Jew-ish: Sophie Kieffer's Covenant for the 21st Century
Sophie Kieffer pauses and squints through the lenses of her comically large, translucent frame goggles before finishing her answer: “I guess; we’re just a very culturally Jewish family.” On the off chance you haven’t had any interaction with Sophie or any of the other Jews that make up 40% of our 4-D wonderland, this statement, as much as her glasses are to herself, is entirely illustrative of Reform Judaism in the twenty-first century.
Sophie is the embodiment of this transition. Does she attend synagogue? Only on the High Holy Days. And at Temple Sinai, one of the largest congregations in Atlanta; a congregation that doubles its capacity throughout the High Holy Days to accommodate the influx of Sophie Kieffers fulfilling their obligation to file into services once per year. So does she believe in God? No. Again, she’s culturally Jewish; a developing sect of Judaism that believes action holds more clout than prayer. So Sophie sees a modern schism developing in Judaism; one that is religious, that is, believes in God, the afterlife, the faith aspects of Judaism. And that cultural sect, the one that doesn’t need God in order to be Jewish in the twenty-first century.
Sophie never attended Sunday School. Her parents didn’t want her to until this year when she started confirmation. “They were so shocked when I started doing confirmation because they never envisioned me doing any formal Jewish education.” And because of that, she’s always kept her identity and Judaism at a distance. She differentiates her altruistic values from Jewish values; even the charity work she does through Jewish organizations, she feels, is more a reflection of her personal values than Jewish ones. Yet, despite this, Sophie is dedicated to Judaism. She identifies with those intrinsic Jewish values of compassion, tolerance, and inquiry and is an active member of BBYO, the country’s largest Jewish teenage youth group. Most of her friends are Jewish, and the charity work she undertakes is entirely, “under the Jewish umbrella.” And so, like the stereotypical Jewish mother, she feels the overbearing presence of religion in her life. She stops me mid-question to recount an epiphany she had the night before our interview in which she asked herself, “am I becoming the person I don’t want to be? Practically all my extra-curricular activities are related to Judaism.” It bothers her that her friends struggle to branch out from the Jewish community. “Some people are so stuck in the Jewish community,” she says, emphasizing the quicksand nature of youth groups, religious school, and services. And when I interject that these are still positive initiatives, just a means to an end, she draws out a barely audible “yeeeaaaaah” that wouldn’t convince a bubby to call her grandson handsome. She goes on: “some people are just afraid to leave the Jewish community, or they won’t do something unrelated to Judaism, even if it’s charitable.”
Sophie is talking about a very dangerous biological occurrence: a lack of bio-diversity. The law that ecosystems and species need diversity in order to prevent themselves from becoming homogenous, and therefore, vulnerable when they are introduced to foreign and unfamiliar elements. This isn’t a new phenomenon in Judaism. For millennia, Jews have crammed themselves into neighborhoods, shtetls, ghettos, and in America, youth groups. Jews are converging on a collective century out of the Ye’ Ole Country, but we continue to marginalize ourselves, huddling in the social security of BBYO and NFTY.
Sophie continues on her tofu sandwich as I poke at my chicken a la FLIK with a plastic knife. We sit there in silence for a moment until I ask her about Humanistic Judaism: a new wave reformist movement that places love of the individual above love of god. Immediately, Her face lights up, “Yeah! I really wish there was one in Atlanta.” While Humanists consider themselves Jewish, other Jews do not. As of yet, no Humanist congregation has been accepted into any sect of organized Judaism. “I was really disappointed in that,” Sophie says, “because, to them, the people matter more than the religion.” And the isolation of Humanism gets to the center of Sophie’s problem with modern Judaism. “It’s stagnant” she repeats over and over, “we are afraid to branch because we’re so sheltered. It hurts our perception.”
The rejection of Humanism encapsulates the issue Jewish Americans face moving forward. If Jews refuse these natural shifts in faith, complacent in our self-segregating haze, never recalibrating our destructive defense mechanisms, we will continue to live in the margins. The problem isn’t that American Jews are becoming less religious, rather, the ones that are active refuse to acknowledge that Jewish identity isn’t everything, that in reality there is a big, diverse, non-Jewish world out there. We need to be willing to branch out, to explore the nuances of religious life in the 21st century and in America, and to diffuse the collective tension that results from millennia of diaspora. We need to be a little more like Sophie Kieffer.
By Dean Kopitsky