David Friedell (Union College), "Becoming non-Jewish"

Forthcoming, New Perspectives on the Ontology of Social Identities (Routledge)

By David Friedell

My paper “Becoming non-Jewish” is forthcoming in a volume New Perspectives on the Ontology of Social Identities, published by Routledge and edited by Alejandro Arango and Adam Burgos.  Here’s a link with more information about the volume, and here’s another link to a penultimate draft of the paper.

The paper is about the metaphysics and normativity of Jewish identity. It explores two main questions: can a Jewish person become non-Jewish? Are there any good reasons for a Jewish person to become non-Jewish? 

The paper is by far the most personal academic essay I’ve written. I’m grateful to many people, especially my father, for supporting me in writing it.

Here’s the paper’s introduction.

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Introduction

I love this joke:

A Jew converts and becomes a priest. He gives his first Mass in front of a number of high-ranking priests who came for the occasion. At the end of the new priest’s sermon a cardinal goes to congratulate him. ‘Father Goldberg,’ he says, ‘that was very well done, you were just perfect. Just one little thing. Next time, try not to start your sermon with ‘My fellow goyim...’ (Baum 2018, 28).

I am a white American cisgendered man. I have never substantially doubted these traits or any other aspects of my identity. Except for one. For years I have wondered: am I Jewish?

I grew up in Philadelphia, raised by two American-Jewish biological parents. My father has Ashkenazi ancestry, and my mother has both Ashkenazi and Sephardic ancestry. From as long as I can remember until I graduated college, I identified as Jewish. Like many American Jews, I was never very observant. But being Jewish was important to me. I celebrated my Bar Mitzvah and participated in some Jewish education afterward. In high school, I joined a Jewish youth group, an interfaith dialogue group for Jewish and Catholic students, and another dialogue group for Jewish and African American students. In college I became less active in the Jewish community but still identified as Jewish.

Something changed in graduate school. I became disillusioned with religion. Not theology but religion as a social category. What once struck me as a source of community now seemed to be a source of division. We divide ourselves in so many ways: gender, race, class, sexual orientation, age, nationality, municipality, neighborhood, family, language, occupation, political party, our favorite sports teams. Dayenu. Do we need religion, too? I was no longer satisfied to self-identify, as many American Jews do, as “culturally” but not “religiously” Jewish. That way of identifying puzzled me. What does it mean to be “culturally” Jewish, other than to embody or embrace certain stereotypes, such as being neurotic and enjoying Seinfeld reruns? Even worse, this common way of identifying still seemed to indirectly support the divisiveness of religion as a social category. Why not go a step further and identify as non-Jewish?

I declared to some friends that I was no longer Jewish. I wasn’t converting to another religion. I wasn’t intending to conceal my Jewish upbringing. Nor did I plan to stop being neurotic or to stop enjoying Seinfeld reruns. I merely identified as non-Jewish. I immediately questioned whether such a change was possible. Can a Jewish person become non-Jewish? Or is a Jewish person always Jewish? The more I struggled with whether I was Jewish the more I felt like Father Goldberg, hopelessly Jewish, preaching to his “fellow Goyim.” After all, agonizing about what it means to be Jewish is one of the most Jewish things one can do.

After more agonizing, I now think the following. The question “Can a Jewish person become non-Jewish?” and the related question “What is Jewishness?” are both ambiguous, because the word “Jewish” is ambiguous. There are many different, albeit related, concepts of Jewishness. I will outline five concepts of Jewishness: halachic, religious, ethnic, and cultural Jewishness, as well as being Jewish in the sense of belonging to the Jewish community. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. In some of these senses of “Jewish” a Jewish person is always Jewish. In other senses a Jewish person can become non-Jewish. I will close with a normative question: Should a person who is Jewish, in the sense of belonging to the Jewish community, become non-Jewish? This question is, of course, deeply personal. I don’t wish to tell others how they should identify. I will explain reasons for and against staying in the Jewish community. In this way I highlight a tension rather than settle how anyone, including myself, should identify.

Works Cited:

Baum, Deborah. (2018). The Jewish Joke: A Short History--with Punchlines. New York, Pegasus Books.