Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/3/84; site mhuxi.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!mhuxi!dsg From: dsg@mhuxi.UUCP (David S. Green) Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish Subject: Holidays -- Two Civilizations Message-ID: <228@mhuxi.UUCP> Date: Wed, 7-Nov-84 16:07:28 EST Article-I.D.: mhuxi.228 Posted: Wed Nov 7 16:07:28 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 9-Nov-84 06:30:12 EST Distribution: net Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill Lines: 94 From: KEN WOLMAN Bell Communications Research Livingston, NJ whuxe!ktw (201) 740-4565 ******************************** With regard to the Halloween (and now THANKSGIVING debate), there is a serious problem there, and I'm not positive it's been touched on: namely the Two Civilizations problem outlined by Mordecai Kaplan, and which forms the basis for Reconstructionism. Understand I do not identify myself with that movement; I used to, if only because the synagogue I originally attended in Montclair (yes, I too drove) made me feel welcome, and the Weltanschaaung ($10 word, probably misspelled) of the movement allowed me to assume a less-than-total or traditional position on most Jewish issues: kashrut, Shabbos, even God (yes, I still prefer to spell it out because I don't feel comfortable with treating the visual/verbal nominalization of a Being as The Being Himself; to me that approaches idolatry). As I understand Kaplan, having tried to read "Judaism as a Civilization" at least three times, but having read some of his disciples, the problem with any kind of post-Emancipation Judaism is that it the Jew has NO CHOICE but to live in a non-Jewish secular world. America, if it is not (yet) a "Christian Nation," is not a Jewish nation, either; any more than is the UK, France, Italy, or Sweden. You are inevitably brought into contact with Jews of all observance levels, and with Gentile ideas, food, culture, etc. The problem becomes living as a Jew in such a society (which also includes modern nontheocratic Israel). Okay, you can withdraw to Williamsburg or Borough Park and never leave: as I understand those communities, many people never do because all necessary means of earning a living and sustaining one's physical and spiritual life are there. Or, failing total self-ghettoization in a 20th Century Judenstrasse, one can work and travel to work through goyisher streets in the company of other observant Jews, i.e., on the private buses from Boro Park or Monsey which enable you to avoid contact with the outside. But for most of us, those are no viable options. As I understand even Modern (Hirschian) Orthodoxy and right-wing Conservatism, there is an effort to live IN the world but not be OF it. Or to paraphrase the much-maligned Shylock (who Shakespeare understood and portrayed far too well to be written off as a simple anti- Semite): I'll walk with you, talk with you, and do business with you; but I won't eat with you, drink with you, or pray with you. Surprisingly, and in light of the bad press he has among Orthodox and most committed Conservatives, Kaplan probably would find that sentiment appropriate as one solution to the problem of living in two civilizations. Which brings us to Halloween. Look, folks, it means ALL HALLOWS EVE, the day preceding ALL SAINTS DAY. It's CHRISTIAN. Or at least it USED to be. In fact, it's been co-opted by a secular society that is not much kinder to believing Christians than to believing Jews, and which has reduced Christmas--a day of some small note to most gentiles--to a three-month extravaganza of worshipping before the Great Idol of Shah-Ping. Secular society (humanistic or not) has a numbing effect on most holidays, religious or not. They are opportunities not for reflection or family time, but for spending money at malls. Does anyone really notice or care that Halloween has Christian roots? Do any Christians observe it as a religious holiday, thereby effectively barring it from Jewish notice? Or --and There I Go Again--are at least some of the people who get high-and-mighty about Halloween as anti-Jewish simply playing the frummer-than-thou game because of their own discomfort with the level of their Jewishness? The refusal of one net correspondent to ANSWER THE DOOR on Halloween suggests the kind of mind-set that might be better served in a community like Boro Park or Monsey, where having only Jewish neighbors is a great convenience like having a dispose-all and dishwasher. It's not a religious solution: it's a pietistic solution which avoids confrontation with the secular world by pretending it doens't exist. The problem extends beyond Halloween and into unarguably secular holidays. When did Thanksgiving take on religious connotations that were germane only to Christians? Because the New England settlers were Protestants, are committed Jews (whether observant or not) expected to treat Thanksgiving as sub rosa goyishkeit and ignore it? Or was Kaplan right (I am in fact answering by the tone of the question): are Thanksgiving, July 4, and some others in fact part of Civil Religion which crosses sectarian boundaries and finds appropriate expression in the prayers of all faiths? Ignoring and/or turning one's back on secular holidays (of which Halloween is in fact a prime example by now) is a way of dealing with the Two Civilizations problem. But it seems at first glance a bit silly.