In the Trenches: Are we one people?

How naïve I've been all these years!

I actually thought that Jews meant it when they spoke of "one people" and repeated the injunction, "All Jews are responsible one for the other."

It helped that this is the spirit in which I was raised. I was surrounded by all kinds of Jews - unbelieving and observant, knowledgeable and unschooled, native and foreign-born, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, engaged and apathetic. I always assumed that, in spite of our differences, or perhaps because of them, we were all one community.

Maybe it was because my family had come out of the European inferno. In trying to find safe harbor, they found themselves in a variety of settings - and surrounded by Jews of many national, ideological, denominational, linguistic, and other stripes. At the end of the day, I was taught, Jews were Jews. It was as simple as that - unless, that is, they practiced some syncretistic form of religion or left the reservation entirely.

They had all been targeted, irrespective of whatever distinctions they might have thought important at some point in their lives. As their murderous enemies reminded them, the commonalities among Jews far - yes, far - outweighed the perceived differences.

What I later understood to be a sense of shared history and common destiny may help explain one of my earliest childhood memories. We lived in an apartment building on New York's West Side. From time to time, solicitors for charitable causes would ring our doorbell, hoping to get a contribution. Among them was a fervently religious Jew who came from Jerusalem each year to raise funds for a yeshiva. My mother, despite very limited income, always gave him something. When I asked why, as it was clear that his lifestyle and ours were quite different, my mother said something about Jews needing to help other Jews. End of conversation. It was a message that stuck.

While in my twenties, I spent several years working in Rome and Vienna with Soviet Jews who reached the West. I applied the lessons I had learned. For me, all were deserving. There was no litmus test by degree of observance or any other criterion other than self-identification as Jews.

Our job was to welcome these individuals back into a community from which they had been forcibly separated by the Iron Curtain. Whether they subsequently chose to pray in a Haredi, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or Reconstructionist synagogue, or perhaps not pray at all, was not a factor in our work. Anyway, who knew what the future would hold? Religious mobility has been a feature of life, including within the Jewish community and, I might add, my own family. (My late father, hardly interested in Jewish life, was rather surprised to see the professional path taken by his only child.) The point was to extend a helping hand and warm embrace, to send a clear message of caring and connection. The rest would follow, we hoped.

More than thirty years later, I haven't changed my thinking, though some might view it as excessively fanciful or idealized.

Whether every Jew mirrors my own worldview, lifestyle, or practice is, in the final analysis, irrelevant. Rather, I subscribe to what I'd call a Jewish version of "e pluribus unum" - many paths, one journey.

We have never been identical in our views, practice, or behavior. When have Jews ever all marched in lockstep with one another? When have we all prayed in the same synagogue? When have we all interpreted our faith and belief systems in precisely the same way? For goodness sake, we can't even agree among ourselves on whether to eat rice at Passover, like Sephardi Jews, or whether to avoid it, like Ashkenazi Jews, not to mention loftier differences.

We have always had internal disagreements, often fierce, whether over religion, ideology, boundaries, or even basic definitions. As often as not, they are within denominations, and not just between or among them.

We need to keep front and center the fact that we all stood at Sinai. There we received our mission statement, our "Tree of life." We may have chosen to interpret and implement it in different ways, but Sinai represents our foundation, the promise of our people.

And, no less, we all stood under the chilling words "Arbeit Macht Frei" at Auschwitz. There we were reminded, not for the first time, of the peril of our journey.

The Jewish world appears to have a self-destructive tendency to create fault lines - be they organizational, denominational, or ideological - rather than accept inevitable differences. Innuendo, name-calling, smears, and suspicions have become daily fare in too many quarters around the world. And in a wired era, their dissemination becomes not only easy but unstoppable.

In doing so, we're ignoring the counsel of Maimonides: "All Israelites are to each other like brothers. If brother shows no compassion to brother, who will show compassion to him?"

Too often, allegiance to a particular perspective - say, left or right, secular or religious - blinds us to the legitimacy of other Jewish views. More important, it obscures the indivisibility of our Jewish journey.

Discuss, debate, and dissent - absolutely. But without assaults on authenticity, without resort to unseemly language or behavior, without endless diversions and distractions from the real challenges we collectively face. It's time, in other words, that we abide by the ethical code of conduct that has been with us for thousands of years.

Of what value is our tradition if we are prepared to violate it repeatedly in the supposed name of its defense?

Do we want to end up like the last two Jews of Kabul, who, according to the New York Times, refused to talk to one another because each claimed to be the head of the Jewish community?

At AJC, we believe in a big Jewish tent. And, yes, we practice what we preach. On our staff are Jews of every imaginable background, outlook, and lifestyle. And you know what? We demonstrate on a daily basis that mutual respect - and mutual understanding - can rule the day. We may define our Judaism differently. We may pray differently (or not at all). We may eat differently. We may dress differently. We may vote differently.

But, for all of us, there is one spiritual heritage, one Israel, and one Jewish people - and we all derive immense pride and enrichment from those pillars of our identity. They explain why, despite layers of security against those who would do harm to Jewish groups, we are collectively devoting our lives to advancing the well-being of our people in all of its creative and diverse vitality.

In the end, as Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik wrote, "We all find ourselves in the realm of a common fate which binds together all of the people's different strata, its various units and groups, a fate that does not distinguish between one group and another group or between one person and his fellow."

So call me naïve, but I can't help it. I remain a true believer in am echad - one people.