There were so many interesting readings and class discussions/ experiences that I could cover in this blog post, but I think a good way to wrap everything up and reflect on the semester as a whole is to look back at the essay I wrote at the beginning of the year and compare what I have learned to what I was expecting to take away from this course. As I already mentioned in class, I really nailed the concept of Judaism as more than just a religious identity from the start, however that is not all that I will take away from this course.

I decided at the beginning of the course that I would know I had had a successful learning experience if I came away from the class with a better understanding of several things. The first was I wanted to gain a new understanding of the cultures, traditions and life experiences of the Jewish people throughout the world. An example of a tradition that I was unfamiliar with prior to this class was the wedding tradition involving henna. This practice is not a traditional American custom and was very interesting to learn about. I never knew that henna symbolized the hope for a bride’s fertility, while at the same time serving as a reminder to the bride and groom to maintain family purity and abstain from sex during the woman’s menstruation. I was also fascinated by some of the customs and traditions we learned about that occur for Jews in Muslim Libya. For example, I knew that breaking glass was customary at Jewish weddings, however I didn’t know that breaking an egg at a wedding symbolized the bride’s virginity. It was very interesting learning about the plethora of traditions that occur as a part of Jewish life outside the United States.

The other criteria I decided to use as a measurement of how successful this class was would be if I enjoyed my time learning and immersing myself in the material we were studying. I think I can safely say this criteria was met. I greatly enjoyed learning about Jews around the world as well as those in America, and all the while learning more about myself as a Jewish woman and my Jewish identity. This course really got me thinking in and outside the classroom. Overall, I think this class was a very successful learning experience and I truly enjoyed it!

All the time we are talking in class about what does it mean to be Jewish.  Obviously being Jewish is different geographically, which we discuss a lot.  What we haven’t necessarily explored is how being Jewish and Jewish identities differs from after the destruction of the temple to the Holocaust, then after the holocaust.

Before the diaspora, Jewish identity was based around the temple.  At the temple, they would make sacrifices and congregate there three times a year.  The holidays of Sukkot, Passoverm and Shavu’ot were all strategically organized in that people could come during those times without taking a lot of their agricultural work.  After the temple was destroyed, the Jews had to find a way to unify and find their identity.  They found their identity through books and rituals done at home.  The Talmud and Hebrew Bible codified and became commonplace.  From then until the time of the Holocaust, Jews were mostly a religious group that predominately defined themselves through their books.  After the Holocaust, I think you could argue that the Jews became more secular.  They started to assert themselves more politically and religious than they ever had before (to my knowledge) with the formation of the state of Israel.  Not Jewish identity shifted from religious practice, to religious understand and secular awareness.  I say secular awareness as a term to describe Jewish culture and a need for a separate identity, not religiously bond.  With the formation of Israel, this can be seen, as many Israelis are secular, but have a cultural understanding/appreciation/participating view on Judaism, while they might not be outwardly religious.  It is interesting to examine what major events change or shift Jewish identity in other directions.

For my final blog post, I wanted to touch on an issue that I haven’t been able to resolve within my own sense of Jewish Identity: my relationship with Israel. During our discussion on pilgrimages, I was surprised that not a single comment was made about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict itself, only that if they had visited during a particularly tense time, they had avoided the “dangerous” areas. Not having had this conversation with many Jews (other than the few whose opinions I am aware are similar to my own), I’m wondering if a)American Jews in particular are undereducated about the logistical/historical details of the conflict b)there is still a lingering strong blind-support of Israel because of the closeness of the Holocaust, or c)the profundity of Jewish experiences while visiting or living in Israel overpower a concern for the state of the Palestinians.

                I was a little concerned when I watched the ads for the Jewish Youth Group trips to Israel. The advertising seemed to manipulate teenage Jews to take this trip under the pretense that they will make friends that will last a lifetime and splash around in the Dead Sea, while none of the comments suggested anything exclusively pertaining to a more meaningful experience. While I’m sure the program provides that, the advertisement itself seemed “sneaky”. Additionally, I hold a personal feeling that programs such as Birthright have a highly political agenda that is unrealized by many, if not all, of their participants. The age group Birthright targets is vulnerable in terms of their religious identity (or rather, are at a critical growing point in their independent identity) and they provide their participants with an emotional and exciting trip under the guidance (and protection?) of an Israeli soldier. How could you not come home loving Israel?

                While I am not yet at a point to commit to either side of the Israel fence, I do feel that it is a serious problem that more Jews are not taking action, or at least speaking out, about the treatment of the Palestinians…especially after our own history of persecution and entrapment. The idea of a Jewish homeland, especially Israel, is a natural road to travel considering even the modern history of anti-Semitism. That being said, however, I can’t help but suggest a certain hypocrisy happening there.

So, I’m going to hop on the bandwagon and look at the course after a full semester, it only seems right to do so.  My knowledge of Judaism coming into college was essentially miscellaneous Biblical references and a sense of the American Jewish culture, however the understanding of the culture did not reach much past my immediate surroundings.  As a child I went to Temple every Sunday but I was never fully engaged in the process or showed a willingness to want to learn.  That is until last year when I took a course called Secular Jews from Spinoza to Seinfeld.  I got to study a whole different aspect of Judaism that had nothing to do with religion, which is something I did not even think about being possible.  We read books by the famous philosopher Baruch Spinoza, as well as other texts about the Jewish mob and the famous baseball player Hank Greenburg.

My interest was sparked for Judaic studies, so I decided to take another course and found this class.  I was particularly interested in this course because it would give me a whole other viewpoint on Judaism.  The former class focused only on a little bit of European Jews and the rest in America, where as this class would let me study Jews as a more global phenomenon.  Lucky for me, I was correct about that.

As we are at the end of the course, I am still more concerned with the cultural side of Judaism more than anything, as can be noted by the topics of my writings.  I feel like this course was necessary for me to come to that conclusion though.  We learned just how important a culture is in determining how Judaism functions.  We listened to how similar music styles were between Jews and non-Jews alike in the same geographic area and similarly with the food people eat.  I got the same feeling of amazement when reading about elderly Jewish women from Libya and comparing them to elderly Jewish women in America.  Their rituals and lifestyles are so markedly different, and the only explanation is different cultures.  One of the few real connections between the two is that they both identify themselves as Jewish.  Similar associations can be made with almost all the literature we read.

This course leaves me with a few more questions about Judaism and different cultures that may not have any answers.  How has Judaism been able to stay alive when it has been spread so thin across the globe?  How far back can some traditions be traced and why are those the ones that lasted while others didn’t?  Where will Judaism be in twenty years?  Alright, well the last one you definitely cannot answer, but it is interesting to think about.

In my last post I would like to take a moment and reflect on this class blog. This may seem a bit odd, but I think it could be interesting to apply some of what we have been learning and discussing in class to an experience of the class.

What makes something Jewish? Does a Jew have to do something for it to be Jewish? Is something Jewish just because its content is? These are questions we have been asking ourselves since the beginning of this course. Given what we know now, can we ask and answer the question, what makes this blog Jewish? I would argue that both the question and the answer fit in very well with our work on this blog. Earlier we outlined four possible ways to define something as Jewish. The four ways were, content, context, perception, and intent. The first one is easy, if we are defining something as Jewish by content, than this blog most certainly fits the bill. Context is nearly as simple. The blog posts have been written in the context of a Judaic Studies class, so this would seem to make them Jewish. Perception and intent are more difficult, because admittedly these terms are more complex even outside the realm of Judaism. However, I feel that they are just as present. Although all of the participants did not necessarily perceive themselves as Jews, I do not think that it is too far a reach to call them Jewish scholars, and for them to consider themselves so. The students in this class were thinking critically and reflecting on Jewish life, and this is where I believe the final element of intent comes in. To me, the intention of the blog is entirely Jewish. Thinking critically about texts, reflecting, analyzing, conversing, joking (if only there was a way to share food over the internet) all happened in this blog and they are all pieces of Jewish culture. Of course, they are elements of other cultures, but I do not believe that this makes them any less Jewish.

This blog has felt like a sort of electronic beit midrash (literally “house of interpretation”) to me. The point of the beit midrash is to study, learn, and interpret Torah, but what makes it so special is that this process is not done alone, but rather with others. Although we’re not exclusively addressing Torah, the core components of the beit midrash were what this blog was about. I have truly enjoyed participating in this great Jewish past time of learning. I feel that hearing the perspectives of Jews and non-Jews alike has enhanced my experience in this class and my general Jewish experience. It has given me a lot to think about and I can’t imagine anything more Jewish than that.

For my last blog post I couldn’t really decide on one specific topic, so like some of my other classmates I want to sum everything up, pick out the aspects of the course that made my mind do a 180 degree turn.  I would like to end the post with a few open ended questions.

The part of the course that first really changed my original perception of what it meant to be Jewish was when we talked about bar and bat mitzvah.   This raises that main issue of an American Jew.  We have studied Jews from different parts of the world e.g. Argentina Morocco.  To have this one sided American view of what it means to be Jewish is limiting, I think.  I thought that a person was Jewish if they had a bar or bat mitzvah. But we learned that this isn’t necessarily the case.  Actually the meaning of the word just seeks to tell us that someone has become of age, and not the American image of a huge party with lots of singing, dancing and putting someone on a chair.  So now when I hear someone talk about bar and bat mitzvah I pass along my knowledge of the word so they can have a better understanding.  The Diaspora also has changed my perception.  At first I thought about a Jewish person on a very narrow minded road.  I guess it has just made me realize how clueless I actually was.  I couldn’t picture a Jew in Yemen or Morocco.  I guess the first day of class when we watched that video I was really confused.  I was so confused it made me scared that I had no idea what was going on.  How could this person be Jewish if they prayed like that?  But it seemed the rest of the class had also not been exposed to this type of Judaism and this type of Jewish culture.  As the semester moved on we kept seeing different types of Jewish culture.  It was fascinating to see such diversity packed into one culture, “Jewish.”  Jewish people taking on other cultures but at the same time having the “great tradition.”  The terms like Judaizing, great and little tradition were also new to me.  At first I was confused with these concepts, but now they make perfect sense because I see this larger picture of what it means to be Jewish.  Well I like to think I see what it means; I guess I have an idea.  Class made me want to go back to my Mckinney suite while everyone was playing video games and interrupt and talk about perception of the Jewish culture.  It made for excellent long run conversations about religion and what does it mean for a person to be Jewish.  As I said in my first blog and was pointed out by Professor Staub there really should be more awareness of the culture and religion on campus.

Since I have so much new and fresh information on Jewish culture and Jewish experience (the title of our course) it leads me to a few questions.  Since there is a Diaspora and there are different types (sects…? not sure of the correct term) of Judaism Why do they clash as they have been in recent events at the Western Wall?  I suppose every religion and culture will have different little tradition views which lead to argument… In my observation of my dad I would really like to know how he could stop practicing Judaism?  Maybe his answer is simple, he has never stopped practicing.  So then I am left with what makes a person Jewish forever?

Today at work while talking to a friend about finals, I mentioned that I have two papers due next week, both relatively about Judaism but for two different classes. He then asks me in a surprised tone, why I am so obsessed with Judaism. I guess as a Jewish person himself, with no religious ties at all, he would be curious as to why, I, whose religious beliefs lean toward Christianity, would take so many classes dedicated to this religion. But really, I couldn’t answer his question right away.  I guess in a way just coming to Dickinson fed my interest. Generally I had always been fascinated by religion. But in high school, when I officially decided that I could no longer call myself an atheist and began exploring Christianity (not Catholicism as I had been raised with) I realized that the pastors of the many churches I visited could not answer all questions. Many of which were inherently tied to Judaism through the Old Testament. But coming to Dickinson and becoming very good friends with Jewish people probably sparked my interest as well.  Now, I also feel that it is necessary to understand Judaism before understanding Christianity. Which leads me to this great quote by Stuart E. Rosenberg from the book  “The Christian Problem”, he writes ” I profoundly believe that Christians can meet Jews with a balanced spiritual attitude by first recognizing and analyzing how their majority faith should deal with so intimately-related a minority faith and culture as Judaism.” While he goes on to say many other things that I don’t necessarily agree with, I do think that Christians need to acknowledge that there are innate connections between Judaism and Christianity, that need attention if one is understand their Christianity, while at the same time emphasizing the fact that Judaism is its own distinct religion in faith and practice. I guess it’s a complicated relationship.

Last year, I went to a college in North Carolina, where Jews were incredibly scarce.  I met one girl who was not especially religious, but went to a Catholic school and identified herself as Catholic.  It wasn’t until I became friends with her that I found out her entire father’s side of the family is Jewish.  She does not associate herself with Judaism whatsoever, and in fact hides this fact from almost everyone she meets, because in her high school she was always taunted for being Jewish.  I didn’t think much of this until she mentioned to me one day an anti-Semitic comment that a student at my college had made earlier.  She dismissed it as not a big deal, and said that she had just laughed it off.

I was horrified by this not just because of the hatred displayed by the student who made the comment, but because I realized the particular danger in this situation.   Those who hide their identity (or a part of their identity, anyway) like this are endangering their own psychological stability.  Though it seems most tolerable to avoid direct torture by others in hiding the offending part of one’s identity, in fact it is slowly chipping away at a part of them that will always be there – even if she herself does not identify herself as Jewish, her father will always be Jewish, she has had experiences that non-Jews will never have, and, in my friend’s case, she is actually named after her paternal grandfather’s favorite part of services.  Literally imbedded in her name, in her family, in her life, is Judaism, so every time she laughs off an anti-Semitic comment, she can’t help but internalize it in some way.  Perhaps this feeling of guilt and shame could eventually turn into resentment, and she could become anti-Semitic herself.

Either way, if she is working so hard to dissociate herself with anything Jewish, she will never stand up for what, I know as a friend, she really believes.  By laughing off comments such as this, she may think she is simply protecting herself, but in reality, she is putting the rest of the people with whom she shares a common heritage at risk.

A few classes ago, we were talking about Hanukkah and its meaning to the Jewish religion. We talked about how it really was not one of the more important holidays but rather that it got so big so that little Jewish kids would not feel left out during Christmas. I remember my first Hanukkah. I was with my dad and he had gotten me a box of pencils. I was 4, and it was probably one of the best presents I ever got, as silly as that is.

For a very long time, I had no idea what the other Jewish holidays were. I knew about Hanukkah and Yum Kippur, but that was about it. I felt like such a fool when one of my friends told me that she was going home for Rosh Hashanah and I asked her, “What’s that?” After that, I began asking my Jewish friends about their experience as practicing Jews and what Judaism meant to them (much like the fieldwork projects we did in this class, but less formal). After my dad died, the only personal connection I had to Judaism was an annual Hanukkah dinner with some friends of my mom. And for a very long time, I was unaware that there was anything else to it. I was woefully ignorant. Ironically, despite my ignorance, I felt more connected to Judaism when having just that one dinner a year than I do now with all of the knowledge I have acquired through my studies. 

Our class the other day made me remember what I thought of Judaism compared to Judaism now. Because of this class, discussions with friends, and other classes, I have learned so much about the religion itself, its history, and its significance to the lives of Jews everywhere, and my connection to it. Though my connection to Judaism still resides in the memory of my dad, I have a better idea of what it could have meant to him. If nothing else, having the knowledge of the history of my heritage gives me more of a base and a frame for my opinions and beliefs, regardless of whether they agree with those of the Jewish faith.

In the course overview for Ethnography of Jewish Experience, there is a list of seven “guiding questions” for the semester. Since August we have referred back to these questions as we have made our way reviewing Jewish lives from the Biblical time to present day. The first question, “What does it mean to be Jewish?” has been eminent in our class discussions, lectures, and readings. In our last class we discussed the topic of pilgrimages with a focus on the Birthright program, a program that sponsors an educational trip to Israel for Jewish adults ranging from 18 to 26 years of old. Before coming to Dickinson I rarely heard about this program because my Jewish friends were too young to partake. However, since becoming a member of the Dickinson community, Birthright has become more prominent in our conversations. After seeing the video and having a discussion on it, I decided I should find out more about the program – what exactly is it and what is its purpose – and to ask my friend, Jenny Saber, about her expectations since she was accepted through Dickinson to go on this trip this upcoming Winter Break.

In the “About Us” section on Birthright Israel’s website, it states the purpose of this trip is “to diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world; to strengthen the sense of solidarity among world Jewry; and to strengthen participants’ personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people” (Birthright Israel). This message is parallel to Professor Staub’s when he briefly described his views on the purpose of pilgrimages today in terms of the Birthright. He said that the organization wants the participants to feel a connection to this place and to return home as active Jews in their communities. However, when I was talking with my friend Jenny about this, she had a different view. She said that the Birthright program exists because Judaism is “dying out” and they want young Jewish adults to meet young Jewish adults of the opposite sex with the hope that they will marry and procreate more Jews. She mentioned that if you find your spouse on this trip, you will receive another free trip to Israel. I found this observation to be very interesting especially after reviewing many of the fieldworks in the beginning of the semester. Many of the young Jewish females interviewed mentioned how they have thought about if they consider the religion of their potential future spouse as a significant factor in determining whether or not to marry him and how important it will be to raise their children Jewish or another religion. It seems as though Birthright would be a excellent way for them to connect with others of the opposite sex and to forge a lasting relationship with people who share similar concerns.

Today, even with all the different forms of technology, it is still hard to make connections with people and to not feel isolated. The Birthright Israel is a way for young adults to connect with other young Jews in a country where they are not the minority. I asked Jenny to describe her expectations of the trip. She states:

“I expect that this trip will have a more spiritual meaning for me. For the first time I will be surrounded by Jews which is quite a unique but special experience. In being in this environment, I expect to learn more about Judaism and take a greater interest in my religion. Being Jewish is different than any other religion in the fact that there are so few Jews and we are a dwindling populations o being able to go to a country full of my minority is an honor and I’m extremely excited to go to Israel”

These people have a common history. There connection goes very deep. As a non-Jew, I am honestly jealous not only about the Birthright Israel program, but I was also jealous when I read about the story of Masada. Jews have their own “300” story, a story of overcoming a great battle to die free men. I have always felt that I lack a connection to my religion and since I have come to college, I have explored other religions with hope that I would find something that feels like a good “fit.” Religion is a popular conversation topic amongst my friends and family, so many times when I am alone I create many what if scenarios. What if Presbyterians had a place to send their youths for them to “strengthen the sense of solidarity among world” (Birthright) Presbyterians? Would this be as successful for us as it seems to be for young Jews? What if Presbyterians had a similar story to the Masada, would I feel more pride? I look forward to hearing about Jenny’s experience when she returns to the United States in January and to see if the trip was a success in terms of whether she becomes an active member of the Jewish community.