T. Belman. Melanie writes, “core Jewish principles involve putting others’ interests before your own”. I have never read that before. In fact I have argued otherwise that we must put ourselves first. See Particularism Before Universalism.
She argues that Jewish children are not taught to, in my words, love themselves, their Jewish selves. So they don’t value being Jews. They take no pride in it. As a result, they have no reason to defend it.
Core Jewish principles involve putting others’ interests before your own, respecting every human being and observing moral codes based on right and wrong. Op-ed.
By Melanie Phillips, INN 22.7.22
(JNS) Diaspora Jews worry about how to deal with the current tsunami of antisemitism that is washing through the world. They also worry about how to deal with the anti-Zionism and demonization of Israel that are now the default position for “progressives” in the West.
Most painful of all, they observe with horror that Jews themselves are increasingly involved in the onslaught against Israel.
However, there’s a problem that’s even more fundamental to the well-being of the Jewish people. It’s that Diaspora Jews are increasingly turning away from and even against Judaism itself.
Throughout the Diaspora, Jewish communities are dwindling in number as assimilation takes its toll. Nowhere is this more acute in America, where it takes a particularly baleful form.
Many American Jews haven’t just become detached from Judaism. They have embraced the sectarian ideologies of “social justice” that are in fact inimical to Judaism, but which they nevertheless tell themselves are Jewish values.
They call this tikkun olam, claiming they accord with the Jewish concept of repairing the world. In fact, they profoundly distort tikkun olam, which is premised on the belief in God that these liberal Jews generally dismiss as irrelevant or an impediment to social progress.
Core Jewish principles involve putting others’ interests before your own, respecting every human being and observing moral codes based on right and wrong. By contrast, the social-justice agenda places the individual at the center of existence so that objective truths are replaced by subjective opinions, feelings trump moral codes, and duties are replaced by rights.
Britain’s Jewish community, which is dwindling more gently, is different. Although many British Jews are socially liberal, they have never claimed the social-justice agenda as a Jewish moral code. In general elections, moreover, the majority actually vote Conservative. This is even though most British Jews who arrived from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century brought with them, just like their American cousins, a deep attachment to the Labor movement and even Communist politics.
And just as American Jews came to identify the Republican Party with antisemitism, British Jews formerly regarded the Conservative party as prejudiced against Jews while Labour was seen for decades as their natural home.
So why the difference over Jewish values? Maybe the reason is that, despite the antisemitism that always bubbles below the surface in any Western society, America was a salad of cultures and ethnicities.
Unlike Britain, whose indigenous and ancient culture meant that—however assimilated Jews became—they always felt themselves at some level to be outsiders, American Jews believed they were as American as anyone else.
Since the essence of Jewish identity is to be distinct from everyone else, this laid the groundwork for an existential conflict between Jewishness and Americanness. For the majority, this would only be resolved by hollowing out their Jewishness into a cosmetic but meaningless shell.
I discussed this neuralgic issue on this week’s JNS podcast with Rabbi Cary Kozberg, a Reform rabbi who has broken with the Reform movement over what he considers to be its embrace of the anti-Jewish values of the social-justice agenda.
Although Conservative Judaism now marches to a similar tune, Kozberg believes that the onslaught on Jewish principles has been driven by Reform. What worries him so much is that we’ve seen all this before.
Around the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, Greek culture—or Hellenism—attracted many Jews tempted by the opportunity to embrace hedonism and pagan decadence. Worse still, this caused divisions between Jews that fatally weakened the community and made it vulnerable to its external enemies who wanted the Jewish people gone.
Kozberg’s deepest fear is that American Jews are repeating this baleful history. The tragedy is that they don’t realize it because they don’t actually know the history of their own people.
This ignorance isn’t confined to progressive Jews. Among the young—even those who come from Orthodox backgrounds, and have been through Jewish day schools and Jewish camps and so on—are often astonishingly ignorant of what is necessary to keep the generational Jewish show on the road.
They tend to be taught from a narrow template of rabbinical texts and halachic ordinances. Whether Orthodox or progressive, the young aren’t generally taught much Jewish history or how Jewish moral principles can enrich their own personal lives and help surmount the pressures of modern existence.
They aren’t taught that Jewish precepts are absolutely foundational to Western values such as freedom, compassion and even rationality.
They aren’t taught why the Jewish emphasis on making distinctions between things is so vital to a moral sense, and how this runs directly counter to prevailing secular orthodoxies of equity and nondiscrimination.
They aren’t taught about the importance and centrality of Jewish uniqueness, and that what drives certain Jews to turn against the Jewish people is their anxiety to erase that uniqueness from their identity and sign up instead to the prevailing consensus.
They aren’t taught that Judaism is joyous and life-enhancing so that it can make their own lives more satisfying and optimistic.
In short, young Diaspora Jews are taught precious little about what has kept Jews together as a people despite overwhelming pressures, and why this is so valuable and important for these young Jews themselves.
Two things need to change if the Jewish people are properly to defend themselves: Jews need to be taught better about their own people, culture and history; and there needs to be a more effective strategy to fight their enemies by getting off the defensive back foot, and onto a pro-active and aggressive front foot.
Precious little of this is done at present because the Diaspora leadership is woefully inadequate: timid, servile and anxious to fit in.
In Britain, Jewish leaders publicly fought the far-left Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn because they felt safe in the knowledge that most people in the country reviled him as a dangerous extremist. But they refuse to fight Muslim antisemitism for fear of being called “Islamophobic.” Nor will they declare the demonstrable legitimacy of Israeli residency in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria—not least because so many of these leaders are ignorant of this themselves.
In America, Jews are increasingly living in a state of siege. Jews have been murdered in Pittsburgh, San Diego and Jersey City. Visibly Jewish pedestrians are beaten regularly in the streets of American cities and towns. Jewish students are bullied and harassed on campus. The Democratic Party exhibits either indifference to all this or even tolerates the virulent anti-Jewish prejudice in “The Squad” of congresswomen.
American Jewish leaders either lend support to such people and their ideologies or else behave like rabbits frozen in the headlights. Now a grassroots movement has just launched to hold their feet to the fire.
The Jewish Leadership Project has a 10-point “action list” to mobilize a more effective Jewish defense. It demands that major Jewish organizations “cease subordinating the safety and welfare of the Jewish-American community to partisan ideology.”
The project’s co-founder, Avi Goldwasser, said: “Many once-venerable Jewish organizations have primarily become front groups for progressive political interests. The significant danger the Jewish community faces today is an indictment of these institutions and their leadership.”
All over the West, people have been left demoralized and disillusioned by an entire political establishment that appears determined to send Western civilization off the edge of the cliff.
They’ve been rising up against this using whatever opportunities come their way. In Britain, it was Brexit; in America, it was the election of former president Donald Trump.
It’s time the Jewish people told their own Diaspora leaders “enough is enough,” and demand they start properly to defend the Jewish people rather than their own exalted positions.
Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for “The Times of London,” her personal and political memoir, “Guardian Angel,” has been published by Bombardier, which also published her first novel, “The Legacy.” Go to melaniephillips.substack.com to access her work.
@Tedl Could this post be labelled as, “lazy majesté?”
@Ted Could he have done a better job if he’d been a Yemenite Arab bodega owner in Harlem or the Christian god ’cause then he could have worked 7 days, 17, 18 hours a day for a year or two, then handed it off to relatives and taken an equally long luxurious vacation somewhere, maybe Atlantic city?
@Ted
TED –
Your revelations about your daughter really surprise me. You have so much documented proof, which surely you could feed her a bit at a time AFTER extracting a promise to seriously read and consider them.
Maybe you could begin with the real reasons that Jews vote for Democrats, like being met at the boat with food, money and a place to stay. They mostly understood no English. And it was the beginning of the demise of the religious Jew. Especially when they were fraudulently signed up for local elections by the “ward heelers” (literally crooks) , then told to shave the beard and brought to vote again in another precinct. and so on. It instilled political craftiness and dishonesty. a gift from the Goldena Medina.
You could begin with Tammany Hall, Democrats cum Mafia, from which all ills began. Boss Tweed might be too far back but Frank Costello the Luciano successor, is a good starting place.. But it should be SLOW, and ger her responses first before progressing.
I am a poor solver having had 4 children all very brilliant and not one of whom followed my wishes as to their futures. My only consolation is that we are all still in touch.
And you, the proverbial silver tongued laywer…!!!!!
My understanding f the term is very limited and I was going from memory.
Last night I had a deep conversation with my daughter which happens very infrequently. On her mother’s side she is a descendant of practising Hasidic Jews, many of whom had Smicha. She has been a practising religious Jew all her life.. And yet she is a leftist. She starts with the position that America today is not exceptional and is in dire need of transformation. She cites a laundry list of complaints in support. You will recall that Obama also wanted to transform America. This is the leftist mindset. Thus they are working to establish a NWO. The left sees itself as revolutionaries. Thus it is not bound by constraints of the old World Order. They are in effect storming the bastille. Any thing goes. And they are proud of their beliefs and goals.
She still believes that there was little election fraud, that Jan 6 is showing the world how nefarious Trump is. She accuses the people in my world as being conspiracy theorists and are subject to spreading fake news. She doesn’t credit me with having a foot in both worlds. She doesn’t realize the extent to which the legacy media and social media giants hide things from her and misinform her.. She doesn’t have a foot in my world. and so doesn’t know the truth. yet she thinks she does.
TED-
Thank you. I know what it means, and how this fantastic myth evolved. It is not in the Torah, but a brain child of simple people who tried to fins out why G-D was punishing them so much. The Moshiach ( a G-D sent Leader to restore Israel’s Glory and the Davidic and Zadok Lines) belief had a similar footstool . I read much on it already years ago by Jewish historians who delved deeply into the backgrounds of such seemingly baseless beliefs. They found the origins but no truth, just mystic belief.
There was NO acknowledgement that G-D had created anything other than Perfection. But it was “Man” who marred the perfection, and was being punished for it. All religious and anachronistic speculation by these hoary old guys of course.
But it was an age which believed in magic , and miracles, spells, witches, angels, (so one might also add “Metatron” both in Talmud and later, the ridiculous Kabbala—all nonsense) They grabbed at any straw..
.Look at what happened when Shabtai Tzvi “appeared” .. driven Crazy by Kabbala, and even found his “Eliyahu HaNavi” in Nathan of Gaza, who also was a head case. (nobody noticed then that “Eliyahu” did not appear first, as the “forerunner” should, but attached himself to Shabtai, during his “triumphal” progress…)..
Just my opinion, (but really researched)
@Will James
Which is why we should take the word back and define it as it was originally meant to mean, rather than abandon it as surrendered to a bastardization from its true intent. Marxists and Leftists excel at language re-assignment. It is a useful method to steel the language against its meaning while stealing the meaning from those who might oppose the new definition. Such as with the new definition of vaccine, vaccinated and post-vaccination, a simple tweak can pervert the meaning of anything as it suits the elitists to do so, but only if we surrender the meaning to those who would distort it against us. By accepting that they have nullified the meaning and context of this phrase, we only empower them to be more bold in doing so again, while losing the connection to the original concept which was actually quite profoundly unique.
So, while I do agree with you that this very Jewish phrase has been adopted to a very Marxist plot, I would suggest that we reacquaint the world with its true meaning by fighting for the truth upon which it was originally based and exposing the false concept for which it is currently exploited. This can only be achieved by using it as it was meant with the original meaning, complete with explanation of that meaning as it is used, while also highlighting the fact that others are abusing it against its Jewish context and misleading the masses to misunderstand the path for which it is being falsely applied. Or such is my own perspective on the matter.
FYI, quite honestly, you have done at least part of this with your comment, so well done.
Western values have NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with Torah (Jewish values), neither they have anything to do (as of now, anyway) with freedom, compassion or rationality (look around you – what do you see? – that you have the right to vote? – that’s about it).
Western values are the values of the Pagan Roman Empire – unending conquest, imposing your culture on everybody else, robbery, personal enrichment, lack of morals (and compassion), etc.
Most of the Western countries were at one time or another occupied by the Romans who taught the population the “Roman values and civilization”.
“Tikkun Olam” as adopted by the Progressive movement is the poisoned Kool-Aid that’s been corrupting a generation. It has only a tangential relationship to the late medieval Kabalistic teachings from which it derives. But it has a direct and powerful connection to the Marxist concept of “negative reason” which has seduced so many. Ordinary Muggles only see the world as it is: but those who have developed the power of negative reason can perceive all that the world is not—but could be.
This is the fateful step toward learning to despise the world that we have inherited and committing ourselves to making something much better. Instead of revering the ancestors, appreciating their gifts and recognizing all that they sacrificed to give us what we have, Marxism teaches the young to spit on all of it and focus solely on the negative aspects of the imperfect world that surrounds us. So, Tikkun Olam functions as the gateway drug that encourages Jews to repudiate their own traditions, abandon Judaism, and join those like Mao, Castro, Stalin and Pol Pot who have been building a glorious new future for humanity.
@Edgar
Tikkun Olam means repair the world. It is an acknowledgement that God didn’t make it perfect and it is incumbent on Jews to repair it.
Reform Jews divorce the obligation to correct God imperfect word and apply it to anything they want.
In the first few words of TED’s highlight, I saw that cursed “Tikkun Olom” nonsense immediately. It was a fine philosophy, 24-2500 years ago when the pacifist Sages were poring over the reasons that Israel always seemed to be , not only getting into hot water with surrounding nations, but always getting the worst of it. They were being punished by G0D these simple souls believed, and took up on that obscure phrase, which was certainly NOT meant to be practiced in the present day.
it was for its times, to “appease” G-D’s displeasure.