The Blessing of Assimilation

The most interesting thing about the blessing one must recite upon seeing a king or secular head of state, is that such a blessing exists at all. Barukh she-natan mik’vodo livriotav. Blessed who has given of His glory to human beings.(Berachot 58a) I recited the blessing for the first time in my life this past Thursday as I stood in the presence of President Obama at the White House menorah lighting. The Hanukkah party was a who’s who of the American Jewish community, a humbling and history-infused setting, and a great kiddush. I always knew there existed a blessing for such an occasion, but it was only when I actually recited it that I was struck by its curious nature. Why? Because, to state the obvious, the existence of a blessing presumes the possibility of those circum actually occurring. We have blessings for eating bread, for studying Torah, for seeing a crowd, for meeting a wise person, for bodily functions, for all sorts of things and occasions, all of which are likely to occur in a person’s life. But to stand in the presence of a king or head of state? The fact that a minority and marginalized community of Talmudic rabbis bothered to codify such a blessing means one of two things. Either (a) they had an overblown estimation of their station in society or (b) there existed a statistical possibility that they would actually need to be say such a blessing. In other words, what happened to me this past Thursday was not unheard of in Talmudic culture. And because it could, would and continues to happen, thank goodness for the rabbis who ensured that we would have the just the right blessing to say in such an eventuality.

One need look no further than this week’s parashah to see an early application of the blessing. I imagine the rabbis imagining Jacob reciting it as he arrives before the ruler of Egypt. “And Joseph brought his father Jacob and stood him before Pharaoh and Jacob blessed Pharaoh.” (Genesis 47:7) On a textual level, the existence of the Talmudic brakhah answers the question of what Jacob actually may have said in that moment. But in sociological terms, embedded in the brakhah is an intriguing possibility regarding the posture of the Jewish world to secular culture. “Blessed is God who has given of His glory to human beings,” specifically, to non-Jews. Parochial as the Jewish community may have been, not only is contact with the non-Jewish world inevitable, not only is it not to be feared, but it is worthy of being blessed. God’s glory is reserved neither for the heavens, nor for particular Jewish boundaries. God’s glory embodied by non-Jews can redound back onto and strengthen the Jewish people, and is for that reason cause for appreciation and celebration.

This morning, I want to offer a contrarian sermon, a view that runs against the grain of much of what I have been reading (and sometimes saying) about the present and future condition of American Jewry. Typically, what we have been hearing is that the root cause of our waning numbers is our social and cultural engagement with secular society. That the story of American Jewry illustrates Salo Baron’s aphorism that “what is good for Jews is not necessarily good for Judaism.” Our engagement with non-Jews, our acceptance into secular society – these are the corrosive causes of our present troubles. The thinking that follows is that the only response to this slackening of Jewish identity is a Tevye-like cri-de-coeur for “Tradition” It is time to circle the wagons. If we want a future, we have to turn inwards and turn back.

Given the luxury of speaking fairly regularly (and the ongoing high of the White House visit), I want to take a break from this “sky-is-falling,” “woe-is-me” approach. This morning, I want to suggest that if we want to understand the historic secret to Jewish vitality, and thus mark out the path to securing a strong Jewish future, we will not find it by ignoring the non-Jewish world, but just the opposite, by engaging it – engaging it, adopting its qualities and allowing Judaism to be strengthened because of that active and ongoing exchange.

Let me explain. In 1966, the late Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Gerson D. Cohen, delivered a commencement address with the provocative title “The Blessing of Assimilation in Jewish History.” While acknowledging the challenge of living in a free society, Cohen demonstrates as a historian that from the very first Jewish Diaspora, the Jewish historical experience has been marked by an anxiety over assimilation coupled with a revitalization of Jewish life resulting from that very experience. On a cosmetic level, Cohen points out that famous Jewish names – like Aaron, Moses, Daniel, Zerubbabel, and Tryfon (or Tarfon) and so on – are not Jewish at all, but are all imports from the Egyptian, Babylonian, Hellenistic and other communities in which Jews lived. We have always looked at and copied and adopted the dress and other practices of our non-Jewish neighbors. Just consider the black hats and coats of the present-day Hasidic community – garb that ironically is borrowed from seventeenth-century Polish gentry. More substantively, it was Jewish communities such as those in Alexandria and Cordoba, writing in Greek or Arabic, who were most effectively able to transmit our faith from generation to generation. But Cohen’s argument goes even deeper. He explains that the Jewish cultural renaissance of Spain’s Golden Age came by way of Arabic literary tastes; the Mussar/pietist movement of French and German Jewry developed due to a familiarity with Christian theology; and Hasidic mystical doctrines evince an ongoing acquaintance with Sufi doctrine. To put it another way, the greatest, most enduring and most vital periods of Jewish life and living – the emergence of the Kabbalah, the philosophy of Maimonides, to name only two – happened not by the Jews withdrawing from non-Jewish life, but by assimilating non-Jewish life into Judaism and thus enabling Judaism to be transformed and revitalized. As David Ruderman of the University of Pennsylvania argues in his recent book on early modern Jewry, there exists a causal relationship between Jewish mobility and cultural production. We arrive in a new place, we appreciate and absorb the blessings of that world and we are rendered a stronger Jewish community because of that encounter. In Cohen’s own words, “Assimilation properly channeled and exploited can be a blessing.”

As interesting as the historical reflections may be, the question for us is not merely descriptive, but prescriptive: To what degree does this hold true for us today? If we take a look at American Jewry, we easily see the pattern continuing. What are our synagogues, federations and JCCs if not communal structures modeled after our those of our Protestant hosts? The philosophy of Mordecai Kaplan – modeled after that of John Dewey. The music of Debbie Friedman, Shlomo Carlebach, Meir Finkelstein and so many others – all given life by the American musical traditions from which they emerge. Jewish scholarship and Jewish journals written in English – modeled after their secular counterparts. Nice Jewish kids with names like Lucy, Maddie, Zoe and Jed. Unpack a whole lot of what is great about Jewish life, and you will inevitably find non-Jewish ideas, themes and social structures. The efflorescence of American Jewry may be explained precisely by of our conscious and unconscious assimilation of secular categories of thinking into Jewish ones.

As Cohen himself points out, as long as Jews live in a non-Jewish world, such an exchange is inevitable. The difference between whether it is a good thing, a cross-fertilization and revitalization, or a bad thing, a slackening of Jewish identity, comes down to the question of whether non-Jewish forms of expression are assimilated into Jewish life, or Jewish life and Jews are assimilated into non-Jewish life. The great cultural Zionist Ahad Ha’am coined the term hikkui shel hitharut, “competitive imitation,” to describe the process whereby cultural traditions influence and impact each other in reciprocal ways. The key is that that the communities in question must be strong and vital unto themselves for the exchange to be mutually enriching. To have it otherwise, to have a weak Jewish culture in the tidal wave of America – will ultimately result not in imitation but in assimilation.

Lest there be any doubt, I think that this is exactly the conversation that we, as a Conservative synagogue, committed to both tradition and change, should be modeling. Whether it is the melody of L’kha Dodi, the manner in which our children are educated, or the social media platforms by which we communicate with each other, we are obligated to engage in and often imitate the cultural milieu in which we exist. If it is our goal, which I think it is, to make Judaism accessible and relevant to the lives of American Jews, then both the “what” and the “how” of what we do here needs to reflect that goal. Yet we also need to remember the distinctive rituals, themes and values of our people that make the Jewish way of life worth preserving in the first place. The hope is not to produce some sort of queer “menurkey”-like Judaism that succeeds neither in loyalty to our spiritual inheritance, nor in accommodation to our present-day context. If nothing else, we should remember that there is something delightfully countercultural about being Jewish, and we must be just as attentive to retaining our points of distinction as to assimilating the blessings of the world in which we live.

As I indicated before, our parashah chronicles the migration of our people into the first Jewish diaspora. Upon hearing that his son Joseph was still alive, Jacob, along with his entire household, journeys from the Promised Land down towards Egypt. For the final time, Jacobs sets camp, and filled with anxiety and fear, has a nighttime vision. What exactly, the commentators ask, was Jacob afraid of? He was, after all, on his way to be reunited with his beloved Joseph. The nineteenth-century commentator Naftali Tzvi Yehuda of Berlin, the Netziv, explains that Jacob feared that “his seed would be absorbed by the Egyptian nation.” God’s message to Jacob “Fear not … for I will make you a great nation,” signals God’s assurance that this diaspora would not be the end of the Jewish people, but an opportunity to become a great a populous nation, a goy gadol. This is the first, but not the last time the Jewish people will move from one place to another, expressing anxiety that such a move will result in a diminution of Jewish identity. Jewish renewal doesn’t happen all by itself. It takes intentional leadership, and it means making tough choices. But secular culture unto itself need not be the source of fear; time and again it has proven to be an opportunity for growth and transformation. Like Jacob himself standing before Pharaoh, we can allow for the possibility that it is even deserving of our gratitude and our blessing.