Reflections of an Atheist Jew

Leonard Mars

doi:10.13189/sa.2016.040106

Abstract

I was not born nor raised an atheist Jew. My identity was formed by various factors among them family background; geographical migration; British education; secular Zionism; anthropological study and research. These factors were the precipitates of two earlier modern revolutions that transformed the modern world and that affected both Jews and non-Jews, namely the French Revolution which was political, and the Industrial Revolution which was economic. For Jews the French Revolution split the hitherto fused elements of religion and ethnicity into their component parts whilst the Industrial Revolution gave rise to urbanisation and increasing individualism. Jews were faced with a choice of various identities; various permutations were adopted, some apparently paradoxical such as Jewish atheist. In this article I examine the interaction of these factors and document how a single case study, my own, exemplifies but one response to the question of modern Jewish identity. Other Jews have chosen different options. For example, my research in post-communist Hungary has shown that former communist Jews have embraced a number of options. Some founded a Reform Synagogues; others became Hasidim; yet others assumed modern Orthodoxy; a few became Zionists; most, however embraced secular Jewish culture.

Highlights

My decision to study anthropology derives to some extent from a childhood curiosity about my family which constitutes an anthropological laboratory
Jewish identity in Europe before the French Revolution was based on the fusion of two elements- a religious element and an ethnic element
I should point out that when I lived in Earlier I observed that one’s identity is both self asserted larger Jewish communities whether in Israel, Manchester or but that such an identity must be validated by others, How Edinburgh I rarely attended acts of worship

Summary

Introduction

This paper addresses my Jewish identity. I was not born an atheist but I was born and remain a Jew. My father was born in Salford in the poorest part of the Jewish ghetto, namely Red Bank His parents were orthodox Jews from Lithuania, part of Tsarist Russia, who had arrived in England in the 1890s. My father was the youngest of three children whose mother tongue was Yiddish and who only began to speak English when they began school at the age of five His sister never married and his elder brother in 1931 had a marriage arranged by a shadchan (broker) as was the custom among Orthodox Jews. My mother’s parents were anglicised and did not speak a word of Yiddish, my mother was monoglot English Her father was a religious man, nominally Orthodox, and patriarchal as were many of the English bourgeoisie. The shabbat is a sacred day marked off from the rest of the week by rituals which inaugurate and conclude that day from the profane days of the week

The Calendar

Identity

Jewish Identity and History