JOE, MY YARMULKE AND ME

With the South Carolina primaries just a few weeks away, Joe and Hadassah Lieberman have been campaigning extensively in my hometown of Greenville. Joe might actually do quite well here. Fundamentalism still holds sway and its bipolarity toward Jews has us vacillating between The Damned and The Chosen People.

I have attended a couple of Lieberman events. They have been small affairs, largely attended by African Americans and liberal white folks, and not too many Jews. The get-togethers were the anticipated press-the-flesh-parrot-a-stump-speech-and-get-outa-Dodge stuff, consummated over onion dip. As a local minor-league curmudgeon, my attendance gained passing mention in the morning newspaper and even a brief, albeit unaired, interview with CNN.

An officious busybody, quick with her camera, however, demanded a photo op for the local weekly, with Joe and me – orthodox Jewish candidate and yarmulke-adorned rabbi – smiling broadly at each other, arm in arm. Instinctively, I chafed, and despite her insistence, I refused, because of the visual statement it would make. Intuition told me that Joe felt the same and was grateful that I bore the brunt of her ire. The uncomfortable encounter took less than 15 seconds but it spoke volumes about lingering suspicions of Jewish marginalization even as Jews seem to have taken up residence in the American political mainstream.

Forty years ago, my parents, otherwise proud Jews, taught me to feel self-conscious about wearing my yarmulke in public. Charles Silberman wrote that in his family, the code word for such behavior was “not nice.” Thirty-three years ago, I was bodily ejected by US Marshals from the infamous Chicago Seven trial because I refused to remove my yarmulke in the courtroom. As I was dragged away, Abbie Hoffman shouted at coreligionist Judge Julius Hoffman, “It’s a shondeh far die goyim (disgrace for the gentiles)! They’re taking a yeshiva bochur (student) away!”

Twenty-five years ago, I witnessed a young man wearing a yarmulke delivering Harvard’s valedictory address (in the traditional Latin). A short time later, I sermonized (in English), yarmulke on head, from the pulpit of Atlanta’s august St. Philip’s Cathedral. Not long ago, Donald Trump supposedly walked into one of his accounting departments and complained, “I don’t see enough yarmulkes in here!” Now, with The Donald’s approval, I feel no self-consciousness whatsoever.

Joe has no obligation to act any more overtly Jewish than he already does. He has already taken the posture of observant Judaism well beyond where even we who believe in the limitless opportunities of America would have dreamed possible. Joe need not wear a yarmulke – literally and figuratively – to establish his Jewish credentials. He has done enough. More might even be “not nice.”

The question for Joe and his supporters is whether he should be seen surrounded by yarmulkes, that is, too closely associated with Jewish leaders, people and causes. Would we ask the same of Kerry, Dean or Bush? Certainly not. Their credibility would rise on the premise, not fall. For Joe, the question at best gives birth to ambivalence.

Pundits and politicos have not openly suspected Joe of “dual loyalty,” the way they did of JFK and the Vatican. Perhaps today’s campaign slime has not gotten so grimy as we had thought. Then again, we really do not know what xenophobia is murmured among confidants or contemplated behind the polling-booth curtain. The best we can say is that despite our sense of welcome to the political mainstream, many Jews are concerned – consciously or unconsciously – that a critical mass of gentiles is still suspicious that a Jewish plot is poised to dominate the American agenda.

The more that Joe is visibly associated with fellow Jews and Jewish leadership, the more the image of conspiracy looms ominous and obscures his essential message. I could not help but pick it up from between the lines of how he and Hadassah campaigned in this arcane little corner of Americana. Sadly, I felt precisely the same.

So, do not call me paranoid, but do call me ambivalent, and certainly do consider indicting me for unjustified self-importance. I like Joe, and I support him. But, I do not think that his campaign benefits from media ops of yarmulke-adorned rabbis fawning over him. He already has enough stigmata to overcome, whether folks talk about them above a whisper or not.

Joe’s presidential bid is compelling evidence that even observant Jews have arrived at the American political mainstream. Arrived, yes. But, we will only really start feeling at home when who-is-seen-wearing-a-yarmulke-next-to-whom loses its inference of a national Jewish cabal.