Tikkun Ha'am / Repairing Our People: Israel and the Crisis of Liberal Judaism

By Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin

October 7, 2023 was not just one of the most tragic days in modern Jewish history; it represented a profound moral and spiritual challenge to liberal Jewish denominations in America.

It’s a challenge Jews have faced before, and we rose to the occasion; but are Jews of today up to the challenge? We have the opportunity—and the obligation—to reclaim a Jewish vocabulary of sanctity, activism, and the desire to stand apart from today’s world.

Tikkun Ha’am/Repairing Our People is a cry from the heart by one of American Judaism’s most prolific voices. His message: the role of faith is to challenge us as individuals and to challenge society. Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin challenges us to rethink contemporary Jewish identity, Israel, spirituality, and popular culture. Rabbi Salkin invites readers to think deeply about the contemporary world, showing that Judaism has a stake in our world’s political, religious, and cultural battles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Post Hill Press
• Release date: Dec 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781637588819

Book preview

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Advance praise for

Tikkun Ha’am / Repairing Our People

"Rabbi Salkin is a deep thinker and a beautiful writer. I was swept in from the first sentence of the book. He is a bold, creative and original thinker, and by reading Tikkun Ha’am, you, too, will be inspired to think more deeply about your life and your Jewish identity. Rabbi Salkin’s insights are directly relevant to our individual and collective lives. He has been a keen observer of social trends for decades, and does not hesitate to point out deficiencies in popular ideas. Put Tikkun Ha’am on your bookshelf of classic Jewish books, and you will return to it over and over again."

–

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch,

Senior rabbi, Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, New York, NY

"Tikkun Ha’am proves once again that Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin is among the wisest observers of our society and our souls—a Rabbi who writes with humor, depth and clarity."

–

Rabbi David Wolpe,

Max Webb Emeritus Rabbi, Sinai Temple, Los Angeles, CA

"Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin is one of the leading liberal voices in American Judaism. In his new book, Tikkun Ha’am - Repairing Our People, he highlights current disturbing trends—shrinking synagogue affiliation, the unraveling of ties to Jewish life and to Israel, and an emerging individualistic and privatized Judaism. His insightful essays invite us to imagine what it would mean for us to create an intellectually alive and spiritually compelling alternative."

–  

Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso,

Rabbi Emerita, Author of Midrash: Reading the Bible with Question Marks: Marks. Her latest book is I Am Not Afraid: Psalm 23 for Bedtime

A WICKED SON BOOK

An Imprint of Post Hill Press

ISBN: 979-8-88845-548-7

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-63758-881-9

Tikkun Ha’am / Repairing Our People:

Israel and the Crisis of Liberal Judaism

© 2024 by Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin

All Rights Reserved

Cover Design by Jim Villaflores

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

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Contents

A Note on Translations

Introduction

One: Davening with Miss Daisy

Two: On Being a Post-Vatican II Rabbi

Three: Judaism as Counterculture

Four: For Those Who Celebrate

Five: What Is the Future of Reform Judaism?

Six: What Happened on the Tenth of Av?

Seven: The Jews Are a Tribe

Eight: The Z Word

Nine: How Many Jerusalems Are There, Anyway?

Ten: Preaching the Dickens about Anti-Semitism

Eleven: It Is Time to Publicly Protest Anti-Semitism

Twelve: Soft Anti-Semitism

Thirteen: God’s Uber Driver in Pittsburgh

Fourteen: Judaism Beyond Slogans

Fifteen: A Moral Guide to Real Estate

Sixteen: Should Jews Watch the Super Bowl?

Seventeen: Judaism and Abortion

Eighteen: How LGBTQIA Rights Became a Jewish Issue

Nineteen: Steven Spielberg Tells His—and Hollywood’s —Jewish Story

Twenty: Bob Dylan’s Most Jewish Work

Twenty-One: Is Paul Simon Jewish, or Jew-Ish?

Twenty-Two: How Leonard Cohen Taught Judaism to the World

Twenty-Three: Will ChatGPT Rot Our Brains?

Twenty-Four: Your Rabbi Has Sinned

Acknowledgments

About the Author

»A Note on Translations«

All translations of classic Jewish texts come from Sefaria.org, with gratitude for the way that they have transformed our engagement with those texts and ideas. I use their way of rendering the names of biblical books and rabbinic texts. I have relied on Jewish Publication Society’s word list for transliterations of common Hebrew and Yiddish terms.

I have retained the traditional male-oriented language of those texts, and in other instances, when appropriate and felicitous, I strove to be more inclusive in my gender language.

»Introduction«

It was one of the worst sins that I committed in recent memory.

Al chet she-chatati—for the sin that I committed by accidentally insulting a van driver at Ben Gurion Airport.

Here is how it happened.

Last summer, I took yet another trip (my fiftieth) to Israel.

When I arrived at Ben Gurion Airport, I picked up my luggage and went out to the arrival area, and, as I usually do, I found a van—a jitney service (sherut)—that was going to Jerusalem.

Do you have room for me? I asked the driver in Hebrew. He was a man in his seventies named Aviyonah.

Well, almost, he replied. Here, put your stuff next to me, up front.

By which I thought he meant: Put your backpack and your briefcase next to me, up front.

When we finally got into the heart of Jerusalem, as he helped other passengers disembark from the van, he asked me the fatal question: Where is your suitcase?

Oy. It was not there. My backpack and my briefcase were there. Not my suitcase.

My suitcase was still on the curb at Ben Gurion Airport.

With this realization, I had a total meltdown—in Hebrew because Aviyonah did not speak English.

Aviyonah called me a few insulting names, all of which I deserved. Then he asked for my phone number, and he gave me his number as well.

We have to return to the airport! I screamed and wailed.

"Lo," he said. No.

He made a phone call, and a few moments later, I heard someone say the magic words on the speakerphone: "Keyn, matzati oto." Yes, I found it.

I could not believe it. Someone—another driver—had found my suitcase!

Do we have to return to Ben Gurion to get it? I asked, with the invisible cash register in my head going. How much is this going to cost me?

Once again, "Lo." No.

Aviyonah pulled into a gas station in Jerusalem, which happened to be around the corner from the apartment I had rented.

He got out of the van, walked a few yards, and came back with my suitcase.

I broke out into tears. I silently said the blessing that you say when a miracle has occurred. Because this felt like a minor miracle.

I reached for my wallet.

"Ma zeh? Aviyonah said to me. Tip?"

Yes! Yes! What can I give you? I asked, fumbling with the shekels in my wallet.

He shook his head, and said, "Katuv ba-Torah." It is written in the Torah. He then proceeded to quote—from memory—this passage from the book of Deuteronomy:

If you see your fellow Israelite’s ox or sheep gone astray, do not ignore it; you must take it back to your peer.

If your fellow Israelite does not live near you or you do not know who the owner is, you shall bring it home and it shall remain with you until your peer claims it; then you shall give it back.

You shall do the same with that person’s ass; you shall do the same with that person’s garment; and so too shall you do with anything that your fellow Israelite loses and you find: you must not remain indifferent (Deut. 22: 1–3).

Then, he said, "Anachnu achrayim!" We are responsible!

You, dear reader, might say, "He did you a mitzveh."

One small vowel change; one large change in world view. He did not do a mitzveh. He did not do what he wanted to do because he was nice. He did a mitzvah. He did what he was obligated to do—because he is a Jew.

What did I learn from this master teacher?

First, he taught me—or reminded me—about the elegant, simple mitzvah of hashavat aveidah—returning lost objects. It is a Jewish obsession. There is an entire section of the Talmud (Bava Metzi’a) that covers this subject. There, we read that in the ancient Temple, there was a chamber. There, people would bring stuff that they had found, and people would search there for what they had lost. Additionally, a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud says that the tribe of Dan had the job of tagging along after all the other tribes and finding lost objects that they might have dropped along the way (Jerusalem Talmud, Eruvin 5:1).

But the second thing that Aviyonah taught me was something way deeper. What has stayed in my brain, in my soul, and deep within my heart was what Aviyonah said to me about why he would not take a tip from me, and why he did what he did in the first place. Anachnu achrayim. We are responsible! Jews have maps of responsibility—a moral and spiritual GPS that we bear within our souls.

In the words of the ancient rabbis: The poor of your family take precedence over the poor of your community; the poor of your community take precedence over the poor of your city; the poor of your city take precedence over the poor of other cities (Talmud, Bava Metzi’a 71a).

Our responsibilities might wind up being global, but they start with ourselves, with our tribe, and with our people. That is why I committed a minor sin that day. I was wrong to have offered Aviyonah a tip. At that moment, I saw myself as a consumer. But, at that moment, Aviyonah did not see me as a consumer. He saw me as someone with whom he lived in covenant.

We need more of this in American Judaism. Not that we should all have the Torah memorized and be able to quote its passages to absolute strangers at a moment’s notice (though worse things could happen).

No. I mean something like this: A cat was pursuing a mouse. The mouse ran into its hole, and when the cat came sniffing, the mouse said, Meow. The cat walked away.

A fellow mouse asked him, What was that all about?

The mouse replied: Now you understand why it is helpful to know a second language.

Americanism is our first language. Judaism must be our second language. American Jews are fluent in the language of Americanism, secularism, and individualism. Let Judaism be our second language.

We need more responsibility—to each other, to the past, to the present, and to the future. That is the Jewish language. Once upon a time, we had it; somewhere, we lost it. But we can find it again.

* * *

Where, and when, did we lose the unique language of Judaism?

It is popular to blame the COVID crisis, which began in March 2020, for shredding communal bonds. Others say that COVID has prompted American Jews to successfully negotiate a new understanding of what community can mean.

But it goes back further than that.

While COVID has not helped the malaise, the demographic, theological, and sociological signs have long preceded the pandemic.

There has been a sociological transformation in American communal structures. As sociologist Robert D. Putnam noted in Bowling Alone, this nation has experienced a radical loss of social capital. People do not join institutions the way they once did. It is not only synagogues. It is churches—all churches, even the evangelicals. It is civic organizations. It is PTAs.

In that sense, American Jews have assimilated. It is not that American Jews seek to become WASPs so that we can gain membership in the country club. That’s not even a thing anymore. Assimilation—as a way of fitting into America—is the 8-track stereo of Jewish ideologies. It is simply obsolete. Rather, American culture has forced us to assimilate, to absorb un-Jewish ways of thinking about life. For example:

Radical individualism. We say that we believe in this thing called community. But, for most American Jews and most Americans, community is those people who I already know and like.

But that is not a genuine sense of community. Community implies a sense of living in a cooperative relationship, a sense of shared values—what the late sociologist Amitai Etzioni defined as communitarianism. However much we say that we cherish living in community, the inexorable truth is that each of us lives as an atomized individual—what sociologists call the sovereign self.

This radical individualism includes, of course, personal autonomy. As Cohen and Eisen described in their study of moderately-affiliated American Jews:

The first language that our subjects speak is by and large one of profound individualism. Their language is universalistic, liberal, and personalist.… Individuals newly liberated from inherited identities and obligations seize hold with a vengeance of the autonomy afforded them, and are driven as a result to reject or recast traditional beliefs and behaviors.¹

American Jews can experience a sense of community. In general, the further along the spectrum one walks toward Jewish observance, the larger the sense of community—which means communal expectations and responsibilities. It requires making lifestyle decisions that puncture holes in the autonomous self.

Say what you will about Haredi Jews, their Judaism, and the internal workings of their communities. The media does a good job of criticizing that community, and often with good justification (for example, educational standards).² There is one thing that cannot be denied, though, and that is the precious nature of their communal self-help structures—the gemach, an acronym for organizations that promote acts of gemilut chasadim, charitable acts, that endeavor to create firewalls between Haredi Jews and poverty.

Even if those structures fail to do that, their intent is noble, and they are the very definition of holy.

Consumerism.I can buy whatever I want and whatever I need—whenever I want it. What I cannot buy, I can rent. I measure something by how good it makes me feel at a particular moment. The eternal urge to replace and upgrade nests itself within this cultural trend. It is what the Protestant theologian, Harvey Cox, referred to as the market as God.

As the late sociologist Charles S. Liebman put it, Religious congregations in the United States are responsive to the religious market. They tend to accept and accommodate prevailing cultural norms rather than rejecting and seeking to restructure those norms.³

Liberal Judaism in America has become a consumer product. Along with consumerism comes the specter of unlimited choice and customizability, which the marketplace has offered.