Editorials

Celebrating Jewish American Heritage

Ellis Island. The Statue of Liberty. The promise of religious liberty and religious freedom. American Jewish history begins with these images and concepts.

From the first Jewish immigrants some 350 years ago to the significant Jewish migration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States offered opportunity, freedom and safety. While we have come a long way since then, the welcoming light of America still shines bright.

May is Jewish American Heritage Month. We have a lot to celebrate.

Our American Jewish history is rich and diverse. Beginning with Sephardi Jews who emigrated as early as 1654, continuing with German Jews and followed by Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews, our Jewish American tradition has been nourished and energized by newcomers. And it was the mixture of those cultures, observances and backgrounds that created the engine that built today’s proud and successful American Jewish community. Soviet Jews, Israeli Jews and those who embraced Judaism through conversion came later, and added to our complex DNA, energizing American Jewry’s move toward diversity and pluralism.

Of the 18 opulent, jaw-dropping Jewish houses of worship featured on MyJewishLearning.com’s “The Most Instagrammable Synagogues in the World,” only two are in the United States. This is so, even as American Jewry has criticized its own “edifice complex.” But since our democratic republic does not promote religion, does not elevate monarch-like religious leaders to roles in the state bureaucracy and doesn’t build governmental houses of worship, we must promote our own religions and build our houses of worship as a means of self-expression, rather than as symbols of a ruling government.

American Jewish heritage celebrates the fact that religion in America is voluntary, decentralized, democratic and competitive. We live and practice our Judaism side by side with our co-religionists, looking with friendship to our neighbors and reaching out to each other in solidarity in times of threat or need.

Jewish heritage and Jewish life have flourished in America. We are a vital part of what has become — apart from the State of Israel — the most welcoming and embracing country for Jews in the world. Jewish life in the U.S. is vibrant and strong. We are the second largest Jewish population in the world, and are well-organized and focused. There is more Jewish learning, prayer, observance and pride in Jewish life, culture and communal well-being than at any time in our history. And we continue to care for each other and for others in a manner that helps us fulfill the mandate to be a light unto the nations.

Which brings us to one other aspect of Jewish life in America that distinguishes us: the elevation of tikkun olam — repairing the world — to a communal and cultural value, and the adoption of social justice as a quasi-religious mandate. These core values help define our Jewish American community and culture, and we celebrate them as part of our proud Jewish American heritage.

Life disrupted

The first jolt of the coronavirus pandemic hit young the blinding speed of technological change. Technology people just as the country was learning the scope changes may “disrupt” our lives, but we consider those of the danger. Schools were closed. Malls were closed. disruptions to be positive. The coronavirus disruption Extracurricular activities were canceled. And kids were is different. It interferes with our lives, and has taken forced to distance from their friends. much of the joy out of many life-cycle celebrations.

Students spending the semester abroad were brought In pointing this out, we don’t ignore or minback home, and herded into quarantine — mostly with imize the tragic loss of life that COVID-19 had the family they just left. High school seniors, who looked brought — 88,588 Americans dead as of press forward to graduation, proms and other celebrations, time — or the financial ruin and deprivation it has face an anticlimax of “distance ceremonies.” So, too, with brought to tens of millions of Americans. That bitter college seniors. Their final semester of idyllic college life and reality puts much of our life-cycle celebration their send-off into the real world has been short circuited. lamentations into perspective. Not just because good No celebratory pomp or star-studded graduation health and financial stability are more important, ceremony is planned, and their job prospects are dim. but also because the celebratory graduations, proms,

There are myriad rites of passage scheduled into theme parties and destination weddings are just our lives. We have become accustomed to them. We conventions — and often excessive ones — that we have anticipate them. We look forward to them. And now, for adopted over time. They may be enjoyable, but they many of us, they are gone. aren’t essential.

The toppling of life-cycle activities is different from A high school senior graduates regardless of whether the kind of “disruption” we refer to in connection with she walks across the stage when her name is called. A Statue of Liberty, circa 1901

Public domain/ flickr

boy automatically becomes a bar mitzvah when he turns 13.A marriage is infinitely more important than the lavish wedding party.

All of that said, we want to take a moment to recognize the very real and significant accomplishments in each of the milestones and life achievements throughout our community — even if we cannot celebrate them now as we have in the past.

And we applaud the creative ways many in our community have developed to bring meaning and emotion to the recognition of life events we have listed. Thus, even though the coronavirus may have stolen parts of our lives from us, it has seeded an impressive creativity and resilience that we are proud to see.

And who knows? Maybe some of what we’re doing now will actually refine our focus and bring us to new, more meaningful celebrations — focused less on the pomp, and much more on the circumstance. WJW