My rabbi cousin's view of my mixed marriage

As long as I remember, I have seen religion as something that creates barriers between people. No doubt religion has had some good consequences, such as promoting charity and encouraging ethical behavior. However, a basic fact of religion is that its adherents believe they have found the right way and everyone not following their religion is at minimum misguided and at worst sinfully wrong. This self-righteous view leads to feelings towards non-adherents ranging from sympathy to hatred. This applies even within the different Judaic groups - Chasidic, Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reformed, Reconstructionist, and non-religious ethnic. An example from my personal life centered around my marriage to a non-Jew. My wedding, officiated by a reformed rabbi, happened to occur a day before the wedding of my cousin Ed, who was attending yeshiva in order to become an Orthodox rabbi. In all the excitement, I didn't notice that Ed wasn't at my wedding, and I attended his very traditional Orthodox ceremony a day later. However, over the years, it registered on me that he resented my marriage to a non-Jew and, while acting friendly toward me, ignored my wife and 2 children. I'm sure he saw it as a good thing that my marriage ended in divorce, but must have plotzed when my second marriage, several years later, was to a non-Jew as well. His apparent resentment about this seems to have created an unfortunate wedge within the family. Ed's mother and sisters (his father died a while back) have always been open and friendly to me and my family and, while religious, do not seem to harbor any resentment towards me or my family. However, Ed's position as a religious leader and the bearer of his family's rabbinical tradition casts a negative pall over the relationship between the religious and non-religious branches of the family. I feel certain that these segments of the family would be closer if not divided by religiosity. I am a strong believer in the value of family ties, and am saddened by this barrier to family harmony.

Israeli rap version of "Adon Olam"

The version of "Adon Olam" by the Moscow Male Jewish Cappella" stuck in my head for days, so I sought other versions of the song on youtube. I came across a powerful Holocaust-themed version that combines violin, rap, and modern dance. I hope you enjoy it. As I've said before, I don't think that the Holocaust should be the main pillar of anyone's Jewish identity, as we must focus on the positive aspects of Jewish history and culture. However, there's no denying that the Holocaust, by its impact on the Jewish people, is seared into our memory.

An Ethnic Jewish Event

I like a wide variety of cross-cultural events, but am quite pleased when I find an enjoyable Jewish-oriented event that doen't require religiosity. I looked over the event calendar at the Combined Jewish Philanthropies web site for something interesting to do last weekend and found a listing for a Jewish a cappella festival at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. I had never heard of Jewish a cappella. Surprisingly, I found out when I got there that it is a major phenomenom sweeping college campuses across the nation with significant Jewish enrollment. There was a large crowd of mostly college-aged people trying to get into the large auditorium where the concert was to be held. Arriving 15 minutes early, I managed to get a seat in the last row, but people kept coming in. The concert started 20 minutes late because of the continued arrival of attendees. Rows of chairs were added wherever there was room and latecomers had to stand along the walls. I estimated a crowd of about 450. The first group was called Jewish Fella A Cappella (JFA), from Brandeis University, which got tremendous cheers. However, I was somewhat disappointed in the 8-man group because I didn't hear any outstanding voices and the group did a lot of silly mugging and imitation of Motown chorus steps. The gigantic ovation they got made me wonder if they were popular because they represented the host school or if young strongly-identified Jews (religious and/or ethnic) craved some youth-oriented Jewish entertainment. The next group, Pizmon, was made up of both male and female students from Columbia, Barnard, and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. They were clearly better than JFA and used vocal artistry rather than silliness to win over the audience. However, I felt they were pretty good, but not excellent. I had the same feeling about The Shabbatones, a male/female group from the University of Pennsylvania. However, I was very pleasantly surprised by the next group, Manginah, a male/female group from Brandeis. They were truly excellent, and I left feeling good about the event. All the groups sang at least half their songs in Hebrew, and I surmised that they were Israeli popular songs. I missed the last two groups because I had to get home. They included Kaskeset of the University of Binghamton and Varsity Jews from the University of Toronto. The next day, I searched YouTube for Jewish a cappella music and came across the Moscow Male Jewish Cappella group whose version of Adon Olam totally blew me away. I hope you will view and enjoy it. My conclusion about my Jewish a cappella experience is that there's a great craving among strongly-identified Jewish young people for youth-oriented Jewish music (I guess Britney and Beyonce might not appeal to them). There's also rising Jewish art in the former Soviet Union after the fall of Communism. As an ethnic Jew, my heart feels good!

Who likes weakness?

Growing up in the United States, the most powerful country in the world, tends to inculcate a feeling of power among its citizens. Most Americans, even those who criticize or protest against the more internationally assertive policies of our nation, come to enjoy, to varying degrees, the feelings of strength associated with being a part of a country unsurpassed economically, militarily, academically, creatively, and in many other ways. The United States, with all its warts and the major setback of the George W. Bush administration, remains a light unto the nations. In contrast, Judaism is the smallest of the "major" religions. In fact, its appelation as a major religion is more due to its historical position as a promoter of monotheism and a precursor to Christianity than to its current presence in the world. The entire Jewish population of 14 million represents one-fifth of one percent of the world's people. By adherents, Judaism ranks 14th among world religions, not only behind Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, but behind the likes of Sikhism and Juche as well. Not only is Judaism very small in number of adherents, but it is declining as a percentage of the world population with a 0.3% rate of growth compared to a world growth rate of 1.4%. One study predicted that the Jewish population of the United States would decline by a third within 80 years, given the current low Jewish fertility rate and migration patterns. All this leads to an American Jewish identity conflict. Feelings of being a member of an immensly powerful nation contrast strongly with feelings of being part of a small minority group, weak in numbers if not in accomplishment, and persecuted throughout recorded history. And there is considerable evidence of continued negative views towards Jews that will very likely persist into the foreseeable future. In addition to increasing physical attacks on Jews in Europe, a recent survey shows strong negative attitudes towards Jews in several European countries. The weak position of the Jewish people is largely due to its small numbers, which is in turn related to current religious policies that keep it small. The first is the Jewish Orthodox and Conservative tenet of matrilineal Jewish identification that excludes those with Jewish fathers from being considered Jewish without a formal, lengthy, and difficult conversion process. This also affects adoptees whose birth-mothers are not Jewish, even if the child is raised from infancy in the Jewish faith. The difficult conversion process also discourages other people who might be interested in Judaism from becoming part of it. Contrast this with the Christian churches whose affiliation requires no more than accepting Jesus Christ as one's Lord and Savior, and a brief baptism ceremony. Thus, Jewish religious policies perpetuate the numerical weakness of the Jewish people. It's thus not surprising that many Jews have a conflict between their identity as strong Americans and weak Jews. If Judaism is to survive and flourish, it will have to become more inclusionary. After all, the existing exclusionary policies do not date back to the bible, but were developed by rabbinical scholars well into the modern era.

Jewish Identity

A nice article on Jewish identity.

BlueFoodBlog: Are you Jewish?

BlueFoodBlog: Are you Jewish?

The bond among various kinds of Jews

The Jewish people is widely diverse, being made up of those who are members of synagogues and temples (Chasidic, Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reformed, or Reconstructionist), those who are not affiliated but practice Judaism individually or in small groups, and ethnic Jews who have a Jewish identity even though they are atheist, agnostic, or practice another form of spirituality, such as Buddhism or even Christianity. The latter group raises hackles among many Jews because Jews practicing other religions are usually regarded as apostates who disguise themselves as Jews in order to bring more Jews into the fold of their new-found religion. This is reflected in the bitterness frequently expressed against "Jews for Jesus."
So what binds this diverse group of Jews together?
1) Genetic relatedness - ("flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood"). Though genetically diverse, Jewish ancestry has been traced via the Y-chromosome. It is human nature to feel a degree of relatedness to those sharing one's genes. Evolutionary theory posits that we have an instinct to preserve and proliferate our genetic stock.
2) Shared history - Unfortunately, much of this shared history is negative and dates back thousands of years to include: serial conquests of what is now Israel by several different empires, capped by mass expulsion from the land; dispersion into countries in which they were weak, frequently persecuted minorities; and the massive genocide of the Holocaust. Yet some of the shared history is positive, such as the tradition of learning, intellectuality, and critical thinking both within and without the religious context (e.g. the great rabbis vs. Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud). Marx, the noted theorist behind Communism, actually came from a long line of rabbis. It is unfortunate that much of the identity of ethnic Jews centers around the Holocaust, while religious Jews have many more positive associations with their Jewishness.
3) Concern for Israel and Jewish survival - Most Jews, whether religious or ethnic, are concerned about the physical survival of the Jewish people. While it is true that there is an element of liberal Jews that condemns the state of Israel for its "aggression", even they usually have a gut-level concern for the physical survival of the Jewish people. Such liberal Jews are generally against any kind of war or violence and have the idealistic view that all people of the world can live together peacefully if they only try to understand each other.
4) Shared outlook - Because of their acculturation, Jews often have similar world views even if they vary greatly in their religiosity. Jews tend to be politically liberal and have most often voted for Democratic candidates for political office. Three quarters of Jews in the U.S. self-identify as moderates or liberals and only 19% voted for Bush in the 2000 elections. Jews in the U.S., whether religious or ethnic, have favored careers in science, medicine, education, and business while avoiding occupations such as construction, other manual trades and the military. Some of these cultural predilections may have their source in the Jewish religion, while others may have developed independent of religion, as they have for all groups of people who have lived somewhat separate lives from other groups around them.