Politics & Power Quote by Arthur Hertzberg

Hertzberg is picking a fight with the easiest kind of Jewish politics: the kind that organizes itself around danger. His question is pointed, almost prosecutorial. Not “Do you care?” but “What are you going to do?” He’s demanding an affirmative program, not a defensive posture. The rhetorical move matters because it exposes how identity can become a reflex rather than a practice: if community cohesion is built mainly on opposition to “its common enemy,” then the enemy becomes the engine of belonging, and tradition gets reduced to a grievance narrative.

The subtext is a critique of American Jewish assimilation and the postwar temptation to outsource continuity to external pressure - antisemitism, geopolitical threats, culture-war flashpoints. Hertzberg, a theologian with a historian’s sense of how communities endure, is insisting that survival isn’t guaranteed by solidarity alone. Solidarity is reactive; tradition is cultivated. “The peculiar and unique culture” is deliberately unfashionable phrasing: he’s defending particularism in a country that rewards melting into a generic liberal identity. In that sense, it’s also a warning about moral comfort. Marching against an enemy can feel righteous and clarifying; building institutions, educating children, transmitting Hebrew literacy, ritual fluency, and ethical habits is slower, less glamorous work.

Contextually, Hertzberg spoke from an era when American Jews were achieving unprecedented security and influence even as synagogue affiliation, observance, and distinctiveness were under strain. He’s arguing that safety can be its own kind of erosion: when persecution recedes, the community has to decide whether Judaism is a living inheritance or merely a badge worn when threatened.