Why I’m still Jewish: A manifesto

I feel like there’s a certain value in being born Jewish. Belonging isn’t a question and your loyalty is almost always unearned but copious. When you’re born into an ethnic group, especially a minority group, you cling to the other members like they are life preservers, even when ultimately you’re forcing each other to drown. I’ve always felt that way about being Black, as well. 

I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit in the 1980s where people of color were few and far between. When I ran into someone else with a dark complexion, it was a moment to savor. Do you go through the same things I do? Do you have the same feelings I experience? It’s an instant affinity that I can only compare to falling in love at first sight. It almost hurts, it’s so powerful. And when I first came across Judaism in earnest, I had that kind of a feeling. 

Of course, as an Oakland county private school brat I knew lots of Jews growing up. The good kind. Not too religious. They went to shul on the high holidays and for their kids’ bar and bat mitzvahs. And all of my Jewish friends vanished during the summer to a magical sleepaway camp. They had a secret language that they could read and peppered their conversations with colorful phrases like “oy vey” and “fressing.” 

I wanted to have that kind of relationship with the African-American community, but I was shut out. I was the daughter of an English teacher who had grown up poor in West Virginia and who had spent years trying to remove every last vestige of a southern twang from her voice. There was no way I was going to be introduced to code switching, the name for when Black people hop back and forth between standard English and African American Vernacular English / Ebonics. I often felt cheated of my heritage, even more so than when I discovered I was adopted with no way to find out about my birth family.

Then my ex-husband introduced me to the Downtown Synagogue in Detroit. We visited after a very uplifting but spiritually lacking Christmas Mass. As a non-Jew, I didn’t know the protocol called for the vast majority of the congregants to be fashionably late, so we arrived right at 8:30am, as advertised. Therefore, I had an hour and a half to speak with the rabbi all alone about what being Jewish meant. Looking back, I feel embarrassed by how little I knew about Judaism. 

To me, it was all about what Jews lacked. No Jesus, no Christmas, no Easter. No salvation from your sins. I asked the rabbi how Jews get saved, and he responded genuinely with, “From what?” Having dated many members of Pentecostal churches, it had never occurred to me that not being saved was an option. I mean, what if there wasn’t hell? What could I accomplish without the fear of a lake of burning fire waiting for me at the moment of my death?

The rabbi made Judaism sound like the logical choice. Yes, there were rules. But those rules were mostly meant to make things easier between yourself and other people. Many of the things that I had considered evil were not only neutral, oftentimes they were good. For example, early abortions — sometimes they were pikuach nefesh (necessary to save a life). It wasn’t just a black and white issue. Jews put thought into every action, every decision.

Eventually, I converted to Judaism under the Conservative umbrella. But even by the time I went to the mikvah, I was already pushing the envelope on how many mitzvot I could take on. My ex-husband and I walked 40 minutes each way to go to shul when everyone else just drove in from the suburbs. We kashered our home and refused to cook on Shabbat, while the synagogue served “magic eggs” at the lunches after services. It became clear to me about four months after my conversion that I needed to go further. So I started exploring an Orthodox conversion.

I’m not sure why it’s referred to as Orthodox instead of Orthoprax. Many Orthodox Jews don’t believe in Moses, or the beginning of the universe as described in Genesis. But they do what they’re supposed to anyway. And Orthodox Judaism encourages this kind of rote performance by way of muscle memory. Not that Jews don’t ask why. No, they ask and they argue over the rationale of rabbinical decisions to the point of abstraction. But regardless of whether you follow Hillel or Shammai, the vast majority of the time, the answer is, “Do it anyway!”

For almost a decade, I was happy with that answer. And then I got divorced and I saw the misogyny that was hidden in my religion. Only men can initiate a divorce in Orthodox Judaism. And this rule was considered practically inviolable. Of course, lots of other hard and fast rules had been changed or worked around in the thousands of years since Judaism first crawled onto the scene. But not this one? Why? Because it only affects women. Hundreds of women in Israel and abroad remain prisoners to their husbands’ whims. And the rabbis could be doing something about it if they thought it was important. They just don’t.

My disgust at the divorce process eventually led to me becoming secular. But it did not make me give up the descriptor of being a Jew. The thought process of logical decision-making will stay with me for the rest of my life. I often say that religions are based in myth, but Judaism is the closest to reality. And I have passed along my particular version of faith to my four children, two of whom have remained traditionally religious. Personally, I find it sad when different streams of Judaism clash violently. It should function like being part of any family. You may fight, but you’ll always have each other’s backs.