Ethnography of Jewish Experience » rotherk

Argentina Musings – Kathryn Rother

rotherk — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:08:12 +0000

During the fall semester at Dickinson, as part of our preparation for this trip to Buenos Aires the research team took a class taught by Professor Shalom Staub entitled, “Ethnography of Jewish Experience.” In this class we focused on boundaries between Jews and the communities in which they live. What we only began to scratch the surface on was the topic of boundaries within the Jewish community itself. Here in Argentina the dynamics are fascinating and ever-changing. There are divisions between Orthodox and Reform (or what they call here Conservative), Sephardi and Ashkenazi, rich and poor. Yet the community remains together as Jews.
On the second day of our trip in Buenos Aires we ventured to the Camargo Temple, and orthodox Sephardic establishment. To a trained eye it became obvious almost immediately upon entering that we were not in your average Ashkenazi shul. The El Paso Temple, which we had visited the day before, was a model of European grandeur with gold decorations and very elaborate carvings on columns lining the sanctuary. Camargo had a very different feel. Many of the patterns were more geometric in design except for the stained glass windows depicting the twelve tribes of Israel. The most striking difference came with the Torot. Both shuls had a good number of them (33 at El Paso and 14 at Camargo) but their appearances were completely different. In Paso the Torot were dressed in maroon and gold cloth covers, elaborately embroidered. At Camargo there was a greater variety. A number of the Torah scrolls were dressed in white with silver embroidery and had very elaborate crowns. There were two or three other scrolls that were stored in the more traditional Sephardic silver cases. In a synagogue the Torah is one of the most holy objects. It is more or less the reason to have a synagogue. Jews can gather anywhere to pray but with the synagogue they have an established place to store the community’s holy objects (including the torah scrolls which are especially heavy and hard to transport).
Despite these clear physical differences in places of worship there tends to be a sense that Sefardim and Ashkenazim are all part of the larger Jewish community. While talking to young university students at Macabi (a Jewish retreat facility) the girls commented that it never even occurred to them to ask their friends if they were Sephardi or Ashkenazi. Rabbi Sacca of Camargo Temple phrased it very nicely. He spoke of the more physical customs: food, dress, decorations of the synagogue, as the “clothing” of Judaism. Everyone dresses their Judaism in a way that makes them comfortable with what is underneath, with the essence of it. If we view different strains of Judaism this way there is no way to feel a separation amongst the Jewish community. As human beings we may judge people by the clothes they wear and use them as keys to see what is underneath, but we never question the essence of the human being because of how they choose to cover themselves.
When talking to the students at Hillel one of them made a remark which unfortunately rings just as true. Gaston’s commented that the biggest divisions among Jews come from arguments over who is a Jew. Is it a question of birth? A question of self-identification? And if it’s either of those or something else how does the community regulate it?
Among the people that we talked to in Argentina the definitions varied greatly. At Macabi, which is a secular Jewish establishment (you can order ham and cheese at any of the restaurants and it runs the majority of its activities on Saturday), the general attitude seemed to define Jews as anyone who defines himself as Jewish. There were no questions asked when people rented a bungalow or signed up for sports teams. Moving along the spectrum, Hillel uses the Israeli Law of Return’s standards to define who can participate in their programming. The Law of Return basically states that if any one of your grandparents was Jewish, so are you. There are groups in Argentina (such as Chabad or Menorah (the youth group associated with the Camargo Temple) that go with the more traditional halachic definition of your mother needing to be Jewish.
The Argentinean Jewish community speaks well about the plurality and unity of the community. Everyone we’ve talked to seems to say that the community works well together and that divisions are only really noticed when it comes time to pray. Yet from an outsider’s perspective it is easy to see that this is not true. A person who keeps kosher would not be able to spend time at Macabi because the facilities would not accommodate their dietary restrictions. There are many more orthodox organizations that would not consider people who only have a Jewish father to be Jewish and exclude this group of people from their activities. The people at Hillel stated about the Jewish attitude about Israel, “to a non-Jew we feel we must always represent Israel in a positive light and be supportive, but amongst the Jewish community we can criticize Israel’s actions as much as we like.” This attitude is the same for the Argentina Jewish community and the divisions among it. To outsiders the community wishes to appear unified and loving, as a big Jewish Argentinean family. But when it comes down to the reality, amongst the community there is a lot of bitterness and arguments about how one should express their Judaism and even who should be counted in the Jewish community.

Kathryn Rother – Blog 6 – Tradition!

rotherk — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:03:47 +0000

Today in class Professor Staub asked the final question, “is tradition a useful concept?” For me this is a very personal question. As I’ve moved toward a more traditional practice of Judaism, I’ve been dealing with this question constantly. Obviously the first thing that comes to mind is Tevye on the rooftop belting “tradition!” but this is not where it ends. It is actually interesting to think about the idea of tradition in the context of the myths that we were talking about it class this week. The idea of tradition has actually evolved over the years. What is “traditional” tends to be associated with what is old. In the times of Fiddler on the Roof tradition was associated with the shtetl, with bottle dancing and yiddish. Nowadays these are not really considered the “traditional” things as much. Old traditions have evolved into new ones.
The bar mitzvah is a great example of something for which the tradition has completely morphed over the years. In olden days young boys would read from the Torah maybe have a nice luncheon with family but it wasn’t such a large-scale event. Today, even fairly Orthodox families have large parties and events at this auspicious time in their children’s lives. And the bat mitzvah has become more and more common. This is all an example of the evolution of tradition.
But what does all this have to do with tradition being a useful concept? The fact is that it is something that we need in our lives. The idea of being connected to past generations came up a lot in our fieldwork as a big part of people’s Jewish identity. The concept of tradition, even if it evolves is a way to stay connected to these previous generations.

Kathryn Rother – Blog 5 – Desensitization to the Holocaust

rotherk — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:32:07 +0000

Caroline brought up a point in class today that she throughout her Jewish education she has become almost desensitized to the Holocaust. This is something I’ve thought about a lot over the last couple of years. To be honest, when I looked at the syllabus for this week I saw that we were talking about the Holocaust and my reaction was “oh no, not that again.” It’s not that I don’t recognize the importance of talking about the Holocaust, and the more I thought about it the more I realized I had never really talked about the Holocaust with non-Jews before and began to dread it less. As we’ve been talking about in class I feel that American Jewish identity is incredibly focused on the Holocaust.
As a child, I was naturally drawn to it. I read every book that I could about the Holocaust, and especially the ones that had girls around my age as the main character. In a strange way I was reading these stories not because I wanted to remember the horror of what happened, but because I could identify with these Jewish girls my own age. It wasn’t easy to find books about young Jewish girls living in America, but in the context of the Holocaust I could find a plethora of girls with whom I could relate. And even more these girls had endured great struggles in order to maintain their Jewish identity, which made me feel proud.
As I grew up the Holocaust began to play into my academic life more. It became less of a personal fascination and more of something that came up in every class. I remember in 7th grade I was reading a book about the Holocaust in English, studying it in History class and talking about it during Hebrew school. Since then it’s been brought up at least once in every year of school. And when I transferred to a Jewish Day School it became even more prevalent.
At JDS we celebrated Yom HaShoah (the Holocaust Remembrance day) every year. We the whole school was decorated for the day, there was a 24 hour vigil where names were read, and there was always an assembly. In addition many teachers dedicated the day to talking about the Holocaust in their classes. We also took a mandatory Holocaust class in our junior year. After graduation the majority of the class went to Israel with a 10-day stop over in Poland and the Czech Republic to visit concentration camps and other Holocaust “landmarks.” And these were only the big events. They were only symbols of what went on the rest of the year.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that it’s important to remember the Holocaust, just as it is important to remember all of history so that we do not repeat it, but it has gotten to the point in my life where it is rare for a day to go by in which the Holocaust does not come up in conversation with Jews. And this is what bothers me. It has become the focus of Jewish life for so many. Especially in place of many of the more religious aspects of the religion, but for some, in addition to these. I think that it is an important part of Jewish history, and it should not be neglected. We should remember but we should not let this remembrance control our lives.

Kathryn Rother – The Marriage of a Jew and a Methodist

rotherk — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:19:49 +0000

Talking about marriage in this class brought up a number of personal feelings for me. I have discussed Jewish marriage in the classroom often before, but only ever as a discussion of the halacha surrounding the wedding and ensuing marriage. I have never actually been to a Jewish wedding so it has always been a topic that fascinates me, but for some reason in the conversations in this particular class I realized I had never asked my own parents about their wedding.
My mother is Jewish. My father is the son of a Methodist minister and had no desire to convert to Judaism. As a result the wedding was obviously not of a tradition Jewish nature. Judaism and tradition have always been fairly important to my mother though her biggest connection to Judaism, her father, was not present at this important event. I knew that the officiant had been my Aunt who is a Methodist minister and had seen that there was a chuppah and that many of the men (but not my father) wore kippot during the ceremony. But that was about all I knew.
After the class session where we talked about the Ketubot I called my mother and asked her what the wedding had been like. Apparently it had been important for her to include Jewish elements such as the chuppah and at the end of the ceremony my father broke a glass. In addition her uncle read “something in Hebrew about love, maybe a Psalm,” according to my mother. She also recalls something about the number seven, possibly walking around the table seven times together. This is also a traditional part of the Jewish wedding in which the bride walks seven times around the groom. It is interesting that for her 20 years later the importance of these acts was not the details but rather that they were traditionally Jewish and that gave them meaning for her.
This brought up the idea also of Goldberg’s discussion of the breaking of the glass. I did not ask my mother why exactly she picked this custom, especially as it is something that involves only my father, the non-Jewish participant, to be the one Jewish ritual that represented the most for her (as it is the only one that she actually recalls in detail). After reading Goldberg my guess is that it’s gaining significance as a cultural symbol of a Jewish wedding played a large role in the inclusion of this tradition in my parents wedding.
Today, with more and more non-traditional couples marrying and wanting some aspect of a tradition Jewish wedding it is truly fascinating to see what is kept and what is discarded. I found he Ketubah written for the two men to be a wonderful example of something that is so traditional but that, in this particular instance has no traditional standing, yet is still something of great importance to those involved.

Kathryn Rother – What makes a Jew?

rotherk — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:04:19 +0000

This class has brought up a lot of feelings about the definition of a Jew and what it means to be Jewish. Almost all of our interviewees claimed that it had little to do with religious beliefs or practices, yet it seems that everyone has an idea of what exactly a Jew is to them, and anyone that doesn’t fit that definition simply isn’t a Jew.
In recent years when faced with this question I have made a distinction between a Jew and Judaism. A Jew is someone who was born Jewish or converted to Judaism. Once either of these things occurs one cannot become a non-Jew even if one converts to a different religion. Obviously there are debates about what exactly constitutes being born a Jew or what is a kosher conversion, but these two basic ideas are agreed upon by all.
I think the truly more complicated question is “who is practicing Judaism?” Growing up a Reform Jew, I always felt looked down upon by the Orthodox, that they felt that I was somehow less of a Jew than them. But I obviously didn’t feel that way. I didn’t know what kashrut was until I was 10 or so, I said most of the prayers in English at synagogue and I had a rabbi that openly didn’t believe in G-d. But, by goodness, I was pretty damn Jewish, and proud of it. Their judgments of me made me feel inferior and did not sit well with me.
However, in 8th grade I found myself sitting in the bat mitzvah ceremony of my friend at a Secular Humanistic Jewish synagogue. My mother had attended the ceremony with me because she knew the girl’s family a little bit but mostly was interested in the movement. We both walked out claiming, “How can they call themselves Jews?” They had removed all references to G-d in their service, but still used many of the common prayers. Their version of the shema looked like this, “
Hear, O Israel, please hear, O tribes, dispersed and estranged.
Let the tale of Abraham inspire us to transcend today’s idols and lies.
Let us heed diverse voices and visions, seeking understanding and unity.
O children of Abraham, O inheritors of this world,
Please hear one another, please hearken to each living being.
B’-vaqashah:
sh’ma, shim’i , sh’manah, shim’ u.
Please: listen …” ["listen" in masculine & feminine singular, then fem. & mixed/masc. plural])
The Earth, our world, is One. All peoples, all beings, are One. http://www.machar.org/content/view/180/1…)
I was confused and bothered by this. I didn’t consider them to be practicing Judaism. It was such a conscious choice against anything that I’d known as Judaism. Even my rabbi who openly didn’t believe in G-d prayed to G-d in shul. But know I was doing the same thing I had been so offended by when the Orthodox had done it to me. Could I really judge that they weren’t practicing Judaism? Where does one draw the line? I still don’t really know. I think my biggest challenge is to respect this difference between figuring out who is a Jew and figuring out who practices Judaism.
This experience with my friend as well as my recent discomfort in the Reform shul of my childhood have made me realize that you can’t judge others for how they practice the religion. Almost anyone that claims that they are practicing Judaism is doing so. I don’t have to be comfortable with it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not Judaism, and people need to realize that there isn’t only one form of Judaism, that it has always had splits and sections but somehow it has still survived until today.
The one restriction I would put on this however, is that if one starts practicing a religion that is closer to another existing religion than Judaism, one is no longer practicing Judaism. For example, the Jews for Jesus. This group is offensive to me not because they are Jews practicing a different type of Judaism, but because they are, in fact, Christians, claiming to be Jews. But that is a topic for a whole other blog.

Kathryn Rother – Children Reading Torah

rotherk — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:07:20 +0000

Discussing the idea of children’s religious responsibility in class today called up a lot of thoughts that I had this summer. I was working at a Jewish summer amp and was responsible for the youngest kids at camp: kids ranging from 6 months to 8 years during the day and from dinner until breakfast 10 year olds, the youngest campers in bunks.
In a place where the majority of people were under the age of bar mitzvah, what they were obliged to do and what they were allowed to do came into question a lot. When discussing the Yemenite tradition of children reading Torah today, it reminded me of this summer. The Yemenite tradition is to call up the children for the 6th aliyah and they all read a bit. This is a pretty cool tradition I think and is really important to teach the kids about the importance of reading Torah in the shul. At camp, we let the kids read Torah as well. They were by no means obligated to, but they were given the option and were usually rewarded with something sweet at the end of the session. They were each given between 3 and 8 verses to read, and by the end of the summer we had so many kids wanting to read that we had to split up each of the aliyot even further than usual (we read on a triennial cycle to make it a more manageable service for the kids). At first this practice seemed very strange to me. I had never heard of anyone under the age of bar mitzvah reading from the Torah (unless it happened because their ceremony occurred before their actual 13th birthday).
After today’s class I recalled the questions I’d had about allowing children to read from the Torah over the summer. I searched “children reading Torah” into Google and found a responsa from Rabbi Joel Roth, which in effect stated that it is allowable for minor’s to read Torah http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/teshuv…
20012004/010.pdf). This opinion was adopted as the Rabbincal Assembly (the international association of Conservative Rabbis) in 1982. It is clear that the blessings may not be said by a minor, which at certain times made it impossible for them to read from the Torah as the blessings were said by the readers, but this is no longer the case in most situations.
This then raised the question in my mind, if there’s no reason not to, why is Torah reading among most Ashkenazi circles (outside of camp) reserved for people post bar mitzvah? In our day and age, the bar mitzvah ceremony itself has become such a culminating rite of passage that at least in many circles educations is actually put off until right before this time. I myself only read the Torah at my bat mitzvah (I did not lead any other part of the service, and the speech that I gave centered around the Torah portion). I had learned the main stories of the Bible, of course, before this time, but until 6 months before the actual ceremony there was no training about how to lead a service for read from the Torah. It was seen as something you needed to do in order for this rite to be complete but was not put in the light of a lifelong skill.
In the responsa I read, there was also a discussion of 10 or 11 year olds wanting to read the Torah in shul and a worry that this could lead to the idea of an early bar mitzvah and a disappearance by this child from the synagogue after his initial reading. I however agree with Rabbi Joel Roth who claims that “the opposite result seems more likely…. allowing children under the age of Bar Mitzvah to participate in such a central and meaningful way would only encourage the idea of participation outside the realm of the Bar Mitzvah ceremony.” And in seeing the excitement in the faces of my 10 year olds this summer after reading from the Torah, I know that this is true. In general I believe that children should not be relegated away to family services or told to just sit and watch, but rather that they should be able to participate as fully as they can before the age of Bar Mitzvah.

Kathryn Rother -Women In Judaism

rotherk — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:04:11 +0000

The topic of a woman’s place in Judaism has always been of great interest to me. As a woman, it is a way to search for my own place within Judaism. I have experienced many different customs as well as had many different evolutions of my own beliefs about women in Judaism.
When I was growing up I went to a Reform shul. My mother is Jewish but my father is not. Because of these things I never really noticed any difference between men and women in religious circumstances. Boys and girls became b’nai mitzvah at the same time. Families prayed as a unit. My mother was in charge of all religion in the household. Women wore kippot and tallitot with as much frequency as men. The cantor was a woman and the rabbi a man. We invoked the G-d of our fathers and of our mothers. I never thought twice about being a Jewish woman. I was just a Jew, no different than the boys.
It wasn’t until probably around middle school that I began to learn that in more traditional circles there were large differences between the genders. I began to notice that Orthodox women were always covered up and wearing skirts (which my mother explained to me was because they didn’t want to let men see the shapes of their bodies). My mother began to put an orange on our seder plate as a form of protest against the rabbi who had once remarked, “a woman belongs on the bimah like an orange belongs on the seder plate.” I also saw women have a bat mitzvah ceremony as adults because their communities did not have the ceremonies for girls when they were young. But despite all of this, in my daily religious experience girls were still no different than boys.
It was when I started attending a Jewish high school that this idea was shattered. Yes, I attended an egalitarian minyan but the girls almost seemed only to participate in protest of non-egalitarianism. Down the hall there was a minyan in which a woman’s place was completely different. There were two separate sections divided by a removable wall (a mechitza). The women were not even allowed to walk through the men’s section to get to their own. They did not wear tallitot or kippot. They were not allowed to lead services or be called to the Torah. I was shocked. I didn’t understand. I had always thought that Judaism was a tolerant religion, yet here were these girls who could do almost nothing. And the worst part was that they had chosen to be there! I was furious and I could not understand.
I have come a long way from this initial reaction 6 years ago. I currently wear only skirts in the presence of men and always cover my shoulders. I am uncomfortable sitting next to men while praying though I do not feel the need for a physical barrier and am okay without completely separate sections. I will not put on tefillin, though I would put on a tallit but find it completely unnecessary and usually do not do so. I do however, still maintain that women should be counted in a minyan and allowed to participate fully in the service (leading prayers, being called to the Torah, etc), but I do not feel that women have obligations to fulfill the time-based mitzvot. But, I do believe that they are welcome to perform most of them if they wish.
Obviously this change in opinion did not occur overnight. Throughout my high school career I struggled with friends “putting themselves down,” as I saw it, but as I became more familiar with the customs some of the ideas started to click with me. I had a wonderful rabbi who was Orthodox and taught from a completely Orthodox point of view but in a way that was completely open and understanding. He explained the idea that women don’t do the mitzvot because they are already closer to G-d. He also explained that modesty (tznius) and the separation of the sexes was due to men’s weakness and is not at all a commentary on women. When I first heard these things I dismissed them as excuses for completely sexist ideas.
I went to Israel for second semester of my senior year with my high school class and I wanted to pray but the only options were often Orthodox services. As I spent more time in these places where I originally felt so uncomfortable and that used to outrage me, I began to get more and more comfortable. When I had the opportunity to go to an egalitarian service, I felt uncomfortable sitting next to a boy. This was the first time in my life that I had felt more connected to women than boys (I was the girl whose best friends were always boys growing up), and it felt really good. And getting comfortable with the customs made me look at the ideology differently and I my ideas started to change.
It’s still hard for me because my mixture of beliefs is shared by very few people and I have yet to encounter a place to pray where I can be completely comfortable, but it is still very interesting to see how much my views have changed. I see people who were in the place I was 6 years ago, and I understand them completely, but I also hope that they will really come to understand that the more traditional views are not all restrictive, that a lot of them give women more freedom and opportunity.