Thanks to Scott Aaron for this piece on marriage and affiliation: http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/2008061520080614cohenstu…
The key graf to me is this one:
“The biggest behavior changes come with getting married, not with
having children,” Kelman said. “Neither of us expected that.”
Why would this be the case? One hypothesis is that the move of
marriage is a bolder one that it once was. Another is that in our
cultural imagination, marriage is often the end of the storyline–
think how many movies and TV shows end with a wedding; they don’t end
with the birth of a child. That may be implied, or it might not be.
But marriage has become a giant differentiator in our culture. Thus
when people get married, they ’stop doing the stuff they did when they
were younger;’ they start living the script of ‘grown-ups.’ (They may
well start living that script before they get married, too, and they
may also fail to make the jump once they do get married. But in
general I’d say there’s a strong correlation.)
I have been struck since the Consultation by the notion of personal
narrative, and how the congruence or incongruence between one’s life
and the ’script’ of one’s life is at the core of authenticity,
identity, and integrity. During the Consultation, I realized and point
out that there is no real script for emerging adulthood, save some TV
series like Friends or How I Met Your Mother. And even in those shows,
there is a definite valence towards getting married. So it may be what
we’re seeing here is that, as people get married, they start living a
new narrative, one which for them includes commitment to Jewish life.
What might this imply for Hillel?
