“WHEN ARE WE GOING TO BECOME JEWISH?”
My daughter Jennifer’s challenge, posed more than thirty-five years ago, implicitly raised the question: What does it mean to be Jewish?
“Become Jewish?” I responded. “We are Jewish. We’re just not very religious.”
My defensive answer reflected an assumption shared by most Jews and embedded in traditional Jewish law: ancestry alone makes us Jewish, so there’s no need to do anything and no need to choose. To her credit, Jennifer disagreed.
In this book you have accompanied me as I’ve explored the nature of American Jewish identity and described aspects of my own Jewish journey. When I was in my thirties I thought being Jewish had little to do with my life. Today, although I remain nonobservant, being Jewish is a much more conscious and salient part of my identity because of choices I have made. An important choice was writing this book, which required me to educate myself on issues that Jewish scholars have debated for centuries, then to wrestle with those issues and come up with my own answers. This process made me feel more Jewish than ever. It required the kind of intellectual struggle that Jewish tradition encourages. It also removed any trace of discomfort I felt about proclaiming my Jewishness to the world. Once I had battled my way through Jewish history and the issues unique to American Jewish identity, I understood my earlier ambivalence toward being Jewish as the product of a particular time and place. I understood why so many Jews in the 1950s were taught to downplay their Jewishness; why now, sixty years later, such caution is no longer necessary; and why I am proud to be Jewish.
The paradox of the book’s title reflects how much has changed for American Jews over the course of my lifetime. Jews have never had it so good in terms of public acceptance, and yet many of us worry that, for our descendants, Jewish identity is at risk. In my youth Jewish identity was supported by five traditional sources: descent, religious affiliation, endogamy, anti-Semitism, and support for Israel. Today fewer of us find those sources meaningful or inspiring. For Jews like me, who find no comfort in religion, what is our Jewish identity based on? This is one of the implicit questions I’ve been exploring in these pages.
I began the book with Erik Erikson, not because of his fame as one of the world’s most influential theorists on identity but because his personal story was filled with conflicts about identity, especially Jewish identity.
Was Erik Erikson Jewish? To an outside observer the answer would depend on whether one gives more weight to descent or choice. His mother was a Danish Jew, so he was halachically Jewish. He was raised in a German Jewish home and celebrated a bar mitzvah. But as an adult, he made significant choices that distanced him from that identity. He abandoned Judaism as a religion. He married a non-Jewish woman, and they raised their children as Protestants. He dropped his Jewish name, Homburger, in favor of an assumed Scandinavian name, Erikson. Toward the end of his life he occasionally attended church services with his wife. Did he stop being a Jew? According to my standard, yes. He no longer wished publicly to identify himself as Jewish and part of the American Jewish community.
I used Erikson’s story to introduce my own theory of identity. I am not an identity essentialist. I don’t believe people are or are not a single thing; instead, our personal identities are composed of many strands, of which being Jewish may be one. Among American Jews the salience of the Jewish strand varies enormously from person to person. Moreover, that salience isn’t fixed; it may vary considerably over a person’s lifetime, as it has for me. In Erikson’s case, after he came to America he chose to avoid public identification as a Jew. I think he had every right to do that. But Marshall Berman, whose book review emphasized Erikson’s family background, stated flatly that Erikson was a Jew and accused him of being less than authentic. As I’ve noted, Jewish identity has a collective dimension: others view you as a member of a group. I have no doubt that many Jews—and probably some gentiles—agreed with Berman: the matrilineal standard meant Erikson was a Jew.
As you know, I reject the matrilineal standard as a way of defining who is a Jew in America today. Its religious pedigree isn’t as ancient as most people think; it was created by rabbis after the biblical period for reasons that aren’t clear. More important, it leaves no room for choice. It doesn’t allow a person like Erikson to opt out of being Jewish, and it subjects him to attack by Jews who suspect him of trying to make a secret escape. It rejects exemplary Jews like Reform rabbi Angela Buchdahl because she doesn’t have a Jewish mother, and it ropes in people like Madeleine Albright, whose parents never told her about her Jewish ancestry. I believe that everyone, whether Jewish by birth or not, should be allowed to choose for themselves whether and how to be Jewish.
One unusual aspect of the matrilineal standard is that it qualifies a person as Jewish even if she has no commitment to the Jewish religion. And as we’ve seen, many American Jews don’t have much commitment to Judaism as a religion. If being Jewish depended on belief in a personal God or going to synagogue, a substantial proportion of Americans who proudly identify themselves as Jewish would flunk the test. This poses a major challenge to maintaining Jewish identity in America. For those of us who are not committed to Judaism as a religion, what is it that makes us Jewish? Is it just descent—or something more?
It’s not “Jewish blood.” The Nazis relied on such racial notions to justify murdering millions of Jews, and the notion of a Jewish race is abhorrent today. I reject the notion that Jews can be defined by heritable physical or biological characteristics that are unique to Jews. There is no Jewish gene, and blood tests based on DNA would be both under- and overinclusive.
I was intrigued when I started to think about peoplehood. Jews are raised to believe that they are part of a distinct “people,” “tribe,” or “nation” with religious and ethnic dimensions and a shared history. No one is born thinking they are part of a people. These ideas must be taught.
I was raised to feel a connection with other Jews, and I count myself as part of the Jewish people. But the idea of Jewish peoplehood doesn’t help us define who is a Jew. It contains no membership requirements. How do you become part of the people? If it’s only through maternal descent or conversion, we’re back to square one: the matrilineal principle. I like the idea of a Jewish people, but only if the tribe is inclusive enough to embrace those of mixed ethnicity and those who marry into the tribe.
Examining Israel’s struggles with Jewish identity didn’t provide me with an answer to this problem. But it did reinforce my feeling that self-identification, rather than proof of descent, can play a role in defining who is Jewish and that the definition can vary according to context.
In trying to find a single standard that satisfied me, by far the most difficult question was the role of descent. Ultimately I gave up looking for a single standard and proposed a two-part test. For the American Jewish community as a whole—the Big Tent—the standard should simply be public self-identification. For each group or organization under the Big Tent, more stringent requirements for membership and participation may be set, but only for that subgroup.
I acknowledge that the first part of this approach is rather radical. Admission to the Big Tent requires no Jewish ancestry. Nor does it require religious conversion to Judaism. I eliminated the religious requirement for non-Jews because none exists for Jews by birth. If it were possible to implement some form of secular or humanistic conversion for non-Jews—one that required learning the basics of Jewish religion, history, and culture—I would support it. But in the meantime self-identification is good enough.
But self-identification doesn’t solve the problem—it’s just a start. What challenges does the Jewish community have to confront in order to draw young people into the Tent and keep them there? The waning of anti-Semitism is great news, of course, in that the cost of proudly asserting our Jewishness is close to nil. But it also removes a powerful force that used to encourage many young Jews to seek shelter inside the Tent. What are the forces that remain?
For some of us, caring about Israel and its survival is still a compelling draw. But for others it’s an exhausting dilemma. Many Jews, despite their commitment to Israel’s survival, are dismayed by the Israeli government’s policies relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the political power of the Orthodox rabbinate. These policies fuel conflicts among American Jews between the Orthodox and the rest of us. They also risk alienating young Jews, whom we most need to entice into the Tent.
Many Jews believe the greatest threat to American Jewish identity is intermarriage. I disagree. Surveys show that many children of mixed religious heritage grow up to have a strong Jewish identity—if they are raised as Jews and feel actively embraced by the community.
Rather than intermarriage, I think the greatest challenge is disengagement. Many Americans proudly think of themselves as Jewish, but they can’t necessarily answer the question I asked above: Why is being Jewish meaningful to you?
Those who are religiously committed to Judaism have a clear answer. Religion is perhaps the most powerful force drawing people into the Tent. I wish I were religious. I wish I found the experience of ritual emotionally gratifying. I envy those who find deep meaning, comfort, and strength in their religious faith. And I envy them for having such a straightforward way—or so it seems to me—to articulate what they hope to pass on.
For the nonreligious, what makes being Jewish meaningful? If my grandchildren asked me this question, what would I tell them? After much reflection I’ve come to the conclusion that what I love most about being Jewish are three things: what I call the Jewish head, the Jewish heart, and the Jewish heritage. All three have roots in the religion.
By the Jewish head, I mean our people’s commitment to education and the life of the mind. We are the “people of the book.” Judaism is a text-based religion that “makes literacy a primary duty,” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has noted. “The Talmud goes so far as to rank study as higher even than prayer as a religious act.”1 Our religious texts, starting with the Torah, are basically books of law. The tradition encourages not just questioning and debate but also analysis and interpretation. It’s no coincidence that so many Jews have chosen intellectual professions. In a different age I might have been a rabbi. I love to engage with texts and law. I like to think through complicated problems. Although writing this book has been maddening at times, what I’ve loved most about the process has been learning.
By the Jewish heart, I mean our commitment to tikkun olam, a Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world.” This key tenet of Judaism dates back to the Mishnah, the body of rabbinic teachings codified around 200 CE.2 As many Jews define the concept today, it expresses our obligation to pursue social justice and help make the world a better place through acts of kindness and compassion, particularly for the less privileged. When I was growing up I absorbed this idea from my parents, grandparents, and religious schooling: that I had an obligation to engage in social action to help heal the world. When I went into the field of conflict resolution I didn’t think of it as expressing tikkun olam, and my motivation certainly wasn’t religious, but I don’t think the choice was an accident: I feel the connection to Jewish values.
In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that many of us who are not religious are in effect practicing the religion through our social commitments. If you are a lawyer who donates pro bono services to needy individuals and organizations, you could choose to think of it as an expression of tikkun olam. If you support the ACLU, the Environmental Defense Fund, or any number of liberal organizations, you might be engaging in tikkun olam. Dale and I belong to a marvelous organization called Facing History and Ourselves, which trains educators to teach history with an understanding of racism, prejudice, and anti-Semitism. The organization doesn’t label itself Jewish, but it was founded by a Jewish educator and its members are disproportionately Jewish. Its goal is to “Help Create a More Compassionate and Ethical World”3—a clear reference to tikkun olam.
By Jewish heritage, I mean the remarkable three-thousand-year story of the Jewish people, including our American Jewish story, which now extends back nearly four centuries. What a story! One of the great pleasures of working on this book was learning about American Jewish history, which I find quite moving. It’s a story of survival that began long before my time, and I feel part of it. The heritage is very rich. What I would tell my grandchildren is: I hope someday you connect to this story. There are so many different ways you could see yourself as part of it.
The Jewish head, heart, and heritage are not unique to Judaism; the values underlying them transcend Jewish boundaries. But I am proud that they are so central to our religious and cultural tradition.
I have also decided that it’s not enough simply to define why one identifies as a Jew; there’s a second question I have challenged myself to answer: How does being Jewish affect how I’m living my life?
“Every reflective human being,” says Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Great Britain, “will ask at some time in his or her life: Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live?”4
Choosing to self-identify as a Jew has little meaning if it has no effect on how one lives. What I’m suggesting is a conceptual shift in how we define being Jewish. Instead of a status, it should be a choice. Instead of something one is, which doesn’t require any thought or effort, it should be something one actively does.
A former student of mine helped me find an answer. When I met her, she was engaged to a Jewish man and was in the process of converting to Judaism. To support this transition, her rabbi recommended that she engage in three sorts of activities each week. One involved study, a second involved having a Jewish experience, and the third involved community engagement with other Jews.
The rabbi made it clear that these categories included many options, both religious and nonreligious. Jewish study could involve learning about Jewish history and culture as well as religion. Having a Jewish experience might involve watching the movie Fiddler on the Roof, visiting a Jewish museum or memorial, cooking a traditional Jewish meal, dining at a kosher restaurant, lighting candles on Shabbat, or reciting a Jewish prayer. Community engagement with other Jews might involve going to synagogue, of course, but it could also involve participating in an activity related to Israel or doing volunteer work in a Jewish organization where, as a Jew along with other Jews, she was seeking to help others.
My aspiration for the Jewish New Year is every week to engage in some form of Jewish study, have a Jewish experience, and engage in some sort of community activity with other Jews. The study part is easy for me because of my fascination with the history. I count as a Jewish experience watching films that qualify for Jewish film festivals. In terms of community work with other Jews, I am involved in several Israeli NGOs, serve on the Harvard Hillel board, and am active in Jewish nonprofits both here and in Israel. I may not hit the mark every week for all three categories.
Thank you for joining me on this journey. You now know how I think about the challenges facing the American Jewish community and why our community should be inclusive. I have also shared why I am choosing to be Jewish, why being a part of our diverse tribe is meaningful for me, and how being Jewish does make a difference in how I am living my life.
I’m not trying to sell you my answers. But I hope I have persuaded you that the questions driving this project are important ones. For the American Jewish community as a whole: Is it not time that we become more inclusive and view being Jewish as a choice, not an ascribed status? And for those who choose to be Jewish: Why is being Jewish important to you, and how does being Jewish affect the way you live your life?