L ifestyles /C ulture
Books: Nostalgia as Religion, Novel Falls Short
Pastrami as Religion
B OOKS
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
“Beyond the Synagogue:
Jewish Nostalgia as Religious
Practice” Rachel B. Gross
NYU Press
RACHEL B. GROSS, a
professor of Jewish studies at
San Francisco State University,
is willing to bet that you don’t
see your purchase of a scarf
from the National Museum
of American Jewish History
gift shop as religious practice.

Ditto for a kosher-style
pastrami sandwich scarfed
down at Hymie’s, an afternoon
spent on a Jewish genealog-
ical website or a historical
tour of Congregation Mikveh
Israel. These activities, as we
typically understand them,
are Jewish cultural practices,
distinct from religious practices
that take place in synagogues
or around the Shabbos dinner
table. They are expressions
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of nostalgia, in many cases,
rather than spiritual exercises.

But Gross argues in her
provocative new book that this
distinction between “religious”
and “cultural” is false. The
widely shared experience of
American Jewish nostalgia
is, she says, the expression of
understanding between Jews
living and dead, i.e., religion,
and create networks of sacred
meaning. To view nostalgia
as merely “a wishful affection
or sentimental longing for an
irrevocable past,” Gross writes,
is a mistake. It is in a Hymie’s
booth, she argues, digging
into that pastrami sandwich,
where American Jews practice
religion today.

Jewish communal leaders,
philanthropists and academics
have sounded the alarm at the
decline of traditional religious
practice, Gross says, giving rise
to a fundraising structure that
privileges “Jewish continuity”
above nearly all else. “But if
we reorient where we look for
American Jewish religion and
reconsider how we define it,”
she writes, “then we start to
find a lot more of it.”
Gross uses the framework of
“lived religion,” expanding the
definition of religious activity
beyond what “official” religion
allows. Rather than accepting
religion as prescriptively
defined by official texts and
dictates of traditional institu-
tions, Gross uses a descriptive
approach that “helps us to take
seriously the structures, commit-
ments, and activities that shape
everyday life,” she writes.

Gross’ assessment of the
way institutional Judaism
dismisses activities that
aren’t officially Jewish is
well-argued and compre-
hensive, and her claim that
this is partially due to an
understanding of nostalgia
as feminine and therefore
unserious deserves greater
study. But it’s difficult to
accept her larger argument.

I write for a Jewish
newspaper, and read about
Judaism and Jewish people
more than any other subject,
but I don’t understand that
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Courtesy of Europa Editions
to be religious. Likewise, it
makes me feel a bit sad to
consider that a preference for
bagels and ancestry.com could
constitute a connection to the
infinite. If powerful sectors of institu-
tional Judaism are not properly
valuing cultural practice, as
Gross charges, it makes sense
to argue for the intrinsic
value of such practices rather
than argue that they should
be recategorized as religious.

Non-religious connections to
Judaism should be encouraged
and nurtured, but we don’t
need to radically reorient our
communal understanding of
those connections in order to
see their worth.

Whether you buy the
larger argument, Gross’ book
challenges prevailing ortho-
doxies of American Jewish life
with respect and purpose.

Too Many Stories, Not Enough Time
“Tonight is Already
Tomorrow” Lia Levi; translated by
Clarissa Botsford
Europa Editions
“Tonight is Already Tomorrow”
is a translated work published
by Europa Editions written by a
prominent Italian novelist about
a mid-century child prodigy. If
that sounds a bit like one of
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan
novels, I’ll admit that my interest
in Ferrante led me to this new
Europa novel by Lia Levi.

But unlike Ferrante’s popular
books, Levi’s “Tonight is Already
Tomorrow” is kind of a drag.

The writer’s powers of
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description are impeccable, even
in translation, and her sense of
the dramatic is on full display
in her tale of a Genoan Jewish
family caught up in the gears of
Italy’s fascist turn. But confusion
reigns in this short novel, which
introduces characters and plot
lines that are quickly dropped, as
if Levi, overflowing with ideas,
had trouble deciding which to
include. In trying to take a bite
out of every cake, “Tonight is
Already Tomorrow” ends up
without a distinctive flavor.

At times, Levi appears most
interested in the character of
Alessandro, the brilliant little
boy set to change the fortunes
of the Jewish Rimon family. In
the chapters about him, you can
see the outline of an interesting
book, with grand machinations
of history and familial strife seen
through the eyes of a precocious
little boy. But Levi finds so many
other characters to inhabit that
we don’t spend as much time with
Alessandro as we’d like. In such a
short book, far too much real estate
is occupied by far-flung cousins
and other minor characters.

There are ideas for five
interesting novels in “Tonight
is Already
Tomorrow.” Unfortunately, Levi didn’t end
up with one. l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
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