A New World: Tear Down those Walls

Summary:

The human community seems poised on the threshold of a new era. The old boundaries are dissolving as our “flat world” enables each of us to fashion a more eclectic identity. Yet this new era is seen as extremely threatening to some, who feel safe behind their particularistic national, ethnic, religious and ideological barricades. This is the real struggle in the post-modern world; not the struggle between national, ethnic, religious and ideological groups, but between those who will fight for the barricades and those who struggle to tear them down.

Full Test:

Last Sunday, I attended the annual “Cantor’s Concert” at my synagogue. Designed by our cantor as part pleasure, inspiration and entertainment for the congregation, and part fundraiser, the concert normally combines her musical talents with those of other Jewish musicians in the community.

This year’s format was different, reflecting the storytelling milieu of the forthcoming Passover ritual and its libretto, the Haggadah, literally, “the telling.” The stories emerged from a diverse cross-section of the community, but not the traditional Jewish community that one might expect. Here was NPR commentator Neda Ulaby, self-described daughter of an Irish mother and an Arab-Muslim father, who spent her life in the company of Jews. At one point she discovered that her Arab-Muslim father was not her biological father. The latter was a Jewish man who had abandoned her mother when she became pregnant. As Ulaby told it, the combination of an Irish mother, an Arab-Muslim step-father and a Jewish biological father yields a Jewish woman.

Another storyteller described his experience as a “gentile” man married to an Israeli woman and raising a Jewish family. (“Gentile,” according to this storyteller, is a word Jews use around gentiles in lieu of the standard word “goy.”) This man speaks what seems to be a fairly decent Hebrew and is proud of his Jewish family. So why not convert? “Because I don’t feel Jewish,” he mused, “and that would be an important criterion to conversion.”

“I want to hold on to my heritage,” he continued, “and that is probably the most Jewish thing about me.”

The world seems poised on the edge of some sort of major social revolution. A new form of human social interaction is being born, and a new way for humanity to understand itself in the cosmos and within the human community. It is a part of humanity that literally thinks and acts out of the box—not in the conventional sense of thinking differently, but actually removing ourselves from the ideological, philosophical, theological, ethnic, national and religious boxes that have defined the individual from very early times.

We’ve actually understood this trend for some time. What sociologists label our post-modern world is one in which the social boundaries have become fluid, permeable. Certainly in pluralistic America, the post-baby boom generations tend to eschew ethnic labels and affiliations in favor of a blending of ethnic identities. These are the so-called “nones” of the 2012 Pew Research Foundation’s study of religion in America, the people who report no religious affiliation. It turns out that many of these people are not irreligious, but understand their spirituality and religious identity as open to inspiration regardless of the particular religious tradition from which it emerges.

There is an entire sweep of humanity reflected in diverse human communities all over the world that are emerging from these boxes. I would suggest that what we have seen in Tahrir Square in Egypt and at the Maidan in Kiev is also part of this trend. These are expressions of the “flat world” that columnist and author Thomas Friedman has been writing about for years. These movements are more than expressions of a desire for some inchoate vision of “freedom.” They reveal an urge to break down the barriers to a larger world that oppressive regimes have imposed. The Ukrainians in the Maidan want to be part of Europe not only to improve their political and economic conditions, but to participate in the dissolution of boundaries that the European Union represents.

To those living in the old world of the boxes, this trend is seen as anywhere from naïve to dangerous. The world outside the boxes is frightening. It’s nice and cozy and secure inside the old boxes. It’s simple: there’s us and there’s them, and they threaten us, so we have to be prepared to fight them to protect us. I would go so far as to suggest that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no longer a struggle between Israelis and Palestinians. It’s a struggle between those Israelis and Palestinians who feel safe and comfortable inside the boxes of their national narratives of victimhood on the one hand, and those Israelis and Palestinians who are anxious to come out of the boxes and create what could be a truly fresh and inspiring blended Mideast culture.

So this is the struggle that I believe will lead to the next phase of human history, the next era. Will those of us who cherish the opportunity for self-awareness and growth offered by the permeability of the boundaries and the dismantling of the boxes prevail, or will it be those who take to the barricades? The latter seem prepared to fight and even die for their boxes. Are the former prepared for this struggle?