Orthodox Anarchist

My friend, Dr. Eva Fogelman, has written a piece for Jewcy about third generation Holocaust survivors for which I was an interview subject. It’s an interesting piece and worth a read, though I regretfully disagree with her assessment of “intergenerational transmission of trauma” and her assertion that “Trauma cannot be transmitted to others.”

As Eva identifies, “3Gs are not experiencing Nazi racism or genocide. What is transmitted to 3Gs are values, worldview, family interaction and love—not trauma.”

Indeed, my generation has not been traumatized by having directly experienced persecution at the hands of the Nazis. Rather, it is our stated family interactions and the values we have inherited from our progenitors that account for our traumatization.

Our historical and religious narratives perpetuate a legacy of persecution: One should view himself as though he had been a slave in Egypt; the Amalekites shall rise up in every generation; 6 million perished in Europe; Israel is the most vilified nation on Earth; “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.” Even our national symbol, the Menorah, recalls surviving our near-total destruction. In fact, I may go so far as to argue that the primary characteristic of Jewishness in itself is the affectation of surviving traumatic historical episodes.

Add to this our generation’s coming of age in a time of outright hostility towards Israel and Jewish national identity, which has brought along with it resurging levels of antisemitism.

And finally, consider the all-too common experience of domestic violence shared by 2nd and 3rd generation survivors, who embody and perpetuate the effects of physical and psychological abuse initiated by 1st generation survivors. I find it telling that the defining act which earned Abraham the inheritance of Israel was that of traumatizing his son Isaac by binding him to a sacrificial altar. This is where our story begins.

In that, while we may not have inherited the very trauma that afflicted our grandparents directly, I believe it self-evident that we have inherited trauma itself.

All this talk about democratizing Jewish institutions (and, for that matter, my obsession with HBO’s miniseries John Adams) has given me a thought…

It is often held by Jewish historians that the Torah is the Constitution for Jewish civilization (just like the Constitution is the foundational document of these United States).

Though I am grateful to have a Torah, and a profound exegetical tradition from which I have drawn many of my personal values and from which we as a community have derived our shared values, I have difficulty accepting the Torah as the final revelation of God. I cannot see it as a perfect document, whereas the 13th century Jewish philosopher Nachmanides noted, one may be a disgusting person “with the Torah’s permission.” By this, Nachmanides meant that the Torah sets the bare minimum for what’s required of a person. Ie., it is the least we can do. He further affirms that one should always strive to excel above and beyond the level of piety that the Torah puts forward.

In consideration of the Torah’s perspective towards women, homosexuals and the intermarried, let alone genocide, the conquest of Israel, and so forth, I can’t help but believe that we can achieve better than that which the Torah itself asks of us. After all, if HaKadosh Baruchu can cry with delight at the Tannaim’s inversion of Torah law for an inferior principle (see the trayfing of Achnai’s oven) it would seem only logical to further extend the principle of reworking or of outright overturning Torah law for the sake of upholding superior principles, such as saving a life, or making Torah accessible in every generation.

Thus it would seem that, in this era — one in which we have benefitted from advances not only in science, but in our understanding of human and civil rights — the Torah, as is, is an inferior constitution.

So let’s say that we, the Jewish people of the modern era, were to have our own Constitutional Convention, to draft for ourselves a new constitution which upholds the values and principles which we, in our current paradigm hold dear, and one which acknowledges the differences in belief between the observant and secular, the Orthodox and the Reform, the Zionist and the anti-Zionist, the Israeli and the Diasporist, and so forth, what would it look like? What are our Articles of Confederation, for this generation?

Let’s say the Torah is our Declaration of Independence. Given the opportunity, how would we, as a Jewish people, constitute ourselves today?

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