Speaker 0 00:00:05 Hi, everyone. Welcome to identity crisis. A show about news and ideas from Michelle Hartman Institute. Um, you had occurred, sir, presidents of shell apartment is to American we're recording today on Monday, October 9th, 2020, this week.
Speaker 1 00:00:17 And next week, this solemn Hartman Institute is hosting a online symposium on Judaism, citizenship, and democracy, and lead up to America's unbelievably, contentious, uh, election, as well as in relationship to similar issues and trends that Israeli democracy faces as it tries to navigate its own definition of being a Jewish democratic state. We're covering a whole bunch of themes throughout this two weeks symposium general questions about citizenship obligation and democracy. We have a number of book events, including a conversation with Lila Corwin Berman about her new book on Jewish philanthropy with Yuval Levin and his book on American institutions with Aidan Hirsch and his book on political hobby ism. And we're really trying to kind of cover a whole variety of issues that relate to American citizenship and democracy and today's conversation and identity crisis is very much part of that. I'm really excited. It feels kind of overdue, um, to be in public conversation with Arielle angel, the editor in chief of Jewish currents and Jacob Pittman, the publisher of Jewish currents for those who are not familiar, Jewish currents is actually a relatively old publication on the American map.
Speaker 1 00:01:24 It was started I think, in the late forties and has been dramatically revived revitalized by a new editorial and publishing team represented here by Arielle and Jacob not only reviving a publication, but kind of updating the very conversation about what it means to be progressive political and Jewish in America. And so as part of this larger set of questions around citizenship and democracy and obligation, I'm really excited to talk to the both of them about progressive Jewish political identity, which is, I don't know whether the numbers indicate that it's actually growing as a movement, but it's certainly louder, much more articulate as a movement than it has been in recent years. And given the rise of partisanship and polarization, it's no surprise that we actually have stronger voices representing different, really significant ideological differences in America and influencing the Jewish conversation in that way. So Arielle welcome Jacob.
Speaker 1 00:02:20 Welcome. Thanks for coming on the show today, Jewish current saran, an opinion piece written editorial column written by the members of the Jewish current staff. And as you said in your piece reflects a collective discussion on October 9th, called justice. You shall pursue, and we'll put it in the show notes for those who are listening, which represented kind of a fascinating critique of the Jewish community's response to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It's something we've talked about in the show a couple of weeks ago with Dahlia Lithwick. There was, as many of you have noticed kind of a shiver, a collective American Jewish Shivah for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, kind of a fascinating window, as you all pick up in your piece about the state of who American Jews are religiously and politically, but you hold no punches in this piece, in which you talk about liberalism subsuming Jewishness.
Speaker 1 00:03:06 And at the end of the piece, I think the key line is you talk about an American Jewishness that has locked itself into a fantasized vision of the recent American past. And your critique of liberal Jewishness is, is essentially it's thinness that American Jews have kind of embraced a certain political ideology or a vision of America. And that that is inaccurate in some ways. You'll tell me if I'm getting to the thesis wrong, it's inaccurate about justice in America, and it represents a certain type of fitness. First of all, I want you to just play it out a little bit more substantively for our listeners. What's the real target of your critique. Here is an American Jews. Is it America more generally? And what's the, what are you trying to get at? What are you trying to push forward? REO? Why don't you start with, because I know you were one of the authors of the piece.
Speaker 2 00:03:52 I think we were noticing sort of the religious tone of the morning specifically. So we pointed to a synagogue in New Jersey that replaced the haftorah reading on Rachana with chance of famous Ruth Bader Ginsburg lines or lines from her dissents. You know, we pointed to people saying, Oh, you know, Ruth Bader Ginsburg just argued her first case in, in heaven. When members of the Trump team became sick and sort of adding different cottages or different recitations of cottage into the Russia, Shana liturgy, and, you know, sort of interesting to us considering how secular generally the Jewish community is and has become, I don't think the piece is really taking aim necessarily at secularity. And I don't think by the way, it wasn't intended to antagonize Jews or American liberal Jews. Like we really didn't want to do that. We understood the outpouring of grief, but we did feel that there was something being confused there and that particular kind of confusion that, that particular kind of grief seemed to speak to us, not to like morning, it didn't seem like morning, it set.
Speaker 2 00:05:13 It seemed in some ways self-congratulatory in some way, celebratory and also that there seemed to be a bit of denial there about what had actually been lost. And so that was sort of what the piece was trying to tease out. What, what have we lost with Ruth Bader Ginsburg? And on the one hand we found, we felt that one of the things that had been lost was a kind of vision of an authentic Jewishness, kind of an old neighborhood, Brooklyn, Jewishness, that that could retain its Jewishness, even in rebellion, you know, that that could propel it forward. It was close enough to sort of the old world, you know, to some of the old languages to Yiddish. And, and so you can have somebody who says, I don't want anything to do with that anymore. I want to join American society writ large, but who still kind of retains that Jewishness in a way that feels substantial.
Speaker 2 00:06:08 And on the other hand, we felt like the other thing that was lost was this idea of America as a sort of a land of justice. And particularly thinking about the way that, that comes together in the figure of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, both as, as sort of a quintessential American success story on the one hand and also a figure of American justice. And so we really take issue with sort of the idea of the Supreme court as an engine for justice, the Supreme court being also a very kind of Jewish institution in a certain kind of way. And we try to, to dissect what it would mean to sort of face the facts that the Supreme court is sort of a progressive institution and that the American dream that was possible for so many Jews was not afforded universally. And also that, you know, we've lost some connection to a kind of pre assimilated.
Speaker 2 00:07:04 I mean, whatever that means, and we can talk about what that means Jewish identity and that in fact that happened on purpose. We kind of wanted to get away from that. And now I think here we are, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dying and we actually don't know how to mourn this figure. We we've like lost some of the ways that we might have mourned collectively Jewishly. And we've also sort of lost an ability to really reckon with what's happening in the country and the kind of breakdown that we're seeing more generally. So that's sort of a summary of the piece,
Speaker 1 00:07:39 Right? There's two pieces that I really want to come back to later on one is this notion of American dream, the American idea, which I think your publication, especially this piece has a very trenchant implied critique of it. And I want to kind of come back to that whole question. And the other is you used a great phrase, REO pre assimilated, American Jewish identity, or pre assimilated Jewish identity. I don't know if such a thing exists. So that's, I want to play with that a little bit then
Speaker 2 00:08:03 I agree. I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sure of such a thing exists of course, but in terms of, if we're thinking of these things on a kind of spectrum and also in the imaginary itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:08:13 Yeah, for sure. Okay, great. So Jacob, I'd love to hear what you had to say about this piece, but also the, at least what I heard Arielle, you said this wasn't really the goal, which is kind of a critique of liberal Jewish American identity. I certainly heard it in it. I'd love for you to give us your sense of, of the piece. Jacob.
Speaker 3 00:08:27 I think the two things you just brought up touch very closely on what I wanted to say about this piece and more generally. And I think my feelings about what was said in the piece, and I think relate deeply to what Jewish parents is. I think it'll make sense in terms of what this piece is as a representative example of the kind of critique and work that the magazine. And I think the progressive Jewish community more broadly is trying to accomplish, I mean, obviously Judaism and Jewish, innocent and Jewish peoplehood. However one would like to discuss the reality that is, uh, us I've always existed in communication with our context, despite the fact that some groups of us would like very much for that, not to be true. That's true. For instance, I think in an obvious sense from our perspective in the liberal reality, as we look upon our Orthodox or ultra Orthodox co religion Aries too, as a Christian term, we look upon them and sort of trying to build a world that is outside of time inside a world of yesteryear in Europe, where there was hypothetically a Halcyon time of real Jewish identity.
Speaker 3 00:09:25 Of course what's happening in a very real sense is a reaction to many forces, perhaps most importantly, the memory of the Holocaust. Now that perspective on say <inaudible> from our perspective in liberal Judaism is relatively clear because it's much easier to just observe it from a distance, someone else's way of living than it is to think about ourselves. And I think that what we're trying to do at Jewish currents and more broadly what critical theorists and historical theorists are trying to do is to be as invested as possible, less in the American idea, as in the American reality for us, we are ourselves and expression of some distinct realities in the American historical experience we to exist in, in a historical context. And if we're being humble, I think as Jews, we will look at the context which we're in and recognize and acknowledge the forces that it is playing on us.
Speaker 3 00:10:17 And I think the hubris of having a Jewish communal identity is to think that we might be able to do something good back and actually participate in the historical context in a way that we would later be proud of. And I think parents, we have a hypothesis as to what is happening to us right now. Two things are collapsing at the same time. The first thing that's collapsing is the high tide of American high capitalist liberalism. So I want to talk maybe in normal person speak about what that means, but I want to talk about the second thing as well, which is the collapse of the centrality of Zionism in the mainstream Jewish identity, which isn't to say that lots of people are Zionists. Lots of people are Zionists, but there is a distinctive shift, I think evidenced by the rise of organizations like J street and Jewish voice for peace.
Speaker 3 00:11:06 And if not now, it's there there's clearly a cracking. Anyone who has been on a Jewish news website in the last 15 years has read something about the cracking of some kind of consensus. So I think both of these things are true where there is a cracking in a liberal reality and a cracking in a Jewish communal sort of nationalist reality and that in between those things, this accounts for stump, perhaps not all, but some of our anxiety and nervous about what the future holds for us and what perhaps as the election looms, what the now holds for us. And so quickly just to remark on both these things. The first is that throughout the 20th century, at least in an American context, Jews, white Jews, I should be very specific white Ashkenazi Jews had an experience generally speaking of class uplift, communal empowerment with lots of twists turns, but that led to what some people would call the Jewish establishment.
Speaker 3 00:11:57 This is what Laila Cora and Berman's book is about. I've gotten to speak to her about it. I'm incredibly excited for what this book will do in our communal conversation. And this created a kind of Jew that Eugene Borowitz in his book, the messages were compared to the mezuzah on the wall of an apartment building that has been painted over with several coats of paint. The mezuzah is clearly there it's a lump on the wall, but the paint that's been coated over. It is several layers of secular liberal identity that was afforded to Jews after we were emancipated. So that has continued and that's fine. As long as you're Jewish nefesh or whatever is, is the misuse. And that's fine as long as you're okay with the layers of paint, if the layers of, of liberal reality are okay with you, then this is a comfortable position.
Speaker 3 00:12:39 This cracked for Eugene Borowitz under Nixon and the Vietnam war. It is cracked for us under Trump, under the disappointments of the Obama presidency under the Iraq war and Bush under the decline in wages under our own. And speaking sort of as a millennial for this point under our own downward mobility, as we make less and less compared to our parents, the paint that covers us as Jewish people has become less and less a comfortable coat. And so in some ways we feel this in a very distinctive and physical anxiety about what the reality holds for us now and going forward as Jews, but also just as citizens and people here. And the other piece is ISP is actually in this case, less complicated because for me personally, going to camp Zionism in a sense, offered a way out of this problem. It was a way to stop thinking about this problem because of course, things are messed up here.
Speaker 3 00:13:29 I'm in goalless, I'm outside of the place I meant to be. And so if I can only either spiritually displace myself there or physically make Alia, then things will be at rest. I will finally have reached a position from which I am whole, of course, that isn't true. And he has really will tell you that Israel is full of problems. Even someone that's not concerned with the occupation of the Palestinians. So both the liberal side and the, our economic reality is, is falling apart. The escape hatch that Judaism built with Zionism no longer is an escape. And so between these two things is us, is now the double bind. That's the crisis that we find ourselves in and are trying to wrestle with.
Speaker 1 00:14:06 So I appreciate all of what, what you both have said. It's especially useful to me when you talk in the language of like I and position yourself within the context of your own generational experience, for instance, to say, like, I'm looking at my grandparents experienced my parents' experience and why does this not work the same way? But there are two issues that continue to emerge for me and engaging with this critique. And on one hand, I will tell you just honestly, and I'll, I'll do it for the record and publicly. So I'm a subscriber. I love reading what comes out occurrence. I sometimes like what I read, I oftentimes, as we all to kind of hate read things, it's been really useful to me for two reasons. One is I do feel like I have a better understanding of a mindset of other Jews who I don't often agree with, or don't often see in the circles that I travel.
Speaker 1 00:14:51 And it's also helped me clarify the places where I'm like, Oh, I'm not a progressive, like that's useful to me to actually say, okay, maybe I'm the liberal object of some of this criticism. And it's actually great to find out because oftentimes we don't interrogate our own political positions until you can actually really clearly see what's standing against you. I guess in that context, it's sometimes hard for me to tell whether what you're describing is a description of your own native, authentic experience of something, and then seeking an alternative versus prescribing. One of the things that drives me crazy in this context is I oftentimes hear in progressive circles, like we represent the future of who American Jews are like, well, so just like the, you know, young professionals group at APEC, they use the same language and reference themselves. So there's a lot of prescriptive claiming of what the next generation of Judaism looks like.
Speaker 1 00:15:42 And I also don't know what to make of it. It's not just that there are still Zionist Jews and it's not just that there are still American Jews who really deeply believe in the American dream and American ideal that was handed down to them from their parents, their grandparents, but they will not identify with the idea that their Judaism is a mezuzah that has been lacquered over five times. They will not agree with that. They will tell you, I'll say it myself, a moral, political, and spiritual thickness that comes with the way that Zionism transforms the Jewish condition in America that comes with believing in like Danielle Allen's vision of the American idea and the American dream that then we, as Jews are obligated to assimilate in the positive sense and integrate into our vision of America. So I guess I get the political reasons for wanting to portray this as like, this is our experience collectively, and it's where we're all heading. But what happens when you actually have real human beings in front of you who are in some sense of your political enemies to this vision, but who also represents something that has to be taken seriously as being really thick. And that's why I felt that this piece, the criticizing of what felt like American Jewish folk, religion around Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I get why you don't want it, but what is it actually, what is serious there? And what's serious about is what is representing.
Speaker 2 00:17:03 Sure. There's a lot in what you just said. Um, let me just start with the question of representation. I don't think that we are saying we are the future. I think that there are many futures for the Jewish community. And I think that we are going to see more and more, that we are different factions. I think that this idea that of people hood in the way that you talk about it, for me, it seems like some of this happened around Soviet jewelry, that there was this moment of really great unity, but I don't see that persisting. And so I think you're right on a certain level, we are speaking for ourselves and we have been since day one. What we are noticing is that we are growing and that people who weren't finding themselves in Jewish life are finding themselves with us. And so that tells us something that also tells us something about the kinds of people who really like aren't represented on poles of Jewish life.
Speaker 2 00:18:01 Jews have no religion as, as they call it. People who have really gone really far down the road of buying into American identity and who are looking for a way back and finding us. So I will say, you know, yeah, we represent ourselves. And also like we're a growing community that needs to be reckoned with in some way, I think in terms of thinking about are coming from, from liberalism on a certain level, I think that that's totally true and there's no way that we can jump out of that. We are the product of our times, like everybody else in a material sense, we have to contend with that. And there are good things there, and there are bad things there, but we also do get to do the work of discernment and say, okay, where are we now? What are we, what do we keep?
Speaker 2 00:18:50 What do we give back in terms of how we might respond to the people who are still holding onto those ideas? I mean, we are contending that the world is shifting and that we are recognizing those world historical trends in a way that will be precious or already is we say, we're describing what is already happening. Now, a lot of people would say that they don't feel the effects of that on their life yet, and maybe they will, and maybe they won't. But I do feel like particularly around Zionism, that if you look at polling, the number one thing that people feel in relationship to their Jewishness and Pew, that was from 2013, obviously we're waiting for the next one for 2020. But what we see is that the thing that people feel is central really in their Jewish identity, more than anything else is the Holocaust.
Speaker 2 00:19:40 And the idea of social justice, even more than Israel, which brings very, very high. And I do think that the community has been set up to keep those things out of conflict. So to tamp down certain kinds of conversations, to make sure that people don't understand the ways in which those things are in conflict. I also think we're getting farther and farther away from the Holocaust. And so we're, we'll see how that plays out in Jewish life, but it is sort of significant to me that the thing that people are identifying with this as essential to their Jewishness being social justice, obviously we are for that, we are we're pro social justice, but at the same time, what does that have to do with being Jewish necessarily? I mean, we're in a leftist context, we see people who are not Jewish devoting their lives to social justice, everywhere that we go. We also do see a lot of Jews in those contexts as well. So I think there's a question there about if all we're left with is the social justice. What does it mean? And also if that's a stronger motivator, what does it say about these other in Jewish life, liberalism and Zionism?
Speaker 1 00:20:50 Yes. It's very telling that you make that critique of, if all there is a social justice, then like the Jewishness is irrelevant. It's just a kind of piece of ethnic backgrounds that I may or may not like that brings me into that, which I just find ironic and fascinating about it is that's been the critique by conservatives of Jewish liberals and progressives for decades. It's Coon Olam, suffocation of Judaism. And that's why it's just so interesting to have it come from.
Speaker 2 00:21:11 We're just on our way to becoming commentary.
Speaker 1 00:21:14 Exactly well, that happens to everybody. It happens to everyone. Well, we've started to talk a little about scientism. I want to talk about one piece of that. And, uh, I don't know whether this is true, but it seemed to me that one of the things that got Jewish Kerns, probably its most powerful readership from people who are not going to be inclined to read Jewish currents was Peter Beinart a piece this summer, partly because it just invited a spate of responses. My own included that mean that people are going to read his piece just because they have to figure out ways of responding to. And it was kind of a broad side against the two-state solution and argument for a quote unquote, one state solution for Israel, Palestine, Jacob, I'd love for you to reflect a little bit on whether that's true, whether people noticed currents differently or more than before, but I'm more interested in the substance of the question, which is in the people who question and I want to lay it out for you, which is especially given Arielle's comments that no, this can't just be social justice for its own sake.
Speaker 1 00:22:07 That there's a kind of Jewish thickness that motivates what it means to be part of the Jewish left. I wonder what happens in your vision of who's then part of your world is the Jewish, right? Simply the enemy of what you're trying to do in the world. What's the sense of accountability that you have for the many, many Israelis who will look at what you're doing and be furious at it and say, I don't recognize it. It's not my Judaism. We'll use the same language of the Jewish left use of the Jewish, right? Not my Judaism. We're not in my name
Speaker 2 00:22:36 By the way. You won't see that in Jewish currents, not my Judaism or not in my name makes some sense, but not my Judaism. I mean, to claim a monopoly on Jewish values. I think that in itself makes an assumption that Jewish values are pure good like that. You won't find justification for whatever they believe in Judaism. And you know, I don't think we're quite as non nuanced as that.
Speaker 1 00:23:01 No, I've, I've noticed that actually in your coverage and the piece that have come out editorial and more reported around ultra Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn and both questions of mask usage, but even going back a year ago, the antisemitic attacks you can see are trying to wrestle with, okay, well, what do I do with these people who are part of my story in some way, but oftentimes behaving in ways that I find to be anathema. But I guess like the historical antecedents to this is when Gershwin Phelan writes the Hunter RN. After I went in Jerusalem and says to her what happens to your love of the Jewish people when she's kind of holding the feet of the Jewish people to the fire in Eichmann, in Jerusalem about Jewish loyalties and is famously critical of the idea that you're loyal to your own people just of your own people.
Speaker 1 00:23:45 And he says to her what happened to your love for the Jewish people and everybody quotes our aunt's response back. Cause she's got like a bunch of fingers, but it's not clear that she wins the argument. It just means that there's two opposing views here. One that says loyalty to my own people is significant in its own, right? And our rents criticism of no it's actually, it has the potential to be a moral monstrosity. So occurrence is now one of the inheritors effectively of the <inaudible> conversation. I would love for you to play out. How do you respond to that criticism? And what do you anticipate of what some will say back to you?
Speaker 3 00:24:16 I'd say two things. I mean, one we hear from, as, as Arielle mentioned, we hear from people, uh, there are people that are Jewish in some way, shape or form often they're are folks that are the people who fall in the margins of the sort of Pew kind of study or the Steven Cohen type of demography. When they say, I finally found a place for me in Jewish currents, they mean, which is both extremely touching. I mean, I mean like so earnestly, like I find that so touching and that the, it confers a kind of like terrifying amount of responsibility. And also, you know, it's, it's interesting because you know, for the, for your place to be a conversation that is a values driven conversation, but also contains many disagreements among the staff and among our contributors is interesting for there to be attention at the center.
Speaker 3 00:24:58 And that part I like, and there's a persistent joke on our staff that we are kabod and we are doing Ky roof for the great disaffiliated masses of Jewishness. I want to be on the record of saying we are not Hubud, but we also take this as a compliment because we really care about this. Arielle is right in saying, you know, we do not claim a monopoly on Jewish values. I think at Jewish politics that's about who really has authenticity and who does not, and who has the power then to claim Jewishness as their own and be the arbiter of Jewishness. That's actually a conversation we're trying to step away from and look at rather than engage in. That's not to say that we don't also have serious political, spiritual and value commitments. We do where people. And I think that there are common denominators across our leadership and our writers of folks that feel very much that Jewishness has to some degree a BA I mean, I've read the fact that you bring up a rent is very interesting.
Speaker 3 00:25:50 The mid century Jewish thinkers and writers are a Pantheon. I think it's very interesting that when we start to think of who are the biggest, most influential writers and thinkers in our community, our minds immediately leak back half a century or more. And we think that that's not just because of the fetishization of the mid century conversation, which is a very real thing. So I think it's interesting that we ended up looking back on this conversations and thinking of ourselves as inheritors. I don't disagree with your characterization as we are picking up some kind of banner, there is a continuity. One of the critiques you had was we have a debt in your words to liberalism, and yet we also critique it. And I don't quite agree with that characterization because our relationship to liberalism is a little bit like telling someone who shows up to work everyday.
Speaker 3 00:26:34 Hey, you say you don't like your job. And yet I see you every day here at work it's as if there's a consent that we grant liberalism, be the context in which we are operating and that's not true. Liberalism is simply our context. It is our condition we live in the world. Liberalism has helped make. And the same I would say is true to an extent of Jewishness. This is different for Congress who join my mom, who's a convert for instance, would actually describe it in a much more sort of love of Nazi and sense of obligation. She had to, she felt she needed to do this thing, but Jewishness and the reality of Jewish history for us is an historical condition. It is a reality.
Speaker 1 00:27:11 Well, but let me interrupt you. I think the theory is not the debt that you get from the past is simply because this is where you came from, uh, the kind of accident of birth or accidents of history. The theory is that actually American Jewish thriving, and I'll be clear, the thriving of a certain subset of American Jews who happened to have been majority of American Jews is tied up in a certain understanding of Jewishness, curated understanding of Jewishness and a curated understanding of Americanness that happens to be shared by many other Americans. And that to harken back to that is not to look back at well. That's just where I happened to grow up in, but to look back at it and say, that's actually a unification of Jewishness and Americanness, that was really good for American Jews for a long period of time. What's wrong with investing in it.
Speaker 3 00:27:58 I think you're right, but it's not the sense of debt, right? For us, you are correct in saying that our position is the materialist critics of the Jewish condition and the American condition is definitely an intellectual offspring of the enlightenment and Jewish emancipation. That's true. This could never exist without those two forces, but does that confer upon us a debt? And I think from where we stand, it's, it's not so much that something is owed, but that what we have inherited is a condition. And for us, the condition that we're in is in a sense, even more interesting than a particular expressions of Judaism. For instance, we're not interested in arguing about liturgy and it's not because we don't think liturgy is interesting. We think liturgy is very interesting, but the truth is that our liturgy right now is a reflection of our condition. So what is most interesting to us is the reality of our condition.
Speaker 3 00:28:47 And, and when I say our, I am making a broad claim here because we are not only interested in downwardly mobile millennials between the age of 20, you know, it's all of us. And whether it touches you now or touches you later, I think a rent was really clear about this. The truth is, is that all of us are living in a context where while some may feel that the borders of Jewishness are clear, I think that's debatable. But you know, Sholem, I think was clear about what he meant when he was saying that, you know, where are your loyalties around Jewish peoplehood or, you know, later what Mordecai Kaplan, when we call civilization, the truth is that if you try to zoom in to where that obligation and interest and common cause ends, it's always been impossible to find. We have always required the Garrett's shop and required our neighbors and required others. And so I think for us, we just accept that. And so I'm not as worried in the sort of psychological or psychoanalytic desire to know who are we really? What are we really I'm interested in? How can we all survive and how can we all thrive?
Speaker 2 00:29:45 And also how can we recreate ourselves in this moment, regardless of a connection to some kind of imagined authenticity, it's more a question about where are we going? What do we want to be? What do we want to do with this? I feel like what Jacob was saying about jumping back to a mid-century moment to think about who the Jewish thinkers and writers are. Something. We talk about a lot at currents. I come out of the literary world. I was a fiction writer. I think when you think about Jewish fiction, you think Roth, you think Cynthia, Ozick you think grace Paley, you think Saul bellow, who are those people now? I mean, you can make an argument for a few names, but I would kind of say that we don't have anything like that. Now there really isn't the same kind of relationship or there isn't the same way that Jewish and it shows up in writing.
Speaker 2 00:30:33 That means something. And I think that that's a reflection of where we are. And I think something that distinguishes what we are doing from a kind of conservative, this is just Tikun Olam kind of thing is I think that first of all, some of that was focused on inner marriage. Some of that was focused on becoming more religious. I think, you know, we may all have different answers within our staff about what it means to rebuild that culture or remake Jewishness in the present. And I think our answers are different from their answers. And one of the things that we are looking at is like, what is a cultural revival look like? And that's something we're really trying to do with currents. And I think a precursor to this Ruth Bader Ginsburg piece was a staff round table that we did on Seth Rogan's American pickle movie. I don't know if you saw that you who to either the movie
Speaker 1 00:31:26 I saw the round table, I couldn't, I just couldn't watch the movie. I could, I couldn't bring myself to do it.
Speaker 2 00:31:31 Yeah, yeah. In this role, I see a lot of Jewish art put it this way, and most of it is extremely bad and feels a bit like some kind of LARPing or is really expressing more of a void or reaching for something than it is expressing something embodied. I think this Seth Rogen movie was basically the same thing. It's like sort of regurgitating stuff from Fiddler on the roof, but there's ultimately no, there, there. And so again, you know, we're in this situation where there's sort of like effects, Emily have effects, Emily have effects. Emily, when do we basically say there's nothing here, frankly, my feeling is, if there's nothing here, that's okay. And like, maybe we can, you know, release me from this and we can just move on and become Americans and then kind of be involved in that project. But I think that we are really at a turning point where this generation has to make a decision, whether there is or isn't something there.
Speaker 1 00:32:26 Yeah. I think you're right. And I, that identify with very much of the critique of the thinness of Jewish culture. More generally, I've been outspoken for years about the philanthropic absconding of Jewish culture, its own terms, which requires investing in people and in arts without ideological parameters that are placed around it, because then you're doing ideological proliferation. You're not really doing culture, but here's the strange thing. This is, this makes me just unspeakably sad. The one place where there actually is an enormous production of Jewish culture in a multiethnic Jewish space is actually in the state of Israel. There actually is original art music, theater, et cetera. That's being produced in Jewish language, in a Jewish idiom, but the politics of the state become a huge obstacle for those who are looking for that cultural flourishing to actually engage with that cultural production,
Speaker 2 00:33:16 Two things. One is that Jewish art or is that Israeli art? I mean, I know people who are involved in trying to figure out what is Jewish culture or secular Jewish culture independent from Israeli Venus in Israel. You know, I have people who are trying to cultivate sort of a diasporas mindset from within Israel because they don't feel like they are able to access what Jewishness means for them as Israelis in Israel. So, you know, I think what we're seeing is basically a young country with a really vibrant art scene. I don't know that we're seeing Jewish necessarily any more than Jewish people in the United States who are making art or making Jewish art. Certainly I've found that, you know, it's much easier to feature Israeli artists and Jewish currents or Palestinian artists for that matter. You know, that they're dealing with something that feels like Jewish in the moment, but I don't know where one ends and one begins. I, and I'm not sure it's like that simple of an idea. And also like, I think what you touched on is very important. The philanthropic community did disinvest from culture stuff in favor of investing in Israel and investing in Israel advocacy and in very destructive political modes. And that impoverished us, it's just worth underlining that because it's an important thing that happened in the last 30 days.
Speaker 4 00:34:38 Hi, my name is Jenny notice less, and I work for the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America with passions running high in the run-up to the U S presidential election. We had Hartman want to help you take a step back to ask the big questions that are facing the American Jewish community today as citizens and stakeholders in the American project, how do our Jewish and civic values intersect? What are our obligations as North American Jews? How should our voices be heard? And October 19th, our Hartman at home programming will kick off with dozens of sessions on the key civic issues facing our communities today, including salons panels, we'll talk and deeper learning opportunities. Plus we'll have 10 takes on the role of a citizen in a democracy, a daily 25 minute session with 10 different Hartman scholars joined for one session or many as we add a Jewish lens to this critical moment in history, go to www.shallomhartman.org to find out more
Speaker 1 00:35:46 Great. Well, I could keep going with both of you for a long time. This is a delight I want to ask one last question and it's actually also builds on something you just said, Arielle, which is the present tense and forward-looking orientation that you're inhabiting has been for me, that critique of the establishment as being rooted in kind of a nostalgic past, or trying to hold on conservatively to an historic past. And it's been very activating for me personally, for my own liberalism and for my own liberal Zionism, which is to say if liberalism is going to hold sway, or if liberal Zionism is going to continue to endure, it has to stop getting triggered by the critiques that it gets all the time from the right and from the left, there's like conspiracy of squeezing it because when you get attacked on both ends, then what you do is you go to a conservative posture.
Speaker 1 00:36:30 How do I hold up this ideology against this critics, liberals Island is in particular, has to articulate a vision for the future and not care about the history that it's inherited. So I, I very much identify with it. You and then you and I both see ourselves as engaged in similar projects, but maybe driven by slightly different value systems or maybe a different read on the past. But last question, which is a short one and an impossible one, we're on the verge of what could be, but hopefully will be a transformative election in America. Give us some sense of something that you are optimistic about. Something that you're looking forward to. It could be either small, descriptive, or a real vision of something that you hope happens on optimism since it's falsifiable can be as big as you want it to be, but give us some sense of optimism for this strange, this anxious, uh, American moment.
Speaker 3 00:37:18 What a question to end on. Thank, I would say there is, this is a sort of quite dark optimism, I think, but there is a truth telling in this moment, and I think the pain, I'm not even talking about the destruction that's gone on over the last four years and beyond I I'm talking about the psychic pain that people are feeling around this election, I think is a reflection of real and quite old contradictions and difficulties in our society having to do with the way we treat people of color, the way working people live, or try to live in this country. And I think the anxieties that build up around that they will not be resolved by the election. But the thing I'm optimistic about is that the development of new political forces either scary or interesting, the actual shifting and changing and shuffling that's happening, I do believe in press. This is my probiotic part coming out of that ultimately will bring us closer to the world we want to live in. And so I feel both fearful and excited for the future.
Speaker 4 00:38:22 This is really not my strong suit optimism. I'm really struggling. I have to be honest. I think that's a great answer, Jacob, just about an actual getting it all out on the table. If I had to
Speaker 2 00:38:36 Point to what makes me hopeful, I do think that it is hopeful that at least by some estimation, most young people are favorable towards socialism. I guess that that is a, a good sign. How long it's going to take to build this, you know, new, new, new left or, or whatever we want to call it. I don't know. And whether it will be sort of, it'll be 150 degrees and we'll have to live underground by that time. I don't know. But I also do think that something that is really positive that's come out of the last five to 10 years, is that the new consolidation of progressive Jews against all odds in terms of the Jewish communities attempt to sort of stamp them out, does bode well for the ability for Jews as Jews to build political coalition, um, with people of color and working people and kind of all of the groups that we need to be working with in order to build something that works for more people. So I, I think that's hopeful.
Speaker 1 00:39:44 Yeah. I'll just say two things. One is, you know, more Mo more voters are mobilized today then than have been in a long time. A lot of young people who can't vote are doing a lot of stuff that is going to shape who they are as voters, uh, when they get to, and we'll have more on that in a couple of weeks on the show. But also I've just noticed in my line of work, the wisdom business right now is a growth industry. And that may be because there's actually a tremendous amount of anxiety and uncertainty. This was true in the last couple years before the pandemic, but certainly since the pandemic has kicked in, I'm sure it's part of the reason why a year publication is picking up traction. People are looking for more serious ideas, more eloquently expressed in longer forms than they were before.
Speaker 1 00:40:23 Maybe we got all Twittered out of real conversation. And that does make me optimistic because it means that the great ideas of the Jewish future are still being written and going to be written. So with that, thanks so much for listening to our show and special, thanks to our guests, Arielle angel and Jacob Lipman, both of Jewish currents, please read Jewish currents. It's worth your time. Identity crisis is a product of the shell apartment Institute. It was produced this week by Devinsky Coleman and edited by Alex Dylan or managing producers. Dan Friedman with music provided by so-called to learn more about the Shalom Hartman Institute business, online Sholom, harvin.org. We want to know what you think about the show you can rate and review us on iTunes to help more people discover it. You can also write to
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