Howard Burton - Rabbi with a Cause: Israel and Identity: A Conversation with David J. Goldberg

What does it mean to have an identity? If I proudly refer to myself as an Australian Muslim, what, in fact, am I doing? Simply resorting to tribalism? Unthinkingly slotting myself into a little box that I happened to have been born into? Establishing my home team?

Or is it somehow much deeper than that, an essential human need to identify with a fixed set of traditions and rituals in order to bring real meaning and perspective to life?

Maybe, somehow, its both at the same time.

David J. Goldberg, Rabbi Emeritus of Londons Liberal Jewish Synagogue has thought long and hard about this issue, particularly when it comes to his own cultural group, the Jews. His 2012 book This Is Not The Way: Jews, Judaism and Israel caused the usual storm of controversy resulting from his openly critical comments of some aspects of current Israeli politics.

But the real reason he wrote the book, he told me, was to address these deeper issues of identity head-onin particular, how a sense of Jewish identity might be somehow disentangled from the religious elements with which it has been awkwardly enmeshed for thousands of years.

I was really bothered by the difference between the theologythat as a Rabbi I was expounding weekly at services in prayer or sermonsand the reality that the overwhelming majority of Jews nowadays are not believing Jews.

They are Jews for any number of reasonstradition, family, persecution, you name itbut belief in God, certainly the God of the Five Books of Moses, the Old Testament, comes way down the list. And I wanted to explore this; and as honestly as possible, my own ambivalence about it, my own belief.

A prime consequence of this deeply personal exploration is Davids conclusion that more credence should be given to the notion of the Cultural Jew, as opposed to its Zionist, Orthodox or Progressive counterparts. The Cultural Jew may be religious in the traditional sense, but certainly isnt necessarily so and sometimes isnt at all.

Moreover, in his customarily forthright style, Rabbi Goldberg admits that he has moved beyond some core elements of traditional Jewish religious dogma himself.

I dont believe in an interventionist God, which is really the sine qua non of Jewish theology: that God has a special relationship with his people, Israel, he looks after us come what may and has an ultimate plan of redemption for the world and for the role of his people, Israel. I dont accept that.

So no special divine link, then. No more chosen people. But what does the Cultural Jew believe? What defines her?

The answer, says David, comes down to traditions and values.

Tradition we largely interpret through rituals. For Cultural Jews, like anyone else, this means adherence to certain rites and ceremonies for birth, marriage, annual holidays and so forth. Encountering old friends, eating particular foods, singing special songs, all of these are signs of the overarching need for the creation and maintenance of rituals that exists in all of us.

But by far our greatest need for ritual, he points out, occurs during a time of mourning.

Its amazing how people whove gone the furthest away from Judaism, as it weresometimes even quite elaborately disowning any involvement in it whatsoevernevertheless when their parent dies, they want to say the memorial prayer Kaddish over the body. And they will want it in transliterations if they cant read Hebrew, just to be able to say it. So the prevalence of honouring the dead, remembering your parents, is a very deep thing in all cultures.

And because all of this is so obviously personal, so inextricably tied to our own memories, experiences and sense of self, the notion that any third party might somehow feel itself competent to pass judgment on any one persons sense of identity mediated through these very traditions is patently absurd.

This might seem like an obvious statement. But look a bit closer and things get murkier, particularly for the case of the Jews, as for the better part of two thousand years rabbinic teachings have stipulated that, aside from the odd case of official conversion through a strictly delineated formal procedure, only someone of a Jewish mother can be properly considered Jewish.

To Rabbi Goldberg, this way of thinking is another example of inflexible and outmoded dogma that the Cultural Jew would be well to discard.

I say, basically, A Jew is anyone who says he or she is one, because it would not be for meit would be arrogance in the extremeto turn around and say, Oh no, youre not, because your mother or your grandmother wasnt Jewish.

So if they tell me, I regard myself as Jewish, I would say, You are Jewish, because you have voluntarily undergone a form of self-identification, which is the most honest kind of identification.

As you might imagine, this type of talk doesnt sit too terribly well with most of Goldbergs more conservative colleagues. But then, hes pretty used to their criticism by now, having long developed a reputation of being a stern and trenchant critic of some of the more controversial policies of Israel, particularly when it comes to the treatment of Palestinians.

Because according to Goldberg, you see, Jewish values matter every bit as much as traditions. Freedom and justice, hes convinced, are the most important aspects of Judaism, the cornerstones on which the entire Jewish identity rests. Which is precisely why he feels so compelled to publicly vocalize his frustration when he sees these very core values being so blatantly compromised through the ongoing Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

I deliberately caused great, great outrage in 2002 or so when I used the dreaded word apartheid for what goes on. I made the very clear distinction, as Im making now, between Israel within the green lines (the pre-1967 borders) and Israel in the occupied territories where there is military rulewhere for heavens sake people travel on separate roads so they dont have to meet, where the Jewish settlers are under Israeli law and the Palestinians are under military law.

Now given this patent difference in their status, their rights, their liberties, what else is it but apartheid?