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ethnic identification. For these unaffiliated Jews, the process of constructing a Jewish
identity is itself a Jewish practice and one of the primary ways in which they live their
religion, even if they define this identity in nonreligious terms. An interesting contrast
between my study and the one conducted by Cohen and Eisen is that they found that
80 percent of their sample population identified being Jewish as a religious identity,
whereas in mine, only ten of the twenty-eight interviewees did so. For many, ethnic
pride was an important component of their Jewish identities. They emphasized how
“immensely proud” they are of being Jewish and of the numerous accomplishments of
Jews, such as the percentage of Nobel laureates, and the sheer raw ability to survive over
millennia of persecution. For my respondents, this was an important reason to claim
an identity as Jews, even if they do not see themselves as religious. These interviewees
have a sense of awe for the history and accomplishments of Judaism and the Jewish
people and want to feel tapped into that. And their narration of ethnic pride allows
them to establish connections with this tradition and heritage they perceive as great,
without their having to engage in any particular religious behaviors.
In one interview with a retired, nonpracticing seventy-year-old man named Mark,
I asked, “What does it mean to you to be a Jew?” He answered:
It makes me immensely proud. I think that the contributions that Jews have made to
the world, to society, and to culture, are just staggering. Um, I’m so proud to be a Jew.
I think about who won the most Nobel Prizes. Who’s fought incredible odds against
every kind of horrific enemy and condition and not just survived, but flourished and
went on to do all these magnificent things. I mean, I just swell with pride when I
think about it. I feel so badly when I hear all these stories about all these American
Jewish kids who have no idea who they are, or what they are, or what they’ve come
from. I remember somebody talking in the sixties about kids wanting to become, I
don’t know, Buddhist or Maoists, who were Jews who had no idea who they were
or what they were, the incredible, fabulous legacy, because they had had a bad way
of being exposed to that, if at all. I’m lucky I was able to go forge my own way of
learning about all that.Most fascinating to me was the fact that nineteen of my twenty-eight interviewees
explicitly emphasized a genetic notion of Jewishness. They stated that being Jewish is
something one is born into and that has a hardwired genetic truth to it. Cohen and
Eisen’s respondents, too, argued that Jewishness was not dependent on observance or
education; “they are Jews because they are Jews, period” (2000: 101). Highlighting the
genetic dimension is a particularly powerful way of claiming a link with this great
tradition and people, without having to engage in any particular religious or other
behaviors – it is simply seen as a native part of oneself. There is a fascinating slippage
here between ethnicity and biology. Many of my respondents started out defining
Judaism, for them, as an ethnic or cultural identity, but when asked to flesh out what
they meant by that, they returned to some level of biological essentialism.
In my conversation with Mark, I asked him, “Is Jewishness, or Judaism, or being
Jewish something you’re born with?” He responded as follows:
Yes. Well, I think ethnically, everybody’s born Jewish. And I think we know about
genetics. Certain things are going to have a tendency to be passed along, like intel-
lect. I mean, since we are the people who first created the idea that to be holy you
had to be, if you will, cerebral. Have you ever seen Fiddler on the Roof? My favorite