A Bissel of Good News (for a change)

(Image courtesy of the author)

I live in suburban New Jersey: old-growth trees, independent bookstores, so many psychotherapists that you trip over them in the grocery store. Our robust Jewish population is spread among three well attended synagogues of three different flavors, plus Chabad. The synagogue my husband and I belong to is Conservative, and that’s because: I’m not sure. It just kind of shook out that way. For a while we were the little shul that somehow hadn’t yet died: oi so depressing. Then, miracle of miracles, things shifted. So much so that not only are we now inundated by a tidal wave of young families with armies of young children in tow, but we also seem to be incubating new Jews.

At our weekly Torah study alone—a group of about 10 of us—are three men, all of whom started out as something not even the tiniest bit Judaic, who now not only know their way around Torah, but often lead the discussion, with dips and dives into Mishnah, Midrash, musar, and a dash of Jerry Seinfeld. Plus a woman of Chinese origin who is raising Jewish children and wears a kippah. And my question to each of them is: why? For God’s sake, man, why? Why turn your brain inside out and your guts upside down to sit around a table discussing, for example, the intricacies of the two Adams in Bereshit? Or to take another example, the stupefyingly unanswerable question: why would God, the Master of the Universe, consciously and on purpose harden Pharaoh’s heart? Etcetera. Because that’s what we Jews do, we ask questions, argue, froth at the mouth over questions of kosher, and never figure it out. Then we nosh. Welcome to the land of Jewish!

In addition to the once-goy-now-Jews who form the backbone of our Torah study group, there are all these other converts at our shul—young mothers of young children, less young mothers of less-young-children, non-young former uber-wasps, and in one case, and entire family comprised of mom, dad, and four children. Such a wonderful thing, such a source of joy and pride and naches—but why? Tell me, oh Chosen People Who Were Once Altar Boys, why be Jewish?

For one thing, it’s not easy being Jewish, not if you take it seriously. You have all these holidays, all these rituals, all these rules and regs, and for most of us, you have to figure out how to do it in Hebrew, which for those of you who don’t know, is a language that goes backwards and doesn’t have vowels. Half the time you feel guilty for not being observant enough, and the other half the time you question why you bother being as observant as you are, given how much time being even a little observant takes when there are all these other things that maybe you’d rather be doing. Such as watching Netflix or mixing meat and milk.

Also, the rest of the world—maybe not at this very minute, or at least not in northern New Jersey—tends to hate us and want us dead, and this with reassuring if not necessarily predictable regularity, with flare-ups of less deadly antisemitism along the way. (Read: Columbia University. Read: the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.) And yet, you choose to be one of us?

I do of course know that there is a whole world of non-traditional Judaism that often goes under the umbrella of Reform that may not be as concerned with taking the lightbulb out of the fridge on Shabbat as those who daven with a mechitza keeping them safe from catching cooties from the opposite sex, but the question, remains: why join us?

True, Judaism has a lot that makes it appealing and makes being a part of it worthwhile, satisfying, good. For example, we are of-this-world, with a focus on tikkun olam. We wrestle (read: argue) about everything, and even wrestle with God, and it’s no problem, because God in fact wants you to be in conversation with Him, even when you’re acting like a pissy adolescent.  We invented psychoanalysis. And of course, who can argue with a really good knish?

Still and yet and still and wait a second, I just realized something. I myself, and despite my Jewish mother and Jewish father, was not exactly raised in the bosom of Judaism. I mistook the Democratic party for God, wasn’t familiar with even the most Americanized Yiddish expressions, and lacked a Jewish education so entirely that I didn’t know the difference between an alef and a bet, the Torah and the Talmud, and Ashkenazim versus Sephardim. And yet, here I am, a few decades later, doing things like: volunteering for the synagogue, studying Torah, and knocking my brains out in a decades-long pursuit of learning modern Hebrew. So maybe I do get why non-Jews would choose Judaism. After all, and despite my Jewish blood, it’s what I myself—and countless others–have done.