Religious studies professor, small college in northern New England, 1980’s. Affirmative action is what got him there, as few Jews attended or taught at that college, it having a reputation of being a WASP stronghold.
I began to understand that he was building a platform in strategic opposition to a real or imagined establishment. He was exploiting the power differential between teacher and student and feeding on our ignorance, or at least, our youth.
At an interfaith meeting, the Jewish concept of matrilineal descent came up. He announced, “no one knows the source for that”, then he looked around the room, smirking and sneering.
I wondered at the sneering, and at that statement. If you have ever been to a Passover Seder, you know that Judaism does not work like that. Lively debate while pouring over sacred texts and oral tradition keep people up sometimes through the night at that feast which is seminal to the Jewish year. Jews across the spectrum celebrate the Seder, and you would be hard pressed to come away from such a celebration thinking that Jews do just about anything without copious references to text and even rancorous debate.
And there he was, smirking at scripture, mocking tradition, and sneering at us.
That tipped me off to a dynamic that made me lose trust in higher education, and in Affirmative Action, which really does lower standards of education, it turns out.
It takes a while to internalize basic assumptions of a community that you are new to. I am an orthodox Jew now, I live in a world in which people regard themselves as links in a chain of tradition. This begets people who see themselves as in a state of growth towards that tradition, constantly working upon themselves to perfect themselves in light of an external tradition that they strive to share with others and pass down to the next generation.
I also saw this with the Christians at that college. Their menschlichkeit - that's Yiddish for interpersonal good characteristics - was in glaring opposition to the abrasive culture that this former liberal just took for granted. The Christians indeed had strong opinions, and they would enter into debate with me about hot topics, but they were respectful of me, they did not destroy a person, like liberals do. They were the first to tip me off that you do not need to be in a state of constant interpersonal battle, a state that threatens your relationships, by the way.
This dynamic of interpersonal respect does not exist with relativism. Relativism begets an inter-personally abrasive culture. Be forewarned about this space of competition and intellectual anarchy in which individuals are competing to be the next small set of gurus, but will not offer you community or intellectual honesty, only the imposition of their own ego and stream of consciousness. That stream of consciousness is unique to them, it cannot be shared with you.
“I cleaned my kitchen for Passover to the extent that I felt comfortable”, Ally told me. She grew up Reform, was inkling towards tradition, but could not give up the idea that it all had to be her choice, she had to have the final say. She emphasized the word "I", with a certain self-worship, and I wondered, how was she going to be in a relationship with anyone if her stream of consciousness was the deciding factor? Would she suddenly submit to another’s stream of consciousness? If she would ever find a partner, would she be in a state of constant debate with him?
(I looked her up. At age 50, she was single with a ten year old child. No partner, no compromise.)
It is one thing to act in your home as you wish, it is another to have a position as a professor in which you are expected to prod students to research and think, and instead, to portray Judaism as you wish it were in order to knock down the so called establishment.
But he had become the establishment, I began to realize. He was in a position of influence. It was the traditionalists who were the beleaguered ones.
At that interfaith meeting, the other students, mostly secularized protestant, were shocked at his answer - huh? Judaism does not know what it is doing? It made Judaism look foolish - if anyway you are on thin ice in a secular protestant culture, keeping your Judaism in spite of the blessings that America has bestowed, why on earth are you holding on to something that you have no clue about?
He was glad to do it, to shoot down tradition, especially with no one present to defend it. It spurred me on to study sacred texts and speak with those who do keep tradition - and when I made that choice, to study and listen, and not just to impose and propagandize, I realized I was no longer liberal.
That is because liberals are all about impression and feeling and imposing, not facts.
That professor's sneer that day was not a one time thing. He also would declare that HIS kind of intermarriage was the right kind, as those who intermarry and raise kids in both Judaism and Christianity are...sneer sneer...not going about it the right way, the right way being HIS way of course. He expressed ignorance about other key issues, even something as basic as - the Hebrew language is made of three letter roots. He expressed surprise at this.
Yet no one was there to evaluate him, he was protected because at that time he was a member of a minority, he could have called "racism!" if he was questioned.
I was in a small gathering that included him, and he mocked the conversion ceremony to orthodox Judaism, he said, "I know a reprehensible story of a woman in Germany who was converting to Judaism, and the Rabbis asked her, 'if you wanted to re-arrange your furniture on the Sabbath, are you allowed to?'" Again, that sneer and smirk.
And I stood up. I demanded to know what was wrong with that question. I said, "In Judaism, there are the rituals and the ethics, he was asking about Sabbath observance," and I countered, "So he asked her that, what is wrong with that?"
Two professors and two students were at that table. I was the only one standing up to him.
He responded with a fumbling, "um, well maybe that is not such a good example."
Huh? He went from, "listen to this reprehensible story" sneer, smirk, scoff, mock, to, "um, well, um...."
Now if a non-Jewish student had mocked a Jewish ritual, she would have been accused of antisemitism. This is how Affirmative Action actually increases the very racism it is claiming to prevent - somehow it is okay for a Jewish "professor" to mock Jewish ritual, seeding contempt for rituals he did not agree with into the college environment, thus increasing contempt for the very religion he was supposed to be teaching about and representing.
In the end of the day, you gotta pity someone living in intellectual anarchy, fumbling for propaganda, trying to prop up his own position, which he himself can hardly grasp.
In that moment I defied a sneering establishment figure in a power differential over me who (you can see in an adjoining blog) mocked me to my face in front of other students at other times, and I still found the strength to defy - and he crumbled. I defied false narratives, I defied mockery, scoffing and sneering, I defied Affirmative Action and the real degradation of educational standards, plus the increase of racism, it has caused.
And I pity him.
Question what liberals are feeding you. It is tragic that academic standards have been lowered, spurring students to study on their own, having felt betrayed by the very system that was supposed to nurture their intellectual aspirations, not mock them.
A similar dynamic is taking place with the group that calls itself "Women of the Wall", which provokes Jewish women who pray traditionally at the Western Wall, Jerusalem. They are not building anything new and good, they are provoking, they are in strategic opposition to the Other, and of course only in front of TV and social media. This group was given an area called the Robinson's Arch just 100 meters away, but no, they must "see and be seen" as their leader has declared, raising their voices loudly when the women who pray traditionally are trying to concentrate, the circus goes on.
After the Holocaust, there were Chassidic groups that were nearly decimated, 70 years later they are burgeoning. That swell in the ranks was due to positive growth, through cleaving to scripture and tradition in a egoless fashion.
Relativists cannot swell their ranks, for they compete among themselves, only a select few have the charm and platform to impose on others.
Relativists are intellectual bullies. Know your Trojan horse, know what you are dealing with.
And, as the sage Hillel said, "go learn."
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