Talking About My Generation?
A Book Review of Generation J, by Lisa Schiffman
By Tobin Belzer
I wanted to love this book. I wanted to nod in agreement with every chapter. But as a Jewishly identified Jew, I could not help but feel poorly represented by this expose of my generation. Generation J is thirty-something, Lisa Schiffman's sweeping exploration of the San Francisco Jewish community.
This is quite a foray into organized Jewish life and beyond. Trained as an anthropologist at Oxford University, the author adeptly interviews JUBU guru (that's 'Jewish Buddhist' for all of you outsiders), Rodger Kamenetz who write The Jew in the Lotus. She has cappuccino with the queer-friendly, meditating, Bay Area Rabbi, Jane Littman; does Primitive Voice Training with a German-born, African drummer/Ghanaian master at the Transformative Body School; and visits the exotic San Francisco Mikvah. By the time Schiffman decides to engage in a week-long, "opposite-of-kosher," all-pork-all-the-time experiment, I was exhausted.
She tries to re-invent the wheel, as if she were the first Jewish seeker in history. If only she had a good bibliography, so that she could be introduced to the writings of the feminist-friendly, spiritual Jewish world that flourishes across North America and Canada.
When we spoke, I learned that Lisa Schiffman had been dissatisfied with the other Jewish books out there. None reflected her "ambivalence" sufficiently, so she wanted to write openly about her experience. Her narrative courageously includes her feelings of "discomfort" about being Jewish. Yet while she expresses these attitudes, she does not adequately address them.
By the end of the book, I felt as excluded from Generation J as the author had from Judaism. In her definition, Generation J is comprised of "unaffiliated, ambivalent, post-Holocaust Jews between 20 and 50 years of age, who are trying to understand how Judaism fits into their secular lives." I am all of these things (and by the way, so are my parents), however, I am apparently not ambivalent enough to feel adequately represented by this author.
It seems that to Schiffman, the difference between "ambivalence" and "anti-Semitic" is largely semantic. Her narrative sometimes exudes a nuance of Woody Allen-esque self-hatred and her critique of Judaism is firmly grounded in such stereotypes. It is problematic to consider that disenfranchised Jewish readers those whom she calls Generation J might unselfconsciously relate to the "ambivalence" that imbues Schiffman's journey.
Don't get me wrong. As a trans-demonimational Jewish feminist sociologist, I am a big advocate of critical analysis especially when it is regarding the patriarchal, ethnocentric, misogynist, heterosexist, and classist tenets which remain embedded in much of modern Judaism. I may be idealistic, but I believe it is possible to critique and even transform Judaism without evoking those age-old Hollywood-propagating images.
Still, I couldn't help but think: who am I to criticize someone else's journey? Yet at the same time, I found it extremely difficult to sympathize with the author, when she sometimes approached her exploration of Judaism with the distance of a colonialist anthropologist, who is observing the uncivilized natives.
One would do better to read the narratives of more than thirty young Jewish women (ages 13 to 30), who were recently featured in a special issue of Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists and Our Friends. This rich and diverse collection of voices from our generation speaks to the inadequacy of Schiffman's title. Generation J is a misnomer for this book, which is an individual's journey, not a generation's.
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