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May 2010/Iyar 5770
A JOURNAL OF JEWISH RESPONSIBILITY
A Fuller Diaspora
Joshua Ellison
A Border-Crossing
People. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Emilio Betech Rophie
Multiple Identities and
Coexistence. . . . . . . . . . 2
Benny Bailey
Discovering My
Jewish Self .......... 3
Elise Bernhardt, Hillel
Halkin, Yossi Klein Halevi,
Gordon Tucker & Steven
J. Zipperstein
Israel and America: A
Roundtable on Deepening
theDialogue ......... 4
Discussion Guide. . . . . . 7
Kamil Kijek
Marginal Individualism . 8
Masha Goldman
Homespun and Made
in Russia. . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Eve Gani
On the Street and in the
Home: French Jews . . . . 9
Mirta Kupferminc
A Sense of Belonging . . 10
Jonathan Boyd
Creativity by Critique . 12
Lisa Capelouto
Renaissance for
a Minority. . . . . . . . . . 13
Moshe Yehuda Bernstein
The Art of a Jewish
Larrikin. . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Kate Craddy
Jewish Identity in
Kraków. . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Andrew Goldstein
Being in God’s Presence . 15
Martine Cohen
French Jews at a
Turning Point. . . . . . . . 16
Abram Sterne
Book Review. . . . . . . . 17
Ruby Namdar
Smashing my Father’s
Idols. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Edward Serotta
NiSh’ma ........... 20
Yonah Bookstein
Sh’maEthics . . . . . . . 22
Once, not that long ago, it seemed that the contemporary Jewish world was essentially split between the United States and Israel with, of course, Soviet Jews eager to leave Russia and to move to one or the other location. How different the world now looks — in
part, because of globalization and a more porous notion of boundaries, but also because of the
splitting apart of the old Communist world and the heightened vibrancy of Jewish communities
across a more significant, if fragmented, Diaspora. This issue of Sh’ma begins to explore why
the Jewish world now feels so much larger and more complicated. In short vignettes, Jews from
around the world share their stories — short takes on communities thriving or barely surviving.
Of course, the United States and Israel remain the dominant spheres for Jewish life, but they
are far from the whole story. That being so, we include a roundtable featuring leading Israeli and
American Jewish intellectuals and cultural figures speaking about the current state of relations
between Jews in Israel and the United States. —S.B.
A Border-Crossing People
Living in a Borderless World
JOSHUA ELLISON
There is nothing that makes me feel as alive as walking the streets of a new city — with a notebook, a map, and a camera — waiting for a portrait to take shape out of
color and sound, clamor and empty space, concrete and stone and sky. A city is, first and foremost, a rhythmic organism: It takes a lot of
patience and attention, and many miles on foot,
to be open enough to hear the particular music
of a place, and to feel how a city situates itself
uniquely on the earth.
I have spent the past several years traveling
— to places like Bosnia, Argentina, Russia,
Hungary, Mexico — exploring these cities’
communities, trying to
understand better what
it means to be a Jew in
different parts of the
world and, just as importantly, what it means
to live in the world as a Jew. What started as a
way to explore my own identity has become the
central act of expressing my identity. I have discovered myself, Jewishly and otherwise, as a
visitor and a stranger in cities all over the globe.
Jews and cities have a special relationship.
Cities are open-ended places and, like Jewish
culture, can’t be fully described according to
geographic boundaries. The great Hungarian
novelist George Konrád wrote: “Those Jews who
lived in Budapest or Berlin or Belgrade or
Bucharest were certifiably at home there. To
what extent they were Jews, Hungarians,
Germans, Serbs or Romanians is an open ques-
tion.” In other words, even if a Jew can’t com-
pletely claim citizenship to a country, that Jew
can feel fully at home in his or her city. Urban
spaces are integrated, porous, works-in-progress.
Nations exclude, but cities embrace. And just as
Jews have made their mark on cities, the ethos
of cities has left indelible imprints on us. The
survival skills of urban life have become our
“Diaspora” is a process of creating proximity and intimacy
over great distances and is primarily an act of imagination.
cultural hallmarks: education, translation, innovation, mediation, and adaptation.
One must be willing to leave a new city as a
slightly changed person. If you’re not open to
that possibility, then you haven’t really travelled,
not in the profound sense that demands so much
more than just stepping onto an airplane.
Jewishness and travel are inseparable for me because they make the same moral demands:
