Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hi, everyone. Welcome to identity crisis. The show about news and ideas from Michelle apartment Institute, I'm UDA, Kurtzer president of shell apartments to North America. We're recording today on Wednesday, November 25th. It is Arif Thanksgiving the day before Thanksgiving. Most of you will likely hear this show. Next week, after we have celebrated Thanksgiving, I'm personally feeling very wistful about this particular Thanksgiving. I'm having a harder time with this celebration of this American holiday than I did with the more private homebound celebrations of the Jewish holidays. Lots of unpack there about my own family's history of Americanness. And we may even get to that a little bit later, but this particular Thanksgiving is taking place, obviously, as we know in a pandemic and right after this incredibly divisive American election, and it feels quite wistful. Thanksgiving's history actually is rooted in American divisiveness, not necessarily the original Thanksgiving, which tries to probably falsely impose a story of reconciliation between white people and native people.
Speaker 1 00:01:04 But actually the first Thanksgiving by presidential proclamation takes place in the middle of the civil war Lincoln issuing the Thanksgiving proclamation, following the battle at Gettysburg as a means of trying to create a sense of solidarity and community in the middle of our country's most divisive moment. And I have to say, it feels increasingly like the question of our time in America right now, and in the Jewish community raised by both the pandemic and questions of collective responsibility around America questions raised by the election and the enormous social race class and ideological divisions among us. I think the big question is, is there an us, I think it was many of us in the Jewish community have wondered this for a long time. Is there an us when we talk about Jewish peoplehood, I think increasingly many of us are wondering, is there us of Americans, red States, blue States, are there responsibilities that we bear across difference that make it worth sustaining that sense of us?
Speaker 1 00:02:00 Do we have to care about and advocate for a larger us, even if it requires taking seriously the 70 or 80 million Americans who voted differently than us with really different stories of America. And I'm really excited to talk about all of these issues of us. We can also talk about them, but primarily we're going to try to talk about us with one of the people who I know thinks about these questions most and most carefully, my friend and colleague, dr. Macaby tone, we call is a social scientist of American Jews, a fellow in residence at the Shalom Hartman Institute as spiritual leader of our community in lower Manhattan. So first of all, thank you hall for being here and thanks, especially for being here on the Eve of a holiday.
Speaker 0 00:02:37 I know great. They'll be here you it, I think for having,
Speaker 1 00:02:40 So part of the news prompt for today was a recent article that you wrote in the Jewish telegraphic agency. We'll put the article in our show notes on Jewish politics and diversity, which you noticed that at least based on exit polls. And we don't know whether that data is good yet. The story of who voted for the president seems to indicate in the recent election in America, for those who are not following, there was a recent American presidential election. It seems to indicate that the president actually increased his votes among virtually every population except for white people. And that mitigates a story that had been emerging in America about the president as the exemplar of a story of racial brokenness. And you are arguing in your article that the liberal project of diversity ignores in particular that people who come from really different racial or ethnic backgrounds, sometimes don't behave the way that the liberal project of diversity makes us think that they would or put differently that Jews who come from different ethnic backgrounds may be diverse. That's one of the terms that you use, but they're not necessarily liberal. So walk us through the arguments a little bit that you're making. What do you think is at stake in this argument? What are you flagging for us? That's important for us to notice after the election and in particular for the Jewish community.
Speaker 2 00:03:53 Sure. And this, by the way is where ideas that I've been thinking a lot about for years. So it's not something particularly new, but as you mentioned, the election did bring into sharp focus and into public conversation. Some of them miss the many liberals or scholars or progressives I've had, particularly a certain understanding of demography is destiny. That as America would become more diverse, we can have this coalition of people of color who would all support the democratic agenda. Uh, and there's been a lot of indicators, not just in terms of exit polls, but if you look at specific counties that are majority Hispanic, whether it's in Florida or in Texas, where that just simply didn't happen. Um, so there's been something really interesting here for me, which is a moment of reckoning and realization and clarity that some of the narratives that we were telling are actually not so correct.
Speaker 2 00:04:43 So as I was reading about this questions more broadly in terms of American minority groups, I realize that something similar has been happening arguably in the American Jewish community, that part of the values that we have in many of our institutions and these are beautiful values are values that revolved around diversity, around inclusion around trying to be more representative, trying to figure out we're having, we included people who should be at the table, and these are all well-meaning projects and well-meaning impulses. But I identified a couple of fallacies or blind spots that I think sometimes can put certain hurdles or interfere even with the most well meaning diversity projects. And I tried to focus on them so I can describe them shortly, if you want me to. I spoke about the fact that we often flattened difference either within groups. We assume all the people in the minority group think the same way or are the same way or between different minority groups.
Speaker 2 00:05:38 So you can speak of Hispanic juror from Argentina and an Asian Jew as if they're part of the same group and think of themselves as part of the same group, the second line spot, or a fallacy that I focused on is that sometimes because the impetus for these diversity projects comes from a progressive or liberal ideology, it often leads us to that with assuming that this minority populations will also hold on to this liberal or progressive ideologies or have these values. And then the third thing that I focused on and this one, I think is the most complicated one and also intriguing in terms of interrogating is that often the translators that we bring in that we make visible, when we are trying to recognize and incorporate members of minority communities, they tend to be people who can speak in the language or share the ideas of the quote unquote host communities or majority culture communities. So you end up having authentic people from diverse communities. And I can bring myself as an example who just happened to not be representative in terms of their ideology. So this were some of the things that I have noticed already for some years, and that I wanted to point out and begin a conversation around them,
Speaker 1 00:06:47 Right? So there's kind of a paradox of liberalism, which most manifests in the context of pluralism, which is in service of liberalism and pluralism. We want to make space for all of the members of our community. We want to validate the identities of all of those who we sometimes invisibilize in our communities, but in doing so, you wind up having to become tolerant of viewpoints that you actually consider to be intolerant. But I think it's worse in this case because sometimes the absence of diversity is used as a witness to the community, not being consistent with this own liberal values. But if you're talking about making room for people who actually don't share those liberal values, like the project of liberalism kind of unmixed.
Speaker 2 00:07:27 Yeah. And I think you're raising up a lot of questions here. One is actually a part of this project. Like what would it mean for a real liberal diversity project? And it gets really complicated and I don't want to resist any of the complications because can I be pluralistic and include illiberal opinions that Dan would actually conflict at KP inclusion of other populations, but what's been happening, I think not just in our community, but more generally is that we've actually resisted even asking this questions because we have projects that are a little bit shallow in which we perform diversity in certain ways that still don't fully shutter or bringing the questions. Some of our paradigms that are not uncomfortable enough in the way that a true encounter between diverse populations should actually be. So even these big questions that you're asking, we haven't fully gotten to them because of the way that our diversity projects have been structured. And just to be clear, I see a lot of well-meaning generous intent in this. I'm not saying that this is done intentionally or to erase or make people invisible. I think that these things are hard and I'm excited that we can ask this question.
Speaker 1 00:08:34 I am very happy to stay at the totally philosophical level, but I've been told sometimes that that might not be particularly useful in advancing the conversation. Let's get tacos for a second. Cause I think one of the undercurrents of your particular piece was on specifically racial, ethnic, and point of origin diversity in the Jewish community. And the crux of your argument is that many of those Jews who are invisibilized, who are nonwhite Jews in America, let's say many of those whose are invisibilized the project of diversity or liberalism wants to make room for them. But lo and behold, they don't share the mainstream politics of the liberal white Jewish community. So if we kind of follow the story in the Jewish community over the past year, the racial justice protests in America awaken in the organized Jewish community, a sense of urgency around a project that a number of activists have been agitating for, for a really over a generation.
Speaker 1 00:09:25 I mean, it goes, the whole lesson was started. And I think back in the 1980s, but the Jews of color field building efforts have been taking place for a few years to indicate that the Jewish community is not monolithically white. It is not of a particular ethnic or class group. And that the insistence that our community is represented by predominantly white voices is a choice that the Jewish community has been making to invisibilize other populations. So the racial justice protests, I think have given a tremendous amount of oxygen, I think in a very healthy way to that project of noticing our diversity, I guess I want to get topless what happens, however, when those same efforts, it's one thing. If those same efforts around racial and ethnic diversity are politically agnostic, we don't care about positions people take, but what happens when those same efforts at promoting a sense of diversity are actually also accompanied by really clear theories about critical race theory, really clear theories about how you rectify social and economic class divides. And what happens when, as you've pointed out in your piece, and as we've talked about for many years, Mizrahi Jews, Jews from the former Soviet union, other Jewish communities that are not represented in the elite classes of the Jewish community, simply don't share those politics. Is there a future for the project of racial, ethnic, and point of origin diversity in the Jewish community? If the same project is going to wind up introducing the same partisan rancor inside the Jewish community as a result of that work.
Speaker 2 00:10:54 Yeah. That's a great question. You hear that? And I think that part of what you're noting is that often as we try to make space for more voices or make new categories, there's complications that come in the wake of that. And part of what we're doing right now is actually advancing the conversation by complicating things even further. So I think there's actually a tension between two different values at play here. One value is the value of trying to be representative, okay, that's a value that actually has to understand the population and try to give voice to whoever it is there is there. And then there are other value is to actually have an ideology as to what a good society can look like, which can have ideologies around racial justice and things like that. But those, I think are the values that our intention right now, and that is I think, part of what we've been seeing in the Jewish community, part of what I've been noticing that some of these efforts ended up being seen as speaking for a lot of communities, but aren't always representative of the views of those communities and those populations.
Speaker 2 00:11:53 But again, we're only at the beginning of the process, like you said, it's been the work of regeneration that has gotten us to where we are now. And part of the work that I hope we continue to do is actually to investigate and to ask a difficult question and to make sure that even as we raise visibility and make people seen that we don't erase other people in the process of doing that. And I'll say something else here again, I don't want to pretend like any of this as easily. Part of the challenge also has to be with figuring out different reasons why some populations are invisible in the Jewish community and why do they not mix are around that? Why is it that we still have like insular communities who for different reasons. And very often, you know, I reject the claims that lack of representation is always the fault of the quote unquote powerful mainstream often has to do with the agency and the choices of the minority communities. And I can talk about that more, but I think we need to actually realize that different populations have different reasons why they might not be at the table may not be seen. And that we have to actually undertake a process of deep research understanding before we not only speak on their behalf, but begin to build coalitions that assume that they are there when they might not be there yet.
Speaker 1 00:13:07 Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about that question of agency. I, to give you two examples that are not about race or ethnicity, but it feel to me like they're comparable. One is I don't remember last year back when people used to be in the same place together, when there was the anti anti-Semitism rally that was organized by UJA Federation and others, it was a March across the Brooklyn bridge. And it was meant to be in solidarity with karate Jews in Brooklyn who were coming under these attacks and no high radium showed up. So you have this weird performance of solidarity by the non-car rated community in order to be in solidarity with her new Jews who, who are not there. And there's a whole bunch of very tactical reasons about why they weren't there, who was sponsoring the rally, who was showing up, but it felt to me like a real illustration of the agency question, what does solidarity even mean?
Speaker 1 00:13:53 If those who you want to be in solidarity with don't want to be at the same table as you a more subtle example is for decades, the Jewish community has tried to say, we need to change how we operate in order for the people who are disengaged from Jewish life, to be able to have a seat at the table. And part of me is like, why don't we respect the fact that people may have opted out of Jewish life? So why do I have to give up on the thickness of my own Jewish community and its institutions in order to thin it out so that other people can find their way in, who may not want to be here? So I'm curious in your perspective, in this both as a social scientist, but also as someone who believes in people hood, what happens when it's not that they're not there because we're not making room for them, it's that they're not there because they don't want to be part of the same community.
Speaker 2 00:14:38 Yeah. And I also think part of the challenge and I'm adding to what you're saying right now is that we tend to notice certain absences more than others, right? So we'll have people who say, well, if your community doesn't look like this, then it's because you're discriminating. But we don't ask the same things about Russian speaking Jews who are like huge population. That's like super underrepresented. Let's say in our institutions are often about Orthodox Jews who are also fairly underrepresented. So I think there's questions both around agency. And also why do we make choices around certain populations being visible and not others? But I think that some of this really has to do going back to trying to find ways to have internal dialogue with these populations and actually finding out why aren't you there? Is it because there are barriers that are in front of you and you want to be there.
Speaker 2 00:15:22 In which case we have a communal mandate to do whatever we have to do. And we have plenty of examples in which people have felt excluded or discriminated against, or that have come through racism in the Jewish community. And we have to do like a lot of communal work and Tikun, you know, fixing around that. But very often when you speak to people, they'll say I'm just not interested or, or I have this other particular local community where I want to be spending my time. And that just introduces a whole new set of dynamics and questions around people who, and I'll say one more thing. I think that being inclusive and being representatives are always going to stand in tension with other values. So I think part of what I'm encouraging us to do is actually to be really honest about what's happening here in the different projects that we undertake, what are the costs and the benefits, what are the choices that we are making and a little bit, not pretend like we can have it all that we can be fully representative and also fully represent certain ideologists and not actually have to grapple with the tension and the difficult things that come up when these encounter each other.
Speaker 1 00:16:25 I think you're right. You're talking basically about competing values. That ideal forms of representation might wind up creating a situation of discomfort because then, okay, now I actually have everybody in the Jewish community showing up at the table, but I have a whole bunch of people in the Jewish community at that same table who have such radically different worldviews and care about things so differently than me. I don't want to be at the same table with them anymore. So now let's try to figure out what's the point of the table. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:16:51 I want to add something to what you're saying. I recently revisited a really good already called by a sociologist called Nissim Israeli in Israel. Studies means rally Jews. And he was reckoning with a question that sociologists in Israel and leaders of NGOs have been thinking for a long time, which is why is it the left really cannot get ms. <inaudible> who faced discrimination from the state to actually align with them politically. And one of the things that he argues and uses a different metaphor, but I'll use yours is that the table itself is problematic. Is that the table itself, the project is trying to have this table with everybody sitting there. And he uses a metaphor of like a nicely manicured garden that, that in itself actually contains certain values. That stand intention with the values of the populations that you're trying to bring to your team.
Speaker 1 00:17:37 So funny, two weeks ago, I interviewed my dad about say America. And I'm just reminded of, I remember when my dad was involved with negotiating the Madrid peace conference. I remember one of the big fights that took place between these Israelis and Palestinians in the lead up to the Madrid peace conference was the size and shape of the table itself. The actual physical table, not table as a metaphor, the actual physical table. And it's an embodiment of what you're describing, which is the very construct of the quote unquote community or the infrastructure in which we want to be able to be really good at representation and diversity. The decision we make around the construct itself oftentimes is indicative of a whole bunch of biases that we already have. And this is by the way, also weapon a lap. He said the summer and identity crisis, she said, stop using the terminology of inclusion because when you use the terminology of inclusion, you indicate that you're there, you're holding the space and I'm going to make room for someone else. I'm going to include them. But if you actually, if you want to think about what radical inclusion is ultimately about, which requires different terminology, you have to get out of the construct of what you think the community is and be ready for it to look totally different when actually people join you around whatever table emerging.
Speaker 2 00:18:48 Right. All right. What's said another option is be ready to name the fact that you're not fully inclusive because I care a lot about using your metaphor, what my table looks like and what values I really care about. And I think part of what the work we have to do is to be honest of, who's not sitting around this table and why, as opposed to kind of pretend like if we include XYZ people, now everybody is here. So I think part of what I'm grappling with is how do we have intellectual honesty around the choices that we've made and who we're including? How do we have the humility to talk about the people that we don't actually know very well and to actually name that lack of knowledge and how do we honestly just leave with some of these difficult questions and not fully resolving them?
Speaker 3 00:19:34 Hi, my name is Alana Stein, Hain, and I'm scholar in residence and director of faculty at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. I want to tell you about a series of talks. I'll be giving over the next few months called Talmud from the balcony. Tell me from the balcony is an occasional series that exposes big ideas, questions, and issues, motivating rabbinic discussions. Our theme for the upcoming sessions will be beyond the limits of law, repairing the fabric of society as a society. We rely upon unspoken norms of behavior and responsibility. And yet few of these norms are legally enforceable. I'll be delving into the waist and rabbis address this gap between law and character to register for one or more of the talks, go to our website, Shalom hartman.org, and look in our Hartman at home calendar for Tama, from the balcony. Thank you. And looking forward,
Speaker 1 00:20:28 Let's talk about the trade off the values trade off, because that, to me feels very, very urgent right now. And especially in the American context, the whole question about healing, our divides, right, Americans are hopelessly polarized. The argument goes, and we basically have two options. Do I try to heal the divides between myself and others? Or do I try to beat, do I try to win? And in some ways the, what we've been talking about, inclusion and representation and diversity are the types of activities that one does in which you say what unites us is more important than what divides us. And we are a stronger society. If we take into consideration all of us as part of this story, whereas the countermove the one that has a different calculus about the choices that's being made, says, okay, I understand that. It's important for me to take seriously if I'm an East coast, I guess cosmopolitan elite, it's important for me to take seriously, the other human beings in America who vote very differently, who live in very different socioeconomic religious or otherwise orientations, but ultimately job is not on me to actually make space within my consciousness for them.
Speaker 1 00:21:33 If the extent I want to understand them, it's because I want to win at the polls. So let's map that out to the Jewish community context. So this whole question of representation being aware of who's in our community, what drives that? What's the Jewish value. That's motivating that precisely because there's a counter argument that says don't, I want to simply win in the marketplace of ideas and ideals. I don't want to lose what my community institutions and their values are ultimately about by having to compromise politically with all sorts of people who I would rather not see and not have to engage with.
Speaker 2 00:22:06 I'm going to rephrase your question a little bit as to me, what's at stake here in this conversation in terms of our community politics, and also more broadly in terms of the conversation we're having in America. And I'll say that somebody who really like the people in my life, half of them are Trump voters and the other half are like Biden supporters. I voted for Biden. I wasn't shy about it. It wasn't a difficult choice for me, but at the same time, so many of the relationships that I'm in, I think make me look at people a little bit differently than people who may be only have voters of certain Stripe in their life. I guess I would say a couple of reactions you heard at the way you're asking one is that I personally, as somebody who cares about liberal democracy, I don't think there's another way aside from persuasion.
Speaker 2 00:22:48 I just don't think that we can quote unquote win, especially the way that our country is set up in terms of the electoral system. I haven't been convinced by any argument that if we have the orientation, if let's just win over the other side, that we'll be able to do it. And no, I'm not talking right now about what's moral. What's right. What feels really good. I'm talking right now about what strategic as somebody who loves this country and wants to maintain it as much as possible. And they're super, not ideal conditions. So that's just one value, but it's very much at stake for me. And the other thing for me is like a lot of people look at discourse of unity or healing as somehow enabling something really bad or something really evil. I don't see it like that. I distinguished between political leaders and voters.
Speaker 2 00:23:33 I don't think that our political identities are the end all and be all of who we are. I also think that I'm fairly attuned to the way that social media and the news are shaping our understanding of the world, which actually helps me think more generously of people who disagree with me because I think, well, actually they have a totally different set of facts in front of them. Now how to deal with that is a different question, but it does help me say that maybe if I was watching only Fox news or whatever, maybe I would actually agree with them. And I wouldn't think of my choices as an ethical. I might even think of the other side as an ethical. So I guess for me, it's a combination of both having human relationships with really good people who disagree with me politically of understanding that the source of data that we're getting right now just ends up crafting different epistemological realities.
Speaker 2 00:24:22 And also just like my mom always told me when I was young at Nicole, <inaudible>, don't be right. Be smart. And right now I think we have to resist the impulse to only want to be right. And there's something here about like, no one's going anywhere. The millions of people who vote for the opposite political party, they're not going anywhere. Their fellow Americans, we are in the same country and our fates are intertwined in different ways. So as long as this is the reality in front of us, I just don't see another way. I don't see an alternative that lets us continue being America. I understand the anger. I felt it myself, especially at, I don't want to get into like specifics politically, but I get the impulse. I just, I just don't see it leading anywhere that is in service of the Republic.
Speaker 1 00:25:06 I think there's another argument behind which you didn't get at because it's hard to formulate as strong and intellectual view of it. Although I've learned this from you over the years around group solidarity and continuity as being, not morally contingent arguments, but moral arguments in and of themselves. And I think another argument that I would use if I were you about to make this case is as simple as kin, they are also your family. And that has to turn into not just because of my family, the people I have to tolerate, but that I have a degree of application, which is a moral obligation, a commitment to family because very few of us are Peter singer ethicists who believe that family is morally compromised category. We don't think of that. We know that family relationships actually matter in defining our moral world. So I think that has to be a part of the argument also. And when mapped on to the Jewish community, the reason we care about the Jews who we oftentimes don't see in our communities enough, because either we have racial and ethical blind spots, or because we don't have those blind spots, but we don't want their politics, but we're actually obligated to them because they're part of our family. Now that's a counter-cultural view, too many liberal American Jews who are suspect about those extrapolated family claims that were supposed to be loyal to other Jews. But I think it has to be part of the moral conversation here.
Speaker 2 00:26:24 Yeah. Although I think it's hard to have it if it's only a moral conversation and if it's not something you experienced. So I know that for me, it's been like very powerful whenever I've had a family members, for example, who had to go to the hospital for different things and you have this Satmar Hasidim groups that basically come to you and take care of you for the time you were there. I benefited so much. I had an apartment, I was given food. I was made to feel like it really difficult moments in my life. There's somebody who's going to be there for me. Who's never going to ask me what I think or how I vote. So I think that experiencing that in the flesh makes the family metaphor. Not only I feel radical and not only something that you can argue is used for different purposes, but actually something that you experienced viscerally. And that definitely is part of my own approach to Jewish people who, and also my own theology and most of the commitments that I hold here.
Speaker 1 00:27:14 Yeah. People that is an easier experience to feel than it is to describe. So it's easier to build up a theory of Jewish peoplehood. Once you have experienced that sense of being connected to an expanded family, then what I'm trying to convince you, that other people who have no relationship to her, actually your family. Exactly. And we've talked for many years also about the kind of inherent correlation between people who had employ wisdom. If you actually care about some notion of the Jewish people, you have to be willing to tolerate and maybe even embrace all of the differences that are within our people as a condition of it, except with one exception. This is kind of the crux of the problem. What happens when for so many American Jews, the thing that was so important about people that for a long time, it was that it was the solidarity that kept us safe.
Speaker 1 00:27:59 What happens if you're at a place in which American Jews on the right and on the left no longer believe that it's their relationship with other Jews that are going to keep them safe. It's their relationship with other Americans who share their political values? Can people had survived that if you have your Trump voting relatives who believe that Biden Harris voters are playing fast and loose with America's security and Israel security and therefore jeopardizing the position of Jews and the majority of liberal American Jews believe that the president is awakening or inviting white supremacist ideologies and making Jews unsafe, does the bond of peoplehood, which makes for a belief in pluralism, can it survive that fear that other Jews themselves are the ones who are making the unsafe and is it worth pushing for?
Speaker 2 00:28:47 Yeah. So I, I think in general, when you think about group solidarity and group cohesion, the ability to agree on who your enemy is, is like the most important thing. So basically agreeing with you that that's sort of the vision and argument is perhaps the most difficult thing to grapple with in terms of Jewish peoplehood. But I do have one caveat. I think the fact that we're disagreeing so much about this is good news, at least for those of us who, the one that is feminism, right. Because the fact that that really there's something here that when the antisemites are at the gate in such big numbers, that you actually stop disagreeing so much. So, yeah. And just adding that caveat, because I don't know if what's happening right now is always going to remain the case. I guess that's what I'm saying. God-willing we should only have good news and safety, but part of the arguments that we have right now, I think are fairly theoretical. And I think that we should name that, right.
Speaker 1 00:29:34 I dunno if it doesn't feel that theoretical to me, how, when you have a situation where a whole bunch of Jews are looking at frameworks like the women's March or other progressive spaces, arguing that it is through multi-ethnic multi-faith coalitions, that Jews ensure their own safety. And that Jews participate in the safety of other vulnerable groups. And then other Jews who are multi-ethnic view those activities as endangering the welfare of Jews. That's the exact problem because now the very thing that some Jews are doing to keep Jews safe, other Jews view is endangering them. And in reverse, it goes back to, we were talking about before those Jews in multi-faith multi-ethnic spaces are going to start saying to themselves, the people I want to see in my diversity are people of color who identify with the same political goals here, but I don't really have room in there for Cuban American Jews who voted for Trump. And then suddenly nobody is consistent then either in our commitments to peoplehood or in our commitments, to a sense of our responsibility to see diversity in our case.
Speaker 2 00:30:37 So I think a hundred percent, for some people it will manifest in this way that you can't really have both, but I'm going to actually use myself as an example. I wrote an op-ed back when there was a lot of noise around the woman's marriage. And I actually spoke of myself and of my identity. And I said that even though there were a lot of Jewish women of color marching and organizing around this, that I wouldn't go. And I said, why? And the thing is that some of those people marching are friends and colleagues of mine, and I communicated with them about it. And this actually goes back to my point, we disagreed over this in exactly the radical ways that you're mentioning, but the quote unquote threat from the women's March of going or abstaining from it is still theoretical enough that we can still think of ourselves as friends and even respect each other within the context of the Jewish community.
Speaker 2 00:31:25 And that we can be in relationship with each other. Now, this might not be the case with everything. And as examples get more extreme or more complicated or more difficult than we might lose this ability, but I'm not sure that we've reached the point of no return. I still think that at least amongst those of us who want to build those bridges and not everybody does, let's be honest, but those of us who want to build this bridges, that we still have the possibilities of talking to each other, try to understand each other's dreams, the nightmares. And honestly, we still have the privilege to understand the choices of marching and not marching and not see it in such like life and death sort of terms that are going to negate the possibility of any relationship.
Speaker 1 00:32:02 I see. One of the things that you and I have in common is that I think both of us are kind of skeptical of teams. That ideology is a transactional activity, as opposed to being like the flag under which we're comfortable marching. There's very few times when I've shown up really I protest. And by the way, I'm aware of my own limitations on this. I know the problematics of it. I also know that there have been moments in the last couple of years, I showed up to the Brooklyn March on anti-Semitism. I showed up to black lives matter marches over the summer because there was at a certain point, no justifiable way to either be human or much less apparent. And to pretend that you could just keep sitting them out. Cause you're not going to like something that one person says this speaker or that sign in any of these contexts. But I do think that both of us are kind of running up against the tide, which is that these kinds of ideological polarizations require of people to make team choices. And that feels very hard. And then if you want to win, right, again, those who are hanging around the margin saying, well, I agree with this part, but I don't agree with that part become liabilities to the movement as opposed to what we would like to think of them as being assets. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:33:07 I mean, yes. The way that I say it is that I'm allergic to orthodoxies, even as somebody who identifies with parts of the Orthodox community, I'm very much with you that I'm allergic to ideological orthodoxies. And I agree with you that it's a funny place to be with this tide of just group ideologies, not just in our community, but across America and across the world, in which the desire for nuance, for compromise, for understanding and for complexity is increasingly called immoral by people who disagree with you. And the only thing that I'll say that to me was one small silver lining out of a very tumultuous and difficult election season is I think there's large numbers of voters who might not be vocal about the culture Wars either within our communities or in the country that actually want to resist making everything into a political war and want to resist having this sort of like moral purity test.
Speaker 2 00:34:00 And, you know, you would, I keep thinking actually about the fact that if most of us who want to resist this thinking around themes and an Orthodox is that if we and I speak personally, if I remain silent or quiet, then the loud voices are only the team leaders who are saying who's allowed to be there and who isn't. So I think there's a lot of work to do. And the more the people speak up against the tide, the more that we might realize it's not actually a tide, it's just a more visible or loud tide on Twitter, as opposed to social life or communal life.
Speaker 1 00:34:31 Couple of last short questions. First is any practical suggestion items to someone who reads your piece in JTA and says, huh, my field division around who I see in my community, or who's included is more narrow than I would like it to be, but you've helped people to broaden their field division. You've complicated, the quote unquote diversity story. One thing person runs Jewish organization runs a synagogue, but what's one practical thing you want them to do there where they might think about representation differently. Might do something a little bit differently as a result.
Speaker 2 00:35:03 I'm going to answer your question, but not too directly. I think that what's needed right now is not just in terms of individuals who want to do things because there's certain adaptive challenges that we have as a community. There's very little scholarship about some of the populations that I was speaking about, like Sephardic middle Eastern Jews. And there aren't that many individuals who have fear in both worlds who can both speak about their more insular communities and also quote, unquote, be able to speak to the mainstream Jewish institutions. So I actually think that we need communal investment in this. I received so many phone calls and emails from really well-meaning people who just tell me, okay, what books should I assign? Who should I invite to speak? And sometimes I have good suggestions that I'm always happy to work with people, but often I just think we have a lot of work to do. And this is not to minimize your question. It's just to actually recognize the fact that there are some big changes that need to happen.
Speaker 1 00:35:56 Yeah. Well, I understand that a former NYU doctoral student wrote an excellent dissertation about Syrian Jews in America and probably the only ethnographic study of its kind of Edom Israeli Jewish community in America. So one day that book will, hopefully
Speaker 2 00:36:07 I call them Sephardic Yehuda, but one day the book will come out here.
Speaker 1 00:36:10 Great. There's a lot that I really wanted to talk to you more about. So you'll come back and identity crisis again, to talk about the whole business of counting Jews, the social science. There's so much there, but last question for today, Nicole, you're a first generation American. Can you tell me a little about Thanksgiving in your house or for you personally? Is this a holiday for you? Is it a holiday for your family? What does it look like and feel like?
Speaker 2 00:36:28 Yeah, so I think it's actually going to feel like a holiday for the first time this year because my son NES who's four years old and he goes to the Manny Cantor center at your school in the lower East side. But most of the population isn't Jewish and he's come back home the past couple of days talking about Turkey and Thanksgiving. So I was texting my husband Sian earlier and I asked him if he can pick up the Turkey and looking up recipes to actually figure out what am I doing? So there's something actually that feels pretty American about this holiday. For me, perhaps the first holiday that I'm going to be doing something. And that also feels a little bit redemptive just in terms of my son being the one to initiate it. Um, and maybe just the sort of symbol for the future that is full of possibilities that we cannot imagine right now.
Speaker 1 00:37:12 I love that. And I can guarantee you that your son is not the first American to be born in America and then to bring his parents into this ritual. That's the whole second, third, fourth generation American story. And I grew up at Thanksgiving is really a genuinely Jewish and religious holiday and is a little strange to not, to not have our whole family together. But as the fourth generation American on all sides, it runs pretty deep. So it's pretty powerful to see it taking root in your family as well. Well, thanks so much for listening to our show this week and special thanks to my guests. We call it the tone. Identity crisis is a product of the shell apartment Institute in partnership with the Jewish telegraphic agency. It was produced this week by Devinsky Calman and Dan Friedman and edited by Alex Dylan, our managing producers, Dan Friedman music provided by so-called to learn more about the Sholom Harvard Institute, visit us online show hartman.org. We'd love to know what you think about the show you can rate and review us on iTunes to help more people discover the show. And you could also write to
[email protected]. You can subscribe to our show in the Apple podcast app, Spotify, SoundCloud, audible, and everywhere else. Podcasts are available. See you next week, stay safe and healthy. And thanks for listening.
