The answer to the first question, at least, seems obvious to most of us. But as this story by AP writer Jesse Washington demonstrates, it’s a question that won’t go away. Perhaps that’s a good thing too. Why? Because definitions matter.
In a world where we are told that definitions are unimportant or that “labeling is disabling”, we have become squeamish about defining things in specific ways. But discussing complex issues like racial and spiritual identity requires useful and useable language, including definitions of the things under consideration. In other words, we can not have a meaningful conversation about the importance of electing our first black President, unless we share a definition of what it means to be black.
But the need for clear definitions does not require them to be simplistic. In fact, the very idea that anything as complex as a person’s identity could or should be reduced to a simple formula is wrong. In fact, the question about Barack Obama’s blackness, which at first seems silly and then perhaps ugly, provides a great opportunity to reconsider the importance of definitions in our culture.
The question about the President-elects blackness, or who is Jewish or what it means to be Christian reminds us of both the importance of such questions and that the answers may be as multi-faceted and nuanced as the people they seek to define. Gone is the era of one definition that can be imposed on all people. Gone is the presumption that we can not be many things at the same time. And gone is the ability to assure our own identities by denying others the right to claim the same label. So what’s left?
We are!
The role of self-identification becomes increasingly important in a world that both demands definitions and recognizes that they are more elastic than previously imagined. And although this makes some purists uncomfortable because they think it demeans the value of that which is identified if “anybody” get to define it, they have it backwards. In a world where one is free to define one’s self in a variety of ways, the definitions we choose are particularly precious.
We need to distinguish between the fact that people may define their blackness, Jewishness, Christianess, etc. in ways that violate our understanding of the terms, and the fact that such “heterodox” definitions dilute the importance of the categories. In fact, it is the opposite. When one could choose to be anything, their choice to define themselves in any particular way is especially powerful and meaningful. And it need not undermine the importance of shared definitions which allow for shared conversation.
We must shift from assumed definitions to affirmed definitions. I am what I say I am, not who you presume me to be. Ironically, that phrasing recalls how God tells Moses to explain who God is to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. And if that kind of definition is good enough for God, shouldn’t it be good enough for us?
Barack Obama is black because he says he is, I am Jewish because I say I am, etc. And that doesn’t spell the end of meaningful shared definitions of identity. It spells the need for a way of valuing self-identification that is as real and useful as identities created for us by others. And that can be done.
In fact, a useful model can be found in the deep recesses of Talmudic tradition. According to the rabbis, one seeking membership in the Jewish people, was accepted as a member of the tribe based primarily on two things: first, their affirming that they were a part of the community and second, their willingness to accept no only the benefits of such membership, but the costs.
Taken together, those two elements combine to make a model that is both deeply respectful of the centrality of self-identification to all forms of identity, and protects against it becoming so idiosyncratic as to be meaningless. Labeling is actually not disabling at all. It is powerfully enabling as long as we respect each other as labelers of that which is most important to each of us and are willing to enjoy both the benefits and the burdens of the labels that we choose.
Author, radio and TV talk show host, and President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Brad Hirschfield is the author of 
posted December 15, 2008 at 1:07 pm
I have been a Jew for more than 40 years now, and the only time my identity was questioned was in a socialist Jewish collective I belonged to for several years. The questioning stopped after I spent four hours in jail for demonstrating against the local Nazis, which I guess is as good an example as any of accepting the drawbacks as well as the benefits of Jewishness.
posted December 15, 2008 at 7:47 pm
“Is Obama Black? Are You Jewish? Am I Christian?”
How amusing. I know people who are all three, blacks who converted from Christianity to Judaism. They don’t have any problem with their identity, but casual onlookers do.
(Note, by the way, the return of the term “black”, displacing the once politically-correct “African-American”. Doubtless we can thank Obama for that.)
posted December 15, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Self-labelling or self-defining has its limits. When self-defining is destructive then it is no longer “useful”, furthermore when self-defining involves a lie (whether the person lies only to others or lies to themselves) then it is not good.
Positive self-definitions include the obvious such as “I am human” or “I am a humane person” or “I am a …” when that definition describes something positive or with positive characteristics.
“I am a criminal” is a negative self-definition as is “I am useless”, “I am unworthy” even if they are truthful definitions.
A more controversial self-definition is that of defining oneself based on one’s sexual desires or “orientation”; some people consider it positive but I disagree. I acknowledge that I am of a certain sexual type but that is not the whole of who I am and I refuse to be defined solely by my sexuality and so should everyone who truly loves themselves.
As for defining oneself by religious, birth, or skin characteristics that too has its positive or negative connotations. I prefer to not be defined by my skin colour, I consider all people regardless of colour or religion to be made in “the image of GOD”.
The Jewish people may be “the people of GOD” or “the people of the Book” but that doesn’t mean that they are better than others, it does mean that they have a special relationship to the Creator though.
Whatever your skin colour or pigment, you are loved by GOD, whether you believe it or not.
posted December 16, 2008 at 1:05 am
Self-definition does indeed have many positive aspects. However, when one defines oneself specifically in terms of membership in some group, the group surely has an interest and a claim in “the proceedings,” if you will.
Do we accept that someone who declares him or herself an American is a citizen of the USA regardless of whether he or she meets any of the requirements? I don’t think so. And yet not fulfilling the requirements is not enough to justly deny someone’s membership in the club. For a significant portion of our history, African Americans, women, unpropertied people and so forth were denied full membership. But that only showed the defects in the legal and cultural definitions.
JFK famously said, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” a statement of identity generally understood metaphorically rather than literally, indicating a relationship of co-responsibility and solidarity. And yet, what is belonging to an identity if not a relationship of co-responsibility.
The person who says “I am black” without noticeable physical characteristics of the group and also without reliably traceable parentage or grandparentage by people of such characteristics would generally be seen as delusional, since “black” is a racial designation and only secondarily cultural.
The claim to being a Christian is almost certainly one that some group or other will deny as invalid. Mormons claim the designation for themselves but a large portion of the Christian world claims that their beliefs are far enough from the mainstream as not to be Christian at all, just to give one example.
And Jews all know the danger of someone outside the group determining who the groups members are.
So who is a Jew? If you, Rabbi Brad, are a Jew because you claim the identity for yourself rather than because of your parentage, culture, or beliefs, then you imply that Jews for Jesus are just as much Jews, after all, because they claim the identity. Various non-Jewish Jewish groups, such as some African American groups that have not undergone conversion to Judaism but see themselves as following the requirements of Torah, are Jewish too by that reasoning. And Christians in general, who theologically see themselves as the “true Jews” are Jews too.
At what point does self definition merely become Humpty-Dumptyism? Do words mean merely what the speaker wants them to mean? Of course not. Words mean to the extent that a linguistic community understands a common meaning or array of meanings from a certain contextualized combination of phonemes and/or graphemes.
For anything useful to happen in the use of labels, the speaker and the listener have to participate in the same cultural-linguistic community.
But is Barack Obama black? What a question! The historical American position was that anyone with even the slightest bit of black African descent is black (or whatever the accepted term of the times was). In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find an African American who is not part white. And Barack is half black African. He qualifies.
But American society is gradually becoming comfortable with the fact that half isn’t everything. Multi-racial or multi-national or multi-ethnic designations are becoming more common.
And what exactly do ancestral-geographic identities convey? At what point in the history does the geography adhere to the DNA? Are Jewish citizens of the USA African Americans? The ancient story of national origin depicts an exodus from Egypt, which is in Africa. Are caucasian Americans African Americans by virtue of the fact that their prehistorical ancestors left the savannahs of Africa for more northern climes? And those of us born in the USA whose grandparents do not remember life in an “old country,” in what sense are we NOT Native Americans?
All these ramblings only to indicate that designations of identity only mean something with a specific context. Identities are not absolute. No one may fully deny your membership in his or her group. Nor may you fully assert your membership against the opinion of either a majority of the group or of that portion of the group that wields power. When I call myself a Native American in the current cultural landscape, I do not succeed in asserting an identity but in communicating confusion. When a Jew for Jesus calls himself a Jew to a Jew (not-for-Jesus) he communicates confusion, rebellion, assimilation, and rejection of identity rather than identity.
Your identity exists situationally.You are who you are partly because you assert it for yourself, partly because of your heritage, partly because of you affiliations, partly because outgroups view you in a certain way, partly because the group you claim claims you…
If the words help you live and act positively in the portion of society where you find yourself, then your identity is good for you. But if your stated identity does not help you live and act positively, you need to reevaluate whether your words are the ones you should use.
L’Shalom
Chaim
posted December 16, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Obama is not black. Obama is not white. Why does it matter? Let us forget about race and focus on the kind of person he is. I believe that God created different colors, sizes and shapes of people for a reason. His own image. Goid is telling us that we are all brothers and sisters. Our faith in him should be enough. If we love him, then we should love each other, regardless of the color God choose to give them. Our focus should be on the important things. Let us wonder if Obama will govern with the principals of our ten commandents. Let us pray that Obama has the courage to do the things that benefit all mankind! His color has nothing to do with this.
posted December 17, 2008 at 1:09 am
Identity is an extremely complicated and frequently emotional topic. Most of us are born with some sort of identity, which we may or may not embrace as we grow older. Sometimes we take on an identity and the group with which we wish to identify may or may not accept us. Most people want to identify with one group or another because humans tend to be social creatures. Being “left out” or snubbed is painful.
I was born to a Jewish mother and Christian father. My mother’s family was mostly secular. My religous upbringing was sort of mixed, and as an adult, I ended up identifying as Jewish and marrying a Jewish man. My husband’s Jewish identity is very strong and religously, he identifies as conservative. Sometimes it is tough because I have a natural resistance to any sort of group identity. I like people, but not in packs. I don’t like group activities. I tend to like to do things with just one or two others…or by myself with my dog! He has trouble with my loner tendencies and my weaker identity. Perhaps because of my upbringing and certainly because of my own nature, I am not fond of ritual and don’t like lots of rules!
According to Jewish law, I am a Jew. I would not change this, though sometimes I think I might make a better Unitarian! If my mother had been Christian and my father Jewish, I would have to convert. This has bothered me a bit because I have met children who were raised Jewish, could read Hebrew, and went to synagogue but because the wrong parent was Jewish, they were not “legally” Jewish. I felt bad about that.
Excuse my ramblings. It is very late and identity is very difficult!
posted December 17, 2008 at 9:52 am
If we are what we say we are, then why the big fuss over the Orthodox question of “who is a Jew”? It would seem you stand with those who ask the same question.
My mother was Jewish and my father Catholic. He did not convert, but he staunchly supported my mother in raising my sister and me raised as Orthodox Jews, even though my mother was scorned by the Jewish community for marrying out. She and my dad was put through the wringer as outsiders, and my sister and I were called “not really Jewish”, though no one stood guard at the door with a flaming sword. I made life even more difficult for them because I constantly questioned everything, from why I was forbidden to say certain prayers, to why they shook young boys’ hands but refused to touch me, to why I had to be hidden away behind a curtain at services. Eventually I got fed up and told the congregation that I felt my father displayed more Jewish compassion and caring than any of the ritually hidebound group there. I joined a reform congregation where I could participate fully, sit with my husband and children as a family, lead services, sing aloud, and read from Torah when I so chose. My daughter is adopted and has been accepted and welcomed there from Day One, though not in the Conservative or Orthodox shuls.
My experience is not unique. I often wonder why anyone would really want to convert to Judaism under such forbidding circumstances. So I have to ask you, as an Orthodox Rabbi, how you would address this issue. Are we what we say we are, or does Orthodox Jewish ritual take precedence over the loving Jewish heart?
posted December 18, 2008 at 5:24 pm
I truly appreciated your comments regarding self-identity. I have been in a challenging place spiritual identity-wise for many years. I was born to two Jewish parents, and am part of a European Jewish lineage as far back as anybody can remember. I was Bar Mitzvah at 13, I observe Jewish festivals and avoid non-kosher foods. However, almost 30 years ago I became a believer in Jesus as Messiah, and currently serve in the ministry of the military chaplaincy.
So, what am I? To many Jews I am no longer Jewish, but am now Christian — regardless of my Jewish birth, upbringing, education and roots. At the same time, to Christians I am an oddity as I continue to maintain a Jewish identity and lifestyle. If it’s about SELF-identity, I’m comfortable describing myself as a “Messianic Jew,” a Jew who believes Jesus was the Messiah — which is different than saying I am a Christian who used to be Jewish (indeed, most Messianic Jews consider their faith to be a Judaism, rather than a denomination of Christianity).
This is a facinating discussion, and made more so by the wise comments of Rabbi Hirschfield
posted December 21, 2008 at 8:00 pm
My mother is catholic and my father is jewish. They told me that by the jewish religion that I was born under my mothers religion (catholic) and by the catholic religion that I was born to the fathers faith (jewish) which put me in a Catch 22. I was raised jewish. My current girlfriend is catholic and insists that catholics go by the mothers religion as well. Were my parents wrong? What religion is a child born to a jewish father and a catholic mother?
posted December 24, 2008 at 3:40 pm
the fact of the matter is that any white american that looks at him would classify him as black.
lots of black americans have white male ancestors but we could never call ourselves white on the drivers liscense, or any where else in america including dating the blue eyed blonds that seem to be the beauty standard here in america