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Friday, April 2, 2010
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Who is a Jew? Who is Jewish? How Jewish are you?
There are communal identifying factors, Halakhnocratic factors, and personal identification factors involved here. Within the Jewish world I have found that the most important are those factors by which you are openly identifiable as a Jew. Lacking any one of these is a strike against you in the orthodox community as well as many other factions. Without further ado, they are:
Jewish by Ethnicity
Jewish by Culture/heritage
Jewish by Religion
Communally, ethnicity is simple: Jewish ethnic/genetic heritage undisputed by communal memory from time immemorial. For the Halakhnocrat, proven matrilineal descent is required. Personal identification as a member of the tribe may require no more than the fact that there is one Jewish parent and that ones family history is that those of the Jews. Often though the genetic factor is more about perception than anything else of course; Jewishness of looks, Jewishness of name, family relatives known to be Jewish, etc.
Culture is a bit more interesting. Culture is hard to define, but it may express itself in ritual, psychology, patterns of speech, mannerisms, and type of profession. One not dressed conspicuously Jewish and living an assimilated lifestyle, acts like woody Allen (in his films), has a Jewish name, and doesn’t engage is too many gentilesque pastimes may be considered as such. But there are many other more realistic variations. There are people who may not be ethnically Jewish to Halakhnocratic standards but have one Jewish parent who comes from an assimilated family and nonetheless values their heritage to some degree may be someone who considers himself or herself Jewish by heritage but not ethnically or religiously so.
Jewish by religion is not completely obvious. Someone who can be identified as Jewish due to his or her conspicuous observance to religious Judaism not just in terms of occasional ritual performance, but also by the persistent projection of their religiousness through their form of dress is identifiably Jewish by religion. Halakhnocratic standards obviously must apply to complete the picture. A person like this though may be a Baal Teshuvah new to orthodoxy still conspicuously culturally non Jewish—the same may apply to the convert.
More specifically though: One can be religiously Jewish but neither culturally nor ethnically. Though it is possible to be religiously and culturally Jewish without the ethnic factor ethnically. It goes without saying that one can be ethnically Jewish without being culturally or religiously Jewish, just as one can be culturally Jewish but not technically ethnically or religiously—but that is more an issue of Halakhik nuance.
I am not ethnically Jewish, but I am both culturally and religiously Jewish, having been raised from birth essentially within the Jewish community and within orthodox schools and by continuing to be conspicuously orthodox.
This model has been important to understanding my identity as a Jew.
Jewish by Ethnicity
Jewish by Culture/heritage
Jewish by Religion
Communally, ethnicity is simple: Jewish ethnic/genetic heritage undisputed by communal memory from time immemorial. For the Halakhnocrat, proven matrilineal descent is required. Personal identification as a member of the tribe may require no more than the fact that there is one Jewish parent and that ones family history is that those of the Jews. Often though the genetic factor is more about perception than anything else of course; Jewishness of looks, Jewishness of name, family relatives known to be Jewish, etc.
Culture is a bit more interesting. Culture is hard to define, but it may express itself in ritual, psychology, patterns of speech, mannerisms, and type of profession. One not dressed conspicuously Jewish and living an assimilated lifestyle, acts like woody Allen (in his films), has a Jewish name, and doesn’t engage is too many gentilesque pastimes may be considered as such. But there are many other more realistic variations. There are people who may not be ethnically Jewish to Halakhnocratic standards but have one Jewish parent who comes from an assimilated family and nonetheless values their heritage to some degree may be someone who considers himself or herself Jewish by heritage but not ethnically or religiously so.
Jewish by religion is not completely obvious. Someone who can be identified as Jewish due to his or her conspicuous observance to religious Judaism not just in terms of occasional ritual performance, but also by the persistent projection of their religiousness through their form of dress is identifiably Jewish by religion. Halakhnocratic standards obviously must apply to complete the picture. A person like this though may be a Baal Teshuvah new to orthodoxy still conspicuously culturally non Jewish—the same may apply to the convert.
More specifically though: One can be religiously Jewish but neither culturally nor ethnically. Though it is possible to be religiously and culturally Jewish without the ethnic factor ethnically. It goes without saying that one can be ethnically Jewish without being culturally or religiously Jewish, just as one can be culturally Jewish but not technically ethnically or religiously—but that is more an issue of Halakhik nuance.
I am not ethnically Jewish, but I am both culturally and religiously Jewish, having been raised from birth essentially within the Jewish community and within orthodox schools and by continuing to be conspicuously orthodox.
This model has been important to understanding my identity as a Jew.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Scratching the Surface of Status
The greatest burden I have had to encounter in the Jewish community is that of the burden of status. There are three main factors that I have found to be the most defining of ones position, authority, or even reputation. Those are:
-Wealth
-Family Name
-Religious Scholarship
The Jewish community, and especially the orthodox sector, is dominated by these three rungs that manifest themselves within community organizations and also in the minutia of daily life.
As an orthodox person, especially, a young person, your goal is to fit in as a model member of the community. In your youth this begins by attaining the praise of teachers and rabbi’s and developing a good reputation—a very loaded word I will try to get in to greater depth in the future—the next stage for which the entire notion of the reputation is based upon is the crucial goal of getting a good shiduch. Getting a shiduch, but a good one from “good family” no less is a very crucial. Ones entire status and by extension ones family’s is very much summed up and laid bare by the types of potential shiduch options that are presented to a young man or woman of marrying age, which is usually between 20 and 23. If you have a bad reputation upon entering marriageable age, then forget it, you’re through. No one will want you. No one in the upper echelons of the “Jewish upper class” at least.
Rich people can essentially do no harm. They are I would say worshipped. A rich mans child will receive more praise and respect than a poor mans child despite behavior or the essential content of that child’s character. Rich people are praised endlessly. If you grew up in an orthodox community (OC) then you know what I’m talking about. This is not to say that if a rich mans child and a poor mans child act up in school that they wont receive the same punishment—they may or may not—but it does mean that sins damaging to ones reputation perpetrated by a rich kid will wash away with far greater ease than a poor kids will, no question. Long after a rich kid has moved into the upper echelons of society the poor one will still be struggling to clear his good name. I am sure that this is not exclusive to the Jewish community, but I am discussing a community, which allegedly maintains itself by the dictates of a merciful and charitable God who has commanded his people to compassionately love and honor the convert, poor and orphaned. Being rich is a guarantee of social success and community worship. Not to mention protection. For example whenever an orthodox Jew steps into the lime light for some infamous reason, like the recent Rubashkin debacle, the community will draw its wagons around the person in question, poo-pooing any attempts at criticizing that person \within the community, not because the person is orthodox, but because he is orthodox and rich—the combo is important.
Relevant sub factors include: publicized philanthropy, relationship/proximity to religious leaders, and commitment to orthodox “values”, children in orthodox schools, synagogue attendance/displays.
A good family means coming from family with a last name that has maintained or developed a good reputation throughout extended generations or at least many years. This may mean a name that has been made well by virtue of wealthy or scholarship. For example a name like Rockefeller or Kennedy in the non-Jewish world will automatically make an impression if not open a few doors. The Jewish world has names like these two. Being from a good family is a guarantee, like being rich, of at least better chances for community success than those less surnamicaly fortunate. Relevant sub factors include: lineage, extent of lineage/Yihus, important personalities in family history-no matter how far removed, country or city in Europe family is most closely associated with.
Being scholarly is important too. It is really the least of the three. Being very scholarly does carry its advantages. But unlike wealth and having a good name it is of these three the most easily overlooked and nullified by reputation—and most important, it is the one most easily faked, not least of which is because it actually comes with an easily replicated uniform and sometimes a certain haircut. Relevant sub factors include: Yeshivas attended, sectoral association, dress, payot, type of hat/brand and sectoral designation, visibility with synagogues and study halls, extent of public ritual stringency, family name (crucial insofar as a someone who is scholarly and from a good family leads to an enhanced aura of scholarship).
Having the three of these is a great thing to posses. These 3 social rungs make one untouchable, regardless to the content of ones character. You can be a literal scoundrel, but with wealth, name, and the appearance of scholarship your community will let you get away with murder.
Needless to say, being poor, having no family name of relevance, and lacking overt signs of scholarship is nearly akin to being stricken with an infectious disease. You become an untouchable in the Indian caste sense of the word. Being a Ba’al Teshuvah is bad, being a convert is really bad. The only types of potential shiduch matches that will be presented will be those viewed as similarly afflicted, or as Hitler put it, similar types of harmonious bastards.
Understanding this system, my lack of value in it, its intense prejudice and hypocrisy is what lead me away from black hat life and into an investigation of the broader spectrum of Jewish life.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
The Journey begins: The beginning in a nutshell
I am a convert to Judaism.
I was once not Jewish. I have gentile relatives.
I am a convert.
I am a Ger.
Whew...
Ok, that took a lot to be able to say. But that last one was the hardest. If you are a Ger, then you understand why too.
Why? because I have been hiding the fact nearly 30 years.
Within the world of orthodox Jewish society being a convert just isn’t fashionable. The fact that you are a convert becomes a kind of albatross around your neck that you’re never really allowed to forget about. It becomes a stigma that you are going to be forever branded with.
In the broader Jewish social hierarchy—there are more specific designations too—there are Jews of Yihus, Hozer Bitshuvah, and then the converts at the bottom. By the fact of your convert status you will be extremely limited in terms of not only how much respect you receive from your community but also insofar as who will associate with you and your options for marriage.
By the very fact that you were once a “goy” you will always carry some sort of gentile contamination with you, whether it is cultural, behavioral, or spiritual. Meaning that you will always have some element of the Gashmiut world of the goy imbedded within you—which you will always fight to separate yourself from.
One may choose to be open about ones conversion status or try to keep the fact a secret, no matter. You will not be allowed to take pride in the fact one way or the other, and even if you are open about it you will eventually try and hide it. On the other hand, you may go so crazy from all the hoops you have to jump through hiding it that you will eventually come out of the closet with it when you finally have given up on the entire endeavor of being accepted as a Jew.
My case is kind of special. I grew up thinking I was Jewish from the moment I could first be conscious of the thought. My mother wasn’t born Jewish. She converted earlier in life to reform Judaism, met my father who was Jewish and then converted to Orthodox Judaism after me and my siblings were born when she became more aware of Orthodox Judaism. We were all then ritually processed as well, and on the 27th of Shvat I became a Jew.
Among other issues religion became a problem between them and my parents divorced not long afterward. My father was never again to play a relevant role—for my mother or my siblings—as far as our communal lives in the community we lived in were concerned. He moved away to another state and that was that.
We became a kind of an anomaly that our orthodox friends just didn’t understand. (Being a convert was bad enough, but divorced?) So, Early on my mother decided that we would keep our status a secret after several run ins with rabbi’s wives who tried, in some sort of effort, to let my mom know that she would never be excepted in the community, that we kids probably would be, but that she would never be. I think that after those conversations my mother suffered a heartbreak that was worse than all the pain my father leaving could ever have inflicted. She had literally begun her journey into Judaism at age 12 and dedicated herself to it throughout all her adult life and here were all these people of some distinction telling her that as much as she had transformed her entire life and world for Judaism she would never really be considered a Jew.
It must have been with echoes of my grandfather’s voice in her mind at a young age telling her that those people would never accept her that she told me as young child of no older than 6 that I was never to ever tell anyone that she was a convert. At the time I though a convert was something like a democrat, I didn’t really understand. And for years I didn’t need to, until I myself began to feel my mother’s pain reverberate in my heart when I first began to experience feelings of otherness and shame for what I was, a convert to Judaism; a convert desperately trying to keep his secret otherness hidden in the proverbial closet, out of mind and out site.
This is really the beginning in a nutshell.
I was once not Jewish. I have gentile relatives.
I am a convert.
I am a Ger.
Whew...
Ok, that took a lot to be able to say. But that last one was the hardest. If you are a Ger, then you understand why too.
Why? because I have been hiding the fact nearly 30 years.
Within the world of orthodox Jewish society being a convert just isn’t fashionable. The fact that you are a convert becomes a kind of albatross around your neck that you’re never really allowed to forget about. It becomes a stigma that you are going to be forever branded with.
In the broader Jewish social hierarchy—there are more specific designations too—there are Jews of Yihus, Hozer Bitshuvah, and then the converts at the bottom. By the fact of your convert status you will be extremely limited in terms of not only how much respect you receive from your community but also insofar as who will associate with you and your options for marriage.
By the very fact that you were once a “goy” you will always carry some sort of gentile contamination with you, whether it is cultural, behavioral, or spiritual. Meaning that you will always have some element of the Gashmiut world of the goy imbedded within you—which you will always fight to separate yourself from.
One may choose to be open about ones conversion status or try to keep the fact a secret, no matter. You will not be allowed to take pride in the fact one way or the other, and even if you are open about it you will eventually try and hide it. On the other hand, you may go so crazy from all the hoops you have to jump through hiding it that you will eventually come out of the closet with it when you finally have given up on the entire endeavor of being accepted as a Jew.
My case is kind of special. I grew up thinking I was Jewish from the moment I could first be conscious of the thought. My mother wasn’t born Jewish. She converted earlier in life to reform Judaism, met my father who was Jewish and then converted to Orthodox Judaism after me and my siblings were born when she became more aware of Orthodox Judaism. We were all then ritually processed as well, and on the 27th of Shvat I became a Jew.
Among other issues religion became a problem between them and my parents divorced not long afterward. My father was never again to play a relevant role—for my mother or my siblings—as far as our communal lives in the community we lived in were concerned. He moved away to another state and that was that.
We became a kind of an anomaly that our orthodox friends just didn’t understand. (Being a convert was bad enough, but divorced?) So, Early on my mother decided that we would keep our status a secret after several run ins with rabbi’s wives who tried, in some sort of effort, to let my mom know that she would never be excepted in the community, that we kids probably would be, but that she would never be. I think that after those conversations my mother suffered a heartbreak that was worse than all the pain my father leaving could ever have inflicted. She had literally begun her journey into Judaism at age 12 and dedicated herself to it throughout all her adult life and here were all these people of some distinction telling her that as much as she had transformed her entire life and world for Judaism she would never really be considered a Jew.
It must have been with echoes of my grandfather’s voice in her mind at a young age telling her that those people would never accept her that she told me as young child of no older than 6 that I was never to ever tell anyone that she was a convert. At the time I though a convert was something like a democrat, I didn’t really understand. And for years I didn’t need to, until I myself began to feel my mother’s pain reverberate in my heart when I first began to experience feelings of otherness and shame for what I was, a convert to Judaism; a convert desperately trying to keep his secret otherness hidden in the proverbial closet, out of mind and out site.
This is really the beginning in a nutshell.
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