What's it like to be Jewish in America? with Rabbi Nancy Kasten

Rabbi Nancy Kasten gives one perspective on what it is like to be Jewish in America, and how that perspective changed when she moved from Massachusetts to Texas.

Listen here, read the transcript below, or click here for the full video version.

George Mason:
Welcome to Good God, Conversations That Matter About Faith and Public Life. I am your host, George Mason, and I'm pleased to introduce a new series that we're starting, that we're calling American Faith. And our first guest is Rabbi Nancy Kasten. Nancy, we're so glad to have you with us.

Nancy Kasten:
Thank you for inviting me.

George Mason:
Just full disclosure, Nancy and I work together in Faith Commons, which is the parent company, you might say, of Good God. And we've been working in these circles and around this subject quite a bit over time. And so it's fitting, Nancy, that you should be the first guest to kick off this series because what we're really talking about here is claiming the promise of America. That we have a land of many faiths and all faiths are legally welcome in this country, but not all people of faith feel equally welcome in this country.

George Mason:
That is to say that, although we have Article Six of the Constitution, which says that there shall be no religious test for serving in public office, and we have the First Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees religious liberty and freedom from government intrusion, and a free exercise of religion, nonetheless culture trumps policy and all of that quite a bit. And we have a long history of minority religions struggling to have a sense of equal place in our society.

George Mason:
So the question really that we're asking in this series is, what does it feel like to be a person of your faith in America today? And what would you want people to know about that experience as we seek to work on this unfinished project of true religious pluralism?

Nancy Kasten:
Well, I just want to, first of all, say, as we talked about in thinking through this whole series, that I'm only one person. I am a Jewish person, but I'm only one Jewish person. So you'll get a lot of variety and differing ideas about what it means to be Jewish in America today.

Nancy Kasten:
But I want to go back to your premise that all religions are welcome legally in the United States. I think that's where the difference lies today. I grew up thinking that, believing that and experiencing that, feeling that. I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. I went to a high school, a public high school that was 90% Jewish. It was a public high school. Most of the people, most of the students were not particularly observant Jews. I mean, there was this... Jews, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, nothing. It was a very academically oriented community. And our high school would go caroling on Christmas Eve on Boston Commons every year. And that was a great treat. And here we were, mostly Jewish kids singing Christmas carols, and that was so much fun. And going and seeing the lights and celebrating, and decorating trees with our friends and drinking Wassail. Is that how you pronounce it? Wassail?

George Mason:
Wassail.

Nancy Kasten:
Wassail. There you go. Sorry. And eating Christmas cookies. It was great. And our friends would come over and like Hanukkah candles with us, and it was never any sense that we didn't belong. It was celebrating each other's traditions.

Nancy Kasten:
Moving to the South was very different because I moved into a place where it was very clear, it there wasn't a 90% Jewish environment. It was a almost invisible Jewish environment, really, except for within our Jewish community, synagogue and extended Jewish community. And while Jews had very prominent roles in civic life in Dallas, when we moved here, it was different.

Nancy Kasten:
One of the big differences was that Jews had Christmas trees in Dallas. I had never seen that before. And it came out of a sense that, I think, that we celebrate Christmas as Americans, and we celebrate Hanukkah as Jews. And we're both. Were Americans and we're Jews. And so we celebrate both. That idea that Christmas is the American holiday, it's something that I really hadn't thought about before. It didn't feel like an American holiday to me. It felt like a holiday that maybe the majority of Americans who observed faith traditions observed. They celebrate it, but it wasn't an American holiday.

Nancy Kasten:
I think that's what's different now. That I'm not sure, you know, especially... And Jews have been somewhat spared from the legal issues, but certainly Muslims have gotten a very clear message that their faith is not protected by the law in the same way that Christian or even Jewish faith is protected by the law to date. So I think that that's different today. And I think that we have yet to see what that difference will mean going forward for our community.

George Mason:
Let's just think about this to clarify that what you're really saying is that America is not one thing. We have regional cultures, too. Right? And micro cultures in different parts of the country. And so here in Dallas and in the South generally, there is a sense that Christianity is the default culture. That is to say it is the foundation of America's civil religion. And so to get along as an American is to defer to that, if you are a minority religion in some way. And resistance to it, or a sense of questioning about its place, puts you in a position, then, of feeling somehow less than fully American. Am I understanding you correctly?

Nancy Kasten:
It's not even about just questioning it. It's living that reality. That makes one ask are the people who are promoting this kind of a law or this kind of a culture or norm, do they really see me as American? Right? You think about what happened in Charlottesville. Maybe that's an extreme and a fringe, but I think that the changes in some of the judicial positions make me feel like there are things to think about and question that I never did before. And it's not a question of am I fully American. But as an American, am I equal to every other American?

George Mason:
When you bring up Charlottesville, you're talking about a resurgence of antisemitism that was represented in that march by Christian nationalists. So the very nature of Christian nationalism that has been resurgent in the past years and has sort of come out of a hiding, you might say, and become very deliberate, that we should be a Christian nation, the chants were "You will not replace us." Right? And I think most people looking back at Charlottesville think that it was only really a white supremacy march against the Black Lives movement.

George Mason:
But it was also rooted in this longstanding sense that Christians fear that that Jews are, in a sense, conspiring to replace them. And the irony of that of course, is that Christian theology has often been a replacement theology of Judaism. Right? And said that Judaism is no longer a living vital religion. It's passed the baton of the people of God and Christians are the new Israel. So what happens in the Jewish community when something like Charlottesville happens and you hear that language come back, and then you don't hear the round condemnation of public officials and Christian leaders and that sort of thing, of that. What stirs in the heart and life of an American Jew when that takes place, nancy?

Nancy Kasten:
I think there's a huge range. I think that probably the vast majority of Americans are worried about antisemitism writ large, very concerned with things like security in Jewish institutions and that kind of thing. But I don't think Christian nationalism is what they're preoccupied with. I don't think that, for the most part, the Jewish community is on the ramparts about the attacks on the separation of church and state that have occurred and that, in my opinion, threatened to make those fringe ideas or ideologies into legal practice or protected practice.

Nancy Kasten:
I think about, for example, we have, still, a Secretary of Education who has promoted the public funding of religious schools. Right? If we were to have a secretary of Education who came from a Muslim background who wanted to promote public funding for religious schools, I think there would be an attack on their religious background, their faith tradition.

George Mason:
Yeah. Sure.

Nancy Kasten:
No one... No. I mean, not no one. But there isn't a widespread concern that Betsy Devoss's Christianity is what is motivating her, because Christianity isn't threatening to people. Right?

George Mason:
Yes. Right.

Nancy Kasten:
But somehow Islam is threatening to people and a person who is Muslim might be trying to undermine the true America. That doesn't happen with a Christian public official.

George Mason:
So you've actually moved into this interesting intersectional moment where you are relating your own Jewish experience over time as a minority religion in America, and although there are issues still that are active for the Jewish community, this has moved you to recognize, also, other religions that are under threat by the culture, Islam in particular. I think back Nancy to 1790, when President George Washington wrote to the Hebrew congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, which was, if I might say, started by a Baptist, Roger Williams, and the first colony of religious liberty in history. But-

Nancy Kasten:
In my maternal homeland. My mother was born, well, she grew up in Newport.

George Mason:
Lovely.

Nancy Kasten:
And my parents were named in the synagogue where Washington visited.

George Mason:
No kidding? All right. Well, let's remember that he wrote to them because of their concern about what kind of country we would have and what their place would be in it. And he quoted from Micah 4:4 about how every person will be able to sit under their own vine and fig tree and not be afraid in this new land. That is a kind of announcement at the beginning of our country that makes clear the intent that, not withstanding the numbers of how many Christians and how many Jews and how many of other faiths there are, that doesn't just apply to Jews. That is true. The force of the it is to be true for every person of faith, or no faith, in this country. And so to take that seriously becomes, I think, a project for us. Doesn't it? I mean that we not only deal with the legal aspect of it, but the cultural aspect.

Nancy Kasten:
Well, except I think that argument can be made on both sides, and it is made on both sides of the spectrum of understanding of religious liberty. For some, in order for everyone to be able to sit under their own fig tree, that means that others... That you cannot serve others in certain ways, or shouldn't be forced to serve others in certain ways that would contradict your faith, belief.

Nancy Kasten:
So one of the things that we have within Judaism, because our people lived for so much of our history in exile, the law of the land... Our law was always the law of the land. Even though we have Jewish law, we have a system of Jewish law called Halakhah that is binding upon Jews, upon observant Jews. Even for the most observant Jews, the law of the land supersedes whatever Jewish law there is. So you might have a Jewish wedding ceremony, but if you live in the United States, you have to have a civil license as well. You can't just be married under Jewish law. Likewise, if there's something that actually contradicts Jewish law within civil law, the civil law always is accepted. That is challenged. That notion is challenged because Christians don't have that same Halakhah. And so the question of what the overarching authority is going to be, is left open.

George Mason:
And yet Christians continue to make the argument that there are things that we see in government that are contrary to our faith, and that are a threat. And we must, in the words of Peter in the new Testament, we must obey God rather than men. And that's a case that's made mostly now by, of course, more conservative Christians who feel that, for example, they have to remove their kids from public schools because they're not being taught according to their own biblical values, and that they are therefore being discriminated against a persecuted in the public sphere and those kinds of things.

George Mason:
I think the Halakhah that you just mentioned is an interesting thing, because going back to Islam, Sharia law is a similar situation. And people don't realize that the American law for Muslims supersedes Sharia. And yet we have all of these cases of lawmakers and states trying to pass laws against Sharia so that we could keep Muslims at bay. We haven't really been doing that about Jews following Halakhah.

Nancy Kasten:
No, but... That's right. But that's part of why... I mean, part of the reason is that the Jewish community in so many ways has assimilated and we've been able to do that within our own tradition because we have those pardons built in. Right?

George Mason:
Right. So I think that raises a question that I think you've told me before, maybe it was in your classes preparing for your bat mitzvah or something like that, with a question was asked to you, "Are you a Jewish American or an American Jew?" How do you answer that question? And what's the difference, so that people could understand what negotiating this space feels like?

Nancy Kasten:
Well, again, I think that this is such a different question now than it was then. And I'll tell you something, part of it has to do with Israel. Okay? I mean another regional difference, and I'm actually... I have some questions for you, too, so I want to make sure we leave time for that.

George Mason:
All right.

Nancy Kasten:
Because I want to know if you see any change. You grew up in New York.

George Mason:
I did, yeah.

Nancy Kasten:
And then you've lived in the South for a long time. So I'm curious to know whether from your youth, you either saw regional changes or changes over time in how you saw minority communities, faith communities, as either being part or being an exotic culture of interest versus an actually integrated part of the fabric of our country. But I think the question then was was I primarily an American, as somebody who was born in America and had American citizenship and protected by American law, and my Judaism would inform my faith, would inform my national identity versus I'm a Jew. My faith precedes any nationality. So my national identity informs my Judaism. Right?

George Mason:
Yes.

Nancy Kasten:
That was a question that could be asked when there was actually no question in my mind that I was an American with... I wasn't a dual citizen of a Jewish nation and an American nation. Right?

George Mason:
Right.

Nancy Kasten:
There was a state of Israel at the time, but it wasn't my, as it isn't now, it's not my birth place. It's not my place of citizenship. I'm very fortunate to be able to become an Israeli if I want to become one. But I don't. And so I have two options where millions of people around the world right now have no options of nationality. So I don't take that for granted.

Nancy Kasten:
But when, in those days, and part of the reason that Jews in Dallas had Christmas trees was to kind of make sure people knew that they were Americans. Right? That they weren't, they didn't have dual loyalty. They weren't also loyal to Israel. And there was no... They wanted to make sure nobody thought that they would preference their love for Israel over their loyalty to the United States. In a very bizarre change over the last 40 years Israel and Jewish identity and become enmeshed in a way that is very hard to disentangle.

Nancy Kasten:
While Zionism, the longing for the eternal homeland of the Jewish people has always been an inseparable part of Jewish identity, the modern nation state of Israel is not the same as that, and the loyalty to the modern existing nation of Israel is not the same as that Zionism that is loyal to the idea of the centrality of Israel.

George Mason:
Right. And I think many Christians, especially, do not understand that Jews do not think, do not have one mind about things that are going on in Israel. While I think generally speaking, you can say, that all Jews are Zionists in the sense of being grateful for the nation state itself. Nonetheless, there is a difference of opinion about government policies in Israel and their relationship to the Palestinians, and the moral underpinning of how Judaism is tied to political action and international relations and those sorts of things. And I think a lot of Christians just blindly assume that there is this dual citizenship, so to speak, where your loyalty, as to Israel, actually makes it somewhat questionable at times, in terms of your American identity and loyalty, too. And we've seen some of that happening in this administration with policies that have been different, and changes that have made.

Nancy Kasten:
Well. And I think, again, to say that any politician's support for Israel is equal to the validation of Judaism as an accepted and included religion within the United States of America, when you equate those two things, then you're assuming that every Jew is part of the Israeli nation. Right?

George Mason:
Right.

Nancy Kasten:
And I think what we're seeing within the Jewish community as a result of this, which I think is troubling, is that Jews who object to what the modern state of Israel is doing and policies of the government of Israel, feel like they have to choose being Jewish or being American. It's not both. Right? That if you're American and you want to fight for policies that you think are good for America, then you might need to separate yourself from Israel at times. And if you do that, then somehow you can't consider yourself Jewish because then you'd be a traitor to Judaism and to the Jewish people.

George Mason:
I think what you're saying is that we all need to learn to be more comfortable with the complicated nature of our many identities that make up our situations in the world where we live and what our religious convictions are. And we can't assume to put people into a simple box of you're Christian, you're Jewish, you're American, those sorts of things.

George Mason:
I want to get back to the question you asked me, because we are kind of losing our time. I grew up in Staten Island, New York, which is actually quite a conservative borough. One of the outer boroughs, you might say, of New York City. And it was interesting to me that, yes, you're right, I encountered more Jews in New York, generally. I went to a magnet high school in Brooklyn. And so, even more so, there. But nonetheless, most of my upbringing was around Italian Catholics because New York is very... I'm sorry. Staten Island was more than 90% Italian Catholic when I was growing up there.

George Mason:
So when I would play little league baseball or pee wee football, and we would go through the cultural ritual of sports, and that is we have a team prayer. You put your hands into the huddle and immediately they begin to say the Hail Mary. Now I was non-Catholic, and I was an evangelical Christian who did not know the Hail Mary prayer. So immediately I learned, at an early age, that sense of being excluded from religious practices that were cultural norms, even though I was a fellow Christian. Now, to be candid, back then I wasn't sure Catholics were Christians, and they weren't sure I was. I mean, look, that's just sort of the way all of that happened. Right?

George Mason:
When I went to the University of Miami, eventually became a Baptist, I actually moved from being kind of a minority part of the Christian community in New York to becoming part of a historically minority denomination in American history. And I learned quickly that Baptists were one of the only groups of Christians that did not have an established colony. And we were part of the tradition that argued for church/state separation, full religious liberty, and where the Christian group that was most responsible, probably, you might say, for the first time amendment.

George Mason:
But then I moved to Texas, and what I found was this completely different culture from the Miami where there were many Jews. Miami Beach, for heaven sake, it was a suburb of New York in a lot of ways for me, in Miami. I moved to Texas and the cultural dominance of Christianity and conservative Protestant Christianity was a new thing to me to navigate. On the one hand, it makes one feel a little more at home, but then you start realizing what happens when you put on a majority consciousness and you lose that sense of being a sojourner in the world, a resident alien. That is part of our biblical tradition. And both Jews and Christians use that kind of language to speak of the authentic spiritual experience of living in the world and the longing for a promised land to come, you might say, that is, yet, always just beyond our reach.

George Mason:
So I would say, Nancy, that for me, education and experience and getting in touch with my roots has helped me navigate this to the point where, in my own faith journey, I have moved to recognizing that unless I am learning sensitivity and advocacy for people of other faith traditions, and doing my best to treat them as equals and to recognize the challenges they face, even at the hands of my fellow Christians, then I'm not really fulfilling my Christian duty, let alone my American duty. And so that's what's changed for me, I suppose you might say.

Nancy Kasten:
Thank you.

George Mason:
Well, you and I could do this all day. And I think there are many, many things that we know would be helpful as we go forward. But if you had some things that you might want to say to those who are not Jewish, that would say... Let me tell you how it would help Jews in America feel your support and encouragement and your acknowledgement of our place as your full-fledged neighbors in American life. What would be some ways that you would suggest we think about our responsibility?

Nancy Kasten:
I have to say, I think so many of our challenges right now in trying to create more equity in our country, that it all starts with ourselves. Right? That if we can't... That the first step is to recognize that we're all alike in a certain way, that we all have areas in which we feel excluded and diminished in certain ways, or ignored or invisible. And that when we do that, if we just tried to then fill the gap for ourselves, rather than... If we fill the gap for ourselves then we're exacerbating the problem for others. Whereas if we use that as an opportunity to identify with that same sense of displacement or sojourning, the outsiders feeling that we have, if we use that to create a sense of empathy and compassion with others, then together, we can build a community, a society, a country where everybody feels like they belong.

Nancy Kasten:
We can't all have everything we want. Right? We will never all have everything we want. And so it's more about saying let's see everybody and everything as essential, and make sure that everybody has what they need, and try to identify with that in each other. I think that's the first step.

George Mason:
I've been reading a book, and the woman who wrote it talks about people who have been other to us. That if we really find our common humanity with them, we should begin to see the other person as that part of me that I do not yet know. I really like that.

George Mason:
So you and I work on this project, ongoing, in what we call Faith Commons. That we invite everyone to the commons, and bring your faith with you, whatever it is. It is welcome with us, and we will try to understand one another better and work toward a more just and peaceful society. Nancy, thank you so much for joining me as we kick off this American Faith series.

Nancy Kasten:
Thank you, George. Always so much fun to have these conversations.

George Mason:
I agree. Well, God bless you in this season. And we will look forward to a good new year as COVID begins to lift and we begin to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Nancy Kasten:
Yes.

George Mason:
Take care.

Nancy Kasten:
Happy New Year.

George Mason:
You, too.

Speaker 4:
Good God is created by Dr. George Mason, produced and directed by Jim White. Social media coordination by Cameron Vickery. Good God, Conversations with George Mason, is the podcast devoted to bringing you ideas about God and faith and the common good. All material copyright 2020 by Faith Commons.