Abstract
This study considers and contextualizes a Jewish discursive practice that I refer to as hyperbolic reckoning: the use of exaggerated large numbers. I analyze two instances of hyperbolic reckoning in advertising and other print and online promotional materials linked to Passover, and suggest that the rhetoric being deployed links the acquisition of a commodity (a Passover Haggadah) or the support of an organization that distributes the commodity (Passover foods) to an optimistic perspective on Jewish well-being. The optimistic perspective being cultivated stands in contrast to and even resists a more familiar pessimistic one frequently seen in printed and online analyses of demographic evidence, suggesting that Jewish well-being is in a precarious state. One cannot know if hyperbolic reckoning in these instances actually succeeds in cultivating optimistic perceptions; one cannot measure if acquiring those commodities or supporting an organization that distributes them actually leads to a change in the attitude of individuals, let alone an amelioration of Jewish well-being. One can, however, confirm that the strategy of hyperbolic reckoning in these contemporary instances rests upon a variety of familiar Jewish cultural precedents, and appears to take authority from them.
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Notes
Chabad refers to a sect of Hasidic Jews; they are also referred to, in full, as Chabad-Lubavitch.
The seder is the ritual meal conducted, typically at home, and sometimes communally, on the first eve of Passover and, outside of Israel, sometimes on the second eve as well. The Haggadah is the liturgical text that orchestrates the seder.
Gideon Reuveni and Nils Roemer claim that there has been a scholarly lack of interest in the role that religion plays in the history of consumption, even though “…consumerism has played a central role in refashioning Jewish culture,” in: 2010, 11:1. Works that do address Jewish consumer culture in America include: Heinze (1990), and Pleck (2000).
It is a coincidence that both of my examples come from Orthodox sectors of Judaism. I selected them because they were the most emphatic in their use of hyperbolic rhetoric in a Passover context and because both projected optimism. In contrast (to provide just one example), while promotional materials for the Reform movement’s 2014 The New Union Haggadah do note that its earlier, 1923 version had the “longest-lived publication in CCAR (Central Conference of American Rabbis) history,” large numbers, let alone hyperbole, are not invoked in outlining its attributes, nor is optimism. I thank the readers of this essay for encouraging me to clarify my selection of examples. http://www.reformjudaism.org/blog/2014/03/28/introducing-new-union-haggadah
B. Tamid 29a.
Israeli author Ari Shavit offers his own discourse of pessimism concerning the viability of Jewish life anywhere outside of Israel. Reflecting on the low Jewish birthrate and high intermarriage rate in North America, he concludes this about secular young Jews, “They are drifting away from the center of gravity of Jewish identity; they are disappearing into the non-Jewish space.” This is found in: 2013, 386.
http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/strategic-directions-for-jewish-life-a-call-to-action/, accessed December 3, 2015.
Given the wide acceptance of online materials among most Jewish consumers, as well as their interchangeability with printed matter in this context, I will not separate the differences in these media of communication as being significant. See: Shandler (2009). Anecdotal evidence suggests that Jewish American individuals with computer access are exposed to articles and advertisements from both print and online sources, and that they seek and receive information from both without much discrimination.
In Mirvis (1999, 285), the narrator explains how exaggerated claims about the lateness of seders made by one set of observant Jews would ideally be interpreted by others hearing about them in synagogue the next day: “At shul, there was always a competition as to whose [seder] had gone on the longest, the lateness of the hour testifying to the closest extended family, the most educated children, the best food, and the most enlightened conversation. Tziporah had the distinction of always winning this contest—last year, they had finished at three in the morning.”
Amsterdam Haggadah, 1695, title page.
Exodus, 13:14.
See: B. Pesachim, 112a.
See: B. Brachot, 14a, B. Shabbat 23b.
According to Susan Stewart, “The twentieth century has signaled the appropriation of the sphere of the gigantic by…commercial advertising.” This is found in: Stewart (1993, 101).
For one current definition of the “good Jew,” as it is used colloquially, see: Borowitz and Schwartz (1999, 3).
Also referred to as Lubavitch.
While Chabad’s seders take place around the world, the headquarters of its organization remains the home of its late spiritual leader, the Rebbe, in Brooklyn, New York. I refer here to the group’s English-language public relations materials.
Some in the movement believed their leader would be revealed as the Messiah.
This is Maya Balakirsky Katz’s definition of Yiddishkeit within the context of Chabad (Katz 2010, 5).
2 Chronicles 31:1–27.
2 Chronicles 35:13.
Anthropologist Jennie Doberne suggested this idea to me in a personal conversation in 2013.
“A mitzvah protects and rescues while one is engaged in it.” B. Sotah 21a.
Before his death, the Rebbe himself intervened: In 1989, from his headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, the Rebbe sent three rabbinical students and a quarter of a ton of handmade matzahs to Israel’s ambassador to Australia Shmuel Moyal, worrying about plans to have a seder at the embassy in Kathmandu for Israeli backpackers: “Although the provisions were meant to feed 100 people, 500 backpackers showed up…” (Olidort 2006).
See: Rabbi Menachnem M. Schneerson (2007), and note that this version of the Haggadah, not the one used at large Chabad seders, is intended for study and use by observant and Judaically literate Chabad “householders.”
One version, from the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5 is this: “Whoever destroys the life of a single human being… it is as if he had destroyed an entire world; and whoever preserves the life of a single human being… it is as if he had preserved an entire world.”
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Acknowledgments
The author acknowledges the Project on Lived Theology for its support and is grateful for the assistance of Kelly Figueroa-Ray. Moreover, she is grateful for the helpful suggestions of all the anonymous readers of the manuscript.
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Ochs, V.L. Publicizing the Miracle: Optimistic Discursive Practices and the Commodities of Passover. Cont Jewry 36, 187–202 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-016-9174-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-016-9174-5