So here they are...My husband. My non-Jewish husband. My non-Jewish husband that was not the reason for my "conversion" to Judaism. And there she sits, my 7 year old daughter, born in China, being raised a Jew, that immersed herself by my side in the mikvah. I suppose this is not a "traditional" Jewish family. They sit in our sukka from this past fall. The laminated poster of the Ushpizin that I ordered online hangs behind them and decorations similar to those mentioned in the readings are there as well. Some memorial candles are lit for relatives that have passed. The walls are not white as Hasan-Rokem describes the sukkot in Jerusalem. This is not Jerusalem. There is no Israeli flag.I guess this is not a traditional sukka.
As I was reading the readings for class tomorrow, I found myself returning to this notion of the "traditional" and the related idea of "authenticity." In creating the Folklife Festival, the focus on folklife specifically can raise issues about extending an ethnographic gaze that equally contributes to questions of power and control in regard to the representation of cultures, nations, and religions. Who decides what is authentically Jerusalem? (I believe Hasam-Rokem asks this question with the sukka example.) Is this desire a very contradiction to the multiplicity and constantly evolving identities of a dynamic place? I am very curious as to how the complex identities that Horowitz describes would have been achieved without "Disney-fying Jerusalem" if this project had reached its completion.
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