The Importance of Support

Being Jewish was always something I felt like I was in the abstract. I had a different culture than most people, I celebrated different holidays, I had a different native country, my family spoke a different language. I was different, sure, but not in any way that mattered.

Otherwise, I’m just like every other American. I celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks. I stay up late on New Year’s Eve watching the ball drop on TV. Unlike many Jews, I even celebrate Christmas: my dad grew up Christian, so we decided to maintain the tradition from his side of the family. Being Jewish never got in the way of these things.

When I told people I was Jewish, I was sometimes met with confusion, but rarely with hate. In fact, it happened so infrequently that I can recall each individual instance.

This is why I was so shaken when I heard about the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue. I didn’t understand how this man could look at a bunch of people who celebrated our holidays like he celebrated Christmas, who had a native culture and history like other Americans might be Irish or Norse, but who were also American citizens just like anyone else, and decide we must be eradicated off the face of the earth.

How do you look at my family on Rosh Hashannah, smiling and laughing and passing around a brisket like many families would pass around a honey ham on Christmas, and decide that “all Jews must die”?

I don’t think I can hope to know, but I was scared nonetheless.

I personally am relatively safe. I go to a different synagogue which doesn’t happen to be in a Jewish neighborhood, and I only go on high holidays when they have a decent amount of security. Everyone I know personally, even those who go to the Tree of Life, is okay. But though that diminishes the fear for the personal safety of those I know, it doesn’t do anything about the more general fear I have for my people.

If you’re a member of a majority culture, you may not understand the strong bond between members of a minority one. Try to think of it as if all Jews are members of the same extended family. (Technically speaking, with Jews in particular this is actually true; you can only become Jewish by marriage or by being the child of a Jewish family, so all Jews are in some sense related.) So, though nobody I knew personally was killed or injured, many members of my extended family were. And that feels pretty awful.

There is a light in the fog, though. It’s the reason I decided to write this essay, as opposed to many others I could have written around a similar topic. And that light is the fact that a lot of people, all of them goyim, have been asking me questions like these.

“Jen… are you okay? I mean I know you weren’t in it but… anyone you knew?”

“Hey, you okay? Cole mentioned you live near Pittsburgh.”

“Is your family safe?”

I’ve never had so many people asking after me before. It was really nice to know that so many people cared. It helped me to realize that, in the words of my skating coach, “Those who hate are a small percentage of the country. The people who love are so many more in number and power and we will always win in the end.” Just because one man thinks that I shouldn’t exist doesn’t mean that everyone thinks that.

This is the importance of support. And it’s not just about mass shootings that make national news; it’s about every crisis, big and small. If you ask one simple question, “are you okay”, you can lift one straw off someone’s breaking back. You can make their day that much more bearable. If you ever question whether or not to reach out to someone going through hardship, do it. Reach out.

It really does help.

Why My Rabbi Asked, “Who Here is an Atheist?”

One morning in autumn many years ago, I was sitting in synagogue with my family. My granddad used to drag us there when he came over for the high holidays. Most of the service was spent on ritual prayers and readings in Hebrew, so I wasn’t paying much attention.

That is, until my rabbi asked a very odd question. “Who here is an atheist? Please raise your hands.”

I blinked in confusion as I watched the hands go up around me. From my vantage point (standing on top of the chair so I could see when the rabbi blew the shofar, which was always my favorite part of every service), I could see that maybe three-quarters of the synagogue had put their hands up.

Seeing the hands of my family raised around me as an indication that it was socially acceptable to do so, I put mine up as well. None of us had ever really believed the God stuff, after all, but I’d always thought we were a minority in this respect. Evidently not.

The rabbi nodded. Though his speech has eroded in my memory, it went something like this. “Faith is a tool to be used towards the goal of doing good deeds. If you wish to use that tool, you may; though I see many of you are not in need of it. But all of us must remember that it is just a tool. If you have all the faith and love for God in the world, but you are cruel to your fellow man, you are not a good Jew. You cannot fall into the Christian trap of worshipping the tool in absence of its purpose; you would not praise a hammer except for its ability to pound in nails.”

I came away from this with the realization cemented in my mind that Judaism is not fundamentally a religion. It is fundamentally an ethnicity and a culture.

If Judaism were primarily a religion, it would have some pretty major problems. For one, Jews aren’t allowed to proselytize: that thing that Christians do where they try to convert you to Christianity, we can’t do that. Nowhere in our holy books does it say that you’ll go to Hell if you’re not a Jew. And the reason for that is another reason that Judaism wouldn’t work well as a major religion: converting to Judaism is really hard. The two main ways of converting are marrying a Jew and being adopted by a Jewish family.

If you look at Judaism as a culture and ethnicity that simply arose from a religion, though, these things make sense. The quality of “Jewish-ness” is within my family, within my bloodline, and unless I choose to marry or adopt you (either of which would add you to my family), I can’t convert you.

Further, all Jews have what’s called right of return. Since I have it, I would be able to immigrate to Israel and gain Israeli citizenship if I wanted to, because it is my homeland, albeit indirectly. This right couldn’t exist if Judaism were much of anything besides an ethnicity.

Because Judaism isn’t primarily a religion, being a good Jew is the same thing as being a good person in general: be kind, don’t break just laws, have good morals, etc. Again, this makes pretty intuitive sense: we can’t be judged against our faith, so the only thing we can be judged against is our morality.

By contrast, when you have an actual religion (I’m going to use Christianity as an example, but I’m not picking on Christians; many religions work this way), there tends to be a problem with morality. A good Christian is someone who puts their love of God first. But sometimes, people tack “to the exclusion of all else” onto the end of that sentence, and the religious leaders don’t seem to mind. Actually, frequently the people who think that way are the religious leaders.

As a result, you have a lot of Christians (some of whom I’ve met) who say they follow Christ, but who seem to have completely missed the whole “love thy neighbor” thing. They were praised for their faith instead of for being a good person.

But, as my rabbi said, you shouldn’t praise the tool in absence of its purpose. Don’t praise faith in absence of its ability to help you be kind.

Explain Your Culture

I answered a lot of questions about culture growing up. As an American Jew, my culture was a minority, so nobody really knew about it. They didn’t know what I believed, what foods I ate on what holidays, what purpose those foods or those holidays had within the culture, etc.

Like many people in minority cultures, I was always happy to answer these questions. My family has had several non-Jews over for our holidays over the years, and when our goyish (informal term for non-Jewish) guests inevitably ask questions about the rituals or foods, we tell them. Once time I brought in kosher macaroons to work for Rosh Hashanah and I got to explain both the holiday and the concept of kosher.

These are highly informal and easy explanations. Our goal isn’t to proselytize—Jews aren’t allowed to proselytize anyway, but even if it was allowed, that’s not our goal so we wouldn’t do it—our goal is simply to educate. For example:

“This little funny hat is called a yarmulka, and men are supposed to wear it to bring them closer to God. Women don’t need to wear them because the ability to give birth brings us closer to God.”

“We prepare these foods because they’re culturally significant, or just because we like them. But we need to make sure that if we make something just because we like it, that it follows our dietary rules for holidays. Those rules are called kosher.”

“Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish new year. Our holidays run on a lunar calendar, not a solar one, so they shift around on the Christian calendar. And the current Jewish year is 5779, because our years don’t start from the birth of Jesus, they start from the birth of the Jewish race.”

Christians in America have it completely the opposite way. They can practically assume that their culture is ubiquitous, which has a lot of implications.

If your culture is ubiquitous, you never have to explain your holidays. You can just presume that people know about them. You can talk in depth about highly specific issues with just about anyone, because you can presume they have the necessary cultural background. Every business closes its offices in observation of your holidays.

To help my American Christian pals understand what it’s like to not be a cultural majority, consider this.

Imagine you had to ask your boss for time off to celebrate Christmas, which he has never heard of. Imagine driving over an hour to get to the only church in your area, when at the same time there are three different synagogues within a two-mile radius of your house. Imagine your entire culture decides to make Labor Day into a huge celebration, because you’re all sick of not doing anything while the rest of the country celebrates Rosh Hashanah. (This is exactly what happened with Chanukah. It’s actually a very minor holiday that American Jews made into a much bigger deal because they wanted something to do at Christmastime.)

Unless you decide to move to a non-European country, you’re probably not going to experience any of this personally, but that’s fine. There’s nothing inherently wrong or right about being a member of either a majority or minority culture.

There is, however, one thing that members of majority cultures could learn from members of minority cultures: an attitude of explanation.

Growing up Jewish, I never really understood Christianity. Not for any lack of Christians around me, for a lack of Christians around me who were willing to answer questions. People in majority cultures aren’t used to answering simple questions about their culture; if I asked who Jesus was, people would look at me like I’d just said I’d never heard of toilet paper. In their eyes, I’ve just said I don’t know about something they thought was both ubiquitous and completely impossible to live without. By contrast, however, I’ve had a ton of people ask me who Moses is.

Similarly basic question, different culture.

But if every member of a majority culture has this attitude, then the small percentage of the population that wasn’t raised with that culture is left out of the loop. They didn’t learn about the culture growing up, and they never will.

So, the best thing to do if you’re a member of a majority culture is to be willing to answer questions. Even questions that seem like they ought to be obvious.