The University of Scranton Weinberg Judaic Studies Institute hosted a lecture by Ted Merwin, Ph. D., entitled “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish: Non-Jews’ Growing Investment in Jewish Life” in Brennan Hall’s Pearn Auditorium.
Dr. Merwin, an associate professor of religion and Judaic studies at Dickinson College, Carlisle, focused on the religious and everyday practices of Jewish culture that are becoming popular among non-Jewish people.
His strongest examples came from a variety of video clips ranging from popular Christian singer Amy Grant performing “El Shaddai” in Hebrew to an episode of the TV sitcom “Frasier,” where the main character instructed his family to pretend to be Jewish in order to impress his Jewish girlfriend’s mother.
“My interest in this actually comes from a little bit of a different direction than you might expect,” Dr. Merwin said. “I first became interested in this whole topic in 2004 when Alfred Molina, a British actor who’s actually half-Italian, half-Spanish in his decent, appeared on Broadway in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ playing ‘Tevye.’”
His focal point centered on this exponential growth of non-Jewish religious and non-religious activities being adopted into the lifestyle of many other social institutions, while at the same time Jewish people are detaching themselves from Jewish culture. Dr. Merwin demonstrated this by talking about the increase of the Ketubah, a Jewish wedding contract, and the act of more grooms stepping on glass under a huppah in Christian weddings.
This movement does not only include the adoption of ritual practices as Dr. Merwin’s other examples showed the likes of popular jazz musician Slim Gaillard singing about and advertising for Jewish foods dating back to the mid-1900s.
According to DR. Melvin, although some of the decline in Jewish affiliation is based on the overuse of these sacred practices and the use of non-Jews in Jewish roles on screen, the recent lack for internal Jewish growth stems from an increase in waiting for marriage and the growth of interfaith marriages.
Dr. Merwin introduced the phenomenon Mothers Circle to explain this movement. This program of The Jewish Outreach Institute, which teaches non-Jewish women about Judaism, is a major factor in these social changes as 186 of these groups have been established in more than 90 different cities.
“This Mothers Circle program was established out of the understanding that a lot of Jewish men marry non-Jewish women,” Dr. Merwin said. “The Jewish men in many cases still very much want their children to be raised Jewish.”
Dr. Merwin concluded his lecture with the focus on the growth of Christian-Jewish Seders in Angelical and mainline churches, as well as how Christians are using these personal Jewish rituals in order to focus on a return to their “roots,” despite the approval of the members of Jewish culture.
“When I’ve spoken to Christians about this, what they have said is not that they think of this as the Last Supper, not just that they connect to it in a sense as a part of their own roots as Christianity growing out of Judaism, but there is something about this ritual that is very appealing,” Dr. Merwin said. “It’s very, what we say in Yiddish, ‘hamish” – it’s very homey.”
Although he is just beginning his research on the topic, Dr. Merwin plans to continue to expand his views and understand of this cultural movement.
Eric Hurd, Long Branch, N.J., is a communication major with a concentration in journalism and a minor in criminal justice at The University of Scranton.
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Judaic studies speaker examines ‘non-Jews’ involvement in Jewish life
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