True Ancestor

" Modernization, in other words, is about everyone becoming Jewish."

That's the thrust behind an intriguing new book by Yuri Slezkine. The Jewish Century, reviewed at length and in depth by Orlando Figes in the New York Review of Books (warning: the link is merely a preview, a tiny petit four compared to the giant banquet of the review itself), attempts to trace the major paths toward the Modern taken by Jews of the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. In Slezkine's words, to "describe what happened to Tevye's children."

Tevye, of course is the wistful patriarch of the famous Sholom Aleichem stories and outsized character of the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof. Tevye's daughters resist traditional matchmaking and all run off with various archetypal characters to various new lives. Slezkine's thesis is that the three main paths of Jewish emergence Modernism, mirrored in the new beginnings of Tevye's daughters, were liberalism (America), Nationalism (Zionism and emigration to Palestine/Israel), and Communism (well, uh -- Communism). Figes makes me want to read the book:

Slezkine argues that "the modern age is the Jewish age, and the twentieth century, in particular, is the Jewish Century," because modernization is about everyone becoming urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible. It is about learning how to cultivate people and symbols, not fields or herds. It is about pursuing wealth for the sake of learning, learning for the sake of wealth, and both wealth and learning for their own sake. It is about transforming peasants and princes into merchants and priests, replacing inherited privilege with acquired prestige, and dismantling social estates for the benefit of individuals, nuclear families, and book-reading tribes (nations). Modernization, in other words, is about everyone becoming Jewish.

Figes also makes me wonder anew at how impossible its become, for all but the ultra-Orthodox and the anti-Semite, to define a Jew:

"Jews," for the purposes of this story, are the members of traditional Jewish communities (Jews by birth, faith, name, language, occupation, self-description, and formal ascription) and their children and grandchildren (whatever their faith, name, language, occupation, self-description, and formal ascription).

This is an enormously inclusive group. By these criteria, I am certainly a Jew (although I have never been to a religious service in a synagogue and do not think of myself as a Jew); my daughters are both Jews (although they have been christened and brought up in an atheist household); nearly all my friends are no doubt Jews; and probably most of my readers too.

(Figes seems here to miss the irony: whether or not he considers himself Jewish, Hitler certainly would have. That goes for his daughters and his friends, too. From that vantage point, if no other, Slezkine is wise to cast as broad a definition of Jewish identity as possible).

Using these criteria of ethnic selection, Slezkine presents comprehensive lists and statistics to illustrate the success (the "Jewishness") of Jews in various "Mercurial" activities. Thus we learn that "in 1912, 20 percent of all millionaires in Britain and Prussia...were Jews"; that in "turn-of-the-century Vienna, 62 percent of the lawyers, half the doctors and dentists, 45 percent of the medical faculty, and one-fourth of the total faculty were Jews"; that "Jews constituted 49 percent of all lawyers in the city of Odessa (1886), and 68 percent of all apprentice lawyers in the Odessa judicial circuit (1890)"; and so on.

The Modern Jew can be said, then, to have helped introduce the identity crisis into an era in which identity was already fragmenting: as Jews fanned out into the delta of modern life, our Jewishness diffused until we either ceased to know whether we "qualified," or to care whether we "qualified" or not. Assimilated or acculturated Jews don't particularly want to be Jewish, but are; various denominations of self-identifying Jews are deemed "not Jewish enough."

And Tevye's children keep crossing thresholds toward the fully modern -- leaving behind the forces, the myths and the memories that propelled them, and accumulating new energies and ideas that carry them forward into this next, less Jewish century.

H/T: Me True Ann-Sister.

--T.A.

How to Reject a Rejection Letter

Sent to me by a faithful reader who will remain anonymous, in case said reader is seeking employment and must employ the technique shared below.

Herbert A. Millington
Chair - Search Committee
412A Clarkson Hall
Whitson University
College Hill, MA  34109

Dear Professor Millington,

Thank you for your letter of March 16.  After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me an assistant professor position in your department.

This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large number of rejection letters.  With such a varied and promising field of candidates, it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.

Despite Whitson's outstanding qualifications and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my needs at this time. Therefore, I will assume the position of assistant professor in your department this August. I look forward to seeing you then.

Best of luck in rejecting future applicants.

Sincerely,
Chris L. Jensen

Martin Buber on the Economy

As introduced by Hilary Putnam:

One of my favorite passages in I and Thou is the passage in which Buber replies to an interlocutor who thinks this is all head-in-the-clouds rubbish, and that what we need instead is the 'know-how' of the practically minded leader of the political-economic machine (i.e., economics and Realpolitik):

Speaker, you speak too late. But a moment ago you might have believed your own speech; now it is no longer possible. For an instant you saw no less than I that the state is no longer led . . . the leaders merely seem to rule the racing engines. And in this instant while you speak, you can hear as well as I how the machinery of the economy is beginning to hum in an unwonted manner; the overseers give you a superior smile, but death lurks in their hearts. They tell you that they have adjusted the apparatus to modern conditions, but you notice that henceforth they can only adjust themselves to the apparatus, as long as that permits it. Their spokesmen instruct you that the economy is taking over the heritage of the state; you know that there is nothing to be inherited but the despotism of the proliferating It under which the I, more and more impotent, is still dreaming that it is in command (I and Thou, 97).

Writers like Buber seem to be talking across topics, continents, epochs. They see up and down the ladder of time, and they seem to see all the rungs, and all the ascendants and descendants pass before their gaze.

--T.A.

I've been called worse (I think).

I must stand out like a sore thumb in these lecture classes. Here am I, with my thinning salt-and-pepper hair and my middle-aged-man attire, looking for all the world like some dilettante auditing the class. And when I ask questions, I betray the middling intellect and bourgeois assumptions of -- well -- guys like me.

The guest lecturer in our Introduction to the Study of Religion class yesterday was William Schweiker, a professor in theological ethics at the Divinity School and director of the Martin Marty Center.

I asked a question after his dense but fascinating lecture about the ethical implications of the text we were studying. The question was about whether mysticism has a place in society. I argued that the text  indicated that mysticism is an inherently solitary and even asocial pursuit, and that established society and organized religion, rather than facilitating connection to the Divine, tend to inhibit it.

I said this because the main character of the 12th-century Islamic text -- Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (which is Arabic for "Aware, son of Awake") -- returns to his secluded island after a brief visit to a neighboring, peopled island. He returns to his hermitage because he concludes that "most people are no better than animals," and that the pursuit of closeness to the Divine is best achieved not in society but in solitude.

To which Professor Schweiker replied, "that's a wonderfully Consequentialist statement you just made."

I had no idea what he meant. But I had the sense I'd been insulted, and I wanted to challenge him to a duel, right then and there. Or say something impudent ("Oh, really? And you da consequence of yo' mama").

Consequentialism, it turns out, is a school of philosophy that holds that the moral rightness of acts can only be determined by the consequences of those acts. The most prominent type of Consequentialism is the Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and the like. Here's how the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes the classic Utilitarian formula of "hedonistic act consequentialism":

[A]n act is morally right if and only if that act maximizes the good, that is, if and only if the total amount of good for all minus the total amount of bad for all is greater than this net amount for any incompatible act available to the agent on that occasion. (Cf. Moore 1912, chs. 1-2.) Hedonism then claims that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and that pain is the only intrinsic bad. Together these claims imply that an act is morally right if and only if that act causes "the greatest happiness for the greatest number," as the common slogan says.

Who knew there was a whole school of philosophy centered around this radical idea? I sure didn't.

So I guess, then, that when I asked Professer Schweiker my question I was saying, or assuming, that acts have consequences.

School is a great place to discover that you can never really have an original thought or ask a question that hasn't already been asked, debated and answered. And where your most foundational assumptions can be called into question, analyzed, poked full of holes and handed back to you.

I'm learning a lot from these people.

But I don't care how smart they are, they'd better stop calling me names.

--T.A.

Divinity School vs. Business School, or: a lesson in humility

Back when the University of Chicago was being built, it wasn't hard to find a religionist on a campus that was, in the words of the university's first president, the Baptist educator William Rainey Harper, "bran splinter new." After all, the university was co-founded by the American Baptist Education Society (with John D. Rockefeller): religion was at the heart of the enterprise, and Swift Hall, home to the Divinity School, is at the heart of the campus.

Today's campus, however, has a much more secular feel and a different gravitational center. That would be the Charles M. Harper Center of the newly re-christened (if you'll pardon the expression) Booth School of Business. The Harper Center looks like a three-dimensional Excel spreadsheet, proclaiming itself as the Prophet of Profit with a soaring -- well, squatting, glass atrium

across the street from the "Prairie Gothic" spire of Rockefeller Chapel.

 

At Swift Hall, we squeeze into those horrid little chairs with the right-handed, comma-shaped tabletops attached, in this ornate and gloomy homage to Oxford, and the professors intone above the sighing of the old steam radiators. People dance that odd little dance of ducking and wandering throughout the building when they're on their cell phones; God is everywhere, yes, but here He only has one bar.

At the business school, students lounge in comfy leather chairs under the atrium, sipping lattes and eating fresh panini from the in-house cafe (the word "cafeteria" seems beneath the reality), working on their laptops and/or BlackBerries, because after all, the building is one huge wireless network.

Even though the contrast is a little ironic, it's exactly as it should be. As religion touts humility, so the study of religion should be a humble enterprise. I enjoy the basement student lounge in Swift Hall, with its donated 70s sofas that are literally crunchy with prehistoric sandwich crumbs, and its cast-off computers that Bill Gates may have built in his garage.

And I enjoy the hissing of radiators and the Gothic gloom of the buildings, and the trees with their sclerotic branches raised in prayer toward the spires, and the genteel shabbiness of the perpetual seekers who wander Swift's step-worn stairwells.

And if I occasionally want to mooch a good snack or a clear cell-phone call over at the business school, no one can say me nay.

--T.A.

My 50 words on turning 50

I'm not 50 yet, but close enough.

The editor of the "class notes" for my college graduating class challenged us to write 50 words about turning 50.

Here was my entry:

My son (13) and I climbed the fire stairs of the Sears Tower  (103 floors) last Sunday. He beat me easily.

Climbing stairs is like turning 50: monotony, drudgery, agony, sweat, no rest -- and suddenly, you're there.

We took the elevator down. As in life, the descent is completely effortless.

The climb was Sunday, 11/9/08.

Gabe climbed the Sears tower in 23:16 -- even though he stopped three times for water. He came in 300th out of more than 1.950 climbers.

I finished in 26:43 (635th).

It was ever thus.

In a lecture yesterday, sitting at the back of the room, I watched as the students, most of whom around half my age, texted friends, checked e-mail, doodled, or watched movies on their laptop.

It was almost 80 degrees in the room -- a good 40 degrees warmer than outside -- and it was near the end of a long day. The text we were considering gave the following diagnosis of the student mind:

The pupils themselves are not without blame: they have abandoned the Pythagorean model of teaching, according to which a pupil should listen and believe for seven years, and ask questions only in the eighth. Instead, from the first day of school, even before sitting down, they question and, in fact, what is worse, they pass judgment. They study carelessly for the space of a single year, and think that the whole of wisdom has accrued to them, whereas they have merely snatched rags from it; they leave school full of the wind of loquacity and pride, empty of a solid knowledge of things. And when their parents or others listen to them and discover that there is little or nothing of any use in what they say, they are at once led to believe that this is all the pupils received from their teachers: so the authority of the teacher is impaired.

The author:

William of Conches, who wrote the above approximately 860 years ago.

--T.A.

Heuristic. Reify. Ontological. Anti-hegemonic. Discourse. [UPDATED]

Words I heard in a casual conversation in the Divinity School's basement cafeteria this morning.

UPDATE: As Chavi rightly points out, it's really a coffee shop with a dingy nearby room to sit in. It's name is "Grounds of Being." Its slogan, proudly printed in Gothic lettering on t-shirts for sale with your latte, is "Where God Drinks Coffee."

The place is in the gloomy dungeon of Swift Hall. It features cheerful, briskly comptetent students working the counter, making espresso drinks, ringing up purchases of the vegan and vegetarian food that's sold there everyday and bantering with their friends and teachers.  One of the more artistic ones has drawn college basketball-style brackets on a chalk board next to the Espresso machine. The brackets feature gods, titans of religion or godlike individuals who go head-to-head in popularity contests. People vote for their favorite by depositing tips in labeled cups at the cash register (see photo below).

Each week features a different competition. Last week, Gandolf bested Dumbledore; before that Moses overwhelmed Chuck Norris; the Buddha is doing well this week against some demi-god, whose name I forget, but some votes get siphone off by the cup labeled "I'm offended". 

The place is cheerful and energetic in spite of its dungeon-like location and appearance (and because of its coffe, no doubt).

And, as you can see by the title of this post, it features some pretty heady conversation, too.

--T.A.

'We have to step up.'

The African American man I know said that last night he had a few family and friends over to his apartment to watch the election returns.

"There wasn't a dry eye in the house," he said. "For half an hour, we just cried and hugged each other. My daughter said, 'Daddy, why is everybody crying?' I told her that we had all seen so much . . . that sometimes tears have different feelings mixed in." His aunt, who had been sent to the backs of buses and the balconies of movie theaters in her native North Carolina; his parents, who came North in search of jobs; his cousins, who grew up here and struggled to avoid the notorious housing projects and the gangs and the crime that so many assume are a universal AA experience; they were gathered at my friend's apartment, in a suburb that two decades ago probably would have found a way to not let him move in.

This man and his wife have two young children. And everywhere they go, and in everything they do, they feel that they must be at their absolute best, and that their children must behave perfectly.

"Everyone is waiting for you to show your wild side, your animal nature," he told me. "Everyone wants to see how your represent, and they expect their worst impressions to be confirmed. So you have to do the exact opposite.

"All my friends and my family, wherever we work, and a lot of us, where we live, we are the first. There are no other African Americans. We don't have paths in front of us; we're cutting brush and hacking our own way through every day."

And what was the reaction of his friends and family to the historic victory of Barack Obama in the presidential election?

"We have to step up," my friend said without hesitation. "That's what I thought, and my friends all agreed with me. No one is thinking, 'Now we can relax.' There is a feeling that we have to make this work, and we have to work harder now to make everything around us better. Before, some of us felt like, you know, 'I'm not really part of this. I'm trying to be, but I'm . . . you know, I'm just not.'

"We don't feel that way today."

--T.A.

Words from a modern prophet, ringing true after the election

The authentic forces that change and shape the world are deep and under the surface. So they move slowly. Real history is the history of the slow pace [of events]. The question is whether there will be enough people who see the deceit in the feverish tempo, withstand its temptation, and commit themselves to the truth of the slower tempo. -- Martin Buber

Today does feel different. There's an air of both promise and peril -- the promise that comes with the realization that we've moved in a direction that would've been impossible to conceive of even five years ago; the peril that our expectations will blind us, or that our thrill will dissipate into complacency.

I was content to vote for Obama, but not thrilled like so many I know. It felt like a historic moment, but more for its symbolism than its accomplishments.

It's a moment of wonder; of revelry more than revelation. Intoxication makes you less nimble. Plus, it comes with a nasty hangover. When the fog of euphoria wears off, how much will we have missed? In the ether of high expectations, we see a vast landscape of possibilities. The terrain, on closer inspection, is rocky and uneven, and the landing can be rough. 

The next four years, regardless of who's president, are going to be very hard years. There will be at least the usual number of recriminations, missteps and scandals. The challenges in front of us block the view of what may come next. With our hopes so high, will the disappointments be that much more bitter? Will they distract us from the real tasks and terrors at hand?

I'm certain Obama will shoulder his responsibilities nobly, and he's not the kind to pass the buck for his failures.

The question is: how many of the rest of us will do the same?

Here's a modest prayer: that if it's change we really want, we prepare ourselves for, and commit ourselves to, the slow pace of real history.

--T.A.