Q&A: Identity and Customs
Identity and Customs
Question
Hello and blessings!
1. Recently I’ve heard a lot of people talking about how important it is to fight against the dismantling of identities taking place under the influence of postmodernism, but most of their arguments were based on utilitarian considerations (psychologically, it destroys society, etc.). Is there, beyond that, some value-based reason to be attached to national identity, family identity, and so on? In my view it’s pretty meaningless.
2. Someone brought me proof for the importance of identity from the fact that one must follow ancestral customs. Is his proof correct? I thought that this is binding by virtue of communal acceptance.
3. As is well known, the Jewish people accepted upon themselves many things and made them binding (the evening prayer, the Talmud, etc.). However, we know that some parts of the nation were not partners to this—the Ten Tribes, the Ethiopians—so how is the people’s acceptance valid when not all the people were included in it, and not even the majority (assuming the Ten Tribes numbered, and perhaps still number, more than we do)?
Answer
- I completely agree. Identity is a fact, not a value.
- Jewish law says that one should follow custom. Why does that constitute proof one way or the other here? In Jewish law too, can’t one say that this is for utilitarian reasons? And even if there is such a halakhic value, that doesn’t mean there is a corresponding moral value.
- Communal acceptance does have validity, and the community today is the community of Judah without Israel. The Ethiopians are a negligible minority. The question is actually the reverse: are they obligated by our acceptances? I once wrote that I’m doubtful about that. Maybe it is like someone who arrived in a different community that is the majority.