No More Hiding…
GAINESVILLE – JULY 4 2025
When I was at camp many years ago, one of the standard exercises we used to do was the now familiar ‘are you a Jewish American or an American Jew’? Disregarding the fact that I was Canadian, it was an interesting exercise. Of course, to this day, each one of us defines ourselves differently although, to be honest, a Jew is a Jew is a Jew. But it on the July 4th, it is an interesting question to probe once again, even as just an exercise. And this year it is even more salient because Jews are under attack once again by our neighbours, our professors, and strangers who for a myriad of reasons decided that beating up Jews was now permissible. In fact, this year we discovered once again what we already knew: too many of our friends and acquaintances had only given lip service to equality. When the chips were down, the anti-Semitism poured out. It has been disappointing, to say the least.
But the second law of Newton rings true once again: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And we have see that more pronounced this year. Though so many embrace the idea that Jews are responsible for all the bad things that happen in the world, the wars, the economy and are somehow responsible for anything that happens to them, Jewish voices are rising and getting louder. Historically, when Jews are persecuted, they remain silent and they self-ghettoize. Not these days.
In fact, these days, despite the anti-Semitism that pervades too much of everyday life and social media, Jews are no longer seen as sheep and no longer react with acquiescence. I see as a pivotal moment in Jewish history. We have reached the point where we feel comfortable with who we are and are willing to stand up for our right and privilege to be Jews.
Anita Diamant wrote, “This is a generation who have no use for the closeted Jew; the polite, blandly American and only privately Jewish Jews. No more Seinfeld; this bunch is Jewish inside and out.” Today, this is more true than ever for so many of us.
Alongside her words, we might place those of Rashi, our Torah commentator of record, on this week’s Torah reading, Parashat Chukat. Chukat begins with an explanation of the parah adumah, “red heifer,” ritual. In short, the Israelites are commanded to produce a “red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid” (Numbers 19:2), slaughter it, burn it, and transform the ashes into a special “water of lustration” (19:9), used to render what has become impure, pure again.
Rashi, in his commentary on the first words of this instruction, testifies to the fact that “The nations of the world would taunt the Jewish people saying, ‘What is this commandment and what meaning does it have?'” For this reason, according to Rashi, the ritual of the red heifer is called by the Torah a chukah, meaning “an indisputable decree before God, which you don’t have any right to question.” In other words, even Rashi had no idea what this ritual meant but because it was in the Torah and Torah was given by God to the Jews at Sinai, we do it. The implication is one day, perhaps, we may actually understand it. Or not. It’s not unlike high school where we all asked ourselves why we needed to learn algebra. We would say ‘I’ll never use it!’ But what was the answer? It was always something like, ‘Yes, but it helps you think.’ Same idea with the red heifer…but with less gory stuff!
Rashi understood what it was like to live as a minority in a majority culture. He understood the pressure to “fit in.” He lived in the late 11th Century in France and was the greatest of the Jewish Mediaevel commentators. France was not the most congenial place for Jewish to live, in fact no place in Europe was during the Middle Ages. Jews were always suspect for one thing or another and when Jews did thing that gentiles could not understand, they were accused of being magicians and witches and diviners of the black arts. So Rashi understood the pressure to explain and justify himself according to the standards of the majority. And yet, Rashi also understood that enough was enough and that memory echoes today in modern America: It was time to stop listening to the jeers of the “nations of the world” and learn to have faith and confidence in the wisdom of our tradition, even if it doesn’t make sense in the eyes of our neighbors. Nearly a thousand years ago, Rashi announced that it was time for us Jews to stop questioning ourselves, stop thinking of ourselves through the eyes of the majority, and start appreciating ourselves for who and what we are.
Today — in spite of resurgent anti-Semitism in Europe, in spite of hostile condemnations of Israel on college campuses, in spite of our ever-present pressure to “fit-in” — there is no better time to be a Jew and to experience the diversity and beauty of Jewish culture in all its various manifestations. New positive expressions of Jewish culture proliferate on television, on film, in restaurants, and in books. In Diamant’s words, “These are exuberant, sometimes startling expressions of a profoundly self-confident Jewish American voice.”
It is tempting to see this prodigious creativity as a reflection of the American Jewish community’s later adolescence — our own, much-belated acceptance of our essential difference and celebration of it. Perhaps, finally, we have banished the voices of the “nations of the world” and begun to appreciate ourselves for who we are.
May we continue to discover the faith in ourselves and be a continued light to all the nations
