A Jewish View of
Multiculturalism
Rabbi Don Levy
Gold Coast,
Queensland
I’ve
been asked to speak to you today on the subject, ‘A Jewish View of Multiculturalism.’ My brief did not include a working definition
of the term ‘multiculturalism.’ Since it means different things to different
people, I am therefore going to fill in a definition. Multiculturalism for the purposes of my talk
is ‘the ideologies that acknowledge and celebrate that society is comprised of
people from a diversity of cultures, and policies that encourage and enable
people from various cultures to live according to them.’ I understand my brief then, to be the
answering of the question of how Jews and Judaism see the validity of, and support,
this enterprise. So, here we go!
First of all, some statistics. According to the 2011 census, there are 97,335
Jews in Australia, or 0.3% of the total population of about 22.68 million. Likewise in the world as a whole; the most
authoritative estimates show the total number of Jews as being no more than 15
million, in a total world population of some 7 billion. That means that, most optimistically, Jews
comprise 0.2% of the world’s population – very close to our proportion in
Australia. But because almost 12 million
of the world’s Jews live in two countries – the United States of America and
Israel – that means that Jews are pretty thin on the ground in the rest of the
world. Specifically, in the Arab world
(except Morocco), Africa (except South Africa) and Asia. In these three parts of the world with the
exceptions noted, Jews are especially thin on the ground.
So why does this matter?
It matters because the premise of
multiculturalism is that it is good for groups in society to retain strong
parts of their unique identity. The premise
is that the ‘salad bowl’ society is better than the ‘melting pot.’ In societies where many people’s family
origins or cultural cues are different from the majority culture, it is a
positive thing when they retain a strong element of that culture. They then bring this element to the patchwork
of cultures that comprise the larger society.
Which is richer for that.
Australia certainly matches this
description. She is a country of
immigrants, and many Australians today, even if they were born here, have
shallow roots here. They trace their
family origins to a vast number of places.
This certainly contributes to Australia’s being an incredibly tolerant
place. You have absorbed repeated waves
of immigration for various parts of the world, and each immigrant group added
something unique and desirable to the mosaic that is Australian culture. This is as noticeable here, in the ‘wilds’ of
Queensland as it is in the metropolises of Sydney and Melbourne.
For the Jews’ part, there were Jews
among the first European settlers to this land; eight Jews were among the
passengers of the First Fleet, and over 1,000 are estimated to have arrived
over the following 60 years. But the
largest group of Australian Jews originated in Europe and came here as refugees
after the Second World War and the Holocaust.
Later groups of Jewish immigrants to Australia, or notable size, came
from South Africa and from Israel. But
the largest and most influential group consists of Holocaust survivors and
their offspring. Proportionally,
Australian Jewry contains the largest proportion of Holocaust survivors- and
their offspring – of the entire Jewish Diaspora. Specifically, 35,000 Jewish refugees of the
Holocaust found their way to Australia’s shores. 80,000 went to the United States, but in the
community of about six million Jews there, they are less of a force. This fact very much colours attitudes among
Australian Jewry, something which I’ll address in just a moment.
Because Jews are such a drop in the
bucket of Australia’s population, they struggle to retain something of what is
unique to them as Jews. They also
struggled to make their presence felt in the national dialogue. Why should it matter? Because it is a non-negotiable in Jewish
life, that each individual and the Jews as a group, must make a positive
difference. Our religious teaching
suggests that the world is not yet complete.
If God created the physical world in six days and then withdrew from His
creative energy from the equation, it was to make room for humanity to ‘finish’
the world by creating a just order, a place of goodness. This imperative is so strong, that often Jews
who are outwardly, entirely non-religious have absorbed it and integrated it
into the actions that comprise their lives.
As a result, Jews are represented out of proportion with their numbers
in public life: in politics and other
social leadership, in academe and in the helping professions. In Australia, and in the world.
As much as Australian Jews have worked
to make a positive difference in society, because of the reality I noted above
there is also an undeniable insularity among Australian Jews. Compared with most other countries in the
Jewish Diaspora, Australian Jews are more likely to have attended Jewish
parochial schools. And anecdotally,
among Jews here, all or most of their close friends are more likely to be
Jewish than among American Jews, which is of course my point of reference for
these observations and comparisons.
Tendencies toward insularity aside,
there is a strong tradition among Jews living in non-Jewish lands that the
civil law of the land trumps Jewish law.
This is an important point when talking about multiculturalism. Many
citizens, here in Australia and elsewhere, fear that multiculturalism by
necessity creates a different social order for each group. And to be sure, there are members of minority
groups who wish for their own laws and customs to trump the larger civil
order. But not Jews; that is, when the latter
is more stringent. This principle is
known in Aramaic as Dina d’malchuta Dina – the Law of the Land is the
Law. It was already articulated in the
Jewish legal writings of early antiquity.
As an example of how this works, Jewish
law allows the marriage of males from age 13, and females from 12. But in a place where local law does not
permit marriage at such a young age, no Jewish authority would sanction a
marriage of anybody below whatever is the legal age locally. I should mention that, while Jewish law does
PERMIT marriage at such a young age, I cannot think of any Jewish community in
the world where marriage at such a young age has been normative since the
mid-twentieth century. And even then,
only among Jews in the Arab world where it was normative generally.
Conversely, where Jewish law is more
stringent than local civil law, Jewish law prevails. Another example from marriage law: today, Jewish law does not permit plural
marriage. So a Jew living in a country
where plural marriage IS permitted, would be constrained by Jewish religious
law to forsake the ‘right’ to more than one spouse. But there is only one element of enforcement
when Jews do not meet the higher standard of Jewish law. That is the force of the community, which
will choose to exclude anybody who flaunts its norms. In a land where Jewish law is not the civil
law of the land – that is to say everywhere INCLUDING Israel which is a modern
parliamentary secular democracy – there is no other sanction.
Jews try to circumvent local civil law,
usually by lobbying governmental bodies, when the clash between Jewish law and
civil law creates a specific hardship.
For example, in America until about the 1960’s, in various states there
were so-called Blue Laws, restricting most types of business activity on
Sundays, the Christian ‘Sabbath.’ Where
there were sizeable Jewish communities in these states, their leaders often
worked to get exceptions to these laws since the Jewish Sabbath is on Saturday
and such laws would result in an inability to do business two days out of
seven. But if such an exception was not
forthcoming, no Jewish religious authority would advocate breaking the law –
hardship notwithstanding.
Jewish law requires that the Jew disobey
civil law only in three matters. If it
would require a Jew to commit murder. Or
perform some indecent and prohibited sexual act. Or commit idol worship. In these three cases, Jewish law instructs
the Jew that he must disobey the law, even if the penalty of such disobedience
is death. In any other matter, he must
obey the civil authorities.
Jews try so hard to be ‘normative’ to
their environment that they often deeply resent laws that separate them even
when a legal remedy exists. For example,
when the Australian parliamentary elections were called for 14 September 2013,
many Australian Jews were deeply offended as this was Yom Kippur, the ‘holiest’
day of the Jewish year. This, despite
that early voting is readily available in Australia meaning that no Jew would
be forced to vote on that date. But some
members of my congregation found it offensive that an election would be held on
that day, because it represented an instance where Jews must choose between
their religious faith and fully participating in national life.
An anecdote along the same lines: many of you have heard of the famous
Jewish-American barrister, Alan Dershowitz, who is a law professor at Harvard
University. In his autobiography, Chutzpah,
published in 1992, Dershowitz tells about the beginning of his years teaching
at Harvard. The university had classes
on Saturdays at the time. As a
newly-hired Assistant Professor, he waged a strident battle to gain exemption
from teaching Saturdays. Since
Dershowitz today is well-known as being a not particularly observant Jew, he
quips that Harvard, by making him fight to avoid teaching Saturdays, kept him
Sabbath-observant for several years longer than he otherwise would have been.
I mentioned the State of Israel a
moment ago and I’d like to return to her even though we’re talking more about
multiculturalism in Australia. I mention
Israel, of course because she is the only Jewish-majority country in the world
and therefore gives perhaps a truer glimpse into Jewish attitudes on
multiculturalism – by showing how multicultural-minded Jews are when they are
the dominant group.
Israel is a modern, multicultural
state where every citizen has the right to practice his or her religion as long
as those practices do not violate civil law.
The latter is based largely on English Common Law although some aspects
such as land tenure originate in Ottoman Turkish Law. The only way that Jewish religious law has
general authority is in minor ceremonial matters. That is, only rabbis offer prayers at public
ceremonies. And the food in all
government cafeterias is kosher. And
government offices are closed on the Jewish Sabbath and holy days, which are
also national holidays.
Not only do all Israeli citizens have
the right to freely practice their own religion, but each religious group in society
enjoys a certain amount of autonomy. So
although there is a national system of secular schools which is open to all
children, each religious group runs its own parochial school system at state
expense, for parents who want their children to be educated according to their
faith’s requirements. And authority for
the so-called ‘personal status’ issues are ceded to each recognised religious
group: Jews, Muslims, various Christian
sects, Baha’is and others. So, for
example two Jews would go to the Jewish religious authorities to get married
while two Muslims would go to their respective authority. The religious groups are given such absolute
authority that there is no civil alternative for marriage. Of course this creates problems when a couple
are not both members of the same religious group. In that case, if there is to be no religious
conversion of one of the principals, they must travel abroad to obtain a civil
marriage, which is then recognised in Israel.
By the way, I mention this twist of Israeli law not to advocate for it. I bring it up only to illustrate the absolute
autonomy of religious denominations in Israel.
So Israel is a Jewish country in the
same way that Great Britain is a Christian country. In the UK, the Church of England is a unique
public role as the state’s church, but members of other religious groups have
freedom to practice their own faith.
Likewise, for example in Greece the Greek Orthodox Church has a special role
but many Greeks freely practice other religions. Israel is very similar.
So Jews, whether they are a minority or
the majority, instinctively practice multiculturalism. We are ready to assert our rights to practice
our faith in a place where there are few Jews.
And to assert the right of others to practice their respective faiths.
This is why I am willing to travel all the way up here to Toowoomba to
participate in these conversations. Between
the religious groups, you have a wonderful feeling of shared destiny and
partnership here. I come because there is
unfortunately no organised Jewish community here. But an opportunity for Jews to participate in
these conversations should not be lost.
Thank you, and Shalom.
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