Wokeness - A Jewish Perspective

For all the recent hyperventilating about Wokeness, I’m not quite sure what it means.  Full disclosure:  I tilt left, listen to NPR, and watch MSNBC.  I guess that makes me Woke, or at least, Woke-curious.  Without a doubt, Marjorie Taylor Greene would question my manliness.  And who could blame her?

I want to discuss Wokeness and its related conspiracy theories as they bear on Jewish history.  But first, I need to deliver a short d’var cabala, which I hope will explain where I’m coming from.

To put it mildly, the study of cabala is hopelessly mysterious.  When I try to learn about it, my brain starts to melt and drip out of my ears.  So please forgive me if this makes as little sense as anything else I say.

Our sages have been ambivalent about the dissemination of cabala into wider circles.  Although there is a consensus that cabala can lead one to higher levels of piety, it can also bring about insanity, or worse yet, apostacy.  Some recommend that it shouldn’t be studied at all until one has reached the age of thirty, preferably after a solid grounding in Talmud and Midrash.  Others insist this knowledge should be kept secret and forever hidden from your garden variety Jew.

There is one aspect of cabala that was considered appropriate for general discussion by no less than Rabbi Yom Tov Heller.  Not that this topic was any less esoteric than the others; rather, since the Greeks had also discovered this notion, independently of Jewish scripture, there was no putting the matza ball back into the chicken soup.

I am talking, of course, about gilgul – the transmigration of souls.  In essence, gilgul is a kind of reincarnation.  It’s not quite the same as what Hindus and Buddhists believe, where upon death the soul is reborn into another living creature.  Rather, as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz explained in “The Thirteen Petalled Rose”: when you die, your soul is split up into a bunch of pieces which merge with pieces from other souls to form completely new souls.  Significantly, the soul is not identical with the self.  Or something like that.

All this explains why there is so much redundancy in history.  As my esteemed mentor, the shul’s excellently credentialed ritual vice president, puts it: “There is nothing new under the sun.”

Now, back to the topic at hand.

Being a creeping socialist pinko, I am horrified by much of today’s political discourse.  To be clear, I am not equating QANON and the MAGA movement to the Nazis, who were uniquely evil.  Still, much of today’s Fascist-adjacent bloviation doesn’t seem that different from the National Socialist propaganda of the 1920’s and 30’s.  Heaven forfend that I call any of those crybaby snowflakes racist, but to quote the popular modern philosopher Bart Simpson: “Fox News: not racist, but number one with racists.” 

I don’t know if the shul’s library has a copy of “Mein Kampf”, but I can lend you mine if you’d like.  Hitler was obsessed with the Jewish “wirepullers” who were corrupting culture and impoverishing the true Germans.  These days, we have George Soros, a survivor of the Nazi occupation of Hungary, being accused of the same thing.  But to quote Tucker Carlson: “Funny, Soros doesn’t look Jewish.”

Carlson didn’t really say that.  The ChatGPT software I’m using snuck that in somehow.

One of the Nazis most effective weapons was to stoke outrage at minorities – most famously, but not limited to, Jews. Immigrants were also a favorite target. Whatever it is that’s bothering you, it’s because of those folks over there.  Any deviant will do.

These days, one of the most helpless targets is the transgender community. Granted, the concept of gender not matching biological sex is difficult to understand.  One reading of Genesis 1:27 – “male and female He created them” – suggests that this an impossibility, although I reject that reading.  When a human embryo is developing inside the mother, the first measurable changes related to biological sex take place at thirty days.  However, the analogous changes in the brain do not take place until several weeks later.  It’s not hard to imagine that something in this complicated process causes these events to be out of synch.  There are also several biological conditions such as Androgen Insensitivity and Swyer Syndrome that blur the lines of sex and gender.  Nonetheless, ignorance and intolerance are fomenting ever more oppression onto transgender youth, who are uniquely vulnerable to bullying, depression, and suicide.  It is unconscionable that red state legislatures are banning gender affirming care for minors.

It has been very popular these days to focus on which restrooms transgender folks are using.  Similarly, the anti-Woke faithful have their panties in a twist over a group of high school students called Furries who identify as cats and insist that schools provide boxes of kitty litter in the restrooms.  This is obviously a preposterous lie, but there are folks who believe this nonsense.

But for the sake of argument, what if there were some kids who wanted to pee-pee and poo-poo in kitty litter?  Maybe this is just the libertarian in me, but who cares? Surely, it’s kind of strange.  I did come across something in a collection of responsa that seems to address this issue, albeit obliquely.

Bear with me, the surviving text is somewhat damaged, and the editor warns that some of the English translation is conjectural, but it does seem to be on point.

There was a small shtetl in a remote corner of the Pale of Settlement.  For years, there were exactly ten Jewish men, the absolute minimum for a minyan.  At some point, the elderly village tailor died, and they were now one short of a quorum.  Nowadays, this is sometimes resolved by opening the curtain of the ark, with the Torah counting as the tenth man.  That is not universally accepted today, and it was unheard of back then.

However, there was another workaround available.  Some rabbis will count a boy as part of a minyan if he is studying to become a Bar Mitzvah and wearing tefillin.  And this is where the text is a bit corrupted.  It seems that the boy in question was what we could call “special needs”, and his father used to keep him on a leash to keep him from running off.

This led to a problem.  When we wrap ourselves in tefillin, there’s not supposed to be anything between the leather straps and our skin.  That’s why I always take my watch off.  Some even remove wedding bands.

Somehow, the boy’s leash or collar was getting in the way, and there were some concerns.  And if the translation is correct, some of the minyanaires complained that the boy would bark and relieve himself like a dog.

A question was addressed to Rabbi Shalom ben Yitzchak of Warsaw and included a request that the boy be forbidden from acting like a dog.  Rabbi Shalom wrote back that he could only find one ruling – by Rabbi Avraham ben Aharon – that was remotely related.  He said it would be better if the leash were removed before the tefillin was put on, but he did not address the boy’s barking or relieving himself at all.

Another full disclosure:  I have dressed up as Esther to read from the megillah, which seems to have been a violation of Deuteronomy 22:5. Rest assured that right now I am wearing very manly underwear. Having gotten that out of the way, let me address another harmless, marginal group that has become the target of bigotry and hatred.  The seditionist Proud Boys have taken to stalking drag queens, and some state legislatures are urinating on the First Amendment by restricting drag queen story hours. And why? Well, there might be some grooming going on.  Perhaps George Santos is the only drag queen these folks have ever met, which may or may not justify their concern.  But this seems quite reminiscent of the Nazis warning that Jewish men were deflowering Aryan maidens.  To paraphrase Martin Niemoller: “First they came for the drag queens, and I did not speak out – because I was not a drag queen.”

I’m reading a great book: “The Rise and Destiny of the German Jew” by Jacob R. Marcus.  It was published in 1934, which was after Hitler had come to power, but before the Nazi extermination of Jews had become efficient.  To be sure, there were plenty of antisemitic laws in place, but the concentration camps held mostly the socialists and trade unionists that Niemoller did not speak out for.  Interestingly, Marcus apologizes for focusing his book so much on Jews, since the socialists and trade unionists did not have as much support outside Germany as did the Jews.  Go figure.

From Marcus’s book: “One of the most frequently reported slogans of the Nazi party was that it would save Germany from being overrun by East European Jews who were invading the land in large numbers, receiving the franchise from the socialist authorities, and exercising undue influence on the political and economic life of the German state.”  White genocide? Great replacement theory? Didn’t we hear something about George Soros funding those caravans of migrants in Mexico?

One of the most important lessons the Torah has to offer is Leviticus 19:34. As per Chabad: “The stranger who sojourns with you shall be as a native from among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” The huddled masses and wretched refuse that Emma Lazarus wrote about were our grandparents.

But didn’t our grandparents come here legally? And doesn’t that make all the difference? That strikes me as far too simplistic a perspective for this extremely complicated issue.  For starters, there has always been illegal immigration to this country, and it’s not clear to me that there’s any more of it now. Steve Miller, the world’s worst Jew, made it vastly harder to enter this country legally during the last administration, both through asylum policy and green card processes. Furthermore, immigration policy has at times been explicitly racist. Do you think that The Former Guy was the first to keep out folks from shithole countries? The Chinese Exclusion Act is no longer on the books, but in Ron DeSantis’s Florida, where Woke goes to die, the legislature prevented Chinese citizens from buying real estate. So much for the free market.

Many of the migrants at the southern border are fleeing from violence and poverty.  This is the fault of the cartels and gangs, who are financed by the demand in this country for drugs and trafficked women. Sure, let’s build a wall, but that won’t solve the problem.  We also need compassion and broader approaches. Am I Woke yet?

Sure, I’m Woke, and I just love me some Critical Race Theory.  Like pornography, I can’t define it, but I sure know it when I see it.  What is CRT?  It seems to be any part of history that Josh Hawley doesn’t want to talk about.  Surely, slavery is just too ancient to bother with.  The same thing with lynching, expulsions, redlining, segregation, and Jim Crow.  Many of these are in the past, but they kept Black families from accumulating generational wealth in the same way that our families have.  Now, it seems that laws are passed in ostensibly colorblind ways that have tangibly racist results.  For example, Texas is implementing a mechanism whereby the state legislature can throw out election results in counties with over a million voters.  Totally colorblind!  Except there is only one such county in the state.  This gives the White Republican legislature the power to toss out the vote of an enormous number of Black voters.  There is a similar colorblind effort to make it easier to access the juvenile records of people of color, without impacting White folks.  Anyone who thinks racism is over in this country is watching way too much Fox News.

But enough with them!  Let’s talk about us.

Many years ago, I had a gentile friend – an exquisitely lapsed Catholic. He felt that we Jews spent too much time brooding about the Holocaust.  After all, it was decades ago.  He wasn’t quite a Holocaust denier, but did he have a point?

For sure, the ground was laid for the Holocaust centuries before the Nazis came to power.  European Jews were subject to all sorts of disabilities: special taxes, restrictions on residence, exclusion from crafts and professions, imprisonment, forced conversions, kidnapping of children, rape, pogroms, expulsions, and who knows what else.  Nu, how is this brooding any different from CRT?  Is it any wonder that Maus and Anne Frank’s diary are being challenged in school libraries along with the rest of the smut?

Now, this might seem familiar. The Nazis complained bitterly about the Jewish dominated liberal press.  As far as I know, they didn’t talk about the “mainstream media”, but preferred to say “lugenpresse”, which translates as “lying press”.  If you don’t like what you’re hearing, just call it fake. And this is how, then as now, so many of the people around us end up believing lie after lie. No amount of fact checking will make a dent.

I suppose that most people have not heard of Maurice Joly.  I hadn’t come across his name until very recently. He was a nineteenth century French journalist who was opposed to Napoleon III.  In 1864, Joly attacked Napoleon with a biting satire named “Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu”.  In it, Joly described the various ways Napoleon manipulated finances and law to undermine democracy and accumulate all power for himself.  Joly was jailed for his criticism and died in 1878.

About thirty years later, the Tzar’s secret police got hold of Joly’s writings, translated them into Russian, and rebranded the work as the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.  The plan was to foment pogroms against Jews and rile up the population against Communists.

Not to let a good antisemitic screed go to waste, a German named Alfred Rosenberg brought the Protocols to the attention of Adolph Hitler, who repurposed them for his own needs.  These were also published in the United States by Henry Ford.  As much effort has gone into debunking these obvious lies, the Protocols are still widely available around the world.

Hadassa Ben-Ito, who served as a judge in Israel for 31 years, wrote a history of the Protocols - “The Lie That Will Not Die” - and recorded the remarkable effort to stamp out this untruth. After describing the run up to the original trial in Berne, she added: “Learned argument has not succeeded in demolishing the forgery. Once the liar gains a platform, once he becomes party to legitimate discussion, he is safe. He has gained recognition. It is then up to a large, mostly ignorant, public to judge the lie. If the forgery is done in a manner that corresponds to existing prejudice, if it feeds on existing hatreds, and supplies answers to existing problems, if the liar is also highly motivated, his success is secure. The public does not possess the tools to judge the lie; it is almost impossible to disprove a positive statement. Denying it is an exercise in futility.”

But no one talks much about the Protocols now, right?

Amanda Gorman is the young woman who recited her poem “The Hill We Climb” at Joe Biden’s inauguration. The poem was published as a book and made its way to some elementary school library in Florida.  A woman named Daily Salinas, who does not have any children in that school, complained about the book being indoctrination, at which point it was moved to the safer environment of a middle school.  One of the offending lines: “To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.”  Okay, that might be a tad Woke, but I much prefer it to “blood and soil”.  Is it much of a surprise that Salinas once promoted the Protocols on her Facebook page?  Of course, she has since apologized, and I guess that’s progress.

I wouldn’t want my whole life to be judged by the worst thing I’ve ever done.  But it is appropriate to examine a political movement based on the malevolence it attracts, even if only at its margins.  Remember: “Not racist, but number one with racists”. Still, charity begins at home, and there are certainly horrible views expressed on the left.  A lot of the examples cited by Trump and his allies tend to be quotes taken out of context, complete misquotes, or associations so tentative that they just don’t stand up on further inspection.  Let me focus on one instance that is legitimately sickening.  According to the Washington Post, Representative Ilhan Omar suggested that “Israel’s allies in American politics were motivated by money rather than principle”, infamously tweeting that “It’s all about the Benjamins baby.” I’m not defending that, nor should anyone.  But, the entire Democratic party establishment, from then Speaker Nancy Pelosi on down, condemned her, and Omar issued a straightforward apology.  Your mileage may vary, but she sounded sincere to me.

And how does this compare to the MAGA Right?  This Republican Senator claims ignorance of the latest tweet.  Or that Republican official hadn’t turned on the TV since last night. Trump has diarrhea of the mouth, but has he been called on the retract anything?

Do you believe that Hillary killed Vince Foster? Or that the Democratic Party is running a pedophile ring?  Or, most shockingly, that the Radical Woke Left is encouraging teenagers to relieve themselves in kitty litter?  If so, I can’t help you.

I’m fed-up with hearing about Wokeness.  If it makes you feel good to call me Woke, then gay gezunt. If you’re just trying to own a lib, good luck with that.  But if you’re trying to persuade me, then you’ve lost me as soon as the W-word comes out of your mouth.  I’m happy to have a non-reductive discussion on the culture war issue of your choice, but let’s keep it a few steps above middle school.

It’s been suggested that we ask our interlocuters just where they heard some juicy tidbit.  Maybe if you can show that the source of the misinformation is unreliable, some progress can be made. I’ve tried this, and it has not worked for me. Sometimes they don’t remember where they read something, or just don’t care.  Maybe I’ll be accused of being the dupe.

I can usually remember where I read things, and if I don’t, I can probably figure it out without too much trouble.  For example, I could do a little googling and trace the Furry hoax back to its source.  But the bit about the barking boy, well, not so much.  I guess The Former Guy would attribute that to a Fake Responsa, and he’d be right.  By which I mean: I made that part up. I’m not sure how many of you folks believed me. Were any of you fuming at Rabbi Shalom for allowing the boy to identify as a dog?

So where does this leave us?

And now I need to give you folks some insight into my relationship with my wife.  No, I’m not inviting you into our bedroom, although you have surely noticed how tired I am all the time.  Rather, I want to share with you how she impacts my attitudes and perceptions.  I guess the best way to explain this is in comparison to Dante’s “Divine Comedy”.  As you undoubtedly know, Dante writes about Virgil’s descent into Hell, followed by his passage through Purgatory, and then his ultimate ascent into Paradise.  In the background, there is Beatrix, the symbol of Divine Love who guides Virgil to enlightenment.  That would be my wife.

Long before I met my wife, she had become alienated from her Catholicism.  My beloved Beatrix is not alone in her differences with the Church.  There was a schism between the eastern and western churches a thousand years ago. The Anglicans broke off in the 1500’s so Henry could diddle a new bride.  The wider Protestant Reformation took place shortly thereafter.  And don’t get me started on all those heresies, from the Cathars to the Albigensians.  I could provide a long list of my wife’s disagreements with various doctrines of faith, but it’s not my place to get her excommunicated.

At some point, she reconciled and became graceful once again.  She missed the traditions and the liturgy.  To be sure, these are the same things that brought me back to shul.  Still, I asked her: “What about all those things you disagree with?”  And she said: “If I didn’t go back, then they win.”

And this is why it is so important not to give up on our friends and family.  Steve Bannon is the modern-day incarnation of Joseph Goebbels.  To use his words, he “floods the zone with shit”, and our country is drowning in it.

But how do we fight back?  And what are the right words? As with so much else, I have enough insight to ask the questions, but not nearly enough wisdom to answer them.

Now, go and study.