How Anti-Semitism and a Lack of Jewish Self-Confidence Slowed the Birth of Jewish Studies in America

As a graduate student at the University of Michigan in the 1960s, Robert Rockaway was surprised to find how many of his Jewish colleagues and professors were reticent about—or even ashamed of—the fact that they were Jews. His efforts, along with a handful of other students, to start a Jewish-studies program brought these feelings to the fore:

[O]ver three months, we met with Jewish professors in the history, political-science, philosophy, and Near Eastern-studies departments. The result was that only one professor . . . openly supported our efforts. [Likewise], when we first approached the Detroit Jewish Federation for money to fund a Jewish-studies program at Michigan, we got the same answer the professors gave: “It’s not a credible academic field.” . . .

As I reflect on those years, I now appreciate [the reasons behind] all the hesitation to express one’s Jewish identity openly: the concern about anti-Semitism. In the city of Detroit in the 1960s, the Detroit Athletic Club barred Jews from membership. Private golf courses restricted their membership to non-Jews. Certain neighborhoods, such as the affluent suburb of Grosse Pointe, maintained “gentlemen’s agreements” of not selling homes to Jews. And the Detroit Edison company and other firms did not hire Jews. . . .

But the memories of hard-core anti-Semitism, however scary, did not adequately account for the hesitancy to express any Jewish identity on the part of my Jewish peers and faculty members at the university. Abandoning or hiding from your heritage in order to be accepted has never worked. It did not work in Europe and it does not work in America. . . .

Once upon a time, persecution was the glue that held non-religious Jews together, but it no longer appears to play a significant role in Jewish survival in America. However, surveys and journalistic pieces in the general and Jewish press point to a resurgence of overt anti-Jewish sentiment in the United States, perhaps especially on college campuses and among academics. I can only wonder what impact this new turn of the wheel will have on the future of Jewish-American identity and attitudes, and on American Jewish life.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Anti-Semitism, History & Ideas, Jewish studies, University

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society