Patriotism

Rabbi Melanie Aron

July 5, 2002

In a world tied together by global communications and commerce, a world in which nationalism is so often a cause of war and conflict, one has to wonder about the meaning and value of patriotism. Yet this year in America, patriotism has been celebrated, as perhaps never before within my lifetime.

So I thought it might be interesting to look for a moment at Jewish sources regarding patriotism, particularly for those Jews living outside of the land of Israel.

The classic source for all Jewish discussion of ties between Jews and the lands of their dispersion, is Jeremiah 29:7: "Seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captive and pray unto God for it; for in the peace thereof you shall have peace." From this text rabbinic Judaism derived both the obligation of loyalty to one's country of residence as well as the obligation to pray for it publicly at communal worship services. This obligation of loyalty was interpreted as the requirement that one follow all the laws of the land, the principle: dina demalchutah dinah, the law of the ruling powers is the law, (except to the extent that a law is anti-semitic singling the Jews out for special hardships or restrictions). The obligation to pray for the government was transformed by Geonic times, in the very early middle ages, into a prayer for the ruling powers which was recited on Shabbat morning, just after the reading of the Torah and Haftarah, and which continues in many synagogues until today. You can find it in the blue Gates of Prayer on page 452 and you may remember also from our High Holiday services.

In general Rabbinic Judaism viewed government as necessary to keep the peace and protect the weak. In Pirke Avot we find the advice: "Pray for the welfare of the government, for if not for peoples fear of the authorities, they would devour one another."

The particular affection a person might feel for their own country was not viewed as an obstacle to peace or of more general concern for humankind as a whole. It was rather considered akin to the special affection one feels for that which is one's own. In the Talmud we find the charm of a wife for her husband compared with the charm of a city for those who live in it, and incidentally the charm of a purchased item for the one who has already bought it (which tells us something about the rabbi's view of marriage).

Even before the French revolution when Jews still lived under special disabilities, and even where Jews lived under non democratic governments in which they could not participate, we find evidence of Jewish patriotism. The Jews of Austria, during the seven years war 1756-1763, for example offered prayers for the Empress Maria Theresa, though she was quite anti-semitic. The most prominent Rabbi of that community, the Orthodox rabbi Ezekiel Landau, urged his congregants to fulfill their required army service. Of course in many of these cases there is a question as to whether these prayers and statements were motivated by love of county and fellow feeling for its other inhabitants, or by fear of the authorities and an attempt at protection from the local hostile population.

With the coming of Emancipation and the full participation of Jews in democratic states, there was all the more reason for Jews to experience patriotism. To some extent national loyalty was part of the deal being offered, as it was explicitly at the time of the Paris Sanhedrin, where Napoleon looked to Jewish officials to promote patriotism in the general community.

America, because of its complete freedom of religion, has been seen as a special case in halachah, where the obligation to patriotism goes beyond that of the prophet Jeremiah. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the most stringent of American Orthodox rabbis, writes that Jews have a special obligation to this malchut shel chesed, this government of kindness. In order to fulfill the mitzvah of hakarat hatov, gratitude for any goodness bestowed upon us, we need to show our appreciation by being good citizens, obeying the laws of the country, and respecting this country's civic institutions and those who serve in them. This feeling about America was manifest in many of our grandparents and great grandparents who first came to this country. It was present in the pride they felt each time they went to the ballot box, in the way they talked about democracy, and in the singing of God Bless America in Yiddish at the many cousins clubs in the old country of New York and New Jersey.

Religiously it is easier to justify patriotism to a creed, a principle of government, rather than to a monarch. In the United States that is how naturalization works, as new immigrants swear their loyalty not to the president, or even to the land, but to the principles of government outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

We then discussed the following quotation for the Jewish Women's Archive (www.jw.org).

"Gentlemen of the jury, we respect your patriotism. We would not, if we could, have you change its meaning for yourself. But may there not be different kinds of patriotism as there are different kinds of liberty? I for one cannot believe that love of one's country must needs consist in blindness to its social faults, to deafness to its social discords, of inarticulation to its social wrongs. Neither can I believe that the mere accident of birth in a certain country or a mere scrap of paper constitutes the love of country.

I know many people - I am one of them - who were not born here, nor have they applied for citizenship, and who yet love America with deeper passion and greater intensity than many natives whose patriotism manifests itself by pulling, kicking and insulting those who do not rise when the national anthem is played. Our patriotism is that of the man who loves a woman with open eyes. He is enchanted by her beauty, yet he sees her faults. So we, too, who know America, love her beauty, her richness, her great possibilities... above all do we love the people that have produced her wealth, her artists who have created her beauty, her great apostles who dream and work for liberty- but with the same passionate emotion we hate her superficiality, her cant, her corruption, her mad, unscrupulous worship at the altar of the Golden Calf."

From Trial and Speeches of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman in the United States District Court, in the City of New York, July, 1917 (New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association [1917]).