On Bernie Sanders' Jewish Identity

Here is a fascinating article from the Forward concerning Bernie Sanders' Jewish identity. The article's thesis:

The Sanders campaign is providing the backdrop for a mass Jewish psychodrama of wrenching, deeply depressing proportions. Sanders is serving as a passive canvas onto which we are projecting a startling array of our saddest insecurities, neuroses and self-delusions.

Intersections with several of the conversations we've been having about American Jewish identity and appropriate for our conversations around Super Tuesday:

a.) Jewish identity does not necessarily correlate to religious identification.

It might not be a Judaism that’s particularly gratifying to those of us who take our Judaism — Jewish learning, Jewish practice, Jewish fidelity — very earnestly. But it is the Judaism of the great majority of American Jews, millions of them.

b.) He represents the enduring tensions between the anxieties of standing out vs. political passivity.

The article talks about a 2008 open letter from Jewish senators, of which Sanders was a signatory, condemning negative emails about Barack Obama that were specifically sent to the Jewish community:

The letter is historic for a single reason: It is the first time in history that any Jewish senators signed a public statement that included the words “As Jewish United States Senators.” Customarily... Jewish senators avoid such statements because they see themselves as representing all the people of their state, not the small Jewish minorities.... This was the first time a group of Jewish senators felt compelled to speak out “as Jewish United States Senators” to their fellow Jews while the rest of the world looked on.

c.) What is at stake for the American Jewish community when it confronts a public persona that represents "assimilation"? I.e: Is the community more comfortable with a Joe Lieberman or a Bernie Sanders?

Those of us who do live fully in our Jewish skins tend to judge those who don’t as wanting. We think they’ve failed in their duties, or walked away... This is what gets projected onto public figures who are outstanding in their chosen fields but ordinary Jews in their private lives.... Think of the abuse Bob Dylan has taken over the years because his Jewish self didn’t meet our needs. Now look again at Bernie Sanders.

Sanders’ Judaism — looking to the Holocaust as a paradigmatic Jewish experience and learning from it that people need to be kind to each other — is utterly typical of the Judaism experienced by the majority of American Jews. It’s a Judaism that’s not fluent in Talmud and doesn’t touch the Jew’s every waking hour. It’s humble, imperfect, not worn on the sleeve.