It would have been nice if, in honor of July 4th, U. S. Independence Day, I wrote a sweeping, lyrical tribute to my American Jewish heritage.
Nostalgia and Identity
July 03, 2009 | Daniel Temkin
Last week, the ultra-Orthodox yeshiva high school where I teach marked the end of the year with a siyum, a celebration in honor of the completion of a tractate of the Talmud. Almost every male there wore a black hat, but I wore a crocheted kippah. It was clear that they were ultra-Orthodox and that I was not, but it was less clear - both to them and to me - what that makes me.
As I danced with my students, I was struck by the irony of the fact that I was their teacher. I had identified with Orthodoxy very strongly for over a decade. After I stopped believing in the principles underlying Orthodoxy, I turned my focus to secular education and became a history teacher instead. Although I teach in a yeshiva, I teach only secular classes and am generally removed from the religious life of the yeshiva. At the siyum, years after my emphatic rejection of Orthodoxy, I found myself dancing at what was fundamentally a celebration over the perpetuation of the ultra-Orthodox way of life.
