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Kol Nidre - 350 Years of Jews in America
In 1654, when Brazil was recaptured by the Portugese from the Dutch, the Jewish community was given three months to leave their homes. In September of that year, a boatload of Jews, 23 souls in all, came to seek refuge on the shores of New Amsterdam. Unlike their compatriots who fled to the known friendly places of Holland and to the colonies in the Carribean, these 23 braved the furthest reach of the Dutch empire, in New Amsterdam, beginning the extraordinary 350 year long history of Jewish people in America. Where are we now? At this season of taking stock, we might say that the state of American Jewry can be characterized much in the same way as Charles Dickens begins, A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, is was the season of Darkness. It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”
Our 350th year in America is pregnant with all of Dickens’ polarities: the best of times and the worst of times, wisdom and foolishness, belief and incredulity, light and darkness, hope and despair. Our standing on these shores reads like a good news bad news report. On the one hand, the good news is that the Jewish community is wealthy and influential. We are integrated in many ways into American life, as is epitomized by the many Yiddishisms like shmooze, shlep, and shmate, which have seeped into mainstream vocabulary and even into our computer spell checkers. The bad news is that despite the fact that persecution, expulsion, tragedy and mass murder are not the central themes of American Jewish history as they were European Jewish history, we are still a deeply insecure community. An American Jewish Committee poll recently showed that a very significant portion of American Jews still see anti-Semitism right here in America as our most significant problem. It bodes well for the Jewish community that nationwide, Jewish education is flourishing, as is exemplified here in Baltimore where there are multiple options of Jewish day schools and high schools from which to choose in addition to the supplementary education synagogues offer.
The recent Jewish population survey showed that 80% of our children are being Jewishly educated, and 70% of American Jews have at some time affiliated with a synagogue. But as I mentioned on Rosh Hashanah, that only 40% are affiliated at any given moment is making it nearly impossible for synagogue institutions to meet their budgetary needs. Instead of being able to sustain themselves, many synagogues are draining precious endowments of the past to pay for programs of the present. It is very good news that the Jewish community has developed a sophisticated and efficient political apparatus to support Israel. And yet, at the same time, there is no denying that a growing number of Jews are far more interested in connecting with a personal and local religious community than they are with the welfare of Israel or the idea of k’lal Yisrael, Jewish peoplehood.
It is the best of times and the worst of times. You may have caught the Wall Street Journal article a couple of months ago about non-Jewish children begging their parents to have Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations. Celebrities like Madonna, Brittany Spears and Demi Moore are studying Kabbalah.
And with the exception of Al Sharpton, you couldn’t have been a Democratic presidential candidate this year without having a Jew somewhere either in your background, foreground or future. We can make our own judgments about these seemingly superficial stories. We can groan, and perhaps we should groan about non-Jewish children wanting to have these “faux-mitzvah celebrations.”But what does it say about our rituals that American popular culture, on some level, envies and wants to imitate the way we Jews celebrate our passages of life? We can groan and perhaps we should groan about the fascination among the glitterati with Kabbalah, our sacred mystical tradition. As a colleague of mine remarked, “the great scholar of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Sholem, is turning over in his grave as from the World to Come he witnesses the ditzy-ness of those who scrape across his beloved discipline.” But what does it say that non-Jews are searching out and drinking from our fountains of wisdom? We can groan and perhaps we should groan about the phenomenon of the “Suddenly Semite,” who on the campaign trail reveals that his family tree has someone who stood at Sinai. But what does it say to us that non-Jews are suddenly so eager to get in touch with their Jewish lineage?
The paradox of our 350th year in America, Rabbi Jeff Salkin observes, is that “once upon a time, Jews pretended to be non-Jews. Now non-Jews pretend to be Jews.” But there is a part of me that wonders if the 23 Brazilian refugees would think these stories reflect the best of Jewish times or the worst of Jewish times? I wonder what they would think of our community’s ability to be social chameleons, to blend in or melt into America’s pot becoming indistinguishable and invisible. After 350 years, is this what they or we aspire to?
If we look back on 350 years of the Jewish presence in America and how our presence has shaped the character of our country, we might not be satisfied at all with being social chameleons. Take for example, Dr. Samuel Nunez who arrived in Savannah, Georgia nearly 80 years after the original 23 settled in New Amsterdam. Nunez was a former court physician in Spain, a practicing Catholic on the outside, a secret, Sephardic Jew in private. He fled the inquisition to London and set sail a year later for the shores of America to establish a Jewish community, bringing with him his family, a sefer Torah and a circumcision box.
They arrived in Savannah just 5 months after General James Edward Oglethorpe established the colony of Georgia. Oglethorpe was about to deny the Jewish immigrants permission to land, but there was an outbreak of yellow fever and Dr. Nunez specialized in infectious diseases. Oglethorpe, like Peter Stuyvesent in New Amsterdam before him, decided the “usefulness” of the Jews, the fact that they might help the colonies, proved far more important than the fact that they were not Christians. But that isn’t the ultimate point. For admitting Jews was not only “useful” to developing America, it was revolutionary. It started America in a direction that was unlike anything before in human history. Opening the doors to Jews would mean, in Stuyvesent’s words, “we cannot refuse the Lutherans and Papists.” Our presence, our usefulness and our resolve to remain distinctive and to establish Jewish communities, forced the issue of pluralism in the New World. In 1663, the Dutch West Indies company wrote a letter that would differentiate the colonies from virtually every other place in the world. The letter said, “Shut your eyes...do not force people’s consciences. But allow every one to have his own belief, as long as he behaves quietly and legally, gives no offense to his neighbor and does not oppose the government.”
This decision to allow Jews to settle and become part of colonial life was critical in determining the social and religious character of America. That America would be richer and healthier for welcoming other countries’ “tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” (Emma Lazarus) no matter what their religious identity. In 1790, after the American Revolution, George Washington echoed this ideal in his famous letter of response to the Jews of Newport who had fought for America’s cause. He characterized the new United States government as one that “gives bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” What most people don’t know about these words of George Washington, is that he copied them directly from the Newport Jews’ letter to him. It was they who articulated this vision of America: of an America which was to be a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual community.
You and I are the inheritors and beneficiaries of that vision of an America built on the twin foundations of diversity and democracy. Our Jewish predecessors in this land did not miss the opportunity.
They understood that something new and great was in the making and that within it they could find their place and build Jewish communities. Three hundred and fifty years later, amid the good news and the bad, if we look around us, we sense something is missing. We are the great American Jewish success story. We are the wealthiest Jewish community in history. The most powerful Jewish community in history. The most unhated Jewish community in history. And the most indistinguishable Jewish community in history. With the growth of our wealth and power has come a decline in our faith; in home observance, in synagogue attendance, in synagogue affiliation. It sometimes seems that more Jews are comfortable in the halls of power than in the halls of synagogues. Our children attend the best universities but when in comes to the history and teachings and traditions of our people, in the secret places of our souls, we know that they are illiterate. When our grandparents and great grandparents came to these shores in the beginning of the 20th century, they may have been immigrants to America but they were natives of Judaism.
Now, we are natives of America but immigrants to Judaism.
If we have any vows to make on this eve of Kol Nidre, let them be about intensifying our commitments to faith, to synagogue, to Jewish education, to helping build the vitality of our Jewish community. If we have anything to regret, perhaps we will find it in the opportunities we missed to pray with the community, to celebrate Shabbat and festivals in our homes, to study and learn the rich literature of our people. By and large we are a very ethical community. We have high moral standards. We don’t have to come here and beat our breasts for all the evil deeds that we did in the past year. Sure, some of us have done some things for which we should atone. But the overwhelming concern that we need to share is the unhealthy nature of the spiritual values of our community. We need to become once again, a thinking, questioning, learning, praying Jewish community.
At the same time, we need to be proactive to prevent the powerful forces outside of our community from stripping us of our historic rights to a pluralistic society. The Christian radical right has no place in its tent for pluralism. First of all, they want to convert us. Second of all, they want to use the legislative and judicial processes to impose their values on everyone.
They don’t believe that women are equal partners or should have equal opportunities outside the home. They don’t believe that Jews have a right within their own tradition to determine whose rights are preeminent, a mother or a fetus and under what circumstances may one terminate a pregnancy. And if we are not out there studying the positions of judges up for election, or the positions of every candidate for state and national office to determine if their views are exclusive or inclusive of ours, then we put the future of pluralism in this country at risk. We risk the dilution of science studies in our public schools, for the radical right would teach creationism alongside or instead of evolution. We risk having no public schools whatsoever, for they would prefer state and federal funded parochial education. We risk having rape and incest victims forced to bring their pregnancies to term. We risk having sectarian religious prayers at every public function. We risk having certain medical procedures forced upon us either at the beginning or end of life. And if you want to tear your hair out, worry about having a future president who believes in bringing about Armageddon? Today, the American pluralism ideal needs to be remembered and renewed more than ever before.
There are people on the far right of the Christian world with vast, sophisticated, growing economic and political power who want to see this country become a Christian country. If a small band of Jews once played such an important part in the development of pluralism in our country, today we, the most powerful and educated and sophisticated Jewish community must have the strength to protect and extend the boundaries of tolerance. Perhaps we need to remind America today of the old story from Kashan, Iran. After a Jewish merchant overcharged a Muslim man of the cloth, the Mullah assembled his colleagues and successful convinced the regional governor to issue an edict requiring the conversion of every single Jewish man, woman and child upon pain of death. A deadline was set and the Jews of Kashan were stunned. It was the women who came up with the Jewish community’s plan. A week before the dreaded day, a delegation of Jewish elders were granted an audience with the governor. “Your honor, before petitioning you, we have brought you a gift, as a token of our gratitude for these many long years during which we have been privileged to live quietly and obediently under your protection.
On behalf of the Jewish community of Kashan province, we wish to leave these two humble offerings before you, and request that you choose ONE of them as our tribute.” Just then they brought out two enormous Persian rugs the women had woven. Both carpets were plush, tightly woven and made of the finest silk. The first one was covered with colorful designs of gold and green and turquoise, intricately intertwined with floral and geometric designs. The second carpet was....red. The whole rug was just one sprawling solid red mat from warp to woof, from end to end. The governor was astonished, the chutzpah! “Do you take me for a fool? What kind of choice is this? Who would not choose the first carpet?” The senior representative from the Jewish delegation stepped forward and looked the governor in the eye saying, “The silk rugs are the territories under your benevolent sway in Kashan province. Today that province is filled with people of every imaginable culture and creed: Muslims, Christians, Turkmen, Jews - and in this way it resembles the first carpet. Would, Your Excellency, then exchange the first carpet for the second?”
We Jews have flourished in America precisely because of its rich diversity. And America has flourished because it was nurtured by its rich diversity. We have to believe the story of the rug. It may sound funny, but we’ve all been called on the carpet together to believe it is good that we are not all the same. That Christians don’t need to act like Jews, and that Jews don’t have to blend in and act like Christians, Moslems or Buddhists. The good news is that we have something wonderful of our own to celebrate called Judaism. And we can only celebrate it fully in the pluralistic, democratic society we’ve helped to build. A generation from now, young people will ask us to tell them what it was like when democracy was attacked from within. “What was it like?” they’ll ask. They’ll ask us how we voted, they’ll ask us what we were doing during the war, and we will have to tell them the truth. That democratic pluralism was won or lost on the votes we cast and the choices we made. And they’ll ask us how the Jewish community came to be so filled with faith and learning or so filled with emptiness and void. And we will have to answer those questions, too. So let’s make our own private vows, on this Kol Nidre eve, by our acts, to make the year ahead of us a beginning to the best of times.
Times when we deepen and enlarge our religious identity, times when we rise boldly to the struggle to defend the democratic pluralistic society that nurtures every American’s religious freedom.
Kein Yehi razon, May this be God’s will. Amen.
