What Does It Mean to be Jewish and American, Part Two

This is the second my series of four High Holy Day sermons on the topic "What does it mean to be Jewish and American?" (see below).  In this sermon, I present a few pictures from 19th century Jewish history that help give context to questions of being Jewish in America today.

Valuing Our American Judaism … and Our Jewish Americanism

          The American Civil War was an era of unprecedented upheaval in our nation’s history. The place of slavery in American society and economy was violently contested, and regional pride drove painful wedges between members of American families.

          Unsurprisingly, Jews were just as affected by the Civil War as their non-Jewish neighbors, and they were similarly divided over moral and geographical boundaries.

          David Einhorn, rabbi of Baltimore’s Congregation Har Sinai, fled north to Philadelphia when his anti-slavery sermons became too controversial in slave-holding Maryland. Meanwhile, on the other side of the spectrum, Judah Benjamin, a Jewish senator from Louisiana, served first as Secretary of War and later as Secretary of State of the Confederacy. Both of these extraordinary Jewish leaders would go on to greatness while championing opposite views. Rabbi Einhorn became a principal framer of the liberal principles of 19th-century Reform Judaism, and Judah Benjamin became the only Jew ever to be depicted on a note of American currency.[1]

          These polar examples demonstrate that Jews were enmeshed on both sides of the Civil War, and in this way, they shared their neighbors’ struggles and hopes through those difficult years.

          Imagine their shock and dismay, then, on the first day of Hanukkah, 1862. On December 17, “General Ulysses S. Grant issued [General Orders #11,] the most sweeping anti-Jewish official order in all of American history.”[2] It read in full:

The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department [of Tennessee] within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.

Post commanders will see that all of this class of people will be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters.

No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application for trade permits.

By order of Maj. Gen. U. S. Grant.

          While this order to expel Jews from Tennessee disrupted very few lives before President Lincoln rescinded it, the American Jewish community was naturally appalled that it could have been issued to begin with. Clearly, Ulysses Grant was no friend to the Jews, and no matter what side they were on, Jews would find it hard to support the man who had entirely dismissed them “as a class.”

          Fast forward five years. when Ulysses Grant was offered, and accepted, the Republican party’s nomination to run for President of the United States. Professor Jonathan Sarna treats this topic in his forthcoming book, When General Grant Expelled the Jews, and I had the honor of learning with him about this fascinating moment in American Jewish history at a recent conference in Washington, D.C.[3]

          While Ulysses Grant was undoubtedly a national hero in post-War America, Jews around the country had grown to revile him as a modern-day Haman. At the same time, Jews overwhelmingly approved of the liberal policies of the Republican party and opposed the Democrats’ stated efforts to bring an end to Reconstruction.

          To make matters more serious, both political parties perceived Jews as a significant and influential bloc of voters. Though in reality, the Jewish vote could have done little to sway the election one way or another, Jewish sensitivities for the first time in American history played a major role in a national election.

          So, progressive American Jews in 1868 were stuck in a bind. Would they support a seemingly anti-Semitic candidate who shared their vision for the country, or would they exact vengeance on General Grant by supporting his opponents, even though they disagreed with their politics?

          As is always the case, different Jewish leaders posed different answers. Rabbi Liebmann Adler of Chicago supported General Grant, arguing that the welfare of the country outweighs the needs of the Jewish community. He wrote:

If that party in whose hands I believe the welfare of the country, so far as the advancement of human rights was concerned, was the safest, were to place a Haman at the helm of state, and if the opposite party, whose nonexistence I believe would be better for humanity and my country, were to place Messiah at their head, make Moses the Chief Justice, and call the Patriarchs to the Cabinet, I should say, “Prosper under Haman, my fatherland, and here you have my vote, even if all the Jew in me mourns.”[4]

          Thus, in the eyes of Rabbi Adler, American Jews must cast their vote for President considering first and foremost the well-being of the entire country. American concerns come before Jewish concerns.

          He argued:

Proud as I am of being a Jew, it is different when I take a ballot in order to exercise my right as a free citizen.  Then I am not a Jew, but I feel and act as a citizen of the republic.[5]

          However, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, later founder of the Hebrew Union College and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, could not justify this distinction; he could not allow his American self to trump his Jewish self.

He wrote:

We have been trying quite seriously to make of our humble self two Isaac M. Wises – the one who is a citizen of the State of Ohio, and the other who is a Jew; but we failed and we failed decidedly; we could not destroy our identity nor could we double it.  In consequence of this exertion and this failure, we have come to the conclusion, that it is a piece of sophistry to suggest that one should be the one-half of himself.[6]

          Thus, for Rabbi Wise, Jewishness is just as primary as Americanness. Since he believed that General Grant was wrong in what he did to the Jews during the Civil War, and since he believed that, “If wrong is wrong, he who defends it is wicked,”[7] he therefore concluded that he would not be able to support General Grant during his campaign.

          These two rabbis demonstrate two divergent approaches to the question of what it means to be Jewish and American. Last night, I addressed this topic on the local level, asking what it means to be Jewish and live in Lynchburg. Today, we enter into the debate along with Rabbis Adler and Wise, asking ourselves what our Jewish relationship is with our entire country.

          We ask the question, “What does it mean to be Jewish and American?”

          Liebmann Adler, the rabbi who supported General Grant, would argue that our Jewish distinctiveness cannot always be compatible with our Americanness. In his view, American Jews must bifurcate ourselves, identifying at times as Jewish and at times as American.

          But another approach, the one held by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, rejects the notion that American Jews can divide themselves into sometimes-Jews, sometimes-Americans.

          It may come as little surprise that I tend to agree with the founder of my school.

          Of course, neither Rabbi Wise nor I would argue that American Jews are not distinct from American non-Jews. However, this distinctiveness in no way diminishes our full claim to America.

          But what does it mean, really, to identify as American? What is it that ties together the diverse groups that make up our hyphenated society? What do African-Americans, Muslim-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Caucasian-Americans, and Jewish-Americans share in common?

          Historian Samuel Huntington argues that there are two fundamental components to the American identity: Culture and Creed. [8] The American Culture stems from a particular brand of Protestant Christianity, rooted in the English Puritan foundations of our nation’s history. The American Creed includes the basic values of “liberty, equality, democracy, individualism, human rights, the rule of law, and private property.”[9] Or, condensed further, the Creed is a reflection of the basic ideals that undergird Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence: liberty, democracy, and freedom.

          For centuries, Jews in this country have acted on Huntington’s basic thesis. Many Jewish immigrants, especially those from Western Europe, already possessed basic acceptance of America’s Creed, and they sought out opportunities to publicly express their proud American convictions.

          What was entirely new to immigrant Jews was the strange atmosphere of this new world, and they spent considerable time actively striving to internalize American Culture. Jewish schools in the 19th and early 20th centuries sought to “Americanize” by conducting classes in English, celebrating secular holidays, and modeling the classroom after the public school. Settlement houses made it their business to acculturate Jewish immigrants to American folkways, teaching Jewish newcomers not only the foundational principles of democracy, freedom, and reason but the cultural components of etiquette, citizenship, and sports. In order to succeed in this land of opportunity, Jews worked to look, sound, and act like their Christian neighbors.

          However, while the Jews were largely successful in eventually winning acceptance in the general American public, I argue that they were genuinely American from the moment they arrived in this country. The Protestant culture that the Jews found when they immigrated here is not the only culture that qualifies as American. One need only remember the Mormons or the Native Americans to realize that there are non-Protestant cultures that are distinctly American. So the culture of Jews in this country, regardless of how much or how little it resembles Protestant culture, is just as American as any other.

          So, I reject Professor Huntington’s contention that a single unifying Culture exists at all, let alone is necessary to being American. Rather, I focus my attention on the Creed, a set of principles that anyone can choose to adopt, as the primary expression of American identity.

          Every person who lives in this country and who believes in the foundational tenets of the American Creed has full entitlement to calling herself American. Whether one is Christian, Muslim, or Jew; whether one is white, black, or brown; whether one speaks English, Spanish, or Chinese; whether one is Democrat, Republican, or Independent; all of these people are American so long as they uphold the foundational values of freedom, democracy, and reason.

          Of course, it was never a foregone conclusion that Jews would easily be able to adopt these basic principles. Our freedom has been compromised by political oppression around the world. Democracy has yielded to the autocratic authority of the rabbis. And reason has traditionally remained subservient to faith. The millions of Jews who came to America from Eastern Europe were particularly tied to traditions that would not easily embrace freedom, democracy, and reason.

          Yet today, these values are hallmarks of American Judaism. In this country, the aspects of our tradition that do uphold freedom, democracy, and reason have come to the forefront of our religious lives. We have had the challenge and the opportunity to embrace this aspect of our heritage, to create a distinctly American Judaism.

          We owe much of our finest expression of American values and their deep rooting in American Judaism to a German immigrant of the 19th century. You may remember David Einhorn, the Baltimore rabbi I mentioned earlier who had to flee Maryland because of his anti-slavery views. It is this same Rabbi Einhorn, considered a radical back in his native Bavaria, who authored the Union Prayer Book, the first prayer book to be adopted by the newly-formed Central Conference of American Rabbis. Einhorn was a fervent believer in freedom, democracy, and reason, and these values found fluent expression in his 1892 masterpiece.

          And now, a century later, a new David Einhorn has given new voice to these American Jewish values. Rabbi Chaim Stern, the primary liturgist behind the composition of Gates of Repentance, has, like his predecessor, given voice to American Reform Judaism’s deepest spiritual hopes and concerns. By looking more closely than usual at a few short selections from the machzor that each of us has in our seats, we can illuminate our American Jewish tradition’s understanding of democracy, freedom, and reason.

          Turn, for example, to page 174, where we find an expression of American Jewish democracy.  We read:

Each generation has its path; each a vision of its own.
Yet each is linked to all; their origin and goal are one.

          In these two lines, Rabbi Stern articulates the Reform idea that Jews continue, generation after generation, to reach for the same spiritual and worldly goals. And each new generation has a mandate to find a unique way to approach our ancient Jewish mission.

          Thomas Jefferson himself would have admired this poetry, for he expressed the very same sentiment in his letter to James Madison, composed September 6, 1789. Jefferson reasoned that the laws of one generation could not be binding on the people of the next, for every generation bears the right and responsibility to determine for itself what laws shall govern it. By remaking the government every generation, each people can find the most comfortable and practicable approach to the foundational virtues for which all human beings strive.

          He notes,  “By the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation to another.”

          Jefferson’s notion of democracy, in which each generation reimagines the context in which it will thrive, is reflected in these simple words of Chaim Stern:

Each generation has its path; each a vision of its own.
Yet each is linked to all; their origin and goal are one.

          Let us now turn to page 65, where we may examine our machzor’s treatment of freedom.  We read:

“The kingdom of law is the domain of freedom.  Blessed is the law that sets us free to find gladness and joy.”

          Here, Rabbi Stern meditates on the modern American Jew’s understanding of the Torah. We accept the law, we bring the Torah into our hearts and our homes, and yet we do not enslave ourselves to its doctrines. The Torah does not restrict us; rather, “the kingdom of law is the domain of freedom.”

          Judaism is about building new understandings of our tradition that lead us “to find gladness and joy.” In this country, every person is free to pursue happiness, and a modern American Judaism integrates this pursuit into our ancient teachings.

          Finally, we turn to page 166 for a Jewish meditation on reason.

We read here that God is “Source of light and truth, Creator of the eternal law of goodness, and of the impulse within us for justice and mercy.”

          We hear in these words an echo of the Declaration of Independence. This paradigmatic document of Enlightenment asserts that our inalienable rights are endowed upon us by our Creator while resting on a philosophic principle that each of these rights can be recognized through the light of reason. For both Thomas Jefferson and Chaim Stern, God grants each of us the ability to discern right from wrong; we need not consult former generations for ultimate moral instruction.

          Thus we pray on p. 49,

“May the light of the divine shine forth to lead us, to show us the good we must do, the harmony we must create.”

          Our holiday candles are symbols of the light of divine reason, and the two of them burn brightly side-by-side, reminders of the complementary nature of our Americanness and our Jewishness.

          These samples are but brief tastes of the pervasiveness with which our Jewish and American selves are intertwined. In my eyes, Rabbi Wise was right, and Rabbi Adler was wrong: We cannot split ourselves in half, declaring some of our beliefs and activities to be Jewish and declaring others to be American.

          When we pray, we do so as Jewish Americans and as American Jews. When we vote, we do so as Jewish Americans and as American Jews. When we buy a novel, when we watch TV, donate to charity, prepare a meal, celebrate a holiday, we do so as Jewish Americans and as American Jews.

          Of course, as the election of 1868 reminds us, sometimes it seems very hard to integrate these two aspects of our whole selves. Sometimes, a situation arises that calls into question the assertion that our Jewish identities and our American identities constitute a single, unified self. What do we do when our Jewish priorities seem to be in conflict with our American values?

          Let us hear the end of the story of 1868 for one possible suggestion.

          As I mentioned before, the Jewish community was split over whether to support the candidate with whose politics they generally agreed even though he had displayed incontrovertible evidence of anti-Semitism.

          Unable to live with this tension, the Jewish community took action. They saturated General Grant with letters of inquiry, demanding an explanation of General Orders #11. Affirming their sense of democracy, they asserted their rights as American citizens to advocate for their freedom.

          At last, on September 14th, General Grant wrote a personal letter to Adolph Moses, an influential leader of B’nai Brith, “in which he unequivocally distance[d] himself from General Orders No. 11 and foreswore prejudice.”[10]

          Having heard their complaints, General Grant clarified his position and assured the Jewish community that he bore them no ill will. Even more forcefully, after his election, the president-elect publicly stated, “I have no prejudice against sect or race, but want each individual to be judged by his own merit. Order No. 11 does not sustain this statement, I admit, but then I do not sustain that order. It never would have been issued if it had not been telegraphed the moment it was penned, and without reflection.”[11]

          This apology would never have been won without the insistence of so many American Jews. By acting fully as Jews and fully as Americans, the Jewish community of 1868 demonstrated the power of their unified identity, acting on behalf of their full spectrum of values.

          Moreover, President Grant’s two terms in office, were eight years of unprecedented advancement of and support for Jews in the American public. As Professor Sarna relates,

“[President Grant] was quite sensitive toward Jewish concerns. As president, Grant made more Jewish appointments than any previous president, attended a synagogue dedication, spoke up on behalf of persecuted Jews in Russia and Romania and was the first president to visit the Holy Land.”[12]

          Thus, with President Grant’s help, American Jews were able even more fully to thrive in the United States, and we continue to enjoy the fruits of that society today with even richer flavor.

          The Jews of 1868 demonstrated an unprecedented ability to influence national politics and today, the American Jewish community is continually a significant factor on the national scene. It is exceedingly rare when a Jew has to decide between expressing her authentic American self and expressing her authentic Jewish self.

          Many believe that concern for Israel is just such a dividing topic, and I will address this question more fully in my sermon on Erev Yom Kippur.

          For now, I continue to maintain that, in situations where our American and our Jewish values seem to be in conflict, we have both a Jewish and an American mandate to try to change the situation. We are full partners in our society, both civilly and Jewishly.

          We contribute to America as Jews, and we contribute to Judaism as Americans.

          Thus, let us pray on this Rosh Hashannah, on this dawning of a new year, in the words of our machzor: “[May God] who gives light to all who await forgiveness be with us … Be with us as we look for strength to be free, freedom to struggle against those who worship power, and power to resist all who would oppress us. God of freedom and right, be with us this day.”[13]


[1] http://www.ajhs.org/hai/entry.cfm?id=61
[2] Quoted with permission from Sarna, Jonathan in When General Grant Expelled the Jews.  Forthcoming March, 2012.
[3] The Tikvah Seminar on Jews and the American Ethos: A Week of Reflection for Rabbinical Students.  www.tikvahrabbis.org.
[4] Quoted with permission from Sarna, Jonathan in When General Grant Expelled the Jews.  Forthcoming March, 2012.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Cf. Huntington, Samuel. Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity.  Simon & Schuster: New York, 2004. 46ff.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Quoted from Sarna, Jonathan in When General Grant Expelled the Jews.  Forthcoming March, 2012.
[11] Ibid.
[12] http://www.sc.edu/news/newsarticle.php?nid=1299#.Tn-y0I5Jmso
[13] Gates of Repentance, p. 305.