Abstract
This article analyzes how congregants in a lay-led Reconstructionist synagogue discursively contest and perform sharedness through active engagement, interpretation, and public disagreements about how to create and sustain Jewish community. I argue that such ‘wrestling with tradition’—that is, questioning, negotiating, and (re)creating traditions in the context of countercultural and eclectic Jewish community—is achieved through collaborative and often conflictual discursive engagement with Jewish tradition. ‘Wrestling with tradition’ does not involve shared beliefs, shared Halakhah (Jewish laws and rituals), or even a shared spiritual practice. Instead, it is in the discursive ‘wrestling’—for example, in debating rather than necessarily following Halakhah—that a communal enactment of sharedness persists in affective and intellectual engagement with Jewish tradition.