I am a religious
listener to NPR’s This American Life, a weekly radio show that brings unique
“slice of life” stories centered loosely around a theme each week. Religious,
that is, in both senses: I am a religious Jew and I listen to the program
without fail each week. The stories are often compelling, thought-provoking,
and educational. Sometimes they are even profound and moving.
Recently, my ears
perked up at the intro to the show, as a friend of mine was featured. David Rudis,
introduced by This American Life host Ira Glass as “a guy I know” (actually,
Rudis was the chairman of the board of the NPR station in Chicago where TAL is
produced), was trying to convince Ira to get involved with a Jewish
organization. The context, as would eventually become clear, was a show with
the theme of “Tribes”—how and why people connect to groups of like-minded
people. Ira’s personal reflection on his relationship to his own Jewish “tribe”
was the hook for the introduction to this show, as reflected in the conversation
where David was asking him to get involved with a Jewish organization.
Ira’s response to
David was telling. He justified rejecting David’s request because he doesn’t
believe in God, is married to someone who is not Jewish, doesn’t keep kosher,
and has “plenty of interesting Jews in my life already.” The “obligatory
conversation about the Holocaust” was likewise sneered at by Ira as failing to
awaken any interest on his part. When David suggested that there is something
profoundly Jewish about This American Life’s recipe of weaving together
narratives in surprising, telling, morally impactful ways, Ira professed shock—the
thought that his show is a “Jewish “cultural product had never occurred to him.
The exchange saddened
me on a few levels. First, for a show which always goes deeply into its
subjects, this was a superficial response. Glass has succeeded in carving out a
compelling niche in the outmoded medium of radio precisely by being reflective,
thoughtful, always asking the extra thought-provoking question. It’s ironic
that when it came to a component of his own identity, that probing curiosity
was absent.
Second--if I can put
aside my personal disappointment in Ira Glass for a moment-- the list of reasons
why Glass professed to have no interest in organized Jewish life reflect
exactly what is wrong with our community today. Here is a highly intelligent,
well-educated Jew with a relatively rich Jewish upbringing in Baltimore, and he
believes that the Jewish community is (still) a place where only
kosher-keeping, theistic, Holocaust-guilt-bearing, in-married Jews would bother
to set foot.
And Ira Glass is a
high-profile media personality in a major city (insert NPR and Chicago joke
here!). It’s not like he is under a rock with no access to the remarkable
intellectual and creative energy that is generated in the Jewish community on a
daily basis. But somehow we have been unable to convey the message that Jewish
life today can be enriching, meaningful, and relevant, regardless of your
theological doubts or degree of ritual observance, even if you have baggage”
from your Jewish upbringing.
People like Ira are
able to operate in the highest levels of our society, with many Jewish friends
and associates, and remain unaware of (or unmoved by) Jewish social justice
efforts which support the dignity of all people; Jewish film, music, literature
and theater which perpetuates deep discourse across cultural lines; and
spiritual communities that provide meaning, connection, and support to people
regardless of their belief or personal ritual practice. All of this and more is
produced by the same Jewish organizational structure that Ira still associates
with a tribalistic, narrow-minded, exclusionary mindset.
It should be noted
that exploring our doubts and notions about God and spirituality, discovering
layers of meaning in the laws of kashrut, celebrating the continuity of our age-old
traditions and covenant, and mourning the losses inflicted upon our extended
Jewish family are still all powerful elements of Jewish life. Just because they
make some Jews uncomfortable is no reason to dismiss or jettison them. But when
our own people, including cultural creatives and meaning-makers like Ira Glass,
can persist in the notion that organized Jewish life is irrelevant to them, there
is clearly a message that is not getting communicated. Some of the
responsibility for that belongs to Ira and his peers: they are distracted by
the blaring white noise of American commercial culture, and they have not
always dealt with their baggage about Judaism. But we in the organized Jewish
community bear responsibility too: our radio signal is too weak. We preach to
the choir too much and broadcast too little. It’s time to proclaim the power of
This American Jewish Life.
