Puzzling Through the Question of Jewish Identity
Yesterday I was asked a question that has since stirred quite a bit of reflection about my sense of my own Jewish identity. The question was: “what is your first Jewish memory?” My first instinct was to scan my mental data bank for childhood images of Shabbos candles, a seder, first day of Jewish day school etc. Within seconds though I realized that something about my search for an answer didn’t feel right. It hit me that what was presenting the challenge was the assumption that subtly underlay the question; that is, the notion that one’s experience and/or memory of experience can be parsed out into categories and then labeled Jewish or non Jewish. The logical corollary of the question is that there is ‘non’ Jewish memory. At first glance, the question might seem straight forward enough. But when I had to actually answer it, it inevitably brought up the more fundamental and difficult question about what is Jewish? and what does being Jewish mean to me? What quickly became clear, which I now realize is a prominent theme in the blogs that I have written, is the idea that for me being Jewish is not something that I experience as separate and distinct from other aspects of my life or identity. It informs my sensibilities and world view, and as such, is one of the central lenses through which I experience the world.
So, in the end, I was unable to answer the question. For even if I thought broader, beyond looking for memories of obvious Jewish rituals, where would I stop broadening my reach? What about memories of my parents or Bubbie speaking to me in Yiddishisms? Does language fall within the realm of ‘Jewish’? What about the fond memories of my Bubbie’s food, recipes from the shtetle? Does food fall within what we consider Jewish? What about hearing talk about the ‘war’ and ‘Europe’ (code for the Holocaust)? When does history and politics count as Jewish? What about memories of earliest friendships, when all my friends were Jewish, and my neighborhood was Jewish? When does the social count as Jewish? For me anyways, the answer is that it is all Jewish.
Tags: jewish, Jewish identity, Memory, Yiddish