Tel Aviv-based researcher, columnist, and editor Shmuel Rosner, a senior fellow at The Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), took on a hefty challenge when he agreed to write a book at the behest of the leadership of ANU – The Museum of the Jewish People.
Each chapter of Why Am I a Jew? provides an array of answers to a difficult question: “What Is Judaism?” “Who’s a Jew?” “What Are Jewish Values?” “Why Do They Hate Us?” “How Do We Survive?” “Israel or Diaspora?” “Jewish Genius – Does It Exist?” An epilogue is titled “Does Judaism Have a Future?”
The subtitle, “A Contemporary Guide for the Perplexed,” is a play on the title of Maimonides’ classic 12th-century work. The Rambam's Guide for the Perplexed, mentioned in Rosner’s timeline, was aimed at practicing Jews perplexed by apparent contradictions between the Torah and Aristotelian philosophy.
Rosner’s book, on the other hand, was written primarily for non-practicing Jews perplexed by Judaism in general and by apparent contradictions between Jewish and Western values in particular.
At the end of each chapter is a handy summary. The first chapter explains that Judaism may be defined as “1) Primarily a religion (more suitable to Jewish life in the Diaspora) and/or primarily a nationality (more suitable to statehood in Israel); 2) A set of ideas (there is “Judaism” and there are “Jews”) and/or a way of life (Judaism is what Jews do); 3) A covenant founded on a bond with God (faith, observance of the Commandments) and/or a covenant founded on a historical bond (tradition, language, peoplehood, ethics).”
Could Rosner’s book prove as enduring as Maimonides’ work – which, despite sparking controversy in its time, remains a highly revered and well-thumbed resource on the shelf of Jewish literature? Perhaps it will – for some readers.
I found several stylistic and substantive aspects irritating. For instance, the contradiction in styles for dates. Dates before year 1 on the Gregorian calendar are referred to as BCE (before Common Era) in the accepted secular style. Yet dates after year 1 are followed not by CE but by the Christian Latin AD – for Anno Domini, “in the year of the Lord” – causing an imbalance in chronological styles.
On a substantive level, Rosner makes some statements that are real head scratchers. In the “How Do We Survive?” chapter, he concludes that because most modern Jews don’t practice daily Jewish rituals, keep kosher, or adhere to rabbinic directives, “Jewish law and communal way of life are no longer relevant.” Really?
Spinoza to Soloveichik
The sources Rosner chooses to quote generally represent a wide spectrum, from Spinoza to Soloveitchik and from A.Y. Kook to A.B. Yehoshua, though some are weighted too heavily.
Mordecai Kaplan, whose name appears 20 times, is described as an “American rabbi and avant-garde thinker” in one place and as “one of the most critical and progressive thinkers among America’s Jews in the 20th century” in another. Only in an endnote does Rosner reveal that Kaplan founded the rather fringe Reconstructionist movement, casting doubt on the rabbi’s relevance as an oft-quoted source.
Nevertheless, Why Am I a Jew? contains plenty of gems worth considering. Rosner includes this insight from Yuri Slezkine’s 2004 The Jewish Century: “The Modern Age is the Jewish Age” because everyone wants to be “urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible.”
Modernization is about “pursuing wealth for the sake of learning, learning for the sake of wealth, and both wealth and learning for their own sake.” Modernization, in other words, is about “everyone becoming Jewish.”
But where is the heart in that statement? Why is there no discussion of the yearning for authenticity and a relationship with the divine that stirs the souls of many Jews by birth or by choice? This is the core I find lacking in Why Am I a Jew?
Rosner's epilogue ponders whether Judaism has a future. “There are Jews by virtue of emotion, and Jews by virtue of reason. There are Jews who investigate questions of identity and Jews whose identity is effortless, natural, and uncomplicated. And there are Jews who make do with faith – and those who also need a mission. All of them are challenged by the vibrant world of the 21st century – a world after Spinoza and Nietzsche, Copernicus and Darwin, where it’s more challenging to defend faith.” ... “In such a world, the question of why be Jewish is a critical one. It’s a question that has no simple answer.”
Indeed, it does not. And despite Rosner’s thoughtful, sincere attempt to answer this question from a multiplicity of perspectives, I believe most readers will remain perplexed and will need to seek deeper answers elsewhere.
At just over 200 pages (146 of text and 59 packed with 492 endnotes), this slim, well-written volume was translated by Marilyn Fefer of Fefer Translations. ■
WHY AM I A JEW?
A CONTEMPORARY GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
By Shmuel Rosner
Wicked Son
(Post Hill Press)
208 pages; $19