he week's events seem to have turned American Jews back into a disadvantaged minority. Despite the success of Jews in nearly every realm of American life, Senator Joseph Lieberman's selection as Al Gore's running mate is being celebrated as a Jackie Robinson moment, as if the long, dark days of oppression of Jews in American society have finally come to an end.
Much of the media coverage has focused upon the question of whether the country is ready for a Jewish vice president. The peculiarity of this moment, as the privileged insider bursts the bounds of societal prejudices in pursuit of the penultimate American achievement, raises questions about the true significance of Lieberman's candidacy.
As much editorial commentary has made clear, many see Gore's choice as a breakthrough not just for Jews but for all those who have been marginalized by American society. Everyone seems to understand that the question of who can be vice president (and, implicitly, president), speaks directly to the question of who really counts in American society. Jews may serve as critical advisers to any number of American presidents, but until one of them actually holds the big job him (or her) self, questions will persist about the extent to which Jews have truly been accepted in our society.
It must be the highly symbolic nature of presidential politics that prompts Elie Wiesel and others to conclude that the selection of this white male graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School means that now the political system is open to all men and women of all ethnic origins.
Whether or not the selection of a Jewish vice presidential candidate actually opens the way to a presidential nomination for a Jesse Jackson, Gore's tapping of Lieberman has been transformed into an emblem of the truly egalitarian potential of American society. Jews have often played the role of the excluded outsider who has broken through the lines that have defined the limits of American neighborhoods, professions, and elite institutions, ultimately opening them up to the participation of other previously excluded groups.
Before World War II, many Jewish students and professionals understood what it meant to be excluded for being different in America. In the postwar world, however, the GI Bill, an expanding economy, and legal battles against discrimination helped Jews like Joseph Lieberman and his family find increasing acceptance in the growing suburbs and expanding universities of postwar America.
Even as the most vital problems of active anti-Semitism receded, a movie like ''Gentleman's Agreement'' in 1947 focused upon the continued destructiveness of anti-Semitism in American society. By focusing on difficulties faced by Jews, filmmakers found a way to illuminate the problem of difference in American society even as its focus moved increasingly from issues of religion and ethnicity to those of race. Since the 1960s, the growth of Holocaust consciousness and the building of the Holocaust Museum in Washington have sustained a cultural emphasis on Jewish suffering even as American Jews have faced fewer and fewer material barriers in their own lives.
In recent decades, the inclination by either Jews or non-Jews to portray Jews as symbolic outsiders has clashed with the expectations of some who see themselves as the truly dispossessed of American society. Some leaders in the black community have articulated resentment against a group that claims to identify with the oppressed in this country while reaping most of the rewards allotted to the privileged.
While some will surely see Lieberman's selection as confirmation of Jewish power, many others recognize that full acceptance for Jews in American society is still affected by old patterns of prejudice.
On Monday night's ''Nightline,'' Maxine Waters, an African-American congresswoman from California, was asked whether the tensions that have surfaced sporadically between blacks and Jews might raise any impediments for Lieberman. Waters's answer was swift and unequivocal.
She dismissed any such notion, affirming that while she would rather have seen a person of color or any woman on the ticket, she saw this selection as a victory for all outsiders. In the context of presidential politics, the privileged white man can become the pioneer, redefining the terrain for all who would follow him.
The choice of Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, illuminates the symbolic power of Gore's choice in ways that the selection of a more representative (and thus less observant) American Jewish politician might not.
Lieberman is hardly someone who has pursued a path outside the norms of the American mainstream. Indeed, media observers are commenting upon the ways in which his strong faith commitment makes him so appealing to Gore and millions of other Americans who see their own religious faiths as central to their lives. His strict adherence to the Jewish laws governing the Sabbath, holidays, and kosher food, however, means that the distinctiveness of his religious faith cannot be lightly passed over and heightens the possibility that his candidacy might presage a true redefinition of American inclusiveness.
But will non-Jewish Americans be able to accept Lieberman as a follower of a truly distinctive tradition? One observer quoted on NPR this week noted that as long as an individual was a man of faith, it didn't matter what church he went to on Sunday. Senator Lieberman, of course, and even Jews less observant than he, go to their synagogues not on Sundays but on Saturdays.
Lieberman may find his way to the vice presidency of the United States by following the well-trodden path of Jewish acculturation and convince millions of non-Jewish Americans that he is, in fact, just like them.
In that case, there is no reason to think that his example will make any difference for other groups of marginalized Americans until they too can prove that they are as privileged and unobjectionable as most American Jews have gotten to be. Lieberman, however, may be in a position to alert American voters that Saturday is not Sunday. He may challenge American political culture into realizing that special contributions brought by individuals of less familiar ethnic, religious, racial, and gender categories may emerge not from their similarities to the dominant voices but from their differences.
If Lieberman can teach America this lesson, then the power of Gore's vice presidential choice may be more than just symbolic.
Karla Goldman is the author of ''Beyond the Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place for Women in American Judaism'' and historian-in-residence at the Jewish Women's Archive.
