“What thing could you not give up?” I asked. “What one thing would you have to keep as a Jew, that you think Judaism itself must have to survive?”
Most of my seminary students dropped into the safest standby. “Torah” was the most frequent answer. One student had the chutzpah to ask why. Another went even farther, asking why we felt we needed to make certain Judaism would survive at all.
I was glad of their chutzpah.
Because my question was an introduction to the surprising reality my students were about to confront: history offers so many wildly differing pictures of what has constituted “Jewish” or “Judaism” that clinging to anything and calling it definitive is a rather dangerous exercise.
Yom Kippur was not a day for breast beating for the Kaifeng Jews but rather Confucian-like meditative reflection.
Ancient synagogues of Late Antiquity sometimes featured a “rosh” that wasn’t Jewish. Others featured depictions of naked women on the walls. Really. Check here.
There is evidence that Jews of Late Antiquity of the Common Era were not convinced that circumcision was as critical to Jewish identity as the rabbis came to insist (and largely because they were responding to Christian fathers who insisted that circumcision was a punishment visited on the Jews by an angry God).
African Jewish communities often read and regarded as sacred texts American Jews have never heard of (the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, the Testament of Abraham).
Different Jews celebrate different holidays. They practice different rituals. The value different texts.
As we approach the High Holy Days, we often reflect on where we stand regarding ourselves and others. This year, I asked myself: is there something that defines what and who I am as a Jew? Something I could not give up?
Those who know me might guess that decades of studying and writing about texts (particularly Tanakh) and teaching Jewish history is foundational to my Jewish identity.
Others might say that my work as a congregational rabbi was and is clearly most important.
And still others might say that my hobby-Etsy business NotMyBrothersKippah is obviously one of the most fundamentally Jewish things I do – after all, I am creating the clothing Jews pray in and use to identify themselves as Jews.
I am here to say that they would all be right, in a way.
And wrong.
Because the one thing I could never stop myself from doing, a thing I regard as one of my most Jewish practices, is pretty mundane and contains no glory.
I do laundry on Fridays.
I have always done laundry on Friday unless I was too ill to stand. It’s a law in my house: laundry before Shabbat even when I don’t get to vacuuming or dusting or the like. It’s my own time-bound ritual – one as strong as any the rabbis insisted on.
(In fifteenth-century Spain, after many Jews were forcibly converted to Christianity, they were sometimes “outed” as false converts when neighbors reported them doing their laundry on Fridays. Maybe I am not alone?)
Now I am wondering if I would have gotten different answers if I had phrased that question differently.
What is the most mundane Jewish thing you do that you could not ever give up.
I promise. It doesn’t have to involve stripping the bed sheets off the mattress to be Jewish.
