PAPERS FROM THE TIKKUN CONFERENCE (II) In this special section we are pleased to present several selected addresses and papers from the Tikkun Conference, which was held in New York City December 18-20, 1988. In the March/April 1989 issue and in the forthcoming July/August 1989 issue additional papers can be found. We regret that we cannot print all the material from the conference; there are many other interesting and important papers we would like to include, but space is a problem. BANQUET ADDRESS American Jews and Israel Irving Howe as there ever, these past two centuries, been a time when the word ?crisis? was not invoked in talking about the Jewish conditiou? Call that descriptive a clich?, declare yourself weary with the extreme and unnerving language favored by Jewish publicists?and still: we know that in the modern era Jewish life has lurched from crisis to crisis. Of the prolonged security and cultural ease that has been the lot of other peoples, we have known very little. So I will perhaps be forgiven ifI say that once again the Jews are in deep trouble, experiencing a dual crisis, one in Israel, bloody and marked by moral laceration, and the other in the United States, bloodless and marked by moral evasion. The two crises interlock, quite as the two Jewish communities interlock. Jewish life, insofar as it is sustained by a historical? that is, a modern?Jewish consciousness, is a life malformed: Not only because of the two thousand years of exile, though the exile has done its damage; nor because of some gentile passion for murdering Jews, though there has been plenty of murder too. Something hard to locate, and harder still to name, has been at work. Amid all the achievements of recent Jewish life there is a paradox, perhaps less so in Israel than else- where, but, insofar as the Israeli Jews are marked by historical consciousness, also in Israel. Jewish life requires, as a commandment, that the Holocaust sear our memories, but precisely this memory determines that we be malformed. Doves and hawks, left and right, at ease in Zion or easier still in the Diaspora: all malformed. \Whether the notion of making Jewish life ?normal? was ever more than a dream of our dreamers, I cannot Irving Howe is the author of World of Our Fathers Harcourt Brace Jovanovicb, 1976) and coeditor of Dissent. say; but I believe the talk of a ?normal? Jewish life in the late twentieth century is an absurdity. Individuals may live a ?normal? life, but Jewish life as such cannot be ?normal.? As an extreme instance, I would cite the opening chapter of David Grossman?s novel See Under: Love, which depicts very powerfully the trauma of Holocaust survivors in Israel-those nightmares of memory that, in far less terrible and sometimes even suppressed forms, af?ict all Jews insofar as they remain Jews, even the toughest of sabras, even the most philis- tine and bourgeoisi?ed of American Jews. To live as a conscious Jew means to live with a malformed con- sciousness. This can be seen in the notions of some North American Jewish writers who, perhaps by way of compensation, want the Jews to become s/ptaree, want them to create a new breed of Hebrew samurai. It can be seen in the confusions of American Jews who feel themselves simultaneously secure and endangered, strong and weak, at home and homeless, liberated from yet also burdened with the Jewish past. And it can be seen in the wisecrack of the late Israeli prime minister, Levi Eshkol, who once remarked that Israeli Jews saw them- selves, or were seen by others, as Shinzslaon der NE?ekb' diger; Samson the pitiful, Samson the feeble. What lies at the root of such feelings is not just the memory of Nazi murders. The crucial fact is that the Nazis systematically humiliated the Jews, that they stamped upon the Jews their marks of sadism and su- periority, that they made the Jews grovel and hop, that, with at least some success, they cunningly undermined the humanity of the Jews; and surely this must have shaken Jewish self-undersranding and self-regard. Per- haps such a realization lies behind the refusal of the great Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzl-tever, a survivor of the Vilna ghetto, to speak about his memories of the Holocaust years?memories about Jewish conduct. 71 Perhaps, at the other end of the spectrum, such a realization led Boris Pasternak to ask whether the end- less suffering of Jews might be too high a price to pay for Jewish survival. And perhaps some such realization made the Canaanite movement in Israel propose to wipe out Diaspora history, in the strange belief that a national identity could be forged by disinheriting a shared past. The half-buried, aching memory of humili4 ation recurs in every precinct of Jewish life; not many Jewish politicians, in Israel or elsewhere, can refrain from exploiting it. Nor is there any escaping. Perhaps our common fate consists in not escaping. For us in America, such feelings are vicarious and therefore often politicized, melodramatic, and inauthen- tic; but that does not make them any the less painful. Every American Jew, whether he blusters, in the comfort of ignorance, that he is ?proud to be a Jew? or, in. the shame of denial, tries to bleach himself into universality, knows?somewhere, in the last little pocket of the heart?s truth?that he too is implicated in this historical situ- ation. Notable as are our successes, so too are the costs. Success, it seems, can generate nothing better than . . . success. Traumatized by large disasters, Ameri- can Jews choose to be dulled by local victories. Shims/9022 der Nebekx?ydz'ger is reincarnated as Shims/3012 tier Brahmas, honored signer of checks, yet when he takes off his tuxedo and puts on his pajamas, he is once again der Nebek/adz'gei: he American Jews constitute a drained com- munity, drained of its animating passions and energies, of its faith that it possesses a self- subsistent ground for being. In these past seventy-?ve years American Jews have experienced too much, have taken too many blows, so that, even while landing on their feet, they have lost their bearings. The minority of organized Jews is trapped in a maze of activity that serves to avoid self-scrutiny. Behind the buildings, the temples, the committees, the organizations, behind even the awesome phalanx of Jewish presidents, there is mostly a hollowness, a vacuum of meaning and value; and this routine has for its end, if not its purpose, the dulling of doubt, the postponement of self-awareness. For in those Jews with a ?icker of awareness?and we have some, of course?there burns a fear that if they dare look inward they might ?nd little or nothing. Communities, like individuals, go through phases of creative energy and then a drab sterility. American Jews have known some high, even exalted, moments? the innovations of Reform Judaism, the strivings of the immigrant years, the flowering of Yiddish literature, the livelier phases of Zionism, the flare, brief and ambiguous, of the Jewish left; all these far more than the doings of a marginal intelligentsia, all shared by 72 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 3 masses of ordinary Jews, and all putting forth ver- sions of traditional idealism while still ending in loss, disillusion, dispersion. The yoking of notable achieve- ment and disheartening failure is something that young American Jews may find hard to understand, especi- ally if they share our native indifference to historical memory?they ?nd hard to understand the caution, the weariness, the persuasion of ?lateness? that courses through the Jewish community: The one thing that has worked for American Jews is America. No small matter; in fact a good deal. But not everything. America has allowed the Jews to live and many of them to thrive; and in appreciation of this fact many Jews have tempered their inherited liberalism, allowing it to shade into a moderate skepticism. If, however, being a Jew in America means that you can live, it also means that you know less and less why you should live as aJew. The very word that many American Jews, often including ourselves, use for self-de?nition? ?Jewishness? [not Judaism)?is notable for its puffy vagueness. ?Jewishness? suggests a duty of remembrance, a tremor in response to the proddings of nostalgia. And ?Jewishness? may, I suspect, serve as a station in the retreat of people on the left. Much of our life has lost its sweep of conviction, has in good measure declined into a kindly philisrinism without much faith or knowledge. As for the older animating beliefs of Jewish life, little remains. Authentic religion is the privilege of a small minority, often self- sequestered socially and culturally; the faith of most synagogue and temple adherents (as the more serious rabbis tell one in the privacy of their studies) is thin, lukewarm. The secularism of American Jews is open to precisely the same charge, and the ease with which it nestles in the temples provides suf?cient evidence. The memory of Jewish socialism fades. Yiddish survives as archaeology and sentiment. Zionism, shrunk to a shape- less benevolence, cannot oblige its adherents to risk a one~way ticket to Israel. The remnant of Jewish liberal- ism has lost its assertiveness, declining into votes and regrets. In saying these unpleasant things, I do not mean to deny that there have been some admirable developments within the American Jewish community; but these, like bawrrot, tend to be marginal or, like the recent growth of Jewish feminism and Jewish studies in the universities, at some distance from organized Jewish life. And in saying these things I do not mean to question anyone?s goodwill: we are all floundering together. Few of us in America can claim to be more than partial Jews, that is, Jews in but part of our lives; few can claim the assurance or coherence of unbroken tradition. Nor is this anyone?s fault. \?Ue live in a world we did not make. These are the circumstances that led many American - -: Jews of my generation, secular but also religious, to feel a sense that we came late, or too late, in the experience of American Jews. Listening to participants in this conference, I sometimes had a sense that, beneath the assertiveness of language, there was an even stronger feeling of ?lateness? than that felt by my own generation, which at least knew some impress from the immigrant streets and some fragments of Yiddish. And from late- ness to lostness is only a short distance. he American Jewish community finds its main purposes in philanthropy?still one of its major in politics. Its organized segment has beCOme politicized in a very narrow way?as a lobby for Israeli policies. There is something sterile about such a role, and not very digni?ed either; it makes for feelings of inadequacy among American Jews and for a barely suppressed contempt among Israelis. It is a role that can hardly promote a community of spiritual resource and intellectual energy. A mood of inhibition, at moments slipping into repressiveness, dominates organized American Jewish life. With all its wealth and influence, it still trembles nervously if a few young dissidents break from the of?cial ?line.? It still deludes itself that there are things the goyz'm must not be allowed to hear?as if we were living in a con?ned East European ghetto rather than in the transparency of modern communications where the deeds of a Shamir, or the Rabin who does Shamir?s dirty work, ?ash across the continents. Israel, it?s become the fashion to say, is the ?religion? of American Jews; but a ?religion? focused On a state must risk idolatry. We should realize that this condition is historically mandated and not likely to change soon. In the view of many American Jews, almost everything to which they or their elders were once pledged has failed?a judgment with a good portion of truth. For them Israel represents the [art Jewry/3 hope, which is one reason they respond more to the idea or image of Israel than to its complex reality, and why they cannot bear much criticism of Israel, especially from Jews. American Jews also know that if Israel were secure and prosper- ous, and therefore no longer in need of its immobile brothers across the Atlantic, they, the American Jews, would be left empty-handed and might have no option but to ask: Why do we exist? What makes us Jews? Of what signi?cance is all this to us? And Israelis, once secure and prOSperous, might say (as many of them, including our dovish friends, have been itching to say): ?Look here, Chaverz'm, come'live with us or stop calling yourselves Zionists; and if you choose not to come, then good-bye and good luck.? \Vhat then would Ameri- can Jews say? \What would we say? The bulk of ordinary Jews, who may belong to a temple but are neither religious nor organizationally involved, sense that insofar as they remain Jews it is mostly Israel that provides a rationale for collective existence. If not the deepest reason, then the readiest rationale. It is this that makes the American Jewish institutions, despite an occasional mutter or rasp, depen- dent upon the Israelis. And that is why it seems unlikely that any large number of American Jews will become. openly critical of Israeli policies: they simply could not bear it; they would feel there nothing But what about the prorest regarding \Vho-is-a-Jew? Didn?t the lamb beCOme a lion? \X?ell, the lamb, being a shrewd lamb, understood that to survive as a lamb it had to roar like a lion. The American Jewish leadership spoke up against Shamir?s surrender to the religious right when its symbolic authority and institutional base were threatened. Actually, this issue is far less important than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is the latter that now forms the main touchstone of Jewish behavior, and it is the chosen failure of the major Israeli forces to advance a policy of conciliation that is our central burden. To live as a conscious Jew means to live with a mayor/med coma'oumess. Of course, the American Jewish community, having discovered the sweet taste of just a little independence vis-a-vis Israel, may want a little more. It may ?nd the courage to speak openly on the central question. But I wonder. If an Israeli government were to make some noises about ?autonomy? for the W?est Bank?too little, too late?~even those American Jews that have ventured a bit of criticism might well be glad to fall back into line. Well, things may change. Perhaps the historical trau- mas that have overdetermined American Jewish behavior have begun to fade, and we may witness greater in- dependence in the organized Jewish community. Recent events give no clear sign. True, the Jewish community showed it could keep some distance from Israel once the American government started conversations with the PLO, but then the Jewish community succumbed, rather shamefacedly, into conformity with the American government. To keep a modest distance from both governments seems beyond its capacities. On its own, the American Jewish community would never have pro- posed or endorsed talking with the PLO. The American Jewish organizations are trying to waffle and ?nesse, and how long they can do that is a question. If the positions of the dominant Israeli parties on the Middle East crisis remain unchanged and, in consequence, there is a deepening split between Israel and America, then the organized American Jews will face a painful choice. AMERICAN Jews AND ISRAEL 73 A minority will hold fast to the hawkish, a smaller minority to the dovish, position; but most American Jews will be both unwilling to attack head-on the American government?s stand and unable to criticize openly the Israeli stand. That?s not a happy prospect. he one conclusion I?m reasonably sure of is that the coming few years will be dif?cult for those of us who support the Israeli cloves and not so easy for those of us who wish to advance liberal or democratic-left opinions. So, a few concluding thoughts: There is no unquestionable sanction in Jewish tra- dition or thought for political liberalism. There has been a strand within Jewish life inclining us to liberal and socialist ideas. Insofar as we want to advance such ideas in America, we must do so on intrinsic and universalistic grounds. But to claim that a liberal politics is somehow sanctioned by Judaism leads to parochial sentimentality or ethnic vanity. Our Jewish experience may have prompted some of us to a certain kind of politics, but our argument on its behalf cannot simply rely upon that experience; it must transcend it even as it draws from it. Now, there may be a certain discontinuity, a ruptured narrative, in what I?ve been saying. I began by describing . the deepening crisis of Jewish identity in America, and then turned to Jewish politics, or, more precisely, to Israeli policies. So let me make clear that I do not see our involvement on the dovish side as necessarily con- tributing to a solution of the identity crisis of American Jews. For the irony is that those of us who deplore the BANQUET ADDRESS Now and Then excessive politicization of American Jewish life must now, unhappily, contribute to it. The Israeli-Palestinian con?ict is of such overriding importance that we have to give it our major attention. The political battle to which we are obligated to turn will probably obscure efforts to ?nd a solution to the American Jewish crisis of identity?if, as I doubt, there is a solution. In the next few years there is probably going to be a ?war among the intellectual, political ?war? ?concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Recent events point not to an end but to a beginning of that ?war.? It will be heated and nasty. Some American Jewish intellectuals may feel tempted simply to pull out. Blessed by geography, we have choices. The tempta- tion to withdraw is only human, and all of us feel it now and again. To keep ?ghting over this issue, the central issue of Jewish life today, means to win little gratitude at home and some abuse abroad. It means to forgo the moral elevation of an Elie Wiesel, who speaks eloquently about all injustices except those closest to Jewish life. But we should persist. Why? To stand in solidarity with our friends in Israel?Peace Now and other such groups. To show that from our particularist vantage point we still hold firm to universalist values. And in the hope that Israel as a democratic state will ?nally agree, with all due precautions, to accept the same national rights for the Palestinians that it fought to gain for itself. That seems to me the ordering of our crises and our orts. Unto each day the burdens thereof. El Grace Paley want to read this piece to you ?rst and then I want to say a few things. This is called Midrash on Happiness.? I don?t think this is really a midrash, but I called it that. Grace Paley is a writer. Her books include The Little Dis- turbances of Man (Penguin), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (Fermi; Straw 6r Gr'roux), Later the Same Day (Penguin), and Leaning Forward (Granite Press). 74 TIKKUN VOL. 4, N0. 3 What she meant by happiness, she said, was the fol- lowing: she meant having (or having had) (or continuing to have) everything. By everything, she meant, ?rst, the children, then a dear person to live with, preferably a man, but not necessarily (by live with, she meant for a long time but not necessarily). Along with and not in preferential order, she required three or four best women friends to whom she could tell every personal fact and then discuss on the widest deepest and most hopeless level, the economy, the constant, unbeatable, cruel war economy, the slavery of the American worker to the