Make Our Children Proud
Imagine a bus of Birthright participants, 40 from the U.S. and 10 from Israel. An Israeli soldier and an American student are sitting next to each other. The Israeli says: “My grandparents came to Israel to be safe in their homeland. Israel is the promised land, from which our people were exiled, and now I am defending it. What’s your story?” The answer of the American Jew will probably be embarrassing, because even Jewish day schools don’t teach their students to be proud of American Jewry. In fact, in many cases even leaders of American Jewry don’t defend its ethos.
Nearly all high school students in America need to study U.S. history and government. Most Israelis learn about the history of Zionism and the founders of Israel. All nations understand that citizenship requires a master story of collective belonging. But what about American Jewry? A graduate of a Jewish day school can have the best secular education, study Bible and Talmud, and learn about the Holocaust and Israel, but know little about the Jewish civilization in America.
That is an educational failure and a strategic vulnerability. Contemporary antisemitism, coming at American Jews from “the left” and “the right,” is an attack on our self-determination and on who we are. Every American Jew should be able to proudly defend their legacy as a member of one of the greatest civilizations of humanity, which made extraordinary contributions to mankind and to America. And on the Birthright bus, they should be able to say that American Jewry contributes to Judaism and ensures the existence of the Jewish People, just like Israel.
Achieving this goal requires five educational revolutions. First, we must teach the master story of Diaspora Jewry, which celebrates civilizational resilience, which emanates from the capacity of the Jewish People to adaptively recreate itself across time and geographies. Jewish history is often taught as a sequence of events that happened to Jews: expulsions, persecutions, antisemitism, migration and genocide. But these events are interspaced between extended periods of security and prosperity and such calamities often triggered incredible comeback episodes of rebuilding. We migrated, reorganized, created institutions, generated ideas and developed new forms of religious expression. Yes, we were an object of history, but also its subjects.
Throughout our history, some Diaspora communities became Great Diasporas, which shaped Judaism and the societies around them. American Jewry is the Great Diaspora of our time that has made tremendous contributions to Judaism, to the Jewish People, to Zionism and to Israel, to America and to humanity. In its story, there is so much to be proud of!
Second, our schools must educate about our “superpower” of resilience and adaptability. Mark Twain famously wondered about Jewish immortality. Well, the answer to Twain’s wondering is our collective adaptability and resilience, which emanate from our unique architecture as a decentralized network of communities, each with core institutions such as schools, synagogues, and charities. Throughout history, when we lost one section of our network due to catastrophe, migration or assimilation, another section surged because all Jewish communities are safety nets to each other, competing for thought leadership, membership and resources. The Jewish People is clearly not the strongest but it is the most resilient and adaptable, and every member of our community should know it!
Third: we should teach Judaism as a societal philosophy that enriches America. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt”l writes extensively about the extraordinary contribution of Judaism to contemporary political thought on executive power, checks and balances, governance, truth, justice, due process, leadership, political dissent, wealth accumulation and distribution, personal and communal responsibility, human rights and minority rights. Judaism is a hybrid of conservative and liberal ideals that develop through the permanent tension among them. Jewish rituals are important, but so is Judaism’s approach to citizenship, particularly in today’s polarized America. In other words, the graduates of our schools should be able to represent our nuanced approach to a model society.
Fourth: American Jewry Studies should become a core field of Jewish education. Students should learn about the history of Jews in America since 1654; about the constitutional conditions that allowed Jewish life to flourish in the United States; about American-Jewry contributions to America, as well as to Judaism, to Zionism and to Israel. Personalities like Louis Brandeis, Emma Lazarus, Jacob Blaustein and Henrietta Szold should be celebrated alongside other leaders, philanthropists, rabbis, activists and entrepreneurs who made our community great.
Fifth: Jewish education should embrace the ideal of peoplehood, namely that Jews constitute one people despite their profound differences in politics, religious practice and geography. This ideal is not just a “slogan” but a nuanced set of notions, religious laws, norms and practices. American Jewry has always included Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, orthodox and progressive, Zionists and non-Zionists, conservatives and liberals. These groups disagreed, competed and frequently irritated one another, yet together they make up one of the greatest Jewish communities in history. When American politics sorts people into hostile camps, the notion of Jewish Peoplehood offers a counterforce that inspires mutual respect, educates to disagree without excommunicating, and teaches to appreciate unity without uniformity.
Every American Jew is a Diaspora-Jew by choice, who are in the United States because they want to be here. Those who want to go to Israel, can do so at will, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis come to America for its promise. Hence, it makes sense that all American Jews should expect their schools to convey that pride to their children. Indeed, five revolutions is a lot to ask for. But each is an essential building block of an identity that can withstand the assaults on our community and all are foundations of the Jewish future.
Gidi Grinstein is the Founder and President of Reut Group, which is a research, strategy and leadership group. Gidi is the author of Flexigidity: The Secret of Jewish Adaptability. Reut USA has been leading AJ2054, which is a series of conferences on the future of American Jewry. See From Pyramids to Skyscraper: Lessons from Our Great Diasporas, Launch a Decade of Renewal Now, and The National Security of American Jewry.
