All right, let me ask you a question – Good Jew/Bad Jew?
Abraham, binds Isaac on the altar, takes a knife, raises it and brings it this close to his son’s throat –
Good Jew/Bad Jew?
Sarah, takes in her maidservant Hagar, and her maidservant’s son Ishmael, and then at the moment her own son is born, sends Hagar and Ishmael off to die in the wilderness –
Good Jew/Bad Jew?
Isaac, passes off his wife Rebecca as his sister to gain favor with a wealthy king. Rebecca tricks Isaac, Jacob tricks Esau, Jacob’s son’s sell their brother Joseph into slavery, Moses kills a taskmaster, David falls in love with a married woman and has her husband killed, Solomon has a thousand wives, and on and on and on –
Good Jews/Bad Jews and by whose standards?
One of the things I always loved about Judaism is that there are no red lines. Believe in God, don’t believe in God, practice don’t practice it really doesn’t matter. If you have any Jewish connection, any at all, even if you just feel Jewish, come. The community is open to you.
There are no value statements you will need to sign. No pledges of loyalty. No interrogations about beliefs. This is why I love being a rabbi, especially a liberal one. We are truly open to all.
But, apparently I was wrong.
Let me tell you a story that the late great Jewish writer, Phillip Roth, relayed to Terry Gross some years back on her radio program Fresh Air:
The year was 1969. Philip Roth was 26 years old and had already made a name for himself with “Goodbye Columbus” published in 1959 when he was just 16 years old. Can you say prodigy?
His next book was going to be “Portnoy’s Complaint.” It was lewd, crude and would perfectly tap into the sexual exploration of the time period. As a nice Jewish boy from Newark, New Jersey, he needed to prepare his parents for what was about to happen.
He sat down one night for dinner at a nice restaurant and explained how their lives would soon be turned upside down. He told them to lay low and not take calls from reporters. His mother burst into tears in the car ride home. Her son was suffering from delusions of grandeur.
But, sure enough the book had the effect Roth predicted. And, as a stereotypical Jewish mother was a central character, the press wanted to know how Roth’s own mother felt about it. Mrs. Roth simply said, “all mothers are Jewish mothers.”
What Roth had no idea about was how the Jewish world would take the book. Suddenly his parents were being ostracized by their rabbi. Their son was Anti-Semitic. Having exposed a section of the Jewish community many Jews were uncomfortable with, Roth was labeled a self-hating Jew, a bad Jew.
In researching for this sermon, I found out that Roth was not the first famous Jew to receive these monikers from the Jewish community. In fact, as the Israeli newspaper Haatetz wrote in 2015: “From Hannah Arendt to Woody Allen, almost every Jewish thinker or creative artist of the 20th Century was accused of self-anti-Semitism.” Now, Woody Allen, I’ll get to him later, but just take a minute for that to sink in: every important Jew in the past century, has labeled one time or another a bad Jew.
Just this past year, two of the most prominent Jews in America, the actress Natalie Portman and the author Michael Chabon, have become persona non grata in large swaths of the Jewish community. All because of the strong opinions they have about Israel. And, both of them consider themselves Zionist.
The phenomenon actually seems to be increasing. An internet group Masada 2000, actually published a list over 7000 names long. They call their list the Self-Hating and Israel Threatening list (you can figure out on your own what the acronym stands for). It has since been banned from cyber space. But, the effects have been lethal. Anyone can be kicked out of the Jewish community. Anyone can be labeled a bad Jew.
Israel, in that past year, has actually changed the definition of what it means to be an Israeli, what it means to be Jewish. Israel, a country that was created to be a safe haven to all Jews anywhere in the world even if only your grandparents were Jewish, a country that said if the Nazis would have killed you than we will protect you, is no longer such. Instead of being a Jewish-Democratic State open to all religions. It is now a Jewish state open only to those who support current Israeli governmental policies.
Well, no matter how you feel about your own Judaism, about Israel, or any hot button issue, we are a community open to debate. We are a community that supports disagreement. Two Jews, five opinions is not an insult. It is a badge of honor.
So, today I would like to clarify once and for all what a bad Jew is and what it is not.
First, to get this out of the way right from the beginning, a bad Jew is not someone who only attends synagogue services twice a year, or for that matter never attends at all.
Too many times I get approached by people feeling guilty they have not been to synagogue in a long time. This is unnecessary Jewish guilt. According to Rabbi Michael Uram, the head of the University of Pennsylvania Hillel, who keynoted our Engagement conference in April, Jews have an extreme case of institutional guilt. I no longer want to be responsible for such things. You are not bad Jews.
Lack of knowledge of Hebrew, Jewish prayers, Jewish texts, does not make a bad Jew. The dreaded “I” word, “Interfaith,” does not make you any less part of this community. Single, divorced, families big or small, newcomers to the Jewish faith, or lifetime adherents, matrilineal, patrilineal, we love you all the same. This is your community.
We love you no matter how much or how little you contribute financially or by any other means. This is a place of acceptance.
Now, back to that Woody Allen fellow. A bad Jew is a bad human being. Woody Allen, Harvey Weinstein, and countless others who have abused women and children, hurt, stolen, maimed, murdered.
This past year, in response to the “me too” movement, so many of our leaders have been exposed for what they really are, frauds.
Dr. Steven Cohen, one of my idols in the Jewish academic world. A sociologist, he has helped to define for so many the definition of a Jew. Often that came down to Jewish practice, lighting candles, observing Shabbat.
Well, it turns out Dr. Cohen was hiding a secret, decades of sexual advances on graduate students, inappropriate remarks. He has since resigned from his position as the director of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive. Good riddance.
The Catholic Church is not the only religious group with problems.
And, I would add, someone who uses Judaism as a weapon to hurt or ostracize fellow Jews, who puts her Judaism over another’s, who makes others feel less than. I cannot tell you the number of emails I get that make fun of “liberal” Judaism. We are too consumed with “Teekuuun Olaaam,” repairing the world, they write, as if all Reform and Reconstructionist Jews were from the south. On the liberal side, it is just as bad, as we in ways both subtle and not so much shut people who do not share our point of view out of the Jewish landscape.
Dr. Yehuda Kertzer at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America offers the following test to liberal American Jews: “If you were on a plane going down and you had one parachute to give out. On one side of you is a Hassidic Ultra-Orthodox Jew from Bnei Barak and on the other is a liberal Christian American from Boston, who do you give your parachute to?
I remember having conversations with our friends in Mount Airy, an intensely liberal section of North Philadelphia, about whether we would be more heart broken if our children married out of the faith, or married a Republican?
Both of these questions are contrived, but they both point to a community that has distinct boundaries of who is in and who is out.
What I am interested ultimately is not who is a bad Jew, but is a bad ass Jew. As I don’t often use curse words in my sermons, let me take a moment to clarify.
I turn to the work of Dr. Brene Brown, a social work professor at the University of Houston, who writes in her latest NY Times Best Seller “Rising Strong,” about what she calls the badassery deficit in society:
“I know, badassery is a strange term, but I couldn’t come up with another one that captures what I mean. When I see people stand fully in their truth, or when I see someone fall down, get back up, and say, ‘Damn. That really hurt, but this is important to me and I’m going in again’ – my gut reaction is, ‘What a badass.”
She continues, “People who wade into discomfort and vulnerability and tell the truth about their stories are real badasses. Daring is essential to solve the problems in the world that feel intractable: poverty, violence, inequality, trampled civil rights and a struggling environment, to name a few.”
Taking Brown’s definition in account, for me a bad ass Jew protects the other, is welcoming and kind, makes the world feel bigger, not smaller. A bad ass Jew stands up for what is right. This is not a Democratic or Republican thing. It is a human thing. The Judaism that I know, that has been passed down from generation to generation for as long as I’m aware, commands me to love my neighbor, to honor my parents, to repair the world.
When I think of our biblical ancestors, it is not their failings that stand out, but their bravery and compassion.
I think of Abraham and Sarah opening their tent to strangers, Jacob wrestling with the angel, Joseph forgiving his brothers, and, Isaac and Ishmael coming together to bury Abraham. On behalf of all of them and all the generations of Jews that gave us life, I say no more red lines. No more bad Jews, only badass ones. Our community will be better for it. Our world will as well.
Shanah Tovah, a sweet and healthy new year.
Last Updated on 12/20/2018 by Marc Slonim