COMMUNITY VIEWS

A House Divided
Cannot Stand

RABBI SHERWIN WINE
Special to The Jewish News

•

•

Jewish unity is an
ideal which is
always talked
about in the
Jewish communi-
ty. It is perceived
as something nec-
essary and good.
It is also a slogan,
like "love" or
"peace," which can mean different
things to different people.
Responding to a heightening of reli-
gious tensions in both Israel and the
Disapora, the Jewish Community
Center and The Jewish News sponsored
an event to dramatize the importance
of Jewish unity. The provocation for
the discussion was the recent assault by
the Orthodox establishment in Israel
against the legitimacy of Reform and
Conservative Judaism and the growing
dichotomy between the Orthodox and
the more "liberal" majority of the
American Jewish community.
Interestingly, Orthodox from the far-
right and Chasidic communities did
not choose to participate in the discus-
sion.
Tensions have been aggravated by
other troubling questions. How should
the Jewish community approach the
growing phenomenon of intermarriage

Sherwin Wine is rabbi at the

Birmingham Temple and founder of
Humanistic Judaism.

EDITOR'S
NOTEBOOK

• Who Will
Make A Home
For Lost
Tanachs?

ELIZABETH
APPLEBAUM
Associate Editor

Ten years ago I was
visiting my friend
Leagrey in San Diego
when she suddenly
stopped her car,
backed up and turned

and the Jewish identity of intermarried
couples and their children? What
should be the response of the American
Jewish community to the breakdown of
the peace process between Israelis and
the Arab world? How should limited
resources of central federations be dis-
tributed among the educational institu-
tions of the Jewish world? Are •
Orthodox day schools a better invest-
ment than Conservative Sunday
schools?
Any discussion of Jewish unity rests
on certain unavoidable realities. There
is a great belief diversity in the Jewish
world. The belief dichotomy between
Lubavitch Jews on the right and
Reform and secular Jews on the the-
ological left is enormous. Issues like
evolution, feminism, personal auton-
omy and rabbinic authority drama-
tize the gap.
There is a great life-style diversity
between _the far-right Orthodox and
the vast majority of American and
Israeli Jews. Issues like sexuality, sec-
- ular education and enthusiasm for
the modern world provide con-
frontation. In a free world, it is high-
ly unlikely that this diversity will
vanish. Where the diversity is minor,
as between Reform and Conservative
Jews, the gap is easily bridgeable.
Where it is major, the coming
together is much more difficult.
Before the modern democratic age,
Jewish unity meant Jewish conformity.
There was one and only one legitimate
path to Jewish salvation. Deviation
meant excommunication. Obedience

discussion and courteous dialogue, not
through violent confrontation and
threats of secession; 3) that problems
we all share — like the survival of the

Jewish state, anti-Semitism and the
funding of shared Jewish social services
and the creation of a significant Jewish
presence in the non-Jewish world —
can be dealt with together, not sepa-
rately.
If this basic sense of Jewish unity is
to work, four guidelines need to be fol-
lowed.
1. The foundation of Jewish unity is
that, in the end, we are more than a
religious fraternity. We are an am, a
historic nation. We are a people whose
roots and bonds are as much ethnic as
they are theological. The most success-
ful Jewish movement in the 20th cen-
tury, the adventure of Zionism, rests
on this reality. We Jews are connect-
ed to each other first and above all
by our sense that we belong to the
same historic family, share the same
historic culture and share the same
social fate of our dispersed people.
2. Since there are many different
kinds of Jews, there cannot be any
single strategy for Jewish survival.
Orthodox, Conservative, Reform,
Reconstructionist and Humanistic
Jews represent five different con-
stituencies, many of whose mem-
bers would not choose to pursue
Jewish identity if their option did
not exist: The imperial notion that
only the Orthodox strategy will
work excludes thousands of Jews who
would not choose the traditional alter-
native if it were offeredto them.
Arranging for a small saving remnant is
hardly a sign of success. Jewish unity
HOUSE on page 43

to the right.
"Look!" she cried. "The sign for an
estate sale. Let's go."
"Are you out of your mind?" I said.
"What do I need to see that old stuff
for? It's junk, Leagrey, pure, unadulter-
ated junk."
O000h, when I think now of what
I missed that day.
My mother always told me: We
mock the things we are to be. Today, I
am an admitted estate sale addict. I
can be rushing to an appointment,
and stickler that I am for punctuality I
will still be pulled, as though against
my will, by one of those "Estate Sale"
signs, mumbling all the while, "Just
one minute, that's all I'm going to be
there."
The other day, by complete chance,
I found the most interesting estate sale
I have ever been to. It was at an old
house in Berkley, on a corner. When I
went in, it was as though time had

stopped around 1948. Virtually every-
thing was from another era. There
were scrapbooks filled with pictures of
Tyrone Power and Merle Oberon,
books recommending daily doses of
cod-liver oil for children, and bright-
red lipsticks from companies long
since out of business.
The house permeated with that
unmistakable smell, a kind of musty,
worn-out smell that often clings to old
things. It was heaviest in the base-
ment, where rickety shelves were still
packed with homemade preserves and
pickles.
Much of what was for sale consist-
ed of furniture or kitchen ware, the
kinds of things you usually see at
estate sales. But atop the bed, mixed
amid the doilies, sheets, scarves and
handkerchiefs with tiny embroidered
flowers, was a photograph. It was .
black and white, in a cardboard frame,
taken many, many years ago. It

showed an elderly man with a narrow
face, and a woman, unsmiling.
Clearly, this had once been very dear
to someone.
I try not to attach too much impor-
tance to things, but I am troubled by
what I see left behind at estate sales.
At one, where an elderly woman
had died, I saw a small plastic bag
with a bundle of dried bits of some-
thing, brown and fragile, with tiny
buds. I saw a note on the side: "From
the flowers at Ray's funeral." Ray, I
learned, had been her husband.
At another I chanced upon a collec-
tion of albums showing family travels.
They included photographs and
menus, maps and postcards.
Underneath, in a clear, thin script in
black ink, were details of the adven-
tures: "We stopped here for a picnic of
roast-beef sandwiches. Our dog
Skipper ate half of Bobby's, along with
TANACHS on page 42

was the price of Jewish solidarity. But
that world has vanished, never to
return. In a free world, we Jews have
become a cultural emporium of many
options. Freedom has made us a Jewish
community unlike any Jewish commu-
nity in earlier centuries. No single
option has the power to enforce con-
formity, especially in North America.
For most Jews, Jewish unity, at a
minimum, means three things: 1) that
all Jews recognize that they are a part of
a larger Jewish community which
includes all denominational options; 2)
that differences among the diverse
branches are handled through peaceful

.

10/17

1997

41