{"id":34427,"date":"2010-08-27T14:00:48","date_gmt":"2010-08-27T18:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/?p=34427"},"modified":"2018-06-04T09:36:56","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T13:36:56","slug":"ask-me-another-cynthia-baker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2010\/08\/27\/ask-me-another-cynthia-baker\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask Me Another: Cynthia Baker and the fraught identity term ‘Jew’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Associate Professor of Religious Studies Cynthia Baker is something of an expert on the dynamics of households and communal spaces in ancient Judaism. So when the editors of the book series Key Words in Jewish Studies<\/em><\/a> invited her to submit a proposal, she suggested the word \u201cspace.\u201d Sorry, she was told, that\u2019s already taken.<\/p>\n

\"baker-7734\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So Baker got right to the point and suggested looking at the word \u201cJew\u201d itself. Her proposal was readily accepted and, in fact, recently won a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for Baker, who spoke with Bates Magazine <\/em>editor Jay Burns.<\/p>\n

What new do you bring to this topic?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some studies have looked at the origins of \u201cJew,\u201d others at the Jew in modern European theater or in contemporary American literature. But no one has conducted an analysis of the term with this kind of sustained attention and historical spread.<\/p>\n

When someone asks why the term \u201cJew\u201d is unique, what do you say?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Being a professor, I generally answer a question with a question. Can you think of any other word that is both a term of great pride and so obviously an epithet that it demonstrates that a hate crime has been committed? \u201cJew\u201d is not an ethnic slur, but it certainly can function that way. The word \u201cqueer\u201d is a taunt that has been reclaimed, but \u201cJew\u201d didn\u2019t originate as a taunt and often serves as a term of honor.<\/p>\n

Was the term always complex?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It derives from a geographic location that the Bible calls \u201cJudah\u201d and, later, \u201cJudea.\u201d But from its earliest appearances, the term \u201cJudean,\u201d from which we get \u201cJew,\u201d seems fraught and troubled, being applied on the one hand to only some of the people who lived in that region, and on the other hand to people who were unwelcome minorities someplace else.<\/p>\n

Will you confront the question of \u201cwho is a Jew?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Absolutely. First, it\u2019s important to know that right up to the cusp of modernity, defining \u201cJew\u201d preoccupied non-Jews far more than it did Jews. Both the Old Testament and the classical Jewish document, the Talmud, for example, speak of \u201cIsraelites,\u201d not \u201cJews.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then what happened?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christianity. In the New Testament, \u201cthe Jews\u201d are used as a foil for what comes to be known as Christianity. Yet most of the New Testament\u2019s primary authors \u2014 Matthew, Mark, John, and Paul \u2014 were Jews. Depending upon how you define \u201cJew,\u201d of course. The formation of Christianity is the single most important phenomenon that gives \u201cJew\u201d its various dimensions today.<\/p>\n

Besides the first and the 20th centuries, what other historical eras most inform the term \u201cJew\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The next era would be the Jewish emancipation of the 18th and 19th centuries. With the liberation and enfranchisement of Jews who had been largely confined to the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire or the ghettos of Europe came new debates on Jewish identity among both Jews and non-Jews alike. Are Jews a religious group? A separate race? A nation within a nation? The Jew doesn\u2019t quite fit into any of the grand Enlightenment schemes, and we begin to see seemingly contradictory identities imputed to Jews. For example, \u201cthe Jew\u201d becomes emblematic of socialism but also becomes the stereotype of the capitalist.<\/p>\n

When you really start paying attention, you realize that understanding the term \u201cJew\u201d is key to understanding the rise and development of Western culture as a whole.<\/p>\n

What do you make of the trading of \u201cJewish\u201d for \u201cJew\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Saying \u201cJewish\u201d softens the word, almost as if there were etiquette involved. But then the question becomes, what\u2019s going on psychologically, sociologically, and anthropologically in that aversion or adaptation?<\/p>\n

How will you explore the Holocaust?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have any radical new insights to offer there. In one sense the Holocaust is unfathomable. Yet at the same time it obviously represents a nexus of historical and cultural dynamics that are nameable and traceable, and to which the term and figure of \u201cthe Jew\u201d are absolutely central.<\/p>\n

In Annie Hall<\/em>, Diane Keaton says to Woody Allen, \u201cYou\u2019re what Grammy Hall would call a real Jew,\u201d and he replies, \u201cOh. Thank you.\u201d Why does that line get laughs?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because it precisely encapsulates everything we\u2019ve been talking about. \u201cJew\u201d is always two things at the same time, and humor is about concisely encapsulating that kind of collision. In this case, the collision is around the content of the word \u201cJew\u201d and who gets to define \u201creal Jew.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is your own identity relevant to this project?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No doubt. But I wouldn\u2019t say that I\u2019m looking for answers in that respect. My life as a scholar, an occasional public intellectual, a teacher, or even at home in my garden tends to be much more about questions than answers. At dinner the other night, a colleague made the offhand comment: \u201cOh, Cynthia, she\u2019s always been this kind of liminal character.\u201d The word \u201climinal\u201d suggests \u201cin between\u201d \u2014 the psychological, spiritual, and physical place between point A and point B. That\u2019s where I feel most at home, most myself \u2014 and in that sense, this project, this \u201cJew,\u201d has everything to do with who I am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Associate Professor of Religious Studies Cynthia Baker is something of an expert…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[10856,2692,11648,10751],"class_list":["post-34427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-life","category-faculty-staff","tag-bates-magazine","tag-cynthia-baker","tag-religion-and-spirituality","tag-religious-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34427"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107505,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34427\/revisions\/107505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}