Resisting Assimilation

by Nina Moliver

Decades ago, I stumbled into majoring in anthropology at Barnard College in New York City. Anthropology was my third choice for a major, and Barnard was my fourth choice for college. But my options were limited. Soon it would be time to graduate, and I had to do a final project. Having dabbled in Eastern religions (of course), I found it made sense to do a little fieldwork in a Japanese temple nearby. New York City, of course, is a playground for anthropologists.

I paid some visits to the temple and watched a group of high school students engage in their Japanese Buddhist practices and rituals. What I saw did not resemble what I was led to believe I would find from my Eastern Religions class. Nevertheless, I took notes and prepared to write up my final project.

Somehow I noticed that many of the young people in the group were of mixed ancestry. At the end of my observations, I asked the class, “How many of you are half Japanese?” Almost all of the students raised their hands. I reported this finding as the conclusion of my essay. I speculated that the participants, or perhaps the parents, were engaging in these practices as a way of “returning,” “coming back,” finding a way to affirm their identities by swimming against the tidal melting pot of modern America rather than meekly and cooperatively assimilating.

I handed in the project, feeling very sure that I had just engaged in some of the most insipid academic work I could have managed. My professors were impressed, and I passed with distinction. I was appalled that they could have thought so highly of something so flimsy. One small sample of people! How could I have drawn such a sweeping conclusion?

Fast forward. As my father had predicted, my anthropology degree led me nowhere. I spent the next 10 years as a typist, and the next 25 years after that as a software developer, before finally earning a Ph.D. in Health Psychology. Along the way, I reconnected with my Jewish roots.

I have just finished reading Dara Horn’s new book, The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living. She says that all Jews today are Jews by choice. We swim against the tide of assimilation, refusing to be swept up in the groupthink of the majority. Of course, many Jews did not make that choice, and they have been lost to us. Our Jewish civilization survives because of the people who went, and go, against the tide.

Today I look back on my anthropology graduation project. I see that the insights I brought into what I saw in that room of Japanese Buddhist students came to me because of my own deep Jewish roots. I had had no Jewish practice in my life for many years, but a Jew was who I was, and who I was enabled me to see a similar dynamic in another culture.

There was much that remained to be explored in that little temple. The Buddhist practices of these teenagers were not the same as the practices of a temple in Japan. They were practiced in an environment surrounded by American culture. Whose decision was it to bring the children into that group? Was it the Japanese mothers, who had married Caucasian men and now saw that the choice they made could lead to the dying off of their own tradition in America? Did they wonder if they should have married Japanese men instead? What motivated them to bring their children into this Buddhist practice? How did their husbands feel about it? Or was it these high school students themselves who stood up and said, “I am Japanese and I want to nurture these roots for myself and my children”?

I will never know. What I do know was that my insights as I prepared my thesis were neither flimsy nor insipid. They were a suggestion, a seed that needed to be explored and cultivated. My little senior thesis was a contribution to knowledge. As Jews, when we stand up for our own tradition and resist being swept up in the tide, we help to set that example as a light unto the nations.