274 Lynn Davidman
sociological question about whether these multiple ways of being Jewish can be under-
stood to be “really” authentically Jewish, or whether there is such a thing as a critical,
essential “core” identity or a connection to specific ideas and/or practices that people
must actively maintain if they are to call themselves Jewish. This also leads to the ques-
tion of whether there is acoreto any religion. As Robert Orsi has argued (quoted by Hall,
1997: 18) “The study of lived religion risks the exposure of the researcher....Working
on this intimate level, it is harder to avoid the question ‘so what do you think about all
this ‘really’?” Clearly, the answer to this question depends on the perspective of who
is being asked. There are important and interesting differences between the ways the
custodians of religion, such as rabbis, priests, and ministers, frame the religion and how
ordinary folks do so in their lived religion in everyday life. As a sociologist, I myself
steer away from this question, recognizing the important influence that social location
plays in any answer to this question.
What is clear from my research is that the religious and ethnic components of
Judaism are not easily disentangled. Even those who do not meet the religious and
institutional criteria (and what these criteria are is itself contested territory) for being
a “good Jew” nevertheless create a lived Jewish experience and identity for themselves
from their sense of an ethnic, cultural, historical, and familial heritage. Their self-
identification as Jews, and even as good Jews, is no less real than that of more tra-
ditional, affiliated Jews.
Within Judaism, there are critical issues at stake here, such as the question of “Who
is a Jew” and how it defines who can become a citizen of Israel under the Law of
Return (the policy that all born Jews can automatically become citizens of the state). In
the United States, such issues are hotly contested among the Orthodox and the other
denominations, with Orthodox rabbis not recognizing ordained Reform Jews as rabbis.
This debate takes on great import in the case of conversion, for example, because if a
woman is not “properly converted” according to an Orthodox standard, the Orthodox
community may call into question the Jewishness of her children and whether these
children can properly be married to other Jews! Obviously, the rabbis have a particular
stake in the matter, which is framed by their dire concerns about Jewish survival in a
country where intermarriage rates are rising. Individuals’ concerns, however, are about
how they themselves and their children can live out their Jewishness, rather than about
the legal aspects of religious continuity according to Jewish law.
For both the traditional rabbi and the unaffiliated Jew, the relationship between
practice and identity is at the center of the search for Jewish meaning, although the
nature of this relationship is interpreted differently by each. While the custodians
of religions emphasize traditional practices and their observance as if these practices
determine a fixed identity, such practices are in fact ways that people perform the
identities that they are trying on. Identities are always in a process of construction, as
each person continuously works to create the most salient meanings for their lives.
What my research points out is that the relationship between Jewish practice and
Jewish identity is mutually constitutive. While practices serve as a way for individ-
uals to perform identity, the process of negotiating identity itself becomes a significant
form of Jewish practice, particularly for those who are unaffiliated and for whom being
Jewish is unconnected to traditional Jewish rituals and observance. Obviously, these
processes of identity formation are not “rituals” in the same way that we normally