Outside the Box: DIY Jewish BEN DREYFUS

presence in the world. Focusing all my energies began to feel the absence of prayer in my life. outward, trying to model a religious personality And when I did begin to pray regularly again, that would fit my ideal religious community, I the experience was more powerful than it had SHMA.COM had turned my own practice into a shell of what been in years. a religious experience should be. Now, in my final college year, I find myself Last summer, I spent two months in Tel drifting from extreme experiences toward a mid- Aviv. It seems ironic that the shift in attitude dle path. I hope that my enthusiasm for my own that would rescue my religious experience took halakhic observance continues to be a positive place in Israel’s most secular city. But my time force in shaping the spirit of my community. But in Tel Aviv was an exercise in taming a yetzer this can only be true if my observance also tov gone wild. Unattached to any religious com- shapes my own spiritual experience for the bet- munity in particular, I began to make religious ter. Looking outward toward the needs and re- choices in nobody’s interest but my own. Some actions of others is indeed a good inclination, days, I woke up late and — for the first time in but I am learning to temper that inclination with years — simply didn’t pray. After a while, I a healthy dose of yetzer ha-ra. Outside the Box: DIY Jewish BEN DREYFUS made history before I was born: I was the my own niche in the larger pluralistic Jewish first fetus ever to be ordained as a rabbi. community. Eventually, I learned that the boxes IYou see, back in the 1970s, women rabbis may not have been as firm as I had assumed. were still rare, and my mother happened to be Shockingly, I wasn’t the only 18-year-old who the first to be pregnant at the time of ordina- had questions about identity; the others may tion. Of course, no Jewish denomination actu- have appeared to my untrained eye to be con- ally accepts smikha in utero as valid forming, but in fact we were all going through credentials, and I never developed any interest parallel struggles and finding our paths. in pursuing postnatal rabbinical training. My cohort graduated and launched them- Growing up as the child of a congrega- selves into the adult world at exactly the right tional rabbi, I was never into the “rabbi’s kid” time. Moving first to Jerusalem and then to New gig either. In an aging community with few York a decade ago, I was positioned to catch the other children around, it felt as if my siblings wave of the independent minyan boom (about and I were on display. Fortunately, I had pos- which much has already been written) and then itive Jewish experiences elsewhere through to contribute to it, founding one minyan and my immediate and extended family and my participating actively in several others. Through summers at Jewish camp. I caught a glimpse my networks and communities, I have had the of what an active Jewish life could look like, opportunity to live in an empowered Jewish cul- though it was limited in scope to isolated bub- ture, where if we think of something that isn’t bles of time and space. happening, our first reaction is to make it hap- At college, it became clear my first weekend pen ourselves. Institutions and labels are seen as that I was the only freshman who had chosen to means to an end, but not as inherently valuable. move in prior to Shabbat, but had not opted to One year, before Pesach, it was time to get live in a dorm that was accessible without an rid of the chametz. Since I was leaving town for electronic keycard. I didn’t fit into any of the the whole week, I didn’t bother to switch my Ben Dreyfus is a doctoral established boxes, and though confused about kitchen over to make it usable for Pesach. candidate in physics education research at the where I belonged, I also felt confident and res- Instead, I decided to sell my chametz for the University of Maryland. A olute enough to know that I wasn’t going to try week, to rid myself of it. (There is an interest- founder of Kol Zimrah, an on one of the more established identities out of ing discussion to be had about whether this independent minyan in expediency. And so I set myself the task of popular practice is appropriate, but that is be- Manhattan, he is currently learning what I needed to learn to make in- yond the scope of this essay.) So I found a non- serving as an organizer of formed decisions about my own Jewish prac- Jewish friend, wrote up a contract, and we both Segulah, an independent minyan on the D.C./Maryland tice, a process that I hope has not abated signed it and made the sale official. Meanwhile, border. He blogs at fourteen years later. If I didn’t belong in any of other people were also selling their chametz, mahrabu.blogspot.com. the smaller boxes I saw, I was going to carve out but instead of finding a buyer directly, they [8] DECEMBER 2011 | KISLEV 5772 were going through a rabbi as their agent, ei- One could look at my Jewish life trajectory ther in person or over the Internet. Even some and conclude that my embrace of do-it-yourself independent minyanim, that don’t employ any Judaism is a rebellion against my upbringing. clergy during the year, were making arrange- But the more accurate description is that it is a SHMA.COM ments with rabbis who offered to be agents for continuation and deepening of that upbringing. minyan participants’ chametz sales. When I Just as the rabbi’s family (in a milieu where saw this, I thought, “This is silly. When I was many people are dependent on the rabbi) does growing up, we never went to a rabbi to sell our not defer to an external authority to be Jewish chametz. My mother just sold it.… Oh — right!” or to do Jewish for them, so do I as an adult And then the epiphany hit. seek to be self-reliant in my Jewish life. Does it Matter if Authenticity Is Authentic? NOAM PIANKO uthentic? Get Real” read a recent New geographic and genealogical origins. The popu- York Times headline (in the Fashion larity of “Fiddler on the Roof” illustrates the ‘‘A & Style section). The article high- power of this trope. Tevye’s “tradition” empha- lighted the obsession with authenticity in our sizes a geographic origin, ancestral roots, and popular culture (one example cited Katie Couric clear outsider status fueled by antisemitism and claiming, “I think I love to be my authentic persecution. Tradition for the sake of tradition self.”) The piece concluded with a snarky cri- fulfills the need for an authentic lineage. At the tique of the authenticity trend as a highly cal- same time, a tradition stripped of its content, culated form of self-presentation more akin to practice, or beliefs addresses other social needs stage management than thoughtful introspec- of immigrant communities. For instance, by fo- tion. Whether or not authenticity is authentic, cusing primarily on ancestry and not content, its cultural prominence plays a significant role Fiddler’s tradition avoids the internal fragmen- in the vocabulary and practices of Jewish iden- tation that would arise from any attempt to de- tity formation. How can we understand the im- fine Jewish identity itself. Plus, identification pact of this turn toward authenticity as a mode with the tradition is largely symbolic. Individu- of self-discovery? als are free to shed those aspects of the tradition The first thing to realize is that the search that might retard the acculturation process. It for authenticity is not a new phenomenon for thus allows Jews to be clearly different without American Jews. The Jewish embrace of au- crossing socio-cultural norms of behavior. thenticity reflects a much larger cultural preoc- The legacy of authenticity linked to ances- cupation with the concept of a shared ancestry tors and a symbolic tradition can still be seen in that links the individual to a stable origin. communal conversations around “continuity” Charles Lindholm’s recent book, Culture and and “intermarriage” (and more recently in the Authenticity, explores the emergence of “au- emergence of DNA testing). This emphasis on thenticity” as a touchstone of identity. The descent as a road map for both narrating the search for authentic roots emerged, he argues, past and moving toward the future reflects an in the 19th century. A new concept, authentic- enduring preoccupation with Jewish authenticity addressed the individual and collective ity based on genealogical and geographic ori- needs sparked by the disruptive economic, so- gins. Jewish identity in the future, this cial, technological, and political changes that perspective implies, will share this mode of au- overturned a far more stable and clearly strati- thenticity. The clarity of descent has displaced Noam Pianko, a Sh'ma fied society. With roles transformed, hierarchies the ambiguity of Jewish belief and practice as Advisory Committee member, rejected, and novel possibilities for social ad- the primary criterion for authentic Jewishness. is an associate professor of vancement offered, origins became increasingly As someone whose early identity was Jewish studies and chair of the in doubt and up for grabs. The resulting sense shaped by a passionate if off-key performance Samuel and Althea Stroum of disorder and status confusion sparked a pop- of “If I Were a Rich Man,” I am sad to ac- Jewish Studies Program at the University of Washington.

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