Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan was a Columbia-trained sociologist.  In The Future of the American Jew, he introduced peoplehood as ethnic consciousness, something that coexists with civilization. Unlike the family unit, whose bonds are instinctive, the ethnic consciousness is an un-biological, humanly-created unit of living: a group soul. Peoplehood makes us individuals feel needed and proud, and it outlives many generations. And, he wrote, this group soul must justify itself by the good that it does.

The ancient Jewish people were the first to recognize that a sacred society must balance self-fulfillment with communal welfare.  One could say that they deified, or made divine, the harnessing of the id. This innovation has, thankfully, spread to other religious civilizations; but our practices which strengthen, convey, and expand this ideal, are uniquely ours.

The Jews, like every other tribe, pass on their abstract values by using concrete traditions. The lighting of Shabbat candles does not in itself bring peace; it serves as a locus for our intentions. Those candles are part of the language we Jews understand. Kaplan’s idea is that, through the mitzvah system, we are moved further along the road to our goal of spiritual health.

Our sense of covenant – the map of our road to our spiritual health and our goal of redemption – depends on the communal commitment of all of us within that covenant. We guard the definition and practice of our shared standards and obligations. They organize the elements of our world, delineate what is sacred, and define our relationships with them.

Collective identity, with its boundaries, is a balance between internal and external definition. Boundaries signal our shared priorities, values, assumptions and modes of interpretation that are necessary to build trust and a sense of belonging. People in a community share relationships that are different from their relationships with those outside the community. This is as basic as the survival instinct itself. Carol Harris-Shapiro has pointed out that, if we attempt to love everyone equally, chances are we are floating above the messiness of real community and in fact have no close ties with anyone. Our Jewish boundaries are permeable – anyone is permitted to become a Jew – but they are boundaries nonetheless.

The aspects of Jewish civilization – our customs, languages, sancta, folkways, and even our boundaries – are the engines of our creativity. Although many of our values are universal, our ways of supporting them are particular to us. When any of these erode, the cost within the community, and beyond it, is tragic.

The civilizations of the earth are different from each other. That is a wonderful thing. Understanding and respecting those differences – not erasing them – is a pre-eminent goal of humankind. The Jewish people have benefited from the influence of other cultures, and we have repaid in kind. This would not have been possible without our particularism.  There can be no mosaic when all colors are gray.