Current Events
This Ain't Your Father's Religion
by TRISTIN HOPPER
A new Montreal festival is aiming to rebrand Judaism for a young Jewish population increasingly alienated from traditional Jewish norms.
The June 5, 2011 Le Mood festival - which carries the tagline “This ain’t your father’s religion” - in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, will feature more than 60 workshops exploring the food, culture and quirks of the Jewish world.
“We’re trying to reach out to people who have a connection to Jewish
life but haven’t been satisfied with the ways they have of interacting
with it,” said festival organizer Mike Savatovsky. “We just want people
to connect and do whatever is Jewish for them.”
Former Montreal Canadiens coach Jean Perron will do a talk on coaching
the Israeli national hockey team. Author David Brody will discuss
growing up gay and Orthodox. “People of the Wok” will explore the Jewish
love affair with Chinese food. “Curious why Jews don’t celebrate
Christmas but feel enough of a sense of solidarity on that one day to
all eat Chinese before going to the movies?” reads a description. Tamara
Kramer, producer of a Montreal Jewish culture radio program, is
moderating “Loaded: Jews and Money,” a look the Jewish connection with
wealth.
“When you think ‘Jew’ sometimes you think ‘money,’ - but that’s been taboo and we haven’t necessarily been able talk about it,” says Ms. Kramer.
Much like the legions of Montreal Catholics who stopped going to church during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, Quebec’s young Jews have been increasingly swearing off synagogue. Montreal’s Jewish community has a reputation for being one of the most conservative in North America, a trait that can leave young people at odds with the highly-traditional rituals of their European-immigrant grandparents. Many Jewish children grow up in secular Jewish households, but still go to summer camps and Hebrew schools that espoused an insular, highly-traditional form of Judaism, says Ms. Kramer.
“People don’t feel comfortable following in traditions if they don’t understand why they’re doing it,” says Ms. Kramer.
Judaism can sometimes feel “buried under a heap of seemingly insurmountable dogma,” reads a press release for Le Mood. The festival offers a way to explore Jewish culture “without any pressure to follow any rules or fit any boxes,” says Ms. Kramer.
“I did Hebrew school until grade 11 and couldn’t care less,” Mr. Savatovsky says. “A lot of young people don’t even have conversations with rabbis anymore.”
The point of Le Mood, he says, is to allow young Jews a chance to inject their own perspectives into Jewish tradition - rather than try and fit within the antiquated traditions of their elders. When it comes to keeping kosher, says Mr. Savatovsky, avoiding shellfish and pork may not be enough in the 21st century - modern Jews may also need to consider whether their pastrami and Gefilte fish is organic and fair trade.
“Judaism has to be continually evolving with each generation, otherwise it’s losing something,” says Ms. Kramer.
Musician Josh Dolgin - aka Socalled, a feature performer at Le Mood - says he felt “alienated” from the religious trappings of Judaism as a child growing up in the village of Chelsea, Quebec. It was only later in life that he discovered his first Yiddish opera while flipping through used records. An obsession flourished and now, whether performing klezmer, Yiddish folk songs or Yiddish-themed hip-hop, Mr. Dolgin has become a face of what has been called the Jewish revival in music. “I found my place in my culture by discovering the aesthetic riches of it,” he says.
Worldwide, Jewish religious observation has been plummeting over the last 30 years. In the United States, the number of Jews who consider themselves religiously observant has dropped by more than 20% since the 1980s. In Israel, more than half of all Jews consider themselves secular.
Dropping synagogue attendance is not so much a sign of an un-spiritual society, but because young Jews have a larger “menu of extracurricular activities,” says Rabbi Philip Bregman of Vancouver’s Temple Shalom. Fifty years ago, the synagogue was as much a community centre as a house of worship.
“It was thing to do, and if you had to go through a religious service once in a while to get to the bowling alley then so be it,” says Mr. Bregman.
He notes General Motors didn’t see its sales drop so much as a result of an inferior product, but because there were so many other car choices available. “There needs to be a retooling of the synagogues and other house of worship like there was a retooling of General Motors,” says Mr. Bregman.
[Courtesy: National Post]
May 24, 2011
Conversation about this article
1: Hari Singh (Kapurthala, Punjab), May 24, 2011, 1:11 PM.
Reminds me of the Punjabi expression: "Oye, eh terrey pyo da nahi hai ...!" - which, I'm sure, all of you will recognize instantly; a phrase which, I daresay, can be appropriately used with the power brokers of every religion today who insist that their own view of their faith is the only correct one.
2: I.J. Singh (New York, U.S.A.), May 24, 2011, 8:40 PM.
Right, no religion ever is "your father's religion." A religion is a way of life. It is not a fat bank balance or a shop that can be willed to a child. Every person has to earn it anew, interpret it fresh. Each generation - every individual indeed - not only has the right to re-explore it and apply it to life but has the obligation to do so. Only then can a person and a people own it and its lifestyle.
3: Gurjender Singh (Maryland, U.S.A.), May 25, 2011, 8:28 AM.
I agree with IJ Singh ji that Religion is not a fat bank balance or a shop that can be willed to a child. But religion teaching and lifestyle can be passed on to children by having good communication between children and parents. Also, religion teachers also have a big role in communicating these values to the young generations.
4: Pierre Sogol (D.C., U.S.A.), May 25, 2011, 12:39 PM.
Bully, I.J., well said! The situation has become now that there are not even the cultural [Jewish] ties, the common unspoken languages of meaning that allow each ensuing generation to interpret anew ANYTHING Jewish; they don't understand even the non-religious aspects - how can they interpret the peoplehood in ALL its aspects? It is becoming ONLY personal, where it is one of world history's central COMMUNAL identities. Many of the examples of Jewish "norms" and such given in the article were not religious - they were largely-cultural institutions that are not even able to reach these Jews! And even at that - there is always a problem of a "next generation" AT ALL; so many marry out in this socially-assimilated communities. But in many such responses like Le Mood (which is a play off 'limud', a phrase relating to learning), they emphasize the medium of any message that can be shared - calling something 'cultural' doesn't remove it's historically religious setting, for example! Or such situations will treat as religious or "traditional" practices or views that are neither 'sacred' nor religious - often ones even shared with *European* society - reflecting EARLIER stages of assimilation, themselves also long-dead! When groups cater so much to how an individual OF a group may personally "understand" something [that they often cannot actually understand, like a term in a language], it plays into the postmodern silliness of nothing having meaning all it's own, only having meaning in representation or in the professing. I could identify and represent myself as a secular Jewish or cultural Hindu for that matter, and who, in the postmodern era could dispute me? ...