I have spent most of my time on this blog thus far discussing what Judaism means to me now. Perhaps it might provide some useful context to say where I came from. Supposedly, in kindergarten I spent a fair bit of time trying to convince my Orthodox Christian friend that Christianity was wrong and my secular Israeli friend that there was a God, but my memory of that time is rather hazy, so I will focus on what emerged in high school and mostly remained until I started to become religious.
I developed a somewhat elaborate historical theory that I will call the "assimilation pump". Basically, I divided the Jewish world into the Orthodox and everyone else, with a necessary role for each. The Orthodox served to preserve the cultural values, traditions, and possibly genetics that foster rigorous study, intellectualism, and creativity, but at the cost of being constricted to a narrow sphere that consumes all their energies. The non-Orthodox would take those benefits and apply them to secular culture at the cost of removing themselves and their descendants from the continuity of the Jewish people. In times of persecution, this would take the form of a few individuals who explicitly reject Judaism and thus gain access to the broader society. In better times, this would take the form of a brief yet brilliant flourishing, which gradually fades as they go further and further from the culture that enabled it and more and more assimilate out (slowed by a steady trickle of ex-Orthodox), until persecution inevitably kicks in again. At that point, the situation reverts to a more bifurcated state, where those who are insufficiently committed to endure persecution or exile for the sake of Judaism would abandon their vestigial ties, speeding up assimilation, whereas those who are sufficiently committed would be mostly Orthodox and some few that would be driven to join the Orthodox for lack of any other viable community. I am not sure how reconcilable this theory is to a theological view of history. Perhaps when we fail to find the correct balance that allows for synergy between productive enterprise in secular areas and a life of Torah and mitzvot, then God turns to this mechanism to allow the Jews to pursue our task. The progressive Jews do the heavy lifting of having an impact on the rest of the world, and the more cloistered forms of Orthodoxy preserve the means by which that impact is accomplished and supply the next round of progressives when these ones assimilate away. Still, rather than accept such a situation and choose which half of the task most appeals, I think that it is incumbent upon us to continue to strive for the balance, even if it is difficult. Torah im derech eretz.
That will do for now. Maybe I will talk about other things I used to think at a later date.
I have been struggling with my sleeping habits, leading to a lot of missed shacharit (morning prayers) and even some missed classes, so I am now trying to follow Rambam in countering an extreme with an extreme. Ideally, my sleep schedule is now 10:30-5:30. If you see me online between those hours, 3:30-10:30 Eastern, tell me to go to sleep.
In other news, I just went to my first wedding since being here, with another to come Monday night. Both strangers, but one is an alumnus and the other a rabbi's son, so the whole yeshiva got invitations. I love weddings.
Also, D&D is up and running and going well. Due to theological concerns of a couple players, we are in a godless world, lending the party cleric a certain aura of mystery. I play a human warlock, raised in an island village run according to a mix of anarcho-socialism and Confucianism that I haven't really thought through. Strict father, many siblings, mother taken by slavers early in my childhood, so I ran away at 14 and lived by my wits until discovering my powers at 17. We also have an elvish cleric and his ninja bodyguard, hailing from a mysterious enclave in distant woods, a halfling swashbuckler with a salty past, a dwarvish fighter with a thick Russian accent who just wants to go home and bury his uncle Piotr (hopefully dwarf corpses, being so stonelike, do not decay?), and a human wizard with all the pompous uselessness that only level one wizards can provide. We were all taken by slavers with some sort of connection to the sinister empire that rules most of the world, and in two sessions have almost managed to meet each other and form a proper party. Feels good to play again. Interestingly, all our spellcasters seem based on some archetype from the Orthodox world -- I'm clearly off the derech, our wizard has a certain whiff of the ba'al teshuva about him, and the cleric seems like a sheltered chassid. Perhaps the greater surprise is that the other characters are not.
Shabbat Shalom!
The D&D game sounds hilarious! I hope you enjoy it to the full extent of its very rich-sounding possibilities. Also, I wish you'd been at this week's What's Brewin' about defining Modern Orthodoxy, a followup to last week's about defining Orthodoxy . . . (at that one, I had a funny line that seems relevant here, about how knowing the difference between Torah U'Mada and Torah im Derech Eretz was very useful, including for figuring out which side of Washington Heights you're on).
ReplyDeleteYeah, the D&D game is going very well. The DM put in a number of potential avenues for us to pursue in our escape, and with the party split into three groups we seem to be following pretty much all of them simultaneously, sometimes more than once with no coordination. Factors at our disposal: high explosives, a few special slaves that might cause some trouble if released (a powerful evil sorcerer, a were-wolf, and an ettin), a tribe of hobgoblin guards that don't like their job or their chief, an old dwarvish mentor, a couple noble customers that the cleric and I have fast-talked into unwittingly assisting us, and a bound angel that can summon some serious celestial wrath if freed. Chaos may ensue.
DeleteSounds like great What's Brewin' topics. My friend here was just recommending that I read Rabbi Lamm's Torah Umadda, but I haven't seen a copy in the yeshiva library. Any consensus reached in the discussions? Any surprising opinions?
Hi E,
ReplyDeleteSurprised I haven't heard your theory of the assimilation pump before (at least it doesn't ring a bell). It's very intriguing. I have a couple reflections - I am skeptical that any Jews find their way back to Orthodoxy in a time of persecution, but am willing to be convinced otherwise. I wonder whether the mechanism for the flowering that occurs during the periods of cultural inter-mixing is simply the cross-pollenization that occurs when two different cultures meet. I'm sure you are familiar with the concept of hybrid vigor - something sort of like that. This has a little less of a whif of Jewish exceptionalism to it - the pump is powered not so much by Orthodox intellectual habits and training as perhaps by Orthodox separatism, which re-creates over and over again the necessary conditions for cross cultural exchange by keeping a separate cultural "gene pool" available for periodic intermixing.
In terms of reconciling this theory with a theological view of history, it seems quite analogous to reconciling Darwinian natural selection with a theological view of creation - not at all hard for me to image a subtle creator who guides evolution, whether cultural or biological, with an invisible hand.
Your Loving Adversary
Hybrid vigor may be part of the explanation, but I think you would have some trouble taking out the Jewish exceptionalism entirely. Unless my history is off, the intellectual, cultural, and economic impact of the Jews has generally been greater than that of other immigrant populations and other excluded or persecuted minorities by significant margins, given comparable external circumstances.
DeleteAlso, you would seem to reject the possibility of similar benefit from a sustained exposure to broad culture combined with Orthodox learning and practice. Obviously, I am not a fan of that conclusion.
I may not have laid out the theory in full, but I'm sure we have discussed bits and pieces.
Interesting to think about the contributions of other immigrant/persecuted groups. I think many of them do make similar contributions in the arenas where they choose to exercise their talents - italians in the visual and culinary arts, blacks in entertainment, especially music, irish in politics. Maybe their contributions are not quite as disproportionate to their representation in the population as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI do tend to think their is something special about Jewish culture, but it may just as well be our excellence in the field of guilt as in orthodox learning and practice. Of course guilt may be inseparable from Orthodoxy in the long run.
I accept that there are non-Jews who have been culturally significant, but I think I can say without denigrating other groups that the last sentence of your first paragraph is an understatement.
DeleteThe theory does not stand or fall on the particulars of Jewish culture. Perhaps guilt is more of a factor than intellectualism. I treat it mostly like the Johnson O'Connor test; we see a constellation of distinctive cultural traits and the outcome, but cannot necessarily trace the causal chain. Seems like a good reason not to throw things out, even when we can't identify the purpose clearly. I think the only way for the non-Orthodox to retain distinctively Jewish traits in the long run is for them to be broadly accepted in whatever society they end up assimilating into, a la the abhorrence of human sacrifice.
Great thread here, sorry I've been slow to chime in. I think it will come as no surprise that i like your goal to find balance rather than choose a camp in a bifurcated world. It is challenging indeed to bridge religious & secular worlds but I do think that the modern Orthodox life I see Aunt Sharon & her family/community practice shows it to be a viable and meaningful option.
DeleteAs for historical trends, it does seem true that persecution has played a role in sustaining jewish identity and practice through the years. I don't accept this as a necessary premise, feel that for me Jewish camps & youth group provided a strong positive identity & connection with Jewish community. Very hard to reconcile support of diversity and love of all humanity as God's creation with minimizing interfaith families & blending of cultures...i don't have a good answer for that, but am intrigued by your assimilation pump theory...
Looking forward to talking later. Love, Mom