Jewish Values in the Contemporary World (pps. 8-9)

By Rabbi Sid Schwarz

Excerpt from Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World © 2006 Sidney Schwarz (Woodstock, VT; Jewish Lights Publishing). $24.99+$3.95 s/h. Order by mail or call 800-962-4544 or online at www.jewishlights.com. Permission granted by Jewish Lights Publishing, P.O. Box 237, Woodstock, VT 05091.

For several generations, many American Jews were convinced that American values were more or less the same as Jewish values. The logical extension of that assumption was that it was not worth the time to learn the language of Jewish values since America provided much the same set of values. It was a license for Jewish illiteracy. It went without saying that Jewish holy apartness was not only chauvinistic and exclusivist but also un-American. Why should Jews hold themselves apart from an America that gave them unparalleled freedom and economic opportunity? We should drink deeply and fully from the cup of American society.

It was these assumptions that lay behind Mordecai Kaplan’s (the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism) rejection of the idea of choseness…

…World events of recent years have been hard on Kaplan’s brand of liberal universalism. Though we might continue to admire the sentiments that he set forth, most of the Western world has been rudely awakened to a global struggle in which democracy, freedom, and pluralism are identified by adherents of radical Islam as a scourge that must be eradicated from the world. Judaism, of course, does not escape indictment by these same extremist elements.

Now it seems clear that Judaism has some wisdom that is in short supply, both in the world as well as in America. Increasing numbers of Jews, and a not insignificant number of non-Jews, are coming to see that within Jewish texts, there are truths and insights that are badly needed in the world. It is also clear that, throughout history, Jews have had some measure of success in making these values operative in their communities. Ironically, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, it seems that we have not traveled so far down the road from our ancestors who understood that Judaism was “counterculture,” offering a way of thinking and living that was embraced by few others in the world. Whereas once the cultural norm from which Judaism dissented was paganism, today it might be religious fanaticism, hedonism, or secularism.

From this perspective, the idea of holy apartness has newfound appeal. There may well be no other way for the values and ideals envisioned by Judaism to be expressed and carried forward in the world, even if those ideals are not yet embraced by the society at large. For much of Jewish history, the biblical expression am levado yishkon (Num. 23:9), Israel as “a nation that dwells apart,” was descriptive. Today it has become prescriptive. Unless the Jewish people succeeds in holding onto some parts of the values and ideals of justice and holiness, over and against societies and cultures that have either rejected or ignored those ideals, there is no way for those principles to endure. It can only be done by reclaiming the importance and value of the Jewish people being holy and apart.