When I think of the word “monolith,” I think of the scene at the very beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (also Barbie). The opening sequence begins with ape-like hominids awakening to a monolith that has appeared overnight. The hominids respond fearfully, eventually approaching the pillar, expressing adoration — even worshipping the pillar. As the music of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” begins to swell and the sun rises over the monolith, violence breaks out surrounding the unified mass.
In today’s parlance, a monolith implies an impersonal entity or group of people, uniform and indivisible in nature. For a host of reasons, groups (often minorities) get treated as monolithic and there is always a rallying cry from within these groups: “We are not a monolith!”
Jews are proudly not a monolith. Two Jews, three opinions, right?
We are diverse linguistically, culturally, geographically, politically, and so on. And yet, there seems to be a societal expectation that Jews believe certain things, maintain particular politics, and hold certain opinions. There is no better demonstration of this anti-monolithic disposition than the nearly one million demonstrators who took to the streets of Israel and the tens of thousands more in the Diaspora who responded to the tragic news of this past weekend.
And yet, in the local news here in Seattle, the message of these marches went largely unheard. BRING THEM HOME has been the central concern of Israelis, Jews, and sympathetic voices around the world yet singular voices are being uplifted as monolithic representatives by media and tokenizing platforms.
This week, the Torah tells us that we shall not set up a monolith, God abhors monoliths. This week, we are also told “Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof—Justice, justice you shall pursue.” It is beautiful that we are not a monolith — that we as Jews are diverse in all ways. I just can’t help but wonder: what does the Pursuit of Justice look like in this moment?