (the idols), and put the stick in the hand of the
largest. When his father returned he demanded, "What have you done to
them?" "I cannot conceal it from you," he rejoined. "A
woman came with a plateful of fine meal and requested me to offer it to them.
One claimed, 'I must eat first,' while another claimed, 'I must eat first.'
Thereupon the largest arose, took the stick and broke them all." "Why
do you make sport of me," [Terach] cried out, "have they then any
knowledge?" "Should not your ears listen to what your mouth is
saying," [Abraham] retorted. (Genesis Rabbah 38:13 and Tanna de-bei
Eliyahu)
The Sages portray Abraham as a man who discovers
God on his own. When God subsequently calls him, he is more than prepared to
leave Haran behind, having already rejected the core of its culture in his
heart. Is Abraham the world’s first counterculturalist, rejecting the ways,
values, and norms of the society in which he grew up?
The problem is: It’s a fine line between “counterculturalist,”
“rejectionist,” and “isolationist.” Too easy to leap-frog from one to the
other. “Counterculturalist” is a tempting label for those who would hold up
Abraham as a model for Jewish purity and isolationism, justifying throwing up
walls and holding up banners reading: “Don’t be polluted by their ways!” “Avoid
cultural entanglement!” “Remain pure!” Indeed we see not only a variety of
Jewish and other extremists doing their best to live in silos of isolation lest
“the heathen” defile them, but growing cracks in our society, as people
separate along religious and cultural lines, vilifying and demonizing “others”—be
they adherents to another religion, or immigrants, or people with differing
political perspectives.
Yet not only are the stories about Abraham myths[1] that are open to multiple interpretations and
applications, the biblical and rabbinic stories of Abraham do not
portray Abraham living in isolation. God’s call to Abraham is to leave Haran,
yes, but also to go out into the world and live among others. Abraham
encounters Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Amorites, Philistines, and
Egyptians; he makes a covenant with King Abimelech of Gerar, receives the
blessing of King Melchizedek of Salem, and buys a burial cave from the Hittites
among whom he lives; he negotiates with God on behalf of the innocent in Sodom
and Gomorrah. Abraham’s covenant with God requires him to retain his identity
and commitments to God, but not live separate and apart from the world.
Over the past 30 centuries, we Jews have lived in
virtually every land on the globe and have evolved our traditions, practices,
values, and understanding of the world through interaction with the wide
variety of peoples and cultures among whom we’ve lived. We have learned from
others and borrowed ideas from them. And they from us. To most of us, this is
obvious. At the same time, we remain a vibrant, distinctive, contributing
member of the human family of nations by remaining committed to the Jewish
people and the Jewish enterprise, which in this day crucially includes Zionism
and the revitalization of our sacred texts.
The cracks we see in the pavement of our society—fault
lines between people who prefer to live in whatever isolation they can manage
with others who are “like them”—are sadly mirrored in our own communities. The
divide between isolationist ultra-Orthodox Haredi groups and the rest of the
Jewish world is growing into a gaping, unbridgeable chasm of values,
priorities, practices, and belief. One wonders if we’re still talking about the
same religious covenant. And even within the liberal, open Jewish world, we
must honestly face our own insularity, which we have barely come to
acknowledge. This past week in New York City, 150 Jews of color gathered to
discuss problems too long ignored in our communities, among them racism,
sexism, homophobia, and classism. Our institutions are not yet safe places for
Jews of color; they are rarely as “warm an welcoming” as we would like to
think. (“Warm and welcoming” is still more a mantra than a reality.) The
meeting was organized by JMN (Jewish Multiracial Network) and JFREJ (Jews for
Racial & Economic Justice),
and co-sponsored by Bend the Arc.
Kalycia Trishana Watson was born in Jamaica and
grew up in a Reform congregation in Illinois. “It is exhausting to always feel
like you are ‘other’,” she told a reporter for The Jewish Week. Whether
it is far more intense questioning than other Birthright participants
experience from El Al security officials, or being asked if she is “really
Jewish” by speed-dating partners, “I’m always being asked to ‘prove’ my
Judaism.”
For me, the idea of juggling multiple identities,
was, and continues to be a struggle. My skin color always signals that I’m
different. That difference often inspires questions like “How are you Jewish?”, “Was I adopted?”, “Have I met the other Jew of Color
in the synagogue?” Many times I let these questions slide off my back, but
other times I cannot, and am suddenly thrust into the role of educator. Add to
that my lesbian identity, and it seemed that new Jewish spaces were often
places not for me to reconnect to my faith and be swept away by familiar
niggunim, but a place where I was on edge and defensive.
I’ll be honest. It has kept me away from synagogues
in my new home town. Rather than deal with the stares due to being the black
Jew compounded by more questions and inquiry due to also being the lesbian Jew,
I’ve avoided going all together…
It is said that context is everything. In the case
of the verses from Acharei Mot quoted above, this is especially true.
The injunction warning to the Israelites not to abandon their covenant and its
ways is a prelude to the gillui arayot, Leviticus’ long list of sexual
prohibitions against incest, adultery, and other relationships deemed
off-limits. The verses are not a global statement, but rather a very
specific expression of concern about what were deemed, in its historical
context, abhorrent sexual practices.
There seems to be something in our human make-up
that leads us to strongly identify with our “tribe” and ascribe negative
attributes and motives to outsiders. The
“Male Warrior Hypothesis,” drawing on findings in
the fields of evolutionary psychology, social psychology, biology, and
anthropology, posits that the long history of intergroup conflict between human
tribal groups exerted an evolutionary pressure on human psychology that are
felt today as intergroup prejudice and aggression, including racism, xenophobia,
and classism. The abstract of Melissa M. McDonald, Carlos David Navarrete, and
Mark van Vugt’s seminal article on the “Male Warrior Hypothesis” summarizes:
The social science literature contains numerous
examples of human tribalism and parochialism—the tendency to categorize
individuals on the basis of their group membership, and treat ingroup members
benevolently and outgroup members malevolently. We hypothesize that this tribal
inclination is an adaptive response to the threat of coalitional aggression and
intergroup conflict perpetrated by ‘warrior males’ in both ancestral and modern human environments…[2]
We do not have to
continue to replicate the behavior of our ancestors in this regard, viewing
others with suspicion and disdain.
In every generation
and age, we have observed the ways and value systems of those among whom we
live, absorbing what is good and
rejecting what is not. Unfortunately, our filters are not ideal, and we have
sometimes absorbed chaff and ignored fine wheat. We need to fine tune those
filters, take in more of the good wheat, and honestly identify and divest
ourselves of the chaff.
© Rabbi Amy
Scheinerman
[1] I use “myth” in
this sense: an ostensibly (but not actually) historical account of events that
embodies and expresses part of the worldview of a people and explains or
illustrates its deepest beliefs, values, and prized practices.
[2] “Evolution and the
psychology of intergroup conflict: the male warrior hypothesis,” (January 23,
2012), http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1589/670.
The theory, which describes tribal behavior, suggests that for women,
intergroup proximity increases the risk for sexual assault by men of the “outgroup,”
creating thereby selection pressure for women to maintain a bias against men
from the outgroup.
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