Radical Judaism_ Rethinking God and Tradition - Arthur Green [77]
The fact that I belong to this sacred community does not establish my only religious landscape. Living in our era of both an open society and a previously unimagined awareness of other cultures and civilizations, I feel a sense of fellowship with seekers, strivers, and doers everywhere. This fellowship does not depend upon whether they have any interest in being considered part of my Israel or share any relationship to the legacy of that name. While I may experience them as “Israel,” to declare them such would be a sort of spiritual imperialism. I recognize my fellowship with them without needing to make them over into my own. They may be Buddhist monks or “secular” ecologists, jesters in the marketplace who make people laugh or great musicians who make their spirits soar. When I pray for God to “bring peace to us and to all Israel,” I find myself wanting to include them as well.
Between these two groups, the historic Jewish people and the world community of seekers and strugglers, there lies a third, no less important community. We need to find a special place for those who revere and feel attached to the spiritual legacy of Israel without belonging to the historically defined Jewish people. Israel, “wrestler with God,” is too big a name to belong just to a single people. We need a way to share it with others, welcoming them to feel like participants in this legacy, without ourselves being threatened, without fearing that we will lose our uniqueness.
In the first two centuries of the Common Era, historians tell us, the boundaries that separated the historical people of Israel from the “godfearers,” Gentiles who frequented the synagogue (especially in the diaspora) and supported its worship, were not entirely rigid. Access to Torah and its message was little restricted, and newcomers were welcomed to an expansively conceived community with various levels of association. The very notion of giyyur, or “conversion,” to Judaism arose out of this situation, along with the emergence of what we call “Judaism” itself.38 Historical factors, including rivalry with the growing Christian church and then a long history of persecution, sealed our borders quite tightly for many centuries. “Israel” consisted of Jews by birth, defined by the more certain maternal line (in the face of all those marauding Crusaders and Cossacks), and a very small trickle of outsiders who chose the difficult — and in many eras dangerous — path of conversion. With rare exceptions, no one else wanted or dared try to be part of Israel. We were, after all, a historically defeated people, as supersessionist preachers, both Christian and Islamic, continually reminded us. Who would want to join a community of such historic losers?
This situation has changed drastically within the past several decades, due to a complex series of historical factors. The borders of Jewish peoplehood have become open again: Ethiopian Jews of questionable historical lineage, Russian Jews of mixed background, non-Orthodox converts, adoptees, patrilineal Jews (recognized by some and not by others), and unconverted spouses of Jews are all finding their way into our community. Groups we'd never heard of—in Africa, India, and Latin America—are seeking to reclaim some tie they believe they have to the House of Israel. The instinct of our most traditional Jews, especially of the Orthodox rabbinate,