The first time I realized that Jews had money was when I began attending Hebrew school at my synagogue in fifth grade. I remember staring at Lindsay Stein’s maroon wool sweatshirt that said “Fitch” in white letters and having no idea what it meant. I thought that maybe it was a bad word, since it rhymed with one.

But no, it was a brand name, Abercrombie & Fitch, of course, and it was the first time I realized there was a such thing as a “brand name.” Suddenly it seemed like everyone but me was wearing brand name clothing. I began noticing how lame my Kohl’s bootcut jeans looked next to their A&F flares. When I asked my mother to buy me these expensive lines of clothing, she laughed.

“What do you need those for?”  she said.

“You want me to pay $90 for jeans that come with holes already in them? They’re shmatas – I don’t think so.”

That was when I started feeling inadequate.

Once the bar and bat mitzvah years approached, the differences between my background and theirs became even more apparent. I remember the after-parties: artists hired to draw caricatures of guests, photo booths where you could take a photo that would be transferred to a button that said “Jacob’s Bar Mitzvah – July 10th, 1997″ around the border, entire buildings of country clubs rented out and elaborately decorated to look like a “winter wonderland.” My bat mitzvah party was in the synagogue social hall. It was nice, but certainly humble compared to my peers’.

We’ve never been poor. My parents both have masters degrees and good jobs. We’ve never had financial assistance from the government as far as I know, not that there’s anything shameful about that. We took vacations, went out to eat every Thursday, and my parents paid for my entire college education. But we were simply always middle class, like most of my peers that attended public school with me in St. Paul, MN. And I never felt bad about that until I started my Jewish education. My peers at Hebrew school were all from the suburbs, had huge houses, their mothers all had plastic surgery–you could simply tell they just came from money.

If it were just that they were richer than me, maybe I would have gotten over it. But these girls were also snobby, cliquey, and simply not that nice. I never became good friends with any of them. I remember crying one Sunday morning on the way to the synagogue because of how much I dreaded feeling like an outsider when I was there.

I would have eventually figured out that there were people out there who were much wealthier than me. But I regret that it had to be Judaism that introduced me to it. It put a bad taste in my mouth — one that took many good Jewish experiences for me to get over. As I became older, I started life guarding at the Jewish Community Center. I volunteered with little kids for the JCC plays. The summer after 9th grade, I became a camp counselor at Jewish day camp, where I made a ton of friends and had one of the best summers of my life, and great experiences over the three summers that followed. I went on a Birthright Israel trip my senior year in college, which gave my perception of Judaism a new richness, and eventually led me to where I am now, working at an exciting Jewish organization that does follow-up for Birthright Israel alumni and their peers.

I want to excel in my career and become successful to the point where I don’t have to worry about money, where I can go out to eat whenever I want, own a nice home, and take vacations. I value money to the extent that it can help me live a comfortable lifestyle. But my views on money will always be informed by the way my parents raised me and the things they taught me – that I shouldn’t flaunt my money, that I should follow a budget and pad my savings account, and as for brand names, they can be overrated.

Read more posts from Issue #11: Money, Greed, & Guilt.

Photo by margolove, licensed under Creative Commons.

(716) is the area code for University at Buffalo (UB), where I went to college. (617) is the area code of Boston University (BU), where I went to graduate school. (716) / (617) and UB / BU – I always wondered if there was significance to the reversal of those numbers and letters. This made me think about growing up in (718) – Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, NY. I wonder, could there be some cosmic, hidden meaning to that number? If you’ve read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you’d know that the answer to the ultimate question of life and the universe is 42. So what’s up with numbers?

Over the years, I’ve become more and more fascinated with gematria, Hebrew numerology, which is the interpretation of the numerical equivalents of Hebrew letters. Since I’m not a professional, I consulted my Rabbi. At first, he couldn’t find a significant word combination with the letter equivalents of 7 (zayin), 1 (alef), 8 (chet). After some thought, he arrived at a few interesting concepts, including one about the upcoming holiday of Chanukah.

What is the miracle of Chanukah? That the oil lasted eight nights? No. It’s that the oil found was expected to last only 1 night, but then burned for an extra 7 nights. And 7+1=8! According to my rabbi, this combination of numbers could mean a lot of things, but it caused me to reflect on my childhood Chanukah experiences in 718.

Chanukah in Kew Gardens Hills was special. I grew up in a Jewish community that has become more vibrant over the years. Many of the stores on Main Street are owned by Jews. There are dozens of kosher restaurants and you can get any kind of Judaica you might need: modest clothing, siddurs, and mezuzot are easy to find. My family belongs to the Jewish Center of Kew Gardens Hills, the only traditional, Conservative synagogue in the neighborhood. When I was growing up, there were a few Modern Orthodox and Orthodox shuls in the neighborhood; now you can find one every few blocks. On Shabbat the neighborhood shuts down and you’ll find more black hats and tzitzit moving about on the streets than cars.

It seemed like almost everyone in my neighborhood celebrated Chanukah – just about every home you’d walk past had at least one menorah in the window. Our neighborhood was a sea of lights: electric, candle and oil-based. I thought this was the norm in most neighborhoods, as American as Christmas trees and tinsel.

The annual Chanukah photo of me, my brother, and my dog became a tradition that can now be turned into a flip-book where I can watch myself age quickly over the glow of the menorah. There were Chanukah photos with braces, long hair, short hair, blue hair, dog hair, and friends. Things changed over the years, but things also stayed the same, like latkes, dreidels, singing “maoz-tsur,” being with family, neighbors, and friends, and the beautiful candles, each night glowing and growing brighter. In (718) some things changed – like a new kosher restaurant opening where an old one closed – but like the candles glowing brighter each night, the Jewish community has grown brighter in Kew Gardens Hills.

So what about the significance of (716) and (617)? I still have research to do. But I do know that my Chanukah experiences in both places paled in comparison to (718). I learned that the Chanukah menorah in the window is not as American as the Christmas tree and realized just how special Chanukah was growing up in (718).

Photo by MauriceReeves, licensed under Creative Commons.

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For more on Jews in different area codes, check out Issue #2: Area Codes.

As another Friday evening sets in, the approach of Shabbat brings a sense of pause and anticipation to the members of Kvutzat Orev. In the kitchen, Michal keeps one eye on the oven and another on the stove. Eugenia and Yotam chop vegetables and slice bread.

A few feet away, silhouetted by the waning sunlight through their bedroom window, Daniel and Karen pore over the week’s parsha—the portion of the Torah designated to be read on each Shabbat—in preparation for the evening’s program. Tal, meanwhile, greets the first of more than a dozen guests who will file in for dinner.

The residents of Kvutzat Orev refer to themselves as a kibbutz, but don’t look for them, say, in the shadows of the Golan Heights or anywhere near the river Jordan. They live much closer to New York City’s East River, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn—a neighborhood populated largely by African-Americans and Caribbean immigrants that is also home to a sizable Hasidic community. The shadows cast here by the late evening, pre-Shabbat light reflect the contours of the once proud limestone town homes that line the avenue.

It’s not the least bit unusual for twentysomethings in New York to share space. But besides a narrow duplex apartment, these six roommates also share a sense of mission, a set of social justice ideals—even a bank account. Reared in the summer camps and afterschool programs of Hashomer Hatzair (literally, “The Youth Guard”), the century-old socialist-Zionist youth movement, the half-dozen friends are, in their own way, holding true to a collective way of life that once spawned dozens of kibbutzim in the Land of Israel.

Whereas Israel’s early pioneers set out to revitalize the land seed by seed, the founders of this urban model are cultivating community. (In fact, the backyard vegetable garden was recently covered over with artificial turf to create an extra gathering space for the many friends and friends-of-friends who visit.) They very much see themselves as heirs to that legacy of reclamation. “We’re no longer draining swamps,” says Tal Beery, who spends his workdays as director for one of Hashomer’s summer camps. “But we like to say that we are draining social swamps— the idea of building an egalitarian, trusting, productive, loving community.”

Shabbat is essential to that mission and plays a key role in the weekly rhythm here. Guests are commonplace; Orev members play host to everyone from family to friends, old and new, to members of other Jewish youth movements. Orev is actually one of three urban kibbutzim in New York City and Toronto, group homes where young people embrace the concept of community to the extreme. But the idea of having some friends over on Shabbat, sharing each other’s company and cooking, is something anyone can do, regardless of their living situation.

In Hebrew, kvutza means group or collective; orev means crow or raven, the bird that Noah sent out from the ark to look for dry land before later sending a dove. Although it was the dove that famously returned with an olive branch, some Torah commentators suggest the orev served a vital function in the search. “One of the morals in that story is the significance of playing an active role in a processthat you believe in,” says Eugenia Manwelyan, “even if you’re not the one who will ultimately make the great accomplishment.”

The formal history of Kvutzat Orev begins in 2006, when the friends—some in college, some just out—moved to Israel, as part of a larger group, and established an urban kibbutz in a mixed development town where they taught drama classes to Arab and Jewish children. By the fall of 2007, they agreed to relocate to New York, partly because they saw an opportunity to take what they had practiced in Israel and apply it in somewhat less hospitable environs—Orev members joke that crows and ravens are known for being able to thrive in harsh conditions.

Tal says that sharing one bank account for all the members is crucial to their mission-oriented approach—it removes all the “discomforts” of discrepancies in income. Karen Isaacs is a fulltime grad student, Eugenia puts in time at a café and does event planning, Michal Jalowski works “about a hundred jobs,” Daniel Roth teaches kindergarten at a

Jewish day school, and Yotam Moran works with Tal in the Manhattan office of Hashomer Hatzair as its North American program director.

On this particular spring Shabbat, some twenty guests are planned, all of whom will be counselors at Hashomer Hatzair’s summer camps in upstate New York and Ontario. Upstairs, the many pizzas Michal began preparing three hours earlier are just about ready—there’s a mixture of vegetarian pizzas, with and without cheese, along with more inventive hummus-and-cheese creations. The kvutza gets much of its groceries from a local co-op, organic and locally grown when possible. Four of the six are vegetarians, with one dairyintolerant “lactard,” and everyone’s needs are met.

Eugenia and Michal do a lot of the shopping and cooking, but there’s no “chore wheel” here; everyone seems to know when to pitch in. “That’s one of our biggest strengths, that we have a sense of responsibility to each other,” Tal says. Michal, pulling another pizza from the oven, agrees: “Preparing food for just yourself when other people are around is definitely a faux pas.”

As tonight’s guests make themselves comfortable, there is a sense of spirited devotion in the air, but the kvutza’s style of Shabbat observance is anything but traditional. Says Daniel: “We are constantly recreating traditions for ourselves, and we strive to balance past, present, and future.”

When the time comes for the evening rituals, not a single prayer is spoken. Instead, Daniel asks for two volunteers to make a dedication as they light each of the two votives set out as Shabbat candlesticks. (“I light this candle to celebrate the connection between generations,” Karen offers— tonight’s crowd ranges in age from 15 to 27.) A pint glass of wine is then passed around, with each guest offering up a salient thought or two before taking a sip. Most touch on uncertainty and change, from a high school senior’s looming college decision to a teen’s excitement over her new cockapoo, Timbo.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about pirates this week…” offers a shaggy young man draped over a stuffed chair. Daniel raises the challah and offers a reflection in lieu of the blessing: “[Making] the challah requires time and space, fields and seasons. Time and space are also the foundations of community.” There is a silent amen.

These traditions, too, will be open to reinvention in weeks to come. Another Friday night might begin with a song in the round, itself an act of community in which everyone gets a personalized “Shabbat Shalom” set to music. The point, Tal explains, is that nothing should ever become routine.

Even the apartment the kvutza has called home for the last year and a half will soon become a casualty of change. Notes on a dry-erase board in the kitchen map out different scenarios for moving and expanding the community. Tal says they now have a group of about 15 people interested in living together—if not in one apartment or house, then hopefully near the same intersection or subway stop. “The really revolutionary thing is that people don’t often get to live close to the people they care about,” he says. “What we’re doing is making that a priority. There is a real quality of life shift when you live close to your closest friends.”

“We are an intentional community,” Tal adds.

And whether or not everyone would opt for the lifestyle they’ve chosen, it’s hard to find a dictionary definition of community—“a unified body of individuals;” “people with common interests living in a common location;” “a group linked by a common policy”—that doesn’t apply rightly to those who cohabitate in Apartment 1L. By bringing in outsiders, as many as 40 on a single Friday night, Daniel says they can share that community for an hour or two and plant seeds every week. “To be a Jew is to take responsibility for others,” he says.

“Shabbat is all about stopping, reflecting, bringing people together,” Tal echoes. “To me, faith is about community, coming together over a shared legacy, a shared story—and food! It’s amazing.”

He shrugs, as if what he’s just said should be—no, is—the most obvious thing in the world. “On Shabbat, everything just stops, and you’re together,” he says. “That’s the point.”

I grew up in Chatsworth, CA, which is known for three things – Charles Manson, the adult film industry, and for being the current home of Kevin Federline. Chatsworth, or as we called it, “Chatsworth-less,” is located in the San Fernando Valley and is part of the City of Los Angeles.

I attended a Jewish day school through middle school, and begged my parents to allow me to spread my wings and attend public high school. After much negotiating, I was allowed to enroll in Chatsworth High. For the first time, I was immersed in the rainbow of the human experience, and not trapped in a bubble of the Jewish day school existence that I was used to. My school was largely white, but had a growing Asian population, a substantial Latino presence, and a small number of black students that were mostly bussed in from L.A. proper. I thought it was great to have friends of all hues, but tensions ran high and there were several race brawls throughout my time there.

For the most part, I was embraced for being Jewish. When I didn’t show up for football practice on Rosh Hashanah, my teammates jokingly asked when the next Jewish holiday was so they could skip practice too. But I wasn’t always so comfortable. Before taking the field prior to each game, the coach or one of my teammates would lead us in prayer. It always ended with “in Jesus’ name.” I was afraid to say anything and quietly endured my embarrassment. I would quickly say the Shema to myself after the team prayer, hoping that would absolve me of my guilt.

Sometimes, there was racial tension on the team. The whites saw me not as a Jew but as another white, and the blacks on my team saw me as a Jew – a minority like them. I was nervous about being put in the middle of these two racial groups since I had friends in both circles. My teammates recognized the tension and would, at times, come to me to mediate between the two groups – I soon earned the nickname “Rabbi Raber.”

After my sophomore year, I went to Israel for two months on a teen tour. I connected with the land and people of Israel and began to take possession of my Jewish identity. I remember visiting Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum, and walking outside the children’s memorial, seeing the stunning panoramic views of Jerusalem. I recall Shabbat on the beach and working on a Kibbutz for three weeks. I learned my name, Eli, had a strong and powerful Hebrew meaning, and was not the “boy named Sue” situation I thought it was. The trip gave me a sense of pride and helped me forge a connection to my people’s history. I remember standing on top of Masada and for the first time feeling, and believing, that I was a link in the Jewish historical chain.

Shortly after returning from the trip, I was back at school and enjoying my new sense of pride for being Jewish. Then, one day, as I was eating lunch with the usual cast of characters, a few members of the white supremacist gang called my name and started walking towards me from across the quad. My mind started racing. “What had I done to piss these guys off?” I thought. “Man, I am in so much trouble.” As I turned my head to gauge the reactions of my friends, I realized they had scattered…I was all alone.

There were about six of them dressed in full regalia. When they approached, I stood up and the leader said, “Raber, something’s different about you this year. We want you to join our crew.”

I was shocked; I thought they were coming to get me, but as it turned out, what they wanted was for me to enlist! My brain was scrambling to think of what to say in response. Obviously, I was not going to join their neo-Nazi gang but how was I supposed to turn them down? Could I blame my parents? Could I tell them I didn’t want to join any gang, no offense to theirs? What excuse could I use? Then, a bit of calm washed over me, and I realized it was natural to be scared, that I was who I was.

“I appreciate the offer,” I said, “but I cannot join your gang – I am a Jew.”

Their eyes lit up like the 4th of July. My “fight or flight” response kicked in, and I wondered which one of them would punch me first, where could I escape to, and damn it, where did my friends go!

The thugs turned to each other, had a mini-conference, and turned back to me. “That’s okay,” they said “we’ll make an exception for you and agree not to hate Jews anymore, we’ll just hate everyone else.”

On some level, I had to appreciate their level of organizational flexibility, but I informed these confused young men that their gang would lose credibility with the other neo-Nazis if they had a Jew amongst them. This also meant I had to turn down their “generous” offer to sport their classic look: white-laced Doc Marten boots and red suspenders. They seemed to think I had a point and decided it was best not to pursue me as a member. Over the next two years they left me alone, and I never had any problems with them at school.

My trip to Israel changed my perspective about Judaism – I no longer saw myself as a “Jew by birth,” but rather as a Jew by choice. It gave me a new confidence not to hide who I was, which would have been really easy in the tense, racially-charged environment of my high school. Looking back, it was not at my Bar Mitzvah that I became a man, it was at that moment when I was able to face the challenge and muster the courage, despite the possible repercussions, to proclaim, “I am a Jew.”

This is a lesson I have carried into adulthood – by connecting to my past, land, and people, I can accomplish incredible things. I can even change the minds of neo-Nazis.

Photo by thivierr, licensed under Creative Commons.

By Joshua Schechter

When I was eight years old, my parents told me and my eight brothers and sisters that we were moving. My mother was an avid business traveler and really liked Phoenix. So one September, we all packed our bags and left New York.

I don’t remember the plane ride to Phoenix or other details about the trip, but I do remember the drive to the hotel where we stayed until my parents found a house. The Supershuttle turned off the main road and pulled into the parking lot of an adult video store. I was confused and asked my older sister, who was sitting next to me, where we were. She just giggled. We drove past the video store parking lot and up to a motel. My mother and father went in, and when they came out they told the driver to pull up to the back. All eleven of us would be staying in two rooms – my father, mother, and infant little sister in one room and eight of us in the other room. There were only two queen beds in each room (we went sleeping bag shopping later that day).

Moving from New York – where we attended Orthodox yeshivas - to Arizona – where we would attend public school (there weren’t any yeshivas in the area at the time) – would be a huge transition for us. Instead of going to school from 8 am – 4 pm, we were going to school from 9 am – 3 pm. I was thrilled – It felt like a half-day. Plus, the curriculum was only in English, instead of the three hours of daily Hebrew studies in addition to English studies that we were used to.

Eating became a challenge. In New York, a family that kept kosher didn’t have to struggle to find kosher food; there were a multitude of restaurants and supermarkets that were kosher, and it was a true convenience. Only until we moved to Arizona did we realize the hardship of finding kosher food. We would go to the supermarket and all of the brands were foreign to us. We had to inspect each thing we bought and make sure that it was kosher. And any food that was perishable, like cheese, meat or poultry, was NOT kosher in Arizona and had to be flown in, special delivery, from Los Angeles. Feeding a family of eleven was not easy to begin with, and it became even more difficult in Arizona.

Eventually my parents found a home, or more specifically, happened across a government re-possessed home that we bought for $122,500. We slowly began to move all of our things out of the motel, except for the sleeping bags which we kindly put out of their misery. But this new place was no ordinary home. Arizona didn’t have two-story houses, they were all “ranch” style. We had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a backyard that was as big as a New York City block. My parents shared a bedroom and bathroom, and had direct access to the pool and outdoor spa. Throw nine kids into the remaining three rooms and have them share one bathroom and you have a party.

At first, people in Arizona were very friendly. Our neighbors came over and introduced themselves, and people would say “good day” to us as we walked in the street. This was nothing like the attitude of native New Yorkers that we were used to. But one thing that was different about these friendly people was exposed as soon as the baseball caps came off to reveal our yarmulkes. At school, I was constantly teased about wearing a “beanie” or a “shoulder pad” on my head. Being a young, naïve Jew, I would try to explain why I wore it, which only brought on more questions and ridicule.

Even the school administration was insensitive towards us. We would have to miss school for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and since Jewish law prohibited us from calling the school on holidays, we had to send a note in beforehand. The school would question us and gave us a hard time about it, as if we were making up new holidays that they have never heard of before.

One time during Passover, I was eating matzah in the cafeteria and the lunch lady walked by with a puzzled look on her face. Later that day I got home and my mother asked me why I hadn’t packed my lunch. I didn’t know what she was talking about until she told me that the lunch lady had called to ask her why her child was lunch-less, eating what must have seemed like nothing more than a large cracker or a piece of cardboard. But how could I be blamed when the only thing to eat in Arizona during Passover was matzah; there was no other “kosher for Passover” food.

One of my most embarrassing moments was during a school presentation when I decided to share the Jewish ritual of blowing the shofar. Everyone was interested until I pulled out the ram’s horn and tried to blow it for them. All that came out was a loud fart-sound. The teacher next door ran in and asked if everyone was okay. I was the butt of many jokes after that incident (pun intended).

Life as an eight-year-old in a foreign state wasn’t easy, but it also challenged us in a good way. Moving from New York, the Jewish Melting Pot of America, to Arizona, we were the first eleven Jews there (or so it seemed), definitely caused my family to look at things from a different perspective.

Photo by Sebastian Bergmann, licensed under Creative Commons.

We lurked outside the synagogue, then approached the iron gates and peeked into the front doors. There was a dim light warmly illuminating the interior.

A woman noticed us. She was dressed in modest, Orthodox-style clothing, but happened to be Japanese. I wanted to greet her, but wasn’t sure which language to use.

“Shalom”? “Konbanwa” (“good evening” in Japanese)? Instinct pulled me towards “Shalom,” to show that I had a good reason to be standing outside a Jewish community center. She replied with her own “Shalom,” and then asked us in English what we wanted. I explained that we were Jews living in the area and just wanted to check out the synagogue.

Inside, there were Israelis standing around, and they all looked at me and my friend with interest. The rabbi greeted us and began talking to my friend Lev, who was visiting me from the States. After five months of living in Japan, I was still in culture shock, still walking around with my eyes wide and a smile plastered dumbly to my face. Japan seemed alienating and foreign, but here, in this synagogue, I was suddenly transplanted into a place filled with the type of people I had known my whole life and never imagined I’d see in Kobe.

I noticed the bima in this small, traditionally Sephardic synagogue. Japanese and Israeli flags hung side by side on the walls. I felt an overwhelming sense of returning home, being in the presence of a religion—my religion— that many people living in Japan know nothing about. From around 1930 to1940, Kobe was a processing center for Jewish refugees arriving from China, Russia, and the Middle East. Although it was mainly a transit point for most Jews en route to North America, several families stayed and made Kobe their permanent home. Japan was seen as a neutral territory where they could freely practice Judaism without persecution.

As a Jew living in Japan, I feel like a needle in a haystack. Because Japan is such a homogeneous, insular society, foreigners are lumped together in one group; knowledge and understanding of Jews as a specific group with a unique culture and belief system is almost non-existent. Hebrew might as well be Arabic, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might as well be just another skirmish in some distant part of the world. As a Jew and advocate of Israel, I often wonder if a society disengaged from the situation is a better environment for open dialogue and debate than one that is agitated and often misinformed.

On a day-to-day basis, my Jewish identity is somewhat dormant, although I admit that my Jewish life here is not much of a change from my life back in the States. As a Reform Jew, the Orthodox synagogue we stumbled into that night was something culturally new for me on two levels – both because it was a synagogue in Japan (!) and because of its Orthodox nature. Still, the energy from the rabbi and from the light that created a welcoming glow around the bima reached out to me more than any formal bow or greeting from the Japanese. There was a real sense of happiness on the rabbi’s face when another Jewish man coincidentally stumbled into the synagogue just at the time when they needed a 10th man for their minyan.

As a woman attending the service, I sat in a sectioned-off area behind a curtain, scrambling to follow in a Hebrew-Japanese-English prayer book. But I still felt comforted by my surroundings. It wasn’t the religion that brought the sense of connection, but the people who keep that religion alive. The Jewish community stays strong because we intrinsically stick together. We forage, we fight, and we create a home of our own wherever we are and however far we may be from our promised land.

When I was five or six, my parents taught me to recite the blessings over the Hanukkah candles. My father transliterated the verses in his block print handwriting on green-ruled index cards that were small enough to fit in my little hands. For a week I walked around the house trying to wrap my brain around all of the new words with foreign pronunciations. It never occurred to me that six-year-olds all over town were not doing the same thing.

By “town,” I mean Pavilion Township, Michigan (just outside of Kalamazoo)–a place so small that the nearest post office was two “towns” over. We’re talking about a place where there was only one synagogue within reasonable driving distance, and it didn’t even have a rabbi. My being different from everyone else, though, only became clear around Christmas-time, when I was forced to present Hanukkah to all the other kids at school. They called it “cultural awareness;” I called it pressure. Imagine being responsible, at the age of eight, for thirty other people’s perceptions of the Jews. That’s power.

Needless to say, my family didn’t practice Judaism outside of the home. In fact, to fit in a little better, we celebrated the Christian holidays. I can safely say that I clung to my belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny just as hard as any other child at school. So, the time that my grandma came to visit for the holidays, my dad swore up and down that the evergreen in the living room was actually a Hanukkah bush.

The closest thing to anti-Semitism I ever experienced was that one day on the playground at recess when my best friend informed me that the only way to get to heaven was to accept Jesus into your heart. That night before bed I prayed harder than I ever had before, terrified that I was doomed to go to Hell because we never talked about Jesus at my house.  When I finally understood the role that Jesus plays in the distinction between Judaism and Christianity, I guiltily fumbled for a way to take those prayers back.

Moving to Texas changed everything. No longer did my peers rely on me to explain the Jewish holidays. Conversely, they all had formal Jewish educations and were able to explain them to me. It was strange to go from being so different from my peers to suddenly realizing that I belonged to something bigger. I transitioned from a high school that was 30% Jewish to a university that was 18% Jewish, and now I work for a Jewish non-profit (they might have made a movie about this sort of thing once). All I’m trying to say is that, with a little bit of happenstance, I found my way into something that I never knew I needed in the first place.

Photo by ashley_dryden, licensed under Creative Commons.

My mother visited me in New York a few weeks ago. She’s originally from Manhattan, and much of her side of the family is buried in a Jewish cemetery in New Jersey, just over the George Washington Bridge. On a sunny October afternoon, we rented a car and crossed state lines. My mother’s family – the “Jewish-sounding” Silvers, Shapiros and Bernsteins – grew up mostly on the east coast. Eventually, the Shapiros moved out to Salt Lake City (area code 801) in the early 1900s and founded Shapiro’s Leather Goods, which still exists.

I never met any of the Shapiros, but I wonder how their life in Salt Lake City – hardly known as a major center of Jewish life – compared to my experience growing up in St. Paul, MN (651). St. Paul has a small but vibrant Jewish community – three synagogues within a 10-minute drive of my house, and many more in Minneapolis and its surrounding suburbs – but I still felt like a minority. Yes, there were multiple synagogues within St. Paul city limits, but there were eight churches within blocks of my home. I currently work in New York City, and there’s a Judaica store next door to my office; back in St. Paul, we had to travel 40 minutes to pick out invitations for my bat mitzvah.

After the cemetery, my mom and I went out for a late lunch at a diner off the side of the highway. It was packed, oddly full for 3pm on a Sunday. I thought about why it might be so crowded, and said to my mom, “well, it couldn’t be the post-church rush, it’s 3 pm, too late for churches to be letting out.” This was common around noon in the Twin Cities – the restaurants were packed with families and old people who had recently gotten out of Sunday church service. My mom laughed at this notion. “I don’t think they have that out here,” she said. I realized she was probably right – this part of New Jersey was so Jewish that there wasn’t such a thing as a “post-church rush.”

Crowded restaurants on Sunday mornings wasn’t exactly a negative experience, but it was one of the many things about being Jewish that left me feeling like the odd one out. In fifth and sixth grade, I attended Saturday school in preparation for my bat mitzvah. I didn’t mind having to wake up incredibly early on Saturday to go to class, except for the fact that many of my friends, with church to go to on Sundays, always had Friday night sleepovers. Every once in a while, my mom let me go to those sleepovers and skip Hebrew school. Most of the time, though, I was allowed to go to the party but not stay overnight, which made me resentful towards Judaism.

Around Christmas-time, our neighborhood became decorated with beautiful light displays on every block. It was so charmingly Midwestern, and we often took a driving tour around the neighborhood to see them. It was the year before my bat mitzvah that I first begged my parents to put up lights on our house. They obviously refused, and I remember throwing a tantrum and begging for blue and white lights, “for Hanukkah.” I’m not sure why it was so important to me; I think I saw the rest of the community enjoying Christmas and wished I could take part.

In junior high and high school, the High Holidays became an issue. Teachers constantly held exams or set paper due dates on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I was a quiet, studious teenager and disliked missing school in general, especially if it meant having to make-up a test. Most teachers were understanding, but I regularly had to explain the significance of the holidays, which was embarrassing.

“Yahm Kipper? What’s that?,” some teachers would ask. I shrugged my shoulders and mumbled something about the Jewish New Year, which seemed easier than explaining the tenants of atonement, repentance and fasting.

Now I live in the most Jewish-heavy area codes in the country (212/718), where almost everyone is at least familiar with Judaism. I work at a Jewish organization, and I can attend a Jewish event any night of the week if I want to. At the same time, St. Paul was a great place to grow up, and I wouldn’t trade my experience there, even for one where I didn’t feel like a minority. Having struggled with resentment and shame for being Jewish as a young person has made me a prouder and more active Jew as a young adult.

Photo by The U.S. National Archives, licensed under Creative Commons.

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Area codes are more than numbers – they define us. Who can forget the classic Seinfeld episode where, because of the growth of the population of Manhattan, Elaine is forced to adapt to 646 from her beloved 212? Geography and corresponding area codes are steeped in Jewish identity. Members of the Tribe – well-represented in the New York City area codes of 212, 718, and 917 – can understand the sense of connection one develops to the code representing your particular part of the City. Tell a Brooklynite living in the 718 that he suddenly has to go by something totally different, and you are likely to have a reaction like the one Elaine had.

In this issue of Alef, we’ll explore Jewish identity through different area codes. And while many of us might have abundant 212, 718, 310, and 305 numbers in our contacts list, it’s probably more unusual for us to know people in the 616 of Kalamazoo, MI, or the 480 of Scottsdale, AZ. In the stories and accounts that follow, our writers share their experiences of being Jewish in the places served by these slightly less recognizable area codes and try to decipher what, if anything, it all means.

- Alef

Photo by Ballistik Coffee Boy, licensed under Creative Commons.

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Area Codes Posts:

St. Paul, MN (651)
Kalamazoo, MI (616)
Kobe, Japan
Scottsdale, AZ (480)
Chatsworth, CA (818)
Oh, Pioneers: Urban Kibbutzniks Cultivate Community in Brooklyn