NEWS STORY: Jews on Lieberman: From Kvelling to Kvetching

c. 2000 Religion News Service (UNDATED) When Al Gore made history this summer by picking Joseph Isadore Lieberman as his running mate, American Jews gushed with pride. The reaction was understandable. The first Jew on a national ticket signaled, in a way almost nothing else could, that an immigrant community that faced brutal repression in […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) When Al Gore made history this summer by picking Joseph Isadore Lieberman as his running mate, American Jews gushed with pride.

The reaction was understandable. The first Jew on a national ticket signaled, in a way almost nothing else could, that an immigrant community that faced brutal repression in the Old World, and a lingering social stigma in the New, had truly arrived.


As a beaming Lieberman himself said in accepting the Democratic nomination: “Is this a great country or what?”

Yet in one of the true ironies of this campaign, Lieberman is facing as much criticism from within American Judaism as he is from the political opposition. Indeed, while Republicans and religious conservatives can’t help but praise Lieberman’s piety and rectitude, many among the staunchly Democratic Jewish bloc have suddenly switched from kvelling to kvetching.

For some of these Jewish voters, the chief complaint is that the religiously observant Lieberman, who considers himself modern Orthodox, is too religious. For others, the problem is that Lieberman is not religious enough.

Still others are embarrassed by what they see as Lieberman’s shtick _ he uses Yiddishisms so regularly and invokes Jewish humor so frequently he has been dubbed “Shecky” Lieberman.

If the Gentiles love the Lieberman rap, many Jews roll their eyes: To them,it’s like sitting through a seder dinner with that uncle they always wanted to avoid. Besides, runs this line of argument, Lieberman’s jokey style undercuts the religious profundity of Judaism.

“Mr. Lieberman’s Borscht Belt, lox-and-bagels clowning treats Judaism as a collection of neuroses and idiosyncrasies, in the style of Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld,” Gil Troy, a McGill University professor and author of a book on presidential personalities, wrote this month in the Forward, a neo-conservative national Jewish weekly. “Jewish identity should be more than a fashion accent, a food preference or a career move.”

Before, the biggest drawback to Jews about Lieberman’s candidacy had been the worry that his high-profile candidacy would spark a renewal of anti-Semitism. Now the concern seems to be that his approach to the faith will represent for America _ and perhaps for American Jews _ what it means to be Jewish.


For a community in open debate with itself when it comes to defining Judaism _ as a faith, a culture, a worldview or various combinations thereof _ the notion of one man, Joseph Lieberman, being held up as the textbook Jew is disturbing to many.

“Are not most non-Jews likely to derive their principal understanding of what being a Jew is about from this oh-so-visible Jew?” wondered the columnist Leonard Fein. “Good for the Jews, or not?”

Parallel to this mostly intramural debate, other, more strictly political issues have tripped up Lieberman in the eyes of his co-religionists. His opposition to a pardon for Jonathan Pollard, for example, irks the majority of Jews who favor leniency for the man convicted of passing U.S. secrets to Israel.

Lieberman also held out the possibility that he would meet with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has frequently espoused anti-Semitic views. While that might seem like a savvy Nixon-to-China scenario to some, Jewish leaders weren’t buying it, and Lieberman was roundly castigated within the community.

More than any other issue, however, the central concern among Jews regards Lieberman’s overt religiosity.

The first salvos came from Judaism’s secular left, which historically holds sway within the American Jewish community.


When Lieberman started invoking God and praising religion with regularity on the stump, the Anti-Defamation League _ the staunch defender of the rights of American Jews _ blasted his rhetoric as “inappropriate and even unsettling.”

“Appealing along religious lines or belief in God,” the ADL wrote to Lieberman, “is contrary to the American ideal.”

While some defended Lieberman _ and he vowed to continue the God-talk _ many Jewish periodicals joined the ADL’s criticism, and in secular newspapers many Jews wrote letters taking Lieberman to task.

Liberal columnist Ellen Goodman critiqued what she saw as a disconnect between Lieberman’s public support for women’s rights and his observance of a traditional Judaism that bars women rabbis and consigns women to balcony seating for worship.

New York Observer columnist Philip Weiss even said Lieberman’s affiliation with the Orthodox, whose views on intermarriage “border on racist,” should be subjected to the same criticism as George W. Bush’s visit to Bob Jones University, the fundamentalist Christian college that had banned interracial dating.

Next came the hits from Judaism’s religious traditionalists, the other side of the spectrum.

Initially, Orthodox Jews had given Lieberman a pass on litmus tests of his Orthodoxy. Naturally, Orthodox Jews were perhaps prouder than anyone that a religious Jew, rather than a secular Jew, had made the great breakthrough, and they figured that whatever shadings Lieberman might make on halacha, or rabbinic law, his candidacy would be a great boost to Jewish observance.


As Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for the main Orthodox movement, put it upon Lieberman’s nomination: “He’s running for vice president, not chief rabbi.”

“Therefore,” Shafran told The New York Times, “there might be some things we would consider not thought out from a religious perspective, but we’re not here to critique his religious life.”

That was before Lieberman’s comments last month to shock jock Don Imus.

First, the candidate told Imus that he “skips” the traditional daily prayer, recited by the strictly Orthodox, in which a Jewish man thanks God for not being created a woman.

Lieberman then compounded his trouble by fudging on whether Judaism bars intermarriage _ it does. That ban may be religiously smart for a community worried about survival, but it comes across as politically intolerant.

Traditional Jewish leaders were astounded at Lieberman’s comments.

“Whether he has usurped rabbinical territory, he has certainly touched upon it,” said Shafran. “Any observant Jew who heard or read Senator Lieberman’s recent comment could not but feel deep anguish.”

So what’s behind all this internecine Angst? Such squabbles are commonplace among Christians; evangelicals and Catholics regularly _ and often harshly _ critique candidates of their religious persuasion if they see them as veering from the true faith.


For Jews, however, the public flogging of one of their own is unusual, and indicates that other forces are at work.

Samuel Freedman, author of “Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry,” said for secular Jews the ascendance of an observant Jew is another sign that their influence is giving way to a more religious view of the faith.

In addition, he said, these more secular Jews still equate public religiosity with a triumphalistic European Christianity that once used religion to oppress the Jewish minority.

“There’s a real terror in vast parts of the Jewish community that once you introduce God-talk into the campaign, it can only come to a bad end for Jews,” said Freedman, a Columbia University journalism professor.

For Orthodox Jews, Freedman said, the intermarriage remark was the last straw, and opened the door for lingering tensions between the strict Orthodox and the modern Orthodox like Lieberman, who make certain accommodations with contemporary life while claiming to maintain classic Jewish observance.

In fact, Lieberman’s travails may actually begin to engender sympathy for him.

“He’s not a rabbi,” Rabbi Eric Yoffie, leader of the liberal Reform Jewish movement, recently told New Jersey Jewish News. “He’s a politician in a national campaign with the burden of explaining Judaism to millions of Americans.”


DEA END GIBSON

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!