Martini Judaism

View Zionism from one angle, and it is Theodor Herzl, seeking to rescue the Jews of Europe. From another, it is seeking to resurrect Jewish culture. From another, it is a spiritual connection to the Land; from yet another, a socialist utopia. The images change, depending on where you are, and where we are at this moment of history.  

That is the subject of my podcast with Nadine Epstein, editor-in-chief of Moment magazine, and Gil Troy, the historian and Zionist educator. Several months ago, Epstein wrote a lead essay that argued, in some detail, that we should retire the word “Zionism” because 136 years of accumulated meanings can no longer clarify anything.

Troy had the opposite instinct: we don’t destroy a word just because those who hate it — and its supporters who have distorted it — have made it more challenging.

 

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Author and musician Daniel Rachel has written a new, disturbing and quite overdue book, "This Ain’t Rock ‘n’ Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika and the Third Reich." And I interviewed him about it for my podcast. 

The book documents something that has been hiding in plain sight for more than 60 years. As Rachel writes:

For over seventy-five years, musicians have been drawn to the language and provocative imagery of Nazism, fascinated by its power, menace and underlying sexuality. They have flirted with the theatrical spectacle of the Third Reich, displayed the swastika, flaunted memorabilia, worn Nazi uniforms and marveled at the grandiose rallies of 1930s Germany.

Decades ago, Woody Guthrie had a guitar with the words inscribed on it: "This machine kills fascists." We never thought that future rock stars might have guitars that could say they celebrate fascists.

The worst part is the rock music industrial complex industry spent seven decades simply looking the other way. And so did the audiences, including me.  

 
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I have done my share of traveling in Europe, and when I am there, I visit cathedrals.

Most are majestic, and they are filled with Christian art that would take a decent docent a decade to unpack for me.

I have never been to Brussels, though I would like to visit. And when I am there, I expect to make a special trip to the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula. That is the subject of Flora Cassen's new book, "Stained Glass: A Reflective History of Antisemitism."

The cathedral is, by all accounts, a masterpiece. Built between the 13th and 15th centuries, it rises above the old town on its own little hill, and when the lights hit the stonework at night, it looks like lace carved out of sky.

But I imagine myself stepping inside. I would look intensely and intentionally at the stained-glass windows — the ones donated by Belgium’s first two kings in the 19th century. And inside that beautiful space, an erudite guide might tell a story about a Jew who, in 1370, was accused of torturing Communion wafers. 

It is an expression of one of the libels that tormented Jews during the Middle Ages — one of the most bizarre — the host desecration libel. It resulted in six Jews burned at the stake and the rest expelled from the city.

And there it is. In the windows. In the tapestries. In the chapel. In the capital of the European Union. Today. 

Flora's book is itself a modern medieval tapestry — of Jewish and European history and family memoir, the story of a 15th-century Jewish woman named Beatrice de Luna — also known as Dona Gracia — and the story of Flora’s own grandmother, Pola, who fled the Nazi occupation of Belgium through the Congo. 

So, why does this book matter, and why do you need to read it?

It is because of what you already know. Antisemitism is rising — on university campuses, in social media feeds, even in food co-ops in Brooklyn.

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When I reflect on my rabbinical career, I realize I have spent nearly a third of it south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Yes, that includes about 10 years in South Florida — and lest you see South Florida as a mere extension of Long Island, when I moved to Miami in 1981, it still had traces of an old Southern Jewish community. I enjoyed my time in the South. I found the people gracious, the communities strong, and I did good work there.

However, I never fully grasped Southern Jewish sociology. I famously and infamously missed social cues. I never fully understood what it meant to be a Jew in the South.

If only I had sat at the feet of Nick Lemann, with whom I had a conversation for our podcast. 

His new book, "Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries," is the story of his German Jewish family, who journeyed from a small village in the Rhine Valley to the sugar plantations of Louisiana and into the elegant, complicated world of New Orleans high society. They prospered. They assimilated. They sent their children to Harvard. They built beautiful homes under live oaks and hosted cocktail parties with silver trays and crustless duck sandwiches.

And yet, even at the height of their success, a quiet awareness lingered: Acceptance was real, but never complete.

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I was talking recently with a young man about his social life. He described an evening that did not sound like the stuff of romantic legend.

The dinner seemed to be going well. The wine flowed, as did the conversation -- with just enough spark to suggest possibility. He leaned into the moment, sensing chemistry, feeling that quiet optimism that accompanies a promising first date.

And then she leaned forward, lowered her voice, and asked a question that changed everything.

“I really like you,” she said. “I feel attracted to you.

"But I need to know something. Are you a Zionist?”

He had expected something more intimate, something more personal. Instead, he found himself fumbling through an answer about loving Israel, supporting Israel, caring about Israel.

Let’s just say there would be no second date.

The young woman, by the way, was also Jewish.

There is an elephant in the Jewish living room, and that elephant is: Israel.

That is the subject of my podcast conversation with Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and one of the most compelling interpreters of contemporary Jewish life. Yehuda writes and teaches with intellectual rigor and moral urgency. He spends his days helping Jews think more honestly about power, responsibility, and identity. He embodies the name Yisrael itself — the one who wrestles — because he refuses easy answers and insists on staying in the struggle.
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