Chanukah and the Fear of PDJs (Public Displays of Jewishness)

Chanukah always occurs at the darkest time of the year (the new moon closest to the winter solstice) and this year, for sure, the world feels inescapably dark. We reel from the massacre of 1,200 Israelis, Hamas’s sadistic trickle of releasing hostages in exchange for convicted criminals, and all the tragedies of war.

Simultaneously, the Jewish community is thunderstruck by the surging antisemitism that we’re experiencing. On Tuesday, the presidents of three elite universities—Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania—testified at a congressional hearing on the Jew-hatred that is raging on America’s elite college campuses. They were each asked if calling for the genocide of Jews constituted antisemitic hate speech and violate their schools’ code of conduct. Not one of those presidents had the courage to answer “yes.”

Self-evident are the disgraces of America’s college campuses, the aggressions that every Jew is experiencing on social media, and the hypocrisy of “progressives” who deserve no claim to the term—as the antisemitism of the far-left bends around backward so far that it kisses the far-right. When you say you believe that rape is always and forever a war crime—except when it is perpetuated by Hamas against Israelis—you forfeit your right to be called “progressive.”

The ripple effects of the war are broad, but here I want to address one in particular: the fearfulness of PDJs, “public displays of Jewishness.”

“Most people know about lighting the Menorah, but many forget that an essential aspect is to put the Menorah prominently where it can be seen, to announce to the world the miracle of the Maccabees long ago, and that miracles still happen today. ”

There are many reasons to be nervous. More and more Jewish institutions have been vandalized in the past few months with anti-Jewish slogans. In my suburban town, swastikas have found in both a middle school and the high school in the past few weeks. Every synagogue has a security guard or police officers keeping a carefully eye on Shabbat worshippers; in more densely populated communities, there’s a police car out front during Shabbat services.

(Still, it’s hardly as fearful as it has been for Jewish communities in Europe, who in many places have learned that in order to be tolerated by their neighbors they have to remain as innocuous as possible. If you intend visit a synagogue as a tourist in much of Europe these days, expect to tell them of your visit weeks in advance and to send ahead a copy of your passport; it is simply not safe in much of the world to pray as a Jew in a synagogue unannounced. No doubt your local sociology professor can explain why this is an aspect of an emerging social justice movement.)

What I hear from many of my students is an increasing fear of being recognizably Jewish in public. Some parents are telling their children—even in the tony suburbs of Massachusetts—to tuck in that chai or Jewish star before going out in public. I’ve even heard, with shock and sorrow, of children asking their parents to take down the Mezuzah from their front door. (Ironically, a Mezuzah case is often decorated with a biblical name of G-d, “Shaddai,” which is often interpreted as an acronym for shomer delatot yisrael, “Guardian of the Doorways of Israel.”)

I understand these fears, even while I chafe at them and push back. Chanukah couldn’t be timelier.

After all, the core of message of Chanukah is: when the world seems dark, have courage to assert yourself. This is found in the basic Mitzvah of lighting the Menorah:

נר חנוכה מניחו על פתח הסמוך לר"ה מבחוץ אם הבית פתוח לר"ה מניחו על פתחו
ואם יש חצר לפני הבית מניחו על פתח החצר, ואם היה דר בעליה שאין לו פתח פתוח לר"ה מניחו בחלון הסמוך לר"ה
ובשעת הסכנה שאינו רשאי לקיים המצוה מניחו על שלחנו ודיו

We place the Chanukah light at the entrance which faces the public domain, on the outside.
If the house opens to the public domain, place the Menorah at its entrance. If there is a courtyard in front of the house, place it at the entrance to the courtyard. If one lives on the upper floor, with no entrance to the public domain, one should place the Menorah in a window that faces the public domain.
In a time of danger, it is enough to place the Menorah on the table.

—Shulchan Arukh, Laws of Chanukah, 671:5

 This is the central Mitzvah of Chanukah. Most people know about lighting the Menorah, but many forget that an essential aspect is to put the Menorah prominently where it can be seen, to announce to the world the miracle of the Maccabees long ago, and that miracles still happen today.

In other words, Chanukah is about proclaiming our identity without apology, even at a time when our instinct is to be more circumspect. Personally? I feel prouder than ever to be a Jew, as Israel fights a just war and as apologists for terrorism rip down posters of 5 year-old Jewish hostages in Gaza.

I realize that I write from a place of privilege. I really am in no danger, even at this time, in asserting my identity, but the same is not true for others. For instance, I realize that as a male, I don’t experience the vulnerabilities that women feel. Nonetheless, even with the caveats, I think this is a time like never before for Jewish self-assertion:

1. To wave those signs that say BRING THEM HOME or STAND WITH ISRAEL AGAINST TERRORISM or to wrap our trees and mailboxes with blue ribbons.

2. To represent as a Jew publicly, unafraid. (I wear a kippah all the time in public now—as much a celebration of my identity as it is an act of spiritual awareness of the omnipresence of the Shekhinah.)

3. And by all means, and most importantly, to put that Menorah in the window as its light increases day by day.

As Judah Maccabee might have instructed us: Let the world know we’re here, and we will not be cowed by those prefer their Jews quiet and quavering.

Let them know that we are committed to sharing the light of the season—and that we are, as we have always been, full-fledged partners in the work of freedom and justice and peace. But when hypocrisies and slanders are flung in our faces, or when they dissemble about dead Jews or consider Zionism to be racism, we will defend ourselves, and stand prouder for our values that go against the grain of the cultural conformist fashion. 

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On the Anniversary of the Terrorist Attack in Pittsburgh

On the one-year anniversary of the Terrorist Attack at Tree of Life Synagogue in PIttsburgh, I sent this letter out to the Babson College community:

In Jewish tradition, which values memory so preciously, a yartzeit—the annual anniversary of a death—is a significant milestone. And in the next few days, we’re coming up on a significant yartzeit, as we mark one year since the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

I’ll always remember where I was on October 27, 2018: in another synagogue, celebrating my cousin’s bar mitzvah in Chicago. I don’t carry a cell phone on Shabbat, but that morning before the service my aunt leaned over and showed me her screen, which already was carrying reports of the shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue by a white nationalist. 

Do you remember how you felt that day? I recall all the conflicting emotions…

I remember feeling profound sorrow for people who were murdered simply for being Jews, doing Jewish things, celebrating Shabbat and the bris of a baby boy that morning, in a sacred space where they were supposed to utterly safe.

I recall the feelings of vulnerability and fear, and the questions that Pittsburgh raised: Just how safe are we as Jews here, really, in this land of so-called religious freedom? And the constant drumbeat of antisemitic attacks around the country in the past year hasn’t made those feelings dissipate.

And anger. Anger is a valid, human emotion; the biblical prophets were often enraged when they observed injustice and the abhorrent abuses of power all around them. I felt (and still feel) a lot of anger towards the perpetrators and enablers of hate, both before and after Pittsburgh. Not to mention the anger born of frustration when it seems, from a yartzeit’s perspective, that not so much has really changed when it comes to guns, racism and antisemitism, and the mentality of us-versus-them.

But I also recall some other feelings, such as a sense of unity and purpose. I recall the amazing outreach that came my way from my multifaith community of friends and colleagues. I remember standing in Glavin Chapel with Christian, Muslim, and Hindu neighbors, all sharing their sense of sorrow and compassion. It makes me realize that there are far more allies out there than there are enemies, and it’s nice to be reminded of that periodically.

Most of all, Pittsburgh reminds of how proud I am to be a Jew. To be a Jew is to be part of a family that is both ancient and modern; that has obligations [Mitzvot] to build lives of holiness; and that is called upon to be a perpetual voice of justice and peace. If that threatens hateful people, so be it; we’ve been there before.

It’s a sad time, to be sure, but that should make us more grateful than ever for being part of a dynamic and caring community that stands with one another.

Philip Roth: An Appreciation of the Wicked Child

I am one of the Exiles of Newark, New Jersey.

My father was raised on Goldsmith Avenue, became a Bar Mitzvah at Young Israel, and went to Weequahic High School, class of ’59. His mother was born in Newark; both she and my grandfather spent their careers teaching in the Newark public school system. My great-grandparents’ graves are in Newark, in the McClellan Street cemeteries.

No doubt I would have been there too. Except that, to bastardize the words of Agnon, through a historical accident—the upward mobility of postwar Jews, the riots of 1967—I was born in one of the villages of the Diaspora.

The Old B'nai Jeshurun building in Newark, now Hopewell Baptist Church.

It always struck me that Newark must have been one of the most extraordinary communities of the American Exile. All the currents of Jewish life in early 20th century America—socialism, Zionism, Reform, Orthodoxy, Yiddish culture, labor—flourished in its environs. In 1948, nearly 60,000 Jews lived in Newark[1], served by scores of synagogues. The caliber of rabbis, cultural figures, political leaders, labor and social justice advocates, business leaders, and philanthropists that emerged from that place is astounding. And it disappeared so incredibly quickly.

But Newark endured in the stories of Philip Roth, and for that reason I always took Roth’s writings personally. As he dissected the psyche of the city and its expatriates, I told myself I was discovering my origins. (That’s ridiculously romantic, of course. Like many Jews of Eastern European descent, my family lived in Newark for barely two and a half generations. But we’ve got very little to go on about the Old Country—the shtetlach and hamlets that were annihilated by the Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, et al—so Newark is all I’ve got.)

Roth left Newark, but wouldn’t leave it behind. Newark—with its concentration of Jews anxious to become optometrists and entertainment lawyers and accountants; its polio terror and stickball in the streets; its racial tensions and Nazi paranoia—was a prism through which he wrote about America.

Now that Roth is dead, the American Jewish community can start doing what it always does: remaking him in our image. Which is rather a shame.

Because Roth at his core was the wicked child of the Seder. He dared to fling our pieties in our faces and say, “Yes—but what does all this mean to you?” Starting with Goodbye, Columbus and running like a crimson thread throughout his work, he satirized and criticized the Jewish community as only an insider could.

Consider his devastating short story, “The Conversion of the Jews” (1959). Ozzie Freedman is a bored Hebrew school kid of the sort that the Coen Brothers captured so perfectly in the movie A Serious Man. He is punished by the rabbi and other authorities for asking “dangerous” questions, the kind that the wicked child asks. Ultimately Ozzie ends up on the roof, threatening to jump unless the Rabbi and the adults answer the question that got him rebuked in the first place: “Do you think that an almighty God could make a child without intercourse?”

It’s so perfect, because Ozzie found the exact question to prick everyone’s sensibilities: the rabbi’s platitudes, the newly-emancipated liberal Jews’ boundaries with their Christian neighbors, and of course the sexual obsessions which Roth would explode in Portnoy’s Complaint.

Or consider his 1993 novel Operation Shylock. The narrative itself is outrageous. A famous Jewish writer named Philip Roth discovers that some nutjob has taken the alter ego “Philip Roth” and is spreading the gospel of “Diasporism,” leading Jews out of Israel and back to Europe—an antisemitic fantasy!

But here’s the rub: like any great critic, Roth knew intimately the subject he criticized, which ultimately rebounded back on himself. If he mocked Israel as a modern Jewish shibboleth, Operation Shylock also shows a deep intimacy with its people, its culture, and its totems. For instance, his true (not fictional) dialogues with Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld in the book (Appelfeld died just this past January) reveal sensitive insights about what, exactly, Jewish identity means at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Ultimately Roth’s subject wasn’t Judaism, it was America. He asked: Why shouldn’t the Jewish lens be as valid as any other lens through which we can understand America? After all, Faulkner wrote about America, but through the perspective of the American South. So did Steinbeck, via the western frontier. So did Ellison, and Kerouac, and so on. America is big and complex and refracted into a thousand hues. Who’s to say that America’s freedoms and dysfunctions aren’t perfectly represented through the eyes of Bucky Cantor, a Newark playground director terrorized by polio (Nemesis, 2010)? Or Coleman Silk, the classics professor who gets caught in the wheels of the political correctness machine (The Human Stain, 2000)?

Or, for that matter, Roth’s masterful creation Swede Levov, the protagonist of American Pastoral (1997)? His name is the perfect encapsulation of Roth’s work: a Newark Jew who marries a (shiksa) beauty queen, flees to the Jersey suburbs, and expects that his Nordic looks and nickname will help him shed his history. But the shtetl, and the past, is as present as his surname.

America does fascinating things to the identities of its immigrants and their descendants. Those complexities are more than enough to stake a career on. We were blessed to be of a generation that had such an articulate master to challenge our assumptions and satirize our self-righteousness. If we grapple with Roth seriously, we will understand ourselves better—because it will be much harder to hide.

[1] William B. Helmreich, The Enduring Community: The Jews of Newark and Metrowest, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999, p.30.