Throughout the semester this class has dealt with issues surrounding Jewish Identity and boundaries, issues that have resonated with me. These issues have resonated with me because when I entered college I was determined to be active in Hillel and I attempted to recreate the connection I felt with my Jewish community at home with my new Jewish Dickinson community. However, I soon realized that it would be impossible for me to connect with my Jewish Identity in the same way I did at home, in high school, and in college at Dickinson.

This duality in my Jewish Identity isn’t something unique to my experience at Dickinson, I realized. It is important to note that it is not that there are places where I identify with my Judaism and places that I do not, it is just that it definitely is connected to who I am with. I bring this up because the people you are with definitely affect the way you feel. In high school, being a member of a conservative youth group (USY), most of my good friends that I made during high school were also members of USY. So I have come to the realization that because I was Jewish, I made friends with them and although it is not necessarily the only thing that we have in common it is definitely a binding factor. It was our common background that allowed us to meet one another, not for any other reason.

Now in college I am a member of the Hillel on campus, technically, but I am not extremely involved. At Dickinson I have made many more non-Jewish friends; and in juxtaposition to my Jewish friends from home my Jewish Dickinson friends are just friends that happen to be Jewish. Now I guess my connection between my friendships and this class would have to be that I have realized the existence of boundaries within the communities I am apart of. I can also say with certainty that I have realized more about my own personal Jewish identity after learning about why/how people form their identities.

For my research paper I am taking a look at how the “Israel Experience” is packaged and marketed to teens and their families; and then subsequently the outcome, meaning if the programs achieved the intended result. What is really interesting to me in doing this research is that, having been on a trip similar to what I am investigating, the material surrounding the topic has caused me to ask myself questions about my own experience.

One of the major themes of ethnographers analyzing the “Israel Experience” is that the program is packaged and delievered with meticulous precision and caution to ensure that they achieve the desired result. That result being the completion of youth’s Jewish identity and strengthening their connection to Israel. Now being about 2 or 3 years removed from the trip, I am now coming to the realization that much of my experience wasn’t truely authentic. By authentic I mean that when I stayed in a Bedouin tent and rode camels or when I went accended Masada before dawn and saw the sun rise that those were truely manufactured experiences. Or at least that is the feeling I get after going through my research.

But what has been repeated by sources, which I can identify with the most, is that the teens end up developing a stronger connection to their group than to the land of Israel. And that it is actually the group and the collective differences that forges solidarity amongst them so that impact of friendship supersedes the impact of Israel. Not that that is a bad thing. I just find it interesting that I am able to look at different parts of my research and have it agree with my beliefs, challenge them, or do both simultaneously.

Last week I made a connection between this class Jewish Ethnography and my English 220 class, which is focused on Critical Approaches and Literary Methods, I realized that the methods I was learning in 220 I could apply to the central question of this class. The question of what does being Jewish mean. With this new knowledge from my English class I realize that answering this question is even more difficult. The answer to this question is more difficult because there are different schools of thought that when applied would lead one down different paths on the way to the answer.

There is the school of thought known as Formalism, which believes that all of the answers to questions about the text should be confined solely to the text. That is to say, in application to what makes music Jewish, for example, that the answer would be in the lyrics of the song. Formalists would argue that from the lyrics of the song one would be able to argue either for or against the position of that music being Jewish. They would disregard the writer of the lyrics, the performer of the song, and the setting in which it was preformed. Those aspects would be ignored because they aren’t deemed important to the Formalist school of literary criticism.

Formalism would reinforce what we discussed today in class regarding the duality of textual meanings in the Torah. The duality is exposed after taking the letters from the text and substituting them with their corresponding match. This method know as AtBash would be the method for discovering a new meaning in the Torah.

Another literary school of literary criticism, known informally as Author and Culture, believes that it is important to look outside of the text. Looking outside of the text allows investigation into what historical events were occurring during the creation of the song or work of literature. This school would use the context to explore the meaning of the work. In class today we discussed the practice of childhood rite in Medieval Europe. Specifically the act of “Ingesting the Torah” were specific verses would be written onto specific foods. Sources from different times throughout history would show examples of different parts of this rite however, once taken into the context of the time its evident why this rite came to exist then. The rite of “Ingesting the Torah” was a direct polemic response to the Christian Eucharist. This Judaic response in context of Medieval Europe makes sense that at male child’s rite of passage they would deny the truth in Christianity.

I just found it interesting that by using the methods of literary criticism in one class, I was able to better understand and explore the central question in another class. I am also relieve to know that although I will not be majoring in English, the skills I am killing myself to learn this semester will continue to be useful throughout my college career.

Last class we listened to samples of “Jewish” music, which included different clips from the Jewish High Holiday services and popular reggae “Jewish” music. What I found interesting was my own reaction to what I previously perceived as two separate types of music. The two pieces in particular that I am referring to are the Kol Nidre prayer, which occurs the during the service the night before Yom Kippur, and the song Jerusalem by Matisyahu, which is a reggae style song about not forgetting the city of Jerusalem.

While listening to the Kol Nidre prayer I found myself actually singing along in my head, because after all it does happen to be one of my favorite prayers of all time. It may seem weird to think that someone could have a prayer that is truly one of their favorites, but I would encourage anyone who isn’t familiar with it to just type it into YouTube and just listen to it. Now I feel that I must clarify even further that the Kol Nidre incantation, which I am referring to is from the traditional Ashkenazic service; and by Ashkenazic, I am referring to Jews that descend primarily from Eastern Europe and Russia. This prayer is a very emotional and soulful prayer, which is chanted and repeated three times and every year. While in services I tend to get chills, I am just absorbed into a trance (which is the best way I can describe it, although it might seem foreign to some); and in class I experienced a similar feeling even though I wasn’t in services. I guess I can explain my reaction to the connection I make personally with that prayer. That would explain how I started to feel the same way I did the week previously while listening to my Shliach Tzibbur (Cantor) chant the prayer.

While I listened to Jerusalem by Matisyahu, I experienced the similar feelings to when I listen to Kol Nidre. The feeling I got put me in a sort of Jewish trance, which made me think about my trip to Jerusalem only a few years ago. Matisyahu adapts some of his lyrics for that song directly from Psalm 137:5, which is why I make the claim that his music is Jewish. However, his music is enjoyed by the secular community as well.

Which causes me to ask, can both the secular and Jewish communities enjoy Jewish music, but have it still represent something uniquely special to Jews?

I would argue yes because, although non-Jews may enjoy the music of Matisyahu I believe that I am able to make a deeper connection to the songs. In the song Jerusalem, he makes an allusion to the Holocaust, “years gone by, about 60 / Burn in the oven in this century / And the gas tried to choke, but it couldn’t choke me”; and having been to the death camps in Poland, those lyrics strike a particular chord in me because they bring back those memories. The verse continues with,

“Change your name and your identity
Afraid of the truth and our dark history
Why is everybody always chasing me
Cut off the roots of your family tree
Don’t you know that’s not the way to be”,

which stresses that you should not forget your past, which is an ideal that I believe strongly in. Now I am unsure if that connection is the same to all Jew’s, I doubt it is, however, I would also wager that a non-Jew would be distanced even further from making a personal connection of that sort.

I just think that it is interesting that the soulful sorrowful lyrics of the Kol Nidre prayer and the powerful lyrics of Matisyahu can illicit similar reactions from me.

As I wrote up my fieldwork assignment, countless questions about Jewish identity came to mind. As I said in my paper, it seems as if each individual has his or her own criteria for qualifying Jewishness. It seems that more observant Jews require more traditional requirements, for instance, a Jewish mother. Upon pondering this trend, I realized that that my father’s maternal grandmother is Jewish, which raised the question, is my father Jewish? My father would not identify himself as such. He was raised Roman Catholic by Italian-Roman Catholic parents, attended Catholic elementary school, and called himself an outcast in his predominately Jewish childhood neighborhood. His mother considered herself Catholic, not Jewish. But it seems to me that, by Jewish law, he is Jewish. Can someone be Jewish even if they do not consider themselves so?

I suppose this depends on whom you are asking. My guess is that less observant Jews, those who do not take much heed in the Jewish mother rule anyway, would reply that yes, my father is technically Jewish, but he is not practically Jewish. But what about those that believe that being Jewish means being a descendant of Abraham, inheriting this identity through the matrilineal line, what would they say about my father? Do more observant Jews feel that one must believe in the teachings of Judaism to be Jewish, or that being Jewish is primarily about being a descendant of Abraham? If the former is true, then my father is not Jewish. But if the latter is true, then my father is Jewish.

But what about my great-grandmother’s mother? Was she Jewish? What if she was a convert? What about her mother? I do not know anything about these women, and, as Lowenstein notes, no modern Jew can actually trace his/her ancestry to the Biblical era. So would it be safer to assume that, somewhere down the line, one of my father’s matrilineal ancestors was not Jewish?

My father does not consider himself Jewish. Nor is he battling with the question of being Jewish. But for many, I can imagine that discovering that you are not, according to somebody, Jewish, could be devastating. What if you have considered yourself a Jew for your entire life, to one day find that someone rejects you for who you believe you are? When we create criteria for an identity, it necessarily leaves somebody out (except “human beings” perhaps). But what about those on the boundaries? What happens when the boundaries shift in accordance with each individual’s criteria? When someone considers another a Jew, but someone else does not?

Identity is highly complex, especially when we try to apply our understanding of identity to somebody else. Perhaps it is best if we leave it up to individuals to decide who they are.

Welcome to Ethnography of Jewish Experience, the blog for the Dickinson College course of the same name.  Students will be posting a variety of reflective and analytical essays to this site as they explore ethnographic perspectives on Jewish experience.