The choice of senator
Joseph Lieberman as the vice presidential candidate for the Democratic
Party has afforded more than one mass media pundit the opportunity to
congratulate the American political process for its progressive tolerance
and full-fledged acceptance of ethnic and religious minorities. It is
widely asserted that such a groundbreaking selection affirms the wishes
and ideals of the American Constitution's founding fathers. Only stone-age
racists and bigots, popular convention proclaims, would ever consider
an Orthodox Jewish vice-president to be anything less than a welcome national
leader. This is the popular view throughout America, everywhere heralded,
everywhere celebrated: the country's most noble all-inclusive philosophies
are being fulfilled.
Upon close inspection, however, the welcoming of Jewish Orthodoxy to a
key role in the American Democratic process is profoundly troubling. For
this essentially blind welcoming of traditional Judaism to the realms
of American power highlights in disturbing degree an enormous fault line
in our current political process: stupefying public ignorance. An ignorance
that no one risks remedying. Why, one wonders, has no one publicly posed
the most obvious question for the new candidate: By virtual of his faith,
his religious allegiance, what does Joseph Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew,
stand for? What do Orthodox Jews believe, particularly in relationship
to the American principles of human universalism, gender equality, and
democracy? As Vice President of the United States (and possibly a future
president), what would Mr. Lieberman, on religious grounds, think of his
non-Jewish neighbor? When confronted, point by point, with the anti-universalistic
teachings of Orthodox religious law, what could Lieberman possibly say?
The answer to these simple questions have breathtaking implications, particularly
in the context of quite possibly the second most powerful elected official
in our American government, a secular system that declares itself to be
a democracy. And the answer to these simple questions, however Lieberman
the politician would dissimulate them, would shock most Americans. For
anyone who is willing to take the time to look into the subject of Jewish
Orthodoxy (and the key to this is traditional Jewish religious law, called
the
halachah), it is easy to find that this brand of Judaism eschews
many of the most fundamental principles of American democracy and human
universalism. As American Jewish scholar Adam Garfinkle has noted, "The
principle of individualist equality that flows from American sacred texts
and the American experience cannot be reconciled with the hierarchical,
communal principles that flow from halachah, Jewish religious law." [1]
Garfinkle speaks here about intra-Jewish communal principles, not universalistic
ones. Whatever the Jewish apologetic (and there are many), the idea that
Jews are the Chosen People of God, which is the absolute premise of traditional
(and hence, Orthodox) Judaism, cannot be reconfigured in any way to be
a universalistic, egalitarian premise. The common euphemism these days
in the Jewish scholarly world for this Judeo-centric chauvinism is that
Judaism, in essence, is "particularist," a somehow noble virtue in today's
multicultural society. And this Jewish "particularism" is always juxtaposed
in discourse about the subject against its philosophical opposite: pan-human
universalism. In recent years, more and more Jewish scholars, particularly
from Israel, have stepped forward to argue that within Orthodox Judaism
one in fact finds the antithesis of democratic values. And why is this
so much a subject of concern today for the Jews of Israel? Because in
the Jewish nation the traditions of modern, western democratic principles,
born of the Enlightenment, are in colossal struggle against the laws of
Jewish religious Orthodoxy, traditional principles that seek to recreate
modern Israel into a complete theocracy. Not only are few Americans aware
of the major political and theological battles going on this moment across
the world for the heart and soul of modern Israel, few non-Jewish Americans
have the slightest knowledge of the essences, nor the perimeters, of the
contesting sides.
How are such American voters in any position to select their own best
interests via the persona of a Vice President Lieberman and, by association,
sanction the antidemocratic principles of Jewish Orthodoxy? The upcoming
election that includes Lieberman on the Democratic ticket is a profound
paradox. American democratic principles insure a "free speech" tolerance
throughout the public fabric. It also sanctions what is today popularly
called "multiculturalism." Ironically, however, voices within this tolerant,
universalistic frame may in fact give free voice to counter, intolerant
belief systems. Orthodox Judaism is, at root, such a world view. And for
Joseph Lieberman to seek to climb up the democratic hierarchy of public
power and control without public discussion about the core beliefs of
traditional Judaism is profoundly two-faced and disingenuous.
Let us look to the religious and secular heart of most of the world's
Jews, Israel, for explication of the issue at hand. We may begin by noting
that in today's Israel, often referred to as the only "democracy" in the
Middle East, it is illegal for a Jew to marry a non-Jew. Why? Because
Jewish religious Orthodox institutions control the civil realm of even
the supposedly secular Israeli government. Jewish Orthodoxy dictates how
the Jews of Israel may marry, where and how they are buried, child custody,
and other civil matters. Jews are therefore forbidden to marry non-Jews,
the way it has been for Orthodox Judaism for century upon century throughout
the world.
Lieberman, during the heat of the political campaign in liberal, multicultural
America, cannot speak freely about traditional Jewish exclusionism. He
has gone on the public record as saying that intermarriage is not an issue
for him as an Orthodox Jew. What else could Lieberman possibly say? Can
we imagine a legitimate candidate for the American vice-presidency publicly
proclaiming, in the same vein, for example, that people of European descent
should not marry African-Americans?
Reaction to Lieberman's two-faced politicking was swift in the Orthodox
community. Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for the Orthodox group Agudath
Israel of America, responded by noting that there is a "clear and irrevocable
Torah prohibition" against Jews marrying non-Jews. Even in the less traditional
Conservative Judaism movement, Rabbi Jerome Epstein noted that "I do believe
our tradition is quite clear that Jews are expected to marry Jews." [2]
What's it like to be a woman under Jewish Orthodoxy? As Jewish author
Lesley Hazelton wrote about her years living in Israel: "To call the laws
of Orthodox Judaism (the only Judaism accepted in Israel) sexist is an
understatement: they do not recognize woman's existence as a full human
being ... Women are classified [in Orthodox tradition] with children,
the mentally deficient, and insane and criminals, none of whom can testify
in Rabbinical court." [3]
In 1994 Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor and the former director of
the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, wrote a an entire volume about
Orthodox Judaism, in this tenor: "An Orthodox Jew learns from his earliest
youth, as part of his sacred studies, that Gentiles are compared to dogs,
that it is a sin to praise them." [4] Every morning male Orthodox Jews
are enjoined to say prayers thanking God that they were not born female,
and not Gentile. Is a believer in such chauvinism the kind of person who
should lead multicultural America, let alone a democracy?
Many secular Jews in Israel are profoundly worried about the growth Orthodox
Judaism and its squeeze there upon democratic principles. "There are those
among us," wrote Ran Kislev in a 1998 issue of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz,
"warning against the dangers of Israel's transformation into a halachic
state. They instill in us a fear of an ayatollah state, like Iran. They
have missed the boat. We are not merely en route to an ayatollah state,
we are already well in the midst of one." [5] In 1998, "Israel's leading
orthodox rabbis" even proclaimed a religious ruling against the Internet
in Jewish homes. [6] "Orthodoxy in Israel," wrote Israeli Uri Huppert
in 1988, "is no longer a creed. It is a well established clerical rabbinical
hierarchy and long political and administrative infrastructure affecting
very strongly the most sensitive political issues." [7]
In other words, Orthodox Judaism is not just a religion. Any student of
traditional Judaism knows that it also includes a strong concept of Jewish
nationalism, with many activist, political currents. Jewish Orthodoxy
can also lead to ultra-Orthodoxy, a meticulously literalist interpretation
of old religious texts. The ultra-Orthodox, largely represented by hundreds
of thousands of the so-called Hassids who are enormously politically empowered
in modern Israel, are blatant in their Judeo-centrism, anti-Gentile chauvinism,
and self-segregating exclusionism. The best known, and most popular religious
form of Judaism in America is the Reform movement (again, Joseph Lieberman
is not a Reform Jew, he is Orthodox). This movement, like the strand called
Conservative Judaism, evolved out of traditional Jewish Orthodoxy in the
nineteenth century and rejected many of Orthodoxy's most chauvinist, anti-universalist
premises. Still, among Reform's secularly messianic claims is that the
essences of democracy are to be found in seminal Jewish religious texts.
Such claims by Reform Judaism are rejected in Israel by the controlling
Jewish Orthodoxy. Such universalistic assertions, as proclaimed by the
leading rabbis (all Orthodox) of modern Israel's religious world, have
nothing to do with Judaism. Even Gentile Americans who have married Jews,
and converted to Judaism in a Reform temple, will be stunned to discover
when they get off the plane in Orthodox-dominated Israel that in the Jewish
state their conversion has been for naught because in the Jewish homeland
they are not considered Jews. After all, in the Orthodox world view, being
a Jew is fundamentally a genetic essence: a person who's mother was Jewish
is a Jew, whether in later years they want to be one or not. Although
it is possible, with great difficulty, to convert to Orthodox Judaism,
converts are not invited and Orthodox Jews are always hard-pressed to
explain away the core of traditional Jewish identity which is nakedly
racial.
How then, could the Democratic party, known for its liberalism, its coalition
of labor unions, civil rights groups, homosexual activists, environmentalists,
women's rights groups, and left wing causists of all persuasions, find
themselves following what is for all intents and purposes a Jewish fundamentalist
who is religiously linked to ideas that run counter to the very premises
of American democratic liberalism? As Charles Liebman and Steven Cohen
have noted about traditional Judaism in Israel: "Many leftist secularists
see Judaism as so inimical to liberal values that they have severed their
own ties to it ... They view Judaism as so thoroughly conservative, nationalistic
[i.e., Judeo-centric] and particularistic that it cannot be reformed.
In this view the only hope for the Israeli liberal is the disestablishment
of Judaism." [8]
Is it fathomable that the Democratic Party would have even remotely considered
a Christian of a parallel New Testament world view? And if any major party
dared to choose a Christian literalist as a vice presidential candidate,
would not his or her beliefs (religious or otherwise) be subjected to
the most astounding of microscopic scrutiny?
What we are witnessing throughout the American social and political fabric
is a disturbing double standard, everywhere entrenched throughout American
culture: one standard applied to those of Christian heritage, and another
for Jews. This situation is long standing. As Jewish sociologist Nathan
Glazer noted years ago, "It would be an interesting study to determine
just ... how the Jewish group, which through most of the history of the
United States has formed an insignificant percentage of the American people,
has come to be granted the status of most favored religion." [9]
Lieberman's candidacy has of course raised concerns in the Jewish community
of a resurfacing of anti-Semitism. Yet public fear of the tarnish of anti-Semitism
upon possible Lieberman critics has in fact served to preserve this politician's
religious world view from studied scrutiny and analysis. While the Christian
Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of the world are treated by the mass
media with disdain and routinely discarded as symbols of a narrow-minded
antiquity, Lieberman, protected by the institutionalized fortress of anti-anti-Semitism,
floats in his own circle of critical immunity.
The Jewish concern for an eventual renewal of what is popularly known
as "anti-Semitism" is not unfounded. Lieberman's high visibility, Orthodox
or not, highlights also the presence of extraordinary Jewish power, not
just in the American political system, but throughout American society.
As much as half of all political contributions to the Democratic Party
are believed to be from Jewish sources. Jewish heads of DNC fundraising
arms have been a norm for years. Seven of eleven of Bill Clinton's original
National Security members were Jewish, as were both of his two appointees
to the Supreme Court, and a long list of Jewish cabinet members, including
one of his Directors of the CIA, and even Madeline Albright, who reportedly
discovered her lost Jewish ancestry after she took the office of Secretary
of State. Jewish political influence is so blatant that in 1997, Steve
Grossman, director of AIPAC, the lobbying agency for Israel, merely moved
over
to
become Chairman of the Democratic Party. Ira Foreman, director of
the National Jewish Democratic organization, once told of a Jewish Clinton
White House staff member "who balked at handling the White House Christmas
decorations but was told he had to do it 'because, heck, everyone else
here is Jewish too.'" [10]
Anyone seeking to find profoundly disproportionate "Jewish influence"
(however one cares to define such a term) throughout the realms of American
power will find it, from the heads of the largest mass media conglomerates
(Sumner Redstone at Viacom/CBS, Michael Eisner at Disney/ABC, Gerald Levin
at Time-Warner), five of the last eight official American poet laureates,
four of seven CIA directorates (so says the Jerusalem Post), [11] the
heads of most major American art museums, the heads of most major record
companies, the heads of most New York major trade publishing firms, the
Commissioner of the National Basketball Association, the CEO of McDonalds,
and on and on. Not an insignificant fact too, Jews collectively represent
the wealthiest ethnic group in America.
Lieberman, as a Jew, of whatever persuasion, symbolizes a kind of hidden
elephant that has at last been brought out for a trial evaluation by the
American electorate. Democratic strategists have embarked upon an extraordinarily
complicated, and daring move, trusting that Lieberman's singular image
as a moral fundamentalist will counter voter disenchantment with Bill
Clinton's sexual fiascoes. This strategy is also based on the solid presumption
that Lieberman, by virtual of being Jewish (and by association a victim
of the Holocaust, et al) will not be subjected to the normal public trashings
of political candidates. For any critic to treat Lieberman anything less
than delicately, after all, is to invite the very unwelcome accusation
of anti-Semitism.
Democratic strategists also can count on the certainty that diverse liberal
alignment with the Democratic Party will not, whatever its feelings about
Lieberman's conservative moralism, in any way aid the Republican opposition.
A vote for a member of a minority group is, however paradoxical, also
attractive to those who wish to affirm their feelings of personal inter-ethnic
tolerance and liberalism. Such a political gamble on Lieberman by the
Democratic Party is profoundly anchored upon the powerful machinations
of "political correctness": i.e., that no one of any public or media influence
will dare to challenge a Jew merely for, as it would be configured, being
a Jew. An investigation of traditional Jewish bigotry and ethnocentrism
would happily be spun around by Lieberman and his advocates as a potent
political weapon: the accusation of anti-Semitism.
In other words, the person positioned to very possibly be the next American
vice president, and a future president, is, and will continue to be, summarily
excused from detailed commentary upon the very essence of what he believes.
1. Garfinkle, Adam. The Two Religions of American Jews: A Provocation
for the Sake of Heaven. Conservative Judaism, Winter 1996, p. 4
2. Jolkovsky, Benjamin. Sen. Lieberman: Intermarriage Is Kosher. The Jerusalem
Post, September 20, 2000 2. Hazelton, Lesley. Israeli Women. The Reality
Behind the Myths. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1977, p. 41
3. Kislev, Ran. The Impending Ayatollah State. Ha'aretz [Israeli newspaper],
July 24, 1998
4. Shahak, Israel. Jewish History, Jewish Religion. The Weight of Three
Thousand Years. Pluto Press, London, Boulder, Colorado, 1994
5. Philips, Alan. International Internet Threat to Israel ..., The Daily
Telegraph [London], January 8, 2000, p. 18
6. Huppert, Uri. Back to the Ghetto. Zionism in Retreat. Prometheus Books,
Buffalo, New York, 1988, p. 21
7. Liebman, Charles; Cohen, Steven. Two Worlds of Judaism: The Israeli
and American Experience. Yale University Press, New Haven and London,
1990
8. Eisen, Arnold. The Chosen People in America: A Study in Religious Ideology.
Indiana University Press, 1983, p. 129
9. Rodan, Steve. Not Forgiven, Not Forgotten. Jerusalem Post, August 30,
1996, p. 20
10. Gross, Netty. The Kinship. The Jerusalem Post, May 25, 1998, p. 28-33
