Complexities and contradictions: ethnographic reflections on American Jewish identity

• In Event: Jewish Identities - Interdisciplinary Approaches

Abstract

In this paper, I use anthropological theory and ethnographic field research to explore the complex realities and lived experiences of liberal American Judaism. According to the recent Pew Study of Jewish Americans, over 80% of American Jews (“by religion”) define themselves as either Reform, Conservative or nondenominational Jews. Yet we know little about the lived experiences of these religious-secular populations, nor do we know what their Jewish practices mean to them (Buckser 2011, Sarna 2005). This paper presents the results of ethnographic research designed to begin to fill this gap. This research was conducted among liberal (non-Orthodox) Jews in the American Southwest, and focused on the MI SHEBERACH prayer and other activities related to health and healing. It also included in-depth qualitative interviews about Judaism, Jewish ritual, and Jewish identity, and 18 months of participant-observation in Jewish communal life. The data collected show that the lived experiences of Judaism and Jewishness are multifaceted, contradictory and in constant motion, and that these Jews live their Judaism in ways that cannot be easily categorized. Jewish identity ebbs and flows across the life cycle; these Jews take on, reject, reinvent, and/or combine Jewish practices with other practices (religious and secular) in their search for personal meaning; they struggle with belief and move between communal affiliations and allegiances over time and place. Their Judaism exists alongside, and enmeshed with, all of their other identities, synthesized in ways that may seem incongruent from the outside, but are not experienced as such. These liberal Jews perform and experience multiple Judaisms, depending on the context and with whom they are interacting. At times these multiple voices coexist seamlessly, with great ease, and at other times, with conflict and struggle. In this paper, I will also discuss the research and policy implications of this ethnographic research, and the ways in which it challenges our understanding of what Judaism is and what it means to be Jewish in today’s world.

author

• Gila Silverman, University of Arizona