Postcard From Koyasan--and a Thought on Jewish Cultural Identity

Because I am not teaching this semester, I tacked an extra week onto my fall break and have spent the last week and a half in Japan--partly touring in Tokyo and Kyoto but mostly on a bicycle tour that took me and the rest of the group through ancient Japan, beginning with Nara (where the deer are believed to be sacred and thus have the run of the town). 

I've had a wonderful time and learned a great deal about Japanese history and culture, but, not wanting to come across like Thomas Friedman, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert of any sort based on a conversation with a taxi driver. Accordingly, I'm going to devote today's essay to reflecting on my own reaction to a particular experience I had at a Buddhist temple in Koyasan, which is home to over one hundred such temples and is the center of Shingon Buddhism, dating to the early 9th century.

Along with the rest of my group, I stayed overnight at one of the monasteries in Koyasan. That was especially meaningful to me because all of the food was Shojin Ryori, which is vegan. In addition, in college I took some classes in Indian philosophy and have long been intrigued by Buddhist philosophy in particular--especially its negation of the self and the resonance of the Buddhist view with the work of David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment more than two millennia later. So I was predisposed to look favorably on the experience--and I did, albeit with one important qualification.

As part of our stay at the monastery, we were encouraged to observe the Joshuku (master monk) chant in what was described as a morning meditation. Because I never quite got over my jet lag, arriving by 6:30 am was not a problem. The session was less meditation than prayer. Although I know that many observant Jews will not enter a house of worship of another faith, that has never bothered me. As a child, I attended first communions and confirmations of my Catholic friends, and I've been to church weddings for various denominations. But at one point during the service, we visitors were encouraged to approach the altar, and move a few grains of incense into a charcoal tray as an offering to Buddha.

I politely declined to participate in what I understood to be an act that would be a literal violation of the Second Commandment--idol worship and infidelity to the Jewish God I don't believe in. I was surprised by the strength of my own reaction. I briefly contemplated succumbing to peer pressure (as everyone else in the group offered the incense) but found myself quite unsettled in so doing. I opted out and I'm glad I did, but I want to interrogate my own reaction.

Although the Second Commandment popped into my head as the source of my anxiety, I don't think it actually was. I generally observe the Ten Commandments incidentally. That is, I don't steal, murder, bear false witness, etc., because I think these things are immoral, not because they are also listed as sins in the Bible. I realize that the fact that I live in a society shaped by the Bible could account for part of my morality, but only a part. There are many things the Bible permits (like killing animals for food and enslaving other humans) that I don't do because I regard them as immoral, while there are other things it commands that I disobey--such as the Fourth Commandment (remembering and keeping holy the sabbath).

So what accounted for my anxiety? I can think of two things. First, I had a nearly identical experience in China 24 years ago. At that time, Sherry and I were eating in a restaurant in which it was encouraged to place a portion of our dessert (oranges) on a tray in front of a Buddha statue. We talked it over and concluded we didn't want to do it. Sherry's Jewish identity was very strong; she was the daughter of Holocaust survivors and raised Orthodox but was not observant as an adult; nonetheless, she often tied her beliefs and views about other matters (including, e.g., veganism) to her Jewish identity. In light of that conversation, I felt it would betray her memory to casually make a sacrifice to Buddha.

But interrogating my own reaction, I think I also would have experienced myself being disloyal as a Jew. The other cyclists on my trip (a few of whom are Jewish) obviously didn't feel this way, and I don't mean to judge them. What I think the experience shows is that there are at least three dimensions to Jewish identity: religion; ethnicity; and culture. I can't say that my unease was entirely unrelated to religion. Although I'm not rationally religious, I was sent to Hebrew School and a Jewish summer camp, so it's possible that at some subconscious level part of my unwillingness to make a sacrifice to Buddha even as an empty gesture was a residual belief. But that's a small part, I think.

Nor was my reaction about Jewishness as an ethnicity. Even if I had moved a pinch of incense onto the charcoal, I wouldn't have denied that I'm ethnically Jewish.

Rather, my reaction was primarily cultural. In Japan, I've been struck by how accommodating Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples are of one another. Many Japanese people freely move from one to another. However, the Abrahamic religions tend to be exclusive. Christianity encompasses much of Judaism, and Islam encompasses much of both, but one is generally not a Jew and a Muslim. Obviously, people from blended families and traditions are both of those things and many other combinations too. What I mean to say is simply that the religious and thus the cultural traditions associated with the Abrahamic faiths are much more one-or-the-other-not-both than are the religions of India and the Far East. That's why groups like "Jews for Jesus" seem so peculiar to the point that they seem to me to be engaged in false advertising: If you're going to be for Jesus, just call yourselves Christians.

In saying all of this, I am making mostly a personal point but also one with potential legal implications. Increasingly, it has become important to say both what antisemitism is and when it amounts to race discrimination for purposes of Title VI. In general, I agree with Professors Benjamin Eidelson and Debora Hellman that Title VI's prohibition on race discrimination encompasses antisemitism insofar as it reflects hostility based on what they call "Jewish ancestry" or "racial Jewishness." These are roughly equivalent terms to what I would call Jewishness as an ethnicity.

In light of college campus protests post-October 7 and Israel's ensuing war in Gaza, much of the discussion about what constitutes antisemitism for Title VI purposes has focused on how to treat anti-Zionism. Professors Eidelson and Hellman say it can be a mask for antisemitism but isn't necessarily antisemitic. A recent article by Professor Zalman Rothschild demonstrates how the question whether and when anti-Zionism constitutes antisemitism overlaps important unresolved questions regarding motive in civil rights law more generally.

Those are important issues about how to construe existing anti-discrimination laws, but I'm suggesting something else. Federal antidiscrimination law has curious gaps. Title II doesn't cover sex discrimination. Title VI doesn't cover religious discrimination. I'm suggesting that there's another gap. If one were interested in addressing antisemitism and related forms of discrimination against other groups systematically, the Title VI definition supplemented by a prohibition on religious discrimination would still be incomplete. It would leave out cultural Jewish identity (and parallel identities for other groups), which can and usually will coincide with one or both of religious and ethnic Jewish identity, but is a separate identity as well. At least that's one lesson I drew from my reluctance to worship Buddha.

-- Michael C. Dorf