Looking at a display of something I’d often heard about, but never seen—a pushcart, with all of the knick-knacks for sale—I was reminded of my own grandfathers, each of whom immigrated to the US from that amorphous area of land we generally refer to as Russia just after 1900. They each made livings in the needle trades—my mother’s father made dresses and my father’s father went into furs. What were they looking for here in America one hundred years ago? What did they want for their children in this new land? Have we fulfilled their dreams or have we failed? Or have we followed some other, unlikely path, one that the immigrant Jews who came before us could never have imagined?

Many of you are undoubtedly aware that September 12, 2004 marked the day that, 350 years ago, a bedraggled group of 23 Dutch Jews arrived to settle in the New World. They were the first American Jews, they arrived here with great hope, and an expectation of welcome by the leaders of New Amsterdam. They were traders, after all, Spanish and Portuguese-speaking merchants who had been living in Dutch-occupied Brazil. In the 17th century, Jewish refugees from the Iberian Peninsula had been welcomed in Amsterdam and the Dutch colonies of South America. But when the Portuguese recaptured Brazil, the Jews were all expelled. This group arrived, whether by chance or by design, we’re not quite certain, in what we now call New York.

But the first group of Jews in America did not receive the warm welcome that they had come to expect from the Dutch. Peter Stuyvesant of the Dutch West India Company, at first refused to admit them, calling them “hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ.” However, the response from his employers in Amsterdam countered with the information that these traders had been loyal defenders of the Dutch in their war against the Portuguese, and besides, they were shareholders in the Dutch West India Company. Though Stuyvesant was forced to accept them, he sought to limit their civil rights at every step. They were initially accepted, under the condition that "the poor among them shall not become a burden to the company or to the community, but be supported by their own nation."

In 1664, New Amsterdam was taken by the British and renamed New York. And despite a continuation of many of the Dutch restrictions, the earliest Jewish settlers began to receive more civil rights. They finally built their first synagogue in the colony in 1730, after decades of meeting in one another’s homes.

By 1700 there were no more than 300 Jews in the colonies in North America. But with the wave of German immigration fleeing the upheaval of the Napoleonic wars, tens of thousands of German Jews overwhelmed the small Sephardi populations in urban centers like New York and Philadelphia. Then came the Eastern European wave of immigrants that brought my own grandparents and the ancestors of most of the Jews in this room. By 1920, 5 out of 6 Jews in America traced their origins from Eastern Europe.

Jews have come, like other immigrants to America from various regions and cultures, seeking freedom from discrimination, and seeking economic opportunity. And for the most part, Jews have found a home here, a place where we have reached the highest levels of economic success and experienced the least anti-Semitism in Jewish history. By these measures, we have far surpassed the expectations of the immigrant Jews of the past 350 years.
In the most recent census of the American Jewish community, the Natoinal Jewish Population Survey of 2000-2001, we can see just how successful our community has become. Among Jews who are employed, more than 60% have high-status jobs, in professional or technical fields, management or executive positions, or in business and finance. This compares to only 46% of the general American population. On the other hand, we have more retired people than the general population, reflecting a growing senior population, many of whom are impoverished.
We are also better educated than the average American. While 29% of Americans have received college degrees and only 6% have graduate degrees, more than half of Jewish adults have graduated from college and a quarter have earned graduate degrees.
These facts are particularly astounding, given that our ancestors, the vast majority of both German and Eastern European immigrants were both poor and undereducated. They reflect the determination and sacrifice of our forebears, and the remarkable advances that American society has made since Peter Stuyvesant’s initial reluctance to allow us to settle here at all.

We could celebrate these achievements and consider our Jewish sojourn in America an unqualified success. Yet, looking back on 350 years of Jews in America, we discover that the true victory can be found in the fact that Jews have not dissolved into the American mainstream, like the 10 Lost Tribes of biblical times who disappeared into exile in places like Assyria or Egypt. The lesson that I learn on this anniversary is that many before us have navigated the same road that we follow today—the sometimes winding path of remaining Jewish while embracing America.

Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionism, coined the phrase, “living in two civilizations,” meaning that, in America, Jews participate in two cultures, embrace two identities, and take pride as Americans and as Jews. Kaplan taught us for the first time in history that living as Jew in a majority culture is not an either/or proposition.

In Kaplan’s day, children of Eastern European immigrants abandoned their traditions to swell the ranks of the Conservative movement, just as their predecessors, immigrants from Germany in the 19th century had flocked to Reform Judaism. In both cases, our ancestors toned down their Jewish observance in order to fit in with American culture. Kaplan foresaw that new and dynamic forms of Judaism, built on democratic ideals and the power of ancient ritual, would blossom on American soil, uprooted from the superstitions and rigidity of observance in the Old Country. Kaplan encouraged Jews to bring their Jewish ideals into American life, and to infuse Judaism with a new democratic spirit.

“The Jew, to be a true American, must be a better Jew. This means that he must belong to a Jewish community where the ideals, by means of which he is to help mold American life, are to be developed.” (Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century, pp133f)

In Kaplan’s visionary perspective, Judaism and Americanism would enrich one another, making each stronger, more vital, and more meaningful.

This prophetic vision was based on the unique experience of Jews in this country. Recently, business entrepreneurs have talked about “re-engineering” the corporation. “Re-engineering” is a Jewish art, the art of immigrants. Each generation is forced to reinvent itself, struggling to figure out what to keep from the past and what to transform or discard. The Jews who arrived here, from the Dutch Sephardim from Recife to our own grandparents and great-grandparents wanted to fit in, to escape discrimination, to enjoy the American dream. That generation discarded Jewish observances as easily as they changed their names, thinking they were doing what was best. But they succeeded in passing on Jewish identity, nonetheless, and we, in turn, have reinvented our own Judaism as well.

Let’s look at just one example:
In 1922, Mordecai Kaplan’s oldest daughter became the first girl to celebrate a bat mitzvah.
In 1972, fifty years later, Hebrew Union College ordained the first woman rabbi. In 1975, they ordained the first woman cantor
Today, there are over 600 women ordained as rabbis in North America.
Last summer, I experienced a true moment of living in two civilizations, when I heard a woman cantor from a synagogue in Framingham sing the national anthem at Fenway Park. To me, that’s truly living in two civilizations!

Our immigrant grandparents and great-grandparents never dreamed that one could be religious and respected, like Senator Joe Lieberman. They could not envision a group of Jewish camp counselors, like our own Daniel Gelbtuch at the farewell concert for the band Phish one Friday night this past summer, welcoming Shabbat with candles and kiddush. While the word “assimilation” has been the buzzword of Jewish pessimists for decades, our own children are discovering Judaism in cyberspace, on jewz.com or in magazines like Heeb with a name that thumbs its nose at anti-semites.

As I look back on over 3000 years of the history of our people’s wanderings, I realize that America is not the first place outside of the Land of Israel that we have called “home.” Some of the places that appeared most hospitable turned and betrayed us. We were expelled from Spain in 1492, from England in 1290, from France in 1306, and from Egypt, Iraq and Yemen in the early 1950s. But overall, Jews have settled and thrived for centuries in Babylonia, in Spain, in Eastern Europe and in North Africa. The history of long periods of amicable settlement of Jews in different parts of the globe accounts for the colorful diversity of Jewish culture, from Hebrew to Ladino to Yiddish, from babkas to baba ganoush, from the hora to the debka. from klezmer music to Yemenite chants.

What will be our unique contribution to Jewish culture? What is the lasting imprint that America will make on Jewish life? And what makes our American home different from our previous Diaspora hosts?

There are those who claim that America is not so different from the other stops in our people’s journey. Human beings are fickle and societies seek scapegoats in times of trouble. They urge us to be vigilant in fighting anti-semitism. “Never again” is their slogan, even in America. When I hear these words, I often discern a sense that we Jews are unique in our experience as victims, and a sense of isolation that borders on misplaced pride.

There are others who argue, “it can’t happen here.” In the modern Western world, the closest parallel to our comfortable American existence is usually found in Germany a century ago. And I can’t mention Germany without arousing our worst nightmares. But these optimists insist that America cannot be compared to Germany, and American Jews are more integrated, more valued in this society than they were in Germany in the 1930s. This argument often appears to mask an underlying denial of any remnants of hatred of the Jews.

I say, in proper rabbinic fashion—you’re right and you’re right too. Yes, let’s keep our eyes open for anti-semitism. Let us not delude ourselves into thinking that American Jews have no enemies. We need only remember Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl, whose final words were: "My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish."

But I also believe that the American Jewish experience is unique. One cannot compare the brutal act of an unidentified terrorist to the uncontrolled force of a powerful state. Unlike the German Republic, or Babylonia at the time of the Talmud or medieval Spain during the Golden Age, we are not threatened by our own government. In American society, our identity as Jews does not tie us down or hold us back. Our American home is more heterogeneous and more welcoming of diversity than any other we have known. We live in an age of unprecedented individual freedom.

And that freedom is the key to our success, and the essence of the American Jewish legacy. It comes down to one word: democracy. Free elections. Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Freedom of Assembly. Freedom to petition the government. What our ancestors sought on these shores was a place of freedom and opportunity. Not just for themselves, but for every immigrant. It is our democratic system, and its backbone, the United States Constitution, that has continually expanded that opportunity for all citizens. Refugees and former slaves, women as well as men, rich and poor, people of all religions have found protection under the American system of law. “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried,” said Winston Churchill. And we Jews have grown stronger and prospered in this country, thanks to those protections.

But those protections have not come easily, nor have they always extended to all American citizens. In this land rich in immigrants and natives, Jews are but one group among many. If we are to survive as Jews, it will not be because we champion our own victimhood. America is populated by victims, refugees from every continent, fleeing torture and slavery and yes, genocide. In such a nation, we must learn to hold up our neighbors so that we in turn can be held up.

The Jewish tradition would not condone the campaign slogan of creating a “society of ownership” – what is mine is mine and what is yours is yours. Our immigrant ancestors survived and thrived by focusing on sharing what we have, on giving bread to the hungry and building houses for the homeless. We must proudly take our place, as Jews, among our brothers and sisters of all races, religions, and backgrounds, and stand together in defense of democracy here at home. We have come a long way from Peter Stuyvesant’s condition that "the poor among them shall not become a burden to the company or to the community, but be supported by their own nation."

Mordecai Kaplan, who loved America and was swept away by the democratic ideal, also insisted that Judaism itself would be transformed by incorporating American values. He said:
“ It is not enough to distill our ideals from our religious traditions. We must integrate them into the habits of living and thinking by incorporating them into legislation, mores and educational content. We must realize that a democracy should be religionized through its institutions. We must practice what we profess.” (Religion of Ethical Nationhood)

Just as Jews need to live their American lives imbued with the Jewish ideals of justice and compassion, Jewish institutions need to be built on the American democratic ideal. [Statements by] Jewish leaders must reflect the voices of all Jews, not just the ones who give the most, or shrai the loudest. Jewish community organizations, even synagogues, need to adhere to principles of transparency and accountability. Judaism can last in a free society only if we learn to encourage the free exchange of ideas while maintaining respect for the community as a whole. Kaplan believed that the common interests shared by individuals in open dialogue would far outweigh the divisions caused by individual difference. Above all, according to Kaplan, democracy’s purpose is to have "justice and kindness instead of tyranny and cruelty prevail in all human relationships . . . to bring under control the inherent tendency of human beings to seek power and to exercise it for its own sake regardless of the harm it does." (The Future of the American Jew) That is, democracy, at its best, seeks to fulfill our deepest a religious beliefs.

As we enter these holy days in a year when we are called to exercise our most basic democratic right and privilege, the right to vote for the leadership of our country, I urge you to spend time considering what it means to you to be “at home” as a Jew in America.

The American Jewish poet, Muriel Rukeyser, framed her answer in the form of a poem, written in 1944. I believe that it continues to resonate in our own time:
“To Be a Jew in the Twentieth Century”
To be a Jew in the twentieth century
Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse,
Wishing to be invisible, you choose
Death of the spirit, the stone insanity
Accepting, take full life. Full agonies:
Your evening deep in labyrinthine blood
Of those who resist, fall, and resist, and God
Reduced to a hostage among hostages.

The gift is torment. Not alone the still
Torture, isolation; or torture of the flesh.
That may come also. But the accepting wish,
The whole and fertile spirit as guarantee
For every human freedom, suffering to be free,
Daring to live for the impossible.

May we, the heirs of the peddlers and refugees who arrived here over the past 350 years, and the descendants of a wandering people who have carried Torah with them for the past 3000 years, never lose sight of the road they paved on our behalf, so that we too, may dare to live for the impossible.

“ To Be A Jew At Home In America”
Rabbi Barbara Penzner
Rosh Hashanah 5765
September 2004