Is contemporary Judaism a singular or plural reality? This questioning may seem strange to those who experience it as a reference point of identity, as well as to its distant observers. However, the ways of living Judaism today are multiple, nourished by diverse identifications. This explains the interest in exploring them, in clarifying the nature of the elements of identifications present – religious, spiritual, cultural or national – and the possible links between them.
Faced with this problem of diversity, cultural interbreeding and multiculturalism, young researchers are renewing the terms of Jewish (self-)identification; they are analyzing conversions to Christianity as elements of identity research, shedding light on the issues related to identity categorizations mobilized in community dynamics, the redefinition processes at work in families of “mixed” couples and, finally, questioning the artistic and literary changes in the appropriation of identities.
At a time when the unique and the identical seek hegemonic legitimacy, this work invalidates the existence of a Jewish community to the benefit of the plurality of contemporary experiences in the identity making of individuals and affinity communities.
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