T orah P ortion
Our Relationship Status is Complicated
BY RABBI ERIC YANOFF
Parshat Yitro
WHO ARE WE? What are we?
I picture that question,
asked by countless romantic
couples, perhaps at a café, in a
moment of reflection: What is
the status of our relationship?
That moment is a critical junc-
ture; it defines and determines
the future of that relationship.

Social media has recognized
that we don’t always get clarity
at that moment, by offering the
option of “it’s complicated … .”
And no less complicated is
the relationship with which
the Jewish people has defined
ourselves, throughout history:
What are we? A people? A
nation? A religion? A family?
A tribe or collection of tribes?
Unlike many other of the
world’s religious identities, we
embrace multiple definitions.

We are adherents of a reli-
gion, yes — but we also have
a national, peoplehood-based
understanding of what it
means to be Jewish. People
inherit Judaism — but can also
become Jewish. Geneticists
track a so-called “Kohen gene”
— lending a sense of ethnicity
to how we define certain Jewish
tribal lines.

March Continued from Page 4
world are telling this story of
the Exodus from Egypt,” Lewis
said. “The journey to liberation
begins with a cry. The Israelite
people are suffering; they can’t
bear it anymore, and so they cry
out, and their cries are heard.”
The list of speakers at the
march in Love Park was much
smaller. It included Sherrie
Cohen, an activist who is run-
ning for an at-large seat on the
Philadelphia City Council.

Cohen, who introduced her-
self firstly as “a Jewish lesbian
feminist” at the rally, noted that
there are Jewish women among
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Jan. 25
In the narrative flow of the
Torah, before this week’s Torah
portion, Parshat Yitro, it was less
“complicated.” Up to the moment
of the gathering at Mount Sinai,
the people of Israel are a tribal
family defined almost entirely by
bloodlines, marriage and child-
bearing. Organized into tribes as
descendants of Jacob’s original
children, we approach Mount
Sinai with full knowledge of
what branch of the family tree
is ours — united and traceable
back to Abraham.

With the receiving of the
Torah at Mount Sinai, this
changes. First, the Torah speaks
of an erev rav, a “mixed multi-
tude” (Exodus 12:38) that joins
the people of Israel in leaving
Egypt and similarly assembles
at Mount Sinai. The Torah itself
serves as a new form of consti-
tution of the people — defining
us as adherents to a set of obser-
vances, parties to a covenant.

This forms a completely different
definition of what it means to be
part of this people — a definition
that will evolve over centuries,
but from Sinai onward, is mark-
edly more diverse and compli-
cated than just a single family,
traceable to Jacob.

Indeed, this tension in defin-
ing the Jewish people even
predates this moment — in a
moment foreshadowed at the
end of the Book of Genesis.

Recognizing how, even after
Jacob attains his new name,
Israel, he is referred interchange-
ably by both of those names, one
commentary (from Sichot la-To-
rah, the chumash edition from
the Great Synagogue/Hechal
Shlomo in Jerusalem) explains,
“As he neared the end of his life,
Jacob was not fearful of his own
death; rather, he feared the end of
‘Israel’ — his NATIONAL iden-
tity…” Thus, even in the inter-
changeable nature of the names
of our patriarch Jacob/Israel, we
see a struggle to define ourselves
as family or nation, tribe, reli-
gion, people, or otherwise.

Once we receive the Torah,
and we begin to live out its
ritual, moral, civic and legal
dictates, we become a religion.

We are constituted as a people
or a nation. We retain the ves-
tiges of tribal, familial identi-
ties. The question of what are
we becomes, well, complicated.

In truth, there are different
benefits and drawbacks to each
of these definitions: The defini-
tion as a nation allows others to
naturalize in, to join the Jewish
nation, but this also means that
we can be porous and people can
drift away from a Jewish identity.

An identity as a Jewish peo-
ple might also allow the
chance to welcome those who
choose Judaism and may have
given us the transnational, bor-
derless identity that has enabled
Jews to live as contributing citi-
zens of other nations across the
globe for millennia.

Religious observance has
always bolstered our particular
identities as Jews, but given the
strong secular Jewish communi-
ties in North America and espe-
cially in Israel, religion hardly
seems adequate to fully define
what it means to be Jewish. The
notion of family or tribe connotes
a kinship, an instinctive closeness
(regardless of geographical differ-
ence) that once united the Jewish
people in common cause.

However, such familial
bonds may be misunderstood to
encourage tribalistic exclusivity
and cloistering that undermines
the nobility of our mission as
Jews; besides, such conscious-
ness of a sense of kinship may
be fading from our Jewish iden-
tities in recent generations.

Much like the framers of
the United States Constitution
sought to unite disparate colo-
nial, religious, national and
socioeconomic identities into
one national identity, this
moment of constitution as a
people of Israel at Mount Sinai
the Women’s March Inc.’s lead-
ership and that the leadership
has denounced anti-Semitism
and met with Jewish women
and rabbis. (Despite those
denunciations, Women’s March
Inc. co-founder Linda Sarsour
endorsed the boycott, divestment
and sanctions (BDS) movement
against Israel during a speech
at the national Women’s March
in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 19.)
“I believe in building solidarity
among women across lines of race
and class and religion, because
that is how we build understand-
ing amongst one another,” Cohen
said. “The more we understand
one another, the greater our
power as women will be.”
Some skipped both rallies.

That included Mariel J.K.

Martin, who was one of orga-
nizers of the first Philly Women
Rally march in Philadelphia
but has not attended one since.

She resigned after the march
that first year over several issues,
including what she felt like was
a lack of diverse representation.

She had intended on
attending both marches this
year for her work in politics,
but in the end, her work didn’t
need her to be there so she
attended neither.

It was a decision she called
“empowering.” She said it’s dis-
heartening for her to see rifts
in the Women’s March because
it creates divisions in the civil
rights and women’s movements
and feeds into a narrative that
women aren’t able to lead. She
also doesn’t like to be tokenized.

“We don’t need to challenge
the status quo all the time,”
Martin said.

Finn, who is running for an
at-large city council seat, was
another Jewish woman who
organized the first march in
Philadelphia. She said she started
to get involved in activism lead-
ing up to the 2016 election, when
then-candidate Donald Trump
signaled his support for a poten-
tial registry of Muslims.

She said she has received a
lot of inquiries about if their
JEWISH EXPONENT
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4:53 p.m.

in this week’s parshah compli-
cates the definition of “what we
are.” However, these different
definitions may have given us
the flexibility and multifaceted
approach key to our survival
and success in the many chap-
ters of Jewish identity.

We can be the family
descended from Jacob and the
people of Israel. We can be a
people and a nation and a tribe
or family and a religion — and
perhaps these are only a few
of the different ways to define
what it means to be Jewish.

May we continue to seek to
define ourselves with the close-
ness of kinship and family, with
the broad-based inclusivity of
peoplehood, with the necessary
structures of support and protec-
tion of nationhood and with the
recognition that it’s complicated,
as no one definition could suffice
to define our legacy as Jews. l
Rabbi Eric Yanoff is a rabbi at
Adath Israel in Merion Station.

The Board of Rabbis of Greater
Philadelphia is proud to provide the
Torah commentary for the Jewish
Exponent. march is affiliated with the
national organization and their
stance on anti-Semitism.

“It’s important that Jewish
women’s voices are heard, just
as much as everybody else’s,”
Finn said. “If we sit it out, our
voices get lost.”
At the museum stage, Finn
made sure her voice was recog-
nized as that of a Jewish woman.

“Like so many people who
faced oppression and bigotry
for millenia, Jews are resilient,”
Finn said during the march.

“We keep our faith, and we
never stop hoping.” l
szighelboim@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
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