Judaism

Halakhah is the branch of rabbinical writing outlining the laws of Jewish religious and ethical behavior. A proposal for new Jewish family values in a post-halahkic time (Ackelsberg 1992) suggests that Jewish families can live outside traditional religious ideals and the demands they make on personal, family, and social life. Such families construct their values according to the forms of Judaism that fit their experience and reflect their desires for traditional observance. Competing accounts of contemporary Jewish experience insist on the need for religious and historical norms for Jewish family life, and particularly so at a time when modern society is increasingly pluralistic and relativistic in matters of behavior and ethics. Even those favoring the traditional Jewish family acknowledge the need to recognize variations in commitment and practice as legitimate adaptations to modern life (Wertheimer 1994).

However one feels about contemporary values, any general account of the Jewish family is likely to overstate its commonalties (just as the historical image of the Jewish family can obscure important differences [Kramer 1989]). What can be said of the Jewish family is perhaps best put in the form of contrasts, choices, and adaptations of tradition. If, as two authoritative studies of Jewish life have recently proposed, it is "the Jew within"—the Jew who interprets for himself or herself the meaning and practice of Judaism—who matters more than halakhic conformity and synagogue membership, then the family too will represent the possibilities for change and Jewish adaptation as much as it does tradition (Cohen and Eisen 2000; Fishman 2000).

For much of its history the Jewish family has been guided by religious rules and practices, as represented in the Hebrew Bible (including the Torah, or the Five Books of Moses) and the commentaries of the rabbis in the compilations known as the Talmud and the Mishnah. With the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and then again by the Romans in 70 BCE, Jews have been a people in exile. Their books, laws, and other habits of society they represent, became an essential source of education and continuity. Thus, the story of the Jewish family begins in Genesis, where it is written that God blessed the first man and woman, and instructed them to have children and to raise them in a family. To do so would be a primary way, because God had created humans in his image, of also living in a divine world. In Exodus (20:12) the Jews are commanded to "Honor your father and your mother in order that your days may be prolonged on the soil that your God is giving you." With the core impulse and relational code in place, Judaism provided a strong ethical bond for the family. Shalom bayit—respect for every member of the family, recognition of the different needs of every member, and mutual responsibility for each other's physical and emotional well being—is the guiding historical principle. It is accomplished by fulfilling the mitzvoth and observing the rituals of the Jewish week and year. Mitzvoth are the 613 religious commandments in the Torah and also ordinary good deeds.

Throughout the Jews' long history, the family and the home, incorporating the desires of private rather than public life, provided identity and security. Until they gained legal rights, during the period of emancipation in eighteenth century Europe, Jews had little reason to identify with the state. The classic Jewish texts, and the social habits they had prompted and sustained, were an essential source of high rates of marriage and childbearing among Jews in the premodern world. However, traditional control of the family began to decline as Jewish thought and society made way for new ideas, science, and democracy. With emancipation and then the Jewish Enlightenment the Jewish family, like other institutions, changed in response to greater social and economic opportunities. Less bound by religion, the family became more adaptive—a scene of growth and development, particularly for life in the large cities. Nevertheless, its traditional structure still prompted many to see it as the source of authentic Judaism. Thus, a French writer said in 1886 that "It is neither the rabbis, nor the synagogue, nor the Talmud, nor even the law or persecution which preserved the Jewish religion. It is the love of parents for children, the love of children for parents—it is the family" (cited in Hyman 1989).

Indeed, lighting the Sabbath candles and making the blessings over the bread and wine, and enjoying the Sabbath dinner, remain universal and durable expressions of Jewish family identity. Jewish holidays and celebrations—like Channukah and Purim—are typically centered in the home for observance and celebration as well as in the synagogue. For many Jews today the Passover Seder represents the meaning of the Jewish family. There is the ancient distribution of roles in the meal-based service. Women light the candles and men make the blessing over the wine. The youngest child recites the Four Questions, in effect guiding the entire family toward recognition of what is unique about the biblical events the holiday records.

As is often noted, Jewish celebrations all have their special foods, reflecting too the role of eating Jewish dishes among those whose claim Jewish identities but have only occasional interest in Judaism as a religion. Lionel Blue vividly tells us:

The changes of the liturgical year are marked out for the Jew by smell and taste, by the aromas of the kitchen. Through the most basic senses, he feels the changing moods of the spirit. Theologies alter and beliefs may die, but smells always remain in his memory, calling him back to his own childhood. . . . Whatever prayers he may forget, the gastronomic cycle remains. (cited in DeLange 2000)

Thus, Jewish family memory can be intense even when an individual lives a largely secular and assimilated life.