I spent most of January and February revising the second chapter of my dissertation. Whereas the experience of writing my first dissertation chapter was akin to being lost in the woods with no map and trying to find my home, I wrote chapter two in three quick months and the process was orderly and focused. When I finished, the product reminded me of that humorous test of abductive reasoning: "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck." My draft had the average number of pages for a chapter, it had an argument like a chapter, it had evidence and citations like a chapter... it was a chapter! I didn't know if the argument or my analysis of the evidence was any good, but I was proud to have produced something that at least looked right.

When I read the comments and feedback from my advisors, however, I realized that I was still learning how to write a dissertation chapter. The essence of their recommendations was that I focused too closely on my documents, creating a laundry list of events and responses ("he-saids, then she-saids"). While this provided a clear accounting of events, I needed to do more to connect the narrative to the broader historical context. One of my advisors wrote, "I would like this chapter to be more conceptual." I may have written what looked like a chapter, an achievement of form, but inside it was not functioning as well as a chapter should function.

Thankfully, that same advisor gave me very specific recommendations about how to make the chapter more conceptual. My second chapter examines a debate that emerged between rabbis and JCCs in the early 1960s, when a group of rabbis accused JCCs of "secularizing" American Jews, and argued that the synagogue was where Jews should spend their free time. My advisor encouraged me to remove some sections that analyzed this debate in excruciating (and now, I can see, unnecessary) detail, and to replace these sections with a discussion of why Jews in the 1950s and early 1960s were so concerned about assimilation and secularism. After reading her comments, I felt confident that I could make the necessary changes quickly and easily.

It only took me a few days to realize that what I thought would be a simple revision was really going to be a "re-envision." Rather than a process of add-context-and-stir, I adjusted my thesis and many of the claims that I was making throughout the chapter. Over the next six weeks, I significantly rewrote almost every section to reflect this new argument. It was really, really hard. Not only was it difficult to remove so much writing that I had worked so hard on over the summer, but my new argument was more complex and I struggled to fully understand it myself, at times, and to articulate it clearly to the reader.

After I finished the "re-envisioning" process for chapter two, I revisited chapter three. Interestingly, that one was a straightforward revision that I completed quickly and easily--despite the fact that I struggled to write the first draft of chapter three. Perhaps I had finally gained a better understanding of how to make a chapter function. Maybe I made all the difficult decisions as I wrote the first draft, easing the revision process. Probably, it was a bit of both.

Although I'm very satisfied with what I produced these past two months, the exercise was intellectually and emotionally stressful. I now understand that revision is a completely different skill than writing a first draft. As I proceed through the dissertation, I will no longer assume that revision will come easily--and hopefully, by changing that expectation, my future revisions will feel less stressful!

One of the biggest challenges that the Jewish Community Center has historically faced is explaining how, exactly, it is a "Jewish" agency. In the first chapter of my dissertation, I wrote about how Oscar Janowsky used the Jewish Welfare Board (JWB) Survey of 1946-48 to convince JCC workers that they could not just run "centers for Jews"--they needed to have an affirmative Jewish purpose, otherwise they were segregating Jews from non-Jews without any good reason. Adding "Jewish" programs meant that they were contributing some value to the community, which justified having a separate institution just for Jews. Although JCC workers finally accepted Janowsky's recommendation, they never really identified what exactly having "Jewish content" or "Jewish programs" meant on a day-to-day basis.

My second chapter examines another big controversy, this time between rabbis and JCCs in the early 1960s. Rabbis accused Jewish Centers of "secularizing" American Jews, and argued that the synagogue was where Jews should spend their free time. The JWB--the organization that represented and served American JCCs--had to defend the JCC, but they struggled because they also recognized that most JCC members came to the Center for basketball or nursery school and not to celebrate their Jewish heritage. For years, the JWB had argued that the JCC helped their members feel a strong sense of Jewish identity, but when the rabbis pressed them on how their program was "Jewish" they could not point to many specific programs. Part of the problem was the the rabbis defined "Jewish" as religious (the practices and traditions of Judaism) while the JCC workers believed in a more cultural or ethnic sense of Judaism. To them, hosting Jewish folk dancing or a Yiddish conversation circle was enough to identify the JCC as "Jewish."

Yesterday, while reading through some documents about this controversy, I came across one of the first really strong statements from a JCC worker about what knowledge made an individual Jewish--and, by implication, what a Center needed to teach to foster Jewish identification among its members.

“For a person to be a Jew in name because he accepts it or is so identified by the general community, without really knowing what it means, is not too different from an individual being assigned a name and yet not knowing to which family he belongs. Rootedness for the Jewish individual requires that he must know who the Jewish people are, what the Jewish community is, what Jews believe in their varied forms, what values the Jewish heritage espouses, what are the problems and aspirations of his people, what was the Jewish past, what are the practices, customs, culture of his people — and most important of all, to determine how he can interpret his relationship to the Jewish group, how he defines his own Jewish way of life and how he functions and participates responsibly as a member of the Jewish community.”

— Manuel G. Batshaw, “Developments in American Jewish Life and their Implications for Jewish Community Centers," 1963

What makes this statement so exciting to me is how SPECIFIC it is! Batshaw's list covers mostly cultural knowledge and not liturgical, ritual, or biblical knowledge, but it provides a very clear checklist of what the JCC could teach to its members to help them feel a stronger sense of connection to the Jewish group. In one sense, this represents a change from the past because never before have I seen such a clear explanation of what the Center should do, but in another sense it's a continuation of the more secular and "civilizational" approach to Jewishness that the Center historically adopted. It's definitely more substantial, though, than being "Jewish" because you're in the same building with other Jews!

I'm not entirely sure how this will make it into my dissertation, but it actually helps me answer a very personal question that I've faced throughout this project: what do I personally think makes me (or anyone) Jewish? If I argue in the dissertation that JCCs fostered "Jewish identity," how do I define that identity? And how is my own experience as a Jew influencing my definition? Manny Batshaw has given me a nice list to work with, so that my starting point does not have to be as basic as "I'm Jewish because I eat bagels and lox and think Seinfeld is funny."