"It's a Free Country"
Reporting from an AZM Or L'Dor / PresenTense Salon
Michael Szanto and Lisette Dolgin in energetic discussion
December 2, 2007
Chicago, IL
On a cold, rainy Sunday afternoon in Chicago, it takes a certain kind of person to be enticed by the opportunity to participate in an intensely passionate discussion of source texts on American Jewish history. Such a person was clearly missing out yesterday if not present at Kafein, a cozy, intellectual coffeehouse in Evanston, for the first-ever PresenTense / Or L’Dor Salon.
Addressing the topic "It’s a Free Country: American Jews and Freedom of Religion," the salon probed issues almost as heady as the highly caffeinated beverages we were all consuming. In a country where "freedom of religion" automatically dictates freedom from having to practice any religion at all; with the American insistence on individualism and pluralism; with the American Dream promising affluence and personal comforts limited only by one’s own ability and hard work – why be Jewish in America? Is the choice to forego Judaism and assimilate into American society the exercise of religious freedom, or the squandering of the blessings afforded us by American citizenship? Does the classification of Judaism as a religion like any other make Jews more palatable to a Christian society and, therefore, more deserving of political freedoms? Or does it confound Judaism with other religions so that even to the Jew all religions seem interchangeable, even indistinguishable? If instead Judaism is defined as a culture, even a nationality, as authenticated by Israel, our Jewish homeland – does that make it richer and more appealing to American Jews, or leave them vulnerable to accusations of an unpatriotic dual loyalty?
Such deep questions are no doubt overwhelming for a bunch of Jews under 30. Luckily, we had all of Jewish history at our disposal. Since Jews first disembarked on colonial America, every generation of Jews without fail has wrestled with, theorized about, and disagreed with themselves concerning the very same conundrums –a pattern whose existence we all found strikingly profound and splendidly tragic, but then again, it’s just our generation’s turn to find out there’s nothing new under the sun.
