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Why should we be Jewish?
by
Senior Rabbi, Alan Green
Published in the Jewish Post on
Wednesday,
December 17, 2008
Why should we be Jewish? It’s a question I once asked myself, many
years ago. My feeling is that a question like this could only be
asked in this modern era--an era of fragmentation and
disintegration. Oppressed and persecuted as our ancestors were, I
don’t think the question would even have occurred to them. Not to
be a Jew, in most cases, was not only impossible. It was
unimaginable.
However, in this generation, when everything is open to challenge,
there is a spiritual price to be paid. There are at least two
reasons for this. First of all, while scientific skepticism has
been extremely valuable on the material and technological level of
human life, it has left a broad swath of spiritual destruction in
its wake. It has made it almost impossible for people to believe in
intangibles, like a God of truth, justice, and compassion.
Second, the poison of the Holocaust continues to work its way
through the Jewish system. After sixty years, it is a trauma from
which we have only begun to recover. How much do we continue to
suffer from the murder of 80% of the spiritual teachers of the
previous generation? And how much of modern Jewish orientation is
now based on the very real threat of annihilation? But this is
hardly a healthy foundation for Jewish identity, belief, or
practice. From the shattered hearts and broken spirits of this
generation, rises the cry: “Why should we be Jewish?”
So let this week’s column be the first of several attempts to
address the inner wound from which all modern Jews suffer, in one
way or another. I want to begin with a poem by the 20th
century Yiddish poet, Jacob Glatstein (translated into English by
Cynthia Ozick):
Without Jews, no Jewish God.
If, God forbid, we should quit
this world, Your poor
tent’s light
would out.
Abraham knew You in a
cloud:
since then, You are the
flame
of our face, the rays
our eyes blaze,
our likeness
whom we formed:
in every land and town
a stranger.
Shattered Jewish skulls,
shards of the divine,
smashed, shamed pots—
these were Your
light-bearing vessels,
Your tangibles,
Your portents of miracle!
Now, count these heads
By the millions of the
dead.
Around You, the stars go
dark.
Our memory of You,
obscured.
Soon Your reign will
close.
Where Jews sowed,
a scorched waste.
Dews weep
on dead grass.
The dream raped,
reality raped,
both blotted out.
Whole congregations sleep,
the babies, the women,
the young, the old.
Even Your pillars, Your
rocks,
the tribe of Your saints,
sleep their dead
eternal sleep.
Who will dream You?
Remember You?
Deny You?
Yearn after You?
Who will flee You,
only to return
over a bridge of longing?
No end to night
for an extinguished people.
Heaven and earth wiped out.
Your tent void of light.
Flicker of the Jews’ last hour.
Soon, Jewish God,
Your eclipse.
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