American Judaism – From Under the Fig Tree

Bright spot

joselitDecember 7, 2015November 16, 2017Leave a comment

In the weeks leading up to Hanukkah, my inbox was filled with multiple invitations from a diverse array of journalists to talk about the holiday. A writer for The Atlantic wanted to know more about Hanukkah’s history in America; a reporter for Time plied me with questions about contemporary practice, while her counterpart at the Wall Street Journal, appropriately enough, zeroed in on Hanukkah gelt.

Much as I appreciate, and am even flattered by, the burst of interest in my perspective -- after all, the last time I experienced such a show of popularity was back in 10th grade -- I’m curious about the media’s attentiveness. Surely, it’s not for want of other newsworthy stories; we’re hardly experiencing a slow news cycle. What’s more, near as I can tell, there are no new and startling developments in the way in which American Jews mark the holiday, apart, say, from substituting crème fraiche for sour cream atop potato latkes. This latest dollop of culinary innovation may have the traditionalists among us all riled up, but it hardly qualifies as journalistic fodder. What, then, might account for the current expression of interest in the Festival of Lights?

I suspect it has something to do with persistence. Though of ancient vintage, Hanukkah hasn’t bit the dust, as have so many other equally hoary festivals. Instead, it keeps chugging along, accruing new meanings and new practices along the way, especially in the United States where a host of factors over time -- consumerism, the rise of the State of Israel and intermarriage, among them -- have endowed the holiday with a new lease on life.

In the 1920s, the availability of new foodstuffs such as Crisco allied “latkes and modern science,” contemporizing the traditional tuber dish. In the immediate postwar era, American Jews increasingly associated the ancient Maccabees with modern-day Israeli soldiers, heightening Hanukkah’s relevance. Today, intermarried families make a point of celebrating both Hanukkah and Christmas, extending its reach and giving rise to a new genre of humorous greeting card that takes the sting out of the so-called “December dilemma.”

An exercise in adaptation, Hanukkah has stayed the course -- which, come to think of it, might well explain its appeal to the Fourth Estate. At a time of wholesale and rapid change, the holiday’s endurance is something to write about.

Spin on, Hanukkah!

Good Manners

joselitOctober 21, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Measuring acculturation isn't easy. Some look to language, others to economic behavior and still others to the maintenance of religious ritual as an index of a group's integration and modernization.

On the strength of a recent story in the New York Times, I recommend that we add etiquette to the list. American Jewish youngsters, it now seems, have no sense of how to behave at synagogue services: they slouch when they ought to stand, text when they ought to sing, talk when they ought to be silent, and on and on goes the roster of faux pas.

Emily Post Blue Book. Source: Amazon.com

Breaches of synagogue etiquette now come so fast and furious that a number of dismayed Jewish educators have gone so far as to organize classes on how to behave while in the sanctuary. They're not alone. The Times reports that in Detroit, dance classes for preteens routinely add a few pointers on "bar and bat mitzvah etiquette" to the curriculum.

Years ago, learning the fine points of etiquette had little to do with the protocols of the synagogue -- who would even have imagined it?! -- and everything to do with the rituals of daily life: how to doff one's hat, talk on the phone and polish off a bowl of soup.

Jewish immigrants, eager to fit in and do right by America, learned the ABCs of proper behavior from Etikete, a text published in Yiddish in 1912. The functional equivalent of Emily Post's Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, this hefty compendium of dos and donts put the mannerly life within reach.

It's a measure of how far American Jews have come that the great-grandchildren of those who might have consulted Etikete on occasion now need formal lessons in what to do when at shul. Now that's what I'd call 'acculturation!'

Word Play

joselitOctober 12, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

The recent volley of Jewish holidays – so rich in activity – didn’t leave much room for thinking about absence. What with a seemingly non-stop round of marketing, cooking, eating and shul-going, the opportunity to take note – and stock - of something missing all too easily got lost in the festive shuffle.

But now that things have resumed their normal course, it’s hard for me to think of anything else, from the absence of the occasional worshipper who would pop in and out of the sanctuary just in time for yizkor to the disappearance of the synagogue bulletin board.

My Forward column acknowledges and, in its own way, salutes the former. Here, within the compass of my blog, I’d like to give the latter its due.

For years, well before emails and other forms of digital communications colonized the contemporary Jewish world, congregants and passers-by alike would know what was going on within their local synagogue simply by glancing at an exterior bulletin board. Whether bolted to the ground or fixed to an outside wall, this metal-framed object – close kin to a movie marquee – featured such critical tidbits of information as the names of the presiding clergy and the times when services were being held. It also announced a forthcoming bar or bat mitzvah or a special Kiddush.

This information was usually conveyed through a series of white letters against a black ground. Simple as it sounds, it took some doing to make sure that the letters hung straight rather than drooped. But whose doing was it? The synagogue’s all-purpose handyman? Or did the weekly task of arranging the letters in an orderly fashion fall to the shamash or sexton, himself a vanishing breed? I never did manage to find out.

All I know is that in my neighborhood the exterior bulletin board has gone the way of so many other forms of vernacular architecture. True, the corner which it once anchored is now a more open and inviting space. And, yes, the digitization of the weekly schedule is not without its pleasures and conveniences.

Still, I’ll miss this informational device, even though I, like so many others, probably never gave it more than a passing look, much less a second thought. The synagogue bulletin board represents just one more in a long line of objects that once rendered the American synagogue a distinctive presence.