Jewish Reconnection Part 3 - "Jewish Enough"

April 1, 2008 · Filed Under Jewish Reconnection, Video Posts ·

A religious person constantly working on his personal growth and his personal learning

A soldier in the IDF sacrificing his life for the Jewish People

A Human Rights activist fighting for human rights based on Jewish Values

Is any of them more Jewish?

First of all, I don’t like the term more Jewish. Jewish is not something you can be “more of” or “less of”. You are either Jewish or not. Still, I think this question touches on the very foundation of Jewish Thought – ie: What is Judaism?

Some people consider Judaism to be a religion. Others consider Judaism to be a Nationalistic Message of belonging to the Jewish Nation. Finally, others also considered Judaism to be a Universal Message of Morality. In the eyes of Rav Kook, all of these 3 values are included in the Jewish Message. We have a message of Godliness, which is to be brought out by our nation, and this message is for the universal good.

If this is so, how exactly should these seemingly contradicting messages interact? The Religious aspect seems to concentrate on the individual, the nationalist aspect concentrates on the nation while the universal message is to the whole world!
The answer lies in the blessings God gave to Abraham in Parashat Lech Lecha. After telling Abraham to go to the land of Israel, God tells him: “I will make you into a great nation”. Clearly, from this we see that Judaism is first and foremost a Nation, not a religion.

Rav Kook teaches that the particularity of the Jewish Nation is that we look at the world with Godly Lenses (Introduction to Shabbat Haaretz). In other words, we are first and foremost a nation. Still, every Nation has something special: Americans are particularly found of Freedom, the Arab Nation is particularly passionate, the Jewish Nation’s particularity is its message of Godliness which it brings to the world.
We now understand the place of the Nationalist and Religious messages of torah, but what about our universal messages?

In the next passouk, God continues blessing Avraham and says: “all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you.” The Goal of our Jewish Nationalism is to bring our a light which all the nations will be able to gain from.

In order to simplify these complicated concepts, let us define 3 words: Prat, Tsibbour and Klal.

The Prat can be translated as the Individual.
The Tsibbour can be translated as a group of individuals. When many individuals come together, they create a Tsibbour.

Then, there is another concept called Klal. The Klal is more then just a group of individuals. It has an overarching theme. It’s a concept which englobes all individuals into one unit giving out one message. Klal Israel’s message is Godliness.
The Goal of Am Israel is to take the Tsibbour of individual Jews and to turn it into a Klal.

One of my friends gave me an amazing metaphor once.
It is like a nice painting. When you look at a painting, there is an image which comes out. This image is the klal. Each brush stroke is a prat, an individual. All the brush strokes together on the canvas is called the tsibbour. If each brush stroke gives out the right color in the right place, then the right image will come out: The tsibbour will be a klal. If any individual does something wrong, it will hurt the representation given by tsibbour on the canvas but the image (conceptually) will still be pure, the image is always pure. It will just not be well represented on this canvas.

This image which needs to be brought out is a universal message of morality based on Godliness. This is how we improve the world. Each individual joining into the message of Godliness in the Klal in order to bring it out to the world.

So, once again, who is more Jewish?

Well, first of all, we can see that this predisposition we have to classify who is more “Jewish” based on external things is very misleading. Many times, people decide if someone is religious or not based on a small piece of cloth which a person wears on his head, a piece of cloth which is, at the very most, a rabbinical commandment (and according to many a tradition). So, to these people, a person who wears a piece of cloth on his head all the while being impolite is “More Jewish” than one who does not wear this piece of cloth but acts like a really good person.

Don’t get me wrong. I love this piece of cloth lol. I wear a kippah myself. But one’s Judaism is not defined by these external things.

So, once again, who is more Jewish?

I think the answer is that all of them are expressing different aspects of Judaism and hopefully, as our redemption unfolds, we will be able to unite all of these aspects into one powerful message of Judaism.

Rav Kook explained, in many of his essays, that the reason for the Kfira (rejection of Godliness) in his time was that people were not presented with authentic Judaism, authentic Godliness. Rather, they were presented with a torah based on the small details of halacha without connecting these details to the general ideas expressed by this Jewish Law. If the small details of halacha are not connected to the general message of Jewish Law, then they become meaningless and people will not want to follow them anymore. They will say “This is not Godliness” and they will be right, since Godliness is attained not just with this small detail of halacha but through the general picture painted by all these details together which gives the message of Jewish Nationalism for universal good expressed earlier.

One of the ladies speaking in the video said something expressing this feeling. She said: “I don’t know if God cares about mixing meat and milk, but I know he cares about how we treat our neighbors.” This sign of rebellion is a healthy one. This person wants Judaism to paint the true picture that it should pain (I don’t agree with the picture she is painting, but her spirit of rebellion is healthy). If we were expressing a true Judaism where mixing meat and milk was part of a general system of behavior in which the Jewish People were bringing back God’s morality to this world through the example of living like a holy nation, this person would not be rejecting God anymore. Actually, the right approach she should be taking, instead of rejecting God, is to reject the picture she has been given of God and look deeper. Then, maybe she can find authentic Judaism which is not at odds with those principles she’s expressing but is rather the most accurate expression of those very principles.
This is the work of our generation. As the Jewish People gets back to its land, it also needs to get back to authentic Torah. To do so, all the aspects of this authentic torah need to be properly learned and fused into one powerful, eternal and Godly message.

You liked this post? Here is a list of related posts:

- Jewish Student Activism - It’s in our Hands! by Dan Illouz
- Jewish Reconnection Project- Part 1 by Dan Illouz
- Authentic Kiruv - Part 5 by Dan Illouz
- Jewish Reconnection Part 2 - Necessary Criteria by Dan Illouz
- Bailout the Jewish Nation by Dan Illouz
- Israel’s Greatest Accomplishments - Part 1 by Dan Illouz
- Jewish Reconnection Project Part 4 -Our Promised Land by Dan Illouz

clement Says:
April 8th, 2008 at 7:02 am

All,

First of all, it is a good initiative!
Discussing, defining and arriving to a consensus on what is our identity as Jews is, I believe the most fundamental question that
needs to be resolved in world Jewry in the 21st century.

I think it is very hard for Jews today to express what it is and means to be Jewish for the following reasons.
First, it draws on questions related to G-d/Judaism, second it involves bringing into this question of identity, Israel a country that many have never visited and finally it requires approaching this question not with our own set of values, but through the values, heritage and history of the Jewish people.

For my part, I think that the answer is simple to conceptualize, but hard to live.

First, it is important to remember that this whole concept/identity of “Jewish” was introduced in the Torah. We like or not, holy or not holy, this is where that concept originates in a text that we associate to God and religion. The confusion begins here, as many do not believe, believe in the concept that one single force “God” is at the origin/source of creation in this world. It is hard to define, rationalize, prove and more over live along this line in our pragmatic world. It is simply not part of our Western value system, but it is at the source of our identity.

Second, being Jewish means being part of the Jewish people. A nation that once physically lived in Israel, but was subsequently expelled and scattered all over the world.
This concept was again introduced in the Torah (That will sound Orthodox for some, but that is where the concept comes from) and is the reason why we decided to found our modern Israel in the historical location of Israel and not in Uganda or Argentina. It is as central to our identity as Judaism. Today, we are the descendants of this nation and many of us came back to live in Israel (for ever and ever). But many of us have never visited Israel, do not speak Hebrew. They are born Americans, English, French, South African and are/feel Jewish.
So how to fit Israel in our identity. I think that first it is important to remember that it is abstract conception. Jews lived in Israel 3000 years ago. Second, I think it is important to remember that not so long, Jews did not have a home and Israel was without question, the place that they were hoping to go back to.

Finally, as Europeans and Americans, children of the western world, we look at the world with the help of a very precise set of values of moral, freedom, democracy, equality. A set of Christian/Western values. We use this vision of the world to define “Being Jewish”, but this can get confusing and inappropriate. Conflicts in the Arab world and globalization in business have made the Western world realize that all that happens in the world cannot always fit to our definition of it. Iraqis, Chinese and Jews do things differently and are different people. This lesson applies to us, it is important for us to question and define our identity, but it is important not to always look at it using the tools of the world we grew up in. Being Jewish is different from being Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or American. We have our own identity, a rich heritage that draws on the concepts outlined above. It is important for us to discover them!

clement Says:
April 8th, 2008 at 7:03 am