.-. iswiff?f Though most Americans commemorate I492 as the year of the ?discovery? of the Western Hemisphere, for Jews it was the year Christians expelled asfrom Spain, andfor Native Americans its was the heginaing of a period of unprecedented su?ering. Columbus and the Jews: A Personal View Victor uch has been made, in this quincentennial year, of the odd skein of circumstances that linked Columbus to the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. The three caravels?the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria?sailed from Palos in early August 1492, on the day after King Ferdinand?s edict of expulsion went into effect. Ships loaded with fugitive Jews plied the Bay of Cadiz even as Columbus's caravels lifted anchor. The crew of ninety included a number of Jewish converts? or conversos?and the ships? logs are said to have been entered in an early version of Ladino or Judeo-Spanish. The expedition?s state-of?the-art navigational instruments Victor Perera is author ofRites: A Guatemalan Boyhood and Iheforthcorrzing Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy. His chrom'cie of the The Cross and the Pear Tree: A SephardiJourney, will he published hyAtffred A. Knopfin 1994. had been designed by Jews. Ferdinand and Isabella?s banker, Abraham Senior, who may have helped sway the Spanish monarchs in Columbus?s favor, was among the wealthy Jews who raised funds for the expedition. (Se- nior soon after accepted baptism at Isabella?s request, and took on the name Coronel.) Whether or notJewish blood flowed in Columbus?s veins, his voyage of exploration was to a remarkable extent aJewish/converso enterprise. What does all this lore add to Columbus?s accom- plishment? As a Sephardi Jew of Jerusalem-born par- ents who emigrated to Central America in the 19205, am I to take pride in my ancestors? participation in the ?dis- covery? of America? Is the possibility that Columbus harbored secret ?Jewish? yearnings?as claimed by a re- Spected scholar like Salvador de Madariaga and more recently by Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal?meant to enhance my own identity as a Jew? SPECIAL Focus 53 From my perspective, Columbus and his voyages evoke a welter of emotions, underscored by conjectures like the following: Would we not, perhaps, be better off if our continent bore Leif Erikson?s name, and if the New World had been christened in Newfoundland in the Tenth or Eleventh century CE. rather than 500 years later on a small Bahamian reef island? Is it not egregious to continue celebrating a ?discovery? of one human cul- ture by another, rather than accepting it for the unequal and fateful encounter it was? three years of research for a chronicle of the Pere[i]ra family have revealed that my blood kin lived in Spain and Portugal as outward Christians for several generations before the Inquisition caught up with them. In Poftugal alone, the Holy Of- fice?s tribunals processed over three hundred converso Pereiras; two dozen of them were burned at the stake in autos-da-f?. Ninety percent of the Pereiras accused of ?Iua'az'rmo, bererz'a, apostasz?a? were routinely tortured; they forfeited most of their possessions to their Inquisitors and were condemned to penitences of vary- ing severity in the Holy Office?s jails. Hundreds of luck- ier Pereiras, among them my direct ancestors, managed to ?ee the Iberian peninsula to other parts of EurOpe and to the Ottoman Empire. In 1646 one of these forebears, a fabulously wealthy distant cousin named Abraham Israel Pereira, found safe haven in Amsterdam and proclaimed his Jewish origins. After establishing himself as a reSpected merchant and elder of the new Dutch Sephardi congregation, Pereira published two tracts in which he severely chastised Jews who fell prey to old habits and returned to the ?lands of idolatry.? He soon after became famous in the Holy Land after he founded two yeshivas there, one in Jerusalem and another in Hebron. This same Abraham Pereira participated in the excommunication of Sephardi philosopher Baruch Spinoza for the unforgiven apostasy of denying Yiz/Jweb and the primacy of the Torah; inspired by Descartes and Hobbes as well as Maimonides, Spinoza postulated God as an omnipresent divinity whose essence cannot be ap- prehended through scripture, miracles, revelation, or any other a porterz'orz' proof. Spinoza believed that all that is exists in God, and nowhere else, and nothing can be conceived of or known outside of Him. The human mind, endowed with its own spark of divinity, is uniquely capacitated to grasp God?s immanence in nature. Two hundred years later my great grandfather, Yitzhak Moshe Perera, a kabbalist rabbi, departed Sa- lonika for Jerusalem to fulfill his prophetic destiny. In the mid-nineteenth century, Salonika boasted the most self-sufficient and one of the most important Sephardi 54 VOL. 7, No. 5 communities since the Jewish golden age in Spain. But Yitzhak Moshe believed, like Yehuda Halevi, that only in the land of Canaan can a Jew live to the fullest the precepts of the Torah and participate in the establish- ment of the Messianic kingdom. InJerusalem, Yitzhak Moshe wrote a testament to his sons and his descendants: He threatened them with three degrees of excommunication?nz'a'uz} berem, and shamta?if they dared leave Eretz Yisrael for the lands of idolatry. When his first born son, my grandfather Chaim Aharon Perera, defied his father?s commandment and traveled to Alexandria as a religious emissary, he paid a terrible price. Chaim Perera died in impoverished neglect of an infected boil, or grano as my embittered Jerusalem aunts refer to it to this day. On arriving in Alexandria to recite the Kaddish, my father was told Chaim Perera died because he could not afford to pay a doctor to lance his boil. In the mid 19205 my father, his two brothers, and their eldest sister shipped to America to pick the gold from the paving stones. (My mother followed a few years later.) They were apparently unaware that they were closing one circle and opening another, for they carried to the New World the seed of the patriarch?s curse. Columbus?s ?Jewishness? and of his ambiguous legacy. But there are other considerations, con- nected to my place of birth. Although my father and his siblings fared better in Mexico and Guatemala than their father had in Alexan- dria, their business successes were shadowed by misfor- tune. ("Como la estrella mia??like my star?my mother intoned in Ladino, at each new stroke of bad luck.) Mad- ness surfaced in two generations of Perera women, while the most promising first born son died in a freak acci- dent at the age of thirty-four. Two of the three brothers who emigrated to America suffered incapacitating strokes and heart attacks before they turned sixty; the third, my uncle Nissim, lingered in a crepuscular senes- cence for nearly twenty years following the death of his first born, Jaime. It was years before I traced my father?s erratic comportment in Guatemala to a subliminal and cancerous guilt. It seems likely that, when he gave it any thought at all, my father tried to dismiss his grandfather?s stern commandment as a product of kabbalist superstio tion. In Jerusalem, however, father had begun as a teacher of Torah and an apostle of Zionism. It could only have deepened his unease when he realized his first born son was growing up as a New World Marrano. Only my uncle Nissirn was still alive when my aunts showed me their grandfather?s testament in Jerusalem. It had been framed and tacked to the wall of their home in I is against this backdrop that I weigh the issues of Yemin Moshe, below Moses Montefiore?s windmill. When I reminded Uncle Nissim of that document during a lucid interval, he shrugged sorrowftu and remarked, ?There are things in this life we can never comprehend. It struck me that Uncle Nissim?s prolonged twilight was more likely the result of a delayed shock of recognition than it was an effect of his arteriosclerosis. Uncle Nissim died a few years later in Guatemala City at age 83, the longest-lived of the Perera brothers by more than two decades. Among his last coherent pro- nouncements was a request?spoken in Ladino?that he be taken to his old family home below Montefiore?s windmill. Rachel and Reina, my two surviving Jerusalem aunts, are convinced Uncle Nissim?s soul will know no repose until his body is interred in the family grave site On the Mount of Olives, facingJerusalem?s Golden Gate. etermined to become modern Jews and put centuries of ?superstition? behind them, my fa- ther and his younger brother Nissim had opened a department store in Guatemala City and de- voted themselves to becoming rich. For a decade or so they held to their youthful pledge to return one day to Eretz Yisrael and plow their good fortune back into their forefathers? soil. But these bonds had frayed by the time I was born. My father, who was regarded by his sis- ters as Yitzhak Moshe?s Spiritual heir, paid a gentile doc- tor to circumcise me rather than send to Mexico for a make]; and he neglected my religious education until I was a year short of bar mitzvah. When they invited my grandmother Esther to Guatemala, she packed her bags, but then refused to budge after my father confessed that they no longer kept kosher and had opened the store for business on Shabbat. Today, when Aunt Rachel reminisces in Jerusalem about the family?s penury in the years of the British man- date, her rancor at last appears to soften. ?My brothers and elder sister sought a better life for themselves, and no one blames them for that. But they blinded themselves to the consequences of defying our grandfather?s testa- ment.? Aunt Rachel sighs and shakes her head. ?The Eretz Yisrael of today, with all its religious and political squabbles, with Arabs who want to push us into the sea, is not one my grandfather Yitzhak would recognize.? Aunt Rachel?s words made me see my great grandfa- ther as a being of ?esh and blood, human and fallible, rather than as the superhumanly tall, white-bearded, ea- gle-eyed Grand Inquisitor of my aunt?s recollections, and of my own childhood memories. Yitzhak Moshe?s prophetic vision failed him in the end, like it has thou- sands of other powerless Jews throughout the centuries I grew up in the care of Mayan nannies and salesgirls from father?s store who sneaked me into church to save my soul from eternal damnation. With an intuition that mystifies me to this day, Chata, my tender Mayan nanny, apparently detected the shadow of the patriarch?s mark on my brow, and sought my deliverance in the only way she knew: by immersing me in her sensuality and mak- ing me recite one hundred Pater Nosters under the ter- rifying image of the crucified Christ. Chata was knifed to death by a jealous lover when I was five, a that plunged me into an orgy of precocious Jewish guilt. After we moved to Brooklyn, New York, Chata?s older sister Elvira, who had replaced her as my nanny, joined a Mayan nationalist movement. Elvira threw over her Catholic upbringing when she was past thirty. She be- came apprenticed to a Mayan priestess, who taught her the auSpicious and curative properties of each of the twenty days in their ancient calendar. Today Elvira con- ducts prayers in the old ceremonial center of Iximch? to cleanse her soul?and that of her ancestors?of the Spir- itual pollution Columbus brought to their world. Elvira and Other Mayan sorcerers plan a huge demonstration next month to purify the earth of 500 years of occiden- tal occupation and to protest the very idea of a discov- ery of their lands by white Europeans. They call the prayer ceremony ?Return of the Gift. One indigenous group is seriously proposing loading a huge cayuco with Mayan incense burners and paddling off to ?discover? Spain and claim it in the name of their ancestors. Although I myself have survived in the New World, and even prospered, I find more to mourn than to cel- ebrate in Columbus?s exploits. What, after all, is there to be proud of in my ancestors? contribution to the Eu- r0peanization of the American continent? Columbus and his crew were driven by a consuming lust for gold, and the Dominican friars who accompanied his later voyages were likewise bent on harvesting a bounty of new souls for the Mother Church. The vision of instant wealth that drove Christians and converros on Columbus?s voyages lured my father and his brothers to America. In both adventures, the protago- nists sought to escape an oppressive religious orthodoxy. In both instances, their dreams ended in bitter fail- ure. The vision of fabulous wealth proved as elusive to my father and his brothers as it ultimately did to Colum- bus, who died in poverty and obscurity after a long ill- ness in 1506. Only my father made it back in his last year of life to the land of his ancestors, where he ex- perienced a brief and solacing religious reawakening. He died and was buried in Haifa nearly as penniless as on the day he had embarked for America some forty years earlier. (Continued on p. 79) SPECIAL Focus 55 The Expulsion of the laws Front gpain Mic/nae] Lerner mourn this year on the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of theJews of Spain. In the con- tinuing saga of Western Jewry?s attempt to in- gratiate itself with ruling elites, 1492 is being turned into a joyous celebration of the Ladino culture of the Jews of Spain and of Sephardi foods and melodies, rather than into an attempt to force the Western world to make an accounting of how the Christian world could have al- lowed the Inquisition to torture and brutalize our peo- ple. 1492 is the beginning of the modern age for Jews precisely because it so dramatically symbolizes the radi- cal instability of our situation, our vulnerability, and the willingness of the Christian world to use us as a scape- goat and whipping boy. The expulsion cannot be explained merely as a whim of a particularly perverse monarch or of the momentary ascendency of a fanatical Inquisitor. For over one hun- dred years before they were expelled, the Jews of Spain were subjected to increasing levels of legal Oppression and mob brutalization. So intense were the threats, co- ercion, and oppression that many Jews did convert to Christianity, while secretly maintaining their Jewish con- victions and many Jewish practices. These New Chris? tians, no longer subject to the economic restrictions facing the rest of the Jewish people, rapidly rose to po sitions of importance in the economic and political life of Spain. It was resentment toward prominence and power that formed the background to the Church?s de- cision to bring the Inquisition to Spain. In the nineteenth century, German Jews invented the notion that the experience of the Jews of Spain formed a kind of Golden Age of Jewish life. History is almost always written to re?ect the interests and concerns of its era, and for German Jews, seeking to assimilate into Ger- man culture, it was important to discover in Spain a model for Jews who could be both secure in their Jew- ishness and participate in the art, literature, philosophy, and culture of the larger non-Jewish society. Although there were certainly some Jews who had these kinds of Michael Lerner is editor and author of Surplus Powerlessness (Humanities Press, 1991) and The Socialism of Fools (Ti/ekun Boo/cs, 1992). experiences, recent historical scholarship is more in- clined to see the Jews of Spain as enjoying toleration but not substantial equality. Our experience with Islam was marked by its own tensions, but overall we found our- selves in far better shape under Islamic rule than under the rule of the Church. Christianity has a lot of penance to do in relation to the Jewish peeple, and one place to start would be to deal with the Inquisition. Every church in the West where the quincentennial is being celebrated, certainly in the United States and Spain, ought to spend part of this year reaching its parishioners about the Christian role in the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and about the details of what the Inquisition actually did. After one hundred years of anti-Jewish pogroms, torture, and 0p- pression, in 1492 the Christians of Spain ordered the two hundred thousand Spanish Jews to convert or leave within three months. Most left. Ultimately, it was the same energy and the same ruth- lessness that had been directed against the Jews which, once the Jews were expelled in 1492, was then turned by the Europeans on the native peOples of the American hemispheres. The genocidal behavior toward Native Americans was in many ways the externalization of the same rapacious lust for wealth coupled with a violent . conviction of European Christians? own moral and Spir- itual superiority that had been directed against theJews. Those who have been brutalized in class societies are frequently encouraged-to identify as part of some larger ?we? (?the Christian crusader,? ?the Spanish people,? ?the Nazi Party?) whose well-being depends on the bru~ talization and exploitation of some designated ?other.? So the opening to the West not only provided a new way to satisfy the lust for wealth, but also a new frontier through which the anger and accumulated pain of most Europeans could be vented on someone Other than their own ruling elites. Ironically, once Europe had so divided the world that it had no more place to externalize this lust and this psy- chotic denial of the reality of the other, it turned back once again onto its Jews, finally completing in the Holo- caust the logic of 1492. (Continued on p. 80) SPECIAL Focus 57 it ROUNDTABLE Commemorating 1492 Sacvan Bercom'tcb is professor of English literature at Harvard Univer- sity. Natalie Zemon Davis is a professor of history at Princeton Univer- sity. Aron Rodrigue is associate professor of history at Stanford University. Sean Wilen tz is professor of history at Princeton University. icbael ack- crman is professor of history at the University of Tikkun: The focus of this discussion is the 500th an- niversary of 1492 and its meaning to us today in the United States. This year many Americans will be com- memorating the voyage of Columbus to the ?New World and the Opening up of this continent to European ex- ploration and settlement. Jews will also be commemorat- ing the 500th anniversary of our expulsion from Spain and the intensification of the Inquisition. This roundtable is convened to ask the question: What is the best way to think of these events now as we commemorate the 500th anniversary? We understand why many people in the lib- eral and progressive world focus only on the negative con- sequences of the Opening of this continent?the outrageous murder of Native Americans, the forced im- migration of African Americans to serve as slaves, the con- quest and oppression of indigenous peOples. The in?ux of EurOpeans brought suffering and death to tens of mil- lions of people. Yet we wonder if those who celebrate Columbus?s 500th anniversary are not celebrating the sense of openness and possibility that America symbol~ ized to Eur0peans; and more than the symbol, also the reality of a place to which many people could escape, find refuge, and relative freedom. That was true for the Jew- ish people, and for many others as well. And while we are aware that many of the freedoms we now celebrate in the US. were not given by America?s ruling elites but rather won through intense struggle, most notably the struggle against slavery, we nevertheless feel that America?s cele- brations of itself ought to be respected and not as com- pletely invalidated. So we pose this question not only as an historical question but also as a question of contem- porary culture and politics: How ought we to commem- orate 1492, how ought we to think of it and of its consequences for the contemporary world? Zuckerman: We see in the Columbian venture the pro- clivities of the West for exploitation, cultural imperial~ ism, and incompetence in understanding other cultures or coexisting with them. With 500 years of perspective, what we might try to focus on now is an effort to over- come the cultural baggage we brought with us 500 years 58 ago and continue to embody in our cultural life now. The West has a singular inability to live with pluralism, to live with multiple gods. Since the fifteenth century there have been bloody struggles to impose our conception of the ?true god? and an inability to accept other ways of life. We've been struggling with that in the twentieth cen- tury, but the struggle has a long way to go. It?s sobering to rethink the Columbian voyage, and the trepidatious cel- ebration of the quincentennial is one measure of that slow and painful assumption of reSponsibility. Wilentz: In thinking of the negative accounts of Colum- bus?s arrival, we should note that this is not so new, that there was a debate among French phiIOSOphes in the middle of the eighteenth century over whether America was a vast mistake, a terrible catastrophe. The phil- OSOphes argued that the exchange, disastrous for the na- tives and slaves, also hurt Europe; that what they re- ceived was syphilis, wars, tobacco, and sugar that un- dermined European health. Current research now indicates that as a result of the contact with the West somewhere between 40 to 60 mil- lion pe0ple died. The prime agents were microbes, as well as marauders. The question is whether we must focus only on this monumental slaughter or whether we can also notice the redeeming aspects of what came out of the American experience. Some of those redeeming features began to take shape in the American Revolution and the forma- tion of the United States, were redefined inthe Civil War, and are still not completely realized. There?s a con- tinuing struggle to further develop those liberatory as- pects of the American experience. So we ought not to limit our assessment of the American experience by see- ing it only through the frame of the undeniable catas- trophe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Davis: I approach this question through the framework of some new research I?ve been doing where I?ve been looking at issues as an historian, a woman, and a Jew. I?ve been examining the lives of a seventeenth century Catholic woman who went to convert all the native peo- ples (she h0ped) of Canada to Catholicism and a seven- teenth century Protestant naturalist who went to Surinam and used Native American and African slaves to help her with her entomology. My being aJew has been relevant in two ways: first, to try to understand why some of the Iroquois, Huron, and Algonquin peeples decided to become Christian in that first generation (a generation in which there was a great deal of loss of life because of smallpox, but not because of economic exploitation, as was the case in Mexico), and second, to understand the role of Jewish plantation own- ers in Surinam. My conclusion is that we ought to look at these issues from the standpoint of the agency of the peo- ples involved, and also see the tragedy and paradox. With the group of Native Americans in the first gen- eration who decided to reSpond to Christianity, one is struck by the inventiveness with which they seized upon Christianity and tried to use new religious forms, by their experimentation and their creation of new forms. My Jewish past is relevant here. When I ?nd myself shaking my head at how convinced the Catholic missionaries were about the superiority of their system to that of na- tive religions, I remember that as a Jew I was interested in the novelty and experimentation of the Western En- lightenment. So why shouldn?t I let these seventeenth century Native Americans experiment also? Going back to the Has/cab}: (theJewish ?enlightenment? in late eigh- teenth century Germany), Jews have shown an interest in intellectual traditions that differed from their own tra- dition, and being a culturally mixed person myself why should I root only for the side (in this case, Native Amer- ican tradition) that resisted the Catholic message? Why not see the Openness to Catholicism on the part of these Native North Americans as reflecting a curiosity and in- genuity?these Native Americans in Canada made choices. Some of the Native American women had an ap- portunity for a ritual voice in Catholicism which went beyond the dancing and assisting role that they got in shamanic religion, whereas as Catholics they sometimes led prayers'and preached (though not with the approval of the Catholic priests). I don?t mean that Catholicism was better than their own religions, but some of these Native Americans were interested in novelty, and they should be seen not just as victims but also at times as agents in the interaction with European culture. Now, as to Surinam, I found that the colony had been set up in part byJews escaping persecution in Brazil. The Jews of Surinam were not quite citizens but had a Jew- ish militia and had considerable influence on the poli- tics of the Dutch colony. These Jews were often plantation owners and owned some of the largest plan- tations, though the majority of plantation owners were Christian and most of the slaves belonged to Christian owners. Jews didn?t dominate the slave trade, but they were part of it. The contradiction and paradox are re- markable freedoms in terms of cultural and political pos- sibilities, but come at the cost of being slave owners! Bercovitch: One interesting paradox is that from this American history of imperialism, exploitation, genocide, racism, enslavement, and land grabbing, there grew an idea of America that is identified with hope and Oppor- tunity. The word ?America? radiates a symbolic hope and is identified, the way an ideology or religion might be, with a whole configuration of values, absolutes, and even utopian ideals. One thing that struck me, as a Canadian Jew, when I came to this country is how the United States appro- priated for itself the hopeful associations of the concept of ?America.? A second thing was that the United States Spread like a religion or ideology. It was once thirteen states, then twenty, then thirty-six that is, it?s not a distinct terri- tory, not a distinct language, not a distinct culture, but rather it?s a certain configuration of abstractions, a set of values. This is not true of Canada or of the Latin Amer- ican countries. The U.S. has plenty of Oppression and dis- crimination, but it has a rhetoric of openness to anyone who shares the basic American values and that rhetoric creates realities, allows for social revitalization and mo- bilization in crisis for new Spurts of social reform. The rhetoric values pluralism, representative individualism, mobility, and voluntarism?and these are a product of a certain fortuitous conjunction between Protestantism, liberalism, and the idea of a new world. One distin- guishing feature of the United States is that it is a nation founded by a compact of words. Unlike the Jews who have a covenant based on words, but who also identify themselves by blood and history, the U.S. put forward the notion that anybody could join this American community simply by subscribing to its principles. You become an American not by blood but by consenting to a certain American way (and hence the plausibility of having an' UnAmerican Activities Committee). Built on the reality of multiple interests and constituencies, America he- comes a society committed to principles like pluralism, multidenominationalisin, multinationalism (America as a nation of nations, the place where all peoples converge). Rodrigue: I approach these issues as a Sephardic Jew whose family traces itself to the experience of 1492, and as a new American. As an historian one has to be pro- foundly aware of the great tragedy of what happened as a consequence of the conquest of the Americas, North and South. The Christian European attempt to remake ?the other? in one?s own image was a dominant theme of this exploitation in the Americas and was something that we as Jews had already encountered for centuries. 1492 and its meaning for the New World is the culmi- nation of a form of oppression that we Jews had been experiencing for quite a long time in the Old World? SPECIAL Focus 59 so if one incorporates Jewish experience when one is writing history one sees that what happens to other people after 1492 is really not surprising, but rather an extension of what had already been happening to the Jews. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 is a moment of profound tragedy because the largest of all medieval Jewish communities was uprooted and expelled from Spain, but it is also a moment which led to new areas of settlement . which themselves be- came immensely prod uc- tive of new forms of Jewish life, not only in the West but also in the East. 1492 is not only an end but also a new beginning for Jews. Tikkun: What is correct in the sentiment of those who argue that this is a time for soul searching for what has happened in the name of America? Zuckerman: There is a humbling that is necessary. The tri- umphal story that is normally told in America makes al- lowances for some paradox and tragedy at our origins, but then quickly moves on to talk about the wonderful open? ings that develOped in American history. But these ?w0n- derful Openings? are themselves problematic because of the way that they are linked to a very thin community in a society that weakens social connections between peOple. This is a world where ?getting what you can? and ?look- ing out for number one? are the top priorities, where mu- tual mistrust tends to predominate?and these are closely bound up with the kinds of freedom offered by the ?won- derful Openings? that are part of the American story. When peOple don't have the sorts of security and con- nectedness that more richly embedded communities sometimes provide, they are more likely to strike out at others. Out of our fear and loneliness we have assumed the role of policemen to the world?and in this way be- come more of a danger-than a hope to the world. If one looks at the savagery and brutality with which the EurOpeans dealt with the native populations, the driven sense of righteousness which is not at home with itself, and the way that this brutal behavior goes on for 60 TIKKUN VOL. 7, No. 5 A replica ofCoZumbur?r ceravei, the Nina, docks in New Kirk harbor next to the Vietnam War-era aircraft carrier the Intrepid. centuries, through the obliteration of native populations and the enslavement of tens of millions of Africans, one has to notice that the society created on these shores by Europeans was at times a symbol of danger and threat to the rest of the world. \Wilentz: But we should also acknowledge that there were things that really have been hopeful in the experi- ence of America, particularly since the creation of the United States?that the rhetoric of American hopeful- ness is not totally disconnected from the actual realities that have been built in America. Davis: Perhaps the best way to commemorate Colum- bus and 1492 is to remember, as Jews are supposed to do, but to remember with a renewed and enriched mem- ory, one that incorporates the range of experiences, from the bloodshed and violence to the hopes that America?s realities have generated. I think there is something to export from America to the world: namely, an emphasis on the fact that the cul- tural outcome of the United States is the result of a mix, that we have not only a population mix but a radical cul~ tural hybridity. This is not quite a ?melting pot,? but rather the constant interaction of diverse values?albeit in a context of asymmetries of power. The slaves brought over from Africa and the peoples who were here origi- nally are still present even in a mixed form. Their values are still here, either expressed by them directly, or can- nibalized by American culture. The idea of ?America? should be redefined so as to incorporate the active role of pe0ple who are sometimes looked at only as victims. So if there is to be a transportable dream from the Amer- ican experience, it is one that says to the world in a time of intense nationalism that if you want to have an idea of hope it must be one based on recognizing mixture. Bercovitch: That message should be accompanied by the memory of the destruction of indigenous p0pula- tions in the United States. In Mexico or South America we have a much greater presence of native populations, whereas in the United States we have a notion of exter- mination that went hand in hand with the notions of freedom and progress. The conquerors could justify their sense of manifest destiny in terms of these values and hence their right to eliminate p0pulations that were impediments to the progress and freedom that the sup- posedly superior civilization was introducing to this con- tinent. Americans thought they were creating a new world and that brought with it the legitimacy to bring devastation to the native p0pulation. The ?openness? and ?h0pe? and ?freedom? that I talked about earlier, which are central to the rhetoric of America, really are very specific kinds of ideals that are intrinsically tied to representative individualism, competition, mobility, a certain kind of liberal plural- ism. America can absorb Blacks, women, Native Amer- icans, provided that they conform to a particular pattern of life, and that they define freedom in terms of a liberal society. Zuckerman: Unlike the Indians who knew what they were doing when they cannibalized, we always denied cannibalization. We never acknowledged what we were taking from the Indians or from the slaves or from anyone else. Precisely the way that we knew our- selves was as not Indians, not Blacks, but without our own identity. Davis: Perhaps one of the things we could ask from this 1992 commemoration is that we take time to find these hidden roots and this incorporated identity. Zuckerman: The notions of freedom to which we are wed- ded work against ever asking those kinds of questions. All through Latin America there are cultures that have done a much better job than we of absorbing and acknowl- edging the presence of other cultures and other races. Rodriguez I?m not sure you?re right unless you have a notion of absorption that means taking people and get- ting them to adapt to the dominant cultural forms and culturally remake them. America as a failed utopia might nevertheless have the potential for developing human freedom in ways that other societies don?t, precisely because we have the rhetoric of freedom. Wilentz: We have come a long way from the seventeenth century, and there is much more of an awareness in p0p- ular culture for the need and value of cultural mixing. So we have a growing commitment to cultural diversity. What unifies the society, however, are our basic politi- cal ideas. Unlike Sacvan Bercovitch, I don?t think that there?s something in the essential nature of America?s in? dividualism or American democracy that necessarily ends in a certain kind of political, social, or cultural type or outcome. Those founding words have been given many different meanings, and much of American history has been a fight over those meanings. Certainly immi- grants were drawn to America in part because of its promise of material advancement, but also, and not com- pletely wrongly, because they saw America as a place where ordinary people had much more control over their lives and over politics than anyplace else. Democ- racy always discomfits the monied few. Bercovitch: It seems to me that we risk overemphasiz- ing the degree to which the US. is really Open. There are power structures here that are very much in place, with a huge and powerful military/industrial complex. The ?alternatives? that are offered to the American peo- ple?Ross Perot, Bill Clinton?come from within a par- ticular elite of power, and ?politics? has to do with sustaining a certain way of life based on free enterprise. When a group like Blacks or Puerto Ricans have a com- plaint against the society, the option offered to them is a version of representative individualism?Black capi- 7 talism, Puerto Rican capitalism, competition to obtain positions within the existing power structure. It?s true that things have been changed in this country, but the changes have often been carefully crafted to strengthen the existing social system. Davis: 1492 represented a moment when pe0ple felt committed to changing things a great deal. The attempt to turn the US. into a society to which the little guy could always come over, or into a society that was going to play a democratic role rather than a policing role around the globe?these haven?t worked out too well. But think of 1492 as the beginning of new worlds, from North Amer- ica down to Brazil and Argentina. Not new because Eu- ropeans discovered them, but new because these were societies that were dramatically transformed by the infu- sion of peOple from different places, and by the incor- poration of the indigenous people through intermarriage, SPECIAL Focus 61 cultural exchange, or through their continued presence. This was one way of thinking about doing something new in the world, different from revolutions, different from divine grace, and different from small scale utopian ex- perimentation. It may not be the most promising ideal around?current re?ection on a new African humanism or on multiple identities in India seems at least as inter- esting?but it is a way to salvage something hopeful from the cruelties and injustice of conquest. Zuckerman: There?s a certain way in which we in Amer- ica are just incorrigible evangelists. I think it?s just ludi- crous for us to talk about us bringing h0pe to the world. What celebrating 1492 should be about is ad0pting a new kind of modesty?not a reassertion of notions that we will export multiculturalism or anything else to the world. Look at the Columbian venture: an Italian work- ing for the Spaniards in a marine world essentially Por- tuguese, with navigators and mariners from every part of EurOpe. They mixed much more easily in 1492 than people did in the ensuing 500 years, and the whole ven- ture was founded on a profound European hope. The multiculturalism and hOpe that we fatuously prepose to bring to the world, the world already had and has. Tikkun: One twist on this: It turns out that many of those most committed to telling the story of America by em- phasizing its ability to create a new kind of society that uniquely allows for the blending of different cultures have been Jews engaged in a fierce effort to assimilate into the American mainstream. In telling the story in its most Optimistic way, those Jews are trying to explain to themselves how it could be that there exists in America a universalistic culture into which they could assimilate as an alternative to their Jewishness. For such Jews, it would be very important to see this society as a product of mixing and sharing rather than as a society whose es- sential features derived from the needs and visions of its upper class Protestant male elite. Zuckerman: Ironically, the people who were most com- mitted to that story simultaneously were those most fearful about the possibility of new eruptions of anti- Semitism. My generation and that of my kids is worried far less about anti-Semitism and far more about the per- ils of freedom. Davis: I felt that my Jewishness and its outsider quality made me less likely to accept the celebratory mode about American society. Rodriguez The point that TIKKUN raises about the role of Jews in creating a celebratory ideology is historically true. 62 VOL. 7, No. 5 AndJews in other societies have created similar for other societies in which they?ve lived. In France Jews played a major role in creating an ideology of republi- canism and of the French Revolution which provided an image of themselves as both French citizens participating in a universal culture and as Jews able to keep their par- ticularity. German Jews had the same story in their rela- tionship to building a conception of German culture. And Jews did this in the face of a ?ourishing anti-Semitism in these societies. But given that all these stories are they still raise the question of how to work to make real- ity correspond to what?s good in the myth. Bercovitch: I share these h0pes. I even believe they offer the best prospect for our modern world. But the universalist prospect depends on our awareness that American ideals are also the expression of particular po- litical economic structures. Davis: I believe that one message that remains relevant is the Jewish command: Remember, Zacbor.? Remember but remember with a renewed memory the range of ex- perience from the bloodshed to the hOpes, and not just the hopes brought over from Europe but also the hopes that were in the minds of Native Americans and of Africans who were brought here. Remember in humil- ity, as Michael Zuckerman has reminded us. Have hope for the future, but a hOpe that is based not only on dif- ferences between people, but also on how much one benefits from mixtures and the hybrid. Wilentz: Someone once asked the journalist I.F. Stone how he could possibly admire Thomas Jefferson in the least, given Jefferson?s role as a slave owner. Stone replied, ?Because history is a tragedy, not a melodrama. Americans have been presented with a very sentimental, melodramatic view of the past; but historians dwell in the terrain of tragedy, which is why?when we leave our typewriters and go out into society?we are so appalled at the sentimental and melodramatic way that the Columbian drama is presented. But out of that anger at the way the story has been distorted we ought not to cre- ate a counter-melodrama of our own with pure good guys (Native Americans, African Americans) and purely evil pe0ple (the EurOpeans). Our memory should lead us to a humility and not to a self-righteous adventurism to which American culture is also prone. But there is a notion that everything about America is so besmirched by that founding catastrOphe that nothing has emerged of any worth. I reject that. There were things that came out of this whole experience that remain wor- thy of our respect, wonder, and admiration.