In Parshat Va’etchanan, which we read a few weeks ago, there is a rather strange short interlude in the narrative just before the repetition of the ten commandments, which describes how Moses established “cities of refuge” – places to where the accidental killer can flee and gain sanctuary. I have often wondered whether the placement of this text is entirely deliberate: the only one of the ten commandments of which Moses himself was actually guilty was lo tirtzach – thou shalt not murder – and after he killed the nameless Egyptian and buried him in the sand, he himself fled to Midian to seek refuge. Some may regard Moses’s violent act as heroic – indeed, it is often portrayed as such – but was Moses haunted by it for his entire life? Did he in some way equate, on the grounds of his belief in the pursuit of justice, his own deliberate killing with an accidental one? And did he, at this critical moment just before reiterating the ten commandments, seek compassion and understanding for his own transgression of one of the laws he was about to decree?
It may be that this week’s parsha – Shoftim – adds some fuel to this idea, as it refers once again to the cities of refuge, and includes the famous diktat tzedek tzedek tirdof (justice, justice, shall you pursue). Moreover, parshat shoftim is almost always read on the first Shabbat of the month of Elul – traditionally the period of reflection and repentance leading up to yamim noraim. Indeed, there is a beautiful Chassidic idea that draws a parallel between the cities of refuge and Elul – the former being a sanctuary in space for contemplation and atonement, the latter being a similar sanctuary in time. So at this very particular juncture in the Jewish year, the notions of a sanctuary in time, accidental wrongdoing, and the pursuit of justice coalesce in an intriguing and challenging way, and invite us to steady ourselves on the path to teshuva (repentance).
According to the Rambam, the pathway to a physical city of refuge is meant to be as clear as possible. In the Mishneh Torah, he writes that “the court is obligated to straighten the roads to the cities of refuge, to repair them and broaden them. They must remove all impediments and obstacles... bridges should be built [over all natural barriers] so as not to delay one who is fleeing [to a city of refuge]. ‘Refuge’ should be written at every crossroads so that the murderers should recognize the way and turn there.” The Chassidic parallel above perhaps leads to a similar conclusion about the temporal refuge that is Elul. Justice in this instance would be for us to clear and repair every possible route to allow those who have done wrong – whether accidentally or deliberately – to be given some respite and a little sanctuary in order to reflect on, and make amends for their actions. We would often like others to make it as easy as possible for us to apologise for our own misdemeanours; but are we making it as easy as possible for them to do likewise for theirs?
Elul is a signpost at a crossroads in our lives. Judaism gives us this brief window in the year to clear the pathways towards our own atonement, and that of others. Many of us live, as perhaps Moses did, under the various weights of misdemeanours committed long ago that were never resolved, and with a longstanding wish for compassion and understanding for that wrongdoing. Now is the time to clear away all the existing impediments and build all the necessary bridges towards achieving those resolutions. Doing so may just bring a little more justice to the world.
(Also available at www.limmud.org)
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Friday, July 4, 2008
Creativity, not Exclusivity
The knives are out again. The Orthodox establishment is condemned for annulling numerous Reform conversions and causing widespread despair and misery for the potentially thousands impacted; the non-Orthodox establishment is condemned for allowing numerous inauthentic conversions and wreaking havoc across the Jewish world. Who should we let into our exclusive club called the Jewish People? How difficult and unpleasant can we make it for people so that the wrong sorts are never allowed in?
Of course, whilst this impassioned debate about Jewish status is going on, in the real world, more and more Internet-Generation Jews are defining their Jewish identities on their own terms. They are creating Jewish summer festivals, Jewish record labels, Jewish intellectual salons and Jewish experimental congregations. They are developing innovative ways to help people connect with Torah, constructing Jewish websites and running Jewish events that build global Jewish connections, launching Jewish social justice initiatives that alter the Jewish calendar, and transforming everything we have ever understood by the term ‘Jewish music.’ They wouldn’t dream of demanding to know anyone’s Jewish credentials before letting them in; they simply invite anyone interested to encounter and experience the richness and creativity of Jewish life.
Rather than investing resources in buttressing walls and filling up sandbags to protect the Jewish community from all those horrible sociological realities out there, they are focused on creating a new reality inside. According to Steven Cohen and Ari Kelman’s recently-published report "The Continuity of Discontinuity," they don’t like being sold an agenda, they feel uncomfortable with social exclusionism, and they are bored by cultural blandness. Yet all-too-often, this is what they find within the Jewish community. So they create spaces for open conversation, they cross previously barred social boundaries, and they create their own Jewish culture. They might not affiliate, but don’t misunderstand that as apathy.
Of course, people will argue that Cohen and Kelman are talking about Americans, so their research has no bearing on young adults in Britain. They will maintain that we Brits are completely different. But are we? Do we really like being sold an agenda? Do we have no interest in fraternising with non-Jews? Do we experience Jewish life as rather bland or uninspiring from time to time? And have we not responded with a few innovations of our own? What about LimmudFest, the Jewish answer to Glastonbury? Or Jewdas, with its irreverent commentary on the British Jewish community and highly popular events? Then there’s YadArts, producing and commissioning new types of Jewish music and art. And Moishe House, taking Judaism out of its conventional locations and trying to create a new form of community. And I’d put Assif on the list too, bearing in mind its engaging approach to Jewish prayer, and the numbers of people it has managed to attract through its educationally inclusive and warm approach.
As Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams argue in their best-seller Wikinomics, the 'Net Generation' – those who grew up with the Internet as a norm rather than a novelty – function differently from their forebears. They have little faith in the "authoritative” or “authentic” view – they scrutinize and sift through information at the click of a mouse, and figure out what makes sense to them on their own terms. They don’t retreat into an individualized, lonely and closed world behind their computer screen – they collaborate and network in the vast array of communities online. And they are not content to be passive consumers – they increasingly satisfy the desire for choice, convenience, customization and control by designing and producing their own products and initiatives.
The truth is I don’t reject the importance of figuring out who is and who isn’t a Jew. We need to know who we are and what we stand for. But maybe the best way to do that is to focus more on encouraging the creativity and dynamism that is going on within our community, rather than investing so much time and energy on guarding the gateways in and out. The problem with spending all our time defending the walls is that when we do finally remember to check out what’s going on inside, we might just find that it’s empty.
Of course, whilst this impassioned debate about Jewish status is going on, in the real world, more and more Internet-Generation Jews are defining their Jewish identities on their own terms. They are creating Jewish summer festivals, Jewish record labels, Jewish intellectual salons and Jewish experimental congregations. They are developing innovative ways to help people connect with Torah, constructing Jewish websites and running Jewish events that build global Jewish connections, launching Jewish social justice initiatives that alter the Jewish calendar, and transforming everything we have ever understood by the term ‘Jewish music.’ They wouldn’t dream of demanding to know anyone’s Jewish credentials before letting them in; they simply invite anyone interested to encounter and experience the richness and creativity of Jewish life.
Rather than investing resources in buttressing walls and filling up sandbags to protect the Jewish community from all those horrible sociological realities out there, they are focused on creating a new reality inside. According to Steven Cohen and Ari Kelman’s recently-published report "The Continuity of Discontinuity," they don’t like being sold an agenda, they feel uncomfortable with social exclusionism, and they are bored by cultural blandness. Yet all-too-often, this is what they find within the Jewish community. So they create spaces for open conversation, they cross previously barred social boundaries, and they create their own Jewish culture. They might not affiliate, but don’t misunderstand that as apathy.
Of course, people will argue that Cohen and Kelman are talking about Americans, so their research has no bearing on young adults in Britain. They will maintain that we Brits are completely different. But are we? Do we really like being sold an agenda? Do we have no interest in fraternising with non-Jews? Do we experience Jewish life as rather bland or uninspiring from time to time? And have we not responded with a few innovations of our own? What about LimmudFest, the Jewish answer to Glastonbury? Or Jewdas, with its irreverent commentary on the British Jewish community and highly popular events? Then there’s YadArts, producing and commissioning new types of Jewish music and art. And Moishe House, taking Judaism out of its conventional locations and trying to create a new form of community. And I’d put Assif on the list too, bearing in mind its engaging approach to Jewish prayer, and the numbers of people it has managed to attract through its educationally inclusive and warm approach.
As Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams argue in their best-seller Wikinomics, the 'Net Generation' – those who grew up with the Internet as a norm rather than a novelty – function differently from their forebears. They have little faith in the "authoritative” or “authentic” view – they scrutinize and sift through information at the click of a mouse, and figure out what makes sense to them on their own terms. They don’t retreat into an individualized, lonely and closed world behind their computer screen – they collaborate and network in the vast array of communities online. And they are not content to be passive consumers – they increasingly satisfy the desire for choice, convenience, customization and control by designing and producing their own products and initiatives.
The truth is I don’t reject the importance of figuring out who is and who isn’t a Jew. We need to know who we are and what we stand for. But maybe the best way to do that is to focus more on encouraging the creativity and dynamism that is going on within our community, rather than investing so much time and energy on guarding the gateways in and out. The problem with spending all our time defending the walls is that when we do finally remember to check out what’s going on inside, we might just find that it’s empty.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
A Changing Jewish Community
Several months ago, I joined Facebook. To date, I have exactly 150 friends based in 25 cities and towns, and am part of seven different networks on four different continents. I am also part of twelve groups, which link me in with people I was friendly with during my teens, people with whom I spent my gap year, people with whom I was in a youth movement, people with whom I helped establish a minyan, people with whom I studied, people with whom I worked, and people involved in various British, Israeli, American and global initiatives that I quite like the sound of. And I’m not even particularly committed to this whole endeavour – in fact, by most people’s standards, I seem to be thoroughly anti-social.
My interest in Facebook emerged partly because I thought it might be fun, but partly because it – and social networking sites in general – are really interesting sociological phenomena. The technology involved allows for entirely new forms of connections to be made and new forms of community to be constructed. The construction, maintenance and growth of community are topics that have intrigued me for some time now, and have formed an important part of both my professional and academic work. I am particularly intrigued to explore how technology, and a variety of other new trends may be impacting some of the dynamics within the Jewish community, and what might be done in response.
Joining Facebook coincided, by chance, with my taking up a new position running JDC’s International Centre for Community Development. JDC-ICCD is a new initiative designed to provide data, insight and training to Jewish communal professionals in Europe and beyond, in order to help them work more effectively in the field. As part of my induction process, I have been travelling around Europe to learn more about what is going on in different Jewish communities. This experience has allowed me to meet with numerous interesting characters, encounter a number of intriguing phenomena, and ask a whole set of questions that previously wouldn’t have even occurred to me. Yet when I look back on the past few months, three particular experiences keep coming back to me, opening up lines of enquiry that appear to strike at the very heart of the future of the Jewish People.
The first took place whilst I was attending a JDC seminar in Oxford. There I met with two Jewish community professionals from Argentina. As part of the programme, they presented an initiative they have set up with the somewhat unfortunate name “YOK” (but pronounced “jok” with a soft “j” as in the French “je.”) YOK has become most well-known for a large-scale Jewish street festival it runs annually in the fashionable Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Palermo. Last year, it attracted an estimated 16,000 people, and had 40 different Jewish food and craft stalls, plus 13 different musical performances. 1,746 people entered its Urban Passover Gefilte Fish competition, which was eventually won by a 73 year-old grandmother. The event took place just before Pesach, so Pesach-related food, gifts and information was available more or less everywhere, ranging from boxes of matzah to kneidl-shaped soap. And given that it was a street festival held out in the open, there were even a few things available for non-Jews, most notably the item that ultimately turned out to be the best-selling t-shirt. Its slogan? “Orgullo Goy” – Goy Pride. Watching a film of the event, it was difficult not to be impressed by the sense of fun that permeated the entire event, and the fact that so many normally uninvolved Jews seemed to be revelling, albeit for a short time, in their Jewishness.
In the break after the presentation, I asked one of the organisers about security arrangements. He told me there were none. The community’s head of security had strongly recommended the standard array of measures, but he had been turned down by the organising committee. They wanted the event to feel open and free, and were more concerned about damaging that atmosphere than about a possible terrorist attack. And this in a city that saw 29 people killed in a terrorist attack on its Israel Embassy in 1992, and 87 people killed in a second attack on the AMIA Jewish community centre in 1994. Irresponsible? Courageous? Naive? Or a breath of fresh air?
The second encounter occurred when I was in Tallinn, Estonia. There are 3000 Jews living there in total, of whom no more than 2000 are actually involved in the community. I met with several Jewish communal leaders in the city, all of whom had much of interest to say, but the conversation that has stuck with me most took place in the newly-opened kosher restaurant in the newly-built synagogue with two barely 20-something youth movement madrichim. Both are extraordinarily committed; both regularly give up their university vacation time to plan and run activities for young people. Both went to the Jewish day school in the city when they were younger, both grew up thoroughly engaged in Jewish communal activity, and both have participated in various major Jewish initiatives like the Israel Experience and March of the Living. Yet, one had a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father, and the other a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. I asked the non-halachic Jew if he was concerned about what might happen if he met a Jewish woman and wanted to marry her according to halacha. He answered that he’d like to marry a Jew, but had never really thought about the potential status problems. Nevertheless, he wasn’t worried about it – he more or less dismissed it out of hand, suggesting that he would do what he wanted, and bring up his family however he wished. His friend – the halachic Jew – was equally dismissive and laughed the whole thing off, playfully teasing him about a potential dilemma that clearly felt both unreal and ridiculous. Naive? Realistic? Foolish? Or a sign of things to come?
The third experience took place while I was in Budapest, Hungary. During my trip, I went to a funky new café in the centre of the city that is listed in the Time Out guide as one of Budapest’s hottest destinations, and met with its owner – or perhaps founder is a better term – a 28 year-old son of a Conservative rabbi. Whilst Time Out explains that this hot destination began its life as a non-profit cultural centre, it fails to mention that it was, and still is, a non-profit Jewish cultural centre. Sirály (pronounced “shirai” and meaning “seagull” in Hungarian, as well as “my song” in Hebrew) is located in a three-storey building, complete with café, library (containing almost exclusively Jewish books), bookshop (again, lots of Jewish books), performance space (mainly Jewish performances), and exhibition space (mainly Jewish art). It doesn’t say that it’s Jewish anywhere, and most of the people I saw sitting in the bar weren’t recognisably Jewish, but it clearly is. Indeed, Adam Schonberger, the founder, produces educational pamphlets about the chagim that are available for anyone to read, has just created an on-line haggadah in Hungarian that he used during the seder he ran in the café, is working on a website for Jewish cultural and intellectual discussion which he publicises openly at the venue, and freely gives out stickers promoting his own Hungarian-language Jewish radio station. No one is a member of Sirály – fundamentally it’s a café that has some nice performances from time-to-time – but it provides a kind of home for unaffiliated Jews in the city, if indeed, as Adam himself asks, affiliation means what we traditionally think it means any more. Provocatively anti-establishment? Pragmatic? Faddish? Or visionary?
What links all of these experiences is that each one of them radically challenges traditional conceptions of community in general, and traditional conceptions of Jewish community in particular. Facebook allows for a version of community to be constructed and created in cyberspace, and builds links between people across cities, countries and continents, irrespective of when they met one another, what they really have in common, or how much they really care about one another. Its Jewish groups have no regard for space or time – they are active everywhere at every hour – and they offer both potentially serious engagement and light-hearted fun. They demand nothing at all: no money, no obligations and no commitments, features which, depending on your standpoint, either characterize them as the greatest threat or greatest boon to Jewish communal life.
YOK opens Jewish community up to the wider world, ignoring the once-impenetrable boundaries that separated Jews from non-Jews, in a way that almost sticks up the proverbial finger to the idea that Judaism can only happen safely and securely behind guarded walls – virtual or real. YOK is open and free, fleeting and sporadic, attracting Jews from the mainstream and the periphery as well as their non-Jewish friends and neighbours. Walls have often played an essential role in Jewish community, serving as divisions between them and us, and hermetic seals around Jewish life, ritual and practice. Removing them, or allowing them to become increasingly porous, may either run the risk of destroying everything, or, alternatively, open up the way to new vistas of unbridled creativity.
The Estonian madrichim demonstrate the remarkably porous boundaries that exist around Jewishness, and cause me, at least, to question whether the halachic definition of who is a Jew can be seriously countenanced in light of some of the stark realities of the contemporary Jewish world. Indeed, I am struck by this issue throughout Eastern Europe. The Shoah decimated Jewish life – Estonia was the first country to be declared officially Judenfrei in the Wannsee protocols of January 1942 – and the post-war experience of Communism provided little, if any, opportunity for the tiny remnant that either remained or migrated there after the war, to rebuild anything of substance. Yet, in 2008, there are community members who are not halachically Jewish, making remarkable – perhaps even miraculous – contributions to Jewish life. Are there any situations where halachic standards can be ignored or overruled? In general, should halachic standards continue to be applied? Or does halacha stand above everything – immune to the trials and tribulations of history – because without clarity of definition, the damage to community could be even greater?
And Sirály is intriguing for several reasons, not least because it conveys an almost nonchalant and certainly carefree conception of belonging, one that neither demands nor requires anything from the individual, yet appears to attract numbers in a manner that puts to shame some of the key initiatives of the organised community. Is Jewish community something unique, heavily grounded in our ideas of what has always been, or should it continually reinvent itself to be in line with contemporary sensibilities, culture and society? If the former, are we willing to give up on those members of the community who count themselves out? And if the latter, is there any kind of unchanging core to Jewish community, without which an initiative is no longer allowed to count itself in?
Perhaps the cynics are right. Perhaps YOK and Sirály are simply flash-in-the-pan endeavours that are unsustainable in the long-term, and of little significance to anyone beyond those who happen to stumble across them – barely even a footnote in Jewish history. But perhaps they, along with my Estonian madrichim, reveal the tip of an iceberg that is destined to sink our longstanding ideas about how Jewish community ought to operate and function, and herald in a new era in which we begin to dramatically redefine what Jewish community means, where, if at all, boundaries are drawn, who is Jewish and who is not, and what one needs to do to belong.
(This article launched the "New Conceptions of Community" initiative at JPR, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, in London)
My interest in Facebook emerged partly because I thought it might be fun, but partly because it – and social networking sites in general – are really interesting sociological phenomena. The technology involved allows for entirely new forms of connections to be made and new forms of community to be constructed. The construction, maintenance and growth of community are topics that have intrigued me for some time now, and have formed an important part of both my professional and academic work. I am particularly intrigued to explore how technology, and a variety of other new trends may be impacting some of the dynamics within the Jewish community, and what might be done in response.
Joining Facebook coincided, by chance, with my taking up a new position running JDC’s International Centre for Community Development. JDC-ICCD is a new initiative designed to provide data, insight and training to Jewish communal professionals in Europe and beyond, in order to help them work more effectively in the field. As part of my induction process, I have been travelling around Europe to learn more about what is going on in different Jewish communities. This experience has allowed me to meet with numerous interesting characters, encounter a number of intriguing phenomena, and ask a whole set of questions that previously wouldn’t have even occurred to me. Yet when I look back on the past few months, three particular experiences keep coming back to me, opening up lines of enquiry that appear to strike at the very heart of the future of the Jewish People.
The first took place whilst I was attending a JDC seminar in Oxford. There I met with two Jewish community professionals from Argentina. As part of the programme, they presented an initiative they have set up with the somewhat unfortunate name “YOK” (but pronounced “jok” with a soft “j” as in the French “je.”) YOK has become most well-known for a large-scale Jewish street festival it runs annually in the fashionable Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Palermo. Last year, it attracted an estimated 16,000 people, and had 40 different Jewish food and craft stalls, plus 13 different musical performances. 1,746 people entered its Urban Passover Gefilte Fish competition, which was eventually won by a 73 year-old grandmother. The event took place just before Pesach, so Pesach-related food, gifts and information was available more or less everywhere, ranging from boxes of matzah to kneidl-shaped soap. And given that it was a street festival held out in the open, there were even a few things available for non-Jews, most notably the item that ultimately turned out to be the best-selling t-shirt. Its slogan? “Orgullo Goy” – Goy Pride. Watching a film of the event, it was difficult not to be impressed by the sense of fun that permeated the entire event, and the fact that so many normally uninvolved Jews seemed to be revelling, albeit for a short time, in their Jewishness.
In the break after the presentation, I asked one of the organisers about security arrangements. He told me there were none. The community’s head of security had strongly recommended the standard array of measures, but he had been turned down by the organising committee. They wanted the event to feel open and free, and were more concerned about damaging that atmosphere than about a possible terrorist attack. And this in a city that saw 29 people killed in a terrorist attack on its Israel Embassy in 1992, and 87 people killed in a second attack on the AMIA Jewish community centre in 1994. Irresponsible? Courageous? Naive? Or a breath of fresh air?
The second encounter occurred when I was in Tallinn, Estonia. There are 3000 Jews living there in total, of whom no more than 2000 are actually involved in the community. I met with several Jewish communal leaders in the city, all of whom had much of interest to say, but the conversation that has stuck with me most took place in the newly-opened kosher restaurant in the newly-built synagogue with two barely 20-something youth movement madrichim. Both are extraordinarily committed; both regularly give up their university vacation time to plan and run activities for young people. Both went to the Jewish day school in the city when they were younger, both grew up thoroughly engaged in Jewish communal activity, and both have participated in various major Jewish initiatives like the Israel Experience and March of the Living. Yet, one had a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father, and the other a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. I asked the non-halachic Jew if he was concerned about what might happen if he met a Jewish woman and wanted to marry her according to halacha. He answered that he’d like to marry a Jew, but had never really thought about the potential status problems. Nevertheless, he wasn’t worried about it – he more or less dismissed it out of hand, suggesting that he would do what he wanted, and bring up his family however he wished. His friend – the halachic Jew – was equally dismissive and laughed the whole thing off, playfully teasing him about a potential dilemma that clearly felt both unreal and ridiculous. Naive? Realistic? Foolish? Or a sign of things to come?
The third experience took place while I was in Budapest, Hungary. During my trip, I went to a funky new café in the centre of the city that is listed in the Time Out guide as one of Budapest’s hottest destinations, and met with its owner – or perhaps founder is a better term – a 28 year-old son of a Conservative rabbi. Whilst Time Out explains that this hot destination began its life as a non-profit cultural centre, it fails to mention that it was, and still is, a non-profit Jewish cultural centre. Sirály (pronounced “shirai” and meaning “seagull” in Hungarian, as well as “my song” in Hebrew) is located in a three-storey building, complete with café, library (containing almost exclusively Jewish books), bookshop (again, lots of Jewish books), performance space (mainly Jewish performances), and exhibition space (mainly Jewish art). It doesn’t say that it’s Jewish anywhere, and most of the people I saw sitting in the bar weren’t recognisably Jewish, but it clearly is. Indeed, Adam Schonberger, the founder, produces educational pamphlets about the chagim that are available for anyone to read, has just created an on-line haggadah in Hungarian that he used during the seder he ran in the café, is working on a website for Jewish cultural and intellectual discussion which he publicises openly at the venue, and freely gives out stickers promoting his own Hungarian-language Jewish radio station. No one is a member of Sirály – fundamentally it’s a café that has some nice performances from time-to-time – but it provides a kind of home for unaffiliated Jews in the city, if indeed, as Adam himself asks, affiliation means what we traditionally think it means any more. Provocatively anti-establishment? Pragmatic? Faddish? Or visionary?
What links all of these experiences is that each one of them radically challenges traditional conceptions of community in general, and traditional conceptions of Jewish community in particular. Facebook allows for a version of community to be constructed and created in cyberspace, and builds links between people across cities, countries and continents, irrespective of when they met one another, what they really have in common, or how much they really care about one another. Its Jewish groups have no regard for space or time – they are active everywhere at every hour – and they offer both potentially serious engagement and light-hearted fun. They demand nothing at all: no money, no obligations and no commitments, features which, depending on your standpoint, either characterize them as the greatest threat or greatest boon to Jewish communal life.
YOK opens Jewish community up to the wider world, ignoring the once-impenetrable boundaries that separated Jews from non-Jews, in a way that almost sticks up the proverbial finger to the idea that Judaism can only happen safely and securely behind guarded walls – virtual or real. YOK is open and free, fleeting and sporadic, attracting Jews from the mainstream and the periphery as well as their non-Jewish friends and neighbours. Walls have often played an essential role in Jewish community, serving as divisions between them and us, and hermetic seals around Jewish life, ritual and practice. Removing them, or allowing them to become increasingly porous, may either run the risk of destroying everything, or, alternatively, open up the way to new vistas of unbridled creativity.
The Estonian madrichim demonstrate the remarkably porous boundaries that exist around Jewishness, and cause me, at least, to question whether the halachic definition of who is a Jew can be seriously countenanced in light of some of the stark realities of the contemporary Jewish world. Indeed, I am struck by this issue throughout Eastern Europe. The Shoah decimated Jewish life – Estonia was the first country to be declared officially Judenfrei in the Wannsee protocols of January 1942 – and the post-war experience of Communism provided little, if any, opportunity for the tiny remnant that either remained or migrated there after the war, to rebuild anything of substance. Yet, in 2008, there are community members who are not halachically Jewish, making remarkable – perhaps even miraculous – contributions to Jewish life. Are there any situations where halachic standards can be ignored or overruled? In general, should halachic standards continue to be applied? Or does halacha stand above everything – immune to the trials and tribulations of history – because without clarity of definition, the damage to community could be even greater?
And Sirály is intriguing for several reasons, not least because it conveys an almost nonchalant and certainly carefree conception of belonging, one that neither demands nor requires anything from the individual, yet appears to attract numbers in a manner that puts to shame some of the key initiatives of the organised community. Is Jewish community something unique, heavily grounded in our ideas of what has always been, or should it continually reinvent itself to be in line with contemporary sensibilities, culture and society? If the former, are we willing to give up on those members of the community who count themselves out? And if the latter, is there any kind of unchanging core to Jewish community, without which an initiative is no longer allowed to count itself in?
Perhaps the cynics are right. Perhaps YOK and Sirály are simply flash-in-the-pan endeavours that are unsustainable in the long-term, and of little significance to anyone beyond those who happen to stumble across them – barely even a footnote in Jewish history. But perhaps they, along with my Estonian madrichim, reveal the tip of an iceberg that is destined to sink our longstanding ideas about how Jewish community ought to operate and function, and herald in a new era in which we begin to dramatically redefine what Jewish community means, where, if at all, boundaries are drawn, who is Jewish and who is not, and what one needs to do to belong.
(This article launched the "New Conceptions of Community" initiative at JPR, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, in London)
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