The other day I think I began to understand what people now call “performative” identity, via the most jaw-droppingly performative act of Judaism I’ve ever seen. The place I was sitting in didn’t exactly feel like a Jewish fishbowl: an old time diner in South Lake Tahoe specializing in delicacies like biscuits and gravy with a side of Jalapeǹo bacon, deep in conversation with a stellar grad student. The staff seemed a mix of Latino and Arabic-speaking, the clientele had the same kind of vaguely redneck look that I do, and I was wearing a lovely watermelon-logo Palestine tee from Wearthepeace casually wondering if that mattered to anybody.
At that point I noticed a schlubby-looking white guy at the other end of the restaurant suddenly clock my shirt, and with a half-smile that I read as a smirk dig a tiny Kippah out of his pocket and balance it on his head. Now, I’m familiar with such acts of public flag-waving when people wish to address an audience “as a Jew,” but this was the first time I had ever seen someone literally perform an act of identification, in a turbo-Trayf diner no less, for an audience of one (me). What struck me as so batshit crazy about it is that wearing such a Kippah in daily life is typically the mark of an observant Jew, and with its panoply of pork this is no place an observant Jew would normally be caught dead eating in. In fact, many conventionally observant Jews would avoid even sitting in such a place because of the Orthodox principle of Mar’it Ha-Ayin (מַרְאִית הָעַיִן) avoiding even the appearance of transgression for fear it might mislead other observant people into making an authentic mistake.
I was tempted to walk up to him–sheepishly, of course, so as to avoid making more of a scene than I needed to–and asking, “does this place really have a Hashgacha??” The sad thing was I would have laid even odds he’d have no idea what the word (here, “legitimate Kosher supervision”) meant. How did we come to this pass, where so many define “Jewish” as “anti-Palestinian?”
Walter Sobchak’s famous rant from the Big Lebowski is a spiritual gemstone here: what is so disarming is that he’s angrily yelling about how Jews are a people whose life goes far deeper than current bullshit, able to inhabit everything and everywhere of Jewish history all at once: “Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax--YOU’RE GODDAMN RIGHT I’M LIVING IN THE FUCKING PAST!” So beyond 21st century politics and the obvious machinations of US support for its biggest client state, why does so many people’s Judaism today sometimes seem little deeper than picking one side in what most of the world recognizes as a genocide? What has been forgotten?
My hunch is in the broad population, few of us today have much of a connection to the Judaism of our ancestors beyond some not-exactly-coherent catchphrases (“Never Again!” “Am Yisrael Chai!” “indigenous,” “What the hell is a ‘scooped bagel?‘”). We probably don’t know what Rambam’s 13 Middot are (what Maimonides, arguably the most influential Jewish religious thinker of all time, considered essential to Judaism). Do we really officially believe in the resurrection of the dead? What about the Messiah–do we have one like the Christians do (or did they actually borrow it from us in the first place?). How important is this Messianic idea, including the principle that only God Himself could return Jewish sovereignty to the Levant at the hands of a descendant of King David?
Some would just throw up their hands and say, hey, I was born Jewish, I’m Jewish! Or…are you actually just white, with a side of lox and capers? The idea that Jewish identity is something obvious that defaults to Ashkenazic or Israeli identity is, as my colleagues Andrew Tobolowsky and Tamar Manasseh have show, on shaky ground both historically and spiritually.
And shockingly, it turns out that the real performative Judaism–the performance of commandments like keeping Kosher–is actually a lot older than Jewish “blood,” because the definition of Jewish ethnicity has famously flip-flopped over time. In biblical times Jewish descent meant having a Jewish father (all the descendants of Abraham and Jacob were his, no matter the mother) but in Rabbinic times it shifted to exclusively having a Jewish mother. While these two definitions can converge, each can also totally exclude the other, meaning that a clear, consistent historical “essence” to Jewish ethnic identity is pretty hard to find. More essential to Jewish continuity across time is what the Torah and Rabbinic thought continued to share: following the commandments. The Mizvot may be the best bet for what has always defined what it means to be part of Israel.
A second, equally time-honored essence of Judaism is described by the political theorist and professor of urban studies Marshall Berman:
Berman, “The Bible and Public Space,” in Modernism in the Streets (Verso, 2017) 350.I have been a scholar for most of my life…But I am also a Jew, grown up with the feeling that the Bible was “my” book, that it was my job to wrestle with it, and this wrestling would be my way to be part of Israel.
Today many Jews–including me–feel alienated from both of these original and long-lasting senses of Judaism. But we don’t have to be. I want to know what they offered the Jews of the past as well as those who learned from them. I think it’s still all there. I hope.
In this series I’ll try to briefly explore and unite these two oldest standbys, Torah and Commandments, divine teaching and human ritual, with the help of the radical Hasidic thinker known as the Sfat Emet–-the “language of truth.” My guide will be another time-honored habit, the weekly Torah portion or Parshat Ha-Shevua, starting this week with Shemini, “(On the) Eighth (Day).” Hit the subscribe thing ↓ if you want to join me!
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