When Did We Start Needing Labels?
This morning I was sitting on my mirpeset with a cup of coffee, replaying a conversation I had with my son the night before.
It started with what seemed like a simple question.
He asked me to compare him and his sister.
Not as people.
As Jews.
They’re each on different religious journeys, and he wanted to know how I saw the differences between them.
I answered as best I could.
Then he asked me something I wasn’t expecting.
“So… what am I?”
I hesitated.
Not because I don’t know my son.
Because I wasn’t sure I wanted to answer the question at all.
“I don’t really think that way,” I finally said.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I just see Jews.”
He smiled.
“The labels aren’t the problem,” he said. “People judging the labels are.”
Maybe he’s right.
But ever since that conversation, another question has been sitting with me.
When did being Jewish stop being enough?
I grew up Modern Orthodox in America. When I first came to Israel at 18 to study, my observance changed. I stopped keeping Shabbat, although I never stopped keeping kosher. Years later, when I got married and wanted to raise a Jewish family, I returned to the observant life that felt right for me.
It’s been a journey.
One that, like most journeys, hasn’t always been a straight line.
Yet I’ve lost count of the number of people who have confidently explained my own Judaism to me.
Especially while dating.
More than once, I’d describe myself one way, only to have the man across the table correct me.
“You’re not dati.”
“You’re masorti.”
“Don’t say you’re dati.”
Imagine that.
Someone I’d known for an hour suddenly felt qualified to define my relationship with Judaism better than I could.
At first I found it amusing.
Then I found it fascinating.
Because who decides?
Is there a committee?
A checklist?
At what point does someone graduate from one label to another?
Is it based on what you wear?
Whether you drive on Shabbat?
Whether you keep kosher?
Whether you pray every day?
Who you vote for?
How many mitzvot you’ve kept this week?
Israel has developed an extraordinary vocabulary to describe its Jews.
Chiloni.
Masorti.
Dati.
Dati Leumi.
Charedi.
Litvak.
Chassidish.
Each word can tell us something.
But somewhere along the way, they also began convincing us that they tell us everything.
See someone wearing a knitted kippah?
We think we know them.
See someone in black and white?
We think we know them too.
My son knows exactly what that feels like.
Today he dresses in a white shirt, black pants, a black kippah and payot.
To many people, that’s enough information.
They’ve already written the rest of his story in their minds.
What they don’t see is that he served in the IDF.
They don’t see the years that shaped him.
The questions he’s wrestled with.
The choices he’s made.
The life he’s actually lived.
They see the label.
Not the person.
And I wonder how often we all do that.
Not just with religious labels.
With political labels.
Social labels.
National labels.
We decide who someone is before we’ve been curious enough to find out.
Maybe labels were created to help us understand each other.
Instead, too often, they’ve become permission to stop trying.
I keep coming back to one thought.
When God looks at us, I wonder what He sees.
Does He see chiloni?
Masorti?
Dati?
Charedi?
Or does He simply see His children, each trying to find their own way toward Him?
I don’t know.
And perhaps that’s the point.
As I sat on my mirpeset this morning thinking about my son’s question, I realized something.
I never really answered him.
Not because I couldn’t.
But because I don’t think a single word could ever describe the person he is.
Or his sister.
Or me.
Or any of us.
Perhaps the better question isn’t, “What kind of Jew are you?”
Perhaps it’s, “Tell me your story.”
Because somewhere inside that story is everything a label could never tell me.
