Tikvah weekend headlined by renowned scholar Ruth Wisse
Prior to arriving in Pittsburgh, Harvard emerita professor implores readers to recognize, 'What is absolutely self-evident is what is least evident to many people'
A weekend focused on scholarship will conclude with a call to prioritize the ABCs. The message will be delivered on June 8 by Ruth Wisse, a senior fellow at The Tikvah Fund and professor emerita of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard University. Her address will follow Saturday talks by colleagues Elliot Kaufman and Eytan Sosnovich.
Wisse, Kaufman and Sosnovich are all affiliated with Tikvah, an American conservative nonprofit organization. The group, in partnership with members of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community, organized several weekend talks across Squirrel Hill. While Kaufman, who serves as an editorial board member and editorial writer at The Wall Street Journal, and Sosnovich, Tikvah’s senior director of development, will speak at Shaare Torah Congregation on June 7, Wisse will share her ideas in conversation with Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s Rabbi Danny Schiff one day later at Congregation Beth Shalom.
Speaking to the Chronicle before her Pittsburgh visit, Wisse said she was excited to address a community of people who are “invested in the same Jewish American life as I am.”
Her program, titled “What the Jews Owe to — and Expect from — Israel and America,” is a chance to “share one’s aspirations, and one’s ideas and one’s anxieties,” while enabling attendees to “exchange ideas about strengthening what is good and combating that which is not good,” she said.
According to Wisse’s dichotomy, the “good” involves the “double fortune” of American Jews.
Not only do American Jews live in the “freest country imaginable, an exceptional republic which is about to celebrate 250 years of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” but they do so at a time when “Jews have recovered their sovereignty in our homeland, in the land of Israel.” The historic improbability of living during such a period, Wisse said, “cannot be taken for granted.”
Wisse, whose books include “Free As A Jew, A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation,” “If I Am Not For Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews” and “Jews and Power,” said her remarks are not merely to inspire gratitude.
Recognition and labor must follow, she explained.
“I often say that democracy is not biologically transmitted,” she said. “And believe it or not, we learn that Judaism is not really biologically transmitted either.” Although an element of Judaism involves lineage, “what it means to be a Jew, the inheritance of the Jewish people, the responsibilities of the Jewish people, the responsibilities for transmitting that is not biologically transmitted.”
Furthering the Jewish story requires education, beginning with knowing the Aleph Bet and “the basics of the Bible,” she said. Likewise, democracy is buttressed by grasping “what civic life demands of you.”
The latter, she continued, “requires the reaffirmation of understanding how this amazing democracy came into being, how unusual it was in the history of civilization, about the separation of powers and how they work.”
An inability to understand democracy’s origin story and the fundamental principles effectuating its continuance inhibit progress, she explained.
“We develop because of ideas which are reinforced, not because they are biologically assimilated,” she said.
Wisse has no illusions that listeners will leave her talk and immediately clutch copies of the Federalist Papers, tweet about the Constitutional Convention or cite Marbury v. Madison at their next dinner party. What she hopes, though, is that Pittsburgh Jews fulfill certain responsibilities while recognizing particular threats.
“The more you feel yourself to be a loyal, knowledgeable and an appreciative citizen of America, the more you can feel yourself to be a proud, invested, supportive and wholly loyal member of the Jewish people,” she said. In achieving both, one must “help secure the precious state of Israel, just as one of our obligations is to help secure the precious United States of America.”
One obstacle, she explained, is the obfuscation of perspective.
“We know enough to know that what is most obvious — how fortunate we are — is not obvious to many people who only see the plight, because everyone is telling us how bad we are,” she said.
The attacks are apparent, she continued. “We are under ideological siege as Jews at the moment, and to be under ideological siege is even more painful than being under physical siege.”
That’s because “one leads to the other,” she said. “You don’t have people getting up and killing just like that, or knowing whom to kill or whom to be against.”
“The ideas precede the deeds. They always have,” she continued. “You have to have people who are shouting for your blood before people will go out and kill you.”
Wisse knows her comments spark alarm.
The value of weekends like the upcoming one, or democracy in general, is to debate essential ideas; but a proper discussion cannot occur without requisite education, she said.
“How do we know what we are? How do we know what is basic and essential? It is not biologically transmitted,” she said. Laborious instruction must be “reinforced at every level — primary education teaches us the ABCs, then literacy grows to a different level, and then you raise it to a level beyond that — and it’s at the highest level of ideas that you then engage in debate. People have to understand the context within which debate is possible.” Unfortunately though, “what is absolutely self-evident is what is least evident to many people.”
Wisse is looking forward to continuing the conversation in Pittsburgh.
“Jews are the blue and white in the red, white and blue,” she said. “Our values are closely aligned with those of the United States of America. So much of America itself, the concept of America, the laws, the way in which the United States of America is formed, comes out of the Hebraic tradition. It comes through the Puritan tradition, the Hebraic element within Christianity and the British legal system. We are a fundamental part of America, and very comfortably a part of America. But we cannot take anything for granted. We have to reiterate our blessings, why it’s so important to sustain our way of life and our teachings and to express our appreciation.” PJC
Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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