Boundaries of Jewish Identity

Introduction: Who and What Is Jewish? : Controversies and Comparative Perspectives on the Boundaries of Jewish Identity

3 introDUCtion Who and What Is Jewish? Controversies and Comparative Perspectives on the Boundaries of Jewish identity sUsan a. gLenn and naoMi B. soKoLoff The subject of Jewish identity, including the question of who is a Jew and what constitutes “Jewishness,” is one of the most vexed and contested issues of modern religious and ethnic group history. This cross-disciplinary volume brings together work by a diverse group of scholars to offer comparative perspectives on what might best be described as the various Jewish “epistemologies” or ways of knowing who and what is “Jewish.” Focusing on the twentieth century and the contemporary world, the contributors bring insights from the realms of Jewish law, anthropology, history, sociology, literature, and popular culture to three overlapping areas of debate: definitions of who and what is “Jewish,” including controversies surrounding conversion, apostasy, and notions of authenticity; images and self-representation of Jews, including those found in scientific and rabbinical discourse; and boundary issues arising out of the interactions among Jews and non-Jews. Individually and collectively, these essays raise important questions about how Jews imagine themselves and who defines what it means to be Jewish.While, historically, Jews have often been defined by their enemies or within the discourse of surrounding majorities, Jews themselves have carried on a rich and sometimes rancorous internal dialogue about how Jewishness should be defined. How are those definitions established, enforced, challenged, and transformed? What is considered normative, what is official proclamation, what is imposed and by whom? Studies in many disciplines and Jews from many walks of life have asked, does being a Jew require religious belief, practice, and formal institutional affiliation? One of these? Or all? Do polit- 4 Introduction ical behaviors or social associations make someone Jewish? What is the status of the convert to another religion? Is there a biological or physical aspect of Jewish identity? And how do these issues play out in different geographic and historical settings?What is the historical and contemporary relationship between ideal and lived experience? These are questions that generate multiple answers. What makes this volume distinctive is its attention to ways in which the possible answers reflect the different social, intellectual, and political locations of those who are asking.The essays here highlight the extent to which different ways of knowing and determining what is “Jewish”— genetic, cultural, social, religious, physical, legal, linguistic, literary, and more—produce surprisingly diverse and sometimes contested definitions of identity. The essays in this volume also emphasize the existence of new kinds of Jews and new issues associated with Jewish identity. The question of who is a Jew has taken on myriad, sometimes startling, new manifestations in the rapidly changing world of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and in the past decade has posed a wide range of unprecedented conundrums. Interest in these issues transcends the realm of academic scholarship. In the past ten years both the national press and Jewish-interest periodicals have drawn attention to the shifting and dynamic aspects of modern Jewish identity and the new face of Jews in North America, Israel, Europe, and elsewhere in the world. Popular exhibits such as “The Jewish Identity Project: New American Photography” at the Jewish Museum in New York City vividly call attention to the varieties of cultural expression and physical appearance among Jews around the world. Much interest concerns the changing demographics of Jewish life, as intermarriage and adoption—along with waves of immigration from the former Soviet Union, Ethiopia, Iran, and elsewhere—have introduced diverse individuals and populations into Jewish communities whose ancestral roots were primarily in Europe. Scholars and the wider public have followed the debates that have arisen over the conflict between Jewish self-identification and established norms of ethnic and religious identity , including the movement of women into positions of religious authority. And these issues have become especially fascinating as Jews who live outside the cultural and social mainstreams of Jewish life Introduction 5 (e.g., the Lemba of southern Africa, the Subbotniks of Ukraine, the Bnei Israel in Ethiopia, the Kuki-Chin-Mizo in India, and the CryptoJews of the American Southwest) assert their rights to be recognized as Jews. Challenging previous conventional wisdom or assumptions of what is normative, shifts of population have led to awareness that the conundrums posed by the question “who is a Jew?” are ever evolving. The questions we raise will be of interest not only...