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Month: June 2015

Russia After Communism

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, September 1993

I have just returned from Russia. Having been there four times before I was amazed by the radical transformation taking place. Capitalism and democracy may be having a hard time winning their victory. But Communism is dead.

Do not get me wrong. The legacy of Communism is everywhere. Acres and acres of decaying gulag-style apartment buildings fill the urban landscape. Families stuffed into cubbyhole fiats, without the opportunities of privacy or comfort, remain the norm. Surly bureaucratic personnel still fill the offices and the stores. Aging junk heaps of factories still belch their pollution into the air. Millions of red stars and hammers and sickles are still embedded in the stone of thousands of public buildings.

But the changes are dramatic. The red flags and Communist slogans are gone. Consumer goods from the West are everywhere. The streets are filled with the energy of flourishing kiosks and private enterprise. People are talky, pushy and defiant. Book stores and newsstands are filled with publications that people really want to read. Jaywalking and traffic jams are becoming commonplace. Nightlife, billboard advertising and fashionable dress are flourishing. The renovation of former beauty is everywhere. Public complaining is loud, raucous and outrageous.

Of course, transitions bring their terrible problems. Beggars now fill the streets. Gangsters and violent crime, emerging from the underworld of the old black market, make urban life unsafe. Prices are high. Unemployment is growing. The differences between those who make it and those who do not grow wider. Two governments, one presidential and one congressional, vie for power. The new ruble hovers on the edge of credibility. Sex shops and psychics are thriving.

If stability can be achieved, Russia is a land of opportunity for Western “investors”. Undeveloped mineral resources abound. Cheap educated labor is eager to play Mexico to Germany’s America. Confused survivors of Communist indoctrination are open to the missionary work of American fundamentalist religion. An admiration for all things Western, from MacDonald’s to rock music, is part of youthful ambition.

The turmoil in Russia worries everybody. But, except for the diehard Marxists and Stalinists who hold their pathetic rallies in a few public squares, almost nobody you talk to wants to go back to what was. Mumbling and grumbling are commonplace. Suffering is real. Yet the rightwing nationalists and fascists have been unable to mobilize a credible opposition. The right is hopelessly divided and ineffective. Monarchists and racists and anti-Semites cannot seem to get their act together. Even an opportunistic alliance with conservative Communists is a failure. They are not able to win elections, recruit the military, or to win wide public support. Even the Pamyat party, which frightened everybody, is falling apart. In the end, nobody has a real alternative to Yeltsin. And that’s why, with all his faults, buffoonery and indecision, he remains in power.

In the midst of all this uncertainty are two million Jews (and, counting the fourteen other republics of the former Soviet Union maybe three million). Their numbers have been depleted by emigration to America and Israel. But, strangely enough, for every Jew who leaves, another mysteriously appears to take his place. The hidden Jews of intermarriage and assimilation are surfacing all the time.

The Jews of Russia are free to leave for Israel. But they are not moving right now. On the whole professional and well-educated, they are reluctant to move to a Jewish state that can only provide them with the opportunities of taxi driving, street cleaning and unemployment. Although they are uncomfortable with the persistent anti-Semitism, some of them are deeply attached to Russian culture and are reluctant to leave Russia for an environment where they will be struggling foreigners. Listening to them is listening to all the ambiguities and ambivalence that are part of Russian Jewish identity.

My most exciting experience of this visit was my encounter with sixty, Jewish students from over thirty communities of Russia and the former Soviet Union, who had come to Moscow for a five day seminar on Humanistic Judaism. The seminar was sponsored by the Eurasian Section of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism. The purpose was to train lecturers for our movement, who would serve as spokespersons of our unique approach to Jewish identity. The organizer was Simyon Avgustevich, the director of the Institute in Moscow.

Simyon is an extraordinary man of great energy and determination. Trained as a psychologist In Saratov, a Russian city on the Volga, he became part of the Jewish reawakening that accompanied the fall of Communism. Chosen as an education officer for the newly founded Vaad (Council of Jewish Communities) he encountered Humanistic Judaism through the energetic work of Zev Katz, professor of Russian studies at the Hebrew University and the Israeli Dean of the International Institute. Over the past two years Zev and he have visited dozens of Jewish communities all over Russia and the other “Soviet” republics. Out of this whirlwind effort emerged 35 small Humanistic Jewish associations which are now federated, into a larger regional association.

The students who came to Moscow were of all ages, but primarily young. Most of them grew up in assimilationist backgrounds, where neither Yiddish nor Hebrew nor Jewish culture were present. But all of them were eager to discover their ethnic roots and to affirm their Jewishness in a way that was consistent with their secular convictions. Assaulted by the prevailing confusion and by the relentless determination of the new Orthodox Jewish missionaries to win the hearts of Russian Jewry, they had opted for Humanistic Judaism and were eager to learn more about what that commitment meant. I was overwhelmed by their sincerity, enthusiasm and desire to learn I was also distressed by the economic hardships which they daily face.

If democracy and incipient capitalism survive in Russia, there will be a future for a vital Jewish community and for a vital Russian/Eurasian Humanistic Judaism. Hopefully, in the year to come we can find brother and sister communities in North America, Europe and Israel for the new Humanistic communities in the former Soviet Union. Perhaps San Diego would like to pair with Vitebsk or Detroit with Minsk or Brussels with Kiev, or Boston with Saratov.

At the end of September 1994, the fifth biennial conference of the Federation of Secular Humanistic Jews will be held in Moscow. It will be a wonderful opportunity for Humanistic Jews, from all over the world, to express their support for the rebirth of Secular Humanistic Judaism in Russia.

I hope that you will join me in this wonderful “pilgrimage of hope.”

South Africa in Transition

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, November 1990

 

South Africa is a troubled nation. I know, I spent three weeks there this past summer.

I was also there in 1973 at the height -of-the apartheid system. I did not – imagine at that time that-the whites -would yield- their power willingly. I imagined that only a violent revolution could change the system.

But in 1990 I seemed to be wrong. Dramatic concessions were made by the- white government. Nelson Mandela, the black leader, was released-from prison after 27 years of confinement. The African National Congress, long banned, was declared legal.

I was overwhelmed by the changes. I wanted to see them with my own eyes. I wanted to experience the difference.

Now South Africa is not a nation. It is a collection of nations. Situated on a piece of land about the size of Texas and California put together, it is the home of many ethnic groups. Some 35 million people are divided among blacks, whites, coloreds and Indians. The blacks constitute over seventy percent of the population. They are divided into three great nations, Xhosa, the Zulu and the Sotho. The whites number almost 5 million. They, in turn, are divided into the English and the Dutch. After three hundred years they call themselves Afrikaners.

Ever since its beginning as the Cape Colony, South Africa has experienced white domination. In 1948 white supremacy was turned into an official policy called apartheid (separation). Laws were passed that turned blacks into aliens, forbade them to own land in white areas, forbade them to live in white areas without special permission and confined them to inferior housing, school and work. Other laws were passed to reinforce this “racism”. Anti-apartheid propaganda was labeled communism and communism was banned. A powerful army and police force, assisted by black collaborators made sure that these laws were enforced.

Apartheid culture was the South Africa culture I experienced in 1973. It was a culture of two worlds. Whites belonged to the First World, coddled by affluence and servants, Blacks belonged to the Third World, living in hoveIs and reduced to walking for basic transportation. This system of contrasts was infused with religious piety and conservative virtues, which were intended to delay the entry of South Africa into the twentieth century.

However, ever since 1976, the apartheid structure has been slowly collapsing. Black resistance, which began in Soweto grew in number and in power. The white government first responded with repression and then responded with concessions. Petty segregation was ended. A new constitution was written granting the vote to coloreds (mulattos) and Indians. The past laws were abolished. Sex and marriage between, the races were no longer forbidden. Mandela was released.

Of course, these concessions did not come about only because of black resistance. The composition of sanctions by the world community, including the United States, hurt the economy severely. Unemployment, failing businesses and a falling rand were painful prices to pay for apartheid. Ultimately the white Afrikaner Nationalist government threw in the towel and announced its commitment to dismantle apartheid.

When I arrived in South Africa last summer the process of dismantling apartheid had just begun. The blacks still had no vote. The land was still segregated. And negotiations between De Klerk, the white president, and Mandela had just begun.

But there were many changes from 1973.

Hotels and public accommodations were desegregated. Blacks were too poor to use them. But more prosperous Indians were present in the hotels and resorts in large numbers.

Token affirmative action was in place. In many banks and corporate offices, black managers and executives appeared from time to time to illustrate the beginning of new racial policies.

Strikes and boycotts were everywhere. Black unions were demanding more pay and more benefits. Black demonstrators were marching through white areas. Black customers were withholding their business from firms that insisted on preserving apartheid.

Freedom had a new lease on life. Censorship was gone. The change was so dramatic that some liberals had difficulty adjusting to their new liberty. Radical anti-government literature abounds. Even Communists were publishing freely.

Politics were turned upside down. The right-wing Nationalist party, which controlled the government and which had invented apartheid, was now a party of the “left” committed to the dismantling of segregation. Disgruntled conservative whites had organized another political party to argue their cause. But their new party found itself in the opposition and without real political power.

White homeowners were now outraged by the emergence of thousands of black squatters in their neighborhood and on their beaches. With the past laws gone, many unemployed poor blacks had moved from the black homelands to the white areas in search of jobs. But there are no jobs and no housing, and no more places in the black townships.

Three years ago the squatters would have been ruthlessly removed. Today a timid and ambivalent white government lets them stay.

Violence was everywhere. Blacks were killing blacks in the black townships. The Zulus, an imperial black nation that had ruled all the others, wanted their share in the scramble for power. Their leader Bathilezi and his political party Inkotha wanted equality with Mandela, a Xhosa, and the leader of the African National Congress. White vigilantes were encouraging the Zulus, with the hope that if blacks could be encouraged to kill blacks, the whites could remain in control.

Important issues were hotly debated by whites and blacks. Should capitalism be returned? Should wealth be redistributed? Should a new constitution guarantee one person one vote? Should Afrikaans, the language of the hated Afrikaners, be retained as one of the two official languages of South Africa? How should the control of the army and police be transferred to a black majority?

Most whites in South Africa are bewildered by the changes. They struggle to cope. Some have accepted the inevitability of black control and are steeling themselves to live with it. Some still hope that the blacks will kill each other off or die of AIDS and white supremacy will remain. Some are determined to resist, even though they are not quite sure what they would do. Many are talking about emigration, preferably to Australia or southern California.

The Jews in South Africa are also bewildered. Still 110,000 strong with over half of their number in Johannesburg, they struggle with the emerging realities. Strongly Zionistic and religiously conservative, their leadership has provided a timid and cautious resistance to apartheid. The close ties between pariah South Africa and pariah Israel make them reluctant to provoke the government.

Most Jews are ambivalent about leaving. Their lifestyle is so comfortable, especially in a servant culture, that it is hard to depart in the absence of any overt assault. Even the reemergence of anti-Semitism among right-wing Afrikaners (who now blame the Jews for the demise of apartheid) is not a sufficient stimulus to start an exodus. If a black government retains capitalism many Jews will remain.

“So what is going to happen?,” people ask me. I do not know. If the Xhosas and Zulus get together, a black majority government with socialist edges will take over. If the whites and the Zulus get together, a black-white coalition may be the political consequence. Most blacks want the first. Most whites want the second.

But continued bloodshed and chaos could produce many other alternatives.

Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, September 1990

Iraqis invasion of Kuwait came as quite a surprise to the world. No one believed that Saddam Hussein would be mad enough to defy the Western alliance at a time when he could no longer count on the support of the Soviet Union. Was this deed the action of an irrational man, a dreadful miscalculation? Or was it a shrewd plan to expose the weakness of the West and to mobilize the Arab world behind the might of Iraq? Only the unfolding of events will answer that question.

However, the current crises has made us aware of certain important realities that were obscured by the euphoria that followed the death of the Cold War. In the heady atmosphere of the collapse of Communism many naive people came to believe that major wars among nations would disappear and that military budgets would become irrelevant. But the Iraq crises has reawakened us to reality.

What is reality?

The end of the Cold War does not mean the end of war. Natural and regional conflicts will continue throughout the world, especially in the Third World. The manufacture of weapons is still a profitable industry. Small ambitious nations will continue to purchase arms. Some of them will even seek to develop nuclear arms. The former easily divisible world of Soviet-American confrontation may be replaced by much more chaotic and dangerous hostility.

The Middle East is replacing Europe as the setting of future confrontations. Muslim fundamentalism combined with Arab and Persian nationalism is a powerful spark to war. Add the economic importance of oil to the Western world and the intense Muslim resentment of the old Western imperialism and you have the makings of violent terrorism and war.

Despite victory in the Cold War, Western powers are very vulnerable because they are dependent on petroleum from Middle East. Even the trauma the 1973 boycott did little to persuade the Americans, Europe and the Japanese to reduce their reliance on Muslim oil. The fall in oil prices made it convenient to forget the danger. But danger remains. The West cannot allow the oil fields to fall into the hands of unfriendly powers. In a time of crisis, military intervention is unavoidable.

America remains the policeman the world. While the United Nations acted nobly in declaring sanctions against the Iraqis, enforcement of the sanctions been left up to America. Both the Europeans (with the exception of the British) and the Japanese, despite their economic power, continue to use American military might as their shield protector. This parasitic reliance is unfair. It gives America more responsibility t it can afford and more negative criticism than it deserves.

Iraq is the first Arab nation become a formidable military power. The Iraqi army I million strong) is the fourth largest army in the world, right behind Russia, China and America. For a nation of seventeen million people that reality is an amazing achievement. And if you add experience of eight years of war with the Persians you have a tough military force. America will find it difficult to field an equal number of battle-trained soldiers. As with Israel, size is no indication of military might.

In war almost anything is possible. Even enemies can become temporary friends, witness Hitler and Stalin, the Americans and the Russians in World War II. The possible reconciliation of secularist Iraq with fundamentalist Iran is a frightening prospect. Both nations feed on anti-American and anti-Israeli passion. Both nations are opposed to the establishment governments of the Middle East, especially feudal regimes of the Arabian Peninsula like Kuwait. Both nations want to raise the price of oil and humiliate the West through economic warfare. Both nations are in favor of terrorism and extra-legal violence to achieve their aims. If Iran accepts Iraqi peace offers and cooperates with Hussein, the American blockade will become impossible.

The Arab nation is, to a large degree, an illusion. There are deep divisions in the Arab world. These divisions were dramatized by the response to the moderate Arab regimes to the Iraqi invasion. A strong alliance of Egyptians, Moroccans and Syrians merged to offer its support to the endangered Saudis. Regional and personal hostilities are also aggravated by class hostilities. The have-not Arabs, like the Palestinians, are deeply resentful of the affluent Arabs, like the Kuwaitis. Hussein intends to see class warfare as. a weapon to Le-stabilize existing conservative Arab regimes and to mobilize the Arab masses to his side.

Oil and democracy do not necessarily go together. While the political system of the aggressor Iraqis is an internal socialist dictatorship, the political system of the victim Kuwaitis was an anti-democratic feudal monarchy. Defending the integrity of Kuwait, whose boundaries were determined by colonial administrators, is less an exercise in the defense of democracy than in the preservation of Western economics and world order. The endangered Arab states are no more respectable than was South Vietnam.

The crises has restored Egypt to a position of Arab leadership. President Mubarak has emerged as the consummate politician who has mobilized an Arab coalition against Hussein. For a long time Egypt was a pariah state in the Arab world because of its peace settlement with Israel. Now the Iraqi confrontation has put Egypt back in first place. If it succeeds in helping the Americans defeat Iraq, it will return to its former role as the center of the Arab world.

The peace movement in Israel has been dealt an almost fatal blow. The emergence of an Arab foe has revised the notion that Israel is an important American ally. Especially now that the PLO and the Palestinians have sided with the Iraqis, the Americans will be reluctant to push for the creation of a Palestinian state. Arafat, by backing Hussein, has given new strength to the Israeli right wing, who has continuously claimed that Arafat and his cohorts are unreliable and dangerous radicals.

The Jews are again in the center of world controversy. Hussein’s threat to punish Israel if he is attacked ties American military intervention to the defense of Israel. If the confrontation with Iraq is short, Israel will benefit from the victory. If the confrontation is prolonged, American frustration could redirect American hostility to Israel as the major cause of Middle East turmoil and Muslim resentment.

Hopefully, the confrontation will be short. But there are no guarantees.

The Fall of Communism

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, December 1989

Who can believe? The Berlin Wall is open. Poland has a non-Communist government. The Hungarians are no longer a “people’s republic”. The Supreme Soviet rejects Gorbachev’s legislation.

What does it all mean?

Failure of socialism. Socialism is on hard times. Plagued by the propaganda of utopian promises, Marxist governments have been unable to deliver on the promises they made. Eastern Europe is an economic shambles, with standards of living and levels of technology that would be unacceptable in the West. The socialist obsession with equality has produced rigid authoritarian elites who allow no space to personal freedom and individual initiative. The people are fed up – and rightly so. Despite its many faults, bourgeois capitalism remains the most attractive alternative for most developed and developing nations.

Communism is reversible. The Jeanne Kirkpatrick doctrine that Communist regimes are not reversible has been proven false. Totalitarian regimes can change without violent revolution and without foreign intervention. In the end, no regime, however dictatorial, can survive without the passive support of the people. Even years of indoctrination and surveillance do not work against profound popular discontent. Once the threat of Soviet military intervention was removed, the satellite governments in Poland, Hungary, and East Germany fell like houses of cards. There is a limit beyond which people cannot be pushed without rebelling.

Soviet Empire is disintegrating. The Brezhnev doctrine is finished. Russia will no longer intervene to maintain Communist governments in power. The test was Poland. When the Russians did nothing after the Solidarity victory they gave the signal to the opponents of communist regimes in the other satellite countries that they could proceed with impunity. Obviously Gorbachev has made a choice. The loss of empire is worth the possibility of European disarmament and the economic development of the backward Soviet economy with Western aid.

End to the Cold War. Disconcerting as it may be to many, we are losing our chief enemy. The justification for increasing armaments and warlike confrontation is gone. The Warsaw Pact is falling apart. And so will NATO. Without the Communist threat the political mentality of the West is being radically altered. Many conservative holdouts will decry the clever trick of Gorbachev to arrange for the dismantling of Western defenses. But their arguments will prove ineffective against the obvious profound changes in the Communist world.

Independence of Europe and Japan. As the Soviet threat lessens, the willingness of Japan and our European allies to follow, the lead of America will diminish. The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union will be followed by increasing tension among the Western allies, aggravated by intense economic rivalry. The American hegemony will be sorely tested in the years to come. Military competition will be replaced by a more difficult and far more challenging economic competition.

Victory of Germany and Japan. The two “losers” of the Second World War are now emerging as economic winners, with all the power that economic success brings in a world where nuclear war is inconceivable. With the possibility now that the two Germanys may ultimately be reunited, Germany will dominate the new federation of Europe. This federation may expand to include many of the countries of Eastern Europe now in the Soviet orbit. With its central location and enormous economic power, Germany will become the premier state of a united Europe. Ironically the two militarist powers of the Nazi era have discovered that military might is no longer the chief road to success and domination.

Change in China. Just as Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria will have to conform to the democratic changes in Russia and in other European Communist states, so will China have to conform. The aging reactionary leadership that suppressed the students in Tiananmen Square confront both the hostility of their own people and the hostility of the outside world. China stands isolated, deeply dependent on Western business and investment. The government no longer has the “mandate of Heaven”. In a world where Communism is losing its credibility, all Communist regimes are on the defensive.

Revival of the United Nations. With the end of the Cold War, the United Nations can be reborn. If the United States and the Soviet Union will cooperate the United Nations can do what it was intended to do. Already there is dramatic evidence of its revival. The withdrawal of Russian troops from Afghanistan, the truce in Angola and the liberation of Namibia have all been engineered through UN auspices. With peace in the air, the world Organization will become increasingly more important in resolving regional conflicts.

New issues are arising. As the old conflict between America and Russia dies down, the world will be able to turn its attention to issues that affect all nations and especially the survival of the human race. One of the most pressing problems that have seized the imagination of young people all over the world is the issue of the environment. Environmental concern may be one of the major vehicles for creating new bonds between old enemies. It may sponsor the beginning of genuinely world legislation. –

Individuals make a difference. Whatever his motivation, the architect of the overwhelming changes we are experiencing is Mikhail Gorbachev. History is not only the product of vast impersonal social forces. It is also a script written by bold creative individuals. What has happened was not inevitable. The disintegration of the Soviet system could have taken a more violent and frightening course. One man triggered the revolution. Despite his limitations, he deserves our praise.

What does it all mean?

We have every right to be optimistic about the human future.

A Visit to South America

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, October 1989

 

This summer I was in Argentina. I was in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. An adventure on the Amazon lured me. The ever-present political turmoil intrigued me. And the presence of two Humanistic Jewish communities in Montevideo and Buenos Aires aroused my missionary instincts.

The most troubled country I visited was Argentina. I had been there before, just after a military junta had overthrown Isabel Peron in a swift coup. Now I returned to the same nation immediately after the election of Saul Menem, a loyal disciple of Isabel’s husband, to the presidency of the republic. This election, took place amid the worst financial crisis the Argentine people have ever experienced. Rioting and the looting of stores had preceded my arrival.

I did not know what I would find when I took the hydrofoil from Uruguay to Buenos Aires on a cold rainy windy winter’s day. Would “the Big Apple” still be the exciting splendid city I still remembered? Would there be violence in the streets? Would the military allow a follower of Juan Peron to be the leader of the nation? Was the Jewish community safe or in danger?

My boat trip allowed me to reflect on the causes of the present Argentine distress. Once viewed as the wealthy land of cattle barons and gauchos, Argentina was now sinking, through economic distress, into the status of a third World country. And the cause of her problem was none other than the most charismatic leader of her history – Juan Peron.

When Peron came to power in 1946, he decided to maintain his power through the promotion of a political ideology which was half-fascist and half-socialist. The foundation of his power was a unique alliance between the military and the labor unions (“the shirtless ones”). This bonding was accompanied by an extreme nationalism which sought to dislodge all foreign control of the Argentine economy. It was reinforced by the personal skill of Evita, Peron’s wife, and the new welfare system which she promoted. Banks and basic industries were nationalized. Foreign investors, especially the British were driven out. New factories were built with state money and state control. Hundreds of thousands of farm workers left the pampas to find their fortunes in the new, jobs in the cities. The standard of living rose, especially for the working class, and especially for the friends of Peron.

So long as a devastated Europe provided a market for Argentine manufactured goods – as well as the more traditional meat and wheat – Peron was secure. Bu when Europe revived the easy markets disappeared. Exports dropped. But imports did not drop. The price of political power was that Peron could no reduce his subsidies to his labor allies. The imbalance grew, aggravated by the inefficiency and corruption of state industries. Inflation followed – at first slow, and then devastating. Even after the fall of Peron the military governments that followed could not reverse the devastation. The last military government, much addicted to terror and a sadistic fear of suspected leftists and liberals, made everything worse through a new free trade policy which bankrupted whatever private industry still survived. After years of protection, the fresh air of competition was lethal. Only borrowing money from America seemed to be the answer to these problems. The debt rose astronomically. And the economy collapsed.

When I arrived in Buenos Aires, the city was much shabbier than I remembered it. The grandeur of a city that had tried desperately to be like Paris was still there. But it was faded and was in need of repair. There is no money to fix anything. Potholes fill the streets. And all construction has stopped. Nothing is being built. The country is at an economic standstill. The currency is worthless. In February, 17 Argentine australes bought you one American dollar. In July, it took 700 australes to do the same work. Inflation is somewhere around 12,000% per annum right now. It is so bad that prices are never posted, credit cards are never accepted and banks pay 1,000% interest on short-run deposits. Middle-class people with fixed incomes are sinking into poverty. Working-class people have no money to buy food or clothing. Only the rich, with easy access to American dollars, seem to be weathering the storm. An underground economy of illegal transactions is thriving.

Right now, in most neighborhoods, the people are too exhausted and stunned to rebel. They are also waiting to see what the new government is going to do. Desperation breeds hope.

The government is the first democratically elected regime in sixty -years to follow another democratically -elected regime a major achievement in itself. For the past six years after the disastrous Falklands War unseated the military junta, the Radical Party – and their leader, Raul Alfonsin – tried valiantly to reverse the legacy of Peron and the military. But they failed. They did succeed in punishing many of the military murderers of innocent victims, including prominent generals who now linger in jail. Yet, they could not rescue the economy. Foreign investors shunned them. And state industries resisted their reforms.

Now the Peronists are back in power. The military detest them as much as they detest the Radicals. But they do not want to be responsible for the economy. They would prefer to -wait and see -what happens.

Menem, the new president, is an enigma. He is an Arab Muslim who converted to Catholicism so that he could be both a politician and president in a Catholic country. He was a mediocre governor of a poverty-stricken province and was famous for womanizing and public spats with his volatile wife. But he is a sportsman and a demagogue, with the oratorical power to reach the masses that Peron did. His campaign slogans were hardly suggestive of a rational approach to the economic disaster.

But he has surprised everybody. His amnesty for army officers still awaiting prosecution was predictable – as well as his proposal to pardon convicted generals. Even though he was jailed by the junta, he needs to appease the army and his constituency will not object. Yet his economic proposals are a total repudiation of the Peronist legacy. He has called for the privatization of state industries. This revolutionary proposal would mean the sale of Argentine industry to foreign investors. Peron must be turning over in his grave!

Privatization means foreign investment and foreign control. It is a slap in the face to all the Argentine chauvinists who supported self-sufficiency and the anti-British war. But there is no alternative. Without foreign money the Argentine economy cannot be made productive. Menem took a bold step that even his more liberal predecessor was afraid to take. Sometimes radical action is only tolerated in leaders who are seen as impeccably conservative and patriotic.

Amid this economic mess the Jews of Argentina are managing to survive. With 300,000 in the nation and 250,000 in Buenos Aires, they are primarily a capital city phenomenon. Some are rich. Most are middle-class and professional. Some are poor. Almost all of them were opposed to the Peronists and supported Alfonsin and the Radical Party. They viewed the Menem victory with great apprehension. Visions of new repressions, anti-Semitic outbursts and economic chaos were part of their anxiety.

Right now they are less afraid than they were. Given the number of Jewish victims of junta murders, the proposed amnesty is disturbing. But some Jews realize that the amnesty may be the price that needs to be paid to keep the army from taking over. The economic proposals of Menem are heartening and welcome. Like the rest of the middle-class they are waiting to see whether these reforms will indeed be realized.

Many Jews, like other Argentinians, have lost faith in the possibility that the legacy of Peron can be reversed. They want to leave. But where can they go?

Europe is now the favorite possibility. Since most Argentinians are of Spanish and Italian descent, they hope to find easy access to the new European Economic Community through a return to the lands of their ancestors. It is ironic that the great-grandchildren of the peasants who fled Spain and Italy because of poverty now want to go back to their homelands because they see those countries as richer than Argentina.

While Europe is a strong option for Jews, both North America and Israel have great appeal – the United States for economic reasons, Israel for ethnic and cultural reasons.

There is a significant Aliyah to Israel. Most of Argentine Jewry is overwhelmingly secular and Zionistic. The synagogue is a minor institution compared to the independent day schools and private community centers which dominate Jewish community life. The two biggest Jewish institutions in Buenos Aires are Club Hebraica and Club Hakvakh. They are unique to Argentina and other Latin American countries. They are a cross between a country club, a cultural center and a school. Religion is almost nonexistent in their programming. Zionism and Hebrew are dominant. In the more hostile environment of Argentina, Israel is more than a romantic attachment. It is a real alternative.

Despite the barriers of Catholic culture, assimilation is widespread and intermarriage is growing. Feeding on the fears of Argentine Jewry for its future are the newly arrived emissaries of ultra-Orthodoxy who offer themselves as the only guarantee of Jewish survival. Their influence is increasing, despite the secular orientation of most Argentinian Jews.

Humanistic Jews in Argentina now have their own association with their own magazine. Their president is Gregorio Klimovsky, a world-renowned professor of philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires. Many distinguished writers and posts have also joined the movement.

Their task is clear. While most Argentine Jews are secular, they are not self-consciously or positively secular. They simply see themselves as not religious. This negative posture makes them vulnerable to all the new conservative religious governments that provide a positive affirmation of Jewish identity. The job of the Association is to offer self-awareness to secular Jews and to give them humanistic ways to express their Jewish commitment. Certainly, the Zionist and Yiddishist heritage of Argentine Jewry can reinforce that task.

Despite the economic distress, I was inspired by my contact with our soul brothers and sisters in Argentina. They are eager for contact and sharing. And I assured them that we in North America are eager too.

The future of the Association will depend on the future of Argentine Jewry. And the future of Argentine Jewry will depend on the future of Argentina.

Can the economic disaster be reversed? Right now hope is the best policy available.

China After Tiananmen Square

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, August 1989

The massacre in Beijing will long remain in our memory. The shooting of thousands of unarmed and innocent civilians by a brutal army shattered our hopes for democracy in China. What initially seemed impossible happened.

The context of the killings only added to the despair. In other parts of the Communist world democracy was advancing. The new Supreme Soviet was meeting with free and open debate. The Communist Party had been defeated in Poland in a free election. The Hungarians were talking about a multi-party system. Until this repression it seemed as though the entire Communist world was moving inevitably to more and more freedom and democracy.

Visions of a world of universal detent and disarmament, induced by the Chinese reforms and the Gorbachev initiative, were clouded by the massacre. The fear arose that Communist conservatives would be emboldened by this success and would offer stronger resistance to reformers in other parts of the Marxist world. Holdout tyrannies, like East Germany and Czechoslovakia, might look at China and find support for their stand. Reluctant reformers in the Soviet Union would see the possibility of changing sides and winning. Rabid anti-Communists in the West would use the repression to revive their paranoia. The mood of optimism might be turned off by new, doubts and apprehensions.

How justified is this new pessimism?

There is no doubt about it. The conservatives, the octogenarians and their henchmen who have been opposed to the speed and sweep of the economic reformers, who have spent their lives in the midst of an authoritarian and Stalinist party structure, who are determined to maintain the supremacy of the Party at any cost – these men have won a victory. They have persuaded the commanders of the Army to serve their vested interests and to impose their minority will upon the people.

The forces of democracy are in danger and on the run. Deng Hsiao Ping, the senior leader who had sought to remove the octogenarians and the conservative bureaucrats from positions of power, has reaffirmed his Stalinist past by joining them. A new sinister Triumvirate of President Yang Shangkun, Prime Minister Li Peng and Securities Chief Qiao Shi have assumed power. And they may be perfectly willing to endure international rejection in order to maintain it.

The picture looks grim. Is there any hope to be extracted from the present situation?

I think there is.

This conservative regime no longer enjoys the support of the people. The deep hatred and anger that the shootings engendered will not quickly pass away. The sense of outrage has deprived the regime of the legitimacy that came so easily in the days of Mao. The “mandate of heaven” is gone. The people appear to be deeply alienated from the army and the “star” personalities of the regime. Sullen obedience is no key to the long-run future of any government. Without some form of active public cooperation no army and no police can ultimately prevail.

The massive demonstrations of students and workers for democratic reform indicate that the Chinese people are quite different from what they were ten years ago. The new freedom in the economic sphere has inevitably stimulated the demand for more freedom in the political sphere. The expectation level of both the educated elite and the urban masses has dramatically risen. What was once regarded as liberation from tyranny has now turned into tyranny. Lowering those expectations will not be easy.

The old Stalinist and behavioral assumption that people can be conditioned to endure any oppression has been -proven false by recent events in the Communist world. In both Eastern Europe and in China public resistance has revealed that human nature is not quite so malleable as social engineers would wish. As Erich Fromm has maintained, there is a limit to how much control people will endure. In the end the weakness of totalitarian regimes is that they bump up against the resentment of the unfulfilled masses. Democracy may indeed be an unstable form of government. But so is dictatorship.

It is quite clear that economic and political reform go together. Deng Hsiao Ping gave the Chinese some economic freedom without conceding any significant political liberties. He mocked Gorbachev, because Gorbachev attempted to use democracy and an open society to stimulate economic restructuring. But Deng’s contention that one can happen without the other is false. Market freedom spawns its own restless energy. The free exchange of goods leads eventually to the demand for the free exchange of ideas. And economic self-reliance strengthens the need for political self-reliance. Russia’s problem is that its economic gains will have no future without democratic reforms.

Progress is never a continuing set of forward steps. There are always many relapses. Quite often the onset of liberation is preceded by a last desperate attempt by diehard reactionaries to hold on to their power. The step-back ward is necessary to mobilize the people for the leap forward. The new repression in China will only serve to undermine what remaining credibility still adheres to the Communist Party. It may ultimately persuade even the reluctant to rebel. There is a hope yet that, sometime soon, the tanks in Tiananmen Square will be replaced by a new statue       of the Goddess of Democracy.

Massacre in Rwanda

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, September 1994

Tutsi. It has the sound of some bizarre tribal name for Africa. It is also the name of a holocaust. Some 500,000 Tutsis have been massacred by their Hutu neighbors in a faraway land called Rwanda. Thirty years ago the murder of Africans by Africans would not have been deemed important. But in the age of television and Third World awareness, the Tutsis have turned into real people. One-eighth of their nation was destroyed by beatings, burning and hacking. The horror of their dismembered and floating bodies was captured on film and displayed itself on the television screens of the world.

The Tutsis are black. But they are not Bantus like most of the blacks in Central Africa. They are Nilotics, former residents of the upper Nile. They are taller, thinner and with narrower noses than their Bantu neighbors. Four hundred years ago they invaded Rwanda, conquered the native Bantus and pygmies and settled down as a governing aristocracy. The symbol of their culture was herds of cattle and the sign of their power was Bantu obedience. Like their fellow Nilotics, the Masai who settled in what today is Kenya, they saw themselves as superior to their Bantu subjects.

The native Bantus in the Tutsi kingdoms of Rwanda and Burundi were the oppressed Hutus. They came to hate the Tutsis. But they did not have the power to overthrow them. Although Tutsis and Hutus were both black, they were and are physically distinct. The Hutus are much shorter, especially because they mixed with the aboriginal pygmies whom they had conquered and oppressed. The pygmies fled Into the rain forest where they still remain. Over the years Tutsis and Hutus lived together as lords and servants. In time they came to speak the same language. But the national, social and physical differences persisted.

In the nineteenth century the Europeans arrived In the form of Germans. The Tutsi kingdoms became German protectorates. After the First World War, the Tutsi kingdoms were taken by the Allied victors from the Germans and given to the Belgians. Both the Germans and the Belgians brought European soldiers, missionaries and culture to Rwanda and Burundi. They also trained many blacks to be teachers, administrators and military auxiliaries. In choosing to train collaborators both the Germans and the Belgians preferred the Tutsis. They saw them as a handsome race and ma desirable as allies.

When Belgium gave up its colonial empire the early 1960’s, she granted independence to the Congo (Zaire) – and to Rwanda and Burundi. But Independence left the Tutsis a vulnerable position. They were only 15% of the population in both states. They were hated and resented by the Hutus. The Belgians were no longer there to support them. The government of Zaire, a large nation of Bantus on the West, sympathized with their Bantu brothers.

In both Rwanda and Burundi, Hutu rebellions broke out reinforced by overpopulation and the struggle for land. In Burundi the Tutsi minority maintained their power. But in Rwanda the Tutsis lost their power.

The tables were turned.  Hutus now assaulted Tutsis. Hundreds of thousands were killed. Many Tutsis fled eastward to Uganda, where the black population was less Bantu and more Nilotic. With the help of the Ugandan government, the president of which was Tutsi, they organized a resistance movement to regain their power. They called it the Rwanda Patriotic Front. They invaded Rwanda with the specific aim of overthrowing Hutu power. The Hutu army retreated before them.

The Hutu government of Rwanda was desperate. Extremists took over. Using the death of their president in plane crash as a pretext, they mobilized the Hutu masses against the Tutsi invaders with horror stories of Tutsi Intentions to kill all Hutus. Ironically, the Tutsi soldiers did not Massacre Hutus. But the Hutu masses, inflamed by government propaganda and intimidated by local militias, turned on their Tutsi neighbors and mercilessly killed a half million of them.

In the end, the massacre did not help the Hutus. Their armies retreated to Zaire. And two million Hutus, fearful of Tutsi vengeance, fled with them. Today half the Hutu population of Rwanda lives hopelessly as refugees in Zaire. Their enemies are no longer Tutsis. They are starvation and cholera.

What does all this mean?

It means that ethnic holocausts can still take place without any significant intervention from the outside world. The French arrival was self-serving. They were trying to rescue their Hutu allies and failed.

It means that Africans will oppress Africans and that Africans will kill Africans without any significant provocation from white colonialists. African nations left to their own devices do not have a better moral record than their European oppressors.

It means that militant nationalism is counter-productive when two nations share the same territory. Separating Hutus and Tutsis is not physically or economically possible.

It means that the United States has failed again morally. As the leading power in the world, it needed to mobilize its allies and the United Nations to rescue a vulnerable minority from extermination. The Tutsis have a morally ambivalent history. But they do not deserve to be massacred.

It means that we, as Jews, the most dramatic victims of racial holocaust, must do whatever we can do to insure that the perpetrators and organizers of this massacre are brought to Justice before an appropriate international tribunal. Such a crime can no longer be swept under the rug of history.

The Future of American Jewry

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, May/June 1994

What is the future of American Jewry? That is no idle question. Because what the Birmingham Temple and Humanistic Judaism need to do to guarantee their future depends on the character of the Jewish community they will be serving.

Profound changes are taking place. They have been going on for a long time. They are, most likely, irreversible. We are living with their consequences right now.

The first change is intermarriage. Priestly and rabbinic Judaism forbade intermarriage for both religious and racial reasons. But the modern urban world has made this ban unworkable and unenforceable. Increasing numbers of Jews choose to marry people they love, regardless of whether they are Jewish or not. The endless condemnations of rabbis make absolutely no difference. In a free and open society cross-cultural unions are inevitable.

The major consequence of intermarriage is not so much that intermarrieds choose to give up their Jewish identity or to leave the Jewish community. It is the “de-ethnicization” of American Jewry. The deep ethnic roots of American Jews in the Yiddish experience of Eastern Europe are fast disappearing. The ethnic roots of increasing numbers of American Jews are as much Anglo-Saxon or Irish as they are Ashkenazic. The ethnic flavor of American Jewry will be hard to maintain in the face of Jews with multi-ethnic backgrounds.

Two forces are pulling in opposite directions in America. One force is the power of Zionism and Israel which dramatizes the ethnic dimension of Jewish identity, with its strong appeal to a national self-image, national culture and national language. Zionism has helped to re-ethnicize many Jews. The other force is the power of intermarriage which tends to universalize the Jewish community, diffusing Jewish ethnic memories in a sea of competing and complementary memories. The child with a Yiddish grandmother and an Irish grandmother may indeed be Jewish. But he is not ethnically Jewish in the same way as a child with two Yiddish grandmothers. What is happening in Israel is the opposite of what is happening in America.

The second change is the shrinking of the extended all-encompassing family and the emergence of the individual. For many American Jews permanent indissolveable relations are things of the past. More than one marriage, more than one career, more than one residence are commonplace. Mobility is the name of the game. The serenity or boredom of unchanging conditions are gone.

Jews of the past were burdened by the intensity of their connections. For many of them the demands of family and community were too oppressive, too guilt-producing, too intrusive for comfort. They often fled them to breathe the fresh air of privacy and aloneness. But, now the tables have been turned. The big anonymous city of individuals, separated from parents and children, is a cold and cruel environment. They crave connection. They search for community. In many cases they will even join communities with ideologies they do not believe in because they are desperate for connection, nurturing, and acceptance. The children of Jewish affluence are, in particular, vulnerable

The third change is the power of feminism. Society is being transformed by the entry of women into all professions and into all the chambers of political decision. The old male chauvinism of the Jewish world has collapsed, except in the Orthodox enclaves. The face of the American Jewish leadership is changing Even traditional women are choosing to do traditional things that only men did before, from wearing yarmulkes to lifting Torahs. The change is so revolutionary that it defines the boundary between the Jewish establishment – whether Reform, Conservative or Secular – and the fundamentalist dissenters who repudiate the Enlightenment. Feminism is creating this unbridgeable gap between the Jewish world that embraces female equality and the Jewish world where men still rule exclusively. It is a dichotomy that will only expand with time.

The fourth change is the “demacherization” of Jewish communities. With the arrival of capitalism and emancipation the rabbis lost their political power. They were replaced by “machers”, successful Jewish businessmen who became the new leaders of the Jewish world. “Machers” might be bossy and undemocratic; but they were generous with their time, talent, devotion and money. They had a strong sense of community commitment and responsibility.

But the last two decades have failed to produce new “machers.” The children of “machers” tend to be yuppie professionals who prefer the pursuit of personal fulfillment to community work. The “next” generation is less interested in building and strengthening community institutions. Jewish organizations all over America are worried about where the necessary army of devoted workers and leaders are going to come from. A hedonistic culture of affluence makes public work less exciting than private adventure.

The fifth change is the ideological free-for-all that an educated autonomous Jewish population inevitably creates. The world of ideas is a smorgasbord of choices, ranging from atheism to reincarnation, from rationalism to mystical spirituality. Every individual puts together his or her unique combination of choices as a personal philosophy of life. The endless variety of choices makes any set of denominational labels obsolete even before they are proclaimed Jewish diversity is like American diversity – an amorphous collection of shifting personal opinions.

How do we need to respond to all these changes and their consequences?

We need to be less ethnic and more universal. A Jewish people with diverse ethnic roots has to place less emphasis on nationalism and more emphasis on the planetary importance of Jewish identity. The Jewish strategies of North America and Israel may not always coincide.

We need to be a family to people who crave family connection and support. We must be the family of choice that works where the family of inheritance has failed. The importance of the new            groups that have emerged in our congregation will continue to grow.

We need to be open to all the possibilities of female leadership. Women rabbis will most likely be a dynamic force in the Judaism of the twenty-first century.

We need to train our young people for community service. A congregation is more than a service center. It is a place where the ethical virtues of commitment and devotion are cultivated. We need to never lose sight of our humanistic message and our ideological focus. In a world of endless diversity of beliefs it is convenient to be all things to all people. Our strength is the clarity of our philosophy of life. In the emerging Jewish world the Jewish ideological realities will correspond less to Orthodox, Conservative and Reform. It will more easily fit a loose division of fundamentalism, New Age thinking, and rational humanism. In such a world we have a good chance to embrace many new seekers of the “truth” if we have something real, consistent and significant to say.

The Lubavitcher Messiah

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, August 1994

The Rebbe is dead. Or is he?

Hundreds of Lubavitcher Hasidim are waiting breathlessly for his resurrection. They cannot accept his death. They await his return.

Whoever would imagine that the death of a Jewish cult leader would make front page news seven days in a row. But the Lubavitchers are no ordinary cult. Next to the state of Israel, they are the most successful Jewish organization in the world. Now 250,000 strong, they have quintupled their numbers over the past 40 years and entered into the mainstream of Jewish life. In 1951 when the Rebbe took over, they were a bizarre Jewish sect that few Jews even knew about. Today their emissaries cover the globe and negotiate with the rulers of the world.

Hasidism has been around for almost 300 years. Emerging in southeast Poland at a time of political and economic devastation, it gave hope to hope-hungry Jews. God would send his Messiah to rescue his people only when they loved him enough. Observing the commandments was not enough. But observance with heartfelt devotion was the key to salvation. Hasidism began with singing and dancing with fervor and shaking, and ended up with miracle working Rebbes who were the dispensers of supernatural power. Devotional leaders founded devotional dynasties. Each dynasty turned into a cult of the personality. If the Rebbe was not God, he was, at least, the deputy of God on earth. He was the very gate to Heaven. Devotion went up. Power came down.

Zalman Schneersohn of Lubavitch was unique. While most Hasidim came from Galeia and the Ukraine, he hailed from Lithuania, the homeland of Hasidim haters. Litvaks almost invariably denounced Hasidism as craziness and heresy. But Zalman the Litvak became a Hasidic Rebbe. Being a Litvak, he tried to give his movement a slight intellectual twist. Habad is the acronym for three Hebrew words that denote wisdom. The Lubavitchers became Hasidism with a Litvak edge.

In 1957, the Lubavitch movement was in exile. Devastated by Communism and the Holocaust, its leadership was in exile in Brooklyn, its followers depressed, its numbers diminished. The old Rebbe died that year and was succeeded by his son-in-law who was also descended from the original Zalman. The new Rebbe was brilliant, charismatic and creative. Familiar with the secular world as an engineer graduate of the Sorbonne in Paris, he combined Hasidic piety, intellectual mysticism and a missionary zeal to reach the ‘lost’ Jews. Instead of despising them he went out to recruit them. The result is a powerful religious empire spanning six continents and a cadre of thousands of dedicated workers who, for an economic pittance, go forth to conquer the Jewish world. In time, some of these devotees would proclaim their Rebbe the Messiah.

What is the significance of all this Messianic fervor?

It means that all these old ideas about Messiahs and resurrections, which liberal Jews assumed were fast fading away in Jewish life, were wrong. They are alive and well. After four centuries of the age of science, fundamentalism is still strong. And the Jews are as much a part of that world as the Christians and Muslims.

It means that the “Jews for Jesus” and the Lubavitchers are on the same wave length. Both believe in salvation. Both believe in Messiahs. Both believe in resurrection. In the end, whether you prefer Jesus or the Rebbe, the mind-set is the same.

It means that rationality is having a hard time in Crown Heights.             The smartest strategy is to keep postponing the coming of the Messiah. But true believers want the Messiah right now. The rub is that he may not show up. And if he doesn’t there is always the risk of mass disillusionment. However, the history       of religion has demonstrated that true believers always find the perfect excuse. Perhaps the Rebbe did not find the world worthy of salvation.

It means that a lot of Jewish energy is being devoted to harmful illusion. Believing that everybody’s life can be rescued by a single person is a dangerous conviction. It undermines self-reliance and turns people into childlike dependents. The coming of the Lubavitchers is no great boon for the Jewish people. Jewish identity survival has no humanistic value if Jewish passion means the abduction of reason, autonomy and self-esteem.

It means that a movement built around the cult of personality needs a personality. It may be the case that the dead Rebbe will serve that purpose. But that has not been the Hasidic tradition.         Schneersohn designated no heir. Internal bickering has now resulted in major confrontations. The danger of splits is real. If no new charismatic Rebbe shows up, can the movement hold together? Ironically, the strong point of the Lubavitchers, their reverence for their leader, is also their weak point.

What this whole fiasco adds up to is the dichotomy in Jewish life. Humanistic Judaism looks at the Jewish experience and arrives at a totally different conclusion from that of the Lubavitchers. They see Messiahs. We find the need for self-reliance. They see divine determination. We find human determination. What we have to remember is that our style may not be as dramatic, our           songs may not be as lively, but our message is a lot healthier. Messiahs have always  been an enormous disappointment. “Jews for the Rebbe” are, after all, in the same delusionary world as Jews for Jesus.

A Humanistic Jewish Education

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, January 1977

 

‘Education’ is a sacred Jewish word. ‘Jewish education’ is a sacred Jewish phrase.

In Jewish social mythology no ethnic group values formal education more than Jews. Going to school is so universally Jewish that not going to school requires an apology.

Jewish education began with the study of the Torah and the Talmud. But it transcended that parochial beginning and moved on to physics, chemistry, psychology and the humanities. The Jews became in the twentieth century the arbiters of intellectual achievement.

The secular state school became a ‘sacred’ institution for European and American Jews. It was the most reliable road to social advancement. What Jews could not achieve through pedigree and inherited wealth they achieved through certificates of education.

Jewish children night complain about the boredom and tedium of public school. But they never questioned its value and its power. Only the recent glut in the market of educational degrees has aroused a new skepticism.

The emergence of secular education created a new institution called the ‘religion school’. The ‘religion school’ was a kind of academic garbage can. It taught all those peripheral and denominational subjects that the public school was unwilling or unable to teach.

To Jewish children ­ and to Jewish parents – the power distinction was very clear. Public schools had the power to make you either a social winner or a social loser. Their rewards were economically significant – and their punishments were terrifying. They had the ‘with it’ prestige of the future.

Sunday Schools had only the power of the past. They were concessions to residual guilt, fading nostalgia and the pain of persistent anti-Semitism. Their rewards were economically insignificant (except for Bar Mitzvah and Confirmation) and their punishments were ludicrous (especially with the vanishing of the afterlife.) As educational places they suffered from pleading postures, resentful students and indifferent parents.

Sunday Schools and religion schools only work when they have purposes which the society deems important to personal success – and when the parents who require their children to attend recognize this importance. If the parents do not recognize that the religion school possesses worthwhile power then the children – who generally read their parents very well – will not.

Theoretically, a humanistic Jewish School is committed to a vital training program. Ethical education is the acquisition of ethical skills which children need for personal survival and success. Cooperative, generous self-reliant and rational people are usually more successful than their opposites in fulfilling their basic needs.

The purpose of a humanistic Jewish school is to help its students become more cooperative, more generous, more self-reliant and more rational – using whatever is relevant in the Jewish experience to reinforce these values. Since it meets at odd hours – weekday afternoons and Sunday mornings – and since the parents are the most important authorities in the lives of their children, the school is viable only if the parents make it viable.

Humanistic Jewish parents – who are behaviorally sincere – act in the following way.

  1. They find out what their children are studying in the Temple school and continue the discussion at home. They inquire about specific information and specific attitudes. They never settle for meaningless vague questions like ‘Did you enjoy Sunday School?’
  2. They never settle for a babysitting service. They insist that whatever time their children invest in the Temple school (including the Mitzvah and Confirmation programs) be related to the important task of character development. They are less interested in having their children temporarily amused or entertained and more interested in seeing a long-run improvement in self-esteem and ethical behavior.
  3. They do not treat Jewish activity as only vehicles to group identity. When they celebrate holidays together with their children, they choose ceremonies, readings and statements which strengthen humanistic values.
  4. They assume responsibility for the character development of their children. They are not afraid to make demands when demands are appropriate. They know that reliability and the completion of tasks are valuable moral skills.
  5. They let their children know frequently why humanistic Judaism is important to them and why ethical training is as significant to ultimate success as secular academic work.

Parents are ethical role models. So are teachers. They have to work together.

Shulamit Aloni

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, May/June 1993

SHUALMIT ALONI IS COMING! YOU WILL NOT WANT TO MISS HER!

Aloni is the leader of the Meretz coalition in the Israeli Knesset She is the controversial Minister of Education and Culture, whose defense of a secular state has aroused the passionate hostility of the ultra-Orthodox. Over the past few months a public battle has been waged between liberals and religious conservatives over her membership in the Israeli government. The Orthodox want her head. The moderates see her as the one guarantee that the present regime will defend civil liberties and begin to dismantle the state support of traditional religion. This controversy has been featured on the front pages of most newspapers and given Aloni international fame.

Shula is a native Israeli who grew up in Jerusalem. Her early years were the formative years of the Jewish state. Reared in the secular Zionism of the Zionist pioneers, she hoped that the state of Israel would fulfill the humanistic dreams of the founders. To her dismay the Labor government of David Ben-Gurion compromised these ideals for political expediency and turned over the regulation of family life to the Orthodox. Her response to this betrayal was not the cynical resignation of most Labor politicians, but open defiance. She committed her life to politics, to feminism, to personal freedom and to the defense of the liberal democratic tradition of the modern Enlightenment.

This defiance was not easy. Given her talents and charisma, she could have, with little effort, achieved political power If had been willing to compromise the Integrity of her ideals. Her punishment was that she was banished by the leaders of the Labor Party to the periphery of Israeli political Golda Meir, in particular, was incensed her disobedience and by her embarrassing persistence. Golda, as Aloni points out, saw herself as the ultimate Jewish mother of the Jewish nation, whose children were not as wise as she was. When she encountered political resistance, especially within her own camp, her response could be ruthless. Golda believed that pursuing the cause of either feminism or civil liberties was a harmful division from the main task of Unifying the Israeli people in defense of the Jewish state against the Arab aggressors.

Shula expressed her defiance in many ways. She wrote books and newspaper articles and hosted a provocative radio show. She counseled the marriage and divorce victims of Orthodox law, finding creative ways for secular Jews to avoid Orthodox jurisdiction. She became a consumer advocate, mobilizing thousands of followers to press for domestic reform. She was elected to Knesset where she remained, for a long time, a sole advocate for women’s rights and Separation of religion and government. She organized a new political party, the Citizens Rights Movement (Ratz), which provided a clear public voice for the elementary personal freedom which we in America take for granted. For over a decade she was treated as a political pariah, a solo prophetic voice in a sea of cynics and chauvinists. But, in the last election, her party helped to create a coalition of the liberal left – Ratz and Mapam and Shinui – which named itself Merétz and went on to win ten seats in the Knesset. With Meretz, the Labor Party and Rabin were able to unseal the Likud and to achieve political supremacy. Aloni’s reward was the Ministry of Education and Culture, a crucial ministry which had been under Orthodox control in the previous government and which had wrought havoc with the secular curriculum of the state schools. The battle lines were now drawn, especially when she proclaimed that feministic values needed to re-enter the Israeli school system. She has now become the chief target of Orthodox hate. Even Rabin has wavered in support of her and has tried to censor her.’ Power has brought her no relief from continuous assault.

Now Shula is more to us than a brave Jewish defender of freedom and human dignity. She is the longtime friend of the Birmingham Temple and one of the founders of the Humanistic Jewish movement in Israel.

We first met her in 1979 when she consented to come from Israel to be our special guest at the annual meeting of the Society for Humanistic Judaism. Her appearance was transforming. The rapport between her and her American audience was electric. We loved her from the start. And she loved us.

In 1981, enthusiastic about the prospects For Humanistic Judaism in Israel, she helped to organize a dialogue between secular Jews from America and secular Jews from Israel at Shefayim, a seaside kibbutz north of Tel Aviv. Many important Israeli intellectuals and writers attended. Within two years the Israeli Association for Secular Humanistic Judaism was born.

Shula’s coming is part of our celebration of our Temple’s thirtieth birthday anniversary. One of the best things that has happened to us in the past thirty years is that we made the Shula connection. Her participation in our celebration is testimony to the fact that Humanistic Judaism has an important part to play In the Jewish world.

Bosnia – US to Intervene?

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, January 1996

Should American troops go to Bosnia?

Many Americans are having heated arguments about this question. After all, there is the risk that American soldiers will be trapped in a civil war that no outside force has the power to stop. Bosnia is not Vietnam. But it is also not Haiti.

The tragedy of Bosnia is the tragedy of Yugoslavia. Many centuries ago a single nation was split into three parts by religion. First the missionaries of Christianity divided the Slavic tribes of Yugoslavia into Catholics and Orthodox. The Croats became Catholics. The Serbs, who spoke the same language as the Croats, became Orthodox. When the Ottoman Muslim Turks conquered the area, many Serbs and Croats chose Islam. Most of the new Muslims lived in the Turkish province of Bosnia. In time the division was aggravated by literacy. The Croats wrote the language in Latin letters. The Serbs wrote the language in Cyrillic letters. And the Muslims sometimes resorted to Arabic script. What had been one became three. And, as we know, there is no hatred like the hatred inspired by religious faith.

The Serbs were the first to achieve independence. After the defeat of their Austrian and Turkish enemies in the First World War, the Serbs created Yugoslavia. The new country brought the Croatians and Muslims under Serbian domination. The forced union did not work. The arrival of Hitler and the German army in the Second World War split the new nation into a Croatian and Serbian part. With the help of the Nazis, the Croatians and their Muslim allies carried out a war of extermination against their Serbian enemies. Together with fifty thousand Jews, over six hundred thousand Serbs perished. The Serbs never forgot this genocide.

After the Second World War, the Russians and their Communist allies decided recreate Yugoslavia. For thirty-five years th federation” was preserved by the iron will a Communist dictator called Tito. Tito tried to secularize the country and encouraged the Serbs, Croats and Muslims to intermarry. But he continued to preserve Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia as sub-units of Yugoslavia. He had no alternative since the official party line did not correspond to the strong nationalist loyalties and hatreds which survived despite propaganda. The death of Tito and a world recession undid the bonds of the fragile Yugoslav nation. War was inevitable because the boundaries Tito had drawn did not correspond to the ethnic realities. The Serbs were the first aggressors, egged on by painful memories, arrogant chauvinism and the ambitions of a former Communist leader, the Serbian president Milosevic. Since the aggression in 1991, four years of war have produced three hundred thousand dead and three million refugees. And Bosnia he turned into a devastated land. Along the way genocide (euphemistically called “ethnic cleansing”) became an ordinary weapon of war.

Despite the moral outrage of the terrible genocide and the threat to peace in the Balkans, neither America, its European allies, nor the United Nations were willing or able to stop the war. America was absorbed by domestic concerns and saw no vested interest in intervention.

And Russia prolonged the war by offering its support to the Serbs. Even the nearby Germans, French and British were ineffective because their so-called unity was only a sham.

But now Clinton has decided to intervene. After all these years of indifference, his action is hardly humanitarian. It is clearly political. He needs to establish his credibility in the face of Republican victories and an aggressive Republican Congress. Having long neglected foreign affairs, he has now concluded that becoming a world leader will enhance his chances of staying in power after November 1996. What followed was the impossible “Treaty of Dayton.”

Right action often emerges from questionable motivation. The intervention in Bosnia is one of them. Regardless of Clinton’s agenda, it will provide relief to a desolate population, enhance world law and order and serve the vested interest of the United States.

World law and order depends on the power and initiative of America. There is no democratic nation able to assume the necessary role of world disciplinarian. The United Nations suffers from the disabilities of too many conflicting agendas and too many vetoes. With the fall of Communism and the balance of power provided by the Cold War, the alternative to American resolve is chaos. Worse wars than the war in Bosnia will ensue if ‘outlaw’ nations realize that there are no penalties for bad behavior.

The vested interest of America lies in a stable international economy. That economy depends on restraints being imposed on aggressive nationalism. A continuing war in Bosnia will bring the Russians and fundamentalist Muslims into the fray. It could unleash a broader war in the Balkans and destabilize fledgling democracies in the area. Anti-democratic militaristic states are more interested in arms rather than trade.

The “Treaty of Dayton” provided for the restoration of Croatia to its pre-war boundaries. It also provided for the preservation of Bosnia as a “unified” state with two parts, one Serbian and one Croatian-Muslim. It is not clear that this “new” Bosnia will be viable. In the end Bosnia may have to be divided between the Serbs and Croats, with the Muslim state becoming a protectorate of Croatia. A multiethnic Bosnia may be more illusion than reality. But, as a first step, the treaty is appropriate.

There is always the risk that Americans will be killed. But the alternative of non-intervention is worse. Educating the American people to this reality is the task of the Clinton administration.

Note on sources: The Jewish Humanist  was the monthly newsletter of The Birmingham Temple. The periodical Humanistic Judaism was the quarterly journal of the Society for Humanistic Judaism. The Center for New Thinking was Wine’s adult learning program beyond Humanistic Judaism. Selections from Wine’s books are appropriately cited.
All texts, photos, audio and video are © by the Literary Estate of Sherwin Wine, whose custodian is the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism – North American Section. All rights reserved.