If there is a lesson to be had, and consolation to be found, in the upcoming festival of Hanukkah, which begins Tuesday night, it is that the challenges we face as American Jews are not as new as may believe. Rising rates of intermarriage between Jew and non-Jew, a tug of war between our Jewish and secular commitments, the influence of our host culture on the Judaism we practice, the arguments we have over who is a Jew and what is Judaism, and the terms by which one may or may not convert to Judaism – none of these questions are without precedent in Jewish history. In the words of Ecclesiastes: “There is nothing new under the sun.” The debates of American Jews, tortured as they may be, are merely the latest expressions of the hyphenated lives that Jews before us have faced, perhaps most famously the Hellenistic Jews to whom we will turn our attention with the upcoming celebration of Hanukkah.
As students of the festival may know, beneath the tale of the miraculous cruse of oil that lasted well beyond its allotted time lies the question of whether the light of our Jewish lives can withstand the assimilating forces of our host society. In the story of Hanukkah, that culture was Hellenism – the Greek language, culture, and way of life brought to the world by Alexander the Great and his successors. The challenge Jews faced was not merely one of living under Greek political power. Rather, in the words of Professor Shaye Cohen, it was the challenge of how best to “preserve Jewish identity while simultaneously partaking of the riches of Hellenistic culture? How to balance the conflicting claims of universalism and particularism, the desire to be part of the larger world and the desire to be separate and distinct?” (The Maccabees to the Mishnah, p. 37) Evidence of Hellenizing influences on Jewish life abound, from the pottery and architecture archaeologist have found from ancient Palestine, to the Greek language we know the Jews spoke, to the importation of Hellenistic ideas into our literature. Case in point is the book of Ecclesiastes which I just cited, whose philosophical outlook probably has more to do with Greek stoicism than authorship by King Solomon. We have yet to find evidence of Adon Olam being sung to the melodies of Greek Broadway musicals, but if Hellenistic Jews had posted their Shabbat services on YouTube, I imagine we would find that, too. The list goes on and on, but the most important thing to point out is that the Jewish-gentile intercourse, if you will, was not limited to art, literature, philosophy or religion. Jews fell in love with non-Jews and non-Jews with Jews, and they sought to build lives together – crossing the boundaries from being one of them to one of us. Not surprisingly, it was during this period that we have the first documented description of a convert to Judaism – an Ammonite general named Achior. As interpersonal contact increased between Jew and gentile, communal boundaries were both defined and sometimes blurred. The manner by which one could cross those boundaries, the manner and terms by which a gentile became a Jew became the source of much contention.
Which is where the Hanukkah story comes in. The achievements of the Maccabees were far more than just a military victory of the few against the many. As recounted in The First Book of Maccabees, the Jewish community was divided between the Hellenists, who sought to integrate Greek culture into Judaism and affirm their place in Hellenistic society, and the rejectionists, who believed that Jews could withstand the forces of Greek culture only by way of strict boundaries and social isolation. It was the Hellenizing Jews, most famously the high priests appointed by Antiochus – Jason and then Menelaus – who sought to do away with Jewish practices like kashrut, sabbath observance, and circumcision that served to separate Jews from the rest of society. It was when those Hellenizing efforts resulted in the desecration of the Temple that Judah Maccabee and his band of brothers rebelled, not just against the hand of the oppressor, but against any interaction – cultural, religious or otherwise –between Jews and Greeks. The battle of Hanukkah was not just between Jew and Greek, but also between two Jewish communal responses to the question of how best to thrive in a society where the line between Jew and non-Jew, Judaism and non-Judaism, was in a constant state of flux and redefinition.
Charles Liebman, the late sociologist of religion, once explained the paradoxical relationship between increased and freer relations between Jew and gentile and the rise of extremist tendencies. While it may not be surprising that there have always been Jews who have embraced a robust exchange with their host community, equally predictable, wrote Liebman, have been Jews who have responded to Jewish-gentile interaction like the Maccabees, with increased stringencies and social isolation. The debate between the Maccabees and the Hellenizing Jews was neither the first nor the final example of culture wars resulting from Jews living in a non-Jewish context. Ever since Joseph and his brothers went down to Egypt, and maybe even before, Jews have debated how best to contend with this tension. The best example is probably our very own post-Emancipation era – the promise of modernity being the breakdown of the intellectual, social, and political boundaries separating Jew from gentile. As students of the modern Jewish experience know, while many Jews have used this newfound freedom to affirm their place in non-Jewish culture and assimilate its influences into Jewish expression, other Jews have responded to the same phenomenon by rendering even stricter interpretations of Jewish law and rejecting all that modernity had and has to offer. (C. Liebman “Extremism as a Religious Norm” in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 22:1, pp. 75-86)
Whether one is studying Judaism of the second century BCE or contemporary Jewry, practically speaking, the question is the same. Shall we be shields-up or shields-down? Shall we affirm our place in non-Jewish culture or reject it outright? There are so many implications to this debate, from the music we sing on Shabbat to the rituals we observe to the sort of community we seek to build. For the purposes of our discussion today, and our community conversation regarding communal boundaries that continues this Tuesday evening under Rabbi Zuckerman’s leadership, I want to focus on how these observations impact our direction regarding conversion to Judaism. As our anticipated winter speakers Dr. Daniel Gordis and Dr. David Ellenson make clear on this subject (building on Liebman’s thesis), the history of stringencies and leniencies on conversion to Judaism is a direct outcome of the perceived threat (or opportunity) created by increased Jewish-gentile relationships. Rejectionists, not surprisingly, see the upswing in Jewish-Gentile contact and increase their stringencies on what it takes to become a Jew, seeking not only to dissuade the would-be convert, but to eliminate the prospect that a liaison with a former non-Jew could ever find sanction among our people. The most striking example I can think of is the 1935 proclamation of the Syrian Sephardic community to ban any of its members from marrying a convert of any kind. Not a non-Jew, but a convert – a decree no doubt meant to be an ‘iron wall’ against the openness of American culture. And while such a stance against any form of conversion whatsoever is hardly the norm, one need not be a rabbinic scholar or sociologist of religion to see that increasing stringencies regarding the process of conversion, the motivation of the would-be-Jew, the behavioral expectations the convert must meet in order to become a Jew, and the revocability of that conversion once completed has more to do with this rejectionist posture vis-à-vis Jewish-gentile relations than it does with one or another interpretation of Talmudic law. The greater the perceived challenge that contact with the non-Jewish world brings, the greater the stringencies regarding conversion, here, in Israel, and anywhere else. (Ellenson and Gordis, Pledges of Jewish Allegiance)
None of this lets us off the hook here in the comfort of our progressive circles. Time and again, I have stated from this pulpit my belief that we should be more lenient, not less, on the subject of conversion. Such a position, I suppose, is consistent with my ongoing embrace of what it means to live the hyphen of being an American Jew. I see the numbers on intermarriage – both nationally and in our own community. I see it is as my job to increase the number of Jews living Jewish lives, and yes, to be transparent, I choose to read rabbinic literature in a way that supports my point of view. But as our community finds its voice and takes its stand on this subject, I must be honest with myself and with you. Justifiable as it may be to be lenient on conversion, it is a leniency that can only be justified if we have also taken steps to ensure that that individuals or individual Jewish households go on to live engaged Jewish lives. A conversion program with integrity cannot just be about an intro class and a dip into the mikveh; it must be a program aimed at creating robust Jewish identity – before, during, and perhaps most importantly, after conversion. My goal is not to create Jews in name only. Such a stance seems beneath the dignity of my rabbinate and the Judaism that I love and defend so. My goal as a rabbi, Jewish educator, and communal leader is to be eyes wide open to the realities of American Jewish life, set a bar of Jewish living for every Jew and would-be Jew to aspire towards, and then provide the tools, community setting, and inspiration by which that aspirational vision can be realized. Without a doubt, I am staking my rabbinate on the thesis that a vital Jewish future can be found in the balancing act of Jewish and non-Jewish culture, not in the rejection of the latter. It is a bet that I am making because I believe that our tradition can thrive by means of an energetic dialogue with secular society and that our Judaism and we Jews can integrate both non-Jewish influences and non-Jews into our fold. It is a bet that I make because I believe that each of you, and so many others, if given a compelling vision of Jewish life and living, will opt into that vision.
This Tuesday night, Jews around the world will light the first Hanukkah candle in our homes, and we will ask ourselves essentially the same question that was asked on the first Hanukkah so many years ago. Will we, with our little cruse of oil, find the will, the wherewithal, and the wonder to make the light last beyond the flicker of this moment? What prayers must we say, what programmatic steps must we take, what community must we build in order to make sure that light doesn’t go out, and ensure that our Judaism not only survives, but thrives into the days, years, and generations to come. Now, and always, on this and all things, I choose to bet on the Jews, on those who came before us, on each of you here today, and on those who have yet to, but one day will, join the ranks of our people.
