Sunday, November 8, 2009
Mona in the Promised Land
At sixteen years old, Mona decides to become Jewish. At such an impressionable age, how do we know whether she genuinely believes in Judaism or if she's just being influenced by her friends? At one point or another in your adolescence, you must have experienced peer pressure, whether it was straight forward or not. Peer pressure combined with teenage rebellion can lead to some very irrational decisions. Will her decision just be another part of her rebellious adolescent phase or will it carry on throughout her adult life?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Samantha, you brought up some good points. I believe you are right in that adolescents make decisions based on peer influence. I'm in middle of the book, and so far to me it seems that Mona wants to be Jewish more to fit in with her Jewish friends rather than because she has deep philisophical questions. Someone who becomes Jewish because they want to join the Jewish people and live a Torah observant life is called a "ger tzedek", a "righteous person"...they are not doing it because they want to marry a Jew, or for any other reason but that they want to live a life of Torah. It is with interest that I read this book. It hits close to home because my mother converted to Judaism at the age of 18. Brought up in a very "Waspy" home in middle America - her grandfather and father were both Surgeons/doctors at the Mayo Clinic, they were Episcopalians. As a young girl - even at the tender age of 12- she used to stay after Church and speak with her priest (or is it Minister?). She didn't understand/agree with Christain beleifs..in the trinity, in that men are born with sin, in Jesus being born "the son of g-d" etc etc. So throughout her adolescents she was actually going against the tide..and against peer pressure. Although she wasn't even Jewish yet, in high school she started wearing skirts - while all her friends were wearing bell bottom jeans - and started keeping kosher. She started learning Hebrew with a Reform Rabbi. (there were no Orthodox Rabbi's yet in Rochester, MN.) At 18 she formally converted and went to Israel to study at a school for beginers.
ReplyDeleteThere was a question asked in class of how flexible our identities are...can we pick our own, or is it given to us at birth? We are all products of society, and the way in which we were raised. Certain values that we were raised with deffinitely stick with us, even if one were to make radical changes. Even though Mona is trying on a different identity, she still has a lot of the Chinese values her parents raised her with. Same thing with my mother - even though my mother became an observant Jew, and knew she wanted to get married and have a large family, she knew her parents expected her to first graduate from a good university, so she followed in her mother and grandmother's footsteps and went to Wellesley.
So while we do have some autonomy on how to live our lives, the values we were raised with most certainly govern a lot of who we are. Actually, to me, being Jewish means going
AGAINST the tide... not letting the norms and values of society penetrate. As a matter of fact, Abraham, the first Jew, did just that. His father, Terach, was an idol worshipper. As a three year old, Abraham used to smash his fathers idols. Once his father became enraged and asked him how dare he smash these 'g-ds'..so smart young Abraham said "I didn't do it..the big statue over there smashed all your idols! His father realized how foolish his beleifs were. Abraham intoduced the idea of Monotheism to the world. The world at the time were pagans...polytheists who worshipped many dieties. The sun was thought of as a g-d, and the sun, moon, stars, oceans, etc. So the Jewish religion really started as a means of serving ONE creator.
To wrap up, while we are all products of the family we were raised in, we all have the autonomy to choose how we live our lives.
I also strong believe that she is being influenced by her friends, who are predominately Jewish. In a way, it is a rebellion against her very traditional Chinese parents, who she wants to separate from. There are even a few instances when she compares her parents to Barbara's Jewish parents. It is comical to me that she became Jewish, and I even sense that the author is trying to make it something comical. I mean, what 16 year old do you know really decides to become Jewish, or Catholic, or any other religion? Maybe she felt that becoming Jewish will disconnect her from her parent's views on life, since it was mentioned that she nor Callie want to be Chinese. Also, the teenage years are the prime years for wanting to discover your identity, so Mona most likely is just trying on identities. Maybe when she gets older, she will realize that it was just a phase she was going through to disobey her parents or something. It just seems peculiar to me that she wanted to become Jewish.
ReplyDeleteI agree that all of us, especially as teenagers, are influenced by our peers. However, I do not think it is fair to say that Mona's decision to become Jewish was solely because of her friends or her desire to rebel against her parents. For example, when Mona's community in their former town was predominantly Catholic the family converted, but Mona did not assume Catholicism as a major part of her identity, nor did she make decisions based on this. However, as a Jew, when the problem with Alfred arises "Mona doesn't at first see why they should have to go anywhere, but then she recalls that she is Jewish....Mona agrees, "There must be something.""(141). Mona may be influenced by her peers, but she takes her role as a Jew seriously and it informs her actions. This tells me that there is something about Jewish culture and philosophy that she connects to on a deeper level than the fact that many of her friends are Jewish.
ReplyDeleteThats an interesting point that Samantha brought up. I personally don't think that Mona really wanted to become Jewish and therefore should not have converted. There is even a point in the novel right before she is about to convert where she isn't sure that she will go through with it. When anyone wants to convert to Judaism, rabbis usually advise them against it unless they see that the person is really committed to the idea, because there's no turning back. I think Mona just wanted to be similar to her friends and different from her parents. Even though this is understandable for a teenager, I think that it was very selfish and egocentric to not think of how she will hurt her parents.
ReplyDeleteHmm, I don't know...I think that the tiny glimpse we get into Mona's life after she's had her kid says a lot about her intentions regarding Judaism. It might have started out as a bit of rebelliousness, but she was a very serious student of the religion from the beginning anyway, and clearly remained committed to those beliefs as she became an adult. It appears that she and Seth are raising Io in the religion as well. I agree with the comment above, about how her deeper connection to Jewish culture and philosophy seemed genuine.
ReplyDelete