Hello, world! This is Harpo Jaeger speaking (writing?) I’m a new poster at New Voices, having met Ben Sales at the J Street conference. I’m a freshman at Brown University, and I blog at my own site, as well as at Jewschool.
This first post comes at an interesting time in my life as a Jewish student. Since the summer after freshment year of high school, I’ve been wearing a kippah and tzitzit. I started doing this for a variety of reasons, ostensibly all of which were related to my family’s difficulty in establishing a cohesive Jewish identity in a rather secular area (a much longer post for a different time), but the reason this is of importance right now is that since last Friday (so coming up on a week now), I haven’t worn either of them. In an effort to gain some perspective, and partially as a result of a long philosophical discussion with my girlfriend, I decided to spend some time flying under the radar.
One reason I was interested in doing this is that I’m in a new place. It ocurred to me when we were discussing it that I first donned these admittedly somewhat odd-looking garments after a year in a small, personal school, where everyone knew everyone. Even though I hadn’t had in-depth theological discussions with everyone there, people knew my face. So when I started wearing tzitzit and a kippah, people didn’t just suddenly switch their opinions of me as Jew – if they knew I was Jewish already, their perception of my beliefs was fairly unchanged. If they didn’t, they didn’t suddenly think that I was orthodox (I’m decidedly not). In my quest to redefine myself, the tzitzit never impacted anyone else as much as they did me. And the same is true of the kippah – I got to the point where I didn’t even remember I had it on.
But that changed when I got to Brown. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t have religious connections with anyone. I quickly formed them with others at Hillel, but portraying myself accurately was a conscious effort. At my job, people have made comments about my being orthodox. Not at all rude ones, just mentioning somehow in a conversation that I was orthodox. Now, I have no problem with orthodox Jews portraying themselves as such, but I am, as I said, most definitely not an orthodox Jew. It’s really a question of accuracy as much as anything else.
So the question is: am I ready to hang up the tzitzit? Have they “done their job”? In many respects, they definitely have. I’ve formed a personal Jewish identity, one that is very much centered around politics, culture, and community. I started blogging about politics, religion, and many other issues on my own, and I wrote at Jewschool about how my davening has changed in a lot of ways, and how I’ve explored alternate religious experiences, among other things. Do I need the tzitzit and kippah anymore? Are they still helping me live a Jewish life (whatever that may mean), be a Jew, and have a Jewish identity? Or are they now just accessories that cloud other people’s impressions of me and ability to interact with me honestly?
I haven’t yet determined the answers to these questions. But this week has been incredibly valuable. I’ve noticed definite changes in the way people treat me, both those that I meet and those that I already knew. People seem more willing to approach me or talk to me about a lot of things, which is interesting. I think it ties into something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently: why is religion considered such an inviolate topic? We feel comfortable challenging people’s beliefs and opinions in pretty much every other context, but it’s practically a societal taboo to criticize someone’s religious practice. Why is this? Religion is, in essence, a personal opinion. We connect to others using it, but only because there are established cultural concepts of how a certain religion should function in society. We can relate to others using those constructs, but at heart, it’s our own belief or conviction in the religion that makes it meaningful to us.
I think a lot of religions, Judaism absolutely included, would benefit from being a little more open to honest criticism. I’m not suggesting that we give a microphone to every crazy anti-semite out there, but there are a lot of non-Jews who I think have very interesting and productive things to say about Judaism and Jewry, things we often write off as anti-semitism or anti-Israeli sentiment.
If we as Jews want to demand a voice in society (which we do), a country of our own (which we do), and, more basically, cultural and social legitimacy, we need to be willing to engage others respectfully and productively,without the precondition of “religious tolerance”, a catchphrase which too often means that we can declare any of our opinions a “religious belief”, granting it near-impunity from serious criticism. This should stop. If you engage someone respectfully and unintrusively, they are usually willing to do the same. This breeds mutual respect, while still allowing people to be honest with each other.
Do I serve this high-minded ideal by wearing Jew-apparel? I don’t know yet. If the detriments to my ability to function as a member of a secular society outweigh whatever personal gain I derive from the constant reminder of my Jewry that are tzitzit and a kippah, I won’t cling to it. I’m no less Jewish without them. I was Jewish before I wore them, and I’ve been Jewish for the past six days.
Much remains to be seen about where I’ll end up. College has been a time of a lot of changes for me so far, and I anticipate that continuing. I’m excited to become part of New Voices, and I’m looking forward to continuing to write more on this and other topics in the future.
