Jewish identities

educating for multiple and moving targets

Stuart Z. Charmé

Tali Zelkowicz

pp. 163-181

in: Helena Miller, Lisa Grant, Alex Pomson (eds), International handbook of Jewish education, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

For a long time, the prevailing approach to Jewish identity has been dominated by a 'survivalist" perspective focused on the threats of assimilation and intermarriage rather than the new realities created by modernity which allowed a variety of new ways of being Jewish to emerge. The widespread anxiety about group survival in the field of Jewish education has led to a survivalist paradigm that has tended to narrow the field's theoretical conceptions of Jewish identity and identity in general, resulting in largely static and monolithic formulations. Instead, drawing upon the work of multiple disciplines, the authors argue for a shift from thinking about identity as some "thing" that someone "has' toward identities as being multiple and shifting processes that people practice and rehearse. The chapter concludes with examples of scholarship from various disciplines that approach identity formation in light of such a shift and with pedagogical applications and implications for the shift within the field of Jewish education, specifically.