Nakadika Shiksa

Hey Editors! Prodigal means wasteful, not going away and coming back.

Dont you know your new testament / dictionary?

It's clear you don't miss the tznius dress codes. You say you're lost from the Orthodox world, but I have a sense that there are things you miss. Is that right?

Yes, you are.

hey anonymous 06/30/08 4:19 pm, who gives a shit? we know what she means

Thank you Yael for writing this piece.

I have encountered similar circumstances while leaving parts of my childhood behind. It informs who I am but does not define me now and it always becomes apparent when I meet people from that time and place. 

Thanks,

mTp 

It wasn't clear from your rebuke of the (other) anonymous whether you objected to the harshness of his correction or to his concern for correct use of the language.  If the former, you have a point, though you should clarify.  If the latter, sorry, but some of us do care that words be used properly.

Your article is nothing more then a petulant child whining. You think by coming back dressed semi-properly you are somehow still clinging to our faith? Please grow up our fathers and mothers were knelt on the ground with a sword over their heads as their family looked on and were asked to convert they proudly said Shma as they were beheaded. You write "I used to come back to the fold and feel pricked by the dual familiarity and remoteness of it. It was returning from exile and knowing I couldn’t stay" I say to you good riddance we dont need Jews like you never have and never will. You are nothing more than a person that for the burden of wearing a few pieces of clothes has given up on her heritage, family, clan, and religion.

Good bye and dont come back.

just because a person chooses not to dress tzniut, it does not mean they are giving up their religion. i know plenty of people who grew up Orthodox and are no longer observant (some are on the total opposite end of the spectrum as Atheists, others merely dropped a notch to Conservative Judaism) but still have a profound sense of pride in their heritage. Orthodoxy is incredibly rigid and restrictive, and many people find they can't handle it once they reach a certain age. i'm by no means bashing the Orthodox. i have a great amount of respect for them and do find that their structured lifestyle can be positive in some ways. but i myself could never follow such a strict way of living. it's very similar to the Amish. the only difference is the Orthodox use electricity...unless they're totally living in the past.  

I'm with "Faithful; Son" on this one. Yael, stop whining and have some respect for your family and the community within which your were raised. To write a piece like this mocking your family and the community that raised you smacks of arrogance and borders on antisocial.

Faithful, did you read the same story I did? The narrator didn't dress
even semi-properly, and she didn't get dressed in an attempt to cling
to the faith (though perhaps she dressed to be in dialogue with the
faithful). I'm not sure that who died al kidush hashem when is
relevant. Kind of like eating your vegetables because people are
starving in Africa.

I enjoyed the story, and thought it's a touching and funny
illustration of the plague of ambivalence associated with learning the
joys of religiousness and having to reject those joys in order to also
reject the sexism and parochialism that got packaged with it. For me,
this really resonated.

I remember Highland Park as a mostly black town with a few Jews probably mostly associated with Rutgers.

It is possible that by the time I graduated from Harvard in 1978 there was a small Lubovitcher outpost.

I do not remember Orthodox or Hassidic shuls at all, but I never really explored.

Keruv activists believe that the children of secular Jews will look for spiritual nourishment via a rebellion to the Torah or the world of their grandfathers.

To me baalei tshuvah express a nostalgia for a world that never existed or for a small piece of the world that was because the Lubovitchers and Orthodox preserve at best a small part of 19th century Judaism but more likely create a false simulacrum of a that Judaism.

Maybe the next generation draws nearer to something approaching reality.

"To me baalei tshuvah express a nostalgia for a world that never existed or for a small piece of the world that was because the Lubovitchers and Orthodox preserve at best a small part of 19th century Judaism but more likely create a false simulacrum of a that Judaism."

Baalei tshivah strive to follow the oral and written Torah. That is not fundamentally different than what  mainstream Judaism has been doing for three thousand years. While  there have been changes, the fundamentals have remained essentially the same for thousands of years. Orthodoxy is closer to "reality" in Judaism than anything else going now. I'm not talking about clothing styles, I'm talking about Shabbos, prayer, and other Torah essentials. Rgeardless of swings to the right or left or in mystical directions, the core is the same.  

I could write several large books on the subject, but in a nutshell not only is it a misunderstanding to believe that there is only one sort of mainstream Judaism that has existed for 3 thousand years, but the Babylonian Talmud, Menachot 29b even provides a fairly clear statement of the changing nature of Judaism.

Greek Orthodoxy is almost certainly far closer to elite Judaism of the Judean Kingdom of the Herodian period than is Medieval Rabbinic or Karaite Judaism or anything that develops later while Islam is a fairly direct evolution of the Judaism of the common people of the Judean Kingdom during the same time period.

Here are some blog entries that I have put together on the development and relationship of Christianity, Islam and Judaism:

In any case by the end of the nineteenth century, secular Yiddish culture was probably the predominant form of Jewishness for the majority of Jewry (however this term might be defined).

The baalei teshuvah movement and Zionism are both defined by a longing for false non-existent past.

Thor,

 I assume by Greek Orthodox you mean the Greek Chirstians not the few orthdoox Jews who lived in Greece.

I did not realize that the Greek Orthodox Christians read the Torah in hebrew to the masses. Does their tefillin have Jesus' name inside or just Hashem's. And, I had no idea that the Greek Orthodox did not work on Shabbos. Who knew?

Yaakov,

You are assuming that today's orthodox Jewish norms were those of Judaic religion of the Herodian period.

Modern Judaism, whether Karaite or Rabbinic, like Medieval Judaism, whether Karaite or Rabbinic, has major discontinuities with the the various currents of pre-hurban 2nd Temple Judaic religion.

It is highly probably that during the Herodian period at least the Torah was more commonly read in Greek than in Hebrew in the developing synagogue ritual.

Laying tefillin is most likely a practice that begins in the 1st century BCE in imitation of pagan practices, and the Greco-Roman literature on the subject suggests initially a great deal of variability in the Judaic practice, which was initially confined to a very small group within Judaic religion.

Christian scripture provides evidence of an ongoing debate on the nature of Sabbath observance, between a stricter elitist minority Sabbatarianism and a more lenient Sabbatarianism among the common people.

By the end of the 2nd century CE Judaism in the Holy Land is very much shattered, and archeologists find much evidence a pagan practices creeping into Palestinian Judaism. The positive and negative interaction of Christian Judaism, Pagan Christianity and non-Christian Judaism seems to have brought about the construction of Geonic Judaism as well as a persistent form of anti-Talmudic Judaism.

Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World) (Paperback) by Seth Schwartz provides a fairly good introduction to many of the issues, but as to the practice of laying tefillin, it could easily have become such an important part of Geonic Judaism simply because Jesus criticized the practice, and post-Constantinian Christians expected anyone associated with Judaic religion to perform this particular ritual.

Shaye Cohen of Harvard argues that Jewishness comes into being in opposition to Constantinian Christianity. His position is only valid if one considers Judaism as a form of anti-Christianity.

I argue that Medieval Judaism (both Karaite and Rabbinic) crystallizes at the time of Saadyah Gaon (10 th century) mostly as a result of the economic and political activities of the Khazar Empire.

In my framework, the major periods in the development of Judaic religion are the following.

Pre-Babylonian captivity -- a form of paganism

Persian period -- early monotheism under the influence of Zoroastrianism

Greco-Roman period -- Hasmoneans reinterpret Judaism, develops multiple currents, Connecting Hanukkah, Christmas and `Idu-l-Adha is probably the most succint piece I have ever written on the subject

Medieval Judaism -- Arabic-Islamic Medieval Judaism, Saadya Gaon tends to reject any territorial ethnic definition of Judaism, rejects the term Yahudut, prefers yihud (Arabic tawhid)

Modern Judaism -- Yiddish-Christian Modern Rabbinic Judaism, Kipczak-Christian Modern Karaite Judaism

Each of the different phases of Judaism is characterized by a major ethnic, linguistic, and cultural break.

Lubovitchers and Modern Jewry in general practice a religion that should be considered almost wholly E. European in origin with no more connection to Palestine than one might assume for Polish Christianity.

Only primordialist essentialist racism on the part of Jews in combination with a refusal to admit the heinous crimes that Jews have committed against the people of Palestine prevents modern Jews from facing the facts.

BTW, one could argue that Syrian Christianity is closer to the elite Judaism of the 2nd Temple Period than Greek Orthodoxy. The Old Testament Peshitta belongs to the family of Aramaic Targums of the Hebrew Bible and is not a descendent of the Septuagint, which is a document of Greek-speaking 2nd Temple Judaism.

Public School Teenagers Covering Up Too.   I welcome your comments on my http://www.simchawear.com/blog tznius topics.