Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site lcuxc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!lcuxc!kenw From: kenw@lcuxc.UUCP (K Wolman) Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish Subject: Assimilation & Its Discontents (Answer to Asher Meth) Message-ID: <186@lcuxc.UUCP> Date: Mon, 28-Jan-85 08:42:30 EST Article-I.D.: lcuxc.186 Posted: Mon Jan 28 08:42:30 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 29-Jan-85 07:24:04 EST Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway, NJ Lines: 128 ***From Asher Meth*** [Ken Wolman writes] > In 1791, when France made its first moves toward emancipating > its Jews, wasn't it the Sephardim who wanted to deny emancipation > to their Ashkenazic brethren? Didn't it take almost TWO years ------ [Asher Meth answers] >> Didn't/doesn't emancipation lead to greater possibility of assimilation ? >> In which group do we find greater assimilation - Ashkenazim or Sephardim ? >> >> I do not know all the historical background implied by Ken Wolman, but must >> not these factors be taken into account, especially when arguing a point >> with Martillo ? >> >> asher meth >> allegra!cmcl2!csd2!meth >> ARPA meth@nyu-csd2.arpa ---------------------------------------- Since I am about to "make trouble," Meth first of all deserves an answer to clear up any misapprehensions about the posting. I was talking not about assimilationism but about POWER and the misuse of same. My point--perhaps improperly stated--was that the history of oppression of Jew by Jew is nothing new, but that the names of the players may change. Today, the Ashkenazim are in a power position; many, unfortunately, use that power and influence to turn their Sephardic brethren into an underclass. I was attempt- ing to place on the table an illustration that suggests that at one time in our history, the proverbial shoe was on the other foot and was used by the wearer to kick the "other" group with equal ferocity and ill-will. Meth, however, has downplayed what HAPPENED and has focused instead on the assimilationism problem. Again. I did not want to discuss "Assimilation and Its Discontents." But it is a real issue, and may as well be addressed. Again. Sigh. Just when I thought it was safe to put away my smoke detector and asbestos suit. . . . First of all, I am not given to posting based on a need to best Yakim Martillo in an argument. I have no doubt that Martillo can bury me under a pile of facts, factoids, Gemora references, etc. The man's learning is prodigious. But it is not Revealed from Heaven. It may be challenged; and on the terms of the challenger, not Martillo himself. (It's called "not fighting the other man's fight.") Second, the word "assimilation" presents problems. How do we define it? A nonobservant, totally secularized Jew living in "The Suburbs" is assimilated. A Reform or Conservative rabbi may be said to be assimilated. An Orthodox Jew living in the United States, employed by New York University, Bell Laboratories, or the Massachusetts Institute of Techology--and therefore not earning his living by interacting primarily with other observant Jews in a primarily Jewish environment--may also be said to be assimilated. We may even say Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch was assimilated. It is a matter of degree and definition. That is the crux of the assimilation issue, as I understand it. Definition. Can any Jew who has accepted "The Freedom Of The City" define him/herself as cut off from the majority culture? Yes, it can be done: and has been done with significant success by Hasidic and "ultra-Orthodox" sects in Brooklyn, New Square, Monsey, and other communities. These communities are largely self-supporting and self-sufficient. Few of us, however, have the ability or willingness to live in that way. Like it or not, we have grown up in a late 20th Century postmodern environment which MUST affect us: we can accept the culture, we can reject it--but we cannot ignore it. The moment we seek accommodation with modernism and technology-- e.g., the moment we install "Shabbos timers" for our lights, or have key-tiebars fashioned so we can lock our doors against the more unsavory byproducts of modern civilization--we are in a very broad sense "assimilating." The moment a yeshiva divides the day into religious and secular studies, we are assimilating. The question is of DEGREE. The objective of most self-aware CONSCIOUS Jews in the Diaspora (perhaps even in Eretz Yisroel?) is to be IN the world without being OF it, i.e., to avoid being sucked into the kind of non- value systems that pollute much of the culture, irrespective of religious faith and observance. Let us say aloud that much of what goes on in both religious and secular "communities" partakes to a great extent of those non-value systems, even in businesses connected with our faith. A Hasidic sofer once told me that there are men in the New York area who will write a pair of tefillin, swear to their kashrut, and drive a cab on Shabbos. Is the driver assimilated? The photo supply discount business is staffed floor-to-ceiling by Orthodox Jews; many of those stores have a well-deserved reputation for cheating their customers irrespective of race, religion, or country of national origin. Are the personnel of those stores assimilated? An observant Jew owns slum buildings and/or nursing homes in which people pass or end miserable lives in conditions that often beggar description. Is that man therefore assimilated? A matter of definition. By MY definition--"someone who has slopped from the trough of materialism at the expense of the common humanity he/she shares AT LEAST with all other Jews, and with gentiles as well"--they are assimilated. They have adopted an alien value system which has nothing whatsoever to do with any Jewish tradition I ever heard of. I would like someone who has stayed awake to this point to cite me ONE reference in any tractate, commentary or code where the accepted opinion allows a Jew to cheat or abuse another Jew or a non-Jew, as in the examples mentioned above. I am aware that the more commonly-defined assimilation has not done wonders for Judaism as a faith and practice. But let me turn Meth's question around: if life in the pre-Emancipation ghetto was so wonderful, for all its frumkeit, then why did so many Jews in Europe run for the gates the moment they were opened? Are we perhaps romanticizing a period in our history that led to lives that were religious, yes; but also nasty, brutish, and short? And might we attempt in our own lives to recognize that ACCOMMODATION does not necessarily equal ASSIMILATION? -- Ken Wolman Bell Communications Research @ Livingston, NJ lcuxc!kenw (201) 740-4565 . . . not Philip Roth . . .