A friend of mine coaches soccer for tween boys in Boulder. One day during practice, she noticed one of the boys had a water bottle with the inscription “Hebrew High.”
“Wait, are you Jewish?” my friend asked (she’s not a Jew). The boy responded in the affirmative.
My friend proceeds to exclaim: “That’s so cool!”
The boy replied with a smile and a hint of chutzpah, “Yeah, I know.”
J.J. Goldberg lamented in the The Jewish Daily Forward a couple weeks ago “Being Jewish is Falling Out of Fashion.” In fact, that was the headline.
(It’s actually an excellent opinion piece. If you haven’t read it yet, get on that.)
But I’ve been dwelling on it for a while and I must protest.
Goldberg’s argument is essentially that his generation had Bob Dylan and Babs, but that young Jews of my generation (our generation) “don’t inhabit a world where being Jewish is high fashion.”
In their world, Jewish brings to mind Israeli helicopter gunships. Their campuses and their media have become virtual dead zones for the cause of Israel. The Jewish state has simply lost the argument among the trendsetters: Boycotts or not, one state or two, Israel plays the heavy in the drama. As a consequence, expressing sympathy for Israel can brand a student as an oddball at best, a right-wing fanatic at worst.
Now, I agree that young Jews in general struggle with the dark, amorphous morass that is the issue of Israel. Many of us are ambivalent and many just check out when the conversation turns to the subject. He brings up a good point about why American Jews are so passionate about Israel (when they aren’t ambivalent about it), too, because Israel as a Jewish state is seen as reflecting on us. The values of the Jewish state are seen as the values of global Jewry.
So, people like myself and many of the other writers at New Voices tend to get miffed when Israeli policy doesn’t match up with our Jewish values (policies like this one).
Isn’t that the point? Do we still define ourselves as young American Jews through a relationship to Israel? I don’t connect my pride in being Jewish with my discontent with Israeli politics. (Perhaps J.J. Goldberg might argue that I am proud of being a Jew in spite of my politics regarding Israel.) But, I like to think I’m not the only one.
Don’t American Jews have culture and identity outside of Israel?
The two scandalously clad women on the upcoming cover of GQ (Dianna Agron and Lea Michele of Glee fame) are Jews. Heebs are still cool and, dare I say, sexy.
Ari Gold. The Hebrew Hammer. Rahm Emanuel. Ben Harper. Zac Efron. Regina Spektor. Even Adam (G)Lambert is a Jew. My point here is that my generation isn’t lacking in models of uniquely American Jewish coolness.
My soccer coach friend asked me a couple weeks ago if she could convert to being a Jew without all the religion.
“You want to convert to being a secular Jew,” I asked.
“Yeah … is that even possible?”
I told her I’d look into it, but I think that kind of question is above my pay grade. I haven’t a clue.
In Boulder at least, being a Jew is still in vogue.
