{"id":1748,"date":"2018-07-13T17:09:34","date_gmt":"2018-07-13T21:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/?p=1748"},"modified":"2018-07-14T16:13:48","modified_gmt":"2018-07-14T20:13:48","slug":"getting-outside-the-ashkenazi-normative-box-on-jewish-identity-and-jewish-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/?p=1748","title":{"rendered":"Getting Outside the Ashkenazi-Normative Box: On Jewish Identity and Jewish History"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_1749\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1749\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/adrenalinedrash.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Sigd.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1749\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/adrenalinedrash.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Sigd-300x200.jpg?resize=300%2C200\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/adrenalinedrash.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Sigd.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/adrenalinedrash.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Sigd.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/adrenalinedrash.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Sigd.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/adrenalinedrash.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Sigd.jpg?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/adrenalinedrash.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Sigd.jpg?w=1575&amp;ssl=1 1575w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1749\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ethiopian Jews celebrate Sigd (Photo AP).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>What can we be sure of? What constitutes an unchangeable, indelible, essential marker that makes a person Jewish, that defines what we can call Judaism?<\/p>\n<p>Twelve students and I joined together to consider these questions at the ALEPH Ordination Programs\u2019 annual retreat (otherwise known as smicha week). I was teaching a class entitled \u201cJudaism without Halakha and the Holocaust.\u201d We had gathered to consider how these two elements had been deployed as identity markers and, just as importantly, what Jewish communities looked like when neither were primary factors in their practice.<\/p>\n<p>I had peppered our reading with a set of wide-ranging data points that could take us beyond our mostly Ashkenazi-normative, rabbinically influenced education. For example&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Sometime in the century or so before the Common Era, a Jewish man survives a shipwreck.\u00a0 His inscription of thanks survives \u2013 in a Temple of Pan, one of multitudinous pieces of archeological evidence demonstrating that our ancestors regularly worshiped other deities.<\/li>\n<li>Who is leading synagogue life during the so-called \u201crabbinic period\u201d? \u00a0Women, for one.\u00a0 Gentiles, for another. (Really!)\u00a0 In his article \u201cEpigraphical Rabbis,\u201d historian Shaye Cohen points out that \u201c[t]he Jewish community of Rome alone left behind over five hundred inscriptions, many with references to <em>archisynagogues<\/em>, <em>archons<\/em>, <em>gerousiarchs<\/em>, <em>grammateis<\/em>, <em>patres<\/em> <em>synagogae<\/em>, <em>matres<\/em> <em>synagogae<\/em>, <em>exarchons<\/em>, <em>hyperetai<\/em>, <em>phrontistai<\/em>, <em>prostatai<\/em>, priests, teachers, and students, but not one with a reference to a rabbi. Not only did diaspora Jewry have no Rabbis of its own, it also did not look to Israel for Rabbinic leadership.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>During the course, my students learned that some Jews still practiced polygamy in the twentieth century \u2013 and slavery, too.\u00a0 They discovered festivals they\u2019d never heard of (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sigd\">Sigd<\/a>).\u00a0 They read about practices that intrigued them (Kaifeng Jews reciting Torah barefoot and with veils over their faces).<\/p>\n<p>We asked ourselves: What does it mean for us to think about Judaism as a genetic inheritance when Jewish communities in some parts of the world have practiced matrilineal descent (European), others patrilineal descent (Kaifeng, Karaites) and still others have found their way to Judaism through forced or voluntary conversion (the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Hyrcanus\">Idumeans<\/a> of the ancient world and the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Abayudaya\">Abayudaya<\/a> of ours)?<\/p>\n<p>What about texts?\u00a0 Must Jews at least know of the existence of Talmud, and rely on rabbinic texts for their practice to be legitimate?\u00a0 If so, a number of Asian and African communities would be exiled from Jewish history. \u00a0If we assumed Jewish communities have to have Tanakh, would that mean casting out the Lemba, whose Torah was an oral tradition of biblical stories?<\/p>\n<p>At one point, I asked my students: What, if anything, about Judaism could you do without?<\/p>\n<p>Lex Rofeberg, rabbinic student, wrote this:<\/p>\n<p>H<em>ere is a list of some of my favorite elements of Judaism:<\/em>The Book of Numbers<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Book of Numbers<\/li>\n<li>Shavuot<\/li>\n<li>Emma Goldman<\/li>\n<li>Mishnah Nedarim<\/li>\n<li>Reb Zalman<\/li>\n<li>The number 18<\/li>\n<li>My mom\u2019s brisket, on Passover<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>I love these pieces of Judaism. They add incredible, deep meaning to my life. And yet\u2026any one of them, or all of them, could disappear from Judaism, and it would still be Judaism.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Because it\u2019s not about me or my preferences. It\u2019s not about any of us. There is nothing \u2013 no holiday, no practice, no language, no community, no belief, no symbol, and no book \u2013 whose absence would transform the something that we call \u2018Judaism\u2019 into a something that is no longer \u2018Judaism.\u2019 <\/em><br \/>\n<em>Many of the somethings that our ancestors would have said define Judaism are already long gone. Not just our ancestors from millennia ago, like Moses and Miriam, but our literal grandparents! Some of the core pieces of their Jewish experiences have disappeared from our collective memory. <\/em><br \/>\n<em>And yet there is still a something that we call Judaism. And I like it! Despite the absence of so many rich treasures of our past, this Judaism thing is still pretty great!<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Because of that, I have a question that I commiserate over. More than asking what I couldn\u2019t bear to live without, from Judaisms that exist today, I ask myself: \u2018What doesn\u2019t exist yet that my children will one day consider an inalienable, necessary, uncompromiseable piece of the thing called Judaism?\u2019 That they could never imagine losing? How can we invent it? How quickly?<\/em><br \/>\n<em>That question, regarding our Jewish future and those who will inhabit it, should loom large at the core of what we do. May we be blessed with many diverse answers to it. We need to be checking our rear-view mirror frequently. But the road in front of the windshield beckons us too. Let\u2019s keep our eyes there as much as we can.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Regardless of our viewing direction, we need to ask questions that nourish, feed and sustain what we call \u201cJudaism.\u201d\u00a0 For our future\u2019s sake, we will be required to think beyond what we think we know is Jewish. From Asia to Africa to Europe and beyond.\u00a0 From ancient Israelite to modern Karaite.\u00a0 From all that is now to all that is yet to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\" http:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Sigd.jpg\"align=\"left\"width=\"70\" height=\"70\" Hspace=\"10\" Vspace=\"10\">We need to ask questions that nourish, feed and sustain what we call \u201cJudaism.\u201d  For our future\u2019s sake, we will be required to think beyond what we think we know is Jewish. From Asia to Africa to Europe and beyond.  From ancient Israelite to modern Karaite.  From all that is now to all that is yet to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[477,476,478,479,480],"class_list":["post-1748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jewish-identity","tag-judaism","tag-karaite","tag-lemba","tag-sigd"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1748"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1753,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748\/revisions\/1753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}