Are you Jewish?

As many of you many know, Judaism is divided into four main streams of practice: orthodox, conservative, reform, and ambivalent.  Most people would assume that the order in which these were just written reflects the gradual passage of the Jewish people into coexistence with the gentile world.  Certainly the folks in black hats would have us believe that the most authentic form of the Jew is the most "traditionally" religiously observant and that relaxation of practice puts one on the slippery slope toward loss of one's very identity.

Interestingly, archaeology suggests that the opposite may be true.  To vastly oversimplify, the historical portions of the bible say that god offered the descendants of Abraham a deal: worship me, and you get the promised land.  On the way down through Moses, the deal got a bit more complicated and specific -- worship me, follow the laws, and wipe out the infidels who are living there despite the fact that I gave it to you, and you get the promised land.  Along come David and Solomon, and a few more details get fleshed out as to the where's and how's of practice, and the Jews get the promised land, plus this really cool kingdom, a nice temple, yadda yadda.  Fast forward lots of centuries, and we have a culture built around the idea of a covenant, liberation from slavery in Egypt, and the carrot of the promised land being dangled in front of us.

However, since the rise of modern archaeological techniques, and especially since Israel's expansion following the six-day war, there has been lots of opportunity to dig up the holy land.  Lots of old cities have been found, lots of worship sites have been found.  Evidence that many of the kings mentioned in the bible were real has been found.  The problem is, most of this evidence suggests that the kingdom of David was relatively modest, and that the Israelites were consistently polytheistic (rather then errantly monotheistic), until hundreds of years later than traditional readings of the bible suggest.  More importantly, no evidence of the exodus has been found, and other finds filling in the context of the ancient world make it extremely unlikely that it occurred on anything like the temporal or physical scale described in the bible, if it occurred at all.

Or so argues a book I've recently read  called "The Bible Unearthed" by archaeologists  Israel Finklestein and Neil Asher Silberman.  Assuming that the narrative F&S lay out is accurate (and a even a cursory survey of the literature on biblical archaeology threatens the certainty of such an assumption, which never stopped me before ...), the greatest significance of this story is that traditional orthodoxy is actually the most recent, and least historically grounded of the forms of practice.  Ambivalence about god and monotheism, ambiguity of identity, intermingling with other peoples, and picking and choosing which religious laws and practices to follow or ignore is the most traditional path of all.

As a fourth generation, smart-assed New York atheist Jew, this is a combination of comforting and disturbing.  On the one hand, I no longer have any reason to feel even the slightest bit sheepish around the nudnicks in the mitzvah tanks.  Which reminds me of a story ... One fine spring afternoon some years ago, I was riding my bike near Washington Square Park, when a guy with a black hat and a long beard standing in front of a Winnebago accosted me. "Are you Jewish?" he asked.  Why, I don't know, but I answered "yes," then swerved away from the liturgy he proferred.  "It's no reason to get he killed," he lamented, with a shrug.  About that, he was certainly correct.

On the other hand, finding out that ambivalence and doubt are the oldest forms of piety undercuts whatever hipster cred attaches to ambivalence and doubt.  Which leads to more ambivalence and doubt about ambivalence and doubt about ... Infinite regress is so, I don't know, regressive ...  Of course ambivalence and doubt about identity and god have their own implications that go far beyond my navel gazing.  If you lack absolute certainty in your beliefs, and you doubt the story that places your ethnicity in a special place in the universe, membership in the tribe is not only a reason not to get killed.  It is also a reason not to kill (or condone the killing of) others just because they are not one of you and aren't happy about your asserting a shaky birthright.

So picking and choosing which laws to honor in a fashion consistent with the ancient traditions of my people, I eat the occasional cheeseburger or rasher of bacon (don't tell my doctor, oy my cholesterol), and worship a false idol or two (Clapton is god).  However I strictly honor the one about "thou shall not murder," and think this applies to dropping bombs on schoolhouses in Gaza.

On yet another hand, I am a non-practicing ethnic Jew, married to a non-practicing ethnic Serbian Orthodox Christian, which makes our son an Orthodox Jew.  This used to be a joke, but in light of recent archaeological findings, not so much so.