This is about me

My complicated relationship with Judaism and how watching so many turn their back on Jewish people, has simply reinforced that it is MY people.

I've been walking around in a complete fog the last few days. “This isn’t about you, Sarah,” I tell myself, when I consider sharing my feelings, but then I read another post or another article condemning the Jewish people or the State of Israel and something hits me in the back of the head, “This is absolutely about you.”

I’m terrified for my immediate family in Israel, but I am starting to be afraid here too. Here, in Northern California, the home of Harvey Milk and the Grateful Dead and progressive views. Where just yesterday in a one block radius, I saw two different groups fighting for LGBTQIA equality and protecting BIPOC voting rights. 

What I did not see was anyone standing up for all of the Jewish lives we are losing. I even had an uncomfortable exchange at a restaurant right in the heart of the city, where I questioned if the person mistreated me because I look Jewish. 

I’m not even entirely Jewish. Like most family relationships, it’s complicated. My mum’s side was English and Irish and she converted to Judaism when pregnant with me. But truth be told, I always found organized religion stifling. I was dragged kicking and screaming to Hebrew School and services on the high holy days. My favorite “joke” (cringe) was, “I got my Bat Mitzvah money and was out.” 

When I was 17, my parents divorced and in what seemed like a matter of hours, my mom came into my room with a big moving box that said “Jewish Stuff” on the side. She didn’t sit on the edge of my bed and lovingly talk me through each item. She all but shoved it into my arms and ran away from me, like it was a ticking bomb (this metaphor is not lost on me). I had no interest in opening it, nor even keeping it, but there was something comforting about seeing her handwriting on the side, especially after she died, and I carried it from starter apartment to starter apartment with me. When I met a “nice, Jewish boy,” as were my last words to my grandfather, I happily handed him the “Jewish Box” when we moved in together for the first time. This isn’t mine.

I opened the box for the first time just before our wedding. It had been fifteen years since it was first given to me. I coldly sifted through the Hagdalahs and sterling silver challah platters, ready to toss the whole thing, but when I saw what each of these talismans meant to my husband, I realized these were more than just dusty old things. 

My husband’s family had escaped the Soviet rule in the late 1970’s because Jews were being persecuted and practicing Judaism was illegal. The word “Jewish” was stamped onto your passport as a black mark. You weren’t even worthy of being a citizen of your own birth country. You were simply “Jewish.” The items in the box meant something to my husband, because his own parents weren’t allowed to have them. These same items I was tempted to toss into a dumpster every time I did a spring cleaning, were treasures for Jews in other parts of the world. 

Even though we had a Jewish wedding and my son’s were blessed by a rabbi, I have continued to feel on the outskirts of this faith. I resist when people invite us to Shabbat dinner or a Passover Seder, but when my eldest started attending a Jewish preschool and coming home singing songs and re-teaching me about traditions I had long forgotten, it warmed my heart in a surprising way. 

Still, it wasn’t surprising enough for me to want to host any Shabbat dinners or start going to Synagogue. When we pulled my son from that school, my husband deeply mourned the loss of the Jewish education. Yet, I felt nothing. “I’m not even really Jewish,” I find myself telling anyone who will listen. “He is the one who’s devastated,” I gesture to my husband, “He is the Jew.” This isn’t about me.

I’m going to be totally honest here, until this week, I knew very little about Israel or Palestinian relations. I knew there was conflict, but I didn’t know the details. Or maybe I did at one point? Maybe, I locked my entire Jewish education in a box in my head, not unlike the one my mom handed me, and disregarded it as junk?

My husband had hoped to revive my Judaism this Spring when we would travel to Israel for my niece’s bat mitzvah. His brother, wife, and two kids moved back a few months ago to make Aliyah. He was excited to teach me and my two biblically named boys about “our people’s history.” I only half-listened to our Zoom planning calls and waved my hand dismissively when asked if we wanted to go to some of the holiest sites. This isn’t about me. 

And then this weekend happened. I won’t even recount the horrors as I’m sure you have read every detail or seen every video already. My immediate stance was to stand up for peace. For human life regardless of ethnicity or faith. It felt so very “us versus them”. This isn’t about me. I just want peace. All life should be valued. Then the posts and the texts and the emails kept coming (or not coming in the case of most major organizations), and I saw more videos. Some I can never unsee of Jewish women just like me, Jewish babies just like my children, slaughtered, mutilated. I also got to see a video from my beautiful nephew and niece who are just trying to be kids, while simultaneously trying to comprehend that they now live in a war zone.

The more I read “you people” or saw the deep-seated anti-Semitism seeping through the cracks, it began to feel very personal. I started to receive and send texts to my Jewish friends in all of my different communities. This mom group here, that mom group there. That one yoga teacher. That one member Al-Anon. All of us collectively feel the same thing: why aren’t more people standing up for us? Why aren’t more companies saying anything? Why do I feel like there has been a significant death in my family, even though we are two degrees from any of the losses as of this moment? How is the world just continuing on normally?

Because this is absolutely about me. 

I can deny and resent my Judaism all I want, but when pogroms start happening and fingers start pointing, I am no different than my Jewish family or friends. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t stepped foot in a temple in over a decade. To the world, I am Jewish. To my friends who are lost and alone and afraid and needing support, I am Jewish. 

To myself, I am Jewish.

This is about me.