De-Cluttering: Making Room for Jewish Life in the Twenty-First Century

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

With cheap manufacturing, globalized industry, virtual storage, and widespread social affluence, there has been a growing preoccupation in twenty-first century America around the topic of excess, and what to do with it. Whether it is extra inches around the waistline, too much stuff in our homes, or electronic clutter in our in-boxes, Americans are increasingly turning to the project of weeding out, thinning, downsizing, recycling and disposing. These efforts are necessarily coupled with the work that goes into identifying those items that are of essential and irreplaceable value; things that need to be retained, even at a cost. This panel uses the metaphor of de-cluttering as a framework for thinking about the contours of Jewish life in 21st century America. It takes as it starting point the fluid relationship between the matter and vitality, treating objects not as inert matter alone, but as vehicles for conceptualizing and activating social, spiritual and cultural life. In this sense, "de-cluttering” references the practical and material, as well as non-tangible categories such as knowledge and tradition.

Alanna Cooper’s paper examines processes through which congregations de-accession their communal property when their numbers dwindle. This are both material and social processes, provoking anxieties about history, communal identity and continuity. Cara Rock-Singer draws on ethnographic fieldwork among participants in the radical feminist Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute, who challenge normative ontological divides between text, body, and material culture. The study of their “sacred clutter busting” practice points to the implications of focusing on material culture to study religious practice. Finally, Ted Merwin’s paper challenges the notion that the Reform movement offers a “watered down” version of Judaism, suggesting instead that the movement’s leaders are responding to present circumstances by making self-conscious decisions about which aspects of ritual and heritage to discard, which to preserve and which to recycle. Here, “de-cluttering” is used as a metaphor, offering a vehicle for thinking about spiritual, ethical, and communal change in the 21st century.

Sub Unit

• Interdisciplinary, Theoretical, and New Approaches

Chair

• Ken Koltun-Fromm, Haverford College

Individual Presentations

• De-Accessioning Congregational Property: Synagogue Buildings in 21st Century America - Alanna Esther Cooper, Case Western Reserve University

• Kohenet’s Spiritual Materials: Altars, Archaeology and “Sacred Clutter Busting” - Cara Rock-Singer, Columbia University

• Diluted or Decluttered? Reform Judaism in a Secular Age - Ted Merwin, Dickinson College

Respondent

• Ken Koltun-Fromm, Haverford College