Calling for a Core Jewish Identity: PW Talks to Donniel Hartman | CPT PPP Coverage

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Donniel Hartman, a modern orthodox rabbi, is in a hot spot. He leads an Israel-based think-tank, the Shalom Hartman Institute, that promotes liberal values and pluralism in a nation riven with internal divisions from the ultra-orthodox to secular. Yet, it’s the right place, in his view, to address an urgent issue: Jewish in Israel and beyond, with all their complex personal, political, and social identities, must find a unifying story or face the “pitfalls of particularism.” Or worse. They could see Judaism losing sway as a meaningful choice for future generations, leaving the their Jewish identity in a drawer like a hand-me-down, rarely worn t-shirt.

PW talked with Hartman, an author (Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself) and host of a podcast for North American Jews, “For Heaven’s Sake,” about the concerns and criticisms he raises in his forthcoming book, Who Are the Jews—and Who Can We Become? (Jewish Publication Society, Nov.). It begins with words from the late civil rights and anti-Vietnam war activist William Sloane Coffin: “…Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country.”

Much of this book is a tough-love message for all Jewish but ultra-Orthodox Jews, who have significant sway in Israeli life, will never read it. Even so, you’re optimistic. How so?

The people who read my books are principally liberal Jews. The ultra-Orthodox won’t read it but they won’t even read Maimonides (a widely studied 12th Century Jewish philosopher). I don’t write for people who are frightened by ideas. And I am not a sociologist who counts the dying Jewish people. Prophets of doom don’t change history. I am by definition a teacher and a teacher is, by definition, an optimist. My reader is someone who wants to go on a journey about who are, who we can be, who we ought to be. That’s 80% of the Jewish world.

The book describes Judaism as essentially a collective, noting, “The Jewish story has no place for select individuals to climb the mountain and commune with God in private spiritual ecstasy, while the rest of the people wander and stray.” Is this why you decry particularism?

I want no part of people who stand for “my-way-or-the-highway” judgmental Judaism or a Zionism that is ultra-nationalist colonial ideology immune from moral responsibility. I want to inform them, inspire them, and challenge them instead. I want to say, ‘I love you but…’ Most people are interested in having a moral conversation about being a moral people, an exemplary people.

Your book reminds readers of the covenant God made in Genesis that the descendants of Abraham are God’s people and the one God made in Exodus where Jewish received God’s commandments to become a holy people. What makes these so significant?

In Genesis, you are a Jew by inheritance. It’s who you are, a statement of being, but not a statement of doing. With the Exodus covenant, you have to choose to act, to claim that inheritance and connect yourself to 3,000 years of Jewish life.

You write, “The continuity of the Jewish story really depends on its ability to compete and prevail in the open marketplace of ideas and identities.” What would that look like?

I am not looking for kumbaya, for all of us to be one and the same. I am looking for us to recognize a core identity, a story within Jewishness and Zionism that reaffirms people and respects diversity and takes on a heightened responsibility toward our fellow humans. All Jewish are Jewish the minute they choose to be in that story.