The Strong Dialectic of an Obsessional Neurosis

I am proud to suffer from the “obsessional neurosis” that I call Judaism. As with other obsessional neuroses, Judaism consists of “obsessive thinking, obsessive ideas, obsessive impulses, and the like” (Freud 212). Each Jewish “obsessive action,” has a specific meaning, and why not embrace that meaning? Why not fall in love with the fact that I can store complex or difficult thoughts in the form of ritual? I am happy to utilize Judaism partly as the defense against myself that Freud argues but more as a barrier between my initial impulses and a better communication of those impulses to the outside world. As Ari Goldman says, “Being Jewish is about feeling good. It is about finding meaning” (Ochs 266).

Throughout this semester, I have increasingly found the ability to relate ritual theory to my every day life. I have started analyzing religious objects and situations and noticing religious leaders’ or texts’ uses of the ritual vocabulary that initially annoyed me in Driver. At services, in conversation with other Jews, and in my Hebrew class, I pick up on changing ritual and formulate new questions about and ideas for ritual. I realize how much my personal perception of Judaism has changed since the beginning of the school year with my relationship to Hillel and the courses that I have taken here. Most importantly, I realize how infinitely the transformation of Judaism and of myself through Judaism can and must progress. Now, I must prompt myself to ask questions, to view my perceived Judaism with different mindsets, and of course, to “record, take it down, and collect” (Ochs 260). I now have the toolbox to both argue for and create new ritual.

Materiality, Text, and [Of Course] Transformation

In Jewish ritual, texts and ritual objects are often intertwined and interchangeable. In a previous chapter, Ochs gave a list of the functions of new Jewish objects: “They introduce. […] They retell sacred stories. […] They generate rules and spiritual possibilities. […] They make ritual tangible. […] They provide assurance. […] They appeal to those on the fringes. […] They address communal need” (Ochs 108-109). Both the text and the materiality of such objects as Holocaust Torahs and wedding booklets fulfill the aforementioned needs of new ritual objects.

Whether powerfully holy or subtle and recyclable, ritual texts can fulfill Ochs’s aforementioned scheme. In order to use a Holocaust Torah effectively, a congregation must take into consideration its textual contents and its material history. Beyond its existence as a ritual object, the Torah exists as a symbolic being, as a channel between human and God. As in Ochs’s story about a congregation’s adoption of a Holocaust Torah, the Torah must be transformed into life in order for the Torah to transform the congregation. A congregation can physically and orally utilize its new ritual object to retell an important story in Jewish history, to materialize that history, to act as an object of interest to bring congregants “on the fringes” closer to the center of the congregation, and of course, as the textual object it was originally intended to be. In a similar manner, both the physical presence of a wedding booklet and the text inside of it can act as a couple’s confession of their desire for changed ritual. With enough personal investment, such an object can act as introduction, storyteller, pacifier, and article of interest. By ritualizing objects and text such as Holocaust Torahs and wedding booklets, individuals and communities can access the opportunity for transformation.

The Coexistence of Change and Continuity - Timbrel Style

When the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, was dying in 1994, a new ritual object, a “Miriam’s tambourine” arose among Lubavitch women around the world. Just as Miriam and the other Israelite women had when they escaped Egypt through the parting of the Red Sea, these Lubavitch women would dance with their tambourines to herald in a better era. The Lubavitch women believed that, instead of dying, their Rebbe would arise as the Messiah and herald in the Messianic Age. In the months before the Rebbe’s death, Lubavitch women bought these tambourines and carried them around in order to play them when the Rebbe arose as the Messiah. Even after the Rebbe’s death, the women carried around their tambourines as symbols of an upcoming Messianic Age nevertheless. The symbolism of the positivism of Miriam and the Biblical Israelite women had grown on the Lubavitch women, and their ritual object had transformed both itself and the identity of the women.

Even though the Lubavitch women follow what is often considered ultra-Orthodox Judaism, the women’s view of ritual still transforms itself and themselves. These women can be considered both “guardians of continuity” and “agents of change,” professing to follow the exact words of the Torah while changing ritual in order to fit their personal interpretations. As Barbara Orenstein claims that Judaism views the progress of the world as both linear and cyclical, effective Judaism must place continuity and change in constant dialectic with one another. Driver’s order and transformation must constantly balance each other out. From the smorgasbord Judaism of the Rabbinic era to feminist innovation to Lubavitch symbolism, Judaism has always faced the challenges of both staying true to its thousand-years old history while avoiding the ritual boredom that may accompany such truth.

Material Culture in New Judaism

Anthropologist James Diet defines the term “material culture” as “objects used by humans to cope with the physical world, facilitate social intercourse, and to benefit our state of mind” (Ochs 90). One small object can either bring a thousand big ideas into the same perspective for a few people. One small object can also mean a thousand things to one person. Because of its materiality, one object has an infinite number of uses, and its mere presence can inspire an infinite number of new practices. Thus, the mere presence of an object can inspire the practice of a new ritual.

In Judaism, objects can help provide identity, inspire new ritual, and provoke a sense of community between Jews. Even though ritual objects in Judaism can be broken into categories of klei kodesh, tashmishei kedushah, tashmishei mitzvah, and reshut, from most to least sacred, respectively, individuals can place more personal value in categorically less sacred objects because of that objects’ material versatility. Whether the an object is explicitly identifiable as used by Jews or implicitly Jewish in the eyes of someone who associates that object with Judaism, it still has endless possibilities for use in new Jewish ritual. According to Vanessa L. Ochs, Jewish objects can “introduce,” “retell sacred stories,” “generate rules and spiritual possibilities,” “make ritual tangible,” “provide assurance,” “appeal to those on the fringes,” and “address communal needs” (Ochs 108, 109). Hence, objects as agents of innovation can bring more community, order, and transformation into Judaism.

Agency in Ritual Narrative

Ochs, "The Narrative Approach"

“The act of telling the story of a ritual – like a ritual itself – can exist in multiple forms that we continually shape and reshape,” (Ochs 79). Just as ritual can occur in infinite forms, reflection upon a single ritual can occur in infinite forms. While Driver focuses on the change that ritual in general evokes, Ochs focuses on how to achieve successful ritual in a world in which perception of ritual is not always positive. Driver encourages jumping into ritual but does not quite explain how to get there physically or psychologically. Ochs, on the other hand, stresses the use of material objects, text, and narrative as part of the complex, messy process of the innovation of ritual. Through description of the contrasting feelings of connectedness and individuality, Ochs gives the how and why of the aspects of rituals and their resulting social gifts that Driver champions.

With Ochs’s examples of ritual innovation from the past few decades, we can better appreciate the ritual agency that has been necessary in Judaism for its thousands of years of existence, as demonstrated by the writings of Marcus and Goldberg. If so much change has occurred in such a short time span, then modern Jews can speculate on how much change must have occurred even within the hundreds of years between the Biblical period and the Rabbinic period. By comparing present change to the past, we can identify what elements of Judaism stay essential to ritual and what elements are more flexible. Thus, we can tweak Jewish ritual so that it can give us that feeling that finally leads to the production of Driver’s social gifts of order, community, and transformation.

Brettschneider v. Ochs: Political v. Spiritual Change

Brettschneider: “Ritual Encounters of a Queer Kind”
Ochs: Pg. 1-55

Both Brettschneider and Ochs take Driver’s call for ritualization to their own personal levels. Both authors speak of the transformation of self and the community that Driver champions. Both grapple with the extent to which order can and should be manipulated in ritual. Brettschneider calls for “coming out” rituals for lesbians, and Ochs calls for rituals for whoever feels the need for new ritual.

The striking difference between the authors’ perspectives is Brettschneider’s call for ritual to provoke outward change and Ochs’s call for ritual to provide inward change. Brettschneider focuses on the individual’s never-ending process of “becoming out,” of confessing to the world his or her personal identity and taking the according action. Thus, Brettschneider touches on Driver’s confessional modes and feeds into the ethical while calling for the according performative rituals. Ochs, on the other hand, focuses on the inward change that eventually causes outward change. She writes that rituals “confirm a sacred presence in the world, and move us to live in ways that are more moral and more righteous” (Ochs 31). While Brettschneider focuses more on the liminality of queers as a parallel to the liminality of Judaism and of ritual, Ochs focuses on the liminality aspects of ritual such as texts, ritual actions, and ritual objects. Brettschneider’s ritual changes the world directly, while Ochs’s ritual brings change into perspective or inspires spiritual change.

The Swarthmore Passover Co-op - A Pilgrimage

Goldberg - "Pilgrimage and Creating Identities"

Harvey Goldberg states, “Pilgrimage sites thus reflect historical events and shared cultural sensibilities while also providing the context for the coalescence of a personal path in relation to life’s flow” (162). This Passover, I would like to think that I embarked on a pilgrimage very similar to the situations that Goldberg describes. By participating in the Swarthmore Passover Co-op, I spent eight days in the liminal sphere of life outside of Sharples, eating all of my meals with only Jews. Throughout the eight days, a group of about fifteen people, who at first seemed to share little except for religion and culture, formed a close-knit community through our realization of communitas. Sheltered from the religious diversity of Sharples, our conversations somehow always returned to our Jewish culture and history. By the middle of the week, we were all so addicted to our interior pilgrimage from the Swarthmore bubble that our lunch and dinner conversations began to last for hours and then expand into further meetings about the future improvements of Hillel and about our reactions to the Three Days in Palestine event. In the liminality of the Passover Co-op, we felt a sort of freedom to express and change our personal relationships to Judaism that Sharples would not have been able to induce.

There were a few moments this week that related more directly to this class’s readings and discussions. For instance, one dinner, someone asked about the Zohar, and we spent the rest of the meal in the Beit Midrash, reading the translation – in the freedom of our liminality, of course - and joking about how all of the boys would be swallowed into the earth. Also, with Three Days in Palestine, we entered into several discussions about our personal relationships to Israel and whether it enhanced Jewish identities or not, as Goldberg grapples with. Finally, during the last few moments of Passover, while we waited for pizza over a lecture about Mimouna, the lecturer explicitly mentioned Turner’s liminality, and Noah and I could not help but laugh. As the Israelite’s exodus and journey through the desert thrust them into the liminality of separateness and transformation into a more concrete nation, my past week of isolated Judaism forced me to look closer at my identity and shape my beliefs in a transformative setting of pilgrimage.