Lecture part of annual Solomon-Tenenbaum series
As Todd Gitlin sees it, Israel and the U.S. both think they were “chosen by God.”
“The Solomon-Tenenbaum lecture has been and remains one of the most notable intellectual events on campus,” said Stanley Dubinsky, USC’s director of Jewish studies. “(It is) one of the key ways that our college is able to bring matters related to Jewish studies to a wide audience.”
Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology and the chair of the doctorate program in communications at Columbia University, used both biblical and historical references in his lecture, “The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel and the Ordeals of Divine Election.”
“The foundational story of the USA runs on a parallel course (to Israel),” said Gitlin, the author of 15 books on various subjects like social science and poetry. “In urgency and terror, the European settlers of the Americas repeated the idea that they were sent to do God’s work. The USA was meant to be God’s new Israel.”
The event was well-attended, almost completely filled with a diverse crowd of young and old alike in Capstone House. The lecture series was originally created by Samuel Tenenbaum, a retired businessman and philanthropist and current president of the Palmetto Health Foundation, and his wife Inez, who currently serves as the chair of the Consumer Products Safety Commission.
The Tenenbaum lectureship was given in memory of Samuel Tenebaum’s father Meyer and his mother Labelle.
“Their commitment to learning and funding wonderful causes is well known to all of us,” said Mary Anne Fitzpatrick, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
The then-Tenenbaum lectures gained their current Solomon-Tenenbaum moniker in 1996 thanks to benefactors Judith and Melvin Solomon, a beloved Charleston businessman and a contributor to medicine and the arts, who was partially responsible for the establishment of Spoleto USA.
This iteration, the 23rd, saw Gitlin’s lively interpretation of the development of both nations and their idea of “chosenness” to the eventual resting place of present day.
“Like it or not, Jewish identity exists upon the idea of being singled out. Wherever you look in Jewish history, chosenness is there. And yet, even now Jewish and Israeli people dismiss the notion. The same holds true for America,” Gitlin said. “Chosenness can only be understood as a concrete promise of divine rewards. The missing alternative is to embrace the idea of chosenness, to understand it not as a mandate, but as a burden to be eagerly shouldered.”
Gitlin concluded his lecture with a warning that both nations should take their ideas of “chosenness” seriously.
“America and Israel are chosen peoples,” Gitlin said. “They have the choice to become more closed or more open. More just or more wild. To surrender to pettiness or, to quote our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, ‘become the angels of our better nature.’”