Feel the Jewish

He has not asked me to come to his defense. But he is “family,” so I feel obliged to at least speak up. The issue at hand is larger than Sanders, whether that be Bernie or David. It is not about politics. It is about identity, about family, about relationships. I would like to suggest it is also about the future of Jewish in America and perhaps around the world.
Bernie Sanders has been asked any number of times about his Jewish identity. He does not volunteer much about it, but when asked, he responds as he did at a CNN Democratic Presidential Candidates debate in March. He ended his answer about his identifying as Jewish by stating: “I am very proud of being Jewish and that’s an essential part of who I am as a human being.”
A few days later, CNN’s Religion Editor, Daniel Burke, wrote The Book of Bernie: Inside Sanders’ Unorthodox Faith and highlighted that Bernie expresses his Jewishness through a humanistic and spiritual perspective and that this way of identifying as Jewish is now prevalent among Jews in America. Quoting the Pew study on American Jews (2013) Burke contextualizes Bernie Sanders as part of a growing majority of Jews for whom observing religious law is not essential to being Jewish. The vast majority of American Jews, like Sanders, say that remembering the Holocaust, leading an ethical life and working for justice are the touchstones of their Jewish identity.
A month later, during an interview on Book TV, Dennis Prager, the conservative radio talk show host, characterized Bernie Sanders as a “non-Jewish Jew.” He labeled Sanders ethnically Jewish, himself as a Jewish Jew-religiously Jewish. Despite Bernie Sanders publicly declaring to America his pride in identifying as Jewish, Prager boldly claimed in that interview: “Being Jewish doesn’t mean anything to him.”
(To hear Prager says these words enter the interview at 16:30 at http://www.c-span.org/video/?407593-9/open-phones-dennis-prager).
Dennis Prager may be accused of hyperbole, or exaggerating to make a point. But I think his comments reflect a lack of appreciating what is important for the majority of Jews in America, from the so called millennials to those as old as and even older than Bernie Sanders. Judaism and Jewish are not synonyms. Prager has conflated them and therefore labels Sanders as a “non-Jewish Jew.”
Judaism remains an important vehicle for meaning and religious guidance for many Jews in America. For the vast majority of Jews in America, Bernie Sanders among them, Jewish is a source of meaning and spiritual guidance. And Jewish is not, as Dennis Prager would deride, merely as ethnic identity. Jewish, as the sociologist Herbert Gans once suggested, morphs into a sacred culture; one that can be defined as a communal identity that combines culture and ethics that is not ethnocentric.
Here is what Bernie Sanders has to say:
“What all religions hold dear is: To do unto others as you would like them to do unto you. I believe in, what my spirituality is about, is that we’re all in this together — that I think it’s not a good thing to believe, as human beings, that we can turn our backs on the suffering of other people.”
Hillel, the great first century Jewish sage could not have said it better. In fact, he said the same thing.

david

P.S. Because the conflation of Jewish and Judaism is so challenging for many I will be suggesting a new name to be adopted to represent the new Jewish sacred cultural-ethical identity.

5 Comments

Bobbette (Bobbi) Furer · June 4, 2016 at 8:35 pm

MY UNFORGETTABLE EXPERIENCE

Bobbette Furer · June 4, 2016 at 8:56 pm

I did not finish my comment. please advise

    kabbalahexperience · June 6, 2016 at 4:21 pm

    Hi Bobbette. Please write another completed comment and I will approve. Thanks for reading the blog!

Dean Travis Williams (AKA - Ayertiam / Maitreya / Yahshuah / Kalki) · July 27, 2016 at 7:29 am

Thank you for your valuable insight, it has made helped me make some key decisions.

Anita Khaldy Kehmeier · November 9, 2018 at 5:52 pm

WOW…I did wonder if he was family to you….Now I know. I was devastated when Bernie was disenfranchised by the democratic party. I wished he ran as an independent, but he did not want to repeat the story of Ralph Nader. We needed some body as a presidential candidate who was open,amenable and rational. He was the movements and people’s choice. He was ill-treated at the DNC and simply ignored. Ella Baker,very nicely said,” We do not need strong leaders. We need strong people.” Power corrupts and is very intoxicating, and the Clinton’s with all their corporate sponsors held on to the reins of power firmly and unjustly. Bernie kept this seat, and hopefully will run again. I wish he stood up to the DNC,and demanded justice,as we are in such a mess right now. He won…on all counts… he won. We have little time to solve the eco side of things to come, especially with a climate change denier in the white house.We were very ready for a Jewish President.

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