Last week, I attended a fantastic Shabbat service and dinner with dozens of students from all around Manhattan, through NYU’s Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life, which I cannot gush about enough. (They’re fabulous.) It was a wonderful experience and full of people from all different backgrounds and every possible kind of observance. But in the midst of all the wonderfulness, I heard something that really irked me.
A girl beside me began talking about Chabad on campus. She said, “I love Chabad. I grew up with Chabad, because I came from an area where there are no synagogues.” I was intrigued, wondering if she came from a really rural area in the Bible Belt. She continued, “I mean, there are reform and conservative congregations, but there are no religious Jews in Orange County, California.”
Even though I don’t necessarily identify with a particular denomination and definitely don’t do all the “right things” all the time (pass the fried shrimp), I was outright offended by this declaration. Since when are reform and conservative Jews separate from religious Jews? I’m sure there’s a reform rabbi somewhere who takes her religion a hell of a lot more seriously than a disenfranchised young Orthodox Jew. A person’s affiliation with a particular denomination says absolutely nothing about his or her affinity toward the religion; it speaks only to the way he or she expresses it.
In fact, I fully believe it is possible to be a strongly religious person with no loyalty to a synagogue at all. Especially in Judaism. Don’t we teach about the importance of things that are deeply personal, like building your own Jewish home, praying silently, and acting out the mitzvot, among many other things? Being a good Jew isn’t about which seminary the rabbi you most respect attended. It’s not about the siddur that you read from on the High Holidays. You can be a religious Jew no matter what variation of Judaism you subscribe to–that’s one of the most beautiful things about Judaism. It’s about taking what matters most to you and making it part of your life.
Judaism is a journey, not a destination. So Whether a Jew begins his religiousness in Orthodoxy and becomes more Reform in his ways, or a Conservative Jew spends her whole life adhering to the same sets of rules, regulations, and beliefs, or a Christian converts and finds a home in a Reconstructionist synagogue, the religion is about the journey and about what each Jew makes of it. Don’t ever try to define levels of religiosity based on denominational subscription. We as Jews should know, nothing should ever be that simple.
Shabbat Shalom to all the Jews out there, no matter how you identify.
Tags: Ashley Tedesco, chabad, Orthodoxy, Postdenominationalism
Dear Ashley:
Perhaps there is some confusion over the meaning of the word ‘religious’.
It’s meaning definitely changes from one’s perspective. It is very ambiguous.
When a shomer shabbat Jew (Orthodox follower of the rules of Halacha) refers to the word, the meaning is simple: Shomer Shabbat: no driving, t.v., money, light switching, cooking for the full 25 hours.
Once you take away all rules, as in Reform, or keep the rules as in Conservative, but violation is meaningless, then religion is a feeling: Jewish pride, ‘the journey’ and ‘what each Jew makes of it’.
Unfortunately, there is a 4,000 year history of the fate of this kind of ‘religious’: Since, as each generation passes, and when each generation takes its own journey, the reference to the past becomes weaker. The new context is the contemporary scene.
The result: Jews have only 14 children per couple, where 25 are required to break even with the loss of those at the end of their life cycle. However, due to today’s 50%+ intermarriage rate, that number goes up to 50 children per Jewish couple. But, oh… only 1 out of 4 Jewish children get a Jewish education, without which they are not even in the bleachers cheering… So… you need 200 children per 10 Jewish couples just to keep the numbers we have TODAY! Of course, it ain’t gonna happen. What’s more, that journey is headed toward Jews for J faster than you can imagine.
And yes, they are both religious and they believe they are still Jewish. But is that what you meant?
Remember campus Jewish life is different: Many are exploring and most all enjoy the love, no matter what the practise.
Your friend who disclaimed the religious in Orange County was also speaking relatively. Yes, there are wonderful Chabads, Beth Jacob of Irvine and Beth Torah in Laguna Woods. But, she was right overall: the “community” Jewish Day school, Morasha had to close its doors for lack of enough paying parents. There are no Jewish neighborhoods with the delis, shuls, schools and mikveh. It’s an ocean of religious Christians. Saturday temple services are B’nai Mitzvah family celebrations with a few baby namings on occasion. There is extremely little intensity of religious feeling.
For those who seek it and feel the need for it, but can’t find it in their reform temples, it is more important for them to have that feeling than to go to a temple. They have been informed from birth that Orthodox is retrograde and primitive, so they seek and find welcoming love and passion in a church and put on a kippah to remind themselves that they are Jewish. That’s why you can see kippot in churches.
Ashley, sorry, but that is the reality of the fate of your ‘feel good’ religion. For the most part, those Orthodoxers are Hebrew/Aramaic literate, marry Jewish and young, have 3+ yeshiva going children and very likely to make Aliyah. That’s what they call ‘religious’.
So if you believe that bringing a sidur to Yom Kippur instead of a machzor is adequate, then at least be aware as a consumer the value of your religiosity: It is that of a cut flower: nice today, but actually dead.
I spent four years on campus trying to keep my cool when trying to explain that Chabad were not the “cool Jews” or the “really Jewish Jews.”
I know that Chabad is a sect that was founded decades after reform Judaism. They have beliefs that, if Jews actually knew about, would easily be considered “not Jewish” or “not humane” by Reform, Conservative, or Modern Orthodox standards. I know that they get over 80% of their donations from secular American Jews because they think Chabad is “preserving Jewish tradition.” I know that in 2008 they gave $33 million to West Bank Settlers. I know that 80% of Israelis oppose the settlements.
I’d love to claim that Chabad are not actual Jews, in the same way that Protestants claim Mormons are not Christians, or the way Mormons claim Fundamentalist Mormons are not Mormons. But I know that almost no one in the world outside of the Jewish population believes this, and I know most Jews don’t believe this either.
Apologies, I was incorrect about the timing of Chabad with reform Judaism. It was started in the 18th century. Reform Judaism was started at the turn of the 20th century.
Incorrect again – Reform Judaism (as an organized movement) started in the early 19th century, just a few decades after Chabad.
I suppose I don’t get why so many Jews get hung up on labels, affiliations, and spectrum. I tend to agree with the author that Judaism is much more than labels. I grew up in what would be called a conservative Jewish home, but I have found my own path to Judaism. I don’t need to belong to a movement to feel Jewiah. If some people feel the need to identify with a label, thats their choice, and perogative. The labels thing is not for everyone, but we should focus on the fact that we all have the same heritage. We all have our own sense of Jewish identity, and are part of the big dysfunctional family known as the Jewish people, and at the same time, we have a responsibility to our heritage to be accepting of each other’s different brands of Judaism, just like we have relatives who we think are strange, we’re still related, and we would still go out of our way to help them, because we’re family. I do not buy the argument that one person’s form of Judaism is better than another, whether religious or not. Let’s make the communal effort to be more accepting and welcoming to our family members, for all of their quirks. Families are supposed to accept the quirks of its members, regardless of how odd and strange they are to us.
Ethan,
33 Million?????
Where in the world did you get your numbers from? Chabad does not have that kind of money to give to settlers. It is completely franchised and there is no single Chabad organization (other than perhaps Russia) that has that big of a budget in the first place? Please cite a source for that outrageous claim.
There is enough true shmutz! Why make it up?
I think you make a really important point that I have been stressing to people for a long time:
“A person’s affiliation with a particular denomination says absolutely nothing about his or her affinity toward the religion; it speaks only to the way he or she expresses it.”
The different denominations don’t exist on a spectrum. You don’t have Reform on one side, Orthodox on the other and Conservative somewhere in between. I think we could definitely agree that there are Jews who are more religious than others (however we really want to define religiosity), but I don’t think it could be determined by denomination.
One of the worst things in Israel is that the closest word to define someone as being Orthodox (of any flavor) is “dati” – literally translated as “religious.” I think this word choice alone is a major reason why liberal Jewish movements like Reform and Conservative have grown much slower in Israel than they have in other places. There is a stigma in Israel that to be religious is to be Orthodox, and that turns people off.
Great post.
You say that being Jewish is “acting out the mitzvot,” among other things… and at the same time you are trying to say that people who don’t keep them are religious… you are contradicting yourself.
But, despite your confusion, you are correct, Jews can be religious and not observant. Your religion is your conviction (passionate about it or not), but your practice are your mitzvot. Many people are religious and do not practice, they think they are not religious, but they very well can be.
The trouble is, that Jews who go to Reform temples almost always declare about themselves “I did not grow up very Religious, my family belonged to a Reform Temple” or “my Temple was not very Religious, it was very Reformed”, which means that they themselves are un-noticeably admitting that they are a compromise and not the real deal. I think that it would anger their leaders to hear this kind of talk, but this is what I hear whenever I talk to someone who is “Reform”.
As an aside, I prefer to call them Jews who go to Reform rather then Reform Jews, because the vast majority of them, -as you might want to argue in many other communities as well- go there out of convenience not ideology. The Reform Jews are either (1) the Leaders, or (2) those who converted outside of the bounds of Halacha or the many other ways that only Reform recognize them as Jews. (i.e. they are Jews only by Reform, not by the other denominations).
One Chabadnik once said, he knows only three types of Jews…
1. Those who do many mitzvot.
2. Those who do more Mitzvot
3. Those who do even more Mitzvot.
Everyone compromises, but some sanctify their compromises, and others recognize them for what they are.
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I’m surprised that BZ didn’t throw an even bigger fit over the frames used here. Reform is NOT a synonym for lax observance!
Again, how do we define “religious”? Is it “shemirat mitzvot” or “yir’at Shamayim”? Devotion to the teachings of God, or the practices and rituals of halakha? There are many people who keep mitzvot on the outside but are completely ethically void – are THEY religious?