Inventing Jewish Ritual

2. The Narrative Approach

THE NARRATIVE APPROACH C H A P T E R 2 M A s we try to understand how new Jewish rituals are generated, we will consider them from a variety of angles. We will turn to two approaches as we explore the overarching questions of why we gravitate both toward and away from ritual innovation and how new rituals are incorporated into cultural practice. One approach studies the narratives of new ritual, and the other studies ritual from the perspective of material culture. Narratives will be discussed in this chapter; material culture in chapter 3. Characteristics of a Narrative of New Ritual With new rituals come stories. It could be the story of a ritual’s beginnings and its development over time. The story might be informally related each time one experiences the ritual, and hence modified with each telling. It could be a more formal narrative: a written document presented as a memoir or scholarly account, one based on personal experiences, interviews, and research. Studying these narratives generated by new rituals can help us better understand their underlying meanings . We compose such narratives in various ways. We might describe a new ritual’s accumulated rules and regulations and comment on distinctions between liturgies or ritual objects for newly created ceremonies (or between various new ritual objects). We might note how this new ritual builds upon or rejects rituals of the past, or how it rehearses major Jewish themes of the past in new forms. In the telling, we might integrate the experiences various people have had as they planned for and performed the new ritual. We might relate the forces that alternately pulled us toward and away from the new ritual. We might speak of our desires, excitement, and entitlement; we might speak of our anxieties about our right to innovate and even our fear of ridicule. The Poignancy of Narration Personal narrations of the struggle to balance transformation and tradition often reflect complicated streams of emotions: in the telling, we reveal we feel moved, conflicted, perplexed—sometimes, all at once. We might tell the story to make a point; other times, we discover that the stories we tell reveal multiple, even contradictory points. As an example: One writer applauds two friends—a transgender man and a bisexual woman—for changing the Jewish wedding ceremony to read, “Behold you are sanctified to me with this ring with the traditions of Moses, Miriam, and Israel before our God and this community,” as they affirm their commitments. The writer tells the couple: “It’s beautiful how you have updated our customs in ways meaningful to you both, while preserving the sanctity of their origins .” Yet when attending a LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) Reform congregation, the same writer finds less peace: I find myself uncomfortable with all the tweaked passages, prayers and melodies of the synagogue’s siddur. Admittedly, there are times that I, and several of my friends, are annoyed that the neutralization 58 INVENTING JEWISH RITUAL of Hebrew has gone so overboard that the familiar Judaism we were raised with is no longer recognizable. Understandably though, the amended wording is highly significant to many congregants, mostly women, alienated by the original text.1 The Pleasure of Reading Narratives about new ritual can make for fascinating reading, satisfying our curiosity, especially when we believe we are finally learning how the new ritual “really” started—of course, this may not be as straightforward as it seems. Still, we listen with pleasure to the biblical story of the first Passover, or the much more recent first bat mitzvah of Mordecai Kaplan’s daughter. In the coming chapters, I extend the repertoire of ritual narratives with many brief descriptions and three case studies that I will present at greater length, including a story practically unknown outside the Lubavitch Hasidic community: the creation of “Miriam’s tambourines,” a new ritual that played a potent role for Lubavitch women during the months before and after the death of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Formats Written narratives of new rituals appear in various formats and can serve distinct purposes. Aside from strictly academic studies, they include: 1. The personal chronicle. Often published as essays in magazines, in Jewish newspapers, or as chapters of books on contemporary Jewish practice, the narrative that is a personal chronicle starts as a memoir and subsequently becomes a guide for others. In effect, the writer says, “Here is the new Jewish ritual I made, what led up to it, and why...