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?

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.

Again, along the lines of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I watched a documentary called Promises a few days ago. This film was incredible for multiple reasons, but mainly because it looked at both sides of the story. Promises focused on the lives of 7 Palestinian and Israeli children living in and around Jerusalem. One of the kids in this film, Moishe, really struck me. He is an orthodox Jew living in the Beit-El settlement in the West Bank. What struck me about him was his pure, unwavering hatred of the Arabs. During his interview, he spent a solid 5 minutes looking through the Torah to find exactly where it said that God gave the land of Israel to Abraham. “[Beit-El is] a place where people who fight with Arabs live. We fight because this land is ours. If I could make my own future, all the Arabs would fly away – the Jews would stay and the Temple would be rebuilt.” Though I can understand why he would feel that his people are deserving of the land, it saddens me that he is not willing to look beyond the Torah and understand from another perspective. There were also two Israeli boys named Daniel and Yarko who were far less determined in their hatred of the Arabs. When the director took them to the Temple wall, Yarko said “I would rather be in an Arab village than here with all these religious people.” I was really struck by this comment because there are not many cases where you will hear an Israeli boy say something like that; that he would rather be with the “enemy” than with people of his own faith. To me, this says that he feels more of a connection with a group of people with whom he has spent no time, than to the ones that are supposedly “like him”. His statement was not about his connection to the Arabs, it was the opposite. It was about his severe lack of connection toward religious Jews. I found this very interesting. I was also struck by the significant difference between Moishe and Yarko. They are both Israeli, they are both Jewish, but the similarities end there. Moishe’s life is definied by his belief in the Torah where as the Torah is a small part of Yarko’s life. I would be interested to hear a conversation had between these two boys. Yarko’s minimal beliefs in the Torah while maintaining his Jewish identity also make me feel better about my own minimal beliefs. As I’ve said before, I do not have much of a foundation but I still have the ideals and the blood which holds a personal connection to Judaism, even if I am not really considered Jewish.

I’ve been thinking about boundaries a lot lately. Specifically how people define themselves by using labels while simultaneously creating boundaries within their own communities. There are many examples of this, such as Christians segregating themselves as Catholics, Methodists, and Baptists, and Jews as Orthodox, secular, Conservative, etc. Lately I’ve understood these labels as not for the purpose of explaining oneself for the outsider by rather for the insider. In other words, labeling yourself as a specific type of Jew allows others in the Jewish community to understand you in relation to their own identity. While I can understand the reasoning behind the labeling, I feel that for the most part it causes conflicts. In my first post I write that one thing that I find most interesting about Judaism is its fluidity though I’ve come to realize that Jewish identity is a lot more complicated and less “smooth” than my last description implies. One conflict that I am most curious about is the relationship between Messianic Judaism and the rest of the Jewish community.

Messianic Judaism is essentially another label that defines a Jew who religiously identifies as Christian. There exist many other Jews within the spectrum that do not necessarily share religious Jewish beliefs by identifying themselves according to another religion or even as completely secular. However the acceptance and attitude that Messianic Jews experience within the Jewish community is different to when pertaining to other Jews in the spectrum. In fact Messianic Judaism’s legitimacy was questioned by Israel and thus those using this label do not receive automatic citizenship. I believe that there are many underlying reasons of why Messianic Jews conflict so much with the Jewish community as a whole, one of which may be the turbulent historical relationship between Christianity and Judaism. However, conflict always arises when there is a search for legitimacy, a search for the ultimate truth. As impossible as it may seem, perhaps the eradication of these labels which over simplify Jewish identity within the Jewish community may soften the situation. Though, of course, differences and dichotomies within Judaism will not completely disappear along with those labels.

As we are halfway through the semester I feel like we have developed a good idea of the Jewish experience.  I understand terminology that I was not familiar with at the start of the semester.  I would like to address the issue of what it means to be half Jewish.  Friends often tell me that I am half Jewish and I have referred to myself as half Jewish.

I would define the term half Jewish to mean that someone in your family identifies themselves as Jewish.  Therefore, by association with a mother or father, you are then considered half Jewish.  Now if we use what we have learned about being Jewish does the term half Jewish still hold?  First it would be appropriate to use the interviews as a starting point.  My first thought is to recall the sense of community that so many interviewees expressed.  A person who considers themselves half Jewish should be able to identify with this community and feel as some interviewees put it, part of a special club.  I would ask the half Jewish person if they feel a closeness during a holiday that their parent is observing, is this holiday bringing the family closer together? If the person who thinks they are half Jewish has this sense of community then does that make them half Jewish?  Well I would say no because there are so many other parts to being Jewish.  One of those parts is understanding the stories.  Can the half Jewish person tell the story of Moses and the Exodus?  Do they know what a Diaspora is the names of the 12 tribes of Israel? The interviewees expressed the emphasis on the story line and the duty to pass the story on to their children.  I would also see if they followed the religion.  According to some of the interviews religion plays a major part when someone identifies themselves as Jewish.  They have faith in their religion and observe holidays in accordance to the religion.  Does a person who is half Jewish only have to observe half the holidays and understand half the holidays? Another point that arises when I think about Jewish culture is understanding Hebrew and certain words.  This is a part of the culture of being Jewish so if a person is half Jewish they should at least know what Hebrew is.  A few basic concepts that we have learned in our class are being put to the test in order to call somebody half Jewish.

When we say a person is half Jewish what comes to mind?  We can certainly paint a picture in our minds of a person who identifies themselves as Jewish.  I feel that in other religions and cultures associated with that religion the term half is less often used.  It seemed that in high school people always referred to me as half Jewish.  At this point in the course I am not sure I am comfortable with name tag.

Today (9/24) the cross country team went on a run as we do every day.  This run usually proves to be a long quiet one that is done at the war college.  Usually it goes about 12 miles around a two mile loop so talking is highly encouraged so we don’t go crazy.  Today we got to talking about classes and topics in each class. I quickly brought up our class! I wanted to ask what we had originally asked in our interviews, what do you think it means to be Jewish.  I figured a non-Jewish outside the classroom response might be interesting.

We have to do 2 miles to the war college, then 4 laps of the 2 mile loop and then again 2 miles back to campus. The guy’ answered in fairly different ways.  One of the guys on the team who is Catholic answered first.  He explained that it was his understanding of the basics of the religious aspect of Judaism.  That people who identify themselves as Jewish do not believe in Jesus as a messiah.  He also pointed out that the bible that we had been talking about in the warm up to the war college was different in the Jewish religion.  He wanted me to know that if a person said they were Jewish that meant that they read the Old Testament and not the New Testament.  The bible he refers to and has faith in is not the same bible.  Another guy on the team who went to church as a child also had a response that dealt with the religion.  He said that he understands that Jewish people have no experienced church in the way that he is familiar with.  He explained that if someone were to say they were Jewish he would not be able to picture what that looks like in his head.  He said the image that comes to mind is Chanukah and other popular culture themes related to Jewish life like a dradle or chocolate that is wrapped in a gold coin.  The third guy on the team who went to Catholic school recalled the story of the Exodus.  He said that when a person identifies themselves as Jewish he pictured the story he was taught about the Jews being in the desert for 40 years.  The last guy that we were running with briefly explained that he thinks of Jesus because Jesus was Jewish.

My teammate’s image and understanding of what it means to be Jewish is narrow.  They really only brought up the religious aspect of what it means to be Jewish.  This is in complete contrast to our interviewees who had more to say about the culture and related cultural events that made them Jewish.  The interviewees talked about the religion but explained that the experience is what they believed meant to be Jewish.  I think before the interviews I might have answered in the same way as my teammates, but in a few weeks I feel that my understanding and image of what it means to be Jewish has drastically changed.

One of the most interesting aspects of Judaism for me is its fluid definition. Not only the idea that people who are Jewish integrate it into their lives in different ways but that they are also each forming their own individual definitions of being Jewish. I think how other Jewish people perceive Jews with different practices is important when attempting to understand Judaism as a people. From the interviews conducted by myself and other students, I found that community seemed to be a universal theme when discussing what Judaism meant to the interviewees. The Jewish community was defined as a type of haven where everyone was accepted and everyone understood and followed the same values. But what if a certain Jewish community did not consider another community to be legitimately Jewish? I was curious, so I asked those who I interviewed what they thought of those who practiced differently whether they leaned more toward the orthodox or liberal side of the spectrum. While most considered being Jewish as “self-defining”, they all seemed to still have their own criteria in order for Judaism to be  legitimate in their eyes. These criteria differed from having certain knowledge about Jewish text and culture to simply having a Jewish mother. I wondered then, if everyone had different “requirements”, is there really an entire Jewish community? Or perhaps they only exist at the local level.

Lowenstein’s distinction between the great tradition and the little tradition sheds much light on the idea of a possible united Jewish community. He says the great tradition was “written in books and enshrined in the laws of the Jewish religion, [and] was the uniting factor. The great tradition had an advantage that was particularly important for the Jews-it was portable” (Lowenstein 2). The little tradition is basically everything else and is obtained through culture and family, including things like, music, food, and language. This dichotomy between great tradition and little tradition did help to understand how the Jewish community can be united but there are still many complications in these distinctions. For example, Karaite Judaism cannot be fully included within the great tradition since it does not consider the Talmud or the Mishnah as binding or authoritative sources. This demonstrates that there are communities that are not defined by the standard of the great tradition but still consider themselves to be part of the Jewish community even though they main not be considered so among other Jewish societies. So then are they actually Jewish? Pseudo-Jewish? Or should they be categorized as a branch stemming away from the larger Jewish society? I don’t really know how to answer these questions or if answers even exist. I guess it would all come back to the fact that universals rarely exist in a world where people are moving from one place to another, adapting to their surroundings, borrowing and giving ideas to other communities. But since all religions, not only Judaism, change over time, how can one group really claim legitimacy over another?

One of the major themes of our class is the question of “what makes something Jewish?”  It is unfortunate that there is no real answer to this question in so far as it is not something you can learn and have a definitive answer, like math.  It is good that there is no answer though because it gets people thinking about the question and sparks debate.  In many ways this question is similar to philosophical debate, where people can have very strong opinions on the matter and will not change them no matter how reasonable the opposing side’s argument is.  I have a fairly strong opinion on the question at hand but I am going to focus on music as the example, even though I think it can almost be universally applied.

Essentially, I believe that what makes Jewish music Jewish is the context, in this case the lyrics.  The Jews have been around for so long and integrated into too many different cultures to have a standard, sweeping definition that applies to Jews in America, Yemen or wherever else a person is that considers themselves Jewish.  Think about the music we listened to in class Monday the 5^th.  The music from the Middle East sounded typical of any music from that area.  The song that almost sounded like an opera came from a trained opera singer.  The last two songs that are from our generation sound like songs that are playing on the radio.  The only thing that connects all of these songs is the lyrics.

Jewish music has to have something overtly Jewish about it, and the only thing that can do that is the lyrical content.  A lot of the songs we listened to were prayers and psalms, sung in a variety of ways with completely different instruments.  We even heard the same song a couple times, however they each sound completely different.  The only way these songs can be equated to being Jewish is the fact that they are songs are Jewish prayers.  Religion is not the only factor in the lyrics that makes a song Jewish though.  I consider the Matisyahu song we heard Jewish (yeah I know he talks about religion in it too) because he talks about Jewish history.  He mentions the Holocaust and the subsequent change to the face of Jewish Identity by being afraid and using the example of people changing their names.  The Eprhyme song I do not consider actually Jewish.  I could understand almost everything he was saying, and the only mention to Jewish culture was in the chorus with “crash like glass at a wedding.”  Other than that it was just his journey through the different genres of music he likes. If there was more of a mention to Jewish culture in any way then it could be possibly Jewish.  I would compare his music more to the Beastie Boys (not nearly as good), as it is clearly performed by a proud Jewish person but has no merit as a Jewish song.

And no, I do not believe just because a song is sung by a Jew makes it a Jewish song, like the one we heard the woman singing in Ladino.  I do not think anyone would consider Bob Dylan’s music prior to his born again period Jewish.  His music, even though possibly influenced by Jews, was just simply the music of a generation and culture with many other influences as well.  As for non-Jews singing what I qualify as Jewish songs, they would still be Jewish because of the content.  It works the other way around too.  “Oh Holy Night” is still a Christian song no matter if a Jew or a Muslim is singing it.