Sometimes it’s nervous laughter, other times it’s an eyebrow raise along with “oh really?” or just a simple “huh.” It depends on who I’m talking to. Whatever the situation, when I tell people that I’m the only child of two psychiatrists, it elicits a response. It subtly says “yes, both my parents are physicians” and “yes, they are intellectuals” and “yes, I am their only child so you can imagine the pressure they put on me.”

Yet, growing up in their household there were never insurmountable requests, just one simple career expectation. I was never threatened, no H-bombs were dropped (“you better go to Harvard or else”), nor was anything taken away from me if I didn’t get all A’s, which I did anyway (getting good grades was a given for me). My mother neatly summarized this expectation when I told her that I was thinking of pursuing a career in a creative field. I was in college, tormented by my undetermined future and abysmal science grades, when she said, “Well, you can do whatever you want…after you graduate from medical school.” It may have been a joke but in my vulnerable state, so willing to hold on to any strong recommendation, I took it as doctrine.

My parents made it clear to me that study and knowledge are inherently Jewish values. As the people of the book, learning is a fundamental part of what we do. We read, we argue, we read some more, and so on. It comes as no surprise that so much emphasis was put on the particulars of my education. When I was very young my father told me that the Nazis raped us of our possessions but they could never steal our intellect. Being a learned person is something no one can take away.

So my mother’s wish that I become a physician didn’t come as a surprise. All my life it was expected that I’d become a doctor even while my time outside of school was spent on artsy pursuits.

I took up oil painting.

“Oh, my little painter, you are very visual. How about dermatology or ophthalmology?” my mother suggested.

Late nights, after I was finished with my homework, I would sew or make jewelry.

“You love to work with your hands. You know hand surgery is a great field,” my dad told me.

In secret I would write poems and during the day I wrote for the high school newspaper.

“There are plenty of physician writers! Look at Chekov.”

My creative interests were always linked to a medical subspecialty (and surprisingly, a subspecialty that made good money). Since I had a perceptive eye, enjoyed writing and manual tasks, a career in medicine would allow me to employ all these aspects of myself. I mean, what else would a smart Jewish girl like me do? Really? Sure, painting was fun but were they really going to pay for the Rhode Island School of Design? I didn’t think so.

After a liberal arts degree, acquisition of three languages, a couple more fine arts class, and two years of advance biology, I finally did make it to medical school. A good one at that. And I’m graduating this May. My parents are so proud (I didn’t make AOA, but they’ll live). I’m pretty damn proud of myself as well. Medicine is a wonderful career choice. The volume of what I know and what I know I don’t know overwhelms me with awe. Perhaps it sounds cheesy, but it’s incredibly fulfilling taking care of people, to learn their ins and outs, what’s going on under the surface and how to make it all better. I love all that. At the same time, I’ve been plagued by this gnawing feeling that I still need to express myself creatively. With residency starting in a few months I’m petrified that I might not have the time or energy to nurture my creative spark. I’m waiting for time to unfold what I ultimately need to do and how I need to go about doing it. For now, I’m happy to be a tangential member of the physician writers community and sometimes I even peek at the Iowa Writers Workshop website, you know, for kicks.

…

Read more posts from Issue #10: “Geniushood.”

Photo by DeaPeaJay, licensed under Creative Commons.

It was a cold December night. The girls were out in far too little clothing, hugging themselves and shivering as they walked around in their clackety heels. The wind, never overly sensitive to the sentimentalities of pedestrians, played coy, reclining just long enough to convince them to relax the tensing of shoulders and scrunching of necks before reappearing to lash at exposed skin. But one young man, just days shy of his 21st birthday, wasn’t suffering with the rest of them on the street. He was indoors, in the warmth of an East Village apartment, finally losing his virginity.

By 20, his virginity had gone from being that annoying family member your mom forces you to speak with during Passover dinner to the unwelcome friend you have crashing on your couch who traces your movements with sleepy eyes every time you walk into the kitchen to get a bowl of cereal in the morning.

“Dude, when are you going to find your own place?”

“What? I’m bothering you? You already want me to leave? I thought we were friends. We’ve known each other since we were kids man.”

“No, sorry, listen, that came out wrong, it’s just that-”

“You’ve changed. It’s really sad.”

He poured out his Honey Bunches of Oats/Cocoa Krispies mix and retreated back into his room.

–

Things with the girl had started off innocently enough. They met during the relative innocuousness of Taekwondo practice. Convinced by a friend to join the team, he showed up ready to find something new to occupy the waning days of senior year. She was a law student who looked nothing like someone called to mind by the word “taekwondo.” Basically, she was attractive, a girding-of-the-loins sort of attractive, and watching her kick and sweat and grunt for that first 2-hour practice didn’t necessarily alleviate any notions he started developing immediately upon meeting her.

But he was a good guy at heart, and he had a hard time reconciling the innate animalistic tendencies we all feel with the desire to be a gentleman. So after he finally left practice and got himself away from her physical presence, he started thinking less about how much he wanted to have sex with her and more about how he really just wanted to ask her out and, if he was lucky, maybe she’d become his…(giggle, giggle)…girlfriend.

Then again, who was he kidding? He was a kid next to this 23-year-old, law school-attending, “mature” woman. He didn’t think he had a chance, he didn’t even think she knew he existed outside of the awkward introduction during the first practice when he stuttered his name and quickly turned red. But on the other hand, there was nothing to lose, and having just climbed out of his post-pubescent years of acne and bad haircuts, he was finally feeling a little more confident in himself.

So, after a few weeks of holding kicking pads for her and accidental glances in each others’ direction, he finally asked her out. He had thought over in his head, a million times, about the least-stress-filled date environment he could find, and finally decided on something that was liable to make her feel totally at ease and score him some “nice Jewish boy” points – a dinner with a Chabad Rabbi and his family.

She came in clothing that made him look twice, at her legs, at her chest, at the line her neck made in its slide down towards her clavicle. During dinner, as the Rabbi’s kids bounced around between the dinner guests and tipped over hummus plates while reaching across the table for soda, the Rabbi’s wife smiled in their direction and nodded as if she was approving of this particular combination.

After dinner he suggested – offhandedly, thanks to the wine – that they visit a friend’s birthday party at a bar near Union Square. But it was only during their walk to the bar that he panicked from the realization that she didn’t actually know his real age, and that as the go-to-responsible one among his friends, he didn’t even have a fake ID.

“IDs please.”

He froze and stared up at the bouncer timidly. His mouth had gone dry.

It was at this exact moment when he was prepping himself for social disaster that the girl touched the bouncer’s arm and cooed in his ear – “He’s with me. Is that OK?”

A smile and a nod later, he was shocked to see the doors thrown open for them. Inside, he quickly wished the friend a happy birthday and proceeded to buy her a drink. She would only take whiskey, on the rocks, and he was too inexperienced at the time to fully understand what this meant. As she sipped on the drink, she pulled him onto the dance floor and drowned him in the deep twisting of her body in candle-lit corners. His head began to spin and he closed his eyes. His hands reached for her hips, desperate to get some grounding as the world seemed to slip from under him. And then, somehow, in the accidental turning of his head, his lips caught themselves on a spot just under her ear and she let out a light moan.

She didn’t invite him back to her place so much as tell him he was coming. And of course he followed her obediently, dragged by hand through that same winter lashing he would, in a few moments, be casually observing from inside her apartment. His feet moved methodically, stepping down from icy sidewalks onto icy streets and scraping their edges against the mesh metal webbing of overflowing garbage cans.

It all seemed surreal that this was actually happening. After all this time? He nodded to himself incredulously. As she led him into the 300 sq. ft. studio and shut the door, he felt the old shell of his world coming apart, sliding onto the floor. And even though he didn’t know all that much at 20, he knew that this was him, finally melting into manhood.

Photo by Mangui, licensed under Creative Commons.

Read more articles from Issue 08: “The Sex Issue.”

My friend Dave and I are your typical Jewish guys. We both fast on Yom Kippur, and we both quote Larry David. But there is one thing that sets us apart: We’re completely fanatical about Seton Hall men’s basketball.

If you’ve never heard of Seton Hall, you’re not alone. (Although you probably wouldn’t “survive” growing up in New Jersey.) With approximately 5,000 undergraduates, SHU is a relatively small university, serving students mostly from the metropolitan area.

Oh, and it’s Catholic.

So, how did two Jews end up such die-hard Seton Hall fans? It’s definitely weird, and even weirder considering neither of us matriculated there!

For the answer, you first need to understand a little more about this Seton Hall team. Frequently overmatched and seemingly outnumbered, Seton Hall is one of college basketball’s scrappiest. In a Big East conference full of Goliaths like Syracuse and UCONN, Seton Hall is truly a David among them, stone in hand.

Let me introduce you to Seton Hall’s reserve point guard, Jordan Theodore. At just under six feet, Jordan compensates for his lack of size with lightning quick defense and gritty determination. With seemingly more arms than a Hanukkah menorah, Jordan frustrates opposing guards by contesting passes and swiping at every dribble. Talk about making the most of your oil!

Will Jordan Theodore ever make the NBA? Fat chance. But that doesn’t mean he can’t dream, that he can’t give everything he’s got, training constantly to improve every facet of his game.

As Jews, we know a little something about overcoming odds. Perhaps this explains why every Seton Hall game is so endlessly engaging. Perhaps it explains why Dave and I have traveled so many hundreds of miles to support our team, including visits to Louisville, Morgantown, and San Juan. (I recommend the plantain omelet.) And we’ve cultivated countless friendships along the way, getting to know our fellow boosters and even the players themselves!

But there’s another dimension to our passion. While Seton Hall’s never-say-die spirit is what we may identify with culturally as Jews, it’s the university’s motto that we find most compelling. A mixture of Norman French and Old English, the Seton Hall seal reads: “Hazard Zet Forward.” Roughly translated: “At whatever risk, yet go forward.”

What’s the significance, you ask? Perhaps the only thing that defines our collective Jewish identity more than our people’s improbable survival is our legendary neuroticism. How often do we fixate on details? Brood over decisions? I know I do.

Seton Hall teaches us that it’s okay to move on. That, even in the face of “hazard,” we must step boldly without constantly looking back. It’s Jordan Theodore taking the court without second-guessing or over-thinking. He just plays his heart out. And that, even Larry David would agree with.

…

Want to read more about Dave and Ben’s passion for Seton Hall hoops? Follow them on their blog: www.setonia.blogspot.com

Being Jewish and being an athlete are two of the many complicated identities I carry. Growing up, I was pretty sure I was Jewish and was equally certain that I wasn’t an athlete.  I went to Hebrew School (and occasionally synagogue), and could not run or jump and had pretty bad hand-eye coordination, so this dual-assessment seemed to make a lot of sense.  However, in regards to my athleticism, I neglected to consider my days spent at gymnastics practice, my near perfect splits and awesome back walkovers. If it ever entered my mind that this was an athletic talent, I would brush the thought away by looking at my body: bigger than any gymnast’s I knew, barely fitting into the largest size of competition leotards.

As I moved into high school and college my Jewish identity became more complicated. I was less and less comfortable in religious services but more and more drawn to Jewish communal activity.  Similarly, my athletic identity took on complications of its own as I transitioned from gymnastics to diving. My commitment to my college team required 5-6 days of practice a week – more time than I had committed to anything before. At the same time, the misunderstandings and misconceptions of diving led me to question again whether I was a real athlete doing a real sport. Ultimately, the scales tipped towards “yes” under the weight of the overwhelming camaraderie and community I felt on my team. We had an identity as a group that made it clear that every member of the group was important and undoubtedly an athlete.

I wasn’t able to continue diving after college, but quickly found my way into the world of aerial acrobatics. Existing somewhere in the space between dance, spectacle, and performance art, I would rarely refer to aerials as a sport. However, I have come to identify and value myself as an athlete who possesses strength, agility and grace, if not speed and height. Similarly, I have settled into myself as a secular Jew, someone who values Jewish culture and community without being particularly interested in the overtly religious aspects of Jewish life. For me there is an elegant parallel in the ways I have come to understand myself as both a Jew and an athlete. I don’t completely fit into the commonly conceived idea of either identity but have no doubt that I am both. I am an agnostic, slow Jewish athlete.

Photo provided by Boocal licensed under Creative Commons