What’s a “Jewish” issue? Jewish organizations are facing the question as never before.
Some are no-brainers: Israel, anti-Semitism, religious freedom, civil rights. Jewish liberals and conservatives argue over what positions to take on these issues, not whether they should take them up at all.
After that, things get dicier. Should Jewish organizations get involved in the debate over the Bush budget, Social Security, Medicaid or the tax code?
In years past, top Jewish organizations and umbrella groups tended to be liberal, in both senses of the word, about the causes they took on. Truth be told, most still are.
However, with Republicans in firm control of the White House and Congress, and bipartisanship a fading ideal, the liberal Jewish agenda is on the defensive — from within.
Orthodox and Republican Jews, overlapping minorities within a minority, wantthat the “Jewish agenda” to be defined more narrowly. They suggest that traditional Jewish positions on, say, church-state separation and abortion should be reversed or modified to reflect their dissenting votes, or to cultivate support in red states for Jews’ core issues.
The debate is reflected in my own state of New Jersey, in conversations with national Jewish leaders here.
Steven Flatow, who became a national advocate for terrorist victims after his daughter Alisa was killed by a suicide bomber in 1995, argues for a narrower definition of “Jewish issues.”
Flatow, who is Orthodox, also objects to those who say they base advocacy on “Torah” values, but who pick selectively from the Torah itself — such as advocating for homosexuals’ rights on the basis of “tikkun olam” (“repairing the world”) while ignoring the Torah’s unambiguous injunctions against homosexuality.
But when June Walker, the national president of Hadassah, tells me that “everything we do as a Jewish organization is moved by tikkun olam and Jewish values,” she is not speaking about Halachah, or rabbinic law.
Hadassah’s core “Jewish values” are Zionism and pikuach nefesh, or life-saving. The two come together in the state-of-the-art medical facilities Hadassah sustains in Israel.
In turn, the policy stands Hadassah takes in Washington are based on what Walker calls a “synergy” between its core mission and domestic politics.
For example, Hadassah supports stem cell research because “our doctors are recipients of National Institutes of Health grants which are being hampered by questions of which stem cell lines are available to work on.”
That single-mindedness of mission has kept Hadassah, unlike the National Council of Jewish Women, from becoming a lightning rod for those who think Jewish liberalism is obsolete, if not a distortion of “Jewish values.”
Marsha Atkind, the immediate past president of NCJW, also invokes tikkun olam in defining a Jewish issue, but offers a classic rationale for at least 100 years of Jewish political activism: coalition-building.
“It’s important that Jewish people act in the general community and not be seen to be concerned only about our own ethnic group and own religious brothers and sisters,” she said.
The difference between NCJW and the groups with which it is often at odds, like the Orthodox Union, is how they define the community whose interests they have been organized to promote.
Orthodox groups will most strongly support policies that allow their constituents to develop and sustain their religious lifestyle: school vouchers, workplace accommodations for the observant and government funding for faith-based institutions.
Liberal groups speak for a constituency that places freedom of choice among its highest values. Their enemies are policies that seem to limit choices available to Jews and other minorities: restrictions on abortion, government endorsement of Christianity, bans on homosexual marriage.
The essence of liberalism is freedom of choice; and Jews flourish where choice is least curtailed, they would say.
Spirit, not letter
So how to define a Jewish issue?
First, if you hope to build a pluralistic Jewish constituency and want to invoke the Torah, you should speak about the spirit, not the letter, of the law.
Orthodox Jews make up fewer than 10 percent of the Jewish population. The majority of Jews simply do not consider the Torah as a legal document or a definitive guide upon which to support a public policy.
Second, acknowledge your self-interest. Is there a particular way Jews will benefit if a policy becomes law, or is there a particular way they will suffer if it does not?
Third, ask who else benefits. Do the other groups supporting this policy have the best interest of the Jews at heart? Will they be with us for Israel and against anti-Semitism, and will supporting this measure help them get there?
Fourth, be prepared to include in your definition of Jewish “community” the broadest range of Jews and accept as “Jewish” the issues that are important to them.
Maybe that means swallowing attitudes and viewpoints you could live without. But in terms of coming together on the issues you can agree about, there is strength in numbers.
Fifth, if you care about Jewish continuity, welcome the political causes that engage Jews, especially young Jews, as Jews.
Global warming won’t make us sweat more than non-Jews will; and the Sierra Club may already be doing good advocacy. But young Jews may become excited by a Jewish environmental effort that fuses tradition and a cause they find engaging.
Sixth, do the right thing. Flatow complains that “tikkun olam has replaced Torah as the religion of Israel.” Yet for most American Jews, the particular Jewish experience compels them to embrace universal issues that alleviate the suffering of the vulnerable.
For them, tikkun olam is not a replacement for Torah, but a way of articulating the broader impulse that grows naturally from the place where Torah, the prophetic tradition, history, sociology and conscience combine.
Andrew Silow-Carroll is the editor in chief of the New Jersey Jewish News.
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