Judaism and Me

When I was young, my family used to go to synagogue a few times a year. I really liked the tradition and singing the familiar tunes and feeling like I was a part of something bigger than myself. I also had a strong friendship circle there. I went to Hebrew school for basically my entire childhood and, while teachers varied from great to horrible, my classmates and I became very close. We went to each other's B'nai Mitzvot, planned youth group activities together, and had so much fun attending regional dances and conventions. I have wonderful memories of dressing up in costume for the Purim carnival, going to Junior Congregation every week and hoping I would get to have a part in the service, and taking the annual "walk around the synagogue" during the High Holidays. Several of my Hebrew school classmates have kept in touch and are still my close friends. So for me, Judaism always felt like a strong community that I loved belonging to, even aside from the religious part of it.

Around my Bat Mitzvah and shortly after, I became much more invested in the religious side of Judaism. I was very active in my youth group, regularly attended Shabbat services, and even read from the Torah at services. I thought that I might go to seminary and become a cantor, because I loved singing and I loved Judaism, so why not combine the two?

Then I went to liberal arts college. It's such a cliche to go to college and lose touch with your religion, but for me, it made a lot of sense. My college professors taught me to challenge the ideologies that I had previously accepted without question. I learned to think critically and challenge hegemony. Faith began to seem flimsy in the face of logic. Organized religion started to look creepy instead of comforting, and the existence of a higher power seemed less and less likely. I certainly tried to hold onto my religion in college. I went to the hillel welcome picnic and to services a couple of times, but I didn't feel the same sense of community that I had come to love in my synagogue. Some other Jewish students who felt the same way invited me to try services with them at a synagogue pretty far from campus, but at that time, I was already drifting away from religion.

Judaism is really wonderful if you're part of the in-crowd, but I have found that it thrives (like many religions/social groups/etc.) on exclusion. There are the "members of the tribe" and the "gentiles," and a clear differentiation between the two. At my confirmation at age 16, the rabbi gathered my whole class together and told us that if we did nothing else right in our lives, we should be sure to marry someone Jewish. I remember learning in Hebrew school an incredibly biased and one-sided story of the creation of the State of Israel. Our curriculum basically ignored and denied the common humanity that we share with Arab nations, painting these people as a faceless "enemy." Of course, I completely understand that there is a long history of violence, oppression, and marginalization in Judaism. But my liberal arts education taught me that there are at least two sides to every conflict, and that labeling people as "the other" may help to build a sense of community among a group, but it will never lead to a healthy relationship between communities.

My sophomore year of college, I discovered feminism. I mean, I knew it existed before then, but I had never really studied it or been passionate about it. Over the last seven years, I have embraced feminism, and I've found that it fills a lot of the same needs for me that Judaism used to. I feel a strong sense of community with other feminists, a sense of belonging to a larger cause that is inclusive of others and supportive of all communities in the struggle against oppression. I definitely still feel culturally connected to the Jewish community, but it feels a little weird to me now to be in a group of predominantly Jewish people and be welcomed as "one of the tribe" (sometimes in those exact words). While I do identify as Jewish, it's a complex part of my identity that I struggle with a lot. I used to know what Judaism meant to me, but now I'm not quite sure. I don't know what to expect from my upcoming trip to Israel, but I'm sure that it will change my relationship with Judaism in some way. Whether it will clarify things for me or make everything more confusing remains to be seen.