What Does America Teach Us? A Reflection for 3 July 2015

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, American Independence Day.  I’m an American living abroad, who has spent a large part of his adult life living abroad, because of my work and my service.  I’ve spent years living in Europe.  In Turkey and Greece.  And now Australia.  I therefore tend to think at this time of year exactly what it means to be American.  About what it makes America unique among the nations of the world.

          America is a difficult place to understand.  Particularly so, for our cousins in the Commonwealth countries who seem so close to us.  An Aussie who visits America usually feels that there is much that is familiar to him.  Okay, we don’t put beetroot on our hamburgers.  That aside, a lot about our cultures is similar.  Sometimes however, something makes you scratch your head in wonderment.

Likewise, as an American, I have sometimes stumbled in trying to grasp Australia.  It just seems so familiar to me.  Yet there are significant, sometimes deep, differences in the way that we think and see our respective countries.

          Many in the world believe that they understand America, and do not see it as a particularly positive force in the world.  They don’t understand why America seems intent on sticking its nose in the business of other countries, and distressingly, sometimes with a not-so-positive result.  And yet they criticize America when she does not take the lead in some crisis far from her borders.  Still others have a knee-jerk tendency to think poorly of America, in many cases out of pure jealousy for her prosperity and her singular ability to influence world events.

          One nice thing about our Jewishness, is that it enables us to transcend political borders with a kinship towards and familiarity with Jews elsewhere.  As I’ve travelled and moved around the world, I’ve always felt instantly at home with Jews no matter where I happened to be.  It adds an important dimension to one’s ability to understand and relate to the peoples of the world.

It’s particularly interesting to observe Jews around the world who don’t get the American-Jewish zeitgeist.  While Jews around the world share certain aspects of mindset in common, European and Commonwealth Jews don’t seem to understand American Jews well at all.  And that’s unfortunate, because after all the American Jewish community is the world’s largest after Israel.  Israel has some 6.2 million Jews, whilst America has some 5.7 million.  That has to be staggering when you think that the next largest Jewish community in the world is France, with under half a million.  Far down the list is Australia, with a tad over 100,000.

          Israel and America are, in our generation, the two great centers of Jewish creativity.  When one is talking outside of Orthodoxy, then America is the lone powerhouse.  The amount of progressive Jewish energy that comes out of the American Jewish community is hard to fathom in the rest of the world, where Orthodoxy is king and progressive strains of Judaism often seem to be an afterthought at best.  I’m not implying that we should see Jewish life as a competition between the different streams.  I’m only saying that those of us whose Jewish path is not Orthodox, cannot help but look to America for inspiration.

         American Judaism is at its heart confident, in a way that Jewry the world over is not.  That is in part explainable by looking at when the majority of American Jews arrived in their adopted country.  They came in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.  In moving to America they were quitting Eastern Europe.  Whilst the world of the Eastern European Jews had no lack of hardship and misery, it was ultimately a vibrant culture with an optimist outlook.  The Jews who arrived in America became, to some degree, Americanised.  And yet, because of their numbers and their energy they, in effect, Judaised America.

          America therefore, despite that her population is only about two percent Jewish today, literally sings in a Jewish spirit.  The Jews of America participate loudly and robustly in the civic life of America in a way that we don’t in any other lands of their habitation other than Israel.  What the American Jews have to teach the Jews of the rest of the world is, I think, the importance of seeing your life in your own country, as Jews, being wholly legitimate and normal.  Jews in the rest of the world cower in their minority status, often way in excess to any threat they face as Jews.  In particular, Jews in Australia feel far more besieged than reality would indicate.  And that’s unfortunate, because it stifles the Jewish voice from speaking out confidently and asserting its place in society.

          Perhaps the very notion of having a voice is very much an American mindset.  Even though Australians and others enjoy direct representation in a parliamentary government, they seldom express a sense of outrage when that government is not responsive to their national good.  They are more likely to express outrage when the government doesn’t dole out to them what they feel they deserve.  Now America is very much going in that direction herself.  But in the America where I grew up, John F Kennedy’s advice – Ask now what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country – resonated.  And it resonates still, perhaps less so, but resonates even so.

         What does America teach us?  She teaches us self-reliance.  For those of us who are Jewish, she teaches us the importance of seeing ourselves as legitimate citizens, as Jews, or our nation.  She teaches us the positive result when we participate fully and robustly in our national life.  She teaches us to find our voice and not be afraid to let it be heard.  Shabbat shalom.