What does it mean to be Jewish in America?
That was the question posed to some 30 people gathered last Sunday at Lake Park Synagogue for a Brunch ’n Learn program of Tikkun Ha-Ir.
Participants were asked to walk around the room and evaluate statements about Judaism that were posted on the walls. Afterward, they picked a partner to view the results of the entire group.
A group discussion afterward revealed the wide range of ways in which Jews define what it means to be Jewish in America.
The activity was part of a program entitled “Tradition and Modernity: The Encounter Between Jewish and American Values.” Speakers were Jody Hirsh, director of Judaic education at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, and Lew Friedland, Ph.D., outgoing president of Tikkun Ha-Ir and professor of Journalism & Mass Communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
According to Hirsh, in America we often feel an “overwhelming sense of culture” that stresses autonomy and individuality that sometimes “conflicts with what Judaism is all about.”
That factor, combined with others, including lower conversion and increased intermarriage rates, has led to a decreased number of Jews in relation to the total American population.
“People felt more strongly a generation ago,” in regards to traditional Judaism, Hirsh said, but today Jews are more likely to “pick and choose” what elements of Judaism are important to them, he said.
Many Jews today “make decisions” about their Judaism “according to their own sense of meaning,” Hirsh said.
“We choose our Jewish identity like we choose our other identities,” Friedland said, though we are often told that we “need guidelines.”
However, Friedland said, “you can claim Jewishness without being involved in the Jewish community” by remaining active in the general community just by “doing for others for the sake of doing for others.”
The “idea and common good” of community work is “what holds people together,” Friedland said, whether they are Jewish or not. But “that middle is falling apart.
“In an America that is always pulling us in different directions, we have to find a common ground,” Friedland said.
“We have to rebuild the civic community in the U.S. When that common bond frays, it affects us as American Jews.”
Friedland said that involving ourselves in the community helps address the problem of “long-term erosion in Jewish community,” which he said is “attributed to decline in American community. You can’t separate the two.” Jews need a “rebuilding of our own community in the midst of eroding community all around us,” he said.
“Learning is a form of repair among us,” Hirsh said.
The event marked the end of Friedland’s term as president of Tikkun Ha-Ir.
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