Jonathan of Head Heeb fame is convening the third annual blogburst for Arrival Day. Arrival Day commemorates the arrival of Jews to old New Amsterdam, and each year, the burst has a theme. According to Jonathan, “this year, the focus is on American Jews as part – or, more accurately, parts – of a larger whole.”
After last year’s Arrival Day I read Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock – no causal relationship. In it, Roth’s protagonist, Philip Roth #2 (you really need to read the book) preaches an idea he calls “diasporism,” as a counter to Zionism. Now, regardless of what thinks of Zionism as a political and/or religious philosophy, diasporism takes that idea to it’s logical extreme and flips it on its head. According to Roth #2, Zionism is an extreme form of ghettoization exercised on the Jewish community by itself, and as such, almost guarantees the death of the Jewish community. The only hope for keeping the faith and culture (he uses the term with several conditions) alive is for Jews to live all over the world. By being spread out everywhere, Jews have more of a chance of being accepted because they will be known, not just an Other. He also talks about the Jewish tradition gaining its vibrancy by being extroverted and interacting with different communities; the isolation of Zionism causes an “inbreeding” (my word, not his) of the Jewish tradition that eventually weakens it and makes it ill-suited for the world around it.
I think Roth, the author, is implicitly making an observation about the world we live in now. How did we get here? As much as there is a sense of defined and definable cultures, for example as presented in the clash of civilizations thesis, the reality is that cultures are in constant contact with one another, and it is this contact that has created the world as we know it. What we argue about now is not the reality of our situation, but how we interact and get along. Those who would argue to maintain an imagined purity see conflict and strife as the logical outcome of interaction, and need to erect barriers to keep that imagined level of purity. As facile as it sounds, the only way to break down those barriers is to make them impossible to keep. For example, Who You? recently posted about Muslim Boy Scouts, and it is that being in the world that we need. I know this sounds like platitudes and simplicity, but to me the ideas are so simple that I can’t complicate them.
Rachel over at Velveteen Rabbi talks about the inter-faith dialogue she sees in the Jewish Diaspora, and in my mind it’s very much a causal relationship. You cannot have productive conversations in an insular world. The greatest periods in Islamic history were period were ones of cultural and religious openness; Europe brought itself out of the dark ages through trade (too Marxist an idea?).
So where does the Jewish community belong? The same place any faith community belongs: everywhere. Look at Kurban Said, author of Ali and Nino. He was Jew who wrote about a Muslim man loving a Christian woman so convincingly everybody assumes he was one of them.
We all need our own diasporas. Sometimes from place. Sometimes from time. But always from where we are.
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You know, I’ve never read Operation Shylock — but your description of it is fascinating, and I think I may add it to my Amazon wishlist now! I’m intrigued by the notion of Diasporism as a counterpart to Zionism.
I’m completely with you on the need for extroversion, on the case for non-Christian Boy Scouts, and on the notion that our world derives much of its richness from the interaction and intersection of religions and cultures. Long live dialogue! 🙂
Happy Arrival Day
[Ed. note: Since the advance notice of this year’s blogburst wasn’t what it should have been, I’ll be keeping it open for a few days. If you have something to contribute but can’t get it in by midnight, please don’t…
Roth’s ideas are interesting but run a bit contrary to reality. Jewish people do live nearly everywhere. There are more Jews in the US than there are Israeli Jews. One of he failures of zionism is that all the world’s Jews didn’t come:
“[C]ontrary to the expectations of the early Zionists, as Ambassador Mekel noted, most of the world’s Jews have not joined their brethren to live in Israel. Of the world’s 13 million to 14 million Jews, a minority – 5.26 million – make their home in Israel, and immigration has largely dried up. Last year, a record low 21,000 Jews immigrated to Israel.”
http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=105610
I certainly agree about cultures (and people) mixing and borrowing and that created our world today. That, among a million other reasons, I have so little patience for the crackpot view of “pure Islam.” Only God knows what that is — the rest of us can only approximate.
Happy Arrival Day
[Ed. note: Since the advance notice of this year’s blogburst wasn’t what it should have been, I’ll be keeping it open for a few days. If you have something to contribute but can’t get it in by midnight, please don’t…
Happy Arrival Day
[Ed. note: Since the advance notice of this year’s blogburst wasn’t what it should have been, I’ll be keeping it open for a few days. If you have something to contribute but can’t get it in by midnight, please don’t…
So where does the Jewish community belong? The same place any faith community belongs: everywhere. This is a bit simplistic, because the Jewish community isn’t simply a faith community; it is also an ethnic or historic community. Where does the Greek community belong? Everywhere the Greek Orthodox one does, I expect, but some Greeks think that Greece has a special relevance to them. So be it.
Happy Arrival Day
[Ed. note: Since the advance notice of this year’s blogburst wasn’t what it should have been, I’ll be keeping it open for a few days. If you have something to contribute but can’t get it in by midnight, please don’t…
Happy Arrival Day
[Ed. note: Since the advance notice of this year’s blogburst wasn’t what it should have been, I’ll be keeping it open for a few days. If you have something to contribute but can’t get it in by midnight, please don’t…
Happy Arrival Day
Welcome to the third annual Arrival Day Blogburst, commemorating the arrival of the first Jews in New Amsterdam on September 7, 1654. As I explained two years ago, Arrival Day is a holiday of the American Jewish people rather than…
Greetings: I very much appreciate your blog and read it often. I have added a link to your site on my own blog which you may find minutely interesting compared to the important work you are doing here. thanks for being you. I couldn’t find an email to write you directly, so here it is.
Why I am a Zionist
This is the first in my Arrival Day 2005 essay series, which focuses on American Jews as part of a larger whole. Needless to say, there are many possible permutations to this theme, because the American Jewish community is both…
Why I am a Zionist
This is the first in my Arrival Day 2005 essay series, which focuses on American Jews as part of a larger whole. Needless to say, there are many possible permutations to this theme, because the American Jewish community is both…
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