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The traditional legal definition of a Jew is well-known: the child of a Jewish mother or a convert. Sure, there is a little fuzziness around the edges as Orthodox Jews in Israel in particular debate what makes a kosher conversion, and whether conversions can be retroactively revoked. But both Orthodox and Conservative Jewish institutions share their commitment to this legal definition. Jewish identity is for all intents and purposes black and white, verified or falsified with objective markers.

Yet as both the U.S. census and Susan Fendrick in a recent article remind us, life is not lived in black and white with objective markers. These legal definitions matter greatly to bean counters and lawyers (or rabbis or others in the role of lawyers), and to people only when they run up against bean counters and lawyers. As Fendrick sensitively suggests, it is not that legal definitions of Jewishness are wrong, only that they don’t adequately reflect lived experience. As for the U.S. census, they can’t figure out what to do with “Race” when many people, flummoxed by the check-off boxes, liberally select multiple identities.

Jews in antiquity had, if anything, even more fluid identities as Jews. Prior to the Rabbis, there were few necessary objective markers of Jewishness (circumcision for men was one, but even it was not sufficient). For most of the people most of the time this would never have been a problem; they had few if any encounters regarding their Jewishness with bean counters or lawyers. There were, of course, some exceptions: when the Romans leveled a tax on all Jews throughout the Empire following the disasterous revolt that led to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, Jews had to be counted. We have little idea how they did this (although Martin Goodman has a provocative articleon its ramifications). Jewish communities locally handled their own “conversions”, and it is intriguing to consider how converts, their families, and different Jewish communities might have had very different understandings of who they actually “were”.

In this vein it is interesting to consider the famous CCAR’s statement on patrilineal descent, which requires at least one Jewish parent and an affirmative act of identity. This is legally a nightmare: it would allow for cases in which Jewish identity was stripped and in which the children of two Jewish parents would not be considered Jewish. I doubt that there have ever been more than a few cases of either of these scenarios, if only because there is a tacit acknowledgement that although this is meant as a legal definition it is a poor one. It is, in fact, more descriptive than prescriptive, a comment on the way that Jewish identity is actually enacted today, with or without legal definitions, in living color rather than black and white.

Last month I saw the exhibit Figuratively Speaking: A Survey of the Human Form at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. What was particularly interesting to me about this exhibit was the chronological progression. The earliest, Renaissance and early modern works attempted to portray the human form realistically. The works of the early twentieth century moved to more abstract representation – Picasso, of course, is the most famous example of this trend. In the more modern works, though, was a surprising slide back to realism.

The focus of the exhibit was on the art, not the intellectual climates in which these works were created and bought. Yet it made me wonder: Does the move back to more realistic representations of the human form reflect a shift in our understanding of the human condition? Have we moved from a sense of unity to fragmentation back to unity? The idea that we are fragmented beings was certainly pervasive in artistic and intellectual circles throughout the twentieth century. Are we seeing in this newer generation a more optimistic view of the human self, one that understands us as whole? Or are is it just an artistic trend, no more or less?

In a recent issue of The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik discusses the modern dessert. His investigation soon took him to Spain, where he talked with with some of the most widely admired pastry chefs in the world. While Gopnik doesn’t quite frame his own essay this way, it is clear that these chefs are not just looking for “new” or “exciting” tastes, but perfect ones. Their work is personal and artistic.

By chance, I read this article shortly after my wife and I had our first meal at a Michelin three-star establishment, Joel Robuchon during a brief get-away in Las Vegas. It was, without question, the best meal that I ever ate, even with the numerous dietary restrictions that we imposed on the chefs. It may even be unfair to call it a “meal.” It was perfect – everything from the environment to the service to the incredible, new, and changing flavors of the food. It was the culinary equivalent of a great work of art, symphony, or ballet.

The experience (better than “meal”) made me think about my own life. Very little – actually nothing – in my life can really be called “perfect.” Much is very good or excellent, but perfect? It makes me wonder about what a perfect book or article in my field would even look like. Is perfection achievable in an academic monograph or a trade history? And what would it look like to teach the “perfect class” or a whole “perfect course”? Where is the model to which I can strive, even if I wanted to and was willing to put in the time and effort, like the chefs Gopnik discusses?

I recently finished teaching a four-class course on the Book of Psalms to medium security inmates of our state ACI (Adult Correctional Institute). The course was organized through a student group at Brown. The reasons I choose to do this are too complex to get into here; perhaps that will be the topic of another post. I had never taught in such an environment; it was quite a learning experience for us all.

First, the context and caveats. The course introduced the academic study of the Book of Psalms to students. I picked this topic because (1) I could identify few things within my area of expertise that I thought could interest this group; (2) as poetry that deals with existential issues, psalms could generate interesting discussions; and (3) I didn’t know much about Psalms and wanted an opportunity to learn. I had about 15 students, all of whom (I was told) applied to get into the course. I make no claims to being an expert in prison life. I entered the prison through several sets of double-locked doors and gates; went straight to the educational/communal wing (I never saw living quarters); chatted briefly and superficially with students before class; taught; and left. I was told by the student facilitators that my students were almost all convicted of violent felonies and due to good behavior had been moved down from maximum security. I never spoke to any of them about their crimes.

I expected the class itself to be more different than other teaching that I have done. The truth was more prosaic. My students were on the whole engaged and smart, although they sometimes had difficulty expressing themselves. They prepared for class (usually a psalm or two a week), and occasionally even did additional research in the prison library. They sincerely struggled with understanding the differences between an academic approach to religion and a more engaged or “emic” one. They wanted to learn.

This is not to say that they did not have unique insights. One psalm was read as an inner spiritual struggle of resisting the temptations presented by one’s evil friends. One of the funnier comments was when, having read together a psalm in which the author called on God to strike down his enemies, a student spontaneously blurted out, “Hey, he’s calling for a hit!” During an off-topic discussion of the Ten Commandments (we compared the different versions in Exodus and Deuteronomy) one student perceptively pointed out that the last four commandments might actually be seen as sub-categories of “do not murder” – they summarize the reasons that people kill. They were in class, but they never forgot that they were still in prison.

As banal as this sounds, I was most struck by how typical and how human my students were. To the extent that I could see, they accepted their sentences and patiently ground through their time in a setting that minimally could be said to be drab and overbearing. They adapted to their environment.

The experience brought to my mind Foucault’s ideas about the development of modern notions of discipline. We have created a penal system that quite literally takes people and makes them disappear, safely tucked away out of view. This is not to say that they themselves don’t deserve this punishment, or perhaps even far worse. The question is the extent to which the system is designed to shield us from the violence that we inflict (again – perhaps correctly) on others.

For the Rabbis of antiquity, as in most societies in antiquity (and until fairly recently, in fact), punishment was understood as a communal activity – most typically a public flogging. I am in no position to say whether this different understanding of punishment would have made most people more careful about inflicting it, or more bloodthirsty. Clearly, though, the community was not shielded from its own violence.

I did not end this experience feeling sorry for my students or with any dramatic revelations about our penal system. Rather, it highlighted to me our desire to make unpleasant things disappear, and makes me wonder about the potential costs that we pay for it.

I have long been interested in ways in which modern technology can enhance what I do, as a scholar and a teacher. In the classroom I have used podcasts and wikis, and I continue to work on a digital collection of inscriptions from Israel/Palestine that date from antiquity. Only recently, however, has the surge of interest in humanities computing translated into more publicly accessible tools for interested amateurs such as me.

I have found two recent initiatives from Google particularly intriguing. One is the well reported tool by which you can analyze the use of words in Google Books, called the “Ngram Viewer.” I had always been under the impression that in earlier times “Jews” were more often called “Israelite” or “Hebrew.” It took me about 10 seconds to discover that I was wrong.

A second more powerful tool is Google Fusion Tables. This enables the merging and visualization of data sets. For reasons too complex and uninteresting, I began to wonder recently about the per capita presence of houses of worship in America today: I wanted to see a color coded map, like the one you see after elections. I suppose that one could do this, or something like it, on Fusion Tables, although I have not yet invested the time and energy I would need to actually figure out how. As with the Ngram viewer, I’m not positive yet how this powerful tool can be applied to the material I more typically work with, but I’m sure that the potential is ultimately enormous.