Beyond the Synagogue Walls 265
personal choices about religious identity and observance that Jews now feel comfortable
making.
While Cohen and Eisen’s research adds a great deal to our knowledge of the lived
religion of Jews in the United States today, it continues the dominant pattern of study-
ing primarily Jews who are institutionally affiliated in some way (whether or not they
are active participants). In contrast, my research attempts to illuminate some of the
interesting features in the Jewish lives of those who self-identify as unaffiliated with
one of the most major of American Jewish institutions – the synagogue. This marginal
but diverse group can broaden our understanding of what it means to be Jewish in
America, highlighting those normally outside of the spotlight. Attempting to define
the contents of Jewish life outside of mainstream Jewish institutions, these Jews may,
in fact, need to reflect on the meaning of Jewishness more than do affiliated Jews. My
training as a sociologist of religion, rather than solely as a Jewish studies scholar, allows
me to bring a fresh perspective to the study of contemporary Jewish life. By drawing
on the current sociological and anthropological emphasis on lived religion outside of
institutional boundaries, I hope to shed new light on the constructions of Jewish prac-
tice, identity, and meaning among a group of Jews who consider themselves marginally
affiliated.
This study is based on twenty-eight interviews in the Providence (Rhode Island)
area. I gathered the sample by placing an advertisement in the local newspaper,The
Providence Journal, calling for Jewish women and men who do not belong to a syna-
gogue. I selected the interviewees from among the fifty callers who responded to my ad
in order to have an equal number of women and men, and an age range that spanned
people in their thirties through their seventies. Individuals younger than age thirty
generally have not reached the life-cycle stage in which most American Jews join syna-
gogues, so I excluded them from the sample. In general, I interviewed only those who
had never belonged to a synagogue, with only two exceptions of individuals who did
not disclose in our telephone conversation that they had belonged to synagogues in the
past. Although individuals who answer ads are not representative of anyone other than
those who feel they have something they would especially like to say on the subject,
such individuals nevertheless provide narratives that can suggest insights about others
in similar situations. My interviewees emphasized various reasons for not belonging to
synagogues, especially that they hated the emphasis on money (i.e., dues and dona-
tions) in synagogues and that synagogues have become heartless businesses; that they
find service “boring”; that they do not respect the rabbis in their communities; and
that they find no meaning in synagogue attendance, especially in the worship services.
These interviews as a whole revealed that Jews who consider themselves marginally
affiliated cannot rely upon any readily available, institutionally defined scripts through
which they can create narratives about the meaning of Judaism in their lives. Instead,
they each struggled to create coherent narratives of identity, in which they strove to
clarify the distinctions they make between religion and ethnicity, and religious practices
and cultural traditions. In constructing their narratives, my informants developed their
stories by drawing on a wide variety of – and sometimes even conflicting – available
sources and cultural scripts. My interviewees’ sensibilities as Jews are shaped by their
family backgrounds as well as their own personal experiences and can be highly id-
iosyncratic. Each interviewee, in telling her or his own story, is attempting to create a
sense of balance for her/his self. The very notion of balance, however, does not imply