I used to think the real Jews in America were the Hasidim or the ultra-orthodox or perhaps the modern orthodox. I thought they really knew what it meant to be Jewish and therefore were the only ones who were willing to discipline themselves enough to strictly keep the Torah and adhere to the Rabbinic tradition. They were the real Jews and the rest of us were just playing games or lacked the gumption or the commitment to be or act Jewish. Whenever I saw the ultra religious I felt like an inadequate Jew. And I believed they also thought I was inadequate Jew. Was I? Am I?
The Rabbinic tradition asserts that a Jew is someone whose mother is Jewish or who converts into the Jewish religion. In addition, contemporary Reform Jews believe that if the father is Jewish and the child is brought up Jewish, then the child is Jewish. My mother and my father were Jewish. They survived Hitler’s Holocaust and came to America in 1947. I was born shortly thereafter and grew up in a Jewish home in New York. At home my parents spoke only Yiddish. Until I was 7 years old my parents told me I did not speak English, just Yiddish. I attended a yeshiva from the ages of 5-12. I said my prayers every day. I went to synagogue most every Saturday morning. I was a bar mitzvah and laid tefillin. My parents kept a kosher home. Based on these facts, I was and am certainly Jewish.
But what about this question of whether or not I’m an adequate Jew? Is this a question with which I should be concerned? The question seems to be inherent within the Jewish religion and community. Some Jews argue that parental heritage is only part of the answer. To really be a Jew, they believe, one must live in strict obedience to the commandments as interpreted by the Rabbinic tradition. If strict adherence to Rabbinic tradition is required to be Jewish and I no longer keep a kosher home, does that mean I’m not Jewish? Or am I simply an inadequate Jew? What makes me a Jew, adequate or otherwise? What makes me part of the Jewish community? Why do I think I need to ask and answer these questions? Am I Jewish because my mother was Jewish? That is certainly the legal Jewish definition . Maybe there are better questions that would be more helpful: How should a Jew live? Does being Jewish deserve a moral definition? Or is being Jewish best given a ritual definition? Or could it be an existential, self-definitional subjective decision, that is, I feel that I am a Jew therefore, I am. Does being Jewish mean that I am compelled to live inside Rabbinic tradition and follow those laws strictly? And how does one understand the authority of that tradition? Which interpretation of that tradition is the authoritative one? And what does it mean to stand under and be surrounded by that tradition? Do I get to pick and choose what parts of that tradition are relevant to me? And if I, as an individual, am compelled to choose, how will I know that I have chosen correctly so I can be sure that I am a real Jew?
Jewish tradition teaches that questions have more power than answers. But as I had plenty of questions and needed some answers, I needed to wrestle with two different historically perennial communal questions. First, what really makes someone a Jew? And second, how should a Jew live in order to actually be Jewish? Or to ask these questions personally, am I really a Jew and if so, how then should I live?
One morning, when I was about 15, in our small apartment in the Bronx, I was praying my morning prayers, wearing my tefillin. I noticed my father watching me rather closely. After I had concluded my prayers he said words I have never forgotten. “Your prayers are very nice. You daven well. Better you should be a mensch.” He went on. “Religion is good but only if it teaches you to be a mensch.”
For my father being Jewish meant that you were a person of character. My father was a good man but not terribly observant. He would often work on the Sabbath as a machine operator at a clothing factory. When I asked him why he worked on the Sabbath, he answered that he had to earn money for the family to have food to eat. My father respected the ritualistic or quantitative part of the Rabbinic tradition but he thought that the qualitative part was more important. He said, “If you want to find out what is in a man’s heart, do not listen to the mouth, but follow the feet.” He thought that being frum or religious is fine but being a mensch was vital and at the center of the Jewish tradition. As I think about his words today I wonder, does it have to be a matter of either/or could it be both? What do his words mean for the way I am Jewish today?
Baruch Spinoza is credited with opening up the door 350 years ago that allowed and required each and every individual Jew to make a conscious choice or decision as to whether and how he or she will be a Jew. In the small shtetls of Europe before Spinoza, Jews were born Jews, remained Jews, and died as Jews without ever thinking that they had or even wanted to make a choice to be or not to be Jewish. It never even occurred to them. But thanks to Spinoza and the “Enlightenment” that followed him, it has become increasingly unclear what it means to be a Jew. Today, we American Jews watch our children as they feel free to make decisions about how to be or not be Jewish. In our world, there is an implicit and explicit compulsion to choose from a multitude of options about what it means for each individual Jew to be Jewish. The Hasidic Jew is Hasidic today because he or she has consciously chosen to be so. The Conservative Jew is Conservative because that option seemed appealing and fit the way he or she wanted to be Jewish. This is also true for the ultra Orthodox Jew and for the Reconstructionist Jew, the secular Jew, the Reform Jew, and every other kind of contemporary Jew. After Spinoza the criterion for what kind of Jew one ought to be seems to be “what sort of Judaism fits well for me?” And even though some Jews don’t seem to make conscious choices but are simply Jewish in the same way their parents were or were not, even though it appears the decision, how to be/act Jewish, was made generations ago and then passed on to the children who accept it gladly, they are still choosing. All of us are Jews that have to make choices. And by the choices we make we determine what it means to be Jewish today.
The contemporary notion of being free to choose how or whether one will be religious means that anyone who thinks he is Jewish can decide how he or she chooses to be Jewish. Autonomy trumps any religious tradition or authority since freedom and toleration are the central beliefs of American society not to mention all of Western culture. The radicalness of this freedom to choose is most evident in those particular Jews who have decided that they can be both Jewish and Christian or Jewish and Buddhist at the same time. Again, it is the hallmark of our age, time, and culture that, not only Jews, but all people feel free to pick, choose and combine different parts of different religions, whatever they feel like combining as long as they find it spiritually beneficial to themselves. The established right to be syncretistic owes its privilege to Spinoza and those who followed him in holding up the privatization of religion. That “ideal” has been achieved and is part of the air we breathe each and every day.
I understand and have experienced this freedom first hand. As a young man I concluded that it made no difference what religion I was as long as I worshipped God and cared for the neighbor. For all sorts of personal reasons which seemed reasonable at the time, I left the Jewish tradition to become a Christian. For many years I tried to live in the Christian tradition, to understand and adapt to Christian beliefs. But I found that the longer I lived among Christians the more Jewish I remained. I found I could not be a Christian because I, constitutionally, was a Jew. I did not and could not recognize the authority of the Christian tradition in my life, and could not define my life under the umbrella of that tradition, try as I might.
Accordingly, I decided to return to the Jewish tradition. In doing so, I felt as if I had returned home for the first time. I felt alive and I could sleep through the night for the first time in many, many years. I was finally at peace with myself and at peace with my soul. But that lasted only a short time because I was soon confronted with a predicament. Having returned to the Jewish tradition, I now had to decide what kind of Jew I should be. I had grown up as a Conservative Jew but what sort of Jew should I be now? I presently live in a city that has only one synagogue and it is a Reform temple. Is that the kind of Jew I should be? The more I investigated all of the ways of being a contemporary Jew, the more I realized how varied the options were. I discovered that for many Jews, being Jewish does not have to do with scrupulously saying prayers and doing commandments though that can certainly be a part of being Jewish. I discovered that there are and have always been many different ways to be Jewish. There are some Jews who believe their way of being Jewish is the only way to be Jewish and other Jews who claim that each Jew has to decide for him or herself what being Jewish means for them. There are many Jews who live their lives ignoring the tradition all together. There are people who are Jewish because their mother or father was Jewish. There are Jews who are Jews because they have converted into one of the different Jewish religious groups. There are people who self-identify as Jews simply because they say so. They think they have the right to choose to be Jewish.
Of course this is not new. Part of our heritage is that we Jews wrestle with our identity. We argue incessantly about what it means to be Jewish. This is part and parcel of what makes us Jewish. Being Jewish has always been complicated and convoluted. It involves negotiation with ourselves and sometimes with other Jews. Indeed, being Jewish involves living in the unavoidable tension between the quantitative and the qualitative sides of Jewish tradition. For some Jews the quantity of commandments you obey each day is the key to being Jewish. For others the quality of one’s life is the way you can tell if someone is really Jewish.
This is the conundrum of the contemporary person who would be Jewish. If being Jewish can mean anything then perhaps it actually means nothing. I know Jews who are quite proud to be Jewish but they do not believe in God, do not know Hebrew, do not keep kosher, do not study Torah, and do not follow any of the traditional commandments. Are they Jewish? And am I any better or worse than them? I pray the Shema day and night, do not eat pork, study Torah, and care deeply for the State of Israel. Yet, I do not keep a kosher home, I enjoy meals in all sorts of unkosher restaurants, I drive on the Sabbath and I use my cell phone (although I do not read my email). I believe that I rest on the Sabbath but I allow myself the right to define what I mean by the word rest. Am I living like a “true” Jew?
A helpful midrash: A Jewish man who owned a shop came to his Rabbi and confessed that on the previous Shabbat he had kept his shop open for six hours in order to make a little extra money for his wife and family. The man felt terribly guilty and with much remorse he cries to the Rabbi, “Rabbi, what kind of awful Jew am I? I ignored the Torah, I shamed my family, what an awful man am I.” The Rabbi told the man to calm down. He asked the man a few questions, “You kept your shop open on the Sabbath for six hours, yes?” The sad and contrite man, his head down answered , “Yes.” But, the Rabbi asked him, “What did you do for the remaining eighteen hours of the Sabbath? The man replied, “For those eighteen hours I kept the Sabbath.” The Rabbi answered, “Go home, my friend, you are a true Jew. Maybe next week you will do better.”
What can this Midrash teach us? First, there is the Rabbi, the teacher who teaches what we need to hear if we are to be Jewish. To be Jewish is to know that you may not know and that you must rely on a teacher to teach you what you need to know. The good teacher not only knows the tradition; he or she knows how to engage the tradition. The word “tradition” refers to that wisdom necessary for life which has been passed on from generation to generation. And what is the wisdom that the Rabbi conveys to his student, the shopkeeper? He teaches him that being Jewish is not a matter of believing certain truths or performing certain rituals with the utmost fidelity. Being Jewish has to do with doing what you can do, given who you are in the place where you live. The shopkeeper did what he could do. He ignored a portion of the law but not the whole law. Perhaps next week he will be able to do more. Perhaps not. He, the shopkeeper, obviously loves the tradition and feels guilty for ignoring that tradition but the Rabbi reproves him. His actions do not call for guilt but for celebration of the eighteen hours of right and just behavior. The rabbi tells him to go and try again, to surely do better.
So, what makes the shopkeeper “a true Jew?” What is it in this person that convinces the Rabbi that in front of him stands someone who is Jewish? Could it be his guilt? But the Rabbi does not applaud or sanction the guilt. For the Rabbi it seems sufficient that the man knows himself to be part of a community that lives under the umbrella of the Jewish Rabbinic tradition. So first he assumes the authority of the legal part of the tradition: A Jew is a Jew if his or her mother is Jewish or he or she converts into the tradition. And second comes the ritual part of the tradition. In essence the Rabbi tells the shopkeeper to continue to live with respect for the ritual portion of the tradition and that will be sufficient. But what does the word “respect” mean in this context? It means that the shopkeeper’s existence is defined by living his life under the authority and wisdom of this tradition even though he sometimes ignores it. Once the Rabbi sees this commitment in the man standing before him, the breaking of the Sabbath laws, while certainly not ideal, is no reason to feel guilty since it is clear that the shopkeeper is bound by the discipline of the Torah as interpreted by the Rabbis. Standing under the traditional Jewish umbrella makes the shopkeeper a member of the community and that is sufficient. His indiscretions are tolerable because he ultimately lives under the umbrella of the Jewish tradition. He is living like a Jew, his lack of strict obedience notwithstanding, is sufficient, “dayenu.” And yet sufficient for whom? For God?? For the Rabbi? For the shopkeeper? For the Hasidim, for the Reform Jews? For whom exactly is it sufficient?
It is sufficient for the Jewish community. Contemporary Jews live in an inherent tension within the Jewish tradition between the quantitative and the qualitative parts of the tradition, between the part of the tradition that says that to be Jewish one must adhere to the commandments as defined by the Rabbis as strictly as possible and the part that says the Jewish community or the Jewish individual can decide which Rabbinic laws or rituals are to be followed in order that the person live a “quality” life as a “mensch.” The qualitative Jews say that it is more important to be a person of character than to carry out all the rituals. This unavoidable tension between the moral and the ceremonial is an inherent part of Jewish tradition. The tension has become in our days more pointed and difficult to decipher. This inherent tension means that Jews may respect the authority of the Jewish tradition even when they disagree with it, rebel against it or disobey that tradition. The tradition remains the center around which all sorts and kinds of Jews revolve, make decisions and live their lives. Some Jews are closer to the periphery; others closer to the center, some eccentric, some secular, some Zionist, some humanist, and some who do not even know that they are standing under the umbrella of Jewish tradition. And, importantly, where a Jew stands in that circle may change throughout his or her life.
This past week representatives of Chabad came to my town in order to convert Jews to the Hasidic Chabad way of being Jewish. The problem is that this way of operating, coming to a city for a few days, acting as if you and only you know what it means to be Jewish, sounding like only your group really understands what it means to be Jewish, is not Jewish. This is not what Jews have done in the past. Chabad is using certain Christian evangelistic methods in the belief that it is thereby saving Judaism from Jews. In acting this way, Chabad is an historical novum placing it on the periphery of Jewish tradition.
Whether you or I or Chabad like it or not, there have always been a variety of ways to live out one’s life as a Jew. In many ways, this was so even before Spinoza, before Rashi, before Maimonides, and certainly within the Talmud and the Torah. The umbrella has been wide and inclusive. Being Jewish has always been a matter of respect for the authority of the tradition, without assuming strict compliance with that tradition. Being Jewish has to do with living one’s life with respect and in an engaged tension with the tradition. When a Jew decides to leave that tradition and converts to another religion he or she, technically speaking, remains a Jew.
So let me return to my question. “Am I a Jew?” Yes! My mother was Jewish and I live within the inherent modern tension of being Jewish. Yet I fear that my attempt at defining what constitutes a Jew and how he or she should live, may be seen as evasive or vague. “Negotiating with the tradition” sounds pretty wishy washy. I confess that it is so but I see no other choice. There is no hard and fast list about how a Jew should live. There may have been a time when Jews were born, lived and died in an inextricable geographical triangular relation between the individual, the community and God. If those places ever existed they were lived out in geographical isolation and not urban freedom. I find myself to be a Jewish American, an isolated floating individual with options and choices that are strictly my own. This negotiation is quite complicated in that the Jew who grows up under the Jewish umbrella is also at the same time growing up under another larger umbrella, that of Western civilization. The negotiation between the different umbrellas is complicated by the fact that so many others around us are negotiating living under these umbrellas in so many different ways. I find myself surrounded by individualized floating Jews who make their own isolated choices without consulting anyone other than their own reason and their own sense of what it means to be Jewish. I would argue that consciously or not, what unites all these individual Jews is a respect, albeit in many varied ways, for the authority of the tradition, whether that authority stems from God, the Rabbis, or one’s own sense of belonging to something bigger than oneself. Being a Jew, inherently makes you part of a community whether you know it or not. How so?
Respecting the authority of a tradition means that in thinking about how I live my life as a Jew, I negotiate explicitly or implicitly, overtly or covertly, consciously or unconsciously under, over and against my religious tradition. Some Jews submit to the tradition. Some tolerate but pay scant attention to the tradition. And some are Jewish because of nostalgia for remembered traditions at their home. Others engage the tradition, argue with it and push back against it. I find myself in this category. Still others do their best to do good deeds and understand their deeds to be “mitzvot.” The fact is that Jews are Jews and act Jewishly for all sorts of reasons apart from strict obedience to the halacha or conscious adherence to the Jewish tradition.
Is it really necessary, then. to ask the question: “Am I a Jew?” Yes. This question is important, especially in a society like ours, which is rich, entitled and self absorbed, it is important to demarcate and know who you are and why you act the way you do. In that way, I am certainly an example of a Jewish modern American. I care deeply that I am a Jew and that I live as a Jew in the world. But everyday, I do have options and choices and am compelled to make such choices and to select my options as best I can. This is also true for all other Jews; we are -- all of us -- whether we admit it or not, making choices about the way we will be religious. We Jews are deciding all the time and every day how Jewish we will or will not be and what that means in every moment and every decision. This is true for the secular humanist Jew, the atheist Jew, as well as those who decide to be Hasidic or orthodox, or whatever. The very notion that I, as an individual, can decide how I will be religious or can decide whether I think there is or is not a God, all of this is quite modern. But, this is the bargain we or our parents and grandparents made 350 years after Spinoza. Perhaps it is fair to say that there may always have been a negotiation between the larger umbrella civilization and the smaller but powerful religious traditions living under that umbrella be they Jewish, Muslim or Christian or whatever.
But in all this choosing that goes on, where is the line between negotiation and capitulation? Let’s be honest and practical. If I go out to a restaurant that is not kosher, eat a cheeseburger with fries, am I thereby negotiating with the tradition or just plain ignoring it, not even thinking about it, capitulating to whatever I feel like doing in the moment? I think that is the wrong question. The tradition teaches that if your mother is Jewish or if you have completed the formal conversion process, you are Jewish. At least for me, that part of the tradition is not debatable. The heart of the tradition is the negotiating process by which each Jew determines how he or she will live out his or her Jewishness. Once you allow for individuals to negotiate and reinterpret you inevitably run the risk that the negotiation will, at times, become capitulation, but such is the risk with which we must live. We American Jews are caught in the tension between individual autonomy and the communal tradition of obedience. We feel the inextricable pull. We live and breathe that tension. I am not comfortable with the tension but feel compelled to live within it.
It then seems clear that no particular negotiation of what it means to be Jewish can be the absolutely correct one. The tradition teaches us that the Reform Jew and the Hasidic Jew and the Conservative Jew and any other kinds of Jews have no authority to judge whether someone whose mother is Jewish or has completed the conversion process of any of the Jewish traditions, is more or less Jewish. Being Jewish is a negotiating process at which some Jews will do well and others not so well and still others will reject or ignore the whole process. But the process of negotiation will not go away. And Jews can respectfully, even stubbornly, negotiate with other Jews about the best way to be Jewish and how to engage the contemporary culture.
Every religion has to figure out how to deal with difference within its community. In this essay I am arguing for a limited pluralistic approach. I am advocating a broad umbrella that allows all sorts of Jews to stand under it. However, there is an important distinction between discussing and even arguing with other Jews about what it means to be Jewish and arrogantly accusing other Jews of not being Jewish. Jews can no longer be commanded to observe; they must be persuaded, not once but repeatedly. This is a problem for Jews on the right and the left. Many Jews tend to think that their way of being Jewish or the way they grew up Jewish is the right way and all other ways are illegitimate. The secret lies in the negotiation. And that necessary negotiation is a good thing. The tradition compels and commends Jews to argue with each other in order to discover the truth. It compels Jews to be awake and alive toward their tradition. Indeed, it may be that the existential dilemma of contemporary Jews is precisely what makes being Jewish so dramatic, mysterious. and life giving. In any event the Jewish community should be a place where Jews can feel safe to be Jews.
My mother and father left me a religious legacy with at least four distinct tensions. As a Jew, I am caught in the interrelated tensions, between being an individual and yet part of a community, between my autonomy and the authority of the tradition, between being Jewish and modern, between being Jewish and American at the same time. They told me again and again “Be a good Jew and be a good American.” But they did not tell me how to do that, and the older I become, the more clear it is that being all of these things at the same time is not easy.
For good or for bad, it is established and given in American culture that religion is private, personal, individual and voluntary. And the key to all this choosing lies in Spinoza’s central belief that “freedom” was the mark of a reasonable society. This is our legacy and as modern Jews we must look at it straight in the face and come to terms with it.
Because I am a modern Jew my identity is complicated by the fact that I am also an American. Each Jew may, and more than likely will, wrestle with the tradition and modernity differently at different times in their lives and that is what makes that person Jewish. “Am I a Jew?” Absolutely. The secret resides in the wrestling. Having left and returned to Jewish tradition I feel a particular kind of grieving and angst. But, leaving and returning are also an important part of being Jewish. Having returned it has taken me awhile to work through what kind of Jew I will be. And the ongoing question for me is no longer, “Am I a Jew?, but “What kind of Jew am I?” I am a Jew who tried to run away from the tradition but could never leave it. I am a Jew who loves the Jewish community, the Torah and the tradition. I am a Jew who loves being an American. And so I am compelled to wrestle with the tradition for the rest of my life.
And, therein lies the response to my question 'Am I a Jew?" Yes. I am a Jew. I am a Jew legally and traditionally because my mother was Jewish. My parents came here from Europe and spent their lives wrestling with being good Jews and good Americans. They never tired of instructing me to do the same and in doing so, passed that legacy of wrestling onto me. I am a Jew because I respect the authority of the tradition, and only because I respect the authority of the tradition am I able to wrestle and negotiate with it. I am a Jew because I wrestle with that tradition in the context of my family history, my local, national and international community.
Note: I have not mentioned God up to this point. It is hard to say whether there is a necessary connection between being Jewish and believing in God. For most religious Jews who daily invoke the name of God it seems that they believe there actually is someone “out there” or “right here” to whom they are addressing their prayers. For some Jews, praying the Shema may be an expression of their connectedness to the Jewish people more than their connectedness to God. For many contemporary Jews, after the Holocaust, the word “God” has at best become unclear or confusing and at worst, an imaginary being created by the imagination of the Rabbis or the tradition. The eclipse of God has also been an intricate part of Zionism. The fact is for many Jews God is not an important part of their being Jewish and that seems fine with them. As for me, the word “God” is a mysterious ineffable enigmatic word. The more I know, the less I know. The word, God, is a metaphor for what is at the heat and soul of the universe. As the name “Israel” suggests, we Jews are compelled to wrestle with God or against God or live without God before God. I finally adhere to the old Jewish cliché: ‘We do not know who God is but we know what God wants us to do.”
For Jews there will be no end to this wrestling with our identity. The wrestling may be self-serving, incomplete or inadequate. As you wrestle with the tradition and your identity as a Jew in your way and I in mine, we together continue, L'dor Va'dor, to be the Jewish community. And that, in itself, is and will have to be sufficient. Dayenu!
Murray Haar
Augustana College
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
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