Do-It-Yourself Judaism, Russian-Style

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  Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain and Canary Islands
Wednesday, August 20, 2008

We paid homage to Maimonides at his statue in the Juderia, the old Jewish quarter of Cordoba.  In the 10th century, when Cordoba was at its height of influence in the Muslim world, there were 30 synagogues in the city, of which only one remains.  We wandered through the synagogue, noted that the Hebrew inscriptions on the wall closely resembled those from Cordoba and ended up outside in front of Rambam's visage (The Rambam is Maimonides' "nickname," a common practice for referring to Jewish sages - in this case, it comes from Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, thus RMBM or Rambam). The group leaders had suggested that our 45 Russian-speaking Jewish travelers wanted to spend more time connecting their personal Jewish experiences to the medieval Jewish thought and history that we were studying.  So after talking about Maimonides as a doctor, philosopher, and writer who wrote in Arabic and Hebrew and straddled two worlds, we stood in front of him and talked about what it meant to be a Russian Jew, someone who in one context sees himself as Jewish, in other contexts as Russian

Maimonides is Everywhere

.  It was exactly the kind of conversation we were hoping to generate as this group began wrestling with their own sense of self.

One student had a crisis of identity when we talked about the number of Jewish practices that have folk or pagan roots-things like breaking glasses at weddings or hanging mezuzot on the right side of the doorframe.  Jews got very good at adopting such popular rituals from pagan or folk traditions and then investing themwith significant meaning and supporting the practices with textual references thereby rendering them Jewish.  For some, this forced them to ask, "If so much of 'Jewish' practice is based on other people's customs, what is, in fact, Jewish about them?"  Is Jewish anything that Jews, as a group, do?  Is it Jewish if there are Jewish texts to support a practice? Is being Jewish simply about being different? How much of Jewish self-understanding is based on how others perceive or label the Jews?

In the end it seemed appropriate and almost subversive to question whether anything is essentially Jewish beneath the watchful eyes of Maimonides, who wrote the Mishneh Torah, an attempt to codify and rationalize Jewish law.  After visiting the Mezquita, the beautiful mosque-turned-church that sits at the heart of the old city, we took the bus to Granada for our second tour of what would prove to be the longest day of the trip

Arguing about Jewish Identity

.

Granada is beautiful and its main tourist site, the Alhambra, is an impressive mini-city/fortress that protected the Muslim state of Granada until 1492 when Isabella and Ferdinand's army finally conquered the city.  The story of the Alhambra is much more about Arab life in Spain than about Jews, so we took time on the grounds to do a poetry reading of Shmuel Ha-Nagid, the chief Jew of Muslim Spain in his time, military leader and poet (yes, imagine if the American commander-in-chief was also the poet laureate!)  It turned out that despite the awesome spectacle of the gardens and buildings, which we toured in the blazing heat of day and under the stars at night, the poetry reading that we did sitting on the floor of a mini-coliseum was the most meaningful part of the visit.  

Poetry reading is something I do with all of my students, but Russians have such a rich tradition of poetry as part of both their culture and identity, that it seemed imperative to make Shmuel Ha-Nagid's poetry, read on the grounds of the Alhambra, the centerpiece of our visit to Granada. We read a short poem about a gazelle in hevruta and then the questions started: "What is the gazelle?" asked one group member.  "Clearly his lover, because she comes in the middle of the night," responded someone from across the courtyard

Our Conversation at the Maimonides Statue

.  "Wait a minute," interrupted another.  "It says 'he,' not she.  Who is Shmuel Ha-Nagid writing to?  Is this an issue of Hebrew grammar or, um, um..."  Shmuel Ha-Nagid's poetry, so deeply shaped by Arabic poetic forms, provoked these kinds of amazing conversations about homoeroticism in medieval Hebrew poetry.

But perhaps the most interesting conversation of the day happened when one of the participants from Kiev and I started talking about the future of Judaism and Jewish life.  I already knew that most Russian-speaking Jews have little experience with the pluralism of American Jewish life.  For Russian Jews, as for most Jews outside the U.S., Judaism is an all or nothing affair-one is either Orthodox or secular.  This model makes little sense in an American Jewish context that is now defined by terms like "post-denominational" and "Do-It-Yourself" Judaism that puts the individual, rather than the collective, at the center of Jewish identity and practice.  But what was so striking about this conversation was having secular Russian Jews so adamantly argue that Judaism has no future outside of Orthodoxy.  "So then you, and all of our group, is part of the problem of Judaism."  "Yes," as he began railing against Reform Judaism, which "isn't Judaism at all."

The questions about what is "real" or "true" Judaism came up in our bus conversation about planning for Shabbat

Davainiki

.  Here I was with a group of six Russian-speaking Jews, most from Chicago, not Kiev, who kept "wanting to do it right.  So a man does Kiddush and a woman will light candles."  This from Jews who today have little regular Jewish practice in their lives.  Despite ten or twenty years of life in America, these Russian Jews are so disconnected from American Jewish pluralism that doing it right means replicating Orthodoxy's gender hierarchy.  "Do you want to do a halachic Kabbalat Shabbat, with all of the zmirot and prayers and choreography?"  "  No, no, no, David...It's too much for this group.  But we should at least teach them that men make Kiddush and bless the challah; women light candles."

It turns out that Do-It-Yourself Judaism for Russian-speaking Jews is two parts Chabad-style Judaism (which picks and chooses, but does so in a traditional gendered way), one part radical secularism (which thinks that Jewish ritual like kashrut and full Shabbes observance makes no sense), and one part disdain for American notions of Jewish pluralism (which thinks that women shouldn't be rabbis and Reform is the death of Judaism).  This is a group that isn't into saying blessings over meals but insists that if you write the word "G-o-d" that it be G-d and that a genizah be on hand at all times.

And note to reader: we have not even talked about the fact that I, the official voice of Jewish wisdom on this trip, am traveling with my husband (sic), who will be leading Saturday morning Torah study (at least he's a man!).  See future entry for that conversation!

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The Cordoba Mezquita, a Mosque Turned Church

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