We are a people, and an odd one at that. obviously we are different and we are challenged with our unique mission

The fact of our difference, our otherness is not in question. What I am arguing is that if that undefined difference and othererness is the essence of our uniqueness, well, that’s just lame.

come join my latest party over at my place…

The same behavior that you focuses on would occur w/ American Jews as well. I know this bec. I work in a restaraunt and I see all kinds of shennanigans by Americans Jews, some w. Kippot.

So please do not prejudge the entire people.

You all know I have a love/hate relationship with Israel (love the country, sometimes hate the people, like last night at a local event when several burly Israeli men felt they didn’t have to wait on line for sushi like everyone else and pushed me quite hard). And as far as my religious self is concerned, that’s in flux right now, whether I were to be in Israel or anywhere else.

But as for identity, I want to draw what i think is an important distinction: we, as am kadosh, are definitionally separate from everyone else. The question is how we translate that into our individual circumstances. Living in smaller communities, we are forced to define ourselves by what parts of society we opt out of, how we differ from the others who surround us. In the bigger communities, like my New York, even though there’s a large community of the different, within that group there’s so much difference on the micro level that we have to find ways to define ourselves, not for ourselves but in order to explain ourselves to others in a way that they’ll understand. And then, of course, there’s the issue of labels. And don’t get me started on that.

Identity is complicated. Even saying you identify as a Jew will provoke the question of “what kind of Jew”? Or at least it will in the contexts I’ve visited.

I’ve sometimes wished I could strip away the Jewish part of me and uncover my “true identity,” but have since realized that the Jewish part of me is the core, and all the rest is commentary and accessories. Important commentary and accessories that bring out the shimmering, prismatic highlights of me, but still, the core is Jewish.

Chassidus teaches us that although we are exactly physically the same as every other nation in the world, the essence of a Jew, what makes the Jew “otherly,” comes directly from Hashem.

To my mind this is both a great benefit and a weighty responsibility. It is where we can get the koach (potential strength) to achieve lofty goals, but it is also where distancing from Hashem (and each of us both comes close and retreats from Hashem at different times) makes many of us yearn for something greater.

This duality of both yearning and potential has separated Jews from whatever society they have found themselves in the diaspora. Sometimes the separation was a comfortable one (USA for example) and sometimes uncomfortable (nearly every other one), but the Jewish yearning for utopia and the confidence that there is the potential for achieving it, has led Jews to be at the forefront of (IMHO) every socially progressive movement in history ((Even if I “politically” disagree whether the “movement” was of net benefit or not))

mumble: everything is something because it is not something else. Figure-ground. You couldn’t see a figure if it were not in contrast to the ground behind it. To define is to de-fine, or state where it ends. And something else, which is different, begins. end of mumble.

And there is definitely a parallel dichotomy here:

Ethnic Jewishness is inherently bound up with “otherness”.

But Torah/morality-based Jewishness has intrinsic, inherent content of its own, and is only tangentially about “otherness”.

We are an Am Kadosh, a people who are separate, distinct. (Once again this is absent of value judgment) We have a unique role and mission in this world. What this means is that we are different. We are other. We have to recognize this fact.

However… and this is the key. We cannot ignore the other side of the coin. To simply be different, other, does not define us. We are defined by our mission as an Am Kadosh to be a Ohr LaGoyim – A light unto the nations. To set an example for the world around us. We are to teach the world Morality, to bring it to a recognition of G-d, and to perform and teach Tikkun Olam – repairing the world and striving to do our part in creation by moving the world toward perfection. This is what defines us.

It is true that we are other, but it is what makes us other that is important. It’s ok to be a Jew who recognizes the otherness, but it is not ok to be a Jew who solely defines himself by what he is not. Rather we must define ourself by who we are, and realize that it is who we are that makes us Kadosh.

I am not a Jew because there is Anti-Semitism.
I am not a Jew because of the Holocaust.
I am not a Jew because of the fact that others label me as such.

I am a Jew because of my lineage which is special.
I am a Jew because I find beauty in Tradition.
I am a Jew because of Shabbat, and Holidays that are meaningful to me.
And I am a Jew because I have a mission in this world that I cannot and will not Ignore.

Does this make me different? Yes. Does this mean I’m something that is other? Yes. But at the end of the day that is not what defines me. I’m defined by my actions, my traditions, my beliefs, and my collective history.

This problem of perspective does not just lie in the definition of who we are as Jews, but also in how we view our own traditions.

Shabbat Kodesh. The sabbath is also other, different. And it is very easy to define it by what it is not. We can’t work. We can’t drive our cars. We can’t… ect… Again we slip into the mentality of negitive definition, as opposed to viewing what it is, and the purpose it serves. This is the question and the mentality that we have to develop throughout our lives, and our personal introspections. Who are we? Why do we do things? Why do we find meaning in things?

It is our Job to realize that we are indeed different, that we are indeed other. That it doesn’t necessarily make us any worse or any better then that which we differentiate ourselves from. Rather, what makes us better on a personal level and on a communal level is when we determine who we are in a positive sense, and take pride in what makes us different, pride in the essence of who we are that makes us an Am Kadosh.

What Laya says in her post is incredibly potent, timely and important. I can only hope that people understand that larger message and implication rather then get caught up in what it means to be a people who are separate. We are separate, the question is why. I at least would like to believe it’s because of something I am rather then something I’m not.