Universalism vs particularism vs the actual debate
This is about trying to get to the heart of the matter
We’re back!
Housekeeping notes: Next week, paid subscribers will get June’s ET Read Home, a monthly book club of sorts. This month I am going to finally just write about If This Is a Man. If you haven’t read it, now is as good a time as any.
With that! Onto news, Jews, and views. (The “news” section is pretty short this week but keep scrolling and you’ll see I make up for it with this week’s “views” and “stuff about Jews.”)
NEWS
From Columbia Journalism Review: “Coverage of the 2026 World Cup promises to bring politics off the sidelines.”
Dr. Orna of Couple’s Therapy was on the noted podcast Las Culturistas. I really encourage you to listen to at least the first 10 minutes for the discussion on how, in relationships, we are talking about politics even when we’re not talking about politics. (That said, her rant at the end against people telling her to leash her dog: Dr. Orna, you are a star and a genius and I would never tell you what to do, but I ask that you please consider leashing your dog.)
For my fellow Ozu fans, from Liberties: “Ozu and the Fear of Death,” which I’m recommending in its entirety but especially for the line that goes, “It’s a wondrous experience — the showing and sharing of art, the nestling of light and love with other human souls — we are living to remember those who passed on but also to be intimate with those living, to tell them our secrets and dreams, to love” and the one that reads, “And this is what art gives us. It lets us practice for the real thing with a work that is true.”
Finally, I liked this Athletic profile: “Marta Kostyuk was out of tennis patience. She found it in her hardest moments.” She beat both the players I was hoping would win Roland Garros but I have to say I find her story this tournament—she learned that a Russian missile hit 100 meters from her parents’ home before the first round and cried and then went on to win that round and her way into the semi finals—very inspiring.
MY VIEWS ON…
…what’s obscured by the “universalism vs. particularism” debate!
This past week, eJewish Philanthropy ran the following story: “Universalism vs. particularism: What is the Reform movement fighting about?”
And while this summary won’t capture it all and you should read the whole thing, the basic thrust is that various Reform rabbis say they support both universalism and particularism—both halves of “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?”—but disagree on which comes first.
The piece quotes Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch speaking to the Re-Charging Reform Judaism conference and saying, “while we may convince ourselves that the main problem in the Jewish world is a narrowing particularism — the opposite may constitute an even greater challenge in the Diaspora. A universalism unmoored from particularism is not Jewish universalism. It is just universalism, of the non-Jewish kind.”
It contrasts this with Rabbis Jonah Dov Pesner and Josh Weinberg, who wrote a blog post for the Union for Reform Judaism that read, “[Some] tell us, now is not the time for social justice or to concern ourselves with the fate of the Other. Now is not the time for public critique, however nuanced. With antisemitism on the rise, now is the time to circle the wagons, to stand with our people, full stop. We respectfully, but firmly, disagree.”
I think the piece is a neat snap shot of this moment where universalism and particularism are being debated and what follows is not at all meant as a criticism of the piece, which is using the language that the people it’s describing are using: Hirsch and Pesner and Weinberg all talked about how Judaism is both universalism and particularism.
Nor is the following meant to be about a debate within Reform. I don’t think this trend is confined to any one movement. The terms universalism and particularism are debated and bandied about across American and global Jewishness today.
And sometimes they do capture what we’re debating. For example, for the first however many years of Open Society Foundations, George Soros pointedly did not give to specifically Jewish causes; Jakob Finci told me that, when he was awarded money in the early 1990s for his humanitarian work in Sarajevo, Soros told him that he did not want the money to only go to Jews. That, I think, is a clear example of universalism over particularism.
I just don’t think they’re what we’re actually talking about here.
To my mind, the questions that are actually being debated are not should I take care of myself first and foremost or should I see caring for the world as caring for myself. The actual questions are:
What, if any, are the conditions I am placing on caring for others?
What constitutes caring for myself/my own?
What I mean by that is this: When someone says that insufficient support in the fight against antisemitism means that Jews should abandon or not focus on other civil rights issues, that is not actually an argument against universalism. That is an argument for conditions for universalism. It’s saying that we think ideally we should be caring about other people, but we can only do that if they show care for us in certain ways (and what those ways are). I’m not sure what to call that, but it’s not particularism. And when people argue that caring for other communities is the right thing to do for Jewish safety and security, that’s not really universalism, is it?
Relatedly, and more importantly, I also know that we disagree on what those conditions are. We disagree on what it means to show up for Jews and the extent to which that means defending or being loyal to other Jews and to Israel. And that also means that we disagree on what it means for Jews to show up for and care for Jews. Another way of putting this is that I wonder if the word “particularism” is being used to obscure that we do not actually agree on what it looks like to focus on Jews.
I think some would argue that particularism entails not protesting Israel, and certainly not protesting Israel in time of war. Hirsch, for example, in a 2024 Yom Kippur sermon addressing young Jews taking part in protests over Gaza, said, “Everything Jewish begins with Jewish peoplehood. Kol Yisrael areivin zeh ba’zeh—all Jews are responsible one for the other, the Sages taught. If you do not feel this special bond with other Jews—you are emotionally damaged, Jewishly…We did not intend that our emphasis on tikkun olam — social repair — would lead some Jews to join anti-Israel demonstrations.”
But I think many of the young adults at his synagogue protesting Israel in 2024 probably did think that they were taking responsibility for their fellow Jews when they came out and chanted “Not in Our Name.” Not all, of course. I’m sure some were outraged about the war and would have been there regardless of who was carrying it out. And usually, at this point, someone suggests they were there to seem cool, which, sure, I’m sure some were. But, at least based on interviews I did with participants, some were there because they felt a special—some might even say particular—obligation to be there as Jews. Caring about Jews, to them, meant protesting Jewish action. And as long as the idea of “Jewish peoplehood” or “obligation to Jews” or “particularism” is used as a stand in for “I think being Jewish means you should not insult other Jews and/or the Jewish state,” or even in some cases, “I think Jews matter more,” I think we will be speaking past each other. Ruth Wisse once talked about how it was the job of American Jews to go to university and serve in the army of words and fight rhetorically for Israel. I don’t agree with that, but it’s more honest than talking about peoplehood or particularism.
Or, to use a more personal example and admit my own bias in this: I sometimes receive emails accusing me of turning my back on or not caring enough about Jews. I always find this very interesting because the emails are usually in response to articles I have written about Jews for, say, the Forward, a Jewish publication. I think what they really mean is that they do not like the way in which I am writing about or what I am asking of Jews. That is, of course, their right, but the idea that the issue is universalism vs particularism is sort of like singing familiar lyrics to the wrong melody: there is a mismatch between words and meaning.
In other words, we are not talking about universalism or particularism. We are talking about conditionality, care, and responsibility. What we think others owe us and what we feel we owe one another. I don’t think our conversations would magically get better if we used different words, but, at the very least, we would be saying what we mean.
…AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
For those who liked the “Andrey X” story from Haaretz last week and/or who follow Russian politics, too, I thought this, also from Haaretz, was fascinating and well done: “The latest wave of immigrants from Russia is younger, liberal and politically uncommitted. A growing network of activists wants to turn them into a decisive force in the upcoming election”
How did I miss this when it came out? Nathan Englander has a new (though now half a year old) short story in The Yale Review.
From the Forward: “Nearly half of young U.S. Jews want to replace Israel with binational state, poll finds” (the article version of a poll and post by the same author that I shared last week)
Also from the Forward: “AIPAC is funneling pro-Israel money to candidates and covering its tracks”
And again in the Forward, Joel Swanson argues, “Mayor Zohran Mamdani made the right decision in skipping the city’s annual Israel Day Parade — because of the specific Israeli officials the parade honored. American Jews have the right to celebrate Israel’s existence, if they find it to be a meaningful part of their personal Jewish identities. But Mamdani’s specific decision not to march in this specific parade, this year, alongside far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich, Amichai Chikli and Ofir Sofer, is defensible. Those painting that choice as a sign of antisemitism have a lot of explaining to do about whose company they choose to keep.”
Harvard Divinity School launched ASHERAH: Innovations in Jewish Ritual and Prayer and a corresponding Substack
From JTA: “British Museum postpones a Jewish Culture Month lecture, citing ‘disruption’ concerns”
Also from JTA: “For the first time in its 73-year history, Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum and archive, is establishing educational centers outside the Jewish state. The institution announced in a statement Thursday that the first centers will be in Germany — one in Munich, and a subsidiary in Leipzig.”
From New York Jewish Week: “Goldman and Lander clash over Israel in first joint campaign appearance”
Moment’s editor in chief published an essay calling for the death of the word Zionism. Moment also published a series of ideological diverse responses.
From Jewish Currents: “A New Umbrella for the Jewish Left”
Ilan Goldenberg, who was charged with Jewish outreach for the Kamala Harris campaign, offered his thoughts on the role Gaza played in the 2024 election.
Finally and for something slightly different: I can’t stop watching Rabbi Arielle Stein’s “12 shoes for the 12 Hebrew months.” I keep repeating “next we have Av, the lowest, saddest point in the Jewish calendar year…we’re gonna go with a black mourning flip flop” to myself and now you can, too.
-ET
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