When being a good citizen means giving up Filet-O-Fish
published April
9, 2001
written by J. Irving Israel / Chicago
illustrated by Vasus Das / New York
I saved my August 8 copy of The New York Times with the headline: "Lieberman will run with Gore; first Jew on a major U.S. ticket." I have a white, leather kippah with "Lieberman 2000" spelled in red, white, and blue around the rim. I was ecstatic about the possibility of a Jewish vice president. Ecstatic, and a little nervous.
Joseph Lieberman is a pretty serious Jew. My own observance is constantly evolving and it is very idiosyncratic. I will not eat meat that isn't kosher, but I will eat a Filet-O-Fish sandwich at McDonald's. I will not buy or sell anything on Shabbat, but I might rent "Raiders of the Lost Ark" before Shabbat and watch it on Friday night after services.
Lieberman raised the bar for Jews like me. After Al Gore chose the Connecticut senator as his running mate, all of the sudden Americans in rural Ohio and in Maine knew that "Orthodox" Jews do not ride in cars on their Sabbath. Human-interest stories about "Lieberman's faith" were broadcast on television and strewn through magazines and newspapers.
With the press came pressure. Would non-Jews now look at me with disappointment when I drive, donning my kippah, to pick up a friend at the airport before sunset on the Day of Rest? Would I be similarly embarrassed eating a slice of mushroom pizza at Edwardo's? Might my fellow patrons know that a restaurant, according to many Jews, must have a hekhsher for a Jew to eat anything from the menu? Whereas in the past I worried about offending Jews who interpreted halakhah differently, now I had to be a good Jew in the eyes of goyim with newly acquired expectations of their Semitic neighbors.
Now that George "Jesus Day" Bush has secured the presidency, we'll never
know how a Gore-Lieberman victory would have affected the Jew on the street.
But in the span of his short, failed campaign, Lieberman challenged the
public's perceptions of Jews, and of religious belief overall. He raised
the American mainstream's expectations of the Jewish minority in their
midst, and he re-ignited a centuries-old debate in the community over
what it means to be a good Jew. And in doing so, he made Jews like myself
somewhat ambivalent about his candidacy: happy that he was raising the
profile of Jews everywhere, anxious that he would force us into his mold
of the "proper," God-fearing Jew.
The model Jew