American Jews of a certain class and culture have the scene engraved in their memories: Woody Allen’s Alvy Singer in “Annie Hall” at Annie’s goyish parents’ house, suddenly seen through their eyes as a Hasid, in a long black coat and peyes.
It’s a hilarious moment: Allen imagining how he is seen by non-Jews, giving us a great sight gag and, of course, capturing in just a few seconds of film the great anxiety of American Jews that we are “too Jewish,” notwithstanding all our best efforts to assimilate.
I wonder, though, how many of us share the unstated assumption of the “Annie Hall” gag: that to be Hasidic is “really Jewish,” to be secular is not really Jewish, and everything else lies somewhere in between. How often has our culture set up “Fiddler on the Roof” as an imagined Jewish ideal: real Jews in a real shtetl, practicing real Jewish traditions for the real Jewish God. Never mind that all these were creatures of fiction: what is most authentically Jewish, many of us believe, is the old-time religion (a non-Jewish term) of black hats and the Pale. Arguably, a similar trope crops up in this year’s “A Serious Man,” which begins with an extended scene of a possible demonic possession, set in the shtetl and performed in Yiddish. As the film cuts to Minnesota from Eastern Europe, the sense of dislocation is palpable.
It’s not, of course, that we want to be the shtetl Jews of Anatevka — only that we continue to see them as the “real” ones, and the rest of us, well, as a kind of hybridization, or adaptation. Thus there persists in the American Jewish imagination an anxiety of inauthenticity — that someone, somewhere, is the real Jew, but I’m not it.
The myth of authenticity, however, has got to go.
First, of course, it’s not historically accurate. Traditional Jews didn’t wear long black coats until the 18th century (notwithstanding some recent, and absurd, images of Moses crossing the Red Sea in a fur-lined shtrayml). Moreover, until the advent of modernity, the notion that if you were “really” religious, you would dress anachronistically, simply did not arise in Jewish thought. Distinctive dress, modest dress, visible signs like the yarmulke, sure — but never the idea that to be “real” was to be so radically other from one’s own place and time. In fact, with only a few exceptions, everything that we think of as “really Jewish” came along at a particular place and time, because of particular historical circumstances, and was never universally shared (by Sephardim, for example).
More importantly, however, the entire notion of authenticity is a false projection of particular historical quirks onto an imagined ideal of “realness” that artificially freezes culture, and thus spells its demise. The truth is that there is no single authentic Jewishness. Like any living culture, Jewish culture (and religion) evolves over time in order to remain vibrant. Of course, there are certain core values, myths and cultural traits that remain relatively constant. But bagels, bookishness and bar mitzvahs all evolved historically; none is more “really Jewish” than sushi, sports or a Sweet 16.
Orthodox fidelity to the law, anxieties of dislocation, reformist rationalization — all arose along the way. Even the ultra-Orthodox maxim that “innovation is forbidden by Torah” is, of course, a 19th-century innovation. To imagine that cultural forms must remain static to be authentic is to doom a culture to obsolescence.
It is also, of course, to privilege some cultural forms over others. Why bagels and not jahnoon? Why Joseph Caro’s legalistic Shulchan Aruch but not his radical, mystical “Maggid Mesharim”? And for that matter, why a white male rabbi over an African-American female one? Anytime we claim that one cultural form is more authentic than another, we are replicating privilege and marginalization.
And worst of all, by ossifying and reifying a fake authenticity as “the real thing,” we actually undermine the attempt to create true authenticity on the part of progressive Jews. Meaningful authenticity isn’t about an old religious form or a Yiddish pun (please, enough with cutesy invocations of “gelt” and “schlep”). It’s when a religious, literary or cultural form — old, new or alt-neu — speaks to the depths of what it is to be human.
If a guitar-playing, meditating female rabbi resonates more with the souls of her followers than does a nigun-singing, Talmud-learning male one, she is the more authentic spiritual leader. If ecstatic prayer speaks to and from the spirit more than a supposedly consistent rationalism, then it, too, is more authentic, notwithstanding the howls of the secularist. Authenticity isn’t about form, it’s about getting to what matters.
For progressive Judaism to succeed, it must jettison the myth of authenticity based on some “real” forms that some “real” Jews really believe in and replace it with a personalized notion of authenticity measured by integrity and individual coherence. Is my Buddhist-Judaism less authentic than someone else’s more carefully patrolled boundaries of permissibility? Quite the contrary: It is more authentic, because it is more faithful to the truth of my experience. Not preference, not whim — but carefully considered internal coherence.
Those who prefer traditional forms sometimes deride innovations as “compromises”. Yet, which is the more objectionable compromise: bending the rules to eat hot food on nonkosher plates, or clinging to a ritual form that may no longer hold any meaning, is historical in its origin and may actively impede other ethical values (such as connecting with people of other faiths)?
Likewise, sometimes traditional forms are derided as intellectual compromises by those who insist on a more rigorous secularism. But which is the real compromise: admitting the irrational desire to pray, or maintaining some pseudo-intellectual purity that cuts off the heart despite the soul?
Progressive Jews don’t do what they do to compromise the authenticity of Judaism; they do it to maintain it. Sure, plenty of lazy Jews simply indulge their laziness, whether as ritual wafflers, ethical slobs or intellectual weaklings. But for those who care about living an authentic life, values shift because of consideration, not spinelessness. To say “This works for me” can, indeed, be a summary denial of responsibility. But to say so meaningfully, based on discernment and introspection, is a mark of integrity.
The myth of authenticity, in contrast, is an abdication of introspection and personal responsibility. Thanks, but I’m not religious. Thanks, but I’m Orthodox. Thanks, but I don’t need to think any further. It’s a lot easier to say “This is real Judaism, and I do/don’t practice it” than to look closely at what form might work to do the important stuff (afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted) for you.
Obviously, newer Jewish forms are not intrinsically superior to older ones; the books of the Bible have endured precisely because they continue to speak to so many people, despite the gulf in history and culture. And to be sure, the ancientness of these texts is part of their power: They bind us to history in a way that newer books cannot. But this power is not because of some imagined authenticity, or some unbroken connection between us and biblical Israelites who, after all, imagined that the world was a small, flat place, had no concept of medicine or industrialization, had notions about nation, ethnicity and gender that hopefully would have no place in contemporary society.
No, Biblical Israelites are not the real Jews. Neither are Hasidim, 20th-century modernists, neurotic New York psychoanalysts, Moroccan saints, angst-ridden intellectuals, High Reformers or anyone else. Real Jews are all of the above — and the rest of us who take Jewishness seriously, in one form or another. Real Jews speak with Southern accents, keep one day of yomtov (the holiday), hike in the wilderness, eat shrimp, intermarry, become ba’alei teshuvah, do karate, are bisexual, are neoconservative. Real Jews are the ones who make Judaism real for themselves.
In the past few years, there’s been a fair amount of attention to novelty Jews. Yuri Foreman, for example, is both a rabbinical student and a boxing champion. What?! Matisyahu is a Hasid and a pop star. What?! The media love those interrobangs (the ?! symbol), but behind every one is an implicit assumption that Jews are supposed to be one way and not another. Boxing rabbis, lesbian rabbis, “Adventure Rabbis” and yoga-teacher rabbis — these images are foreign, funny or weird to some people, because the word “rabbi” still conjures up a very particular image: usually male, nebbishy and bearded. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that — I’m all three.)
But that image is just a form. Indeed, when I read about Jewish farmers, Jewish Sufis and Jewish pro wrestlers, I think, good for the Jews. I’m generally reluctant to praise one culture over another, but if there is one distinctive feature I love about Jewish culture, it’s how, in our many diasporas, we have amalgamated so many contradictions, oblique angles and diverse perspectives on how it is to be human. Granted, that pattern also leads to Jewish mobsters, Jewish financial shysters and Jewish arms merchants, but Jewish crooks aren’t bad because they’re inauthentic; they’re bad because they’re bad. The basic principles of change, growth and evolution are what has kept us going these thousands of years, as much as the basic bedrock values that remain more or less constant. For Jews, even more than for others, change is authenticity.
So let’s get used to slippery slopes, murky swamps and the many other geographies of blending and uncertainty. Whether or not Jews have traveled here before, they are where we live today. Finding authenticity without is ahistorical and self-defeating. Finding it within is holy.
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They are seen as more authentic because they are continuing a tradition of Torah study and observance which has built accretionarily over several thousands of years and had been the defining characteristic of all Jewish communities until the haskalah and even after (i.e. virtually all of Jewish history). One community may have had different "minhagim" from another, but they all had the torah. And thus hasids/haredis have become the stereotype because they are the Jews in the US who take that tradition to its extreme. No one thinks of Fareed Zakaria as the muslim stereotype; they think of bearded guys in robes and women shrouded in black, even though that is hardly the defining tradition of all Muslim communities.
Reform Jews, Buddhist Jews or jews who make pork kreplach are connecting to their heritage, but in a way that is at odds with the torah and torah scholarship dating back to biblical times.
Sorry Jay it won't work.
Believing that Orthodox Judaism is 'real' Judaism is part of Jewish culture worldwide.
If you want to create a new people go ahead. The Jewish people, though have already decided.
PS Has anyone heard of any Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist or Renewal organization getting lots of money from Orthodox Jews? Didn't think so. Its all the other way.
This piece does little more than borrow a long-established tenet of the post-1970s Western academy's humanities and try to insert into that mould the Jewish world. It doesn't work.
No, black hats aren't more authentic than traditional Moroccan dress, or bagels than jahnoon -- duh, and not relevant to the argument Jay is trying to spin, either. On the other hand, those who resolve conflict between post-Enlightenment secular convenience and Jewish tradition by electing Jewish tradition are certainly more committed to Jewishness than those who do the opposite.
As for those whose Judaism is made of whole cloth out of secular post-Enlightenmentism's refashioning of Jewish tradition in its own image -- well, it is little wonder that the rest of the Jewish world regards them as odd dilettantes, or that the very same "Sephardic" world that Jay brandishes as his pet argument (what is this homogeneous Sephardic world, anyway? who is Jay talking about?) gravitates towards these very black hats, not the Judaism's-a-religion, choirs-and-pews-and-microphones religion which seems to stand for little sense than reassuring its adherents that, no, you're not insular or tribal or any of those other ugly Jewy-isms, and if anyone says you are, have them talk to us.
Not sure I care frankly, in fact, so what?
Yes, one form of cultural expression isn't necessarily more "authentic" than another but that isn't really the point.
I'm not particularly observant, there are people out there who are far more observant than I am, does that make them "more Jewish" than I am? Yes, and that is fine with me because I don't have my whole identity tied up in religious observance and Jewishness, it is one facet of my personality. I don't have something to prove.
I just tire of the antagonism between the groups. The best world is where we all live side by side as Jews without worrying non-stop about what the other is doing. If the orthodox won't interfere with my eating habits or activity on shabbat (as happens too often these days in Israel) I welcome their presence, it's good to know the observant are there if I ever choose to become more religious. I'm grateful for the fact that there are people willing to dedicate their lives to maintaining tradition and following torah. In return I am happy to respect their space and to provide a willing community which welcomes any orthodox who feel they cant maintain that path - better they should remain less observant Jews than not Jews at all.
We are all part of a bigger community than just our immediate worlds and the presence of each of us greatly enriches and strengthens that community. If only we could stop shouting long enough to see it.
When one's Jewish identity is no longer one's core or primary identity, then the whole discussion of authenticity is quite silly. It doesn't really matter if one is Orthodox or Reform or whatever. Most Jews are quite unfamiliar with the Jewish heritage, but they are very much at home in the American world and recognize its cultural symbolisms. Generally, authentic Jewish cultural expressiveness is the exclusive realm of the Jewish professionals. The lecturer on Biblical literature could quote the Tanakh, but a Jewish dentist has probably never studied the book seriously. Jewish life in America marks a break with the Jewish past. Let's stop pretending that this multi-generational Jewish illiteracy is an expression of authenticity. Let's start calling the situation "a crisis". In order to solve real problems, you first have to admit that there is a problem, that something has gone very wrong.
Sounds like you're conflating your personal trajectory with that of the collective (am yisrael), on the lines of the classic conflation of ontogeny with phylogeny.
Plus, your argument is premised on the superiority of the values you presently uphold (e.g., "personalized authenticity") over those others uphold, but as your own religious history (recounted in detail in your numerous articles about it in various periodicals) illustrates, the values one holds can change.
Finally, your account of Jewish history ("fidelity to the law ...arose along the way") is just as inaccurate as those you lampoon.
This piece reads more like an apologetic self-justification than a reasoned argument against the myth of authenticity. A pity, in view of the manifest need to deflate the notion that Orthodoxy a la Aish Hatorah,Har Bracha Yeshiva, and Chabad is authentic.
Your column is like saying gold and brass are the same. SInce you believe that, will you pay $1100/ounce for brass? If so, I have a lot of brass that I can sell you
The problem with this piece is that it lumps two things that should be separated: authenticity and excellence. Of course the "Orthodox" claim that Jewishness involves some unchanging essence is largely absurd. The real question is do we as a people, culture, etc. have our own standards of excellence by which we measure ourselves and to which we aspire? Show me a culture that lacks such commitments and I'll show you a slacker culture. The problem with most Jews isn't that they're not "authentic" Jews, it's that they don't aspire to grow Jewishly, they don't even know what that would look like, they don't acknowledge the claim that Judaism/Jewishness imposes around what excellence is--language, texts, rituals, ethics, you name it. Jay knows that which is why I think his emphasis here is misplaced.
OK as if we didn't know you really don't like being Jewish so much and that you don't have the chops or the background to do what the religion is about studying and learning, as if there's not Breslov and Carlbach. So what's knew maybe it's really all the other problems you have that prevents you from living a normal life that would drive you to a kind a priesthood like in Stendahl's Red and the Black and eastern monastic religions to suppress what really bothers Jay, to give you the feeling of acceptance and bodily punishments that can seem deny of those urges that Judiasm looks so down upon.
Are we talking here about Jewish, as in the religion; or Jewish as in culturally? There are distinct differences. And the overrun of the former by the latter is why someone would even venture to write this article.
Judaism is a religion. Like all other religions, it has practices, holidays, customs and language that are steeped in history. In our case, the giving of the Torah.
Which isn't to say that only people who are very visibly Jewish, such as Chassidim, are really Jewish. All Jews who are Shomer Mitzvot are the "Keepers of the Faith". The rest is all fluff.
I agree. We have to decide what the core beliefs of Judaism are, and interpret them for our own time.
Hillel told us what the core belief are: That which is hateful to you, do not do unto others.
All that other stuff about wearing 19th Century European Shtetel clothes, that's optional, as long as it doesn't interfere with the core beliefs.
I think that other stuff about resting on Saturday, eating pork, intermarriage, wearing a hat, and believing in God, is OK if it makes you feel good, but it doesn't make you more Jewish.
Some of those "orthodox" habits, like worshipping "Rabbis", makes you less Jewish.
I think the core belief, translated from Hillel's day, is social justice. The real Jews are the ones who fight against war, for community responsibility, for welfare, for health care, for unions, and for making the rich pay their fair share.
That's why so many Jews today oppose the injustices of Israel against the Palestinians. Social justice is a more central part of Judaism than dancing the Hora. Tanks and guns, and exploiting your neighbor, have never been a part of Judaism at all.
If the Torah says otherwise, the Torah is wrong.
The truth is somewhere in between. The halacha (in its varied forms) and the Torah are the foundation of Judaism; those are "authentic." The black hats etc, not so much.
BRAVO! As a Jewish American with roots in central-East Europe(Hungary,Germany and Ukraine) and with family in Hungary and Germany,I observe every year the current wide range of being Jewish,let alone my knowledge of the past e. g. Neolog Jews in Hungary,a unique development found only among Jewish Hungarians. If not for Hitler and Stalin,most of central and east European Jewish communities would NOT have remained static,but would have evolved in even more diverse ways. So enough romance about the 18th century Orthodox which also was not static e. g. the development of not only the Hasids,but the Mitnagdim. After all,the Vilna Gaon taught that the chief goal in life was the perfection of character.And what of Mose Mendelssohn's great contributions. All of these developments happened during the 18th and/or 19th centuries;but for the nazi mass murder and communism's anti Semitism,history would not have stayed the same for the nominally Orthodox, who made up so much of the Jewish communities,particularly east Europe. We have always been a diverse group with at least 8 or more different Jewish languages,which only underscores our great diversity. There are many ways to be Jewish. My preference of Reconstructionism is no more OR less than any one else's way of being Jewish.
Yasher koach!Finally, someone has the guts to say that Moshe Rabbeinu didn't eat glatt kosher, or that Sarah didn't bentsch licht in the 4-opened-door tent!Judaism and the Jews have developed over thousands of years, both in style and substance;to say that Chabad (of all things!) is more "authentically Jewish" than classical Reform or Yemenite practice is patently ridiculous!Diversity has always been our hallmark; questioning "the correct" interpretation has allowed us to survive (and to win Nobel Prizes!) by NOT swallowing what is. Jay Michaelson has hit the nail on the head.
Jay---as a person of color struggling to find a place in Southern Jewish community, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You've put into words exactly what I've been trying to make sense of all these months.
To say that the Jewish nation is diverse is one thing; actually conducting yourself like you mean it is quite another. If there is anything that I desire most from the people in my community, it is that they see me for all of what I am, even those parts of me that seem unfamiliar. The person I am is the only authenticity that I know.
Whatever does not kill us makes us stronger. There's no way to know yet which path leads to the better ending, the 16th century Eastern European way with endless ritual for the sake of ritual or the secular humanist way.
Biblical Israelites thought "that the world was a small, flat place" and "had no concept of medicine or industrialization? I think Jay is referring to those guys that lived in caves and carried big clubs.
Steve Weisman got it wrong. Reform Judaism was not an evolution - it was a radical break from (Torah) Judaism. While I have no issue with Female Rabbis for instance, I do have issue with eating pork and shellfish and violating clear, unequivocal Torah precepts in some misguided attempt to curry favor with post-enlightenment goyishe society. Not cool. And besides, it didn't work so well did it. Berlin didn't exactly turn out to be the New Jerusalem, did it?
In the final chapter, we all end up in Neverland. Is there a Jewish or a Christian or Muslim afterlife. Those that follow an orthodox view believe that dues are paid for either a righteous or secular life. My belief in God or not is based on how I consider my fellow man and woman, by the compassion and love that I am able to express. My enemy is not my friend but is separated from me by the barriers we place, whether it is poverty or gold. How I may physically separate myself by costume, after all what else is it, makes little difference I believe to an omnipotent God who sees not the material being but a consciousness filled with good intentions. We can eat bagels and cover ourselves for whatever human satisfaction that may give us, but in the end we stand naked before infinite wisdom. I am sure that many will find my comments irreverent but you might question whether an orthodox belief is as Tevya cried out only "tradition" or can there be a place for some of us who carry a deep faith and higher thought as our connection to God.
A well written and reasoned article. Authenticity? So much of Judaisim today has been modified from the Torah by the rabbinic sages, that we have no idea of what is authentic. Why are some torah prohibitions considered metaphoric and others absolute? The argument about the oral torah looks too much like a game of telephone, with no reliable answers, i.e. a kid cooked in the milk of its mother has become an elaborate set of prohibitions with no real consensus. Late in my life, I still cannot get a solid answer about why you can have meat an hour after milk, but you have to wait either 3 or 6 hours after meat to drink milk, depending on which synagogue you attend. The whole thing gets pretty silly, and I think authentic is what you're comfortable with.
Bravo. If Jay takes his argument a little far at times, that's okay with me if it chips away at the stranglehold ultra-orthodoxy has on supposed "authentic Torah-based" Judaism. The challenge is finding and creating dynamic and expanding communities where progressive Judaism is approached with intellectual honesty and spiritual adventurousness. This is happening in independent minyanim around North America who take from tradition and are not afraid to innovate by channeling the spirit of what makes Judaism inspiring and enduring over the ages. This strain of Judaism can only be as strong as the modern cultures it exists in tension with -- both serving as an alternative to late-Capitalist/consumerist society and an extension of a democratized, information-rich culture. A dynamic Judaism like this will of course lose some "traditionalists" as well as those who don't care to work that hard at their Judaism. But it will gather a dynamic core to transmit Judaism to the next generation and empower them to continue to innovate.
Jay Michaelson's "Myth of Authenticity" is a pastiche with a strong point of view. There are two movements in the article: (1) an unfair and patronizing dehumanization of the Orthodox and (2) the valorization of a new commandment: "Thou shalt be authentic". Both movements should terrify any thinking Jew. These are strong criticisms, and therefore need to be supported.
To wit, (1), after a rehash of 200 years of stale tradition-bashing rhetoric, the author brands adherents to tradition as benighted slaves of an "abdication of introspection and personal responsibility", which is close to calling Orthodox Jews "mindless automatons". It is sad that rather than engage with courageous Jews who struggle to maintain fidelity to a tradition of debate and learning, while at the same time negotiating with a world which is, after all, created by Hashem, the proverbial baby is thrown out with the bath, and any sense of the rich and diverse reality of tradition is hidden by a dehumanizing insult. The fact that Orthodoxy itself has become more right wing is no excuse for the treatment, and ironically the sociological processes of Orthodox fortress-building is exacerbated by the kinds of rhetoric on evidence here. But one step further, to emphasize the shock that is due on reading the article: the strategy of dehumanizing the Jew, as prelude to worse, is an old strategy. Thus an alt/new shanda, which brings us by association with the second movement of the article, the elevation of the concept of "authenticity" as a measure of life.
The idea of the "authentic" is not one that is found in Torah, or for that matter, in traditional Western philosophy, at least until recently. It's not just a matter of why a three-syllable word is needed to replace perfectly good and complete one syllable words, such as truth and love and life. But the concern is also about the meaning of authenticity as defined in the article. Specifically, authenticity "speaks to the depths of what it means to be human", authenticity is "personalized" and is measured by "individual coherence", and lastly authenticity is about dissolving boundaries, against those who would "carefully control boundaries". In a more condensed version and using words which are as positive as possible, one could say that the article's position is that authenticity is a way of life that is "useful", "personal" and "open".
The only problem with the article’s happy description of authenticity is that this description of a way of life has little to do with Judaism, or religion for that matter, except in the most trivial ways. On the first point, “useful”: to be useful, in sociological terms the functionalist argument, is to turn G-d and Torah into a useful instrument, which should be a shocking and trivializing act.
The second aspect of authenticity on display is that of the "personal", which supplies the actor which will make use of the utility provided in the first aspect. "I" "use" Torah to achieve something. The traditional definition of this utilitarian, personal act therefore, which is an act to defy meaning outside of one's self, is solipsism, otherwise known in institutional form as organized selfishness, and possibly in theological form as Gnosticism. Beware the Gnostics, those worshippers of their own minds, because they generally hate G-d and G-d's people, the Jews.
So, now the final and even more disturbing implication, which has to do with "openness". The word open is so benign that it is possible to forget that terror can be derived from openness. For example, colonialism and imperialism are ineluctably associated with a strategy of openness: the "open door" policy in 19th c. China was a demand for Western powers to be allowed to sell opium to Chinese. Sometimes boundaries and limits are exactly what are needed.
The association in the article of openness with authenticity is defined in such statements that the author's mish-mash of beliefs are "more authentic" than those who would fetishize "carefully controlled boundaries". Better that one should dissolve such boundaries, on the measure of personal utility.
The article then is, finally, a radical hymn to the useful, the personal, and the open, all under the rubric of authenticity. Where do we go to find the results of such an approach, what in less generous terms could be described as an ideology where the means justifies the ends, the ends are selfish, and the whole project is characterized by a radical imperialism against those who believe differently?
Martin Heidegger, the 20th c. philosopher of authenticity, has been much in the news lately. His valorization of culture and authenticity was part and parcel of the Nazi project, a project which was very much about getting in touch with your essential being, by any means necessary, and then smashing any boundaries that stood in the way of that project. In a sense the terror of Kristallnacht was the exemplification of the ideology of authenticity, where the thin membranes of glass from which the night of horror is named, become symbolic of the boundary-smashing authenticity of Nazi selfishness, a process undertaken first of all by the dehumanization of Jews. It is unfair certainly to suggest that the author's project is at one with fascism; nevertheless the road from the ideas expressed, even benignly here, to another place that no one wants to go, is not that difficult to find.
To end on a positive note, consider that Yiddishkeit needs repair and succour. A litte more love and respect would go a long way. The cult of the authentic is not the answer. That is not to deny that there is a question. Instead of the three words here, why not consider a traditional formula: G-d, Torah and the Jewish people?
JM
. . . "ends justifies the means" . . . 3rd last paragraph
Norman - You claim that "the real Jews are the ones who fight against war". You have often expressed your understanding of the war of Hamas against Israel, opposing even the thought that they might moderate their positions (which you call "surrender"). You have told us in past debates that "Hamas had no other choice" but to resort to violence (i.e. shooting random missiles at Israel). Your opposition to "tanks and guns" was only meant for Israel which you oppose. You mean to say, therefore, that you support war when you identify with the cause, and you oppose war when you don't identify with the cause. And the cause that you identify with is the struggle against Israel - and even her culture (the Hora also seems to be on your list of grievances).
"And worst of all, by ossifying and reifying a fake authenticity as “the real thing,” we actually undermine the attempt to create true authenticity on the part of progressive Jews."
Michelson contradicts himself.
Either authenticity is attainable or it is not. There is not such thing as fake authenticity if the concept of the authentic isn't real in the first place.
Moreover,while true that the Hassidic dress is distinctively Ashkenazi it probably developed over time from the medieval grabedine into the modern black long coat.
This in itself doesn't make them in authentic.
What does make Hasidism inauthentic Judaism is its reliance on neo-Platonic concepts which are not Jewish in origin.
About this Michelson knows nothing about.
wow- the 10th of Tevet is the night i see this article- the day on which the Babylonians laid their siege on the old city of jerusalem, and the day of the translation of the Torah into Greek... and the yartzeit of Ezra haSopher- three events entirely related to the issues in Jay's article... Ezra haSopher is credited (in my humble historical knowledge) as the real birther of the Oral tradition- opening up Jewish learning and halachic innovation beyond the Cohanim/ Levites who had largely just carried the tradition as it was. Empowering wider-spread learning and drash amongst the masses- a real revolution in its time, (an authentic Jewish pursuit) the bounds of which are probably described in ChazAl as whether a disagreement/ new direction is "l'shem Shamayim" for the sake of the Most High... The siege on Jerusalem- is a siege upon our walls- our boundary that holds some in and others out... that is a constant necessity for one tradition to survive. Whether that wall is burning people outside of it is another and upon us to shine light rather than burn- but the abandoning of our traditions to flavors of the time- like the rampant individualism that masquerades as global citizenship is worthy of serious evaluation. A quote from Linda Hogan- respected Chickasaw activist/ writer- in the question of can cultures be synthesized: Synthesis is thought of as positive, but thats not necessarily the case. There is also the possibility of separate culture living side by side, cooperating with each toher without being being synthesized. Shared, perhaps, but not enmeshed. They don't have to integrate in that deep structured way. What's wrong with a love of difference?" This point has a lot to be reflected on in American progressive Judaism. I don't mean to challenge any individuals process and place as a Jew- but I think there is a throwing out the baby wit the bath water when we try to build an ideology out of experiences that are in this post-ideological world. Our little bits of moderness- though "antiquated" can be important points of reference for ourselves. I fully feel the frustration in having an "ultra-orthodox" model of Judaism be regarded as the end all be all, which is even more prevalant here in Israel i think. but if I didn't have my childhood images of the hasidic Jew in my head, i wouldn't have broken out crying in being back a part of an incredible chain the first time I danced in a circle of chasidim... and then the Torah was translated into Greek- shouldn't that be a great thing- the rabbis understand that the Torah was supposed to be shared into all the languages? except that sometimes translation ends up desecrating. Adaptations of judaism can easily turn ourselves into cliches, empty facades of an inner light... provoking the strong zealous responses that jay often attracts... I think it's hard to profess these lines on computer internet forums- it really is part of an oral torah- that which the tradition can share one on one, like what el Otra heard from Jay... tzom kal v'amitz!
The writer produces an article based upon the logical fallacy of the straw man with the authenticity argument to prove and substantiate his chosen Buddhist path. The writer has proven nothing except that he is prone to tendentious use of propagandistic arguments. It's okay because Americans will believe anything these days, weapons of mass destruction, the magical nonsense of religion, 9/11, etc. So Jay you're spiritual, so what, you are in closer touch with what, gravity, nobody is listening, there is nobody out there to help. Don't you see it is all subjective, nothing religious is proveable, but the falsity and fictionality of religion that is proveable, when you cease consciousness so will your spirituality. Even your ideas about spirituality and the soul and God, it is not innate, not revealed but a contained within the complex process of human civilization and philosophy/religion going back thousands of years. Read Al Segal "Life After Death", 700 pages for some greater insight.
The picture of the Golden Pavilion as an illustration at the beginning of the article presents what might be thought of as an "anti-Temple". As symbolic of an ultra-repressive, ultra-regimented and sometimes fascist culture, this building stands for an aestheticized, pagan view of the world, and as such is the opposite of the world mandated by Hashem in Hasem's detailed instructions for building the Temple. You don't have to be Roland Barthes to figure out that the important semantic cargo of the text in the article is not the Torah message of life.
Of course there's no such thing as an authentic Jew. In Israel at the current time, there's a battle going on in so-called haredi (ultra orthodox) schools because Ashkenazi parents will not allow their children to study alongside Sephardi children. Yet, if we're looking for ethnic authenticity, Sephardim are probably closer to the original Jews than Ashkenazim. We are products of our various environments. Whatever form our Judaism takes, it is seldom isolated from the outside, non-Jewish world, which whether we are conscious of the fact or not, influences who and what we are, including how we identify Jewishly. None of our Biblical heroes are saints. They are depicted with their many human faults, flaws and foibles. Moving forward to post-Biblical times, in all the eras of persecution against Jews, the persecutors weren't looking for authentic Jews. They were looking for anyone who could be identified as a Jew, and perhaps we should take a lesson from our enemies and accept anyone who identifies as a Jew as an authentic Jew. That old joke about two Jews, three opinions holds true for almost everything related to Jews and Judaism - so lets give each other a little leeway, and let's accept accept each other's differences as we accept the fact that several siblings raised in the same household by the same parents can be close but different. Let's stop fighting about authenticity and who's the better Jew - and let's just celebrate the miracle that despite centuries of effort to exterminate the Jewish people, we're still here to tell the story, each in our own way, yet closing ranks when confronting existential threats. It's only then that we remember that we all belong to the same tribe.
Greer
While its absolutely true that Hasidim are not necessarily authentic - they are certainly among the few Jews left who are fiercely proud of their heritage and wear their membership on their sleeve. This is something no other Jewish denomination can claim ( save perhaps for yarmulke wearers and modesty adhering women).
"While its absolutely true that Hasidim are not necessarily authentic - they are certainly among the few Jews left who are fiercely proud of their heritage and wear their membership on their sleeve. This is something no other Jewish denomination can claim ( save perhaps for yarmulke wearers and modesty adhering women)."
We seem to assume that yarmulkes have always been a part of the Jewish heritage. But did you know that the custom of wearing yarmulkes actually began in medieval Europe? It was a way of making the Jewish manner of prayer visibly different from the bare-headed Christian style of prayer.
Hasidim are no more the 'real deal' than the Founding Fathers of this great country were born-again Bible-thumpers!
When asked what is the religion closest to Judaism, the haredi giant Rabbi Shach answered "Hasidism". And he should know.
If someone went around wearing a white sheet and a white hood with two slots cut out for eyes, and claimed to be Afrocentric, would you believe him? Of course not. Yet take a look at how the Haredim- and esp. Lubavitch and other Hasidim dress: like morticians. Did Moses dress that way? Isaiah? Hillel? Akiva? Rambam? The Vila Gaon? Never! But 18th century Polish nobility – quintessential anti-Semites- did. Since when does dressing funny by wearing centuries-old regalia constitute proof of religious bona-fides in Judaism?
In halachic terms, Hasidism is not “Orthodox” but deformed Judaism. They claim that the Zohar overrides the Talmud, and whatever brain fart their rebbe has, automatically supersedes both.
No matter who we consider to be traditional and real, it is always the others who define who we are. Keep in mind that the Nazi and all other anti-semites want to exterminate all Jews: Hasidim, Orthodox, Communist, non-observant, et al. Did you ever hear of two lines in front of a gas chamber, one - of Orthodox, another - of other Jews? They went in all the same.
And we should remember that at the end we are all the same, because this is how we are treated by the rest of the world.
Jay seems to have a point, that certian ways of Jewish life have evolved but implying Yoga Judaism is of the same innovation is just wrong. The ideas that have evolved within the Modern Orthodox world have evolved within the confines of Torah values. We may have eaten fish in ancient times but now we add spices albeit kosher spices. We never incorporated Pork into Kashrut and called it inovation. I agree by depicting Moses with a strimel that is over doing it. Over glorification of Torah and patriarchs, I feel, can take us off point almost as far as not appreciating it at all. Judaism is known for being self criticle. If there is any inovation in Judaism it should be for what it Is and Was in an authentic realistic way not a way of incorporating what ever we want then call it true.
Perhaps an outsider's perspective traveling through the variety of Judaism may be useful here. I propose that Jewishness is not an issue of width but of depth. Hasidim is not some illusory lineage purity but rather an old conversion-- as explained by Shlomo Sands-- that led to wondering over Europe following misfortune to a Kazar kingdom of converts. But, being devoted more to a number of practices from a number of handed down traditions based on adulterated documents and practices, Hasidic "Judaism" is more Jewish only in depth of traditions than that of a secular Jew. Just as you are what you eat and drink, you also are what you are taught and what you personally fantasize. In the end East Euro ethnicity is a perverted racism that divides little countries into almost distinct species, per a fascinating neuro-anthropological treatise, by language, not by purity of lineage. I learned after a long stay away from home that while my native roots are real to me, my countrymen deem my every grammatical error as making me "Americanule." In the same way, Golda Myer’s claim that the only Jews are those who speak Yiddish bespeaks her divorce from Mideast history while steeped in the immediate environment of her upbringing. The fate in 1950s of Mizrahis and, worst still, of their children, bespeaks Ashkenazi Jewish crime on Mizrahi Jews. Right now, tolerance, acceptance and unity in width—DESPITE WIDE VARIATION IN DEPTH-- is all you've got to keep Israel and Judaism from becoming archeological relics by the end of the century. Keep in mind that the rantings of “professional” Jews like Foxman, devoting the ADL to "fighting assimilation" (his words)—though he insisted that its history is one of fighting racial and ethnic exclusion-- can only fragment and dissolve Judaism as global warming is fragmenting and melting the polar ice cap. Hug your rebellious Jewish son or daughter and love them and their goyim mates and progeny as of your line no matter how much or how little of Judaism permeates them. If you haven't gotten them self-identified by bar mitzvah, trying to force it on them later means to lose them. Besides, I’ve never met a Jew that forgot he/she is a Jew if he/she had a bar/bash mitzvah. Worst of all, let Zionism court Judaism but never Judaism court Zionism for whatever happens to Zionism, Judaism is the root of you all.
The Torah (and Oral Law) is not the core of the Jewish people. Jewishness is a hybrid cultural identity that can include religion.
Language is probably a more potent device for sustaining the sense of peoplehood. Yiddish, Ladino, Hebrew.... Language does not demand that we abrogate our minds for burning bushes, animal sacrifice and separating women deemed impure. Language remains with us when all other beliefs go out the door. Sadly language has not been integral to our identity in the US.
Jay,
It would seem to me that one is considered "real" or "authentic" by what he risks or sacrifices to maintain his identity.
The culture will always be identified and maintained by those who sacrifice the most for it.
That's reality. And none of your verbal acrobatics can change that. It sounds like you are fooling yourself with your words.
Zvuv,
A reduction of Jewishness to language is to turn Judaism into just another ethnicity, i.e. another pagan people, which like all pagan peoples, drift away as so many leaves stirred by a ceaseless wind.
Yisrael,
Nice reference to "verbal acrobatics", but again, you give up the fight by conceding that the fight is about "authenticity". And you add the idea of a kind of "personal sacrificial economics", i.e. that those who risk or sacrifice the most are thereby defined as the "defining few". It would be great to get a comment on this "theory" from a serious Torah perspective, it doesn't sound Toradik to me, because there is no sense of "the right sacrifice" -- mere sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice is not the same as "the right sacrifice". "Mere sacrifice" is cultic -- i.e. pagan -- and is perhaps in part responsible for the kind of criticism that motivates the article's author.
Why is the ugliness of paganism -- i.e. the worship of the self -- so attractive to both left and right, to both those who are ostensibly shomer Torah and those who identify as "progressives"?
John
one cannot make a person or force oneself to believe in the Torah. there are some rabbis who recommend going through the motions of ritual until it takes hold and becomes a part of everyday life. but if a person does not believe, and I do not, i am still a jew by virtue of the Yiddish that spoken in my household, my Hebrew from years of living in Israel, and my study of things Jewish via an advanced degree. i have no inhibition about passing that along to my daughter. She will have to decide where she fits.
John - Perhaps you don't live your everyday life speaking a Jewish language. Assuming that I have guessed correctly that you live your life only in American English, I would then add that this is probably the reason that you dismiss language as an important aspect of Jewish identity. It could be that it's a lost cause and that it is impossible to re-introduce language into the Jewish equation in America. It's a lost cause, because so few understand the importance of language in the carrying of cultural messages from generation to generation. It could be, however, that Jewish authenticity is also a lost cause in America. Jewish culture will remain foreign for the vast majority, only accessible through translation.
Each of us has our pet gripes. After all the noise, the fact is that the Lakewood Yeshiva which had less than 100 students in Rabbi Aaron Kotler's time has 5,000 students today. Regardless of what one thinks about many aspects of Lakewood or any of the Chassidic enclaves, that is the part of the Jewish People that is growing. It is not a matter of Triumphalism ,but of demographics. Most Jews who eat shrimp will not have Jewish great grandchildren, or very few at most. One frum couple with 12 children who all marry Jews and whose children have large families and all marry Jews will outnumber all the intellectuals, secularists and assorted free thinkers in a few generations. If authentic means that it works, that it has what it takes to pass on to future generations, then it seems that believing orthodoxy has figured out a way to regenerate and reproduce that no other group comes close to. Facts are facts.
Ex-President Jimmy Carter has recently asked Jews for forgiveness.Carter claims that the fact that his grandson is now running foroffice in their home state of Georgia has nothing to do with hisapology. He states that Jews only make up 2% of the county where hisgrandson lives--about the same percent that Jews make up in the nationat large--and so uses this as further evidence of the integrity of hisintentions.Hogwash!I voted for Carter in the '70s.I liked his approach to environmental concerns. I came to regret my decision.I'll never forget watching the Democrat National Convention ontelevision and seeing Carter chasing after his producer comrade,Michael "Israel is one of the three top evils in the world" Moore.Like other Gentile politicos, Carter has received millions of dollarsfrom Arabs for his help in demonizing Israel and Jews.Well, I have a way Jimmy can put this all to rest...sort of.Since he is a man of the world whose books do indeed reach millionsand influence world opinion, I have a new assignment for him.After all, for decades now, if Israel took one too many breaths, hewas there to investigate, criticize, and dissect it under the highpower lens of moral scrutiny. Most often, his critiques were givenlittle or no context whatsoever. Jewish victims were constantly blamedthemselves when issues such as blown buses, checkpoints, the securitybarrier, and such were discussed. Arabs were given a virtual freepass.While indulging in such hypocrisy, Carter acted deaf, dumb, and blindregarding what was happening in the region surrounding the nation ofthe Jews.Jimmy, your first task is to travel to re-visit your friend, Basharal-Assad, the butcher of Damascus and author of the "Hama Solution's"son, in Syria.Since you worry so much about Arab rights and conditions--you mustnow, at long last, demand that "Arab" Syria stop murdering andsubjugating its millions of Kurds. The latter are not even allowed tospeak their own language, have been forcibly Arabized for decades--yetI don't recall a peep about their plight ever being uttered from yourlips. Only America's toppling of Saddam changed things for the betterfor "Arab" Iraq's millions of Kurds. No concern from you over theirbrethren in the Turkish and Iranian portions of Kurdistaneither...some thirty five million perpetually used and abusedstateless people. Why hasn't their plight caught your attention?The second part of your assignment will take you to "Arab" North Africa.Since you are allegedly so concerned about human rights, you willfinally have to break your troubling silence about the plight ofanother truly stateless people (Arabs have almost two dozen states;"Palestinians"--no matter how you define them--are Arabs), the thirtymillion or so Imazhigen/Berbers, who predate their Arab conquerors bymillennia and who, like the Kurds, have had their own language andculture outlawed by Arabs and who have been murdered if they haveresisted.Your next assignment has you moving just a bit south and east into the Sudan.While Darfur in the west has been making the news of late, the forcedArabization of the south by the north has been going on for centuriesand exploded once again in the '60s.Where have you been while this Arab enslavement, genocide, and suchagainst black Africans (not only in the Sudan) has been going on? And,unlike the most of the south, the blacks in Darfur are alsoMuslims...so, this goes beyond a religious jihad and truly involvesArab racism, pure and simple. Many quotes from black victims havetestified to this.All of these things are happening in the here and now. Why thesilence? Where’s your book?So, here's the deal, Mr. Carter...Write your book and articles, give your speeches and take Arabs totask for the crimes they have committed against everyone else in theregion --real crimes, not measures Israel has been forced to take tosurvive Arab slaughterand maybe we will take you seriously.
Without god and the messorah, Jewish identity becomes labile and strange, and some Jewish practices, such as brit milah, feel straight out of David Lynch. Orthodoxy covers up that vertigo of wierdness. Look at the confidence of the orthodox comments here! For the Orthodox, authenticity is clear - god tells you what's authentic, case closed. The rest of us have to muck our way through a religion of women wearing kippot, extravagant bar mitzva debacles, and other creepy stuff, all without god's imprimatur. For us, Judaism feels like a modern art museum - you don't like most of the exhibits, you connect with a few of them, and you're relieved to get out and go home at the end of the day. There's no one to tell you what's authentic, no one to guide you.
Authenticity in Judaism is about a life devoted to loving Hashem with all one's heart, soul and power. If it happens that this is done more by people wearing black hats and coats and less by people eating shrimp practicing bisexuality, then this would explain the authenticity gap that you identify.
Yes, give up authenticity entirely. The concept as we encounter it (in the Western context) is linked to Heidegger's ideas. He argues that authenticity is rooted in one's purity of essence, in which no foreign elements are intermixed. Hence the tendency to see intransigently-non-assimilated Jews as more authentic than Jews who have assimilated aspects of their surrounding culture. But Heidegger's ideas allowed him to justify Nazism. Authenticity is a dangerous concept because it leads to the idea (seen on this board) that "my Judaism is more authentic than yours" -- which runs contrary to the core value of respecting Am Yisrael as an organic whole. Why are we adopting this (ultimately chauvinistic) nonsense?
Why do we care so much what labels others attach to us? Is it not enough to be kind, and honest, and treat all others with respect? Augustine was not so far removed from Hillel: Love, and do as you like. Do not do unto others that which is hateful to you.
The rest - really IS commentary. And we SHOULD study.
But first, we should love. Be good. Play nice. I know I am a Jew. Am I authentic? I'm not sure authenticity is of any importance to anyone, unless you are vetting antiques. What is more important is that others know that I am honest and kind, because of the way I act and live my life. We are told to be a light unto the nations. So go do something good, and do not worry whether your actions are authentic: worry only that your tzedakah is enough.
Wow. The amount of response this column generated is wonderful. I am writing to say briefly the following:
1. Mr. Michaelson is not speaking to most Orthodox Jews here, because they would hold with, they believe, historical validity, that Orthodoxy is the true form of it. And, indeed, there are many comments here to that effect.
2. He is also not speaking to those Jews who say something like, "I'm so Reform, I'm very Reform." For comments like that are usually indicators of intellectual and spiritual laziness.
3. He IS speaking to those in the progressive world who believe that Judaism is organic and developmental, that change is part of any people and the ideas they carry with them through history.
4. And that is precisely the problem. A column like this is not going to change Orthodox or lazy Jews' minds, and the progressive Jews pretty much already know what Michaelson is saying. So, except that the piece is a fine, articulate statement of the progressive Jewish cause, its limited audience does little but to generate great conversation.
In every religion the population may be depicted as a bell shaped curve were the Y axis is the number of individuals, and the X axis is increasingly strict religious observance. The majority of practioners fall in the middle, fundamentalists and apostates at the fringes. Over the millenia the median point may have shifted to the right and left, but the integrity of the curve would had changed little. If an investigator were able to define degree of observance among the Reform and Conservative movements, the curve would presumably still be recognizable. The creation of the State of Israel may have disenfranchised nonOrthodox within Israel, but it did nothing to distort the bell shaped curve. Hasidim are icons because they are distinctly different, not because they are authentic. The main stream Jew is essentially indistinguishable from main stream gentiles. Authenticity is as difficult to define as degree of observance. Long before Protestant Christians rejected a central interpretation of their faith, Jews refused to establish a definitive interpretation of religious law. The Torah has been available to all (apologies to those women denied the opportunity to learn to read). Each individual has been encouraged to read, interpret, and argue. Those who have adopted these guidelines are authentic Jews.
To Moshe regarding milk and meat. With 'soft cheese' one need not wait if you eat some bread and drink something to clean out the 'soft' cheese.Some, however, do wait a half hour. For 'hard' cheese you must wait longer. Most American cheese is technically 'soft'.Ask your rabbi about this. After meat one waits either one, three or six hours, depending on where your ancestors lived. It was one hour in Holland, three hours in Germany and England and six hours in Eastern Europe. The rule in Shulchan Aruch is that we wait from one meal to the next, and it appears German and British Jews ate something every three hours, while Eastern European Jews only ate every six hours. The Talmud mentions one and six hours, three hours came later. What interests me about Kashrus in the USA is that it has never been easier to keep kosher in the Diaspora, yet some American Jews don't appreciate it and still eat treifus, as if rejecting three millennia of Judaism were a small matter !
Our proprietary formula for hair regrowth offers the possibility of authentic hair and reversal of hair loss. That is more authentic than anything Mr Michaelson is offering. Im sure that Jay can tell the difference between authentic hair and a cheesy toupee
I am into my 75th year of life and I am Jewish. Why? because I was born into a Jewish family and decided to continue to be a Jew. In my mind, asking what is an authentic Jew is an absurd question. You are a Jew because you are, and want to belong to a community (or tribe if you like)that shares certain values,spiritual faith, and customs which you feel suits your life and lifestyle. These values are steeped in many centuries of Jewish thought, debate, and basic tenets that have guided our ancestors with reasonable success. My early association was with a conservative congregation and all that means...Hebrew school, minyons, Shabbath services, and Bar Mitzvah. I didn't particularly enjoy it. My parents were first and second generation Americans and practiced a moderate form of Judaism that included holy day observances,a bit of Yiddish when it was appropriate, and a quiet reverence to the Torah. Perhaps most important to them was not to hurt their parents by abandoning Judiaism completely. I am a Jew because this religious following provides me with a moral and social compass that I believe is fundamentally sound, and which gives me a particular access to a community of people worldwide, with which I am more than comfortable. I support the Jewish causes that are important to me and my children follow yet another modification of the religion. Are we contributing to the "slippery slope"? I don't believe so. My kids and several of my grandchildren are taking steps to enhance their participation in Judaism. Whatever form they choose to take, I am satisfied that the essence of the Jewish religion will continue and hopefully flourish. To those who want to argue what makes a Jew authentic, I say there are far more important issues to discuss with those of us who ARE Jewish.
The idea that identity is constructed is not new, and does not make identities any less real or more malleable. Furthermore, if all identities are constructed anyway, then this whole article is a tautology.
E.g., It is not the authenticity of 'spiritual leadership' of the guitar-playing, meditating, African-American female that traditionalist Jewish human beings reject, but that she is called "rabbi," a term previously constructed with a certain meaning. {Ignoring the fact that streimel-wearing hassidut was founded on the idea that all Jews should meditate every day - that image was poorly chosen.}
That being said, the point was to inspire Progressive Jews not to be 'spiritually lazy', so logical coherence is not the benchmark. From the talkbacks, it happily seems to have worked. Just make sure not to fight triumphalism with more triumphalism, I'd say.
"The constructivist claim that ethnic identities are socially constructed is clearly correct. After all, our ethnic identities are not stamped on our genes so they must be constructed. It does not follow, however, that we should drop the assumption of fixed ethnic identity. This is because ethnic identities, while constructed, are hard to reconstruct once they form. Reconstruction can happen but the conditions needed for reconstruction are quite rare, especially in modern times, and especially among ethnic groups in conflict. Hence the reconstruction of ethnic identities is seldom possible and the reconstruction of identity can seldom serve as a remedy for ethnic conflict today."
from Stephen Van Evera, "Primordialism Lives!", APSA-CP: Newsletter of the Organized Section in Comperative Politics of the American Political Science Association, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Winter 2001): 20-22.
Many American Jews are Jewish in name only. They know virtually zero about Judaism. Demography is destiny. If one crunches the numbers, it's quite obvious that non-Orthodox Jews in America will virtually disappear due to assimilation, intermarriage, delayed childbearing and below-replacement level birthrates, while Orthodox Jews have a high birthrate and low levels of assimilation and intermarriage. The percentage of people who identify as Jews in the U.S. who are Orthodox will skyrocket as the 21st century progresses.
Baltimore-based black-hat Rabbi Leonard Oberstein's remarks are fatuous when he contends that "It is not a matter of Triumphalism ,but of demographics.... If authentic means that it works, that it has what it takes to pass on to future generations, then it seems that believing orthodoxy has figured out a way to regenerate and reproduce that no other group comes close to. Facts are facts."
So it all comes down to metrics, to numbers, to quantity rather than quality? In that case, Jews should convert to Christianity or Islam, because it is in those traditions where the real numbers lie!
Rabbi Oberstein is quite outspoken on this blog. Where was his concern for "facts as facts" during the huge sexual abuse scandal in the Orthodox Baltimore commumnity? Why was he silent at that time? Shetiqa kahodaa. (Silence is concurrence in that long-standing attempted cover-up.)
Reform Judaism first emerges as a distinct group in Hamburg in 1819. It's also the oldest movement in the United States. It would seem that predictions of its demise 'within a generation' are greatly exaggerated. So far, it's just shy of 200 years old.
If you have real numbers, by all means share them: if we are losing Jews, we need to know. But stating that liberal Judaism will be undermined within a generation without actually backing that claim with genuine research -- that is not at all helpful. Opinion is not fact, and triumphalism is merely divisive.
Yes, Reform Judaism is culturally different than traditional Judaism. But that does not mean that it is not self-sustaining. If its forms of worship are offensive or off-putting to you, realize that many Reform Jews feel the same way about traditionalist Judaism -- and would leave the fold if traditionalism were the only option.
And as for those who choose to define Judaism as strictly traditional, and allow no room for variations in practice and belief, it should be recognized that Reform Judaism simply does not accept their authority to make that pronouncement. How can it not accept the ruling of the traditionalist rabbis? The same way the traditionalist rabbis don't accept them. Neither group views the other as the most 'authentic' continuation of the Jewish tradition.
Which is precisely why I think we should abandon authenticity. We would do a better job of securing the future of Judaism if we could find ways to communicate with each other outside of value-judgments regarding authenticity. When I have to explain these differences at the community day school where I teach (which quite literally has Chabadniks sitting next to Reform Jews sitting next to secular Israelis in the same classroom), I usually explain the differences in terms of being "more" and "less" strict, and in terms of each group's cultural roots (it shouldn't be too surprising, for example, that most of our reform Jews here are German-Jewish, or that many of the Conservatives here have misnagdim in their background).
As a bisexual Jew, I appreciated this article. Thank you Jay.
i appreciated your article, too. i think i am a secular humanist, although i was brought up conservative. what does all that mean? i am jewish and i celebrate holidays, but i do not feel the need to observe much more than that or pray for that matter. does that make me less authentic or jewish? i don't think so. the beauty of judiasm as i see it, is that you can observe and be "jewish" pretty much any way you please. g-d does not discriminate between the truly and the very observant.
for those of you who disagree with me, well, we live in a democracy, thank god, and i won't force you to live your jewish life like me, and you won't force me to agree with you. do not impose your "authenticity on those what have different opinions. isn't that how talmud and the study of jewish law goes? everyone argues and has a voice.
by the way, my kids are in a jewish day school but still we are secular. they will choose what they want when the time comes.
Agree with John and Gerald.
John... ya single? :)
I loved the article and found many of the comments at best rude and at worst obnoxious. First, we can't, as much as we seem to try, separate the Jewish culture from the Jewish religion as each feeds the other. Second, "can't all we Jews just get along" IS implied by the writer in several sections. Third, the writer does not condemn the observant but speaks to blind aherence against studied loyality-is there no longer room for people to move toward holiness? Will we continue to demand converts come righteousness already completed? And fourth, just like Shoshana, "John..., ya single?" 'cuz I have a nice Jewish girl I'd like to introduce you to!
Three Rabbis, four opinions. My psychoanalyst once told me that A Jewish family ought to produce in every generation an outstanding Rabbi and a revolutionary socialist. One thing I especially like about Talmud is that it never finally decides anything. As long as Jews go on arguing with one another Judaism survives.
@ Those who have accused Jay of Orthodox bashing: Jay is not Orthodox bashing. Rather he's criticizing those who use the line "Thanks, but I'm Orthodox" as an easy way out of actually grappling with deep questions. I don't think the author meant for a minute that all Orthodox Jews do this, but merely that it's one of many simple one-line "answers" to what is actually a very complicated question. (And I want all of Jay's detractors to notice that the line "Thanks, but I'm not religious" doesn't get much sympathy either). Again, what's under fire here is not Orthodoxy, it's intellectual and spiritual laziness, no matter who its practitioners happen to be, and how they self-identify.