JewsByChoice.Org

The Jerusalem Post has come through again with an interesting piece that speaks directly to the issues of Jewish identity and stereotyping. In Stewart Weiss’ article A Twist on the ‘Who’s a Jew’ Question, the author points out that both in Israel and abroad, it is often the outer trappings of Jewish observance that lead us to assign the label “religious” to a Jew. The following excerpt sums up Weiss’ thoughts nicely:

Is it a function of the clothes we wear, the company we keep, the type of synagogue we pray in, the particular laws we observe? If a person defrauds a yeshiva or bribes a health inspector, if he is a child molester or a spousal abuser - but he covers his head, keeps kosher and davens three times a day - is he still “religious?”

And if a soldier risks his life to defend Israel and the Jewish people - but does not put on tefillin every day or wait six hours between eating meat and milk - is he “irreligious?” We are a label-obsessed people. The moment we lay eyes on someone, before we get to know them at all, we are already drawing a box around them and sticking on all kinds of isolating labels: Ashkenazi, Sephardi, leftist, rightist, secular, observant or Orthodox.

This is certainly an important topic for Jews of all backgrounds to consider, and to me it seems especially important given the growing importance of independent minyanim and jewsbychoice.org’s recent affiliation with Big Tent Judaism. And I would imagine that most of us, when we really think about it, can admit that we know people who are “observant” in all sorts of ways that do not always seem obvious at the outset. It is so easy to see a man in a kippah sruga, Borsalino fedora, or a giant streimel and assume all sorts of things; the same is true of women in snoods or scarves and long sleeves and skirts. Or of men or women with names like Resenkranz or Goldfarb who eat cheeseburgers, shop on Shabbat, and seemingly have never heard of tsniut. But as the article suggests, such reactions to outward appearance often deprive us of the opportunity to really get to know one another, and in turn to appreciate the humanness and the Jewishness of one another.

When I was in Israel on the Egged bus between Masada and Jerusalem we broke down in an ultra-orthodox neighborhood just northwest of the Old City (I think it was Mea Shearim, but someone else may have a better idea), and we had to wait an hour for another bus. During that time, the riders, who by all observable indication (there we go again) were largely secular, waited outside in the less stuffy air, and the non-verbal communication between many of them and the haredi residents was quite easy to see. That the disdain flew both ways was frequently obvious. I wonder what kinds of conversations could have happened across worldviews if outward distinctions could have been set aside for a bit?

As a People we have many different approaches to our Tradition and many different ways of understanding what it means to be a Jew in the modern world. But what we should perhaps pay more attention to than the things that drive us nuts about one another are the things we share in common, not the least of which is a sense of connection and a desire to see all of us do well. Things go better for the Jewish People when we are united, and hopefully our tendency to see one another in outward stereotypes will begin to fall away.

kol tuv,

Yair