through that lens of novelty and curios- ity that Singer identifies. Or else we forge ahead—because time moves in only one dir- ection—and find ourselves drifting through modernity mapping out new identities on- line. And for now, though certainly not for- ever, it might look like a backwards hat and a TikTok-trend inflected voice saying, “I’m a rural Jew—of course I whittled my mezuzah out of driftwood” played over a billion small screens, making reality out of hyperreal- ity, hyperstitiously forming an identity on the historical realities and inventions of a people drenched in time and, say, more spe- cifically, the 1970s when their grandmother got divorced, left Montreal, and went adven- turing. And this new mush of a person might say they consider themselves a hyphenated Jew. As in, a “I’m a Rural-Jew.” “I’m a Rural-Jew—of course I grew up in isolated Canadian communities with a family who wanted to give me a sense of Jewishness, which, without the input of trad- itional rigour, amounted to very cute, highly irregular, idiosyncratic practices determined by whim.” “I’m a Rural-Jew—of course we did the fun holidays, the dress up holidays, the good food holidays. Mostly Hanukkah.” “I’m a Rural-Jew—of course Jewish sum- mer camp made me feel like a voyeur peer- ing in a bedroom window, watching the real Jews make their collective history while doubting my own Jewishness and internally arguing myself to sleep.” “I’m a Rural-Jew—of course I learned the Shema on YouTube.” And what would Singer, adopted angel of the introduction, say about these new versions of an old people breaking with tradition, forming new tradition, reviving ancient tradition, and learning about themselves, each other, and the burgeoning multitudinous collectives of online life? Perhaps he would shrug, as he was accustomed to do, or else he would say, as he’s said once before, that “the more you see what other people do, the more you learn about yourself.” We can hope. We can hope to learn, we can hope that wisdom isn’t relegated to the past, we can hope that restlessness yields innovation, invention, and creativity. And we can know that whether urban or rural, religious or secular, stories of the individual entertain us, make us smile, add depth to our days, and grist to the mill. And that, luckily, stories are something we’ll never run out of. n
cheap data and Temu ads? Anthropomorph- ic hamantashen doormats from $9! Jew- dolph the Blue-Nosed Reindeer tote bags from $4! Polyester sweatshirts imploring the wearer, or reader of the wearer, to “Imagine if your phone was at 10% but lasted eight days? Now you understand Hanukkah!” from only $12! We’re doing what in the woods? Well, what- ever. We wandered out here. Or were led by family, friends, or men we met online. The same thing that directs the rest of the root- less, restless modern souls who find them- selves simultaneously inside and outside of culture. And though detachment, even in a bucolic setting, might be an absolute tell of our modernity—as Saul Bellow says, “To be modern is to be mobile, forever en route with few local attachments anywhere,
why, and can seek out and verify and find all the evidence. Because it’s harder to run a synagogue in northern Quebec than it is in Westmount. Because there’s no market for kosher meat in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, N.L. Because the institutions, organizations, and community that make up Jewish life are more difficult to maintain without a critical mass of Jews. Now, if modernization, globalization, and/ or catastrophe were to render these endur- ing organizations, institutions, and holy rel- ics extinct, it would strike much of the pub- lic as sad. As when faced with the loss of a species, we resist, we conserve—whether for sentiment, or the fear and knowledge that that which is lost contains irretrievable value. But there is arguably more on the line with the loss of community than just artifacts, ways of being, ways of cooking, historical knowledge, jokes, and sometimes wisdom. On the importance of community, Singer, in the same book paraphrased earli- er, writes the following: “The Ten Commandments are command- ments against human nature. Many people would like to steal if they knew that they could do it without being punished… But Moses came and he said that if humanity wants to exist it has to follow certain rules no matter how difficult they are. I would say that even to this day we have not yet con- vinced ourselves that people can make such decisions and keep them. Even when they make them, they can only keep them if they make them as a collective. If people live together like the Jews in the ghettos they keep to their decisions. Why? Because one guards the other.” Not only is community essential to civiliz- ation—keeping us on guard against our hu- man nature—but its dailiness and regular rhythms are necessary to an individual’s ability to identify with the collective and thereby feel they have a place in the world. In turn, through personal identity founded in community, the collective is reinforced and so exists, or even thrives. Tradition lives as long as you practise it. We rural Jews, then—without a bustling community, a critical mass, or even a poorly attended synagogue—what are we doing out here? In the sticks, in the boonies, making matzah by hand and leaving Seinfeld on a loop? Containing multitudes? Writing rest- less essays on everything at once? Mangling tradition and identifying with commercial versions of a history known in part through
We are born into circumstances, but also born into particular tellings of those circumstances.
cosmopolitan, not particularly disturbed to be an outsider in temporary quarters”—in a sense, we’ve been practising that mobil- ity, that outsider status, that potential for a cosmopolitan disposition, since before we had the consciousness to know it. Thus, due to circumstance and personal quirks, we are not all fated to live tradition, to guard against deviance, to know the blessing on a major (Jewdolph) purchase. There is no use in lamenting alienation, exile, or estrangement—particularly when that estrangement fits so well within an ob- served and somewhat yearned after collect- ive identity of restless wanderers—because though there is living tradition and historical connection in community, there is intrigue in the individual. As Singer says, look to the “human ocean” that surrounds you “where stories and novelties flow by the millions.” Maybe we, the rural Jews, the feral, far-flung untraditional Jews, can accept ourselves and our brand of restlessness
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