The Fading Jewish Identity

The Fading Jewish Identity

By Gil Troy
B’NAI BRITH MAGAZINE
FALL 2006

While recently reading the book "Stars of David", a collection of interviews with 62 Jewish celebrities, I was struck with the sadly incidental manner in which most of these "stars" defined their Jewish identity.

What little Jewish identity they still express tends to be confined to Jewish foods and jokes, a peripheral interest in Israel, and fear of neo-Nazis.

Unfortunately, these celebrities represent a familiar phenomenon: Most American Jews just don't care about Judaism and Jewish life. Jason Alexander of “Seinfeld” dreaded Hebrew School and saw Seders as ordeals to be shortened. Yet, he continues the tradition by imposing a Jewish education on his kids, for "the same dopey reason” his parents gave to him:

"Somebody's going to kill you one day because you're a Jew. You might as well know what you're dying for."

Alexander and celebrities like him obsessively fear the rise of American antisemitism and tend to ignore the more pressing threat of cultural suicide. To these celebrities, Judaism is an accident of birth, a burden to overcome not a blessing to embrace. "I'm Jewish because my mother was Jewish," William Shatner of “Star Trek” tells former "60 Minutes" producer Abigail Pogrebin, whose book “Stars of David” was published last year. "I like the comfort food of Jewish dishes… I didn't understand the effort to be Jewish. I'm Jewish without the protocols."

Pogrebin views this as a generational issue that has led many Jews to embrace “cafeteria-style Judaism,” typified by “a la carte Judaism” where “strict observance and fervent Zionism have largely fallen away.”

Pogrebin did interview some celebrities who made their faith a life priority, but I find the attitudes of many of the tarnished Stars of David she interviewed depressingly typical.

I consider myself a man in the middle - at a time when the American political, cultural, and religious middle is becoming increasingly lonely.

I recoil from those – famous or otherwise -- who reduce a rich, enveloping, 4000-year-old civilization to a collection of ethno- cultural tics and fears.

Yet, I am too modern and doubt-filled to join the Orthodox camp. I reject both extremes that view Judaism as all or nothing.

The great divide I see in the non-Orthodox, modern Jewish community is not between Reform and Conservative, Zionist and non-Zionist, or the theologically inclined and the culturally motivated. Instead, it is the divide between the engaged and the disengaged, the thoughtful and the ignorant, those who view Judaism as complex, multi-dimensional, and enveloping, and those who view it as simplistic, nostalgic, and easily
discarded.

We must stop looking at Judaism as "a great tradition to be from," as one celebrity put it, and consider it a great tradition to be building and integrating into our lives.

We should be utilitarian Jews, asking how we can use different aspects of our tradition to enhance our lives. As each of us builds his or her own particularly Jewish edifice from the dazzling array of traditional materials, I believe we need a foundation with four tenets.

First is education. The author Leon Wieseltier thoughtfully tells Pogrebin that "the great historical failing of American Jewry is not its rate of intermarriage, but its rate of illiteracy. Most American Jews make their decisions about their Jewish identity knowing nothing or next to nothing about the tradition that they are accepting or rejecting."

The second tenet is engagement. We should be spiritually, emotionally, and existentially committed to Judaism. It should be a central part of our lives not a quaint sideshow.

Emotional engagement should naturally lead to action, the third tenet. "Judaism without the protocols" without actions, rituals, and mitzvot, is like eating food without nutritional value -- or parenthood without responsibility -- drained of meaning.

Finally, for the fourth tenet we must become what I call Jewishly ambitious. The term's very awkwardness highlights how rare it is for us to set Jewish goals.

The need to identify these tenets reflects poorly on a people who tend to be deeply educated, emotionally engaged, prone to take-charge activism, and ambitious in so many other life arenas.

As we prepare to celebrate the High Holy days, let us make them days of education, engagement, activism and ambition, so that, next year, rather than worshiping our Jewish stars, the Jewish celebrities will look to us for guidance.

Let us hope that in our community, they will find the depth, passion, spirituality and meaning that we all crave - and deserve.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and the author most recently of a revised and expanded edition of “Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity, and the Challenges of Today” (Bronfman Jewish Education Center).

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