Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice by Rachel B. Gross

Abstract

Reviewed by: Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice by Rachel B. Gross Gabrielle A. Berlinger (bio) Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice. By Rachel B. Gross. New York: NYU Press, 2021. xii + 259 pp. In Beyond the Synagogue, Rachel B. Gross makes a bold and significant claim: Jewish religion in America today is hidden in plain sight, and not where you would imagine. Past generations prayed in synagogues and married within the faith—historic patterns of Jewish religious expression. Today's Jews, writes Gross, have moved beyond. They do not find or express their Judaism in such explicit ways or spaces but rather in daily life and everyday places. Gross's research identifies a network of "secular" places and practices that affirm Jewish cultural and religious affiliation, countering vocal concern that American Jewish religion is on the decline or that intermarriage is causing a "continuity crisis." Gross argues that former metrics no longer apply; today, one must look to a multiplicity of vernacular expressions such as genealogical pursuits, new food movements, historic preservation efforts, and children's toys and publications to locate Jewish religious expression. In each of these contexts, she writes, American Jews are engaging with Jewishness on their own terms. Crucially, the key to finding Judaism in these spaces is a familiar feeling to us all in a 21st century world in constant flux: nostalgia. Contemporary American Jewish religion, writes Gross, exists and thrives today in diverse modes of nostalgic practice. This book examines "the ways in which people enact their religious identities on a daily basis, through ordinary activities such as eating, cooking, shopping, reading, or entertaining" (7). Through this lens of lived religion, Gross uncovers the Jewish practices of a broad spectrum of Jews, [End Page 311] cutting across the common divides of "religious" and "secular," "leader" and "layperson." She recognizes new meaning attained in the blurring of these boundaries in contemporary American Jewish life, stating that, "Divisions between Judaism (the religion) and Jewishness (the culture) are no longer useful, if they ever were…In reality, activities understood as both religious and cultural provide existential meaning for American Jews and connect them to imagined transhistorical communities of Jews past, present, and future" (32). Gross thus conceives of religion as the relationships and structures between families, communities, ancestors, and the divine, and as such, she looks to activities and organizations—both "religious" and "secular"—in modern Jewish America that nurture these relationships and produce structures of meaning. Memory, in the form of nostalgic practice, threads together Gross's four cases of contemporary religious practice. Countering former theories of nostalgia, she asserts that nostalgia functions as religious practice for Jews in contemporary America. She claims that this is possible because nostalgia can be productive, not only reductive, helping to forge personal and shared bonds with history and satisfy present-day desires to search for and connect with authentic pasts. Each of the case studies demonstrates a distinctive way in which nostalgia works as religious practice—"alternately authoritative, intimate, playful, ironic, or elegiac" (13). Gross's first case highlights amateur and professional Jewish genealogists across the United States. Through their efforts, these genealogists create local and digital communities in the present while gaining an emotional and spiritual appreciation of history—one that Gross notes is nostalgically longed for and eagerly claimed. Gross's second case centers on historic synagogues across the United States that function as heritage sites. Through self-conscious public programming, these institutions enable visitors to affectively experience local and shared history by walking through the historic spaces, brushing with an "authentic" past. "A search for authenticity is a hallmark of American religion," observes Gross, and these restored buildings yield tangible results to such nostalgic quests (96). The third case study describes how children are taught nostalgia through new toys and the contemporary publication and distribution of books with Jewish consciousness. The Jewish experiences and values that these books and toys convey focus on forging bonds with, primarily, Eastern European Jewish immigrant history, bridging imagined ancestors and a storied past with a child's present and future. The last case surveys the field of new Jewish deli cuisine and culinary revival efforts...