THERE WAS AN INTERESTING ARTICLE on Chabad.org titled Henry Ford Sr. and My Renewed Sense of Jewish Pride (http://tinyurl.com/ybj76z4q)
The author, Peter Himmelman, posits that what Henry Ford, sponsor if not the author of The International Jew, failed to understand about Jews is ”what we Jews know as ‘Ahavat Yisrael,’ the innate love a Jew has for a fellow Jew.“
HIMMELMAN ASKS “WHAT IS THE GLUE THAT BINDS ONE JEW TO ANOTHER? Is it a cultural or culinary connection like a love for the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer or gefilte fish? Or is it a shared language—Yiddish or Ladino, for example?“ (How about Hebrew, Mr. Himmelman? THAT is the language of Jews all around the globe.)
His answer to himself: “What I have come to understand is that the Torah itself is at the root of the deep, almost mystical affinity of one Jew for another.”
He adds that “with all our differences, whether political, religious, or cultural, when the Torah is removed from the ark on the holiday of Simchat Torah, the day we celebrate having been given this precious and unifying document, we will rush as one to kiss it, to embrace it, and to dance with it—as if the Torah were a beautiful child.”
Unfortunately, I think that is fiction.
Judaism, at last in the United States, is badly fragmented on both philosophical and political lines.
I have acquaintances who are
Totally non-observant
Reform
Conservative
Shomer Shabat and kashrut
I correspond with a man who was born a Jew and now rejects everything Jewish; he is a Barney Sanders liberal. University educated, author of a small book,
Nice guy. Even volunteered in Israel for a spell. I dated his sister back in junior high school, lo those many years past.
It seems to me that liberal Jews are liberals first and Jews second – if at all.
Observant Jews, on the other hand – even if they are only Jews at haggim, when, with the exception of Yom Kippur, they come for the food – are politically conservative.
In the minyan I attend, most are politically conservative. Many are Israelis which, in itself means nothing as Israelis, like Americans, come in all political stripes.
If you look at pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel organizations, you will find liberal Jews among the leaders, just as they were leaders within the NAACP until the blacks decided they didn’t need the Jews anymore.
Look at a staunchly pro-Israel organization and you will find observant Jews on the board.
I contend that, at least in the United States, politics prevents us from being “Am Ehad.” Fewer and fewer American Jews, particularly on the left, think of themselves a Jewish Americans. They are Americans who happen to have been born to a Jewish mother. Jewishness is “an accident of birth.”
It is not a matter of knowing the words to HaTikvah, it is not a matter of making a Birthright trip to Israel; these things are not important to today’s modern liberal Jews. There is no “Jewish connection.”
Not even Chabad’s Mitzvahmobiles and its other outreach programs can inspire a feeling of oneness with other Jews. Birthright opponents challenge young Jews to abandon a trip to Israel and their challenge always results in a few deciding that seeing life in Israel first hand, rather than hearing about it second or third hand from the liberal media, is a waste of their precious time.
These same Americans who “happen” to be Jewish attack every thing President Trump says or does – even when they have no clue what was said or done, again getting everything second or third hand. They worship at the alter of Sanders, Feinstein, and Boxer and, albeit they are not Jewish, Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, latter day FDRs and JFKs.
For most Jews, as with most Americans in 2018, their way is the only way; they lack the capability of even listening to different opinions.
It would be wonderful if Himmelman was correct that “Jews who’d never met one another, Jews who didn’t share a common language or a cultural heritage, could be so immediately at home with one another.”
Unfortunately, in the U.S. while many of us may SAY “Am Israel Hai,” the concept of “Am Ehad” is non-existent.
It is unfortunate that “when the Torah is removed from the ark on the holiday of Simchat Torah,” far too many Jews will be otherwise occupied. (Granted, two-day holidays -- save for Rosh HaShana-- are only rabbinically ordained.)
We are one only if the “one” includes our politics first.
We’ve always had our political and religious differences, but it seems to me never with such acrimony as we have today.
My way or the highway; the song is the same from the left and the right.
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
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