INTRODUCTORY UNIT - RITUALS, CULTURE AND US

6. LIFE CYCLE MOMENTS - A TIME WHEN CULTURE CALLS

It is interesting to note that for many people in such a position, a vestigial sentimental connection with their traditional culture makes them unwilling to cast off their links to that culture totally. They seek out some kind of contact with that culture, especially at the crucial turning points of their life. In other words, many individuals who have, at best, only a marginal connection with their traditional culture, will turn back for contact to their source culture at those turning points, precisely on the occasions where the ceremonial ritual enshrining cultural values is so strong.

For those brief moments in the passage of life, the individual will once again be inclined to immerse him or herself in the comforting embrace of the mother culture. This tends to happen despite the fact that much of the meaning of the ceremonies has lost its hold on the individual who often is unaware of the deeper meaning of many of the ritual acts which make up the ceremony. Indeed, the ideological messages of the traditional culture would not necessarily speak to the individuals participating in the ceremony, were they to be fully understood. Individuals have become alienated from the messages and values of their own tradition. They are willing to stand, perhaps, within the ceremonial embrace of the culture at crucial moments in the passage of life, because of the vestigial pull and the innate power of the ceremony in question. This ceremony often acts as a magnet for the sentimental person unwilling to cut her or himself off from the cultural group, but they are not willing or capable of accepting the real cultural messages that are embedded in the very ceremonies towards which they are attracted.

All of these factors are true for many Jews today. There are very large numbers of marginalized Jews who are willing to turn towards the framework of Jewish ritual at crucial life moments, such as marriage, birth or death. Yet there is little willingness to engage with the deeper meaning of the ceremonies; the idea of ceremony attracts them, but the meanings of these same ceremonies remain unknown to them on all but a superficial level. Moreover, if they were to examine the real meaning of the ceremonies and rituals, they would find much that would only reinforce their initial alienation and marginalization.