Beyond Jewish Identity

This volume, while not the first to explore and critique the concept of Jewish identity, makes two important interventions into contemporary understandings of American Jewish life. It is the first collection to critically examine the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish identity. Insofar as Jewish identity has become the most popular way to talk about the desired outcome of Jewish education, a critical assessment of the relationship between education and identity is both useful and necessary. It is useful because the reification of identity has, we believe, hampered much educational creativity in the rather single-minded pursuit of this goal. It is necessary because the nearly ubiquitous employment of the term obscures a whole set of significant questions about what Jewish education is and ought to be for in the first place.

Second, this volume offers responses that are not merely synonymous replacements for “identity.” With a selection of more critical essays, we hope that we can begin to expand, rather than replace, the array of ideas that the term “identity” is so often used to represent.

As scholars of Jewish education, the authors of this book hope their work contributes to any number of new conversations about the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish life. The intention here is to move from critical inquiry (in Part I of the volume) to suggestive possibilities (Part II). The true measure of this effort, of course, lies in the hands of the readers, those who will advance our understanding of the complexities of American Jewish education and life—beyond Jewish identity.

Contents

1. Introduction
Jon A. Levisohn and Ari Y. Kelman

2. Taking Jewish Identity Metaphors Literally
Eli Gottlieb

3. You are Jewish if You Want to Be: The Limits of Identity in a World of Multiple Practices
Samira K. Mehta

4. On the Origins and Persistence of the Jewish Identity Industry in Jewish Education
Jonathan Krasner

5. Identity and Crisis: The Origins of Identity as an Educational Outcome
Ari Y. Kelman

6. Regarding the “Real” Jew: Authenticity Anxieties Around Poland’s “Generation Unexpected”
Katka Reszke

7. Re-Thinking American Jewish Zionist Identity: A Case for Post-Zionism in the Diaspora (Based on the Writings of R. Menachem Froman)
Shaul Magid

8. Jewish Educators Don't Make Jews: A Sociological Reality Check About Jewish Identity Work
Tali Zelkowicz

9. Beyond Language Proficiency: Fostering Metalinguistic Communities in Jewish Educational Settings
Sarah Bunin Benor and Netta Avineri

10. Where is the Next Soviet Jewry Movement? How Identity Education Forgot the Lessons that Jewish Activism Taught
Shaul Kelner

11. Jewish Education as Initiation into the Practices of Jewishness
Jon A. Levisohn

12. Jewish Sensibilities: Toward a New Language for Jewish Educational Goal-Setting
Lee Moore and Jonathan Woocher, z’’l