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167 Descent Versus Consent One feature of what many call postmodernism and what others call late modernity is that cultural identities are no longer structured and regulated by the constraints of descent but are structured and transformed by the freedoms of consent. The language of descent—of hereditary qualities, liabilities, and entitlements—is being replaced by the language of consent—of agents who freely choose not only their occupations and spouses but also their religions and even their ethnicities.1 The transition from traditional to modern societies included the change from ascription to achievement, but this affected mainly occupations, classes, and socioeconomic statuses. Modernization also included the process of nation building, which involved distinguishing groups in terms of descent. Terms such as American, French, and German were understood to signify unified cultures to which minority religious and ethnic descent groups might acculturate and dominant groups into which minorities might assimilate. The multiplicity of differentiations in extensively pluralistic postmodern societies , together with processes of globalization, has weakened these distinctions. Cultural diversity (both religious and ethnic) has obscured the notion of a dominant culture associated with purportedly nonethnic carriers; in the absence of a normative standard or reference group, cultural identities come to be perceived as freely chosen and constructed by consent. The change from descent to consent has not affected all cultural identities in equal measure. One cultural identity that has undergone considerable transformation in the direction of consent is religion. An identity previously passed on in most cases from one generation to the next has become in some Western societies, especially the United States, a matter of consumer freedom, of private preference and taste.2 Two interrelated changes have contributed to the religion of consent. One change is the substitution of the autonomous self or inner spirituality for the external voices of authority. The other is an ever more extensive religious pluralism, 8. judaism and jewish ethnicity Changing Interrelationships and Differentiations in the Diaspora and Israel 03 Part 3.indd 167 9/20/10 10:25 AM 168 cha p te r 8 which provides the religious consumer with a wide range of choices. Nowhere is there more emphasis on the right of the individual to choose his or her religious preference than in the United States, and nowhere is the number of religious alternatives so great. The triple melting pot of Protestant, Catholic, and Jew, which apparently became entrenched in the 1950s, has been superseded by a religious pluralism that also includes Islam, Eastern religions, and New Age religions .3 Religious privatism is occurring in other societies, but making the self the locus of religion has fewer implications for religious choice if the choice is made within a society with few religious alternatives. Such is the case for Jews in Israel, where the high social boundaries between national groups associated with Judaism and Islam and the state-supported near monopoly of orthoprax Judaism are highly restrictive of choice among religious traditions. Ethnic identities are also undergoing a transformation from descent to consent, but this is a slower process and is not yet so encompassing as in the area of religion. The definition of ethnicity includes references to descent or inheritability, and the development of ethnic choice is likely to depend more on intermarriages than religious choice has. An increasing number of ethnic intermarriages produces multiple ancestries from which children can choose their preferred ethnicity.4 In the past the constraints of descent meant that a religious intermarriage was often accompanied by one spouse’s adoption of the other spouse’s religion; but the understanding of ethnicity as inherited made the adoption of a spouse’s ethnic identity problematic. The principle of religious preference has made partners in intermarriage feel less obligated to adopt the religion of their spouses—but conversion of one spouse to the other’s religion is still more likely than the adoption by one spouse of the other’s ethnic identity. Where religious and ethnic identities are associated with each other, it is possible that a religious conversion will be seen as an ethnic act as well as a religious one.5 However, it is also possible for the spouse who converts to differentiate between religion and ethnicity and adopt the partner’s religion without the accompanying ethnic identity. Compared with religious identities, which may even become more salient when adopted, the choice of ethnic identities provided by multiple ancestries is likely to be accompanied by a decline in the salience of ethnicity. Recent studies of...

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