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During one of my many conversations with Penina, a Lubavitcherbaalat teshuvah , she reflected on the importance of a Jewish identity, saying, “in the religious life you are a Jew as your primary identity before you’re a woman or a man. If things sway you through your second identity as a woman or a man you have to go back to your primary identity to decide what to do about it. But what does it mean to be . . . a Jew as your primary identity?” What does it mean to be a Jew in America at the close of the twentieth century? With the competing forces of multiple identities inherent in the modern world, Judaism has become only “one resource among others upon which an individual may draw” (Schoenfeld 1988) in creating identity. So, what makes the appellation “Jew” central to the identity of so many Jewish Americans, including those who have no ties to Judaism other than to call themselves Jews? Perhaps most important, how is Jewish identity lived and instantiated on a daily basis? In this essay I analyze the concept of identity and, by examining the lives ofbaalot teshuvah (newly Orthodox Jewish women),1 provide one illustration of the way in which Jewish identity is constructed and reconstructed.2 This research explicates one side of the relationship between individual and collective identity, that of the individual. Through an examination of individuals in “transit” between two incongruent worlds, it is possible to gain a clearer picture of the competing forces of modern Jewish identity. Before turning to the experiences of baalot teshuvah, however, I want to explicate the notion of identity in general and Jewish identity in particular. 10 Jewish Identity Writ Small The Everyday Experience of Baalot Teshuvah Louise E. Tallen 234 IDENTITY Selves do not live in isolation; we exist in relationships with others (Mead 1934).3 It is our ability (and need) to identify with others, either individuals or groups, that creates the link between self and the outside world. In order to create meaning, self reaches out to others and identifies with them, creating identities. Thus, creating and negotiating identities is a vital task of the self. Identity is “the sense of oneself as simultaneously an individual and a member of a social group” (London and Hirshfeld 1991:33).4 Identity negotiation is largely an unconscious process (Erikson 1980:122). Yet forbaalot teshuvah, as for other individuals who undergo radical life changes and for those living in cultural margins and borders, this process is often made conscious as part of the struggle to unlearn old ways of being in the world and learn new, often antithetical, ways. For baalot teshuvah, finding a compromise between their former secular identity and the new identity associated with the ideals and norms of the religious community in which they live is of central importance. Every woman with whom I spoke, either casually or in the context of an interview, discussed the dilemma of managing competing demands between self-desire and the needs, expectations, and standards of her religious community. Baalot teshuvah have to learn new ways of behaving and thinking as they adopt an observant identity and they have to unlearn the thought and behavior patterns of their secular lives. Thus, baalot teshuvah have a double dilemma, they must negotiate a compromise between self and their new community and must decide what values of secular American culture to let go of and what to retain, if any. In the research described below, I focus on how identity is experienced by individuals rather than on analytical discussions or cultural models (Hollan 1992; Holland and Kipnis 1994; Wikan 1995), because this focus allows examination of the ways in which individuals struggle to create and sustain meaning in their lives (Obeyesekere 1981; Goldberg 1982).5 An examination of individual lives is important because it represents the discrepancy between the ideal of cultural models and the reality of lived experience. JEWISH IDENTITY Recently there has been a flood of volumes analyzing Jewish identity.6 A major thread running through these discussions is that, beginning with the rise of the nation-state and the emancipation of the Jews, secular Jewish identity became a possibility for the first time. Zionism in particular caused a radical rethinking by transforming Judaism from “a divinely ordained body of beliefs, norms, and practices into a secular culture created by Jewish people” (Silberstein 1994:2). Jews began questioning their identity, thus jewish identity writ small 235 [3.145...

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