Vampire Weekend's Surprising Jewish Stories
9 min read
Great Jews are ones who never bother about antisemitism, but go on making their Judaism and Jewishness better all the time.
When Jews hear the name Henry Ford, many of us think antisemite.
But Ford was also a terrific businessman and innovative pioneer who said something that individual Jews, as well as the collective Jewish People, ought to learn from:
“The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.”
Ford was offering this advice from an entrepreneurship standpoint, but it could also be beneficial to apply it within the framework of the fight against antisemitism.
Something along the lines of:
“Great Jews are ones who never bother about antisemitism at all, but go on making their Judaism and Jewishness better all the time.”
Here are five ways we can do just that:
The Israeli philosopher Yirmiyahu Yovel’s broad and charitable definition of a Jew is: “to be personally preoccupied with the question of Jewishness.”
The implication here is one of action, of doing, of continuing to learn about Judaism and Jewishness. This is what I mean by sharpening your Jewish pencil.
The more I learn about Judaism, the more I understand that Jewish complexity runs so historically, geographically, and materially deep.
The more I learn about Judaism, the more I understand that Jewish complexity runs so historically, geographically, and materially deep. Whereas many people try to simplify Judaism by putting it in some sort of box, I continuously encounter just how oceanic the Jewish treasure trove is.
Whether you’re interested in religion and spirituality, history, wisdom and philosophy, culture and lifestyle, people and society, or a combination thereof, Judaism has plenty of rabbit holes to go down!
In the Talmud, there’s a story about Honi the Circle Maker who saw a man planting a carob tree and asked him how long it takes to bear fruit. “Seventy years,” the man replied, to which Honi wondered aloud, “Are you certain that you will live another 70 years?”
The man pondered Honi’s question, and then said, “I found carob trees in this world planted for me by my ancestors, so I am planting these for my descendants.”
One of our main missions, as Jews, is to continue planting Jewish carob trees. In fact, there’s a Maori word for this, according to Roman Krznaric, author of the international bestselling book, The Good Ancestor. It’s called fakaapaapa, the idea that we are all in the great chain that stretches far into the past and long into the future.1
The late, great Rabbi Noah Weinberg (of blessed memory) recommends the following approach to being a good Jewish ancestor:
“If you want to feel what your Jewish ancestors felt, learn one chapter of Mishnah by heart. That is the Jewish culture at its roots. The beauty of it will get to you. You will appreciate Torah from Sinai. You will understand what the Jewish People are truly about.”2
Part of being a good Jewish ancestor, in my estimation, means being aware that we are truly privileged to be Jews in today’s world — which is not to say that the world is or will ever be perfect for Jews. But everything is relative!
The Jews of just a few generations ago, not to mention for centuries upon previous centuries, were not so lucky. They either needed to be under-the-radar Jews, as a form of self-defense, or they aimed to assimilate, leaving their Judaism behind in many cases. Today, Jews can be openly Jewish and enjoy assimilated lives simultaneously. “Either or” has been replaced by “and” and “plus.”
Therefore, it is our duty, our responsibility, to nurture this privilege, so future generations of Jews can enjoy it as well, both in Israel and across the world. Jewish history defiantly demonstrates that nothing is guaranteed, no matter how good things may seem at any particular time. As Jews, we have it good today because Jews of the past didn’t have it so good. Our pleasures and prizes are the results of their sacrifices and sufferings.
I didn’t write this to make you feel bad. I wrote it as a reminder that Jewish thriving is to be cherished.
To establish effective interdependent relationships, a thriving Jewish world, and constructive relations between Jews and the greater world, highly effective Jews commit to creating win-win situations through consideration and courage, and by maintaining an Abundance Mentality, or the belief that there’s plenty of room for everyone.
In reality, many Jews operate with the Scarcity Mentality — meaning they act as though everything is zero-sum. My way or the highway. People with the latter mentality have a hard time recognizing and making room for others, and find it difficult to genuinely accommodate diversity.
To achieve Jewish win-wins, we ought to focus on results, not methods; on problems, not people. We should strive to collaborate, not compete.
What’s more, we should seek first to understand, then to be understood. Before offering advice, suggesting solutions, or effectively interacting with another Jew in any way, we should aim to deeply understand them and their perspectives through empathic, active listening.
To listen empathically and actively requires a deep-seated paradigm shift, since we typically seek first to be understood, not to understand. And many people listen with the intent to reply, not to understand. At any given moment, they’re either speaking or preparing to speak.
By seeking first to understand, we can find strength, utility, and synergy in different perspectives.
The benefits of empathic, active listening are evident in the Talmud, by way of Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, two schools of thought that frequently disagreed about Jewish law. Beit Hillel generally posited more lenient positions, while Beit Shammai usually held stricter ones. Beit Shammai’s legal rulings were just as valid as those of Beit Hillel, yet with a few rare exceptions, we follow the latter.
But why? Because Beit Hillel’s students were kind and humble, and always quoted the other side’s opinions before their own.
By seeking first to understand, we can find strength, utility, and synergy in different perspectives. This will enable us to uncover new possibilities through openness and creativity, to collectively agree to ditch certain old scripts and write new ones. More specifically, synergy assists us with:
Judaism certainly can survive (and has survived) by being rather insular. But to thrive — both as individual Jews and as a collective Jewish world — we ought to create better, more impactful relations with our non-Jewish family, friends, and communities.
This might be a controversial position in the Jewish world, but hear me out: For centuries, Judaism has, by and large, been a “members-only club.” Perhaps there were legitimate reasons for this exclusivity, I don’t know.
But I do know that, in an exponentially open, globalized, and interconnected world, exclusivity doesn’t seem to be serving the Jewish People anymore. In fact, one could argue that Jewish exclusivity hurts more than it helps, since:
If tikkun olam (fixing the world) is a universal Jewish value, then part of this work ought to be geared toward fixing or improving relations with our non-Jewish family, friends, and communities. In other words, it’s time to make Judaism more inclusive.
I am not insinuating that synagogues and Jewish community centers and Jewish summer camps should suddenly become a free for all. Nor am I suggesting that we modify Judaism’s conversion process or aim to convert more people to Judaism or change the “legal definition” of a Jew.
The Jew’s primary function is to put forth light, to radiate, to better a fellow.
Instead, I believe the combination of technology, media, e-commerce, and other digital and soon-to-be virtual means can give people across the world — both Jews and non-Jews alike — unprecedented, on-demand access to Judaism, Jewish life and culture, Jewish Peoplehood, and Israel.
As a Jew, I believe making Judaism more accessible to the greater world is one of our purposes, a sentiment Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe once conveyed to a Russian Israeli pioneer in magnetohydrodynamics.
“What is the unique quality of the sun, which makes everyone consider it a blessing?” Schneerson asked him. “It is, of course, its capacity to give light to the earth. What would happen if the sun had the same temperature, the same energy, but did not radiate or give heat? Indeed, there are such stars, called black holes, the force of attraction of which is so strong that not even one light ray can depart from them.”
“If the sun were such a star, whom would it benefit then?” Schneerson continued. “Of what use would the sun be if it were a black hole? So it is with the Jew whose primary function is to put forth light, to radiate, to better a fellow … Without this, such a person would turn into a black hole, when he or she was created to be a sun.”
Ultimately, my hope is that Judaism becomes one of the world’s bright spots in the hearts and minds of more and more people, because I believe Judaism enhances people’s lives and makes the world a better place.
