Beyond the Synagogue Walls 269
through institutionally defined religious activities, practices and, beliefs. Although
they are not making any efforts to participate in any distinctly Jewish institutions
that might shape their identities as Jews, “genetics” allows them to still identify
as Jewish and have a sense of belonging to the group they refer to as “the Jewish
people.”
In contrast to my respondents’ ideas of religion/ethnicity as inscribed aspects of
identity, Steven Warner’s (1993) important article offering a paradigm shift in the so-
ciology of religion argues that religion is actually anachieved identity, a product of
upbringing, social factors and personal identity development. The fascinating tension
for my respondents is that although they claim ascriptive identities, they are also highly
aware that religious or ethnic identities are also achieved. In fact, they themselves seek
to construct these identities in ways that are different from the traditional definitions;
they pick and choose from the available options in their traditions to craft new ver-
sions of the meaning of Judaism. The achievement component of identity is revealed
in the multiple, varied ways individuals construct themselves as Jewish. Despite defin-
ing Judaism as an innate identity, independent of specific observances and religious
beliefs, “ethnically identified” Jews can be seen as living their religion through their
ongoing construction of ethnic identity. In a context in which simply “being Jewish”
supplants particular ritual observances as the central meaning of Jewish identity, defin-
ing what “being Jewish” actually means is a complex and ongoing process. Negotiating
the many, contested ways to be Jewish in contemporary America and creating their own
understanding of the basis of Jewish identity becomes for these ethnically identified
Jews a ritual of American Jewish practice.
My respondents’ claims about the centrality of genetics are being espoused in a
social context in which many types of individuals, such as antiracists and feminists, are
challenging essentialist views, arguing that identities are actually socially constructed.
There are great political and economic stakes in the current sociological and political
debates between the social construction of identities, such as race, gender and sexuality,
and the essentialist view of these elements of identity. It is notable that in this era in
which the role of genetics is an important and fiercely contested issue – for example, the
contemporary dominance of sociobiology as a major paradigm in biological research
and theory, and the widely debated reaction to the book,The Bell Curve(Herrnstein
and Murray 1994) – my respondents nevertheless feel comfortable in claiming a genetic
essence to their Judaism. This ongoing social dispute about the genetic components of
identity nevertheless may further complicate my respondents’ attempts to define the
roots of Jewish identity. In their study, Cohen and Eisen uncovered ambivalence toward
the idea of an essentialist Jewish identity; while the respondents downplayed their
sense of distinctiveness as Jews in their responses to the survey, it was revealed in the
extended interviews. Despite some ambivalence about the source of Jewish identity, my
respondents are clearly adapting the essentialist claim that “genetics” or history rather
than rabbis or researchers define who and what is Jewish. By claiming their identity is
ascribed, they are stating that the individual cannot be held responsible for it. This is
how the gay Catholics in Michele Dillon’s (1999a) study of nonconformist Catholics
talk about their sexuality – if it was simply a “construction,” then it could easily be
changed.
The view that Jewishness is genetic stands in contrast to the argument articulated
by about ten of my respondents that although being Jewish is not necessarily about