{"id":42,"date":"2006-03-28T16:44:22","date_gmt":"2006-03-28T21:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/weeklyrob.dreamhosters.com\/?p=42"},"modified":"2006-03-28T16:44:22","modified_gmt":"2006-03-28T21:44:22","slug":"more-god-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=42","title":{"rendered":"More God Stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned in my <\/span>last post<\/a>, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m reading a book about the debate over separation of church and state. Almost right away, and before getting on to anything resembling his actual point, the author (Noah Feldman) threw out a side comment that made me blink.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

In his Introduction, Feldman tells us that his world-view (including the idea that religious symbols should be allowed in government) was partly shaped by his being raised in an Orthodox Jewish household. Fine with me. Then he casually says the following, as if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing that could be argued with:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Confident in what I knew and believed, I did not find Christianity to be a threat to me or my religious community.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s when I blinked. I blinked because I had read almost the exact same thought in an article (by a different Jewish author), in the Washington Post over a year ago. This article, titled, <\/span>Just Leave Christmas Alone<\/a>, says that non-Christians should just relax about Christmas and its constellation of events and symbols. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dismissive of parents who disagree:<\/span><\/p>\n

What kind of fragile religious identity have they bequeathed their children that it should be threatened by exposure to carols?<\/p>\n

I’m struck by the fact that you almost never find Orthodox Jews complaining about a Christmas creche in the public square. That is because their children, steeped in the richness of their own religious tradition, know who they are and are not threatened by Christians celebrating their religion in public.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nBoth authors assume that the discomfort that (non-Orthodox) Jews feel when faced with public Christian expression comes from fear of losing their own identity. The authors think that these Jews are threatened, not by feeling like outsiders and second-class citizens, but by the possibility of forgetting all about Judaism while in the throes of Christmas bliss.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is a bunch of hooey. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think I know any Jews who are worried about losing their identity, or even that of their kids, to Santa. They may worry because their kids were told that all good boys and girls get presents on Christmas. Or they may worry that their kids are destined to feel different from everyone else. This is upsetting for a child, but it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to go worship Jesus because of it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mind you, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not arguing that this feeling of being upset is a tragedy. Let them be upset a little. They ARE minorities, and they can learn that being a minority isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the end of the world. But let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s at least get our facts straight about where the resistance is coming from.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

People who fight public religious symbols do so out of a desire for inclusiveness. Whether or not they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re right or realistic, they want every citizen of the US to share in the collective American culture as equally as possible. When city squares, courtrooms, and public schools all celebrate one religion, then that inclusiveness suffers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They are not fighting to maintain their own weak belief systems.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true that Orthodox Jews feel less discomfort about public (and publicly funded) Christianity, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re already outsiders. Their kids don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wonder why the other, seemingly identical, first-graders all hunt eggs on Easter. Why don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t they wonder this? Because there are no Christians who seem identical to Orthodox Jews. Orthodox kids already wear different clothes, different head coverings, and may go to different schools from the Christians. They certainly have different social lives. Difference is part of the equation: according to Feldman, being a religious minority was something he \u00e2\u20ac\u0153saw as basic to a two-thousand year-old tradition of diaspora Judaism.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That sense of being different throughout the year explains his tolerance for public Christianity better than relative \u00e2\u20ac\u0153identity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d strength. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s used to being a minority and even revels in it. Most Non-Orthodox Jews face a much less severe feeling of minority until December, when it gets shoved in their faces. Until then, in many ways they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re more like casual Christians than they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re like Orthodox Jews. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that their Jewishness is weak. It just means that their Jewishness doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t force them to feel as different from their neighbors, in so many settings, as they do in December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned in my last post, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m reading a book about the debate over separation of church and state. Almost right away, and before getting on to anything resembling his actual point, the author (Noah Feldman) threw out a side comment that made me blink. In his Introduction, Feldman tells us that his world-view […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}