Summer Message #3 The Accident of Being Jewish

The Accident of Being Jewish

I strongly subscribe to the opinion expressed by Leon Wieseltier in his book, Against Identity. "Every inheritance is an accident. This is what religious, sexual, and ethnic identity is designed to make one forget. For a feeling of contingency, it substitutes a feeling of necessity. But it is not necessary to be necessary, if one is prepared to work. There is no shame in being accidental." People call me up in my capacity of Rabbi of Panim Hadashot. They tell me they are born Jews.

They have Jewish genes. They are Jewish to the bone even if they practice another religion. I don't believe in Jewish genes except to the extent you may get an inherited disease. I don't believe that Jewish genes make you believe unique things or behave in certain ways. I do think that upbringing and culture matters, so there are a range of so called Jewish behaviors and attitudes that a person may acquire through a wide range of upbringings which could be called Jewish. I have a broad definition of Jewish culture and it can be transmitted in various ways. But I also believe there is content to Judaism. Judaism stands for specific ideas and perceptions of the world. To learn these a person, Jew or non-Jew, must make effort to understand the core of the culture, the guts of the religious life, or the language and values of the people.

Wieseltier continues, "Rabbi Yose said: Make yourself fit for the study of Torah, for it is not an inheritance." Not an inheritance: this from the first century in Judea , gives the problem of tradition, the illusion of tradition, in all its brutality.....For centuries we have been warned. The biological deos not establish the spiritual. Like the sins of the fathers, the illuminations of the fathers will not be visited upon the sons. So you want Jewish spirituality. You have to work for it. It is not automatic.

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg6-19-06