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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 applyingto 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 self-evident.) 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.

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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 beingcalled 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. Itused 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 becomerestrictive: 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 strongcommitment 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.

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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. Howdare 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, assistantdean 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 theinnocent question, Where are you from? Rabbi Richard Israel of blessed

memory tells this story:

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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 wasafter, 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

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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. Andwith 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, funny-

you-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 intervieweesresponded, 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, Judeo-

Arabic, 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

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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 itsrefusal 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, thatat 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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