The interchangeability of identities means they is little commitment, duration or permanency. Such identities can not be legitimized by Jews since they will inevitably collapse and lead to assimilation. There is, however, another possibility, that such expressions are behaviours surrounded by meaning for the individual. Today we reside in a postmodern era. Modernity brought rational, certainty and Truth.
Post modernity suggests that concepts such as 'truth' are relative.
No metanarrative will emerge to explain the world, what has emerged are various narratives. Indicating that understanding is based on analysis of discourse, discussion and of course individual meanings. We need to penetrate to the reflections, motivations, memories and intimate relationships in which, and through which, contemporary American Jewish selves are discovered and constructed. Statistics can no longer portray the variety that exists in American Jewry's expressions of Jewishness. When we look more closely at the people behind the statistics we find a different story.