Studying Judaism

The Critical Issues

Melanie J. Wright

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781472538888
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

This volume in the Studying World Religions series is an essential guide to the study of Judaism. Clearly structured to cover all the major areas of study, including historical foundations, scripture, worship, society, material culture, thought and ethics, this is the ideal study aid for those approaching Judaism for the first time. Studying Judaism offers readers the chance to engage with a religious tradition as a diverse, living phenomenon. Its approach is 'critical' in two major respects: its use of the dimensional approach to the study of religions as an interpretive framework, and its focus on matters perceived as problematic by insider and/or outsider commentators, such as gender, demography, geo-politics, the 'museumization' of Jewish cultures and its impact on religion and identity. This book is the perfect companion for the fledgling student of Judaism.

1

Introduction

The Jews are a scattered people. They live in many different countries, and with one exception they are a numerically insignificant minority in all of them. They belong to many different ethnic and linguistic groupings, and many different cultural backgrounds. Even within a single country these differences divide the Jewish communities from one another. So what is it that binds them all together, and allows us to speak in general terms about ‘the Jews’ ש One superficially attractive but actually misleading answer is that they are united by a common religion.¹

Judaism is a religion, so we begin by asking what we mean when we define religion in general, and one religion in particular. In general, people treat religion as a set of beliefs about God, and such a philosophical definition sets forth what a religion believes. A definition of Judaism would, therefore, begin with the statement that Judaism believes that God is one, unique, and concerned for us and our actions, thus ‘ethical monotheism’. But the philosophical definition leaves out much that religion accomplishes within the social order. Religion transcends belief, because it shapes behaviour.²

The mezuzah consists of a container of wood, metal, stone, ceramic or even paper containing a parchment with Deut. 6.4–9 and 11.13–21 lettered on the front and the word Shaddai (Almighty) on the back. Usually the container has a hole through which the word Shaddai can be seen. Otherwise the container should have the word Shaddai or the letter shin displayed on its front.³

How to begin the task of studying Judaism? Judaism, as the first of these quotations illustrates, is associated with a group of people, the Jewish people. So we might start by looking at demography – population size, distribution, structure, etc. – and then attempt to locate Judaism amidst the different aspects of that people’s experience. Israel is home to the world’s largest Jewish population, but only overtook the United States in that regard in 2006. The opening extract, taken from the 2010 edition of Nicholas de Lange’s Introduction to Judaism, positions Israel as the ‘one exception’ and presents dispersed, minority status as normatively Jewish. Moreover, his text notes that Jews are a multicultural community, a consequence of historical and present day factors such as adoption, conversion, intermarriage and migration. This kind of starting-point is likely to produce an account of Jews’ religious cultures – of Judaism – that emphasizes diversity, or even fracture, as the final sentence in the passage hints.

An alternative strategy is apparent in the second quotation. Initially, its author, Jacob Neusner, seemingly privileges the prioritization of belief in accounts of Judaism. But this approach is quickly dismissed. The targets of Neusner’s critique are the unnamed ‘people’ who characterize Judaism as ‘ethical monotheism’: first used by Christian biblical scholars to describe the religion of the Hebrew prophets, this label became popular amongst late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Jewish reformers who wished, in the wake of the Enlightenment,⁴ to stress that Judaism was a religion of reason, whose object was to guide people towards right conduct as desired by the one God.

Despite their different emphases, de Lange’s and Neusner’s texts have some common elements. Both reference the collective or social aspects of Judaism; Neusner’s words ‘behaviour’ and ‘order’ signal that the study of Judaism needs to embrace both particular actions, and the frameworks that shape and are shaped by them. Both also participate in the discourse of academia. What they say and how they say it reflects the fact that they write primarily for students or teachers in modern, western(ized) colleges and universities. They assume positions of neutrality or open-mindedness, and little or no prior knowledge of Judaism on the reader’s part.

The final quotation, although also highly formal in its language, takes a different approach. It does not begin with general statements about the Jewish people, or about the definition of religion, but with a description of the mezuzah, the encased piece of parchment that many Jews fix to their home’s outer door-post, and in some cases, to the post of every room in the house, save the bathroom. Michael Strassfield and Richard Siegel’s aim is to reawaken American Jews’ interest in religious ritual, food and art. The Jewish Catalog introduces a plethora of traditions and suggests how its readers might re-cast them in personalized, politicized terms. In this context the decision to begin, in media res, with the mezuzah, is understandable. The scriptural passages referred to in the quotation are the first two elements of the Shema (‘hear!/listen!’), Judaism’s most important prayer. Its opening phrase, ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone’, is often regarded as the quintessential statement of Jewish faith, while subsequent verses remind Jews of the obligation to follow God’s words or commandments (mitzvot) and to teach them to their children – in other words, to engage in the kind of activity that Strassfield and Siegel wish to promote. Examples of mezuzah cases and a scroll are shown in Fig. 1.1.

Figure 1.1: A Mezuzah Scroll and Cases, © K. Hannah Holtschneider

According to Jewish religious law, the mezuzah klaf (parchment) must be made from the skin of a kosher⁶ animal. The texts must be written in Hebrew by a scribe (trained religious copyist) and regularly checked for errors or damage. In theory, the case is secondary in importance to the klaf, but nevertheless a myriad of designs is available today. These examples are made from aluminium; glass and copper; and a clay-like polymer. Each bears the Hebrew letter ש (shin), the first letter of Shaddai, a name given to God in the Torah (Hebrew Bible).

Together, these quotations, each one taken from the opening pages of an introductory book, suggest something of the diversity of ways in which the study of Judaism may be arranged. They also underscore the extent to which any account of Judaism (or of Buddhism, Christianity, Paganism, etc.) is just that – an account or construct, which only imperfectly reflects religion as its adherents experience and live it. Even writers who strive, as does each of those above, to refrain from imposing an essentialist, normative, or otherwise overly simplistic definition of Judaism at some point find themselves systematizing their material in the effort to explain and inform. The task, then, is to resist the arbitrary, to offer an account of Judaism that is serious and critical, while acknowledging that ‘every project…is, more or less explicitly, a working out of experience and value in the world, the search for a personal point of view and a contribution, however modest, to wider ethics and politics.’⁵

Studying religion, studying Judaism

The publication of Studying Judaism in the Critical Issues series is itself an intervention in ethics and politics. As Bennett’s preface explains, the series seeks to renew Religious Studies by recovering its polymethodic character and thereby honing its critical edge. In writing this book, I attempt to balance clear, wide-ranging information for the reader who has little knowledge of Judaism with analysis and interpretation informed by a number of disciplinary perspectives. In particular, I draw on approaches in cultural studies, whose impact on religious studies has noticeably grown over the past two decades.

Cultural studies examines the practices and objects of everyday life, and the uses and meanings that people attribute to them. It analyses the ways in which individual and shared meanings and identities are produced and circulated. In considering these things, it emphasizes occasionality – that is, the precise moment or context in which a phenomenon is manifest. Cultural studies is relevant to the study of religion since religion is partly, or entirely, depending on one’s viewpoint, ‘what humans do, the texts and other cultural products they produce, and the statements and assumptions they make’.⁷

An illustration of what the questions and concerns of cultural studies might mean for the study of religion is provided by Nye, who is one of several scholars of religion to argue that what the Academy often conceptualizes as the discipline, or multi-disciplinary field, of ‘religious studies’ ought to be renamed, and thereby repositioned, as ‘religion and culture’. To study Christianity, he suggests,

one can of course study the Bible, high Christian art, and great thinking, but that does not tell us everything about the traditions of Christianity. For many centuries Christian people have been practising their religions in other ways, through producing less ‘great’ works of art, music, and literature, which could also be studied as forms of Christian culture.⁸

Two key aspects emerge here. First, the meeting of cultural studies and religious studies is associated with a democratizing definition of religion. It implies an interest in non-elite expressions (‘less “great”’, in Nye’s words) as well as elite ones (‘high Christian art and great thinking’). Second, it entails a broadening of the traditional activities of religious studies, to encompass the study not just of sacred texts, but also of other literary and art forms, and, as scholars of religion increasingly emphasize, of actions, objects and the body. As Cort writes of Jainism:

Jainism, as with any religious tradition, is in part a vast historical enterprise of trying to find, realize, and express the values and meanings of human life. The study of texts alone is insufficient for an adequate understanding of that enterprise. To the extent that human life is by its very nature embodied, physical, and material, the study of religions therefore must involve itself with the study of the material expressions of religion.⁹

One might readily substitute ‘Judaism’ for ‘Jainism’ in this quotation.

It is important to stress, especially for readers whose academic home is a religion department, that my referencing of cultural studies does not necessarily imply a wish to dismantle existing institutional structures. Rather, it is intended to underscore the necessity of deploying multiple tools in the effort to do justice to a religious tradition as a diverse, living phenomenon. For non-specialist readers, and particularly for students who major in other subjects but have opted for a single module or course in Judaism, this book’s engagement with other disciplines and fields including, but not only, cultural studies, should, I hope, facilitate the drawing of links between the familiar and the new. If I have been successful then the result is a work that makes few assumptions about its readers, but credits them with interested, interesting minds.

Reflecting these goals, the book is ‘critical’ in two respects. First, it explicitly relates Judaism to a set of conceptual and analytical frameworks and second, it addresses matters commonly perceived by ‘insider’/adherent and ‘outsider’/non-adherent commentators alike to be of critical import, like gender, geo-politics and the growing commodification and ‘museumization’ of Jewish religious cultures. Influenced by cultural studies, the texts, practices and objects discussed have been selected on the basis of a wish to explore the realities of the everyday and ordinary as much as artefacts deemed to be of aesthetic or intellectual excellence.

Consequently, Studying Judaism is structured slightly differently than other introductory books. The chapters are as follows:

What is Judaism? discusses the problems associated with the definition of Judaism as a ‘religion’. It considers the relationship between Judaism and the Jewish people, and offers an outline sketch of the major contemporary Jewish religious movements.

Authority looks at the importance of Jewish legal tradition and custom, describing key types of Jewish religious literature and the individuals and institutions associated with their authoritative interpretation. It also considers other types of authority within Judaism, such as the charismatic authority of the rebbe in Hasidism.

Worship, Festivals and Mysticism focuses on prayer, the Sabbath and festivals, and considers ‘time’ in Judaism. The chapter also looks at Jewish mystical tradition, kabbalah.

Beliefs examines the role of belief in different movements and historical and geographical contexts. It discusses ideas concerning God, revelation, theodicy, post mortem existence and messianism, and asks whether the work of ostensibly secular thinkers can be located within a Jewish religious framework.

Gender discusses constructions of masculinity and femininity in Judaism, looking at such topics as rites of passage, the family and modesty. It considers the impact of feminism on the practice and study of Judaism.

Politics addresses ideas about holiness, particularly in relation to the land of Israel. It touches on the Israel–Palestine conflict and on ideas about Jewish theocracy; it also considers Zionism and other political ideologies, assessing how far they are derived from Judaism.

Culture attends to Judaism’s material dimension, including synagogue architecture and artefacts associated with personal piety. It also looks at food and at ‘culture’ as it is more popularly conceived, including film.

Memory considers the place given to individual and collective memory within Judaism. It discusses mourning. It also focuses on pilgrimage and memorialization of the Shoah or Holocaust.

Jews and Others discusses attitudes within Judaism to inner-Jewish diversity and to other religions. It considers topics such as assimilation and challenges models of religions as discrete, boundaried entities.

Finally, Studying Judaism: the critical issues: the future touches on a range of issues vital for the future of Judaism and Jewish life (and for their study), including demography and sexual politics. It discusses how existing forms of Judaism are being challenged by, and are colonizing, new media and technologies.

Religious diversity is one of this book’s key themes. I do not want to suggest that the story of Judaism is overwhelmingly one of fragmentation, but as is true of other religions in the Critical Issues series, there exist within Judaism a number of different movements. I take account of well-known positions such as Orthodoxy, Conservative and Reform, and of some lesser-known ones like Karaism, Reconstructionism and Renewal. In utilizing these labels, I also remain mindful of the fact that ‘“Judaism” is an abstract noun. Jews, not Judaism, believe and do things’.¹⁰

As suggested previously,...

Table of contents

• FC
• Studying World Religion Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Author Biography
• Tribute
• Series Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 What is Judaism?
• 3 Authority
• 4 Worship, Festivals and Mysticism
• 5 Beliefs
• 6 Gender
• 7 Politics
• 8 Culture
• 9 Memory
• 10 Jews and Others
• 11 Studying Judaism: the critical issues: the future
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index