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This is a worthwhile article which explains how it is that we’re repeatedly caught in the middle throughout history. Thank you.
Shalom Andres,
You wrote, “But after proclaiming both the thesis of universalism and the antithesis of particularism, Judaism never gets to any synthesis – or, at least, not the kind that Hegel’s life-cycle of nations implies, the synthesis that means assimilation. We live not in a harmonious synthesis, but in a permanent tension, between universalism and particularism.”
If the “we” at the beginning of your last sentence refers to North American non Orthodox (NANO) Jews, this is most definitely NOT the case for the vast majority of us in this majority demographic of NANO Jewry. Re NANO Judaism which has in some cases has been dumbed down and trivialized to be anything a Jew says it is, the above quote is at best marginally true if not meaningless.
Shana tova u’m’tuqa to all of us.
Biv’racha,
Jordan
This is an excellent essay. The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, in The Ethics of Identity (not a Hegelian work BTW) observes that today’s generations are “rooted cosmopolitans”, universalists who come from a distinct someplace and refuse to give up their rootedness. The opposite, of course is also true. No more so than we in the U.S. who insist on being very Jewish in our Americanism and very American in our Jewishness.
Shalom Dr. Bob,
You wrote: “No more so than we in the U.S. who insist on being very Jewish in our Americanism and very American in our Jewishness.”
Please help me understand who the “we” is as well as how you define the adjective Jewish and the noun Jewishness in the above quote.
Shana tova u’m’tuqa to all of us
Biv’racha,
Jordan