Archway in the Jewish Community of Riga, Latvia that reads:                                           Welcome to the Jewish Community of Riga

This post was inspired by a JFNA GA session I participated in…enjoy!

The community that I know, that I perceive as the archetype for North American Jewry:  You belong to a synagogue.  Pray at a synagogue.  Celebrate life cycle events at the synagogue (or at least with clergy from your synagogue).  Thus it only makes sense that your primary community is your synagogue.  Your respective Jewish Federation, JCC, JFS or any other Jewish non-profit or youth group that you may be associated with…that is your community too.  And let us not forget the Jewish News.  To some, (Benedict Anderson) printed literature helped expand our community and make Jews in a city more unified.  I guess we have some choice in what part of the greater Jewish community we want to associate with.  Have pride in our ever-expanding community.  

All these organizations exist because at one point, in our not so distant past, we became autonomous out of necessity.  No one wanted to be associate with Jews.  In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, one young Jewish law student from the 50s was denied employment with a law firm because of his “antecedents”.  In layman’s terms…because he was Jewish.  Un/fortunately that is our past.  But look where North American Jewry is now.  Not to shabby.

Now, let’s go back to the beginning…synagogue.  Religion.  Jewish law and obligation, commandments, observances, Jewish text and liturgy.  This is where North American Jewry emerged.  But this not the same story for Jews around the world.  After the Holocaust and fall of Communism many Jewish communities were faced with a very difficult task.  Try and rebuild their community.  But how?  If you even knew you were Jewish in the Soviet Union, it was because it said it on your passport.  Jewish became your nationality, your ethnicity.  So where does religion come in?  Sadly it really doesn’t.  For some communities religion had not been apparent for 90 years.  Therefore, for some, building a community around a synagogue was not a very viable option.  

So let’s now look at the Latvian Jewish community.

The roots and history of the Latvian Jewish Community are rich and vibrant.  Latvia was teeming with Jewish Culture and was home to many influential people, including Rav Kook.  But unfortunately 95% of the Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.  The resurgence and growth of the new community are from the remnants of the Soviet expansion. Members of the community are very eager to learn, and rebuild, there is a renaissance of Jewish identity. 

Much of the the Jewish Community revival efforts are concentrated on the youth.  They are the survival of the community, they are the future.  The youth have been proactive and there is an engaged group of teens and volunteer coordinators that plan the majority of the youth programming.  They are responsible for the kids’ club, the teens’ program, and also work at the camps in Latvia.  Their programming is centered around Judaism and Jewish Culture, however the culture here is fundamentally different than what we would know in North America.  Remember, here Judaism is only an ethnicity, a peoplehood.  Religious ceremonies and ideas exist through their ubiquity in tradition.  It is a only point of pride and not a halakhic (Jewish law) observance. 

Learning about wold Jewry and living in the global Jewish community, I can now say with certainty that cultural Judaism, it is really important.  Cultural Judaism gravitates people in.  Indeed religious school and other forms of formal Jewish education are important, but cultural Judaism is developed in informal settings, i.e. camps and youth groups.  Of course I am biased as I am a product and staffer of Jewish camp and youth groups.  But after many conversations with people from different faiths…I think we got this one right.

Thank you to Sarah, Larry, Shauna and Liz (not pictured) and Amy, Heather and Jeanine for our international teleconference conversation at the GA.

And thank you to my fellow Michigan Wolverines who attended the session.  David Rosenwein, Shayna Goodman, and Laura Flusty.

(Source: newconversatio)