In his article “Is America Exile or Home?” (in our November 1946 issue) Israel Knox declared that it was high time that American Jews began to create a culture of their own, indigenous to this soil. Obstacles to this development, in his opinion, included a persisting dependence on earlier European centers of Jewish culture and a sense of inferiority and defeatism, fostered by some Jewish nationalist ideologists and organizations who continue to talk of America as galut (exile) rather than as a homeland for Jews.
Dr. Knox’s thesis aroused nationwide discussion and we present here two commentaries on it. It will occasion no surprise that these discussions on fundamental issues of Jewish thought are by men not professionally engaged with such problems: in the Jewish tradition there are no laymen in these matters.They write here, of course, in their personal, not official capacities. (For a related discussion on the theme of Jewish culture in America, as it applies to a specific problem, readers are referred to Mrs. Wischnitzer-Bernstein’s article “The Problem of Synagogue Architecture” in this issue.)
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Dr. Israel Knox’s thoughtful article, “Is America Exile or Home?” asks whether Jews in America can develop “The Good Jewish Life.” His conclusion is that if we display sufficient “creative cultural activity,” we can produce a center of “Jewish Life” in America not inferior to such centers in the past or Palestine of the future. However, in view of the vastly different conditions of life in this country, the real question is not the quality o6/18/2008f such a proposed center of “Jewish Culture. ” Rather, it is whether or not America is a place where Jews can or should attempt to develop the intensive segregated life suggested by his comparison.
Such words as “Jewish culture” and “Jewish life” are stock adjustable expressions made to fit almost any implied meaning. Dr. Knox, apparently, uses them to express a concept somewhat less ambitious and all-inclusive than that made famous by the cultural pluralists and it is possible that if he gave us more precise definition there could be little objection to his thesis. However, as Dr. Knox knows, there are those who would not accept any such restricted meaning. They view America as a place where peoples of different ancestries continue to develop their own nationally distinct “ways of life.” Extreme Jewish nationalists and Reconstructionists are prominent among advocates of this plural-cultural theory for American Jews. Dr. Knox seems to accept their premise tentatively in order to reason with them. Since the premise itself, however, is unsound, the article loses in clarity what it gains in tact.
It is true, as Dr. Knox indicates, that the Nazi horror and organized anti-Semitism have made us more aware of being Jews. Many Jews who have given their “Jewishness” but little thought are now earnestly seeking out its spiritual values. They also realize more clearly that Jews, as such, have some interests in common and a cultural inheritance which should be explored and developed. This is a very different thing, however, from a desire to lead a special “Jewish way of life” distinct from our lives as Americans.
Surely no one who knows America through his own living experience could accept the plural-cultural theory that our nation consists of descendants of different ancestries busily creating separate and distinct “ways of life.” True, some of these groups display considerable internal cohesion, but in the second and third generation their respective “ways of life” differ little, one from the other. Religious differences there may be and some slowly dissolving areas of Old World traditions, but no view of American culture, except from a library window, could see it as a jig-saw puzzle pattern composed of the “Good Jewish Life,” the “Good Italian Life,” the “Good Irish Life,” the “Good German Life,” or for that matter, the “Good Polish-Catholic Life,” the “Good Russian-Orthodox Life,” the “Good English-Episcopalian Life,” or the “Good Afro-Methodist Life.” Even sociologists who once eyed the theory with sympathetic interest have since chopped it to a fragment and classified it as a transitional phase.
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Let us see things as they are. Except as to religion and ethics in ancient Palestine, the Jews in America have probably surged far beyond the achievements of any “center” in the past.
It is grossly misleading to base the comparison solely on the specifically Jewish cultural output in this country. The comparison must also take into consideration the fact that American Jews are making an astonishing contribution to the general culture of this nation. They have already greatly enriched American music, law, art, literature, journalism, science, architecture, theater, motion pictures, medicine, education, finance, social work, trade-unionism, business, diplomacy, production, radio transmission, sports, and communal organization, and helped mightily in the good fight for democracy, social justice, and civil liberties. Their achievements have been woven into the fabric of American civilization according to the pattern of American life.
This miracle was accomplished only because repressed energies and talents were liberated by the opportunities of freedom. The spectacle has naturally bewildered those intensely Jewish scholars whose life experience has been largely that of the study. In their subconscious minds there still lingers a somewhat romanticized memory of life in a segregated European minority, turned in upon itself by the clamor of many nationalities each agitating for its own separate culture. They are, therefore, dismayed to see specifically Jewish activities in America devoted mainly to religion with its cultural fringes, to philanthropic and communal endeavors, to Zionism, to defense against anti-Semitism, to literary and journalistic production of common or special interest to Jews, whether in English, Yiddish, or Hebrew. Unable as yet to evaluate the exuberant creative spirit of Jews on the expansive American scene, they seek to reconfine it within the snug and familiar shadows of the past. They propose to inoculate the Jews of America with such a “sense of being Jewish” that this injected feeling will be carried from the cradle to the grave in all secular activities of life. This theory of voluntary retreat from freedom has won some converts, especially among those so stunned by the sudden resurgence of barbarism in the modern world that they have lost faith in the underlying strength of democratic forces.
The synthetic nature of this movement is seen in the fact that indoctrination is felt to be a prerequisite to the production of this special way of life. The idea is to propagandize American Jews until they come across with the desired culture. Adult Jews are regarded as rather hopeless lost souls whose tastes, interests, and diversions resemble too closely those of their fellow Americans. Jewish children offer better possibilities, especially when they are gathered in Jewish centers, camps for Jewish children, and Jewish day schools. Jewish communal and social workers are regarded as the most likely agents of the propaganda.
It is much to be feared that this forced feeding will create not “culture,” but only an unhealthy feeling of not belonging to the American community. For instance, camps attended by Jewish children now utilize fully the Indian camping tradition with its Indian names, trail-making, canoeing, and campfires. This, it seems, is all wrong—at least as to Indian nomenclature. Self-respecting Indians use Indian names, and self-respecting Jews should use Jewish names. Why not “Theodore Herzl Lodge,” “Ibn Gabirol Canoe House,” “Trail of Ahad Ha’am”? Of course, the effect of this sort of thing could only be to make Jewish children feel that the delightful Indian tradition, the inheritance of all American kids, does not belong to them.
Again, the chairman of a meeting devoted to “Jewish” music recently betrayed his subconscious imagery when he thanked the musicians for not dedicating their talents to the “outer world.” A fine Jewish leader, influenced by this separatist propaganda, inadvertently referred to the great non-sectarian agencies of his city as “their” philanthropies, although he well knew that these institutions belonged to Jews as much as to others. The editor of Congress Weekly, lamenting the failure of Jews in America to live “as Jews,” recently wrote that it makes little difference whether we Jews are destroyed by gas chambers or by “granting us that equality which wipes out our identity!” Such a complex is the logical end-result of frustrated plural-culturalism.
Soon we shall celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the first settlement of Jews in America. It seems a little late to ask whether America is “Exile or Home.” On a thousand fronts, military and cultural, Jews with other Americans of many faiths and origins have fought to defend and develop in America a fine democratic civilization. We are moving closer together, not away from one another.
Dr. Knox has sought to soothe the anxieties of those who are beset with separatist and nationalist propaganda. Would it not have been just as effective, however, if the thoughtful author had said quite simply: “Stop worrying about producing a special ‘way of life.’ This business of being a Jew and an American is not such a problem. Just relax and do what comes naturally. If, as I suspect, plural-culturalism is merely a rationalization of fear that Jews, as a group, may not survive in America, then I suggest that those who are upsetting you with these notions have neither the knowledge of America nor the faith in freedom to qualify them as experts on the future. Certainly, neither they nor anyone else have the divine wisdom to direct the thinking of the coming generations. Leave the moulding of posterity to God.”
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