Abstract:
Cultural belonging in New Zealand is highly political. New Zealand as a nation-state celebrates cultural difference and ethnic identity. New Zealand is a bicultural society and there are ongoing questions about the relationship between Maori and Pakeha. However, this is complicated by New Zealand’s increasingly multicultural population. While many groups are becoming more and more visible as culturally, socially or phenotypically different, Jews in New Zealand are invisible as a group and Jewishness is not publically recognized as a category of ethnicity or Difference (that is, difference that is socially relevant). Most Auckland Jews blend in with the majority population and are publically perceived as “white” and as belonging to the nation. There is little public discourse about Jews and Judaism. In this thesis, I investigate this phenomenon of relative invisibility, its impact on individuals’ identities and how they negotiate their Jewishness, with a focus on affiliated young adults (ages 18 to 30). Many of these young adults feel that there must be something significant to being Jewish and place considerable emphasis on doing and displaying Jewishness. Knowledge and maintenance of what they refer to as “traditions” and connections to Israel are two of the most prominent practices in this regard. These work as identity practices, linking them to Jewish history and the Jewish world. However, these are largely private practices. Young Jews seem to find little room within the hegemonic whiteness to which they are assigned for the display of and insistence on Difference and most are reluctant to push for greater public awareness of Jews and Jewish practice. Instead, they negotiate their Jewishness and Jewish identity, simultaneously navigating the potential costs and capitals of ethnic identity and the privileges of being “white” and determining how to be “Kiwi Jews” within national understandings of religion, ethnicity, “whiteness” and difference. In this process, Jewish ethnicity becomes an outward looking identity but remains largely privatized in New Zealand. Keywords: Jewish, Jew, Identity, Ethnicity, New Zealand, Belonging