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Varieties of Authenticity in Contemporary Jewish Identity

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Varieties of Authenticity in Contemporary Jewish Identity [133] Contempo- Varieties of Authenticity rary Jewish Identity in Contemporary Jewish • Identity Stuart Z. Charmé Stuart Z. Charmé uch discussion about religious pluralism among Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews, about assimilation and Jewish conti- Mnuity, about Jewish life in Israel and in the Diaspora, and about a variety of other issues related to Jewish identity all invoke “authenticity” as the underlying ideal and as the ultimate legitimizer (or de-legitimizer) of various positions. In an address to the graduating class of Reconstructionist rabbis in 1983, Irving Howe encouraged the next generation of rabbis to “try for an atmosphere of authenticity, wherever you find yourselves.”1 An Orthodox rabbi in Philadelphia recently encouraged liberal Jews to share a Sabbath meal at an Orthodox home in order to see “how special an authentic Shabbas really is.”2 Israel, claimed Daniel Elazar, is “the only place in the world where an authentic Jewish culture can flourish (at least potentially). Even the more peripheral of American Jews are touched by the Jewish authenticity of Israel, while the more committed find the power of Israel in this respect almost irresistible.”3 And in response to such typical Zionist authenticity claims, one of Philip Roth’s literary alter egos proposes that Europe, not Israel, is “the most authentic Jewish homeland there has ever been, the birthplace of rabbinic Judaism, Hasidic Judaism, Jewish secularism, socialism, on and on.”4 Authenticity has become the key term for postmodern reconstruc- tions and “renewals” of Jewish identity. As feminist, progressive, gay/ lesbian, environmentalist, secular, and many other kinds of Jews lay claim to parts of traditional Judaism that offer recognition and respect to the previously marginalized parts of their identities, they also seek elements that they consider to be “authentically Jewish.”5 Thus Tikkun editor Michael Lerner argues that authentic Jewish identity must be “more spiritual; moral; God-centered; politically committed to social [134] justice; pluralistic; democratic; nonsexist; joyful; full of intellectual ferment; and open to dissent”6 than is allowed by either Jewish secular- Jewish ism or unquestioned adherence to tradition. Alan Dershowitz pleads for Social more fluid understandings of Jewish authenticity that allow one to say Studies that Yiddish secularism was “an authentic Jewish culture,” that political Zionism is “an authentic Jewish civilization,” and that Dershowitz’s own secular Judaism is “equally authentic to that of the ultra-Orthodox.”7 Why has the term “authentic” become such an important qualifier of Jewish identity, tradition, culture, and religion? In what sense is it possible to describe a Jewish person, place, practice, or ideological position as valid, real, or authentic? This article will analyze some of the historical and cultural roots of the idea of authenticity in general and how different conceptions of authenticity are or might be applied to Jewish identity, culture, and tradition. References to authenticity constitute a hybrid discourse, one that makes descriptive claims about historical continuity with particular tradi- tions of the past as a source of authority for the present (e.g., “halakhic Judaism is more authentically Jewish than liberal [non-halakhic] Juda- ism”), prescriptive claims about the normative superiority of one form of Jewish life over another (e.g., “religiously observant Jews have more authenticity than assimilated, ethnic Jews,” or “Jewish life in Israel is more Jewishly authentic than Jewish life in the Diaspora”), and existential claims about one’s deepest values and sense of self.8 At times the pre- scriptive claim of authenticity presumes descriptive claims about the legitimate Jewish past. For example, the normative superiority of one form of Jewish practice may be defended by appeals to its historical authenticity. At other times, claims of Jewish authenticity require con- testing elements of the received tradition, as in many feminist quests for an authentic nonsexist or inclusive Judaism. The search for Jewish authenticity may be in the service of modern individualistic goals of searching for meaning and achieving some form of self-actualization, or authenticity may be linked to a collective agenda, such as when forms of Jewish identity that encourage or preserve group survival are regarded as more authentic than less durable individualistic or assimilationist forms of identity. It is clear that many of the various uses of the idea of authenticity are incompatible with each other. One of the first questions that arises in exploring the issue of “authentic Jewish identity” is whether the authen- ticity aimed at refers to the Jewish content of identity or to an existential quality in the structure of a Jewish person’s identity—that is, whether “authentic” modifies “Jewish” or whether it modifies “identity.” What is the relationship between “authentic” Jewish traditions and a Jew’s per- sonal sense of “authenticity”? British chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks con- [135] tends that authenticity in the modern existential sense of determining one’s own values out of a commitment to being true to oneself, rather Contempo- than accepting external authority, is “the archetypal biblical vice.” Thus rary Jewish Identity “from the perspective of the autonomous self, halachic existence is inauthentic because it flees from making personal choice the center of • Stuart Z. the universe. From the perspective of tradition, much of contemporary Charmé ethics is inauthentic precisely because it makes personal choice the measure of all things.” Sacks finds the incompatibility between Ortho- dox and liberal Judaism located in the shift in authenticity from being a characteristic of Judaism to a quality of the self.9 Although this change in the meaning of authenticity to Jews is critical, Sacks presents the two competing elements—tradition vs. the autonomous self—as individually far less problematic than each one really is. Essentialistic Authenticity At the descriptive level, authenticity is often invoked when referring to the Jewish content in a person’s life. In other words, to call someone an “authentic” Jew may be a statement about the depth of their Jewish knowledge, observance, or commitment. On this scale, contemporary Jews frequently regard Orthodox Judaism as the most authentic repre- sentation of the Jewish tradition of the past and Orthodox Jews as the most authentic embodiment of that tradition. When Adin Steinsaltz, an Orthodox rabbi in Israel, called secular Jews “empty sausages that only have the skin left,” he was asserting a view of the real essence or “meat” of authentic Jewish identity. Claims of authenticity are often used by some Orthodox Jews to invalidate or “de-authenticate” other forms of Jewishness. Of course, in the past decade, romanticization of Orthodoxy has been tempered by resentment at Orthodox triumphalist denigra- tion of non-Orthodox Jews. In a survey of American Jews in 1989, when debate in Israel on the “Who is a Jew?” question had thrown the authenticity of non-Orthodox Judaism into doubt, only 18 percent agreed that Orthodox Jews were “the most authentic Jews.”10 Still, a whole range of Jewish religious leaders promote the return to Jewish religious tradition as the only path—not just to Jewish continuity but also to Jewish authenticity. In its basic form, this model of associating authentic Jewish identity with the essence of Jewish tradition is rooted in the German romantic idea of volksgeist, or “spirit of a people,” which treats an ethnic, national, or religious group as a distinct species with its own unique cultural [136] outlook to which it tries to remain true. Each member of the group is simply an instance of the shared common body of cultural, religious, Jewish and national traditions. This perspective can be traced back to the Social eighteenth-century German philosopher J. G. Herder, who emphasized Studies the historical nature of reason: the idea that thought itself takes on different forms in different peoples as a result of their different cultures, geographies, and languages.11 Such essentialistic models of authenticity are attractive to all those who are troubled by the most difficult problem of identity: its fluid, shifting, overlapping, and intersecting boundaries. It is easier to see oneself as an expression of a group identity that pre-exists one’s birth and continues after one’s death. Anthropologists Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnekin point out that “to imagine the collectivity as a species eliminates the problem of fuzzy boundaries: people can claim that any individual is or is not a member of the nation. There are no ambigu- ous or divided affiliations, and the nation, as a collection of individuals, is as definitively bounded as a natural species.”12 Tradition is the collective expression of a group’s essence, or volksgeist. Accordingly, authenticity is often associated with loyalty to a primordial and largely homogeneous tradition. Located in some idealized past, this tradition offers a means to resist the alienating and corrupting effects of other cultures or modern civilization in general. The glorification of tradition has often reflected an anxiety that the present moment or wider culture is fake and artificial, corrupted and alienating. Romantic reactions to the Enlightenment’s universalism held up the common folk or peasantry as the guardians of a cultural authenticity that was being lost in urban bourgeois society. The folk “harbored a spiritual essence that higher social classes had buried or lost in excessive civilization.”13 Seek- ing the shelter of tradition is to some degree symptomatic of “the destabilizing flux of the post-contemporary world.”14 Anthropologists have observed that the search for authentic indigenous cultures and artifacts has utilized the concept of authenticity to construct a boundary between modern Western culture and a pre-modern, pre-contact past representing what modern civilization has lost.15 The attraction to essentialistic models of Jewish authenticity is not limited to the very religious. Even secular Jews have claimed a sense of difference from non-Jews rooted in the Jewish volksgeist.
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