Illuminations

I realize that it's been nearly a month since my last post, and to anybody out there who frequents this little corner of cyberspace, I apologize for my absence. Now that I'm back in the States, back at work, and back into the routine of school and teaching, I can begin to write regularly again here, as well.

I last left you just prior to my departure for Israel, my second trip to that country and a journey that I assumed would consist largely of treading on fairly familiar territory. While the purpose of the trip last time was largely for pleasure and perhaps also as a means to connect with the culture to which I belong, the goals of this adventure revolved more around determining the role that Judaism would play in my adult life than they did around sightseeing and shopping. I assumed that, in the span of my 10 days in Israel, I might feel some sort of reconnection with my heritage as well as an appreciation for the dense concentration of historical sites within Israel itself. What I did not expect, however, was the depth of the connection that I would feel and some of the feelings of both regret and determination that the journey aroused.

The film "Everything is Illuminated," which is adapted from the novel of the same name, ends with the quote, "Everything is illuminated by the light of the past...from the inside out." This film happens to be about a young Jewish man who travels to the village in Eastern Europe from which his grandfather fled Nazi oppression during World War II. There, he not only learns his identity as a descendant of the village's long-dead youth, but he also witnesses several other transformations that, it seems, are only possible once you are forced to view yourself not as someone living in the present, but as a link in an unfinished chain of humanity. As such, your job is primarily to ensure the strong construction of the next link--to ensure that it is sturdy and of the same material as the previous. It should be resistant to corrosion, durable, of the same makeup as the links that have allowed for its creation, and cognizant of its importance in ensuring that the next link can evolve and sustain itself.

Personal goals are important, to be sure, and anybody that knows me knows that I am somebody who is a goal setter and a person of significant ambition and competitive spirit. There is, however, a greater purpose, and it is one that this journey helped to illuminate for me--to make our chain stronger despite my residence in a society that, while great and proud, is also potentially corrosive to it.

This post will not be a blow-by-blow rehash of my trip to Israel. I've provided my favorite video from the adventure, and that will have to suffice for now as the extent of my description of the events on the ground. There is far too much ideology and self-discovery to sift through, and it will likely take more than one post to do so.

As a member of an ethnic group in America (and I use the term ethnic group--not religion--deliberately), I have always struggled with questions of identity. Who am I first and foremost? Am I an American? Am I a Jew? Am I a Jewish American? An American Jew? To most of my non-Jewish peers and countrypeople, I am an American who happens to be Jewish. To view myself otherwise would, to many of them, be an overstatement of the importance of my family's past. "Why do you refuse to assimilate?" is a question of Jewish people that I have heard uttered over and over again by the secular or Gentile majority. As an American citizen, educated in American schools, paying American taxes, I indeed identify on a daily and hourly basis as an American, and I believe that there is still no place of greater opportunity than the U.S.

America has been described as a land without a culture--a melting pot or a mixed salad and a nation-state that borrows its culture from the heritage of the people that comprise its population. Still, with Jews consisting of just over 2% of that population, my personal heritage is one that, if I am not proactive, I can conceivably eliminate completely from my identity, and the vast majority of people with whom I come into contact would have no clue, nor much of an opinion, on my choice.

Indeed, were it not for my parents and my very small handful of Jewish friends, I might never knowingly come in contact with people who share this culture, heritage, and any whisper of a sense of responsibility to shape the next link in the Jewish cultural chain.

Prior to my recent journey, I had come to a point where, except with a few people with whom I am especially close, I did not discuss my "Jewishness." If quizzed about my religious or cultural background, I would not hesitate to identify myself as a Jew, but I would also quickly qualify it with a terse, "but I'm not really observant," or a chorus of, "but I still love pork chops."

It seems to me that this rush to claim assimilation is something that is decidedly American, and after my experience, it is my discomfort with this attitude that has led me to discover that--for better or for worse, and regardless of how it might strike my fellow Americans--I am a Jew who happens also to be an American.

This is a difficult realization at which to arrive, given my love for this country and the fact that such anti-assimilationist attitudes are often ill-received by those who do not share them.

I like to keep on my door a small piece of artwork known as a Mezuzah. It is a small container that holds inside of it a scroll on which is inscribed some of the holiest blessings of the Jewish religion. One of those blessings dictates that we keep these words on the gates of our houses, and as a result, a Jewish household has always been identifiable by the presence of a Mezuzah on the right doorpost.

An example of how I have adjusted my attitude: One morning a few months ago, I woke up and realized that, sometime during the night, someone had ripped the Mezuzah off of my door. Slightly perturbed that somebody had messed with my personal property, I thought little of it after the initial frustration and have yet to replace it. In reality, however, this was not a simple invasion of personal space. It was an attack--minor though it may be--on the right of Jewish people to practice our culture in a society that claims to pride itself on the freedom of its citizens to do just that. It was a denial of 3,000 years of heritage that have survived to this day and are carried on by only roughly 25 million people worldwide (compared to over a billion practitioners of each of Catholicism and Islam).

After spending 10 days in a place that represents the very struggle of those 25 million individuals to continue to exist as a people, I am at once ashamed of my nonchalant reaction to the theft of my Mezuzah and am also determined not only to replace it, but also to make sure than neither I nor my children ever again take lightly the responsibility to maintain this dying culture and chain of heritage and to build in that chain links that remain Jews first who are loyal to the nation-state in which they happen to reside, as long as that nation-state recognizes their right to exist within its borders.

And in the event that the home countries of "disapora"--or non-Israeli--Jews become hostile to their right to practice their culture, then Jews retain yet another right--the right to a homeland where they can go to be safe from persecution, welcomed as citizens, and free to flourish. While Jews have found extraordinary success in America and other parts of the West, there are still places where they struggle for the right to exist culturally as well as for their literal survival. These places include Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe, parts of Africa, and much of the Middle East.

I realize that this post seems fiercely ethnocentric, and while that is not the goal, I also believe that members of any culture group have the right to identify strongly with that culture, to practice it, and to defend its maintenance across generations. Perhaps if we all view ourselves not as creatures of the present, but instead as contemporary vessels illuminated always by the spirit of our ancestors, we will develop a greater sense of value for life and culture in the here and now.