What do Batman and Superman have to do with Jewish identity?
Other than the fact that their creators were Jews: Batman by Bob Kane, and Superman by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster?
It is more than that. It is about having multiple identities.
About a decade ago, I interviewed for a rabbinical position. A past president of the synagogue asked: “Rabbi, are you a Jew first, or an American?”
This was my answer.
“With all due respect: If that question could wear clothing, it would be a Nehru jacket. It seems so out of fashion right now. I live my life fully, both as an American and as a Jew. And I suspect that most American Jews would say the same thing. They feel no tension between their American identities and their Jewish identities.”
The (admittedly edgy) answer must have satisfied him. He nodded; I got the job; we became good friends.
But, what was this gentleman really asking me?
He was resurrecting a classic Jewish accusation — that Jews have dual loyalty — to their Jewish identity and to the places where they live. It is a suspicion as old as Pharaoh in the book of Exodus.
And, what was I doing? I was playfully suggesting that you can have both identities — often, simultaneously.
It is not only possible to have dual loyalties. It is necessary. That is the subject of our podcast interview with Rabbi Nolan Lebovitz. He is the senior rabbi of Valley Beth Shalom, in Encino, California — one of the most prominent synagogues in America. His new book: “The Case for Dual Loyalty: Healing the Divided Soul of American Jews.”
Because, that is the name of the game. Having a divided soul.
Which gets me thinking, once again, about Batman and Superman. They had secret identities, as did most super-heroes.
The creators of those superhero comics could do this — because they were Jews. They understood what it meant to live with dual identities. “Am I Jewish, or am I an American?”
That was one of the founding questions of modern Judaism. “Am I Jewish, or am I German/French/Hungarian? When am I Jewish? When am I something else? Can I be both?”
Many Jews tried to be both and had a difficult time balancing those parts of their identities. (As Clark Kent must have wondered, from time to time: Am I a mild-mannered reporter or a super-hero?)
In the 1940s, assimilated Reform Jews created the American Council for Judaism — a splinter group within the Reform movement in the 1940s that fought Zionism.
Why? Because the American Council people were afraid that Americans would accuse Jews of having dual loyalty – to the Jews and to America. Just as, in that same decade, Japanese-Americans would be accused of dual loyalty — with disastrous results. Just as, decades later, when he was running for president, John F. Kennedy famously told a group of ministers in Houston that even though he was a Catholic, he would certainly not be taking orders from the Vatican.
Did the creation of the state of Israel deep six the dual loyalty charge?
No.
In 1951, Israel’s Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, visited the United States. He had a public meeting with Jacob Blaustein, who was the president of the American Jewish Committee and a very prominent American Jew.
Ben-Gurion was pushing for aliyah from American Jews. He was touting the typical Zionist line that Israel was the homeland of the Jewish people and that Jews belonged there.
Blaustein put Ben-Gurion in his place:
We have truly become Americans, just as have all other oppressed groups that have ever come to these shores. We repudiate vigorously the suggestion that American Jews are in exile. The future of American Jewry, of our children and our children’s children, is entirely linked with the future of America. We have no alternative; and we want no alternative.
I only wish that Blaustein had heeded the words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who had already written in 1915:
Loyalty to America demands that each American Jew become a Zionist. For only through the ennobling effect of its strivings can we develop the best that is in us and give to this country the full benefit of our great inheritance.
Why do we have dual loyalties — or, for that matter, multiple loyalties?
Because we have multiple identities.
If only life were that simple. Years ago, Leon Wieseltier wrote: “I hear it said about somebody that he is leading a double life. I think to myself: Just two?” We are all committees of selves: professional, parent, partner, friend, child, sibling, neighbor, colleague.
If we only had two identities, than dual loyalties would be manageable. Not so — anymore, or ever. Hence: American. Jewish. LGBTQ. A person of color. A person of the middle class. My Yiddish speaking forebears would have spoken of the need to dance at two weddings with one tuchis. If only it were two. Now, it is more like four or five.
Is there a quarrel in the Jewish soul? Can we join the secular and the religious parts of ourselves together?
The answer is: Yes. We can stitch those pieces of ourselves together.
And, we should.
