Rabbi Elyse Goldstein First Day Rosh Hashana 2011 Are You A Zoomer?

If you are over 65 youll appreciate that when I went to lunch the other day, I noticed an old man sitting on a park bench sobbing his eyes out. I stopped and asked him what was wrong. He said, I have a 22 year old wife at home. She rubs my back every morning and then gets up and makes me pancakes, fresh fruit and freshly ground coffee. I said, Well, then why are you crying? He said, She makes me homemade soup for lunch and my favourite brownies, cleans the house and then watches sports TV with me for the rest of the afternoon. I said, Well, why are you crying? He said, For dinner she makes me a gourmet meal with wine and my favourite dessert and then makes love with me until the wee hours. I said, Well, why in the world would you be crying? He said, I cant remember where I live! Oh to be old and cute and funny. Ive never thought that age defines me. Until now...until I realized I am...a...Zoomer. Now, before I get to Zoomers, let me tell you who you are according to your age. So...If you are in your early or mid 20s, born in the mid-to late 1980's please raise your hand. YOU are known as Gen Y, or the Millennials. With

numbers estimated as high as 70 million, you are the fastest growing segment of todays workforce. Professor Fred Bonner of Texas A&M University describes you as "...affluent teenagers who accomplish great things as they grow up in the suburbs, who confront anxiety when applying to super-selective colleges, and who multitask with ease as their helicopter parents hover reassuringly above them." If you are 29-44, please raise your hand. YOU are Gen X. Author John Ulrich explains that, "Generation X" signifies a group of young people, seemingly without identity, who face an uncertain, ill-defined (and perhaps hostile) future. Gen X, are, lets face it, a little lost, their worlds defined by the dotcom bubble burst and the rise of AIDS. But they are resilient, can adapt easily to change, have the highest education levels and they, according to Time Magazine, keep the world from sucking. Born between 1950-1970? You are a boomer or baby boomer. The 1960s is the decade that defines you. The music, events, and social changes of that era made a permanent impression on you. Boomers, listen up... you are now Zoomers. We are a vast group: 14.5 million, accounting for 44 per cent of the population, and controlling more than 77 per cent of all Canadian wealth. We are the largest, most affluent, age-conscious global market. We live longer, retire later, and buy more anti-aging products than any other group. (Well, that buying pattern should be selfevident.) Moses Znaimer coined the term Zoomer just a few years ago with the authority of one who has founded a new religion. Zoomers are, to put it bluntly, a most lucrative target market.

If you are over 65? Sorry to say there isnt a marketing term for you yet. You are a senior citizen, but you have Grey Power. Im sorry but I didnt like being called a boomer then and I dont like being called a zoomer now. I dont like being a world wide market. And I dont like being a label. My age is not my identity. I reject the idea that you really know me, my essence, my hopes and dreams and fears and loves and behavioural patterns and expectations, by knowing my age. So listening to the endless zoomerology on my used-to-be favourite classical music station, I couldnt help but feel that the Zoomer stuff was bringing up something more for me. I started to think about the whole question of a persons identity. What categories make up the people we are? Sociologists call these categories identity markers, things like age, race, religion, gender, nationality, hobbies, career, and the like. Growing up, my generations identity markers used to be very clear and well bounded. Boys were boys and girls were girls. We didnt think about what to call our sexuality. We were patriotic Americans or Canadians and we were identifiable Jews. We went to law school to become a lawyer and we stayed a lawyer. We lived within a mile of our parents and joined their shul even if we didnt like it. We were defined by our gender, our nationality, our race, and our religion, and all of those markers were pretty static. It used to be easy to know who we were, where we belonged, how we fit. Our identities were solid and secure, and so we were too. Based on prescribed understandings without much nuance, we knew our labels and we wore them more or less comfortably. But those identities came with a price tag;
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they defined not only who we were but what we could and could not do; what was open and what was closed to us. The civil rights struggle that began in the 60s and continued with feminism in the 70s was all about challenging those assumed norms; the identities that had become restrictive: oh, you are a woman? You cant be a Rabbi. You are a black? You cant be the President of the United States. The simple identity categories of race, gender, age, and religion were boundary settings and behaviourally prescriptive. in the last 20 years, all those once-fixed categories of identity race, religion, gender, career, hobbies and nationality have all been called into question. In the digital era you can reinvent yourself almost instantly and as often as you want. Everything we once understood as an established piece of our identities is up for grabs. Rabbi Yitz Greenberg once remarked, When I was growing up, an Orthodox Jewish boy from Brooklyn would live and die an Orthodox Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Today an Orthodox Jewish boy from Brooklyn can just as easily end up a Reform Buddhist woman from Toronto. Today the categories of identity itself has become porous. Identity diffusion is the norm. Not surprisingly, researchers have found that those who have made a strong commitment to an identity tend to be happier and healthier than those who have not. But it is increasingly difficult to make a strong commitment to any one identity because identity itself today is a concept that is almost undefinable. Very few people know who I am, Salvador Dal is reputed to have said, And I am not one of them.

In todays Torah portion, Sarah knows exactly who she is, as defined by her society. She is a woman, a Hebrew, an elder, the mistress of the house, the mother of the next patriarch. Hagar too knows who she is, too, as defined by her society. She is a woman, a slave, a concubine, an underling. How dare she challenge the hierarchy and act as if she were a matriarch. How dare Sarah cross her identity boundaries to befriend a slave. Locked in each ones place, neither one of them is willing for the briefest of moments to explore how those their identity definitions shape, influence, and hurt the other. The conflict that we read about between Sarah and Hagar emerges when the birth of Ishmael allows Hagar to entertain changing her identity and status, and Sarah cannot abide by that identity change. Some of you may have seen the movie The Help, a perfect example of how conflict emerges when one party in a relationship changes an identity marker the other partner has come to fully accept and expect. But as modern Jews we are not Sarah and Hagar and we do not accept the boundaries of identity readily. Christopher MacDonald-Dennis, assistant dean and director of intercultural affairs at Bryn Mawr College calls Jews a complicated diversity category. He writes, Jewish identity confounds established and understood notions of ethnic, racial, national, and religious identity...Jews can be neatly categorized neither as a religious group nor as an ethnic/national group... Jewish identity...is multidimensional and defies simple social categories Our identity is as hard to answer as the innocent question, Where are you from? Rabbi Richard Israel of blessed memory tells this story:

A few months ago, driving cross-town in a Manhattan taxi, my Korean cab driver turned far enough around to start a conversation and asked, Where are you from Boston I said. Then since that answer was apparently not sufficiently rewarding, clearly not what he was after, he asked, And what are your origins? What are my origins? I thought to myself. Chicago is where I born but could I call Chicago my origins? What about England, where my fathers family comes from ? But who knows how long they were there? Eastern Europe, the birthplace of my mothers family? But if we are talking about origins, maybe I should opt for Asia Minor and Palestine? Mt. Sinai? Ur, Abrahams home town? While I was trying to unravel the meaning of the question and simultaneously formulate an answer which was at once accurate and intelligible, the driver turned again. Youre taking too long to answer! he said. You must be Jewish! Erik Erikson described identity as "a subjective sense as well as an observable quality of personal sameness and continuity, paired with some belief in the sameness and continuity of some shared world image. Four key words: observable, sameness, continuity, shared. Idyllic words but unrealistic. In my grandparents generation the observable quality of personal sameness and the shared world image of Jews was obvious. There was a common Jewish dress, a common Jewish language, Jewish eating patterns, even Jewish mannerisms. But by my parents generation those outward manifestations were no longer shared nor obvious. In my generation even less observable quality of personal sameness and

shared world image and in my kids generation so much the more so. And what is an observable Jewish quality? Having a long black beard? A big nose? Eating bagels? Being from New York or Montreal and talking loud with your hands? Those stereotypical observable Jewish qualities are often caricatures anyway. Have a beard? So do Amish and Moslems. Big nose? (Show own nose)- pretty small. Talk loud with hands? Ok that one Im guilty of. Is this the sum total of my Jewish identity? Zoomer is easy: its all about my age. I dont have to look my age, or act my age and bam, Im a Zoomer anyway. But Jewish is so much more complicated. Are we a nation? A race? An ethnicity? A religion? If you live in Israel you can say yes, we are a nation. But if you live in Toronto thats a hard one to lay claim to. The vast majority of Israeli Jews would say they are more Israeli than Jewish. And the minute an Israeli leaves Israel to live here is their identity Jewish, or Israeli? My son Noam teaches the children of Israelis who now live in Boston. Those children may think they are Israeli by nationality but they were born in the States. They cant read Hebrew, have never heard of the Shema, and they dont know a single Jewish holiday. Outside of Israeland for some, even in Israel!it is hard to claim that our Jewish identity is national. Because many of us are from white, European (Ashkenazi) stock, we can pass as white, so are we a race? By race then, many of us are in the privileged white majority, but our history and undying anti-Semitism calls that into question. Again, MacDonald Dennis claims, Jewish students
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engaged in diversity education often express internal conflict arising from the contradiction between their assigned identity and their self-image. Diversity educators often hear from Jewish students when talking about race that they do not see themselves as white, but rather as Jews. And with so much intermarriage, adoption of kids from other countries, conversions, Sephardic awareness, Jews from other countries joining the mainstream community, its impossible to claim anymore that Jews are white. To be honest, when I was growing up, a black person in the synagogue was either the help invited to a Bar Mitzvah by the family for whom they worked, or a visiting Baptist preacher. Today, there are black Jews, Asian Jews, Hispanic Jews, Mayan Jews, mixed race Jews, funnyyou-dont-look-Jewish Jews and the jokes not funny anymore, really. So what about culture? People often tell me they arent religious but culturally Jewish. The most important findings of the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey were the responses to the question, What do you mean when you say that you are Jewish? Some 70 percent of the interviewees responded, I am Jewish by Culture. Culture is made up of language, dress, food, history, religion. But are these universally shared by Jews? Would you say the Jews of Guatemala or Uganda are culturally Jewish? Take language: please dont say Yiddish! What about Ladino, JudeoArabic, German, French, Polish, English? Dress: Please dont say shtreimel! The Jews of Morocco wear jellabiyas. History: Dont say the Holocaust; The Holocaust didnt touch the Jews of Yemen. Food: please dont say gefilte fish! What about charamie? Indian Jews eat samosas. Sephardim eat rice and sesame and chick peas on Pesach while

Ashkenazi Jews dont eat anything that even resembles food for 8 days. Country of origin? Spain or the Ukraine? Ethiopia or England? Each one has its very own unique Jewish culture which very closely resembles the local culture. So Im tempted to sayand you might be thinking Im leading up to this that the only thing which really unites us in a Jewish identity is religion. The Torah. But what does being religious or non-religious mean today when religion has been hijacked by fundamentalists and fundamentalism? Does religion unite us when the Judaism I practice is often profoundly and utterly different from the Judaism of other Jews, say, the Neturei Karta of Israel? Yes its the same Torah but as liberal Jews we often interpret it differently. How can our religion be the bottom line of our Jewish identity when every adjective of Jewish is loaded: secular, observant, cultural, denominational, Zionist, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Orthodox, modern Orthodox, neo-Chasidic, haredi, New Age Jewish Renewal, etc etc? Maybe we should simply say being Jewish is accepting a shared destiny. Whither thou goest, I go. But shared destiny is a negative identity, based on a history of oppression and anti-Semitism that keeps us locked in a victim mentality. Shared destiny is, put simply, about dying for Judaism, not living for it. How I wish it could be as easy as Zoomers! Just give us a name and make us a marketing gimmick already. Being Jewish is so damn complicated. Ah, but thats what makes it alive, what makes it fascinating. Like Jacob who wrestled with the angel the name Israel means the one who struggles
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with God. Struggle is what a hermit crab does when it frees itself from the old and useless shell. I love telling people who claim they dont believe in organized religion that Judaism is perfect for them because its the most disorganized religion I know! I think the power of modern Judaism is its refusal to be easily defined; its ability to grab you and make you think and make you work and make you ask and make you wonder. Because none of the categories easily work, its been nearly impossible through all of Judaisms long history for any one group withinthough some have certainly tried to hijack or sabotage the meaning of being a Jew. We cant have a pope and even the chief Rabbis of Israel dont speak for us in the Diaspora let alone speak for all Israelis. I think the confusion might be one thing that has kept us alive, kept us from boxing ourselves in too tightly and too narrowly and forced us to stay adaptive and reactive and open to the cultures in which we found ourselves, including the one in which we find ourselves today. In his book Jewish Identity: A Social Psychological Perspective Simon N. Herman writes that there is a distinction between the act of Jewish identification, the process by which the individual comes to see himself as part of the Jewish group, and identity, what being Jewish means in the life of the individual, the content of his Jewishness. On this holiday its up to each of us to struggle with our own personal Jewish identity. But each of you has come here because we do have Jewish identification. Coming here was an act of Jewish identification. So many of us long to be part of the Jewish group whatever that means; we are prepared to form that Jewish group ourselves if we have to, as we do

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here every year. We long to belong. We long to have an identification with something bigger than ourselves, something deep, something meaningful, something we can hold on to, something we can pass on. We long for community. The group palpably shares that longing. We sense, I think, that at this time of year we are prepared to forego our own questions, ambivalences, unsureties, insecurities, lack of definition of our Jewish identity just for a day or two, in favour of Jewish identification. In the inexplicable feeling of closeness with people who may share no more than the word Jew with us. So on this holy day, all ye Gen Xers, Gen Yers, Boomers, Zoomers: today lets be Jews in search of a Jewish identity that is more than a stereotype, more than a caricature, less fixed than a generation ago but not so fluid it floats away, out of our grasp, out of our reach. An identity not dependent on colour of skin or place of residence, or dress, or language, or mannerisms, or even an agreed upon interpretation of a sacred text. An identity not based on a fear of the future nor a certainty of calamity. My kids are fond of saying we are underconstructionist Jews; that we are constantly exploring, growing, changing. Struggling. And in that struggle, may we join hands and help each other ask and answer the question, who are you? in this New Year.

Shana Tov

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