In Theorizing Religion today, students described their experiences attending a religious festival: I'd given them four options to research and visit, all of which happened to fall this past weekend: the start of Sharad Navaratri (Hindu), Eid-al-Fitr (Muslim), Rosh Hashanah (Jewish), and the feast of San Gennaro (Catholic). Finding a place to witness one of these festivals was part of the assignment, as was writing an account of what they found and what they made of it.What they came up with is wonderful! A Polish Catholic girl, unable to attend other festivals because of her work schedule,
is invited to celebrate a festive Rosh Hashanah dinner with the family of a Russian Jewish co-worker, though she's warned "we're not very religious anymore." Two boys attend a Hindu community celebration in a tiny room; as some pujatis convulse on the floor, one student is unnerved, and the other is surprised to find a "pure form" of the "spirit" he now thinks animates all religion. Many students go to the San Gennaro Festival in Little Italy and are disgusted or discouraged by its commercialism; people they ask about the religious significance of it know little, but one student makes it past the food vendors and freak shows to the Church of the Most Precious Blood, where he finds the painted plaster statue of the saint fluttering with taped-on dollar bills;
another student discerns a religious love animating even the tackiest street events. A girl who interns for an organization helping South Asians is told about Eids and Navaratris past by people she meets, and then is treated to dinner at a Pakistani place by a taxi driver - he has neither time nor family to celebrate Eid himself, so offering it to her is his Eid celebration.These are just some of what students found - several managed to visit two festivals! My intention in assigning these visits (besides making up for the class time missed because of my trip to Berlin!) was to get students out of the classroom, into the city, to confront major religious traditions in their sometimes appealing,
sometimes vulgar festival garb. A "reality check" for the theories we're discussing in class - do they really apply to anything but academic constructions of religion? I also wanted them to feel the complex energies of the festivities and wonder if they were really "religious," and to start to think about festival "higher time" and the power of community celebration, topics we'll take up in a few weeks. Seems to have worked!
