| High-Octane Octogenarian |
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| Written by Elliot Ratzman | |||||
| Tuesday, 30 March 2004 | |||||
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Arthur Hertzberg’s "A Jew in America" and "The Fate of Zionism" Want to be named the "preeminent public intellectual of Judaism"? Don’t quit your day job. No, really. Arthur Hertzberg never did. A talented and popular rabbi, Hertzberg finagled a tenured-for-life position at his Conservative Englewood, N.J. synagogue, Temple Emmanu-El, back in the mid-1950s. Since then, he has published widely-read books on Zionism (The Zionist Idea), European thought (The French Enlightenment and the Jews) and American history (The Jews in America). If that wasn’t enough, he has taught at Columbia, Dartmouth and NYU, while rubbing shoulders with big machers and becoming a big macher himself: president of numerous organizations like the American Jewish Congress; delegate to congresses, conferences, and confabs; jet-setting essay writer, public speaker, and behind the scenes finger-wagger. One wonders how he had time to run the Sunday school. Hertzberg’s grizzled voice is worth listening to, even if he does sound like that annoying old man who talks your ear off at shul—the type who regales you with cautionary tales, I-told-you-so anecdotes, and sage predictions. The octogenarian Rabbi Hertzberg has recently published two books: one personal, one political. "A Jew in America" is Hertzberg’s story of the Jewish 20th century, with our hero popping up, like a hyper-erudite Forrest Gump, at crucial historical moments. "The Fate of Zionism" is a condensed history of and case for a robust progressive Zionism, written as a response to the hard-line Jewish nationalism hawked by the likes of Bibi Netanyahu and the grandees of the American Jewish establishment. Both books are worth reading, though Fate is more timely for Jewish readers seeking the unpaved middle road between illiberal chauvinism and self-negating leftist anti-Zionism. As related in "A Jew in America," Hertzberg’s own account of his role in Jewish history is often less than modest (one colleague of his assured this author that he has "plenty not to be humble about"). But Hertzberg has lived a damned interesting life: counseling Golda Meir to pay heed to Israel’s Mizrachi underclass; helping the Catholic Church revise its thinking about Jews and Judaism at the Second Vatican Council; haranguing American Jews to fight for civil rights and protest the Vietnam war; sounding the early warning signal about the evils of occupation, and so forth. This cranky contrarian has 50 years of advice under his belt, solicited and unsolicited, at dinners, meetings, sermons, and in print. He may be the only person to have dressed down left-wing Golda Meir, right-wing Itzhak Shamir, and Palestinian activist Edward Said. Hertzberg demonstrates that Jewish life in the U.S. can be lived as heroically as life in Israel. Though his stances on war, racial justice, and interfaith relations don’t seem controversial now, in the 1950s and 60s they were great radical struggles against an unyielding establishment. Today’s political issues are no less pressing—poverty, racism, and war haven’t disappeared—and Hertzberg would like to see young Jews take up where his generation left off. Most importantly, he wants them to do so as Jews. Nothing could be more virtuous, he says at numerous points, than resisting assimilation and sticking with your community, even when you’re opposing its conventional wisdom. Overall, the memoir makes the case for a rich unassimilated American Jewish identity. "I cannot accept," he writes, "that the encounter of millions of Jews with American democracy means nothing to the Jewish spirit." Even Hertzberg’s Israel advocacy has its own American stamp of swagger and spunk: talking back to Israeli politicians when they’re wrong; suggesting Israel deal with its own race problem. Though deeply involved with Israeli politics, he shows how one can live a fulfilled Zionist life just fine in America, thank you. Which brings us to Diaspora Jews and the question of Zion today. Hertzberg loves to take a contrary position, and in The Fate of Zionism, he dismisses both the self-righteous right and the self-negating left. He wants American Jews to take a reasoned stance on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, citing no less an authority than David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father, for his condemnation of Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank and Gaza. Echoing a speech he heard Ben-Gurion deliver, he "cannot believe that Jews can defy logic in Israel and presume that the messiah will come to save them from the political and military debts they are running up in order to expand the settlements." Hertzberg argues that only the United States can force a settlement—a two-state solution, on the warring neighbors—since negotiations have led nowhere. And he makes the case for a more secular Jewish state, one without the pernicious influence of national messianists and turf-guarding Orthodox. "The Fate of Zionism" was written as an intervention, given the unsteady state of opinion among American Jews today, where "Zionism" is almost totally owned by the right, and almost totally rejected by the Jewish peace camp. But Hertzberg himself has trouble hewing to a single viewpoint. Some of his pronouncements echo the pessimism of Neo-Cons (and one’s racist uncle) who don’t trust "the Palestinians", talking about "them" and "they" with too little nuance, and seeing "existential threats" to Israel coming from too many quarters. Other passages have Hertzberg advocating highly progressive positions and displaying an acute sensitivity to Palestinian suffering. Ultimately, Hertzberg presents the Zionist enterprise as a project Jews can take pride in, warts and all—Israel as the attempt to create a just society, a salve to anti-Semitism, and a multicultural democracy in an unwelcoming neighborhood. This is the Labor Zionist narrative. We may have heard it before. But Hertzberg declaims it with the zest of a defense counselor. The secular future he imagines would deflate much of the "messianic passions" that have exacerbated the conflict, prolonged the occupation, and pushed Israel ever close to Orthodox hegemony. Secularism, he argues, will make Israel safe for democracy and Judaism, in all its denominational forms. A rabble-rousing rabbi extolling the virtues of the secular – such seeming contradictions will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Hertzberg’s work. Those who haven’t yet encountered him would do well to immerse themselves in his practical arguments about the future of Israel and Judaism. Carrying the torch for justice, compassion and contrariness, Hertzberg reminds us that Jewish values are best lived passionately, on the go.
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