RP2: What does Asian Diaspora even mean? & Feeling Jewish-ish

Part 1

Our class on Thursday was awesome, clarifying, and confusing, specifically around the term diaspora, and about what it means to be a part of the Asian Diaspora- I feel especially drawn to the apparent contradictory nature of this idea.

As a Jewish American with what I'd call a Jewish-ish upbringing (with elements of humanism and Buddhism mixed in there), I feel both connected to and disconnected from this Jewish identity. A number of quotidian (?) cultural practices and events have helped shape this identity, including: attending Hebrew school every Sunday for ten years, learning to read (i.e. sound out, but not understand) Hebrew, becoming a Bat Mitzvah, receiving a Hebrew name (מִרְיָם – Miriam), participating in annual Passover Seders, and singing Chanukah prayers with my family. While these practices have forged in me a strong feeling of being Jewish, there are also times when I don't feel Jewish enough and don't feel justified in fully claiming that identity.

I believe that this tension partially comes from the fact that the word Jewish itself does not – cannot – refer to just one very specific identity or experience. And the way to go about negotiating that fluidity of meaning, for me, has been to explain my self, or to clarify or qualify my identity. In the past, I have identified myself as half Jewish, as culturally-but-not-religiously-Jewish, and as: *giant inhalation* my-mom-was-raised-Jewish-and-my-dad-was-raised-Catholic-and-now-my-parents-belong-to-a-Unitarian-Universalist-community-and-I-practice-Zen-Buddhism. All of these ways of identifying – each more complicated than the last – reflects my lifelong figuring-out of who I am in the midst of a wide variety of narratives (from a variety of sources, most with strong opinions) about what Judaism and Jewishness is and what it is not.

This is not a direct parallel, but Ien Ang deconstructs the words Asian and Asia in her article, and, if I take her argument a few steps further, I can see some similarities to my own experience. She writes that "the very idea of Asia as a separate, demarcatable region of the world was developed with the imperializing European geographical imagination... Asia is an imagined construct, and as a construct it [has] real effects on how the world is organized" (Ang 288). She goes on to write about how seeing people as either Asian or non-Asian can erase the experiences of many whose lives contradict this binary. If we can think about continents as constructs, it is not a far leap to noticing that countries are constructed as well, by laws and political leaders and mapmakers... what about cultures or ethnicities? Obviously (i.e. I take for granted the idea that) there is something inherent, genetic, in my blood, that makes me Jewish, but the implication and the meaning of Jewishness seems to me to be constructed by cultural productions, history, politics, geography, migrations, and diaspora (whatever that means).

Part 2

Today, the weekly Community Reflection in Stetson Chapel was led by JSO (Jewish Student Organization), in honor of Yom Ha'Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. For the Roots & Routes project earlier this quarter, I looked at a family tree that included my great-great-grandfather's line, on my mom's side. I found out, for the first time, that I have (at least) twenty-three relatives who died in the Holocaust. So, walking into the chapel this morning, I felt more personally connected to the Holocaust than I have in the past.

At one point in the Reflection, the JSO members went up on stage and invited the audience to join them in reciting the Mourner's Kaddish, a prayer of remembrance for the dead. They sped through it and I couldn't keep up, even with the helpful transliteration that they'd handed out. So I didn't feel particularly Jewish then. Then they sang HaTikvah ("The Hope"), the Israeli National Anthem, and again invited audience members to join in. I was surprised to notice that, as they started singing, not only could I follow along with the transliterated lyrics, but I actually knew the exact melody. So I sang along, and felt more Jewish than I have in a while. Where in the recesses of my brain was that melody hiding? Where had I filed it away?

 To me, this experience speaks to the fact that any identity we assign ourselves or any identity that is placed on us is not simple, and cannot be simply expressed. If nothing else, that is something that became more clear to me because of our discussions and readings this week.