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[Continued from previous posts on READ: What I Wish My Christian Friends Knew about JUDAISM by Robert Shoen. This chapter is interesting; it answers the question what makes a person ‘Jewish’. —Admin1.]
Even if I have never been a “practicing” or observant Jew, I’m still Jewish.
Whether I attend religious services or speak or read Hebrew, I’m still Jewish. Regardless of whether I have become a bar mitzvah or been married in a Jewish ceremony (or, for that matter, married another Jewish person), I am still considered Jewish. Even if I’ve never stepped into a synagogue in my life, if I was born a Jew, I’m still a Jew. And if I’ve converted to Judaism, then I am considered as much a Jew as someone who is born a Jew.
I can renounce my Jewish heritage and religion and convert to another faith, in which case I might consider myself something else. I may even seek my own form of observance, define and embrace a personal concept of God, or combine tenets of several different religions. However, according to traditional Jewish law, I am still considered Jewish.
And when my time is up, even if I don’t know the first thing about the history of Judaism, the literature of the Old Testament, or the difference between Hanukkah and harmonica, I can be buried as a Jew.
The problem with all this is that it causes a lot of confusion to non-Jewish observers. For example, if I have a Jewish friend who is very observant, attends synagogue services every day, always covers his or her head with some kind of hat, recites prayers periodically throughout the day for myriad activities, keeps a strictly kosher home, and never works on the Sabbath, my friend will be considered a more observant Jew than I am. However, I am just as much a Jew as my friend is.
Many of the customs, procedures, beliefs, and behavioral aspects of the Jewish religion date back hundreds and even thousands of years. Most Jews throughout history lived in small, closed communities or ghettos and did not mix with general society, except perhaps for work or mercantile purposes. Today, of course, this is not true, especially in the United States (although there are always exceptions).
Thus, describing what it is like to be Jewish is like describing snow. While you can describe snow in terms of intensity, duration, witness or dryness, inches of snowfall, historical perspectives, granularity, color, effect on visibility, and even the possibilities of school closings and ski conditions, you can also just say “It’s snowing.”
It is really the range or spectrum of Jewishness that makes it difficult to describe or explain. An Israeli friend of mine describes it as a continuum. You can go from the ultra-Orthodox Jew all the way to the most liberal Reform Jew, from the extremist to the virtually nonobservant Jew, and still find some similarities of belief. Even though there are more differences than commonalities, all of these people are Jews. While there may be very little that ties them together (even tradition is not a leveling factor), what they do have is a common lineage and a common ancestry—a common history.
When describing things Jewish, I often find myself saying things like, “Some Jews beleive . . .” or “Reform Jews do not believe . . .” or “It is not uncommon for some Jews to . . . ” The reason for all this hedging is that Jews typically do not agree on many aspects of what it means to be Jewish or of Judaism itself. That doesn’t mean, however, that I can’t give you an overview, a snapshot, or perhaps a sketch of the Jewish way of life—the customs and beliefs, the holidays and festivals, the history and people.
In many instances throughout the book, I introduce a term in one section and more fully explain it in a later chapter. Hebrew and Yiddish words are defined in the glossary along with their correct pronunciations.
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