Identity Crisis

What if Kermit, after years of singing,”It’s Not Easy Being Green” found out that he was really beige? My guess is it would send him into a bit of a tailspin and not just for a moment, either. Green is not just a color he associates with himself, but also with his mother, father, grandparents and ancestors. He probably feels a shared history with other green creatures and eats the same kinds of food as they do, as well. He has an affinity for things green and this kinship would be in question if he were, for instance to discover he was red or purple.

 Well, it is Spring and an old woman’s fancy turns to Passover at about the same time her husband reads a book showing that The Exodus probably never occurred as related in her Passover Haggadah. The Passover story is relived every year to remind Jews of their shared sorrows and triumphs. We eat bitter herbs and unleavened bread to try to share in the experience of our ancestors and to share in their pain and, by the end of the long evening, we can, thus, share in their successful journey. But what if they never took that journey?

 Identity is so many things. We have a personal identity. We have a professional identity. We have an identity through the history of our family members and we have a historical identity gleaned from our own people’s saga. Of course, there is a lot of overlap and these facts and fictions get intertwined over the years. We carry around a lot of baggage. This baggage can be supportive and be a foundation to build on or it can weigh us down and render us immobile. 

 Identity is fluid. There is no real “who you are” only how you see yourself. I know four individuals whose fathers are Jewish and mothers are not. One of them was bar-mitvah’d and considers himself Jewish, one of them knows nothing about Judaism and announced almost in horror, “I’m not Jewish,” one considers herself a Catholic with a Jewish father and one says “I’m not really anything.” The Jewish identity question is especially difficult, because Judaism is both a religion and an ethnicity. For Black Americans, it often doesn’t matter how they identify themselves. If they are black at all, the rest of America considers them Black, whether one of their parents is Jewish, Sicilian or Egyptian. After a while, they might as well identify as Black, because the culture at large has already pigeon-holed them. 

Many adults have discovered they are not who they thought they were. Jack Nicholson discovered rather late in life that his sister was really his mother and his mother, who had raised him, was his grandmother. Madeleine Albright discovered her Catholic parents were really Jewish refugees from war-torn Europe. And countless individuals have discovered that their fathers are not really genetically related to them. One of my patients and her brother uncovered a family secret after their parents’ deaths. Their mother’s physician was their biological father. Their mother had been inseminated, using the treating doctor’s semen (one-stop shopping) due to their “father’s” infertility problems. The documents were in their parents packet of vital documents. 

 My husband’s announcement concerning Passover was not heralded in our family. First my daughter and I protested. We felt angry, as if he had stolen our holiday. My husband got a lot of grief. After doing my own research, however, it appears there is good archeological evidence to support that no large movement of Israelites out of Egypt occurred in the thirteenth century B.C.E. “The conclusion that the Exodus did not happen at the time and in the manner described in the Bible seems irrefutable when we examine the evidence at specific sites where the children of Israel were said to have camped for extended periods during the wandering in the desert.” After reading the book from which this came, The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, it brought to mind a show I saw on TV about tracing man’s journey out of Africa by examining the genes of people all over the world. One fascinating exodus was from Africa to India, along India’s western border and later through Southern Asia into Australia — that of the Aboriginal people of Australia. When this evidence was presented to this population, however, they became angry. They have their own myth of their origins and it did not mesh with those of the geneticists. They reacted pretty much like I had to my husband. No thanks. Our rabbi’s reaction to our initial response? “:-) no worries. Just throw in a Dayeinu and it will be fine. By the way, evidence shmevidence. What other people would keep a record of a 12 day hike taking 40 years!”

I believe our rabbi’s point of view is that, although we might feel like Passover is a part of our shared history that we do not want to be extricated from, its importance is metaphorical, not historical, or archeological. It informs our world view; it imbues us with a system of values. We are not lost in the dark now that we rethink the factuality of our holiday. Whether it occurred where it is said to have happened or when it was said to have happened, our ancestors bound together as a people, shared a national set of moral values (the Ten Commandments) and have survived many regimes anxious to annihilate us. Finkelstein and Silberman conclude: “Passover proves to be not a single event but a continuing experience of national resistance against the powers that be.” In that frame of mind I will do my spring cleaning and prepare for our family seder and forgive my husband. 

 

 

Comments

[Sistasasy]

this is so sweet
the timelessness of this piece will be proven by history
its applicability is evidenced now

i am mired in the tragic killing of TRAYVON MARTIN
because he wore a hoodie a mindset fostering DANGER rose

the good thing about an identity crisis is that it makes us examine, contextualize, challenge and share our point of view
after TRAYVON MARTIN'S killing AMERIKA re-examined the Stand Your Ground Law
it has been discussed with the possibility of improvement

let me suggest that the identity crisis is not in the LAW but in human perception of other humans
the crisis is shall we commit heinous acts with or without legal protection
or will we identify with our common humanity
luv ya