Questions of Identity: Present, Past and Future

May 13, 2008

by Daniel E. Levenson

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend a unique and thought-provoking conference at Harvard University. Entitled “New Approaches: Home, Nation and Landedness in Modern Jewish Identity,” the conference brought together faculty and graduate students in Jewish studies from across the country for two days of talks, presentations and informal conversations at Harvard Hillel. The conference, which was the brainchild of two doctoral students in Jewish studies, Jessica Fechtor at Harvard University and Jonathan Gribetz at Columbia University, covered a wide spectrum of topics and ideas, creating an experience that was at once broadly inclusive in scope, but cohesive in spirit - an ambitious goal to be sure, but one which they achieved, in my opinion. The sheer number of interesting people and topics I encountered would be impossible to enumerate here, but I think it’s worth mentioning a few of the presentations that really struck a chord with me, in terms of my own personal Jewish academic and intellectual interests.

As a poet, I was very interested in the paper presented by Celine Piser, a graduate student in comparative literature at UC Berkeley, entitled “The Journey Home: Language and Identity in Clarisse Nicoidksi’s Lus Ojos Las Manus La Boca,” which explored some of the historical and cultural context of this collection of poems written in Judeo-Spanish by the late author and poet Clarisse Nicoidski. While Yiddish has, in the last 10-15 years, experienced something of  a revival, and Hebrew is clearly alive and well, we seem to hear very little about either Ladino (which is  a written language, as Ms. Piser explained to me after she had finished her presentation)  or Judeo-Spanish, which is a spoken language, composed predominantly of an older form of Spanish with linguistic and grammatical elements borrowed from a variety of other languages, ranging from Hebrew to French to Turkish. Summoning all I could recall of my 7 years of middle and high school Spanish, a minimal acquaintance with the French language and my familiarity with modern Hebrew, I looked closely at the excerpts from longer poems handed out during the talk, reading both the original Judeo-Spanish as well as Ms. Piser’s translation. These poems were linguistically fascinating, and the accompanying English translation provided a parallel text that was not only comprehensible to those of us who do not speak or read Judeo-Spanish, but one that was moving and beautiful as well.

Although it has been many years since I sat in an anthropology class, I have never lost the initial fascination with the construction of culture and identity that led me to switch my major as an undergraduate from English literature to anthropology. It is perhaps, then, not all that surprising that I was particularly intrigued by a paper presented by David Koffman, a graduate student at New York University, who has done research on the fantastical connection made by some early American observers between the indigenous peoples of north America and the Jewish people. Professor Jonathan Sarna of Brandies University led a brief discussion after Mr. Koffman and the other graduate students in the session had shared their papers, noting the three ways that Jews had somehow become connected to several of America’s most important foundational mythic elements: the idea that Christopher Columbus was Jewish, the view that the Puritans were in some way “Hebraic,” and finally that there was a link between the Jews (and specifically the 10 lost tribes of Israel) and American Indians.

In conversations at meals and between sessions I had the chance to talk to people who were deeply curious and excited about scholarship on Jewish topics in disciplines ranging from history to theology to philosophy to literature.  As I left the Hillel building, it occurred to me that perhaps the best thing about this conference was having the opportunity not only to hear about a tremendous range of issues and ideas in different Jewish communities in many times and places, but to have a chance to meet these people who are dedicated to the exploration of these myriad aspects of Jewish history, culture and life. I have little doubt that many of them will go on to make significant contributions within academia in Jewish and Israel studies, but hopefully many of them will also expand their work beyond the academy someday and find ways to share what they have found with the rest of the world.