|
|
By Steve Israel
INTRODUCTORY UNIT
RITUALS, CULTURE AND US
INDEX
- Jews and Life Cycles: Opening Words
- Judaism as a Culture
- About this Introduction - Our Strategy
- On Rituals and Culture: How It All Fits Together
- Traditional Cultures - Losing Their Grip
- Life Cycle Moments - A Time When Culture Calls
- The Problem of Cultural Traditions for the Modern Person
- The Price of Modernity - The Loss of Ritual
- The Benefits of Ritual - Two Perspectives
- Where Do the Jews Fit Into All of This?
- Why This Program?
1. JEWS AND LIFE CYCLES: OPENING WORDS
Judaism is a cultural system whose roots go back several thousand years.
In that time, it has gone through many changes and developments. Biblical
Judaism, Second Temple Judaism and Talmudic Judaism are differentiated
in terms of the customs and practices that developed in the different
countries and periods, as well as in the ways that the ideas of Judaism
were incorporated into their daily lives.
In this regard, the Talmudic period (the five or so centuries following
the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E.), is perhaps the crucial
stage. The rabbinical authorities who came to the fore at this time as
the unchallenged leadership of the Jewish people, standardized, in completely
new ways, the Halachic (legal) requirements that obligated the Jew in
every area of his or her life. They created a base of legal requirements,
onto which additional traditions could be grafted, according to circumstances.
Through the following centuries, many local traditions - "minhagim"
- as well as additional Halachot, developed in different places and swelled
the obligations pertaining to many aspects of Jewish life. In many spheres
of life, these minhagim were seen to have the same force as law.
This chain of events is as true for life cycle events as much as for
anything else. Thus, when we examine any aspect of the life cycle in the
Jewish culture, we are likely to find a dense core of Halachot and minhagim,
often cushioned by additional traditions and beliefs, verging from the
sublimely spiritual to the outright superstitious. But we always find
a richness and depth that usually comes only in the oldest and deepest
cultures.
2. JUDAISM AS A CULTURE
Use of the term "culture" to describe Judaism is a reference
to an all-encompassing way of life that has concretized a series of spiritual
insights into the world and what is believed to lie behind it. The Jewish
culture is one of the world's great religious cultures, and the insights
derived over the generations regarding humankind's relationship with G-d
have been woven into a whole way of life that Jews have lived for thousands
of years, with variations in time and place.
Jews, like many other people, have a rich series of rituals that mark
the transitional life cycle points. These transitional points that mark
the passage of life from one stage to another are some of the most important
indicators of the values and ideas that define the Jewish culture. But
in any examination of the Jewish life cycle, it is important to start
with a general consideration of the place of life cycle events and rituals
in human culture in general.
3. ABOUT THIS INTRODUCTION - OUR STRATEGY
Everything said in the first - general - part of the introduction now
will be relevant to Judaism and the Jewish culture but it will be equally
true for other cultures and belief systems. It is important to consider
the question of Jewish ritual and Jewish life cycle ceremonies within
a wider perspective than these are often viewed. Questions of ritual are
not Jewish questions; they are universal human cultural questions and
must be seen as such. What will be done in this program is to examine
these questions within the framework of the Jewish ritual and value system,
which provide an excellent reflection of all the relevant issues. The
Jewish ritual and value system will provide the laboratory in which we
will examine the questions of specific life cycle moments and processes.
4. ON RITUALS AND CULTURE: HOW IT ALL FITS TOGETHER
One of the most basic facts of human existence is that life never proceeds
in an absolutely smooth line. The lives of all of us as humans proceed
through a series of bumps as we make our way through the different stages
of our existence. As we grow, we pass through a series of milestones,
some biological and some cultural, that punctuate our lives from the beginning,
when we open our eyes in birth, to the end, when we close them in death.
Between birth and death, the stages are likely to include such major turning
points as puberty and entrance into maturity, fertility and marriage,
parenting, elder care and old age.
Another of the basic truths of human existence is the fact that, as well
as being born into a biological family, we are all born into a cultural
grouping of one kind or another. These groupings are intermediary tribal-national
frameworks that exist between the individual biological family and the
vast universal cosmos that we call humankind. Most of these frameworks
undergo great changes over time. The Jewish framework, according to the
tradition, started off as a distinct family and in time became a series
of tribes. These tribes themselves became at a certain point in time (the
monarchical era of David and Solomon), largely subsumed in a national
framework.
These frameworks, originally geographically based, but increasingly scattered
in the modern world, traditionally served many purposes.
- They provided safety and a place of refuge for the individual.
- They provided an economic framework and safety net.
- They also provided identity and a series of values and beliefs that
gave the individual a key to negotiating the mysteries of the world
and to living a successful and fulfilling life.
Some of these functions have fallen away in the modern world where other
institutions - primarily those of the modern state - have often stepped
in to replace the traditional social and educational functions of the
cultural group. Where the group has been divided up into a number of different
countries, many of the original functions of community have largely been
lost. However, the provision of cultural identity is one of the most enduring
and all cultural groups have endeavored to continue to survive, in order
to ensure the passing down of that identity, since it is the cultural
identity that ultimately cements the individual to the group in the modern
world. For a group to relinquish this area would be suicidal.
The Jews provide a telling example of this process. More than most groups,
because of their peculiar history as a people who left or were pushed
out of the land that served as the territorial base for the national framework
- the Land of Israel -, their story has developed in many different lands.
As such, over time, many of the original functions of the Israelite or
Judean state were lost. For example, they no longer were able to defend
themselves in the traditional way and, for most of their history, they
had to make do with the often inadequate protection which they received
from the leaders of the lands where they lived. But the attempt to provide
a cultural and religious framework for all Jews never ceased: when just
about all other functions of the Jewish collective had broken down, this
was the one that survived.
We have mentioned two important truths about the human condition. As
people, we go through many stages in our lives. In addition, we are all
born into larger cultural units of tribes or nations. These two most fundamental
biological and cultural truths are closely linked. In all cultures, tribes
and nations, there have evolved a complex series of rituals around the
major turning points in human life, which have been crucial in guiding
the path of the individual through the difficult and tortuous path of
human existence. These rituals have been focal in building and reinforcing
the connection of the individual to the group and in transmitting the
values and perspectives of the culture to the participant. These are the
life cycle rituals.
It is important to understand that these central turning points of human
life are the magnets which have attracted clusters of ritualistic acts
and thus act as a public stage for the display of cultural values and
attitudes. Through these landmarks, values can both be perceived and analyzed.
However, it is not only the life cycle turning-points which are significant
in this regard. At all times in an individual's life, those values and
attitudes are working to condition and frame the life of that person,
to bind him or her to the group culture. They might be especially overt,
more apparent and more powerful when they appear on the surface of life
in the public arena at the crucial turning points of individual's life,
but they are no less present in everyday life when the individual stands,
not at some transitional juncture in his or her life but, rather, is floating
in the calmer waters that mark the journey from one transitional turning-point
on the life path towards the next one.
There may, for example, be major ritualistic ceremonies that exist in
a certain culture around the entry into maturity and once again around
the time of marriage. It may also be that between these two points there
is no major ceremonial moment that marks a point of transition. However,
the culture works in the interim period to fashion the attitudes of the
individual and prepare them for the next turning point, in this case marriage,
so that life's journey will hopefully bring that individual calmly towards
that next major intersection, which the culture perceives as all important.
5. TRADITIONAL CULTURES - LOSING THEIR GRIP
In the modern world, of course, many of the traditional cultures have
loosened their grip on the individuals inside their group. This has happened
with geographical dispersion, where large numbers of the members of many
groups are scattered over the face of the earth, making it more difficult
for the culture to be the dominant influence in the running of its members
lives.
In addition, the overwhelming influence of western materialistic culture
backed up by economic power of a formidable scale tends to be so powerful
and all pervasive that even traditionally sheltered and isolated cultures
find themselves in a defensive posture. With one hand they try to fend
off the cultural influence of the West, even while they are attracted
by some of the material rewards that contact with that culture can bring.
As a result, an enormous leveling off in cultural differences has developed.
The majority of individuals, certainly in the West, but by no means entirely
so, have become distanced from their traditional cultures. These traditional
cultures have frequently become, at best, a marginal and secondary influence
in their lives, competing with the bland consumer culture that surrounds
much of human life today - certainly in the West. In this manner, large
populations have become marginalized within their traditional culture;
that culture has become less important to them and no longer plays a dominant
or formative role in their lives.
Once again, if we examine the competing cultural influences in the lives
of many Jews today, we see this process very well borne out. Many Jews
have only a marginal connection with, and a minimal knowledge of, the
traditional culture of their People. Language, for example, a major component
of national culture, has been very largely lost among contemporary Jews.
For hundreds of years, most Jews have spoken the vernacular language of
the lands in which they reside, often together with a traditional Jewish
language, with at least a basic knowledge of the Hebrew language. But
increasingly, in recent generations, we encounter the phenomenon among
very large numbers of Jews, of almost complete Hebrew illiteracy. The
Hebrew language has simply faded away. It is very common to find Jews
in the West, for example, who can read the language, but without any idea
of what they are actually saying. Their literacy and fluency in the language
of the country in which they live, however, is extremely great.
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.
7. THE PROBLEM OF CULTURAL TRADITIONS FOR THE MODERN PERSON
The underlying reason for this is not just the marginalization of the
individual in relation to the traditional culture. It goes much deeper
than that. The majority of traditional cultures have, central within their
belief system, a fundamentally religious conception of the world, which
places individual life in a specific subordinate relationship to a Heavenly
power, or powers, that play a crucial role in the running of the world
and the running of individual lives. The traditional life cycle ceremonies
express, among other things, certain very deep cultural beliefs about
the relationship of the supernatural to human beings. But, over the last
two hundred years or so, a deep change of perspective has swept over the
majority of humanity, which has undermined the traditional perspective
towards the supernatural aspects of life and replaced these certainties
with deep skepticism on the part of many people. In the western world,
the intellectual movement that paved the way for this was the Enlightenment,
that developed in Europe from the eighteenth century. It was the Jewish
version of this movement, the Haskalah, which developed only a little
later, that had the same effect among many western Jews. With the exception
of those Haredi - extremely orthodox - Jews who tried to cut themselves
off from the influence of the outside world, it is true to say that in
one way or other, all western Jews are heirs of the Haskalah.
However, the issue is not merely one of the presence or absence of religious
belief. Even among the believers, the kind of belief has changed. To a
large extent, religious belief has become rationalized. Many things that
were once seen as real are now seen as symbolic. Views of the role of
the Divine and the part that the Divine forces play in human life have
changed for the believer hardly less than for the non-believer. This has
tended to create a problematic relationship with the old traditional rituals,
many of which came to express beliefs that are seen as superstitions by
many of the people still immersed in the culture, and of course far more
so among those who are alienated from the tradition. The way that at least
aspects of the ceremonies and rituals are perceived, then, even by many
of those who embrace those ceremonies, is from a distant, folkloristic
point of view, rather than with a wholehearted acceptance, as was the
original intention regarding the attitudes to those ceremonies.
8. THE PRICE OF MODERNITY - THE LOSS OF RITUAL
One of the major casualties that the modern western world has inflicted
on the traditional cultures and, arguably, on the lives of many human
beings in western societies is a steady undermining of belief in the importance
of ritual. We live in a world which is skeptical towards the idea of ritual
acts, we see much ritual as superstition, we speak of values as important,
but have tended to distance ourselves from the value of the ritual acts
which once acted as a framework for those values. Let us now think for
a moment about the role of ritual in human life and suggest some of the
things that have been lost or abandoned in the move away from ritual.
We all perform ritual acts on a regular basis. Rituals refer to those
acts, which we invest with some symbolic meaning, over and above the concrete
nature of the act itself. Here, however, we are referring to those ritual
acts that are dictated by the demands of a person's own culture, and specifically
those previously mentioned clusters of symbolic acts that become enshrined
in ceremonies involving the individual at crucial turning points in his
or her own life. Let us examine the significance of such ceremonies from
two vantage-points, both the cultural group and that of the participating
individual.
9. THE BENEFITS OF RITUAL - TWO PERSPECTIVES
From the point of view of the cultural group, there are many significant
points about ceremonial life cycle ritual. The first is that the ceremony
is to one degree or other a public ceremony, witnessed by members of the
community. In that sense it is a cementing moment emphasizing the connection
of the individual to the group and confirming it publicly. It bestows
public communal validity upon the new status that is being marked in the
ceremony. This, of course, is particularly important when the individual
has become marginalized and distanced from the group.
Another major function of the ceremony, from the collective cultural
point of view, is that it provides an opportunity to emphasize and publicly
proclaim the values that represent the group and that have been embedded
in the ceremony through the generations. It is an opportunity for the
group to educate the individual into a new stage of immersion in the values
system of the group. This is especially true in those ceremonies (most
prominently at maturity or puberty), which demand learning and preparation
on the part of the individual before she or he comes to the ceremony,
since they provide a chance for the accumulated group wisdom to filter
through to the particular individual.
From the point of view of the participating individual, in addition to
the aspect of linking up to the group, there are a number of other issues
that must be considered when evaluating the importance of the ritual ceremony.
The ritual moment is a chance to take stock, to frame a moment with meaning,
to single out a particular and significant moment in the life process
and focus on it in a way that infuses it with enormous significance and
alerts the individual to the importance of self-examination and introspection.
It is a means of signaling to individuals, who might otherwise take such
change for granted, that they have come to a particular moment of great
importance in their life and a chance (even an obligation) at such moments
to take stock of the meaning of the moment in life's passage.
Many of these life-passage moments are fraught with private anxiety,
and even personal crisis for the individual. The ceremony can serve as
a comforting reminder that others have passed through the same difficult
stage before, and that it is publicly accepted that this is a particularly
tense time for the individual. It can be viewed as the culture's way of
comforting the individual in his or her individual anxiety and pain, and
announcing to the individual that this is merely the prelude to a new
status within the community.
This last point bears emphasizing. In many cultures, life cycle ceremonies
almost always have a transitional aspect, marking the passage of the individual
to a new status within the collective. The ceremony offers and denotes
a publicly proclaimed way of allowing the individual to be removed from
the previous status and to pass to the assumption of the new status within
the community, within a public forum.
An additional function for the individual is the encounter with the deepest
truths that the culture has produced. In this way, a person is confronted
with deep cultural truths about the material world, the spiritual world
and his or her role in relation to those two worlds.
Another very important function of the ceremony for the individual is
connected to the symbolic aspects of ritual, which are present on all
such occasions. If, as mentioned, the life cycle changes tend to be situated
at junctures of individual life when a person feels anxiety, the symbolic
aspects of ceremony can often provide a physical anchor for those anxieties,
making them easier for the individual to deal with. The very physicality
of symbol can channel the anxieties and help overcome them.
A final aspect is the importance of the ceremony for the individual in
later retrospect. We tend to remember the life cycle ceremonies. They
become fixed landmarks in our lives and in our memories. When we try and
assess our lives and our progress in life, it is useful to have such landmarks,
which enable us to recall the events of our lives. In fact, while we are
likely to be unable to recall in detail the majority of our lives, the
"anchored" life cycle events can almost always be remembered
in great detail. This, too, is an important benefit for the individual.
When examining the sum total of the important aspects of ceremonial life
cycle ritual, both from the individual point of view and from the point
of view of the cultural community, it is clear that these ceremonies mark
occasions of potentially great significance for all involved.
Clearly, that potential is not always realized. Often, as previously
mentioned, the individual has become detached from the cultural group.
In many cases, the deep meanings of the ceremony are not clear to the
participants who retain the external elements which often seem ridiculous,
meaningless and superficial, when separated from their deeper layers of
meaning. Sometimes, the philosophies and belief systems of the participants
are so at odds with the world-views on which the ceremonies are based
that there is estrangement from the culture, while the relationship between
the participants and the cultural group is strained and results in alienation.
Frequently, too, those whose task it is to represent the culture to the
individuals do not know how to present it in a manner that is comprehensible
to the individual participants. Very often, the ritual is pushed to the
front, while the meaning is forgotten, so that the ceremony becomes a
meaningless exercise in sterile ritual rather than a meaningful encounter
with deep cultural truths. For all these reasons, what should be a momentous
encounter between the individual and him or herself, and between the individual
and his or her culture, often fails to achieve its full or even its partial
potential. In cultural terms, the moment has been wasted.
10. WHERE DO THE JEWS FIT INTO ALL OF THIS?
The scenario of alienation that we have outlined in general terms above,
is borne out very well when we come to examine the situation of Judaism
in the modern world.
As is the case in many of the old traditional cultures, there has been
considerable attrition of affiliation
- The close relationship between the members of the 'tribe' and the
traditional tribal system, with its specific beliefs, has changed enormously
over the last two centuries.
- There are many who are alienated from the collective and who show
very little, if any, interest in the traditions of the group.
- There are many others, loyal members of the Jewish tribe, who have
drifted far from the traditional culture and the philosophical and theological
underpinnings of that way of life.
But many of both these groups show their greatest loyalty to the culture
when it comes to life cycle events. Others still, have reinterpreted and
modernized the tradition, often dropping aspects of the tradition once
considered central, while developing new ideas and traditions on the basis
of the old ones to create a cohesive and coherent balance of the old with
the new.
11. WHY THIS PROGRAM?
If it is true that there is great loyalty towards Jewish life cycle ceremonies
and rituals, then it is clearly worth examining and clarifying these traditions.
If, in addition, there is often comparatively superficial understanding
and knowledge of what lies behind the different aspects of the life cycle
traditions, it is clearly essential to try and reveal the depth of thought
behind the traditions and rituals. Furthermore, if each culture invests
deep values and meanings in the cluster of traditions that accompany the
life cycle changes, then it stands to reason that it should be possible
by interpreting the ceremonies and traditions - to deconstruct them -
and thereby arrive at deep insights into the nature of the group culture
itself.
For all of these reasons it seems worthwhile and important to examine
the Jewish life cycle process. This is indeed the assumption on which
this whole program will be based. The hope and expectation is that , as
we explore the different aspects of the Jewish life cycle, we will be
able to uncover some of the deepest truths about the Jewish religion and
culture. This, then, is our task and our empowerment.
|
|