Continuity and the Politics of an American "Mitzvah"
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The American Jewish "mitzvah" of continuity is a complex constellation of values, norms, and contexts that sits at the core of the critique levied by Berman, Rosenblatt, and Stahl. We agree that continuity prescribes a certain kind of labor, a gendered language applied to and, in some cases, impressed upon women. Further, a communal emphasis on continuity can alienate those who don't, can't, or won't participate: single men and women, the childless, the elderly, and others disenfranchised or rendered invisible by this agenda. For the vast majority of Jews and fellow travelers who see Judaism as contingent on their own personal and subjective interpretive autonomy, such a mitzvah is incredibly harmful. It's fundamentally disenfranchising and, quite possibly, backward looking, an emergent post-Holocaust theology powered by "American family values" to produce a communal conservatism that, simply put, does not respect the rights of individuals and does not value Jewish expression misaligned with continuity.
For some Jews, though, a mitzvah is not subject to individual autonomy. It is an obligation, a commandment. For some Jews, too, the language of "continuity" does not come close to describing the underlying values of family formation that run deep in Jewish tradition, well beyond a post-World War II American conservatism driven by anxiety and guilt. Finally, for some Jews, the recognition that women's labor is crucial to family development is cause for vital political action.
It's a challenge to reconcile these two viewpoints. It might be impossible. In our response, we do our best to speak with the key points raised by Berman, Rosenblatt, and Stahl and surface points of convergence and divergence. That said, we acknowledge that our differences likely run deep, well beyond this particular topic. We may be illuminating a tension between "traditionalists" and "innovators" within the broader theological fabric of the Jewish community, but we welcome the opportunity to engage in such a dialogue.
OBLIGATION AND AUTONOMY
Berman, Rosenblatt, and Stahl seem to reject the idea of normative Judaism, of "a solid line separating correct and incorrect behavior" or a "valued core." This view is in line with the theology, among others, [End Page 201] of the Reform movement (if not the lay theology of the majority of American Jews), which rejects the binding nature of Jewish law and embraces personal freedom.1 It is also in line with the anti-essentialist views of historian Daniel Boyarin2 and social scientists such as Ari Kelman3 and Debra Kaufman.4
Yet, many of the scholars and Jewish communal professionals who Berman, Rosenblatt, and Stahl criticize are essentialists. They assert the existence of a normative Judaism and attendant obligations on individual Jews. As Charles Liebman put it, "There is such a thing as Judaism which exists independently of what we call it or what we make of it."5 Marshall Sklare, in introducing the chapter on "Family and Identity" in his classic work America's Jews, wrote
to marry and establish a family is a mitzvah, a religious commandment. To perform a mitzvah is also to do good and to increase the supply of happiness in the world. And, according to traditional conceptions, the performance of a mitzvah adds to one's merits for the world to come.6
It was from this perspective that these scholars evaluated the life choices of Jewish men and women and issued policy prescriptions.
Such a perspective has undeniable, deep theological roots. In Jewish thought and Jewish legal tradition, the family is the building block of a holy society, and marriage and procreation are divine obligations. The mitzvah of procreation is based on God's commandment to Noah and his sons to "Be fertile and increase" (Gen. 9:7), and Sefer HaChinuch, a widely-used thirteenth-century discussion of the 613 mitzvot, ranks procreation first in order and importance.7 In many ways, the Talmud and [End Page 202] later codes of Jewish law themselves offer what Berman, Rosenblatt, and Stahl term "a blueprint to repair, protect, and fortify the Jewish family."
Berman, Rosenblatt, and Stahl misread this blueprint when they suggest that women...
