American Jewish thinkers, concerned with demonstrating Jewish contributions to America, have stressed likenesses and identities: culture-bearers, like blood donors, presumably must be of the same “type.” Daniel Boorstin here presents the provocative thesis that the happiest and most fruitful marriages may well be those of differing, contrasting “cultural personalities.”
_____________
Apologists of Judaism in recent years, in a frenetic search for identities, have dulled their vision of what is distinctive in either the Jewish or the American experience. While apologists of other cultural minorities have been eager to show that they have something unique to add, too many Jewish spokesmen (haunted by the specter of anti-Semitism) have been more anxious to prove the Jewish tide to a share in American culture than to show how they are qualified to enrich it. Yet the capacity of Jews to contribute to American civilization is by no means proportionate to the affinity of traditional Judaism with “real” Americanism. Indeed, those who would equate “Judaism” with “Americanism,” by the very terms of their argument may well prevent the discovery of any fruitful relation between cultures. They are actually not so much concerned with cultures as with orthodoxies; their search is for an authoritative and rigid dogma.
A fertile encounter between Jewish and American culture must be historically and not dogmatically defined. We must not seek the tenets of any dominant creed; we must look rather for what is characteristic of each of two historical experiences. We must be willing to face their true diversity, and even to make that diversity the measure of what the two have to say to each other. Cultures, we must remember, are not characterized by dogmas, but by assumptions or emphases; not by creeds to be defended, but by possibilities to be explored. They are more like responsive personalities than consistent systems of thought. Inevitably, their relationship will contain tensions; to be a living relationship it must contain tensions. Among cultures it is often the marriage of opposites that is the happiest and the most fruitful.
If we examine the large features of the Jewish, as distinguished from the American, historical experience, I believe we will discover the materials for just such a dynamic tension. The dramatic contrast between the two will not only help us discover the kind of dialogue which can exist between our two experiences and traditions, but may even help us define the mission of Jews on this continent. The American and the Jewish historical experiences, we will find, differ at least with respect to: (a) dimension, (b) arena, and (c) orientation.
_____________
The difference of chronological dimension is perhaps the most obvious. While the American is the most precocious of living Western cultures, the Jewish is the most venerable. The history of culture in the United States extends over a period of three hundred years at the most; Jewish history (even if dated only from the departure from Egypt circa 1445 BCE) is at least ten times that long. The whole of American history could be confined in the chronological boundaries of a single chapter of Jewish history. The period from the age of Hillel to the writing down of the Babylonian Talmud is approximately twice the length of all American history.
A result has been a striking difference of attitude toward time: in this the Jewish and the American views have been polar opposites. The brevity of the American past has led to a failure to give due importance to the whole human inheritance, and to a readiness to attach disproportionate importance to any one man or generation. “The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles,” boasted Crèvecoeur in the era of the Revolution, “he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions.” In a Brave New World Americans have been eager to see man in heroic nakedness. And man stripped of his institutionl and traditional inheritance seems a mere biological creature. The classic formulation of this emphasis in political theory is found in Jeffersonian political thought, resting as it does on a materialist anthropology, defending the equality of men by their common membership in the species Homo sapiens, and maintaining the superiority of political life in America because this continent lacks an institutional past.
What has seemed to characterize man in America has not been new American garments so much as his new opportunity to see his unadorned beauty. In Whitman’s words we hear a theme which reappears in many unexpected places in American culture, from Jefferson and Jackson through Theodore Roosevelt, John Dewey, and Ruth Benedict.
I sing the body electric . . . .
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath,
seen as he swims through the transparent
green-shine, or lies with his face up and
rolls silently to and fro in the heave of
the water . . . .
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys,
quite grown, lusty, good-natured,
native-born, out on the vacant lot at sun-
down after work . . . .
The march of firemen in their own costumes,
the play of masculine muscle through
clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps . . . .
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with
wrestlers, march in line with the firemen,
and pause, listen, count.
O my body! I dare not desert the likes of
you in other men and women, nor the
likes of the parts of you.
But the Jew, least of all men, can believe in the nakedness of man: the past is forced on him—if not inwardly, at least by society. Perforce he has a historical orientation. Even his God (as the Rabbi in Halevi’s Kuzari insisted) is a historical figure, identified by actual past accomplishments, “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who brought our fathers forth from the land of bondage.” The Bible of Judaism is replete with begats and the careers of generations.
_____________
In America, of all commodities the most precious has been time. It has been one of the few strikingly scarce commodities in our national history. Colonial history was a race among European nations for control of the continent; recent American history has been a race among individuals and corporations for a continent’s treasure. Nor is it surprising that Americans should be impatient; since time does not stretch back endlessly into the national past, it seems unlikely to stretch endlessly into the future. But for the Jew time has been abundant. In Veblen’s phrase, the Jewish mind bears the date-mark BC. According to the familiar story, when Bismarck confronted the French with his bill for reparations after the Franco-Prussian War, they complained that to pay such an amount would take them more years than had elapsed since the birth of Jesus. Bismarck replied (pointing to the Jew Gerson Bleichröder), that that was why he had brought with him a man whose people started their calendar not from the birth of Jesus, but from the creation of the world.
The disparity of chronological dimension has contributed to a difference of attitude toward the intelligibility of history, if not of all experience. The beginning of the United States—not so many decades ago—is a story rich in facts: we know by name and even by portrait many of the earliest settlers, and when and why they came here. Our republic was formed at a precise and historical period. The destination of American history has appeared equally plain, for optimism and a belief in progress have made the present age seem to us (as it did to John Winthrop, Benjamin Franklin, and Calvin Coolidge) the culmination of the past. The peculiar American version of destiny has been “manifest destiny,” with clarity its hall-mark. The American past contains few, if any, mythical characters.
American history could then be described as “closed” at both ends: both origin and destination appear fixed. In contrast Jewish history is open at both ends. The creation of the Jewish people is shrouded in twilight; the mystery of Jewish destiny has been its authentic stamp. God made the beginning and the end, and only His back are we permitted to see. The creation of the world merges indefinitely into the creation of the Law and the mystery of truth.
The Lord made me as the beginning of His
way,
The first of His works of old.
I was set up from everlasting, from the be-
ginning,
Or ever the earth was.
When there were no depths, I was brought
forth;
When there were no fountains abounding
with water . . . .
Then I was by Him, as a nursling;
And I was daily all delight,
Playing always before Him,
Playing in His habitable earth,
And my delights are with the sons of men.
(Proverbs, 8:22 ff.)
The mystery of the Beginning is paralleled by the mystery of the End, expressed in a Messiah who is certain to come, is always about to come, yet whose coming is always in the future.
To see history sub specie Americani is to be encouraged in an excessive (if well substantiated) optimism. Jews, viewing history sub specie aeternitatis, incline to pessimism, however much tinged by Zionistic utopianism. For Americans, America is Zion; but for Jews even the achievement of a Jewish state does not make Zion attained.
_____________
In the arena of historical experience we find a contrast no less dramatic: the characteristic arena of American history has been nature, while that of Jewish history has been society. The epic of American history is the conquest of a continent, unprecedented in rapidity and thoroughness. It is a tale of Man against Nature. Crossing mountain ranges, irrigating deserts, digging gold and silver, discovering and extracting oil, cutting down forests—such achievements have marked the history of the United States. We look in vain for works of this type in the history of the Jewish people, at least until the present generation. The crossing of the Red Sea is perhaps the last event of Jewish history of a peculiarly American grandeur, and even that was not accomplished by Jewish engineers.
But on a scale no less grand than that of American history, Jewish history has shown man in society. Its impressive accomplishment has been social: the survival and the actual development of a culture in the midst of peoples who have despised it. As American history has revealed with unique magnificence man’s ability to adapt himself to varied physical environments and to exploit nature, Jewish history has revealed his potentialities for survival among other men, however different from him they may have been or have thought themselves to be. The Jewish experience has been the survival of a community among communities, in a Babylonian captivity or among the Marranos. It is understandable that American folkheroes should be Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Paul Bunyan, men clever with their hands, able to hew a forest or strangle a mountain lion, while Jewish folkheroes are Moses, Elijah, and Judas Maccabaeus.
The emphasis on exploration and control of the natural environment has helped produce an American pre-eminence in technology which has its counterpart in the Jewish achievement in ethics. Public education in America has been preoccupied with useful knowledge; Jewish education (partly because so many avenues of usefulness have been closed to Jews, partly because of the non-naturalistic temper of Jewish thought) has been interested in the eternal meaning of the Law. The urgent practical tasks of American civilization have made the convenient concept of law as an ethical minimum flourish here with unprecedented vigor. It has seemed particularly important that men be left free to do as they wish in every area not explicitly covered by the law. While this has nourished the libertarian tradition and a healthful disrespect of bureaucracy, it has also helped engender a bewildering multiplicity of statutes. At the opposite pole is the Jewish conception of every man’s “legal” duty to exceed the demands of law.
The naturalistic arena has made American life conspicuously poor in ritual and has nourished an extraordinary directness and explicitness in approaching the problems of national life. While Jews have never ceased to seek a definition of a Jew (without ever expecting to find one), Americans for decades have been ready with oaths and pledges of allegiance, loyalty and sedition tests, and courses in citizenship supposed to make true Americans in short order. The very brevity of American history and the diversity of origin of Americans have required a doubly explicit reassurance of national identity. The Fourth of July has been celebrated by the Oration, in which a public figure exhorts his audience to loyalty and public virtue; the Passover (the analogous Jewish holiday) is marked by prayer, ritual, music, and symbol. The sermon, which has thus become secularized and acquired a prominent place in American political life, has played a small role in the Jewish religious experience.
In America, the pressure of physical problems and the greatness of economic rewards, together with the variety of traditions which have sought to live together, have nourished a willingness—even an eagerness—to minimize differences of ideas. This has amounted often to a tendency to undervalue ideas themselves. Who would spend his energy on metaphysics with a virgin continent before him? As Benjamin Rush urged in the early 19th century, Americans dared not be so foolish as to turn their backs upon a gold mine in order to go chasing butterflies. But history has imposed on Jews an opposite necessity: having been denied ground to conquer, they could not be united by a task of conquest, and instead have had to seek community through ideas.
If men coming to this continent have had nothing else, they have had land (at least until recently), and plenty of it, which they could call their own. In this sense the history of the United States has been perhaps more geographically defined than that of any other recent culture. What other nation could summarize its history by the movement of a line across a map? Nothing could be further from the character of Jewish history.
_____________
The difference of orientation between the American and the Jewish historical experiences is, of course, very much a result of those differences of dimension and of arena which we have already remarked. But it is in itself something quite fundamental. In American history man has for the most part confronted his enemy. European man comes to this continent and sweeps all before him; the frontier advances and the enemy is conquered. On the whole the American moves in one direction at a time, with his allies behind him and his enemies in front. Jewish history, however, has shown a people surrounded by its enemies. The difference may be summarized as that between an attitude of confrontation and one of encirclement. The American looks ahead toward the horizon. The Jew, with the walls of the ghetto or of the Gentiles around him, looks up to his God or down to within himself or his community.
The American orientation has led to an emphasis on the simple and the measurable, and to a stunting of the sense of paradox and of that awareness of evil which goes with it. The American meets the dragon and kills him; he is confident that the dragon is then dead and he turns complacently to another battle. His is a statistical sort of dragon. Consider, for example, the American enthusiasm for legislation, and the belief in statutory panaceas, familiarly illustrated by the prohibition amendment, or by the fact that the “lawless” Western states from the beginning provided themselves with especially long and explicit constitutions. Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi gives classic form to the struggle to master the River: a problem large and physical, but where the test of success is easy. The good man is the “square shooter” or the man who “plays according to the rules of the game.” That the rules should be uncertain or the nature of the game itself mystifying, is not to be imagined. Not since the Puritans of early New England—who indeed had a Hebraic sense of encirclement by enemies—have we seen any considerable awareness of the problem of evil.
Finding his own survival itself a magnificent paradox, the Jew has a feeling for paradox everywhere: “Better is one hour of repentance and good deeds in this world than the whole life of the world to come; yet better is one hour of blissfulness of spirit in the world to come than the whole life of this world” (Pirke Aboth). Jewish history amply documents a shortrun pessimism and a longrun optimism; it is the perfect antidote for the naivety which would believe any victory complete. The Jew does not underestimate the power of evil; he knows that the wicked cannot be counted.
Nowhere does the disparity appear in sharper relief than in a comparison of American and Jewish humor. American humor has for the most part been forthright, the humor of exaggeration, understatement, and rough-house—of the Tall Tale, Mark Twain, Mr. Dooley, Mack Sennett, and Will Rogers. But Jewish humor has been that of double-entendre, irony, paradox, and satire; its proper response is not the belly-laugh but the nod of the head. In the world of Sholom Aleichem, where the Jew’s afflictions prove his chosenness, the unexpected is normal.
The peculiarly American disposition to simplify, select, and digest has its counterpart in the Jewish disposition to expand and explore. The American willingness to reduce great mysteries to words of one syllable (to tell the life of Jesus in journalese) is countered by the Jewish readiness to find in every syllable a world of mystery. If Jewish literature and folk-legends have been marked by monuments of expansion and commentary, the American public thrives on the short short story, on abridgments, pocket anthologies, and digests.
The straightforward orientation of American history has carried with it an emphasis on extension and quantity. Jefferson’s dream was of a nation of one hundred million; to “populate” or “fill” the continent was a common aim of patriots of the early 19th century. Where else has the national census been so widely taken for an index of progress? But if the advance of civilization on this continent has seemed readily measurable in quantitative terms, the march of Jewish history has been least of all susceptible of such measurement. The Jew, lacking a continent to explore, has instead explored his mind and soul and his community. His aim has been not to extend, but to perfect; he has lived in a microcosm. His chief concerns have been with the manifold possibilities of the family, with the moral import of everyday life. His mission has been not the conquest of the Great Plains, but the perfection of the Sabbath.
_____________
Some of the differences between the American and the Jewish historical experiences are general distinctions between secular and religious cultures. But if this is true the Jew living in America is all the better qualified to throw into sharp relief another striking feature of American life—its insistent secularity.
If Jews have lacked any clear distinction between the secular and the religious realm (like that which St. Augustine’s City of God defined for the Christian tradition), this too fits them to hold up the mirror to American civilization.
To overlook the distinctions in favor of the supposed similarities or identities of the Jewish and the American historical experiences is to destroy the peculiar qualifications of Jews as pupils, critics, and mentors. This is, of course, not to say that American Jews are any the less Americans because they are Jews, but that if they would accept their double inheritance they must also accept the burden of an inner tension. In America of all places they cannot refuse to be Double-men culturally.
“Our necessities,” wrote Edgar Allan Poe of the United States about a century ago, “have been mistaken for our propensities. Having been forced to make railroads, it has been deemed impossible that we should make verse.” Christianity (especially Protestantism) in this country has proved comfortably responsive to these necessities; it has become permeated by the predominant character of American culture to an extent which is not yet, and may never be, true of Judaism. Christianity, simply because it speaks for America, cannot so well speak to America. May it not be that the American Jew—stubbornly insoluble as he is—is providentially fitted to distinguish the necessities from the possibilities of American culture?
_____________
