I was raised as a cultural Jew rather than a religious one. "Cultural Jew" is shorthand for lover of good deli, cruise ship vacations, suburbs, nose jobs, and rushing through the Passover Haggadah so you can start on the gefilte fish and matzo ball soup. It’s about being true to the Jews, i.e. Us: Don Rickles, pastrami on rye so tall it could choke a horse, having the (fill in the blank: best, smartest, most gorgeous) child ever born; Them: John Wayne, bologna on white, German Shepherds; we don’t know from camping, bungie jumping or polo ponies, and the only guns we see are on cops – who are gentile, of course.
I had my doubts about cultural Jews early on. I was a principled young thing and the hypocrisy of claiming to be the Chosen People while leading a shallow life was not lost on me. Religious Jews were not my people either. I’m not a believer in God and the few times I was taken to a synagogue on high holy days or for a bar mitzvah, I had no context to understand what was going on. The other kids knew when you could go outside during the rabbi’s sermon and when to run back inside to sing Adon Olam with the bar mitzvah boy. I was lost in the world of ritual and prayer.
So I turned my back on Judaism for decades thinking it was not where to find my home nor my people.
In 2001, Russell phoned to say that Theo, who was then 11, had to start bar mitzvah preparations and I had to find a synagogue and a tutor. I could barely deal with this. I had just moved to Northampton, Massachusetts the year before; my relationship with Mary had crashed and burned; my dissertation director at NYU resigned, leaving her minion stranded. I was dealing with a breakup, researching a dissertation without guidance, looking for work, yearning to move back to NYC, making sure my two children were happy in their new home. I was a wreck. I was unmoored, ungrounded, in turmoil.
I joined the handiest synagogue – a conservative** one around the corner -- and Theo entered Hebrew school with kids who had been at it since they were 5. He’s an easygoing person, my Theo – he’s not a doubter like his mother – and he picked up Hebrew and Torah study quickly, plus he seemed to like it.
Part of his bar mitzvah training was to go to Shabbat services, and I went to see what he was up to. I was not prepared for what I felt. The melodic liturgy, the Hebrew, the ancient chants, the beautifully adorned Torahs in their ark, the elders, the rituals, the overwhelming number of women and lesbians (this being Northampton), the restless children who were not hushed or made to sit still – it all felt deeply familiar to me in a familial way although I had rarely been in a synagogue. Soon I enrolled in a two-year adult bat mitzvah course with seven other women. I learned Hebrew, Jewish history and ritual, studied Torah.
(** Conservative Judaism is not a politic but a denomination that “conserves” the original texts, prayers, and traditions in practice but interrogates meaning and questions viability in modern times. It’s considered the most intellectual of the denominations [Orthodox follows without question, and Reform updates ritual and practice to modern times.])
I am neither a religious nor a spiritual person, but I am a communal person. I need to belong to something bigger than what I can create by myself. I never found this sense of belonging in an ethereal god nor in nature but rather in being a part of a vibrant, diverse humanity (which is why cities appeal to me). Living in the middle of New England, far from the oceans, in a town in which I never felt quite right; living among reserved, polite people who counted pilgrims as their ancestors – this was not my thing.
When I was a young person wandering, this is how I felt about libraries: No matter what city, what state, the library was home with the same books, the same Dewey decimal system. I belonged because I was a reader. And entering the sanctuary of the library with the smell of books and the desks and chairs of polished wood made my body and mind slow down and feel safe and protected and at peace. Now I was part of a small but enduring population of Jews all over the world reading the same passages on the same day and being linked through ritual and tradition. I had the same sensation as I did in the libraries.
I don’t feel like an outcast in Brooklyn like I did in Northampton. Here being a Jew is commonplace. So much so that it didn’t occur to me to join a synagogue until Rosh Hashana was around the corner. My friend Shelly took me to her congregation a few weeks ago. The services were held in a Brooklyn church borrowed on Saturday. The congregants and rabbi created their own practices because they did not feel addressed by the other denominations of Judaism. I appreciate this impulse but I felt lost and sad and longed for the familiar.
I’m not seeking a new understanding of Judaism, nor a connection to a god that might be a woman, or a determiner of fate, nor punitive or rewarding. Judaism is about the people who came before me, whose struggles and sacrifices and pride and unwillingness to ever give up created a home for me to understand my own struggles and identity. My religion is this: Humans are frail and vulnerable and construct gods and heavens because love and belonging can be tenuous, fleeting, malleable, and we can only rely on one another so much. It’s in this human vulnerability that I know I can find strength or falter. That is what makes me cry in synagogue, the rituals and beliefs that are, at their most raw, a longing for protection and love.
On Rosh Hashana I wandered up the block to a Conservative shul led by a lesbian rabbi. The synagogue is beautiful, 100 years old and built as a synagogue; the place was packed with Jews in their finery. I sat in the smooth wooden benches and chanted, listened, cried, thought deeply about my past year, and knew I found home again. Later, I went to Taslich – which is where you throw pieces of bread into a body of water and reflect on your misdoings of the previous year and hope to live the next one with more awareness and thoughtfulness.
I wandered through the park filled with Jews on their way to water. Hasidim, people in jeans, women in dresses, yarmulkes everywhere. I saw the cultural Jews checking out one another’s outfits and the religious Jews with their shofars. I found my new rabbi, who was excitedly endorsed by my old rabbi who was thrilled that I’d find not only a great home in this synagogue but a great rabbi who happened to be a lesbian. I spoke to her and was greeted by kind people who had seen me in services.
I threw my bread to the swans and ducks and thought of what I won’t do to undermine myself in the next year and said each thing twice. I don’t know why I did that but every Taslich I let myself know what I need to do to move on to the next year. This is my year to come home to myself.
Afterward, as it was getting dark, I walked home through the park by myself. I texted my dear friend Jenny in Berkeley. We share every profound experience. I told her about what I was seeing -- the pockets of Jews near the lakes, the trio of young Lubavitcher men excitedly rushing through the park looking for Jews who had not “heard the shofar.” (I assured them I had.) The exquisite sunset. The Hasidic baby in the stroller pretending to blow the shofar, the drunk on the bench muttering “Jew holiday” over and over. We made each other laugh as we always do.
This is great piece Robin.. I dig it. I dig you.
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