"What motivates me is what motivates lots of philosophers. They have some practical problem and their training and inclination get them to think about it in philosophical terms." So says Mitchell Silver, who has been teaching philosophy at UMass Boston since 1982. Silver also directs a secular Jewish Sunday school where reconciling secular values with Jewish identity is of constant concern. Hence his new book.
In Respecting the Wicked Child: A Philosophy of Secular Jewish Identity and Education, just published by the University of Massachusetts Press, Silver speaks directly to a sizeable group. "Give me someone who rejects God and wants to remain Jewish," he says. "Some people might say, 'Look, if you reject God it's crazy to keep on wanting to be a Jew.' I want to claim, 'It's not a crazy feeling. It's rational to want to stay Jewish. Furthermore, here is, in broad general terms, a practical means of doing it.'"
The book's title refers to a Passover story about the responses of four sons to the Seder ceremony. "The wicked son's question is 'what does this have to do with me,'" says Silver, "and the answer is 'this has nothing to do with you because you've put yourself outside of this.' I think they've misinterpreted the wicked son's question. He's not saying 'I don't want to identify with this.' After all, he's at the Seder."
Silver's book - - "a more respectful answer to the wicked child" - - offers both a philosophical basis for secular Jewish identity and proposals for drawing upon Jewish history, thought, and practices to support an intellectually and spiritually satisfying way of maintaining this identity over generations. The book also reaches beyond its immediate audience. "Part of it deals with being Jewish within America - - that double identity," says Silver. "I hope it will speak to other ethnic groups that feel 'It's important to me to see myself as an Irish American, or as an African American, or as part of some other ethnic tradition.'"
- - By Jeffrey Mitchell