Rabbi Alexander Schindler, in a presidential address to the Board of Trustees of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations on December 2, 1978, proposed that American Judaism (or at any rate its Reform wing) actively seek converts from among the religiously unaffiliated: “I believe that it is time for our movement to launch a carefully conceived Outreach Program aimed at all Americans who are unchurched and who are seeking roots in religion.” Modern Jews, Rabbi Schindler acknowledged, have for all sorts of reasons been reluctant to seek converts, but this reluctance is no longer appropriate in today’s American context. He spoke of the great religious hunger in the country, a hunger leading some people into bizarre and destructive cults (this was shortly after the Jonestown affair), and concluded: “My friends, we Jews possess the water which can slake the thirst, the bread which can sate the great hunger. Let us offer it freely, proudly—for our well-being and for the sake of those who earnestly seek what is ours to give.”
The Board responded positively to Rabbi Schindler’s proposal. It passed a resolution which, in addition to some other measures, called on the Reform movement to “plan a special program to bring the message of Judaism to any and all who wish to examine or embrace it. Judaism is not an exclusive club of born Jews; it is a universal faith with an ancient tradition which has deep resonance for people alive today.”
Does this signal the beginning of an extravagant campaign to convert America to Judaism? Nothing of the sort. Rabbi Schindler was not suggesting that active members of Christian churches be approached in a missionary spirit; only the religiously unaffiliated were to be considered potential converts. Moreover, both Rabbi Schindler’s address and the Board’s resolution dealt with the issue in the broader context of the demographic future of American Judaism. Other measures proposed were an intensification of Jewish educational programs and a more welcoming attitude to the Gentile partners in mixed marriages.
But muted or not, Rabbi Schindler’s address attracted immediate and widespread attention, both in the secular press and in the Jewish community. For the press there was the appeal of a man-bites-dog story. American Jews had long been nervous about and resentful of missionary activities directed at themselves (be it by conservative Christian churches, by groups such as the “Hebrew-Christians” or “Jews for Jesus,” or, more recently, by a variety of sects of Asian provenance). Were Jews now going to do to others what they did not want done to themselves?
Within the Jewish community there were deeper misgivings. What was being proposed here, after all, was a reversal of a centuries-old attitude of Judaism; not since the Hellenistic era had the synagogue been an aggressively missionary institution. And there were more immediate concerns. Might this new attitude encourage anti-Semitism or undermine Gentile support for the cause of Israel? Could it upset the civil peace among the major religious bodies in this country, that delicate “tripartite” arrangement first defined by Will Herberg in 1955? One important part of that arrangement has been the principle, enunciated by Reinhold Niebuhr in 1958, that Christian churches should not seek to convert individuals with a positive Jewish identification—a principle that had become explicit policy within mainline Protestantism and increasingly (though more tacitly) in the Catholic church. Were Jews now to give notice that this arrangement was no longer binding?
There are aspects of this matter that anyone who, like myself, is not a Jew, cannot properly address. Only Jews can decide the proper boundaries of Jewish faith and Jewish peoplehood, as Jews must define for themselves the inner meaning of Jewish faith and Jewish identity in contemporary America. Nor can anyone (Jew or non-Jew) give ready answers to the questions I have just enumerated. Anti-Semitism is a deeply-rooted pathology of the Western psyche, and it can never be assumed that serious eruptions have been permanently contained. All the same, it seems unlikely that the conversion to Judaism of a few lapsed Presbyterians would provoke anti-Semitic reactions—except among those already so disposed and for whom any other excuse would do just as well. This probably goes for attitudes toward Israel as well. As to the civil peace among the major denominations, it is equally hard to imagine that irate Presbyterians would launch a missionary counteroffensive. The mainline Christian churches are in a state of theological exhaustion and are most unlikely to be roused from it by a little Jewish proselytizing; and as for the theologically more vigorous groups, they have never felt bound by the Niebuhrian principle in any case.
From a sociological point of view, then, it is reasonable to regard Rabbi Schindler’s proposal as a sensible and low-risk measure of Jewish demographic self-defense. From the viewpoint of liberal Protestantism (to which I subscribe), as there is no interest in converting believing Jews to Christianity and certainly no interest in the reverse procedure, there can also be no objection (either theologically or in terms of religious liberty) if Judaism should now become more generous in sharing its heritage with individuals of whatever ethnic background who freely seek such a share. If that were all, a non-Jewish observer could express general approval of the idea, leaving it to Jews themselves to argue its merits.
But there is more to be said, both sociologically and religiously. Sociologically, what is at issue here is the dynamics of pluralism—a matter that must be of serious interest to those with a stake in any religious tradition and one which is bound to touch Judaism in ways that go far beyond considerations of demography. Religiously, the issue is that of a new contestation among all the great traditions which the pluralistic situation is bringing about. This contestation carries within it an immense challenge and perhaps the most hopeful prospect for the fate of religion in the modern world.
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Pluralism is commonly taken to be a distinctively American phenomenon. This is correct as far as it goes. The distinctive features of American history, notably the patterns of immigration and the political institutions within which the different immigrant groups succeeded in accommodating themselves, have created a pluralistic situation unique in the world. Yet pluralism itself is not unique but a general product of modernization, and as such it now exists in all modern and modernizing societies.
While the causes and the ramifications of this phenomenon are very complex, its basic feature can be simply stated: modernization breaks down barriers among human groups. Where pre-modern men tended to live in relatively closed communities, among “their own,” modern men tend to live in intense and ongoing interaction with others who are not their own. The structures of modern urbanism, and the sheer geographical mobility made possible by modern technology, put the individual face-to-face with countless others from different communities. And beyond the physical presence of all these others there is the more abstract but no less real presence of other societies, other ways of life, and other systems of meaning that come to the individual through the modern media of communication. Hence a fundamental trait of modernity: everyone is rubbing elbows with everyone else.
Pluralism, in this sense, is an objective constituent of the social world and not a matter of individual consciousness. But the external collision of groups and communities obviously has its correlate within consciousness—in the collision of meanings, values, and overall systems of belief including, perhaps particularly, religious beliefs. In this country, at least in the larger cities or in the vicinity of college campuses, one can walk into a bookstore and, for a reasonable sum, purchase paperback editions of good translations of the sacred scriptures of most of the world’s religious traditions. In most of the same places one can also take courses expounding the various traditions, and in quite a few one can meet their representatives in the flesh. For anyone with a personal and intellectual concern for religion, the sum total of human religious experience is present, accessible, and on the horizon of consciousness in a way in which it has never been before.
If the social and political problem of pluralism is, how are all these people to live together in a modicum of peace?, the intellectual or cognitive problem is, how can all these alternative definitions of reality coexist in consciousness? This problem, too, it goes without saying, is very complex, but its major feature can again be stated simply: the presence of all those “others” continually undermines the taken-for-granted quality of moral and religious beliefs. At the least, those beliefs now have to be reflected upon, articulated, and defended against what challenges them; at most, all beliefs are placed into a cauldron of relativity in which they become deliberate and reversible choices. In either case, what previously was fate has now become a matter of decision.
The essence of any truly traditional existence is its taken-for-grantedness, and this is precisely what pluralism calls into question. To gauge the import of this for modern Judaism, one need only try to imagine the reaction of a Jew living in a traditional community (say, an East European shtetl) to a discussion by contemporary American Jews of their “problem of Jewish identity.” The problem of Jewish survival—that he would have understood, and he would also have understood the problem of keeping faith in God, in Torah, and in the Messiah in the face of adversity. But a problem of identity? Jewish identity, for better or for worse, was something assumed—a datum which, to be sure, gave rise to many problems, but which itself was not problematic.
If one has a commitment to (or even a nostalgia for) traditional Judaism, contemporary discussions of “Jewish identity” might easily be seen as symptoms of spiritual degeneration. And perhaps they are. But the simple fact is that the loss of the taken-for-granted quality is as much a given in the current situation as the fate of being a Jew was in an older situation. The experience of the modern world, in America most of all, includes the progressive translation of what once were destinies into choices.
Of course, to be a Jew, even in pluralist America, is not just a matter of choice. There is the weight of biography and cultural heritage, there are pressures from one’s immediate environment and from the larger society (including the negative pressure of anti-Semitism). Still, to be a Jew in the contemporary situation is more a matter of choice than it has been at almost any previous time in Jewish history.
One sometimes hears it claimed that Judaism is not vulnerable, or is less vulnerable than Christianity, to the intellectual doubts brought on by modernity because Judaism, unlike Christianity, is not a dogmatic religion: Halakhah, not doctrine, is the heart of Judaism. Yet modern Jewish history hardly supports this proposition, and it is important to understand why. The cognitive structure of a human community is not to be equated with a doctrine or a set of theories. Rather, it is the overarching canopy of meanings within which reality makes sense to individuals. It is precisely this canopy of meanings which pluralism attacks and renders open to doubt. Such doubt may center on doctrine: “Can I really be sure that Jesus Christ is divine lord and savior?” or “Can I still believe in the biblical account of creation?”—but it may also center on practice: “What sense does it really make to keep a kosher kitchen?” or “Can I still feel bound to live by the commandments of Torah?”
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The strategies by which individuals and groups try to cope with the loss of traditional taken-for-grantedness run the gamut from total acceptance to total rejection. If the loss is truly accepted, then the religious identity of the individual or group indeed becomes a complete matter of choice, a “preference”—which, by definition, is not rooted deeply in consciousness and therefore may be changed with relative ease. Thus Judaism has for many become a “denomination,” in the sense given to that term by H. Richard Niebuhr—that is, a religious institution that has surrendered its claim to monopoly status. This “denominationalization” of religion has had very grave consequences for the Protestant churches that first went through it, and the consequences have been even more severe for Judaism, given its minority status in a predominantly Christian society. Quite simply, to have a Jewish “preference” is frequently the last stage before even that mild option ceases to be plausible; “denominationalization” tends to be a way station toward secularity.
To be sure, one can be a secular Jew, and even call that an identity, but it is doubtful whether such an identity can sustain one for long—especially in the absence, or even relative absence, of anti-Semitic pressures. In this connection, the insistence by some that the Holocaust must be the core of Jewish self-reflection today has the function of freezing the presence of anti-Semitism in the consciousness of Jews—and thus of covering up the question of why one should be a Jew. This strategy will be plausible to individuals in the degree that it corresponds to their own experience of the social world. If it corresponds only weakly or not at all—that is, if the individual has not experienced anti-Semitism that even remotely adumbrates Nazism—the insistence that the Holocaust is an ever-present reality is unlikely to be persuasive, and may even achieve the opposite of what is intended: why should one be a Jew if horror is the central reality to which one is linked by virtue of Jewish identity? It is hard to believe that, barring a massive upsurge of anti-Semitism in America, a Jewish identity can be permanently reconstructed on the basis of ongoing remembrance of the Holocaust. (It goes without saying that there are other reasons to remember the Holocaust, but they cannot readily be linked to the problem under discussion here.)
But if there are difficulties in accepting the loss of traditional taken-for-grantedness, there are also difficulties in rejecting it. Any attempt to restore a traditional form of existence and consciousness must take place within a social milieu, in which that enterprise is plausible. If the society as a whole no longer provides such a milieu, it must be deliberately constructed; if the shtetl no longer exists, it must be reinvented, along with the structures necessary to protect the individual from the corrosive influences of society at large.
A visual example of this possibility may be had in New York, by driving on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. There are two bridges over the expressway in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, and at just about any time of the day one can see a number of people walking back and forth on these bridges, dressed in the traditional garb of East European Hasidim. It is as if time were standing still, an impression all the more striking in view of the turbulent metropolis surrounding these enclaves of rigorously traditional life. By all accounts these hasidic communities are indeed surviving in their improbable geographical setting, but the setting already points to an intrinsic difficulty. The two bridges, after all, span a traffic artery that links downtown Manhattan with its major airports. The people who walk on these bridges are within constant reach of an overwhelmingly powerful system of communications, each element of which radically denies the plausibility of neo-traditional existence and consciousness. The “neo-shtetl,” of course, is constructed so as to keep these influences out, but this requires an immense and ongoing effort. As for the individual in this situation, however sheltered he may be, he knows that he can make his exit by walking across the bridge and taking the subway.
This is the fundamental problem with all forms of neo-traditionalism, of which the example of the Brooklyn Hasidim is admittedly an extreme case. The modern transition from fate to choice may be denied, tradition may be reaffirmed “as if nothing had happened,” but this means that an existence chosen at every moment by the individual living it must be treated as if it were not chosen at all, as if it were really destiny. A cognitive strategy that is subject to ongoing empirical falsification can be very hard to keep going.
If “denominationalization” and neo-traditionalism were the only options for religion in the modern world, the outlook would be very bleak. It happens, however, that the very nature of the religious phenomenon opens up another possibility. At the heart of religion is neither doctrine nor social structure but a distinctive experience of realities that transcend the reality of ordinary life, an experience that has been described with precision by Rudolf Otto and other analysts of the sacred. Every religious tradition originates in such an experience. The vitality of a tradition depends on the success with which the experience it embodies can be “handed on” (the literal sense of tradition) from one generation to another.
Of course some traditions become dry, empty forms, which no longer have the capacity to revivify the experience for new generations. This, however, is not inevitable; clearly the great traditions of religious history have always had the ability to revivify the experiences from which they derive. This ability is of particular import under the conditions of modernity. For the “turning-to-experience” which has been so characteristic of modern thought in general at least since Descartes has its theological dimension as well—perhaps especially in Protestantism, the religious community with the longest and most intimate relation to modernity. In Judaism, too, the biographies of Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Abraham Heschel contain precisely such rediscoveries of the experiential contents of the religious tradition. These rediscoveries require social confirmation, as all human experiences must find some sort of institutional expression if they are to survive over time. But the individual who has in his own life and consciousness experienced his tradition anew does gain, if not the old taken-for-granted faith, at least a new measure of self-assurance.
This does not mean that the “turning-to-experience” magically transports an individual or a group out of the modern situation and its pressures; there continue to be all those “others” who have not shared the experience and who, if given the chance, would deny its claims. It does mean that the experiences and beliefs of others have a significance they never had in the traditional situation, and this has far-reaching implications precisely for those who have a living relation to a body of religious truth. The most important implication is that the argument which once went on between those inside and those outside a religious community now goes on within the consciousness of the individual. If he is fortunate enough to have some religious experience of his own to stand upon, he is still under pressure to relate this experience to the experiences of others. Applying this proposition to the situation of the Jew in the pluralized situation, one can say this: he may have a plausible answer as to why he identifies himself as a Jew, but he must also be in a position to articulate (to himself if not to others) how his Jewish identity relates to the empirically available alternatives of existence and belief.
In other words, the believing individual is always both inside and outside his commitment to his own faith, and can only convince himself if he can (at least in principle) convince others. If this point is grasped, the missionary possibility attains a hitherto unsuspected dimension. It is now no longer an expression of institutional strategy, let alone of religious arrogance or aggression. On a more basic level, it is an imperative. Whether the engagement with the outsider actually leads to conversions or changes of religious affiliation is not essential. Rather, what is essential is that every committed individual, and every community of such individuals, engage with all the significant alternatives. If this proposition were put in the form of advice to any particular religious community, it would run as follows: you will not be able to keep your own unless you are prepared to persuade others.
Rabbi Schindler may not have had this in mind when he made his recommendation that American Judaism should actively seek converts. Still, the argument strongly supports the validity of his recommendation. Surely it should not trouble anyone who believes that Judaism does indeed contain truth, for no truth is falsified by comparison and contestation. But even more mundane considerations lead to the conclusion that Judaism has nothing to fear from such a course. One need only look at the spiritual and intellectual poverty of some of the movements that have successfully gained converts in recent years, and compare them with the treasures embodied in the Jewish tradition. There are no grounds to suppose that Judaism would come out a loser in a religious contestation. On the contrary, recent data (especially on interreligious marriages) suggest a contrary prediction.
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If the dynamics of modern pluralism make a missionary stance plausible for American Judaism, theological considerations make it welcome. For in the quest for religious truth, the pluralistic situation is one in which uncertainties can be turned into new opportunities. Pluralism forces individuals to make choices. The tradition can no longer be taken for granted as it stands and as a whole; the individual must choose his stance in the face of it.
One possible choice, of course, is that of the neo-traditionalist. But the individual who finds himself unable to make that choice now confronts his own tradition in a new stance of freedom. Inevitably, he will be a “heretic,” in that he will select, will “pick and choose,” from what the tradition makes available to him. (The Greek word haeresis means choice.) In this way he will be pressed toward a double engagement—with his own tradition, and with the other traditions within his reach. If this can lead to shallowness, triviality, and religious “consumerism,” it can also lead to a profound revitalization of religious consciousness.
Every vision of the world attains lucidity in contest with other visions, and how much more so in the case of religious visions. The experience of ancient Israel gained lucidity, indeed certainty, in its contest with the alternatives available in the surrounding civilization of the Near East. In large measure, the Hebrew Bible is the outcome of this contest. Similarly, Christianity attained self-consciousness in contestation with a variety of other religious movements and cults in the Greco-Roman world. The way to “one’s own” has often led through interaction with the “other.” Contemporary pluralism has greatly enlarged the cross-cultural scope of that “other.” This creates problems; it also offers great promise.
For this reason, interreligious dialogue should be high on the agenda of every religious community in the contemporary world—not just for moral or socio-political reasons, such as cooperation with others for the achievement of universal goals like peace and social justice, or for the furtherance of amicable relations (although these are thoroughly worthwhile enterprises), but also for theological reasons. Such dialogue must include a common search for truth, taking the visions of others with total seriousness—and with the readiness, in principle, to accept another’s truth.
There is not much dialogue of this kind just now, and what there is of it rarely goes beyond either disinterested scholarship or mutual self-explanation. Dialogue between Jews and Christians (again, for perfectly understandable reasons) only rarely deals with the truth claims of the two communities. In America, if not elsewhere, a deeper dialogue should now be possible. Whether any sort of dialogue will be possible with resurgent Islam will largely depend on international politics. Theologically speaking, however, the most important dialogue to come is that between the monotheistic faiths originating in western Asia and the traditions that have come out of the subcontinent of India. Here, between the symbolic poles of Jerusalem and Benares, is to be found the single most important alternative in human religious history. It is possible that this contestation will have the most far-reaching impact on the future course of both Judaism and Christianity.
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It has been said a number of times in recent years that there are now three foci of Jewish experience—Israel, the Soviet Union, and America. Each has its own distinctive quality, and its own significance for the future of the Jewish people. Yet it is noteworthy that both the Israeli and the Soviet situations are replications of earlier historical configurations—respectively, Jewish existence under sovereignty and under alien oppression. It is the American focus that represents a historically unprecedented case—the existence of the Jewish people under conditions of pluralism in which Judaism is a fully recognized ingredient of the religious heritage of the nation. It is not unreasonable to think that the theological consequences of this situation may also turn out to be unprecedented. The possibility evoked here is that of a self-assured Judaism entering into open contestation with the full range of religious options in the contemporary situation, and thus taking an active part in the historic battle against the inroads of modern secularism.
