Ritual and Ethnic Identity: A Comparative Study of the Social Meaning of Liturgical Ritual in Synagogues

Norman Ravvin’s novel Café des Westens won the Alberta Culture New
Fiction Award.

The purpose of this book is to “interpret ritual practices among
contemporary Canadian Jews, primarily from the perspectives of
anthropology and the sociology of religion.” In one of his
contributions to the collection, Jack Lightstone comments that Canadian
Jews are “invisible... [and] often indistinguishable from others.”
Nevertheless he and the other contributors are concerned with
articulating the “shared views of reality, identity, and mutual
responsibilities” held by Canadian Jews. In response to data
suggesting an increase in the rate of intermarriage, Lightstone insists
that the studies in this volume serve as proof that “consciousness of
continuity remains intact.”

The synagogue communities examined cover a broad spectrum of Canadian
Jewish life, including reform, reconstructionist, sephardic, orthodox,
conservative, as well as a synagogue modeled after the yeshiva of
pre–World War II Europe. The essays are carefully researched and
provide a portrait of each synagogue community, although their purpose
is not so much descriptive as analytic. Each strives to illuminate
enactments, ceremonial space, hierarchies, and aspects of performance
inherent in religious practice. Unfortunately, the individuals who were
interviewed in the course of fieldwork are never quoted; their responses
to the writers’ questions would provide an interesting and
idiosyncratic contrast with the writers’ conclusions.