The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America (review)

T H E JE W I S H Q UA R T E R LY R E V I E W, Vol. 94, No. 1 (Winter 2004) 221–223 STEVEN M. COHEN and ARNOLD M. EISEN. The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Pp. x Ⳮ 242. During the same time that Professors Cohen and Eisen were preparing their study of those American Jews whom they call the ‘‘moderately affiliated ,’’ I was also examining these same Jews.1 Given that parallel, I can vouch for the accuracy of their descriptions and for quite a number of their conclusions, which ring true to what I found. Like them, I discovered these Jews to be dedicated first and foremost to ‘‘the sovereign self’’ (p. 2). For these people, the search for meaning, even Jewish meaning, must answer primarily to their personal needs—it is no accident that the authors put the ‘‘self’’ ahead of community as well as family in the subtitle to their book. These are people whose Jewish affiliations derive not from their sense ‘‘of obligations to the Jewish group (though some felt these obligations), or from the historical destiny of the Jewish group . . . or the need to ensure Jewish survival’’ (p. 35). Here is the ‘‘me generation’’ in its contemporary Jewish incarnation. This is largely why so much that these Jews do is relegated to the private sphere where that self reigns supreme. Moreover, because that self is constantly developing and subject to change, these Jews often see in their Judaism ‘‘no final answers’’ and believe it demands ‘‘no irrevocable commitments’’ (p. 2). For Cohen and Eisen, this is a ‘‘profound individualism .’’ Others, however, with less charity in their description, might perceive it as a profound self-centeredness. To be sure, it is a self-centeredness that includes family, and to some more limited extent attachments to community. Yet in the end, it is what is good for the self that serves as the basic criterion of what they are willing to do. The result is that they ‘‘pick and choose’’ what they will embrace ‘‘among new and inherited practices and texts’’ in order to find what speaks to their personal desires and needs (p. 9). ‘‘Even the most observant and active of our interviewees,’’ the authors report, ‘‘expressed discomfort with the idea of commandment’’ (p. 24). In these pages, the reader sees a population strikingly different from a 1. Samuel C. Heilman, ‘‘Holding Firmly with an Open Hand,’’ Jews in the Center: Conservative Synagogues and their Members, ed. Jack Wertheimer (New Brunswick, N.J., 2000). 222 JQR 94:1 (2004) Jewry that feels bound by time-honored commitments to ritual, or that perceives itself to be linked in a great chain of Jewish being and feels obligated to maintain and appropriate the ways of its forebears. Missing among these moderately affiliated self-centered Jews is a sense of sharing in a covenant. They are even more uncomfortable with what Jewish tradition has viewed as the essence of Jewish peoplehood: the notion of a people possessed ‘‘of particular commandments issued by God to Jews alone’’ (p. 24). In place of commandment is comfort. As Cohen and Eisen put it, these Jews are convinced ‘‘that one need not take on any rituals with which one is uncomfortable,’’ and even that one should not be challenged about the choices one has made for and against certain Jewish practices and affiliations (p. 36). One looks in vain for Jews here ready to be told—even by their rabbis—what they must do. Religion is totally voluntary and only a matter of persuasion. If they are to better engage their congregant, rabbis can only hope to demonstrate that there is a value in Judaism that will enhance their personal sphere of existence. Hanging between the ideals of affiliation and personal satisfaction, these Jews are willing to share in the former but operate primarily on the basis of the latter. To be sure, ‘‘children are often the catalyst’’ for greater Jewish involvement , and many affiliate with the synagogue and Jewish life in general when those children are born or reach school age (p. 43). Yet the motives are...