I’m just back from a visit to the old country – a.k.a. the United States – and am reminded of the intense patriotism of my former homeland.
It’s not at all unusual to see men in uniforms in restaurants or to pass armed forces trucks on the road. Huge American flags fly over car lots and in front of homes and businesses alike. Children recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning before class begins for the day.
My family raises and lowers the flag at appropriate times outside their home in Pennsylvania. July 4 is the time for parades in every city, town and smallest hamlet, with whole communities decorating their cars, trucks, bicycles, motorbikes and even baby carriages with the red, white and blue. Fire companies, police forces and all local, state and national politicians line up to wave to their constituents from huge floats mounted on flatbed trucks.
The United States was built on the notion that it could take a multitude of nationalities and mould them into a single identity: out of the many, one. That concept was heartily embraced by Jewish immigrants, who, by and large, structured their lives so as to have at least their children become full-fledged Americans, with little or nothing to distinguish them from the native-born.
But surely Canada is different?
When we came to Canada, my first-generation husband and I met a challenge at the border.
“What’s your ethnic origin?” we were asked. “American,” we replied. Not an ethnic origin, according to the officers.
Jewish? Nope. (We later found out that “Hebrew” would have worked.)
How about our fathers’ origins? My husband replied that his father had been born in Russia. Voila! “Russian,” they wrote down. And me? American back to the Revolution. Where before that? Germany. So I entered Canada as a German.
That was in 1965, long before the concept of a multicultural society was enunciated or put into official practice. Today, we can think of ourselves as Canadians of Jewish descent, or as Jewish Canadians, just as we have Chinese Canadians, etc. The concept of an ethnic origin linked to our paternal ancestors has, largely, disappeared, although the census still asks for both religion and ethnic origins. We can share our double identities without worry. Or can we?
Jewish identity has always been a bit “other.” Identity is linked sociologically to a shared history, cultural practices, geography and language. Yet Jews’ shared language is Hebrew, something few of us speak outside Israel. Geographies? We lived all over the world at one time. What we share is a historical bond and the recognition that, whether we practise it or not, we are tied to the religion of Judaism.
As many of the next generation of Canadian Jews lose a strong denominational sense, as ties to a particular community diminish or basic knowledge of Judaism wanes, will there be less Jewish identity within our community as a whole?
We have begun the reading of Dvarim, the book in which a dying Moses speaks to a generation born with no memory of parental failings in the long trek from slavery to freedom. It will be up to the generation born in the wilderness to forge a national identity in the land of Israel.
Moshe reminds the children how not to behave, since their parents’ feckless and fearful ways caused them to be shut out of the Promised Land.
But most importantly for the topic of identity, the combination of long sermon and historical overview that Moses delivers serves as a crash course in identity. “These commandments will be the basis of your new identity as free people in your land.”
Over the next six weeks, we read once again the story of the children of Israel’s struggle to escape, not from Egypt but from the identity as slaves. We can see the blueprint for a new sense of identity being drawn up. It’s been a guide for to us for more than 3,000 years, segments of an identity that is still changing and challenging.