Below is an excerpt from an interview we had the pleasure of conducting with Ariel Yelen, a Jewish poet based in NYC. As with our other interviews, our hope is that our site visitors are able to ground this compelling personal narrative about adapting a holiday ritual in a larger conversation about universal experiences of personalization, adaptation, and tradition. A link to Ariel’s website can be found here: https://www.arielyelen.net/
A: You asked if I thought all Jews have something in common, and this might be a very obvious answer, but Jews, at least American Jews, are extremely divided. Honestly, it can be hard to even begin to think about what it means to be in relation to other Jews at all—the politics can range so broadly within different Jewish communities. The definition of what it even means to be a Jew can be so different depending on who you’re talking to. When I think about Jewish identity, I come to it from my own personal identity as a white American Jew of Ashkenazi descent—I am always interrogating what that orientation means in relation to whiteness in general, but also to other Jewish identities—Jews of color, European Jews, etc… and the methods for which I think about these relationships are also always in question. There are some organizations in New York City, like Jews for Economic and Racial Justice, and Jewish Voice for Peace, that do a really great job with orienting one’s Jewishness towards fighting racism and economic inequality for example, as opposed to centering the mission solely on ending antisemitism–I find this kind of intersectionality really useful and supportive.
H: I hear you speaking to the fact that it is very complicated and you’re still pondering it which is very natural; we never really get to know ourselves even by the time we die because we’re constantly changing. You’re speaking to this idea of rigidity that certain Jewish people—but also certainly any sort of recognizable community whether it’s the queer community, whether you’re Catholic or whatever—this idea that there’s a certain way to be, a certain way to belong to that group that might have to do with dress and ritual or just how you spend your time and attention. But I also hear you speaking to this idea of personalization and adaptation in the way that you adapted the Seder and that’s a huge thing we’ve been talking about this semester. Whereas some people might view adaptations to a certain religion, group, identity, whatever as a bastardization of that identity or even as a diverging identity, as something totally other, I feel like I’m hearing you say that yes there is a sense of otherness that comes with personalization and anything that’s idiosyncratic, but it also is still very much tied to a sense of tradition. And I think when we hear the word “tradition” we think of something fixed and immutable, but another thing we’ve been examining in this class is tradition only survives due to the adaptations it takes. Adaptation and change are very necessary and vitalizing aspects of tradition and I was just wondering if you could speak more to that, to how tradition has adapted in your life.
A: Typically, the Passover Seder is centered around the story of the Jews being freed as slaves from Egypt. While I think it’s always important to discuss this story at Passover, especially to help illuminate and give shape to the Seder, I think that the point of it is not to—as an American Jew who has relative financial stability—sit back at Passover and be like, “Thank God I’m free! It feels so good to be free!” I don’t think that’s real, that’s not teaching me anything, that’s not the point. Passover has the potential to not only be a time to recognize the fact that no one is really free yet but discuss it. This past April, my adaptation of the Haggadah that you and I talked about, was centered around two things: 1) framing capitalism and racism as the main oppressors and 2) thinking about the ways we as individuals oppress ourselves. For example, what do you continue to tell yourself that keeps you from being free, and therefore keeps you from liberating anyone else? And then also thinking about larger oppressive structures that we participate in complicitly.