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Once, basic elements of identity were seen as unchangeable. If your mother is or was a Jew, then you are a Jew. If your father is or was liberal, then you too are liberal. Any shift from these home identities was considered radical and thought of as a conversion. But this is no longer true. An increasing number of people simply don’t accept their parents’ markers of identity. They see identity as something they create themselves. Our identities are no longer essential; they are constructed.""Rabbi Michael Sternfeld, my colleague at Chicago Sinai Congregation, writes, “maybe we should simply stop trying to say who qualifies and who does not. Instead we should be asking: who can we count on and whether they identify with the aspirations and values of the Jewish people.” I would rather draw boundaries based upon whether someone is an Ohev Yisrael, a lover of the Jewish religion, than based upon the purity of their religious commitments or the purity of their DNA."
Thought provoking. I particularly like Rabbi Sternfeld's comment "maybe we should simply stop trying to say who qualifies and who does not. Instead we should be asking: who can we count on and whether they identify with the aspirations and values of the Jewish people."
ReplyDeleteThis may be the growing reality anyway. Especially out here on the West Coast.