“Those who practice this religion … honor the sacred writings and venerate Eternal Reason … These sacred books … are summed up in the worship of heaven, the honor of parents and the veneration of ancestors.”
This odd-sounding description of Judaism is excerpted from a 1512 inscription on a marble tablet placed by a mandarin in a synagogue that served the Jewish community of Kaifeng, China.
It clearly displays some of the commonalities between Jewish and classical Chinese culture and values — and thereby hints at how and why the Chinese Jews assimilated and disappeared, with only a small number of non-practicing or self-identifying descendants surviving today.
Indeed, the Chinese community might serve as an example of what can happen when Jews are accepted in a country and culture that has no serious prejudice against them. It thereby provides some food for thought this Chanukah.
The story of Chanukah illustrates the opposite phenomenon. When the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus IV decided in 167 BCE — for still uncertain reasons — to persecute Judaism in his province of Judea, he halted a process of Jewish assimilation to classical Greek civilization and sparked a bitter revolt.
This rebellion not only resulted in the recapture and rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 165 BCE — the event Chanukah commemorates — but also inspired the people to sustain a more than 20-year on-and-off war that eventually won full independence for the second Jewish state in the land of Israel.
In today’s United States, Jews live in a situation resembling that of the Jews of China. Both communities found environments and cultures not only largely free of any persecution and prejudice, but also so welcoming that many Jews found insufficient stimulus to keep themselves separate from the society around them.
The Pew Research Center Survey of U.S. Jews, whose findings were released on Oct. 1 under the title “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” provides evidence of this. In a country one of whose founding documents celebrates “the pursuit of happiness,” Jews have searched for and found happiness in ways material and spiritual, theistic and atheistic, religious and not religious. (One widely reported finding of the study is that 22 percent of U.S. Jews say they are “Jews of no religion.”)
However, we have two things today that the Chinese Jews did not. One is the Jewish State of Israel. And Israel remains in a precarious position similar to that of the Seleucid Empire Jews. It faces enemies seeking to impose social-economic-political-religious supremacy of Islam and Muslims upon the land and its Jewish people — and to exterminate Jewish people who refuse to accept this program.
The other thing we have that the Chinese Jews didn’t is a powerful and persistent memory of how an important segment of the civilization in which we live once turned against us even more ferociously than Antiochus did.
This month marks the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-inspired German national pogrom that, as we can see in hindsight, signaled the Nazi Party’s ultimate intensions toward Europe’s Jews. (See page 1.) The Pew study shows how those memories remain powerful. When the pollsters asked U.S. Jews what “is an essential part of what being Jewish means,” a majority of some 73 percent said “remembering the Holocaust.”
I think this raises an interesting question. The Chinese Jews apparently did not experience much tension between acceptance and rejection in their world. The Pew study shows that today we in the U.S. do — and this despite all the indicators of growing assimilation that have troubled many commentators on the study.
Perhaps the best situation in which a Jewish community can live is in a state of at least mild tension between acceptance and rejection. Clearly it is not good for us to endure the total rejection of Antiochus, the Nazis and most modern Arabs, for then we live in terror and danger. But neither is it good for us to be as totally accepted as the Chinese Jews apparently were, for then we risk dissolving.
I do not say this to disparage in any way the efforts members of our community are and will be making to encourage Jews to preserve their Jewish identity. All of them in all the denominational movements and non-denominational organizations are important. I hope all of them are successful and that even more will exist. I tend to agree with Andres Spokoiny’s contention in the opinion article on the facing page that “we need more avenues to Jewish identity.”
But opening such avenues requires understanding and discussion of the situation and the possibilities. I hope The Chronicle can encourage that, and its pages are open to your thoughts on this topic.
This year, the first full day of Chanukah coincides with the U.S. national holiday of Thanksgiving, a rare event that apparently won’t occur again for a long time. (See Rabbi Avner Zarmi’s D’var Torah column in this issue.) This juxtaposition has already inspired some creative thinking about products and humor (turkey-shaped Chanukah menorahs).
Perhaps the unusual sight and taste of latkes with turkey will stimulate some creative thinking about how U.S. Jews can avoid the fate of the Chinese Jews and persist in one of the freest diaspora countries Jews have ever known. Chag Chanukah same’ach.
