Honey and Poi is a history of my synagogue in Hawai‘i. I helped research it and Matt, my collaborator and friend, wrote it. In a short column for USCJ’s online magazine Journeys we talk about being Jewish in Hawai‘i and the lessons we learned about keeping our community strong and vital far from traditional American centres of Judaism on the East Coast. Check it out!
Tag: Judaism
George Washington’s Letter to the Jews
I recently returned from a trip to New England to visit the affines. While there, my children received a gift from one of the aunts — a printed copy of George Washington’s letter to the Hebrew congregation in Newport. I think most American Jews, like me, have heard about this letter and understand its importance: It makes clear that Jews were in America before it was the United States, and were welcomed into our polity by perhaps its most famous founding father. A copy of the text of the letter is available at the website of the synagogue it was addressed to (they also have the text of the letter to which Washington was responding) , and there’s a more scrupulously sourced version online as well. This Fourth of July, it’s worth reading not just for what it says about Washington or Jews, but what it says about our country and its ideals.
The first thing to notice about the letter is that it is very short! So it doesn’t take too long to get through. The central sentences of letter read:
“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
Today my children and I take it for granted that we citizens of our country and that we enjoy the exercise of our rights naturally, without the indulgent toleration of a religious majority… at least more or less. And our privilege in this regard is not shared by everyone in this country, much less the world. The United States, like most institutions, fails to live up to its ideals. Holidays like the Fourth of July are a time for us to remind ourselves of our ideals and to commit ourselves to realizing them. America is not and probably has never been a place where the government gives to bigotry no action and to persecution no assistance. But this has always been our goal, and it is worth continuing to fight for. Happy fourth of July!
A drash on Korach
(I read this at my shul when I gave the drash this week)
Once there was a professor of anthropology at Harvard named Clyde Kluckhohn (not Jewish) who was a specialist on the Indians of the American Southwest. It was the 1950s, when Americans were richer and less cosmopolitan than we are today. Every summer wealthy East Coast professors and captains of industry would fly out to Kluckhohn’s ranch in New Mexico, which seemed incredibly exotic to them. He would throw cocktail parties and his wife Florence would prepare delicious little finger sandwiches full of a meat that was not quite fish and not quite chicken. Every year, a guest would invariably ask what it was, and Kluckhohn would loudly announce “rattlesnake!” At which point, at least one guest would vomit. “And that, my friend,” Kluckhohn would say, “is the power of culture.”
The power of culture: nothing physically had changed about the sandwiches. Only the guests’ interpretation of them had changed. There is nothing naturally disgusting about rattlesnake finger sandwiches — many cultures eat snake. It was only by growing up in their White American culture that his guests were socialized to believe rattlesnake was disgusting.
This shabbat we find ourselves faced with a similar situation: is this parshah chicken, or is it rattlesnake? Continue reading “A drash on Korach”
Edward Sapir, Genuine Culture, and Judaism
Although most people know me as an anthropologist or blogger, I’m also active in the Jewish community here in Honolulu. A while ago I gave a drash in which I drew on the work of Edward Sapir. Natan Margalit recently blogged his thoughts on my drash and some of its implications. So head on over there to read more about it!
Alex Golub 