Alef: The NEXT Conversation
A So-Called ‘Lost’ Jewish Family
By Shannon Sarna
This piece originally appeared in The Jewish Week.
Almost eight years ago I traveled to Israel for the first time on a Birthright Israel trip through Hillel. Recently I returned with my husband, brother and uncle to visit my sister, who is spending the year there on a Young Judaea Year Course. At first glance this hardly sounds different from the experiences of any other Jewish professional.
But my siblings and I are the products of a typical American Jewish narrative: attractive Italian Catholic pianist from Brooklyn meets disengaged Jewish rocker from Yonkers. They fall in love, get married, and have a family.
Did our mother convert? No. Did we attend synagogue? Not regularly. Were we exposed to Christianity? Absolutely. Religious institutions were frowned upon in our household, but being a good person, believing in a higher power and giving back to community were all emphasized. Amazing Jewish grandparents who loved and embraced us no matter how we identified were another important piece of our childhood.
Working in the Jewish community for the past six years, I hear a lot of negativity, even from the very funders of “crucial” Jewish organizations, that the investment in youth and outreach isn’t working; that there aren’t enough measurable outcomes. That we are “losing” Jews. I would not claim that we’re achieving miracles daily. Or that every success can be measured. But the situation is not the Jewish crisis that so many like to bemoan.
I take great pride in explaining to such naysayers that my family is a success story of the Jewish community; we are an example of the choices children of interfaith families make when they connect with welcoming, embracing professionals and organizations. The Jewish development of my family is no accident. We started by having a spiritual, open-minded and culturally Jewish family. The next key ingredient was engaged Jewish grandparents who exposed us to Jewish religion and culture, but never forced it down our throats.
Although the Jewish Outreach Institute’s Grandparents’ Circle didn’t exist at the time, I am confident that a support system like this program would have only further championed my grandparents’ loving influence. I was also lucky to have mentors who encouraged my spiritual exploration, and caring Jewish professionals who welcomed my desire for further education. By the time I had the opportunity to engage with the Jewish organizational world during my formative college years, I was primed to be open to the experiences presented.
One of my former bosses, Avraham Infeld, frequently remarks, “There’s only one thing that 90 percent of North American Jews do: go to college!” Hillel (along with other campus-focused organizations) is uniquely positioned to have an impact on the greatest number of Jews in North America simply by being a presence in one very common location.
Hillel had a major impact on my personal and professional Jewish journey. The first time I went to Israel was on a Birthright Israel Hillel trip. The second time was also with Hillel, to attend the 2003 United Jewish Communities (now Jewish Federations of North America) General Assembly, and it was on that trip that I made connections with Hillel staff that led to my eventual career as a Jewish communal professional.
And now, in a similar fashion, my sister, with little formal Jewish education, was accepted for a Young Judaea Course and is having a life-altering year in Israel; she is bonding with other Jewish students from all over North America, volunteering with various communities and connecting with her own Jewish identity in ways she never imagined.
Her ability to attend can certainly be attributed in part to the patient and welcoming staff at Young Judaea, which spent countless hours on the phone with her and our father, explaining all the ins and outs and walking them through the application process. Her year in Israel, a major investment in my sister’s Jewish identity on the part of the community, will have a lasting impact on her, our family and her future family, as did the investment that Birthright, Hillel and countless other organizations made did on me.
With nearly 50 percent of Jewish students on college campuses having only one Jewish parent, our family’s story is not an exception. We represent the community’s greatest opportunity to affect those who have had negative experiences, or no experience, with the Jewish community. We are the “lost” Jews that so many organizations are trying to “find.”
When I brought my brother and uncle to the Western Wall in Jerusalem for the first time last month, along with my sister and my husband, I was thankful for all the professionals and organizations who have contributed to my success and to a meaningful Jewish identity for my typically American Jewish family.
Shannon Sarna is communications manager at The Samuel Bronfman Foundation.
Photo by Calsidyrose, licensed under Creative Commons.
My Journey in Judaism
By Meredith Patrick
Every Sunday, my mother would take my older sister and me to church at Our Mother of Consolation in Philadelphia. We would put on dresses, make the five-minute drive to church, and sit in the same pew each week.
Our Mother of Consolation is a beautiful church, with gorgeous stained-glass windows and intricate statues of the Stations of the Cross along the walls. I always liked to look around. I remember being bored, however, by the homilies as a child, and was envious of the kids who got to leave and go into a room beyond the sacristy (where the sacred vestments are stored) for a brief Sunday school service. Eventually, I asked my mother if I could go with the other kids, and she agreed.
And so, a decision that was made out of boredom as a small child was the catalyst for me becoming a Catholic.
I don’t mean to sound like I’m mocking the religion, but it’s shocking to me, upon reflection, that this was the reason why I began the process of initiation into the church. The choice became official after my mother’s father died. He played a very major role in my childhood. I looked up to him a great deal and wanted to emulate him. When he died, I was adamant about being a Catholic like he was. After years of going to church every week, when I was 7 years old, I decided I wanted to be baptized.
My mother is Catholic and my father is Jewish. When they got married, they made a mutual decision to let their children decide which religion they wanted to be raised in. My father was pretty secular and rarely went to synagogue services, while my mother went to church once a week; therefore, my sister and I were only really exposed to Catholicism growing up. My only significant childhood memories of Judaism were when my father lit Hanukkah candles every year. We went to his mother’s house for Passover Seders, and I recall staying at her house while the men went to High Holiday services. Still, I didn’t consider myself half-Jewish; I saw myself as Catholic. I didn’t see why I shouldn’t be baptized, since I was doing everything a Catholic did anyway.
The tradition in Catholicism is to baptize babies shortly after their birth. Since my parents wanted their children to choose their own religion, I was baptized later. My father didn’t object, seeing as I made the decision on my own. I don’t remember much about the ceremony: just bending over backward across the baptismal font and having the holy water poured across my head.
After I was baptized, I experimented with ways to further initiate myself into the church. I became an altar girl for a while, helping the priest go about his rituals throughout the Mass. Later on, I sang with the small group that led the congregation during each of the songs. Looking back, I realize that I was trying to feel like I belonged in the church community. I never really felt at home, however, and eventually abandoned both being an altar girl and singing in front of the congregation.
By the time I was 8 years old, I started to get interested in the Holocaust. I had always loved to read as a child, and reading Anne Frank’s diary on my own had a profound impact on me. Up until that point, I had absolutely no knowledge of the Holocaust or World War II. The connection I felt with Anne and the way she described her life growing up made me want to learn more about the time period. I began to read more about the events surrounding her life in Europe. Hindsight shows that not only did I feel a connection with Anne, but with all of the Jews who lived through the Holocaust. Yet, at the time, it didn’t alter my religious beliefs or my view of Judaism.
My beliefs did change, however, when I was 13 and 9/11 happened. This was the impetus that led to my shifting away not only from Catholicism but from God as well. Having read dozens of books about the Holocaust, I had already wondered how God could allow such a horrible thing to happen; 9/11 was my breaking point. I refused to believe in a God that would let so many innocent people die under horrific circumstances. Even if God existed, I didn’t want to worship Him. I felt wrong praising His name in church every week, as if He deserved to be exalted. I slowly stopped going to church, until my attendance ceased altogether.
For years after that, I didn’t consider myself religious at all. I didn’t call myself an atheist, though, as I still believed in some kind of afterlife.
It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college that I began to investigate my own Jewishness. I had transferred from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, an acting conservatory in New York City, to Albright College, a small liberal arts school in Reading, Pennsylvania. A few weeks into my first semester, there was an activities fair where students could learn about different clubs and organizations on campus. I signed up for Hillel, the Jewish group at Albright. It seemed interesting, and I figured I could learn more about the religion my father’s side of the family belonged to. His mother, my grandmother, had died while I was in high school. She was a very important, loving figure in my life. She and my grandfather had done community service for Meals on Wheels at a local synagogue; my sister and I would often join them. While I don’t remember much about her funeral, I can recall her headstone being unveiled in a Jewish cemetery a year later. The surrounding headstones inscribed in Hebrew were somehow comforting to me.
As a member of Hillel, I started to consider myself half-Jewish. The members were welcoming and made me feel like I belonged. I was also taking religious courses that focused on Judaism, such as Religious Responses to the Holocaust; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; and Hebrew Bible. I eventually became a Religious Studies major, because I wanted to keep learning more about Judaism. My parents were supportive, since they viewed college as the time to learn about what you’re interested in.
At a Hillel meeting in the fall of 2007, the president announced that registration for an upcoming Birthright trip was open. I asked for more information, regarding a trip to Israel as yet another way to dive further into my quest for knowledge about Judaism and my heritage. The hard part was convincing my mother to let me go. She was hesitant only because she was worried that it would be too dangerous, with suicide bombers being a constant threat to my safety. My father knew how much I wanted to go, and we both ultimately persuaded her that I would be fine.
A minor stumbling block was the phone interview I had as part of the application process. The interviewer seemed a little hesitant when she found out I was half-Jewish. I explained that it was important for me to learn more about my heritage, considering I knew very little about it growing up. When that didn’t seem to be enough, I got a little defensive about my status as a half-Jew, informing the interviewer that my great-great-grandmother had died in the Holocaust. My passion and determination seemed to sway her.
The 10 days I spent in Israel were 10 of the best days of my life. I became close to several of my fellow students, who were all very welcoming and made me feel a part of the Jewish community. I especially grew fond of a girl my age, Rayna, who was Jewish but didn’t believe in God. The idea that one could be a Jew without believing in God had been something I was introduced to during my classes at Albright, and it gave me hope: I could still be a part of this community that I felt connected to without giving up my beliefs (or lack thereof). As the trip progressed, I began to identify myself with Judaism more and more.
I’ll never forget when Rayna and I went into a jewelry store in Jerusalem. The shop owner asked us where we were from, and we told her we were visiting from America. She asked, “So, what does is feel like to be home?” When she posed that question, the idea of Israel being “home” for all Jews finally made sense to me, because I felt it to be true deep down in my bones. I could only smile at her, while Rayna replied, “It feels good.”
My favorite part of the trip was when we visited the Western Wall. The visiting areas were divided into two parts: a large section for the men, and a small section for the women. Because the women’s section was so small, you had to wait your turn to get close to the Wall. There were white plastic chairs spread out near the back of the section, where you could sit and wait, sit and pray, or sit and write a message that you wanted to put in the Wall. Most people wrote prayers to God, but seeing as how I don’t believe in Him, I wrote a note to my grandmother. I hoped she would have been proud of me for exploring my Jewishness. When I was able to find a spot in front of the Wall, I tucked the note into a crevice. Everyone around me was praying, some out loud, some quietly to themselves. Orthodox Jews in skirts down to their ankles were rocking back and forth as they prayed. I knew I wasn’t going to pray, but I felt like I needed to do something, since this was the holiest site in Judaism. I remembered having seen photos of people leaning their foreheads against the wall, with one or both hands splayed out next to them. I moved closer to the Wall, rested my forehead against it, and put my hands on the stones on either side of my face. I closed my eyes and waited. Soon, the voices of those praying around me faded into distant murmurs; it was almost like I was by myself, yet still had the comfort of the proximity of others. I felt an incredible calm wash over me, from my head all the way down to my toes. I’ve never felt so at peace in my entire life. I could have stayed there for hours. I silently thanked my grandmother for her presence in my life growing up and asked her to watch over me. As I backed away from the Wall slowly (you’re not supposed to turn your back on it), I thought maybe, just maybe, there might be a God after all.
A few months after I returned to Albright, I started looking into officially converting to Judaism. My trip to Israel had been life-altering, in that it made me feel like I finally found a place where I belonged. I had learned about Judaism in my courses at school and felt connected to it while reading about its traditions and beliefs, but it wasn’t until I was actually surrounded by the Jewish community in Israel that I felt like I was home. The books I read on converting to Judaism only solidified my decision.
I told my father first, since he’s Jewish and has always supported any decision I’ve made, whether it was transferring colleges or going on Birthright. He was very understanding, and even offered to give me some Jewish family heirlooms, like the mezuzah and menorah that belonged to my grandparents.
I was more nervous about telling my mother, because she had essentially raised me as Catholic, and I worried that she would view my conversion as a rejection of her and her beliefs. I shouldn’t have been so worried, as she was also supportive, knowing that I’d only make a decision if I had thought about if for a long time and weighed my options. Her main hesitation was over my wanting to become Jewish even though I don’t believe in God. I tried as best as I could to explain that a belief in God wasn’t a prerequisite for being Jewish, since Judaism is more than just a religion, but also a culture and a people as well.
Although I told both of my parents about my decision in person, I found it sufficient to inform my sister via text message, as she was living in a different city at the time. Her reply? “im not surprised. Im glad ur happy.” It put the biggest smile on my face.
I also told my dad’s sister, my aunt, and his father, my grandfather. My aunt’s response was to grin and hug me, while my grandfather said, “I’m even more proud of you. I was already proud before, but I’m even more proud of you now.” The love and support of my friends and family has been overwhelming and incredibly moving.
I’m constantly reading and discovering new things about Judaism. When I studied abroad in Paris for a semester, one of my favorite experiences was going to the Jewish Art and History Museum. At the closing sale of the Borders bookstore in my hometown, I immediately went to the religious section and bought two more books on Judaism. For a college graduation present, I’ve asked my parents to pay for a Jewish heritage tour that includes visits to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany. Even though I’m not officially Jewish yet, I already consider myself to be a Jew.
I keep kosher, which is easy as a vegetarian, and I fast on Yom Kippur. I ask my dad to go to High Holiday services with me at my grandfather’s Jewish retirement home, and we also light Hanukkah candles together.
One of the most touching parts of my journey has been my mom’s acceptance. This past December, she bought me a Hanukkah card that wished me a happy holiday; she also wrote that I should ask the Albright cafeteria to make latkes, and offered to light the menorah for me while I was gone. Her acceptance of my Jewishness, despite her strong ties to Catholicism, has meant more to me than she will ever know.
I’m going to begin the conversion process after I graduate from college, so I can dedicate the amount of time such an undertaking deserves. Yet, even after the ceremony is over, my journey in Judaism will continue.
Meredith Patrick traveled to Israel as part of the Kesher Birthright program in the winter of 2007-2008. A native of Philadelphia, she went to school in New York and Paris before graduating with a B.A. in French and Religious Studies from Albright College in 2010. She was also part of the Holocaust Studies special program at Albright and was elected the president of Hillel her senior year.
**This essay appears in What We Brought Back: Jewish Life After Birthright, a new anthology written by Birthright alumni, and published by The Toby Press in conjunction with Birthright Israel NEXT and Nextbook Inc.
Photo by Kudumomo, licensed under Creative Commons.
Real
By Lisa Kaneff
A hurricane was brewing that fall as I walked my Birthright Israel application from my dorm room at the University of Miami to the Hillel House. The wind whipped through the palm trees, the air was devoid of the humidity I’d come to expect after most of my first semester at “The U.” Barely 18, I was fighting all of the identity demons one would expect to fight when you move at such a young age so far away from home, family, and the life you know. It was 1999, and this would be the first official Birthright Israel trip.
Greeted with fanfare suited more for celebrities than bleary-eyed university students, our welcome to Israel was delayed by three hours thanks to a package allegedly left on our ElAl plane by someone attempting to slip his way back through security. The 747 packed with the young and excited participants was escorted off the plane, and quarantined in the airport lounge until both sets of bomb-sniffing dogs cleared us for take off. It was a dubious start to a trip we were assured would be safe, fun, and above all, meaningful.
The details I remember: I was on bus #1. As I understand it, Birthright has consecutively numbered all buses since that first trip and I was on #1. I remember Leif, a student from FIU, was #15 during our “did we lose anyone” count-offs. Why do I remember that particular detail? Because we were always losing Leif. The silence after #14 was deafening and memorable as we missed things like sunrise at Masada because of #15 and his predilection for tardiness. I remember that I wore a Superman T-shirt that day we climbed Masada. I remember I was lapped climbing that mountain by a blind student smoking a pipe. And I remember that was the first time I realized my safe, fun, and meaningful trip to Israel would be more of a mental, physical, and spiritual challenge than I had signed up for.
A dreidel tells the story best: “A great miracle happened there,” becomes, “A great miracle happened here.” Here. All of the stories you read, the tales you’re told… No longer are they tall tales told by Hebrew School teachers to purvey a life lesson — a fable told during those painful hours between the long-endured school day and long-awaited television show you knew was around the corner — a piece of the sermon you may have heard during High Holy Day services when you weren’t scribbling notes to your best friend you were lucky enough to sit next to on the longest day of the year. But.
But in Israel, you are forced to confront the reality of religion. You meet faith head on for a jetlagged, spiritual Battle Royale. Could it be that what I had, as an impetuous youth, blown off as a tall tale be true? Could the stories be real? What does that mean for me and my faith? At that moment on the mountain looking down over where tragedy struck thousands and thousands of years prior, I knew things had changed. That Judaism, my Judaism, had just become… real.
Photo by Ani Carrington, licensed under Creative Commons.
An Unorthodox Coming Out Story
By Jessica Annabelle
Coming out can bring out a wide range of emotions – liberating, difficult, scary, fun, slow, sudden, not actually surprising to everyone but you, political, and super confusing.
For example, the first time I had a crush on a girl was super confusing. Rachel was, like myself, a nice Jewish girl and she happened to sit next to me in Modern Lit class. The important thing to know about Rachel though, was not only that she sat next to me, but that she often wore low cut and loose fitting shirts and sometimes they fell forward and I could see her boobs.
It was the best thing ever.
Simultaneously, it was weird and inexplicable and obviously didn’t mean anything. I had already been through a handful of boyfriends, so I was completely certain having a crush on Rachel did not mean I was a lesbian. On the contrary, I decided having a crush on Rachel meant I was totally normal, because she was hot and all of my guy friends had crushes on her. This weird thing, I decided, had everything to do with her shirts being irresistibly sexy and nothing at all to do with me.
I had successfully convinced myself I was into shirts, not girls. Several years later when I went on my first date with a girl, I explained to the few friends I told that I just “really liked her piercings.” And about a year after that, when I first slept with a girl, I realized that these sorts of explanations were probably no longer going to work.
Because I wasn’t sure how to tell my family and friends from home that I wasn’t straight anymore, after 18 years of evidence to the contrary, the first people I talked to about these new experiences and the questions they raised were my college friends at Hillel. When I tell other people in the LGBTQ community that the first place I came out was in my religious community, their reactions tend to range from surprise to disbelief. For many of my queer friends, religion is dangerous terrain, full of enemy soldiers laying in wait to attack with cures for homosexuality and promises of an eternity spent unloved. This hostile environment is not exclusive to Evangelical Christianity, but can materialize in the most liberal of churches, in small talk with a fellow member of the tribe, or in the mosque. I was blessed with an entirely different experience.
For me, Hillel was a safe place (looking back, even the safest place) to come out because my friends there were also family. We enjoyed each others company and conversation, but in addition to that, we were Jewish. There was a bond between us that could not be broken, and I held on tightly to that as I reinvented myself.
As I sorted through the new questions that arose with each of my new experiences with girls – like, was I interested in women romantically as well as physically? Is this whole thing really worth potentially upsetting my poor mother? And, am I allowed to call myself “queer” when most of my relationships until now have been with men? – I started to rely more and more on the ritual of Shabbat. Once a week, Shabbat allowed me to take a deep breath and set aside the uncertainties. For one day, I focused my energy on celebrating the answers I had found and appreciating the community that sustained me.
It’s been about a year since I first admitted to my best friend and fellow Hillel board member that I might be kind of into girls as well as guys. I’m definitely queer and Jewish and while my mother is not yet able to say LGBTQ three times fast, she has a pretty solid understanding of a few other new terms, including bisexual, Prop 8, partner, and dental dam.
One last thing – Rachel came out about six months ago.
Photo by Made Underground, licensed under Creative Commons.
The Accidental Bat Mitzvah
by Emily Comisar
It was the second Shabbat on my Taglit-Birthright Israel Trip in December 2006. I was twenty-one and the only member of the young adult generation of my family not to become a bar or bat mitzvah–a fact that I had already come to peace with years earlier. My Northwestern University bus had been traveling in caravan with a UCSD bus for days now and together some of our shared cohort was having a B’nai Mitzvah, an event not uncharacteristic of the trips, from what I hear.
I watched as the students were presented to the make-shift congregation and, donning kippot and tallit, each read an aliya, the blessing before and after reading haftarah. That was it. Within seconds, each had become a bar or bat mitzvah.
Not having known that this was all it took to become a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, I was stunned. Not only was this blessing one that I recognized, it was one that I knew forward and backward because I had recited it on my Hillel’s makeshift bimah every time I went to Saturday morning services. I was a bat mitzvah. I had been a bat mitzvah for nearly four years and had absolutely no idea.
My first reaction was to feel like a failure as a Jew. What kind of bat mitzvah doesn’t do a mitzvah project, make a speech, or worse, have any recollection of her Torah portion? I don’t remember exactly when it was, or who was there, or what I was wearing that day. My Bat Mitzvah was essentially meaningless. I’ve botched a few things in my life but this one, I thought, was a big time screw up.
I look back at that moment now and have to laugh a little. Many cultures have a coming-of-age ritual–the Bar Mitzvah is just one in a long list that includes confirmation, quinceanera, and rumspringa. Note though, that all of these rituals take place during the middle teenage years. All of them. Could I really expect to have felt as if I had come into adulthood at the age of twenty-one, by participating in a ceremony that is designed for budding thirteen year-olds?
The year I turned thirteen, I attended my third middle school (in as many years), made my first Jewish friends ever (some of whom I still have now), and became a full member of the community that shaped me into the person I am today. Doesn’t get much more Bat Mitzvah than that.
Photo by Chajm, licensed under Creative Commons.
Read more posts from Issue #13: Bar Mitzvah Season.
Follow Us
2009. Alef: The NEXT Conversation All rights reserved.
Home |
About |
Contact Us
Recent Comments