The Big Not Getting It

Two important e-reads have passed my desk in the last few days, and since I have a professional obligation to report on both of them, I'd like just one minute to vent. The first is "The Continuity of Discontinuity", a new study put out by Steven Cohen and Ari Kelman on "new Jewish initiatives", and the second is The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute's most recent e-zine, with the clever title "Is Judaism a Girl Thing?" (playing off Rosh Hodesh: It's a Girl Thing!).

"Continuity of Discontinuity" is a long read, but I thought it was important to slog through: generally I find my position best summed up as Professional Young Person. (It's a step up from the Professional Jew niche I occupied during college.) In summation, it seeks to assuage older Jews who might read it (although its graphics, to my eye, were pitched to a young audience) that young Jews haven't, in fact, dropped out of the J-world; we just use radically different to engage with one another and with our culture. (And, yes, culture is an appropriate word there, because most of the conversation stayed away from religion, although I see an easy correlation between what were identified as cultural markers--an inherent dislike of hierarchy, lateral community building, etc.--in many of the religious innovations I personally use.) Surprise, surprise, we find the exclusivity of our elders repugnant; we find heteronormative, nuclear-family-oriented, non-progressive programming stifling and we like the internet. Whoa!

I know I'm being facetious and not very patient here, but I'm not only tired of feeling like the monkey in the observation tank, but I can't believe it both took the community so long to care about this stuff and that this is heralded as such news. It's good, it's great, even, that this may make its way into the hands of those responsible for the "Young Jews Just Don't Care" propaganda and assuage some of their loudly-held doomsday proclamations. God knows it just confirms everything I could have told these researchers. I guess that's what bugs me--I can't believe it takes a team of sociologists to uncover this. Just ask us! When Hillel published its report on Millenials (which, by the way, said many of the same things--was no one listening?), my Hillel director just snorted and said, yeah, we kind of knew that already. Which may be why she remains a very good friend--when she wants to know what I'm thinking, she asks! When my bosses want to know about new technology, or how do I use blogs, or where can information be found, or do I think young Jews are disengaged from x and for what possible reasons--they ask! They group they surveyed is exceptionally bright, no doubt (I've had the chance to chat with Aaron Bisman at parties, and he really is awesome), but they could have picked any four of the hundreds and maybe thousands of articulate, hard-working folks out there. I'm not mad they didn't ask other people--I'm mad that nobody seems to consider that a course of action. We've not yet turned into a movement that swears off the establishment entirely (and, thanks to said internet, we probably won't ever cohere that way)--so take the opportunity to ask us us, Establishment.

As for Judaism being a "girl thing" (and despite the "clever" title, isn't that a sweetly patronising way of putting the question?), I can't emphasize enough how sick I am of even the little simmering undercurrents of this conversation that I seem to keep have over and over. I know I should be more empathetic, and I do strongly believe that it's time to start actively working to include men--and boys--in Jewish life more consciously. But the kvetching really has to stop, and I mean now. I find the whole "the Reform Movement isn't comfortable with male spaces, and so boys are dropping out, because the woman-smell is overpowering" to be the biggest load of bullshit. This is how the Men's Movement's gonna work? Because then we really need to address gender stereotypes of exactly who are the snivelling whiners of the bunch. If, after 5,000+ years of patriarchy and misogeny, women can force themselves into the scene and demand to be taken seriously while overhauling the system to find themselves inside it, surely men, after 30 or so years of menacing Debbie Friedman songs, can say, hey, we really need to do our own spiritual-finding work, because the Women's Movement has shown us that the tradition really can be at least a little flexible and still full of meaning, and we were a little embarrassed to say this, but it hasn't been working for us either. But the blame-the-woman thing--and believe me, that's what it is--is disgusting. I'm disgusted. What a cop-out on the part of a population that should be thanking J Fems for trailblazing. I support curricular change and inclusion work and I support men's individual and even group efforts to locate themselves within Jewish culture and religion, but the moment you say "women took over" is the moment you lose the whole of my respect, and you can take that shit to the bank.

The morals of our story? Talk to young Jews and stop blaming women. Doesn't it feel like maybe we've been here before?

Update/Post-Script
Apparently, the head of the Reform Movement, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, had some pretty choice comments about how dealing with CUFI & co. (Christians United For Israel) is Bad For The Jews. Although I said some unpleasant things about him when he got a little simpery over Jerry Falwell's death, it seems I spoke too soon: he comes off strongly against co-operation with Christian Zionists and grounds his arguments, here, at least, in the fact that young Jews will (and do--hey there!) find such cooperation repugnant, alienating and traitorous to our own Jewish values. He said:

"[Young Jewish adults] respond negatively to those who disparage other religious traditions and who make exclusivist religious claims. They are insistently centrist in their political views on the Middle East. And they are suspicious of a Jewish establishment that they see as too focused on money and insufficiently focused on values.

And so whom do we offer to these young people as a spokesman for Israel? John Hagee, who is contemptuous of Muslims, dismissive of gays, possesses a triumphalist theology and opposes a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. If our intention was to distance our young adults from the Jewish state, we could not have made a better choice."

Sounds kinda familiar. So good on you, Rav Yoffie. Where's everybody else?

JewStuff for the Real World

I've sat out the last few weeks because I've been so wrapped up in the (secular) political scene that I thought I would probably just explode if I tried to write anything down.

Let's see how I do.

I've spent the last few weeks generally appalled at my government--a government that refuses to limit gun ownership but will outlaw medical procedures--as well as many of my fellow citizens, including those who were rooting for National Prayer Day. And then when you read that the Prime Minister of Israel has a 3% approval rating because he mangled a military situation and greatly magnified the body count and political damage and you think, why the hell is everyone so down on Israel for lack of political loyalty? I think the lowest recorded approval rating for a sitting American president has been in the low 20s. The low 20s, folks. Please don't hang up the next time John Zogby comes a-ringing, okay?

As happens, I'm now just waiting for the pendulum to swing the other way--the inevitable period of time when the mere sight of the NYTimes will make me queasy. In the interim, that strange middle state where I'm desperate for insight but simply cannot look at DailyKos again, I've taken my usual route, and have been searching out JewStuff that helps me think. JewStuff for the Real World, we might call it.

Thinking about abortion has been weirdly eased by the rereading of two articles--Kathleen Peratis' brilliant piece in the Forward, and a rather old piece in The American Prospect by Sarah Blustain. (I have a curious relationship to her work, as I currently fill a position she once held--and although our interests and stills are very obviously divergent, everything she does has a tinge of what-might-yet-be for me.) I am so impressed with the ability of these women to wrestle honestly with these questions that the abortion issue presents--something that Caitlin Flannagan aims for, and sort of gets, in this month's Atlantic. I think a willingness to grapple with the messy parts of a problem is a really Jewish thing to bring to the table--not in an essentialist way, but simply because the force of history helps it along. All of those rabbis and scholars dissecting point after point of Talmud, following arguments through because to argue is to accrue knowledge and engage in an admirable exercise. It's an argument I've made before, and one I plan to make many times again.

Plus, today's discovery of a very interesting post on Jewcy by David Klinghoffer, whose work I don't really know, provided what I've been looking for for weeks: a Jewish justification for gun-control laws. You should read the post, but the basic concept is that the injunction not to "put a stumbling block before the blind" is essentially a condemnation of providing people with that for which they have a weakness. And he inspired me to make the connections between Jewish law and democratic law that I've been groping for.

I don't believe religious law should have any teeth in civil government--if you haven't caught on that far, you haven't been paying attention. I am an absolutist regarding the separation of Church and State, and I believe that the democracy embodied in the Constitution is a result of the Enlightenment, not religious establishments. That said, I obviously find a lot of beautiful things about Judaism, and I'm most impressed by its ability to train into us the same basic impulses towards good that secualr government at its best seeks to enstatue. Leave grain at the corner of your fields for the poor to collect? It's not an injunction towards charity--it's the recognition that there needs to be a dignified safety net for people. Even kashrut, as I learned at BJ's recently, is much more (in my opinion) about metaphor. It's a way of dealing with the omnivore's dilemma--aka free will. We need to train ourselves not to do hurtful things. And in these pre-Messianic, post-Sanhedrin days, we need a civil government that's going to kick the shit out of us when we screw other people over. (Although the current system--wherein the Rockerfeller Laws trump Enron, doesn't quite fit the ideal.)

I don't know--it's all still a mess in my mind. But I do take a lot of comfort in the fact that my Jewish Judaism helps keep my internal compass on the right path.

Kol tov.

We're Back to This Shit?!

The April issue of Moment magazine--commendable in many ways--features an article by everyone's favorite Constitutional theorist, Dennis Prager. Except by "Constitutional theorist", I mean...not. This article (an opinion column, really) attempts to explicate, exonerate and apologise for Prager's now-famous remarks about Rep. Keith Ellison, the man who wanted to destroy the fabric of America by getting sworn into office with a Quran and not a Bible. Leaving aside for the moment that the actual act of swearing in features absolutely no theological literature, which can feature only in a later, non-ceremony, this is a huge load of bunk. Horse-hooey, to take my cue from Molly Ivins.

Prager argues any number of inane and incorrect points, still attempting to play on stupid, outdated, and did I mention incorrect, fears about what is or isn't good for the Jews. Now, let me be clear: I love Jews. I love Judaism. I think we're pretty much past the point of denying it. (Just look at where I work.) And I love America. A lot. This country is an idea, and an ideal, and I can go on for hours about the eerie similarities between the practices of Constitutional law and Conservative Judaism, but I won't. I just want to firmly afix my street cred here.

So, incorrect point of Prager's, part the first: the values upon which America was established were Enlightenment values, but Enlightenment values are merely extensions ("largely add-ons") of Biblical values. Sorry, not true. Admittedly closer to true for Jews than Christians, still useless in this argument because, well, not a lot of Jews among the Founders. The Enlightenment valued reason (and beauty, as reason's physical manifestation) above all else. Religion values faith above all else. Yes, the social values of Judaism fit an Enlightened social agenda--especially if you take a highly-Americanized/Westernized, liberal, latter-day Judaism as your example. Which sort of defeats the point. Anyway, anyone who claims the Enlightenment was merely an extension of Biblical values, especially given that the Enlightenment was a reaction to a Church-driven society, is fairly murky on the precepts of the Enlightenment. Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau: these men valued sound reasoning, the triumph of reason as man's birthright. I don't know what their feelings on Jews were, but they would not be comfortable in Boro Park today. Dogma was not part of the agenda.

Anyway, incorrections, part the second: "These Bible-based Christians did not need the Enlightenment to tell them that government should not be theocratic." Except, um, of course they did. Not in every case, of course: the originial Jamestonians seemed to have been relatively lax on enforced religion (as long as you were a Christian--for further commentary on that, please allow me to refer you to the decided lack of tolerance shown those native peoples resitant to conversion). The colony of Pennsylvania was famous for religious tolerance. But the Puritans were some of the most intolerant sons of bitches this country has seen--no small feat. Anne Hutchinson? The Salem witch trials? People were regularly excommunicated--not to mention executed--for religious transgressions. This is seventh-grade social studies stuff, guys.

Parts the thrid and fourth: "While the United States has no state-established religion, it was designed to be a deeply religious country. And America's religiosity was uniquely Judeo-based." Okay, first of all, the US was not designed to be a "deeply religious nation." It was designed to be a society in which deep religiousity would be left on its own, so long as it didn't infringe on the rights of others. But design specifically to be religious? James Madison, who, in addition to signing the Constitution and, y'know, being President, wrote a hefty portion of the Federalist papers and sold the idea of the Constitution to America, state convention by state convention, agreed with Thomas Jefferson that the Constitution should build a wall around religion. Dennis--know anything else we're supposed to build a boundry around? There's zero evidence offered to support Prager's assertion, by the way.

And as for America's Judeo-based religion--which Prager later amends to Judeophilia--what a load of bunk. Certainly America has always perceived itself as a sort of secular Zion, a triumphant underdog in its early days that beckoned with the sweet scent of promise well into the present day. I can understand, even agree with, the fact that America has a sense of Judeophilia. But that doesn't counter the fact that America is overwhelmingly Christian. Overwhelmingly. I don't feel compelled to document this further than to point out the 2% thing, but if America's so Jewish and so in love with us, I guess we can call off our dogs.

In response to the assertion that until 1800, you couldn't graduate Harvard without learning Hebrew (which I think was perfectly reasonable for a curriculum that taught classics in their original language), I would say a far more relevant example of Jews' place in a thoroughly Christian America would be the fact that this selfsame institution, along with its Ivy brethren (don't know about sistren) instituted Jewish quotas in the 1920s and 30s. Love the Judaism, hate the Jew?

All in all, I'm disappointed by this article. What's with the quarter-hearted apology? All of these points add up to some very wishy-washy scholarship in my book, and I don't appreciate yet another older Jewish man lecturing me on the ways of America and what is or isn't good for the Jews. I was appalled in the first place to have an Islamophobic argument about Quran vs. Bible be blamed on what's good for me as a Jew (Mr. Ellins: fix healthcare and you can be sworn in with whatever you want). My disgust at an apologist attempt to tack this onto America's "Jewish" values is ever greater. If you're gonna shoot big, at least stick to your guns.

For more information about the Constitution, check out constitution.org, American Rhetoric, or email my friend Jon. Bro knows what he's talking about.

Kol tov...

Newsflash: AIPAC=Psycho

After the warm-and-fuzzy vibes of that last post, please allow me to take one moment to say this: the folks at AIPAC have gone fully friggin' crazy. Seriously. So say the good people at JewsOnFirst, and so say I.

They invited Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel to speak--check out the first part of his speech:


The person screaming "I love you" nearly made me puke my morning coffee. I have neither the energy nor the inclination to point out the reasons why I'm uncomfortable with Christian Zionists--although, in Reader's Digest version, it probably has to do with the fact that they believe I'm doomed to eternal damnation--but I will say that I hadn't realized before the last few weeks how far to the right AIPAC has really veered. Forget denominationalism--the next showdown in and amongst American Jewry is going to be the uber-lefties versus the incipient Judeo-fascists. Luckily, both sides can bring their very own evangelical Christians. We Jews can take a breather!

By the way, even if you missed John Hagee, there were plenty of other nutjob speakers to keep you entertained.

I'm disgusted.

kol tov...

Pesach for the Rest of Y'all

I had a whole post planned about how much I love Pesach, but I think I'll skip it. (Although I do love it, do think it encapsulates all that is vital in Judaism, do think that it is the most beautiful and complicated set of metaphors available to explore those vital issues, etc. If you're in Brooklyn and need a seder, track me down. It's a good time.)

I want to talk, very briefly, about the personal importance Pesach has for me as a holiday that takes place in the home. First of all, there's all that proto-feminist, sanctification-of-the-domestic-sphere, mechitzaless-learning-space, isn't-it-funny-the-second-wavers-reclaimed-seders-first-except-it's-just-obvious jazz, not to be taken lightly. But more importantly, it's an opportunity--one of the only ones--for me to share everything beautiful about Judaism with the people I love.

I think maybe I'll never stop seeing the world through the frame of a sort-of-religiously-inclined person who hangs with a bunch of aggressively secular folk. And although working for some of my world's coolest people has provided an outlet for a lot of that, lifting the fog of depression that so dampened my Jewish renaissance, I still frequently feel like I live two lives. I think I'm pretty adept at navigating conflicting or just multiple identities, but it saddens me sometimes that I have this whole secret life that my friends don't know about. And, to be fair, that I try not to talk about too much, because I think it would be alienating and uncomfortable for them. Because these amazing and lovely people in my life almost uniformly lack any context for religion that's authentic without being batshit crazy. Except for The Girlfriend, a self-defining ex-Catholic who has a deep appreciation for the possibilities of religion--both to be beautiful and dangerous.

Pesach provides the opportunity for me to invite people into my home (and sometimes my parents' home) for what we might call some private religion. And because I'm generally appointed master (mastress? mastrix?) of events--even at aforementioned parents' house, because, surprise, I'm more religious than they are, too--I get to control how the story unfolds. And I get to editorialise, which is among my top-five favorite things to do. This year, I went so far as to make my own haggadot (although that was a decision influenced primarily by economics), which really allows me to take every opportunity to show, if not tell: This is it! This is the thing I love! These are the ideas behind all the stuff you see me do! See how much there is for me to love! I'd like everyone (my roommates, my parents, my near-and-dear-ones) to see and feel the beauty--and it's this magnificently three-dimensional beauty--of the holiday, but more than that, I at least want them to see why I feel it. And that I feel it. I want my decisions and committment and love to make some sense to them, and I want them, if only for one night of wine and endless, encouraged questions, to peek through a window into the other half of my life.

My boss said something the other day that gave me pause: she said she was always comforted that, even when she was going crazy pesadiking the house and cooking (and cooking and cooking...), everyone she knew was doing the same thing. Pesach, like everything else, is a much more solitary endeavor for me than it is for most of the Jews I know, but I'd like to think of this, too, as a double blessing: I can trade matzah-ball recipes by day with all these women I so love, but at night when I open my door to Elijah, I have a true understanding of what it means to say, "Yes, this is my home. Please, come inside for a little while."

Kol tov.

Conferences Coming Out My Ears

But damn, they're all so good. Tonight, I went to one panel of the excellent "A Jewish Feminist Mystique? Jewish Women in Postwar America" conference, co-organised by the incredible Rachel Kranson. Tonight's presentation was about growing up in the '50s, and it was awesome. Although the worst moderated panel I've ever seen (and who knew moderating was something you could screw up?), it was probably the only panel I've ever encountered where all I wanted was for each of the four panelists (Alix Kates Shulman, Judith Shapiro, Anne Lapidus Lerner and Ruth Abram--an SLC alum!) to keep talking and talking and talking. They were funny and charming and inviting and their material was totally accessible, even to me, relative fetus that I am. Hopefully, NYU or JTS will post the video of tonight's goings-on, so be on the lookout and for sure watch it; I just want to touch on two points I felt were pertinent.

1) Cultural Jewish Identity Say What?
Although all the panelists professed a Jewish identity, there was definitely discussion of what mix those identities were, given the various components of religious, secular and the-goyim-treat-us-differently. Judith Shapiro made my jaw drop when she said that she thinks her generation was the one to find a firmly culturally Jewish identity, and that she didn't know if that would be possible nowadays. A rather audacious claim, I think. After all, I'm a Millenial. (Although, it did occur to me that, from an anthropological point of view--one Shapiro herself might engage--our own insane self-awareness as cultural Jews might interfere with the authenticity of the identity. After all, we're pretty ironic about our Jewishness.) I caught her on her way out, and we briefly discussed how much the Jewish community has moved to the right. I think she's right about that--it's one of many reasons, I think for this incessant and incredibly harping insistence that my generation isn't invovled, isn't affiliated, blah blah blah ad nauseum. But something wasn't jiving for me. And it wasn't until the ride home on the 1 train (that became the 7 train, that became the G train) that it clicked: Judith Shapiro, k'mo ani, is from New York. Her stories about the non-Jewish components of Jewish culture--Chinese food, basic menu skills in Italian--were so familar to me, because I've heard them over and over from my Bronx-born mother and I tell them myself. None of the other panelists shared as precise a connection to her exact definition of secular Jewish culture as my younger boomer parents would. We were both looking for the answer in time, but I'm pretty sure it lies in space. And I think that if this generation of Jewish youth changes that, it'll be because the prophets among us take it all to the internet.

2) Mommy, Where Do Jewish Feminists Come From?
Well, from the Civil Rights Movement, if you ask Alix Kates Shulman, which several people did. Shulman is sure that the over-representation of Jews in the CRM is directly related to the subsequent high number of Jewish women in the Women's Liberation Movement (and use of that term, by the way, is a rock solid way to date yourself). She maintains that it was impossible for women involved in the CRM to remain silent at the way women were expected to serve coffee to the revolutionary types. It set off "aha!" moments sort of en masse.

I like this theory a lot (especially the paralellism between how the Civil Rights Movement and what I would dub authentically Jewish feminism both alter their respective systems from the inside out, instead of advocating separatism--I think it marks them not only as doubly courageous but really more mature movements), but I don't think it explains everything. This is a question to be thought on much more: why? Why so many Jewish feminists? Because we know more about oppression? I don't know. I'm ready to think more. But until I do, I'm going to sit back and enjoy the fact that I heard four women in their sixties rock the (bobby) socks off their audience tonight.

Kol tov...

JOFA

There's way, way too much to say about the JOFA conference that ended today--way more than one post and possibly even more than one brain can hold (mine, at least, on both counts). I have sheaves of notes and am still trying to synthesize all the separate phenomenon I witnessed. Smarter people than I will surely dissect the particulars of what was said there; I want to comment on two far more obscure phenomenon.

1) I had seen many of today's speakers before. Norma Joseph and Tovah Hartman, in particular, but a number of other presenters and participants. It was like meeting them anew. Perhaps because this is the time when they are trying to cheer their sisters in arms onward toward battle, Norma and Tovah especially were on fire. Seriously incendiary, and I got lit up right with them. I wonder how much of it had to do with not being the representatives of Orthodoxy, or at least the only representatives of Ortho feminism, up on whatever dias they found themselves on. Whatever caused it, I hope I get to see it again.

2) The universality of Jewish deity who, or which, supercedes gender is supposed to transcend denomination. It's tautological to say that an incorporeal God is genderless. But for whatever reason, it's women who drive that home. I was reminded today of a recent story Lilith ran about the first batch ever of Reform women rabbis--that is to say, women rabbis. One of the rabbis spoke about how the introduction of female clergy helped people conceive of God outside of an old man with a big beard. And when Norma Joseph said, "Can you see the idolatry of conceiving of God only in male terms?", it made me think that women maybe are really on to something here.

3) The question of whether denominationalism is really the best methodology for transporting Judaism, sustainably, into the future has come up in this blog before, but you can expect to see it reemerge with a vengence: I'm becoming more and more convinced that it's an idea whose time has gone. Maybe we're more evolved now. Maybe we're just bored.

So much to say, so little sleep. Sigh. Kol tov...