r/JewsOfConscience • u/aisingiorix Non-Jewish Ally • 17d ago
Discussion - Flaired Users Only Interested in Judaism and looking for a community to learn more
Before Twitter became a right-wing hellscape, I made friends with a small community of liberal Jews and I grew to admire their practical approach to many issues of life. Sadly, we've lost contact with each other, but I would like to seek out another liberal Jewish community (preferably in person, but online will do), and learn more of these diverse perspectives.
Would it be appropriate to turn up to a synagogue (or other meeting place) as an outsider? I'm not interested in converting; I just want to listen and learn, and maybe find some spiritual or ethical understanding on the way. (I've also been attending an Anglican church for some years, also as an outsider.)
Particularly relevant to this sub, I'm a person of Chinese descent living in the United Kingdom, and we have very important issues over identity, and the relationship between the culture - one that is important to me - and a state that claims to represent us. I think there are many things we can learn from you about how to wrestle with this issue of identity.
I'm really glad I found this sub but it would be great to find some other communities in person too. But have no idea where to begin looking. Any advice?
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u/aniftyquote Jewish Communist 16d ago
Most synagogue services only have select portions in the local language, while the rest is in Hebrew. It wouldn't be looked down upon for someone to ask to come as a guest, but I'm not sure it would be useful?
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u/Adept_Thanks_6993 Orthodox 17d ago
For what it's worth, I think you guys (being the Chinese diaspora) are handling those tears way better than us.
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u/aisingiorix Non-Jewish Ally 17d ago
Why do you say that? (asking neutrally) Of course, the dynamics are different in many other ways.
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u/Adept_Thanks_6993 Orthodox 17d ago edited 17d ago
Well for starters, your diaspora didn't end up creating a schism in your religious practice that irreparably fractured your community and led to assimilation, which led to nationalism. More of you speak your ancestral languages than we do, etc, etc, etc.
(though that's because Chinese folk religion is structured differently from us more than anything).
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u/domino_poland_007 Ashkenazi 16d ago
Is the schism you're refering to, the haskalah (i.e. Jewish Enlightenment, part of the enlightenment movements across Europe)?
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u/aisingiorix Non-Jewish Ally 14d ago
How, if at all, did the tendency towards one side or another of the schism vary with a person's economic status or with the size of their local Jewish community? What sort of factors would have caused people and communities to tend towards one or the other?
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u/domino_poland_007 Ashkenazi 14d ago
I'm still not sure if this is the schism that Adept_Thanks_6993 is referring to, but my (limited) understanding is that the Jewish Enlightenment happened mainly in Western Europe, and very slowly spread eastward. The result was that by 1900 or so, most Jews in Germany, Italy, and Western Europe were secularized, and fairly assimilated into secular European society, whereas the Jews in Eastern Europe were much more traditionally religious and tended to live in Jewish enclaves -- some of them even deliberately resisted secularization, and this is where the ultra-Orthodox come from.
Of course with mass immigration to the US/Israel, the Holocaust in much of Europe, and state atheism in the USSR, the picture is more muddled now, and you tend to have these two communities living in generally the same regions of the US/Israel, but with very little interaction between each other.
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u/aisingiorix Non-Jewish Ally 14d ago
No schism, but apathy: my grandparents' generation (b. 1920s-30s) do the rituals, but my parents' generation don't, and it's sad to know that those traditions will be largely lost when that lot go. Same with regional languages like Cantonese and Hokkien, or their many dialects. They're not being kept alive in Mainland China (largely due to government policy).
Compared to most other diaspora, we're very new (2 or 3 generations) and are still figuring these questions out, so it'll be interesting to see how things turn out. I don't intend to have kids, but hypothetically, it's a difficult thought experiment over "how Chinese" I'd raise them, whether we'd speak Chinese at home, celebrate the holidays, visit (sorry, "return to") China, etc..
(...all of which are tensions that a government that thinks of the diaspora as its pawns would love to play on.)
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