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 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?

I just saw the new Coen brothers movie A Serious Man, which is adapted from the Bible story of Job. I found it very interesting how the knowledge I brought to the movie changed my viewing experience. Specifically, my familiarity with the Hebrew language and what we have learned in our Jewish Ethnography class about Jewish weddings/divorce. I also found it interesting how the Coen brothers conveyed what I consider a religious message through the media of film that is intended to garner mass appeal.

An example of when my experience brought something unique from the movie would be in the first scene, which is set in a Hebrew school classroom. The Coen brothers set the scene with an elderly man teaching a class of obviously disinterested students a lesson in Hebrew grammar. The viewer can infer the disinterest of the class because the first shot is of a student listening to Jefferson Airplane on the radio trying to get the attention of  another student in the class. I was able to relate to this scene immediately because I have been taught the same lesson that the Coen brothers portrayed.

The movie also dealt with Jewish divorce and I found it interesting that the Coen brothers chose to use Jewish terms of art. Terms like Aguna and Ghet, which is a term traditionally used to describe a woman who is chained to her husband by marriage; and a Ghet is a formal Jewish divorce document which is required in order to remarry within the faith. I was surprised because the use of Jewish terms of art created a situation that could distance a non-Jewish audience from the film, however the Coen brothers do explain the terms in the movie.

The Book of Job is meant to address the struggle of human ability to remain faithful to God when everything seems to be hopeless; it also debates the concept that misfortune was dealt as a punishment for sin. The Coen brothers replace the biblical Job with a college physics professor, and throughout the movie the protagonist engaged a constant moral debate. The protagonist attempts to seek meaning without any result causing his life to continue in a downwards spiral. Without giving away the ending of the movie, the Coen brothers way of ending the movie is clever because it allows the audience to tackle the moral question presented by the film.

Throughout this course, we have seen multiple times how various cultural texts can be considered Jewish even when they are also practiced by non-Jews. The natural question that follows is: what is “Jewish” about such cultural texts? For instance, in Goldberg, we saw how both Jews and Muslims practice henna ceremonies prior to weddings. In the United States today, both Jewish and non-Jewish newborn males are circumcised. Plenty of non-Jews eat bagels and schmear and exclaim “oy vey!” when something startles them. So why is it that we associate these things with Jewishness? What is it about them that makes them Jewish?

Since we discussed Jewish music and Jewish foods several weeks ago, I have thought more about this question. As we mentioned in class, there is a similar debate among literary critics, regarding whether an author’s intentions are as important as they way in which the reader interprets a piece. In literature, I believe that a reader’s understanding of a piece trumps the author’s purpose. Although I do believe that an author’s meaning is significant, I believe that literature can affect people in various ways and one should not be discouraged from embracing his or her individual reaction to a piece.

My understanding of literature relates to my understanding of Jewish cultural texts. I would like to believe that something is Jewish if the audience understands it as Jewish. Participants in a henna ceremony may understand it as Jewish or Muslim, depending on their personal background. However, the actors in such a ceremony would most likely determine the nature of the ceremony by deciding whether to follow Jewish or Muslim traditions. In such a case, how could a participant deny that an event is Jewish, if the actors are performing it according to Jewish traditions? Or maybe it is up to each individual to decide whether the event was Jewish for him or her or not. For example, someone who is ignorant of Jewish traditions may go to a Jewish henna ceremony without understanding it as Jewish. For this individual, the event was not Jewish, although this does not preclude others from understanding it as Jewish.

Circumcision is similarly complicated. If a newborn male is circumcised in a hospital by a physician without the traditions of a Bris, but his parents want to understand the event as Jewish, do they have the right to do so? Certainly they can think of it however they want to, but I do not think that the rest of the Jewish community would view it is such. Therefore, can an individual really decide if something is or is not Jewish? Does it need to be sanctioned by the rest of the community or follow tradition?

What about if I go to the bagel store with a friend on a Sunday morning? We both order bagels with cream cheese, and when she sees how much cream cheese the worker but on her bagel, she says “oy vey!” Although I am not Jewish, I might recognize this event as very Jewish. Or I might completely fail to understand it as Jewish. My friend who may or may not be Jewish has a similar ability to understand it as Jewish or not. But if we are both non-Jews, can we do something like this and consider it Jewish? Is the presence of a Jew necessary to make something Jewish?

This blog entry consists of many more questions than answers, but I think that it is okay to be asking these questions. I think it would be more problematic to have definitive ideas about what makes something Jewish than to be open to questioning such events.

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.

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.

In class, in response to Leo’s blog post, we discussed how Jewish music was Jewish in its very essence, regardless of whether it was sung by a Jewish singer or an Italian opera star. I completely agree with this, and I think it applies to aspects of Jewish culture as well. Our discussion of Jewish music reminded me of “reader-response criticism” in literature, in which the experience that matters is that of the audience. The author, his or her intentions, even their reasons for writing the book are disregarded; what matters is the audience and their individual reaction to the book. It is a highly subjective form of criticism and therefore, in my opinion, the most interesting because one literally projects meaning onto a text. It lets a work of art stand on its own, an entity unto itself, and puts all interpretive power in the hands of the audience. The result is that the work takes on its own meaning—it literally changes with its audience.

I think that this applies to many aspects of Jewish culture—food, music, dress, and more. For example, I think virtually any food can be considered a “Jewish food,” so long as there is someone to whom it represents Judaism in some way. In class, we mentioned that all it really takes is three generations to begin a tradition and “create” a new Jewish food for a family. The reason there are certain foods that are considered Jewish, like matzo or gefilte fish, which begin to embody Judaism even for non-Jews, is because so many people over time have perceived them as Jewish and have, in effect, given them their Jewish essence and permanently changed their reception.

In a similar way, I think certain objects like amulets also rely on the essence they acquire from their users. Lowenstein mentions that rabbis were “ambivalent” about the use of amulets (104). “One the one hand,” he writes, “Judaism could not tolerate calling on any power other than God,” however, “they [rabbis] did not generally reject the idea that amulets served a purpose and that the supernatural forces could be called upon to fight the evil eye or evil spirits” (104-105). Though this is very different than the idea of music being Jewish because it holds Jewish meaning for its audience, it still involves something of religious significance, but something whose significance is different for different people. Like so many of the “little traditions,” amulets, and even mezuzahs, which can be given an amuletic quality, carry meaning that is unique to each person who uses them.