The Accidental Jewess
Mar. 5th, 2004 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quietannso, the topic of Judaism, one's background, what one thinks of the various sub-species of Judaism, etc. has come up. And I have been thinking about this a lot lately, so here is my core-dump about Judaism.
First: my dad is a Christian; my mom was Jewish. I didn't consistently self-identify as Jewish until I was over 30, though I think it was always in the back of my mind that I was. Like a lot of kids from intermarriages, I went to the UU church as a kid, and then later on (late 20s to 30 or so) belonged to and attended UU churches.
Second: My beliefs are agnostic. I don't *know* if all this religion stuff is true, so in general I view it as a curiosity. The only time this is not the case is when someone else tries to convert me to their religion, or lack thereof. One of the nice things about being Jewish is that I don't feel compelled to believe in G-d; it's OK to be not sure.
Third: #2 has not stopped me from certain observances. Ben and I don't belong to a synagogue, and don't want to. Most Friday evenings, we light candles and say the shabbos blessing. At Ben's request, I restrict my diet during Passover, and I don't bring "high trayf" food into the house, or eat milk and meat together there. And I am aware that "maybe I really shouldn't do this" when I do either of those things outside the house. We have mesuzahs on our doors; I occasionally even touch them as I go in or out. I try (and usually fail) to fast on Yom Kippur. When my mom died, I sat shiva (though not in the full observant sense) and led the Kaddish prayers at her memorial service. OTOH, while she was dying, I got absolutely furious with a Conservative rabbi sent to us by the hospital who said all kinds of terrible things because we were, at mom's request, going to have her remains cremated and scatter the ashes on one of her favorite mountains.
Fourth: I am sensitive to anti-semitic slights, get really pissed off at Holocaust-deniers and their ilk, and think that Israel should exist as a Jewish state. (However, I do not like how the current Israeli government is doing things... they are getting dangerously close to committing the same acts of oppression on the Palestinians that the Nazis committed on the Jews. The Palestinians are not blameless here, not at all. But. enough said about that...)
Fifth: Southern California (where I grew up) is a weird place to be religious. People either seem *very* religious (to the point of fundamentalism), or vaguely religious in a new-agey sense, or not religious at all. This is as true of Jews as anyone else. It is very different on the East Coast. My mom (see below) was very impressed with how connected my Jewish friends are to their religion, regardless of observance level.
Sixth (and most important): My mom's parents were working-class Jews from Warsaw, and the men always were tradespeople in the general community. They didn't segregate themselves from non-Jews (except as required by secular law and custom, e.g. living in the Jewish ghetto). There are, AFAIK, *no* rabbis in my ancestry. To say that my grandparents were lax about observance would be too mild a statement. When they moved to Springfield, MO (home of the Assemblies of God) before my mom was born, and my mom's older sisters wanted a Christmas tree because their friends all had them, my grandparents got them one. My mom babysat for an observant family when she was a teenager, and mixed up all the milk and meat dishware, because she had no idea that these things needed to be kept separate. Her first Passover seder was with this family. But, to my mom and her family, there was no question that they were Jewish. My mom resented it, as a child, when the neighbors told her she was such a nice girl, "just like a Christian." To the best of my knowledge, my mom received little if any Jewish education. Her parents did belong to a synagogue for a while, but my grandfather dropped out because he thought all the members were "crooks" (businessmen who took advantage of their customers, especially the Christian ones), and as a business owner himself, he didn't want to associate with people like that. I would have to say that overall, my mom's impressions of other Jews were fairly negative; as a very sensible person, she saw a lot of the traditional observances as annoying and superstitious, and the people who followed them often "holier than thou." e.g., after her mother's funeral, she got bawled out by a rabbi for helping set up the house for visitors rather than sitting shiva. She thought the rabbi was ridiculous. So I picked up on a lot of her negativity about Jews.
Seventh: I have a cousin who is Orthodox (baal teshuvah, not sure how to spell that). He and his brothers got the usual track of Reform Jewish education until Bar Miztvah. He was drinking himself to death until he "got religion," and I am glad that he did. I was the person who came to his defense when his mom and my mom complained about how difficult it was to accomodate his needs. Would they have preferred that he be dead, rather than alive but "weird"? His religious belief saved him, and who am I to question that?
so... I am, in fact, an "Accidental Jewess." That phrase came up after Ben and I met, and he revealed how importnant it is to him that his wife be Jewish. And I am Jewish enough for him, much to my surprise and delight....
First: my dad is a Christian; my mom was Jewish. I didn't consistently self-identify as Jewish until I was over 30, though I think it was always in the back of my mind that I was. Like a lot of kids from intermarriages, I went to the UU church as a kid, and then later on (late 20s to 30 or so) belonged to and attended UU churches.
Second: My beliefs are agnostic. I don't *know* if all this religion stuff is true, so in general I view it as a curiosity. The only time this is not the case is when someone else tries to convert me to their religion, or lack thereof. One of the nice things about being Jewish is that I don't feel compelled to believe in G-d; it's OK to be not sure.
Third: #2 has not stopped me from certain observances. Ben and I don't belong to a synagogue, and don't want to. Most Friday evenings, we light candles and say the shabbos blessing. At Ben's request, I restrict my diet during Passover, and I don't bring "high trayf" food into the house, or eat milk and meat together there. And I am aware that "maybe I really shouldn't do this" when I do either of those things outside the house. We have mesuzahs on our doors; I occasionally even touch them as I go in or out. I try (and usually fail) to fast on Yom Kippur. When my mom died, I sat shiva (though not in the full observant sense) and led the Kaddish prayers at her memorial service. OTOH, while she was dying, I got absolutely furious with a Conservative rabbi sent to us by the hospital who said all kinds of terrible things because we were, at mom's request, going to have her remains cremated and scatter the ashes on one of her favorite mountains.
Fourth: I am sensitive to anti-semitic slights, get really pissed off at Holocaust-deniers and their ilk, and think that Israel should exist as a Jewish state. (However, I do not like how the current Israeli government is doing things... they are getting dangerously close to committing the same acts of oppression on the Palestinians that the Nazis committed on the Jews. The Palestinians are not blameless here, not at all. But. enough said about that...)
Fifth: Southern California (where I grew up) is a weird place to be religious. People either seem *very* religious (to the point of fundamentalism), or vaguely religious in a new-agey sense, or not religious at all. This is as true of Jews as anyone else. It is very different on the East Coast. My mom (see below) was very impressed with how connected my Jewish friends are to their religion, regardless of observance level.
Sixth (and most important): My mom's parents were working-class Jews from Warsaw, and the men always were tradespeople in the general community. They didn't segregate themselves from non-Jews (except as required by secular law and custom, e.g. living in the Jewish ghetto). There are, AFAIK, *no* rabbis in my ancestry. To say that my grandparents were lax about observance would be too mild a statement. When they moved to Springfield, MO (home of the Assemblies of God) before my mom was born, and my mom's older sisters wanted a Christmas tree because their friends all had them, my grandparents got them one. My mom babysat for an observant family when she was a teenager, and mixed up all the milk and meat dishware, because she had no idea that these things needed to be kept separate. Her first Passover seder was with this family. But, to my mom and her family, there was no question that they were Jewish. My mom resented it, as a child, when the neighbors told her she was such a nice girl, "just like a Christian." To the best of my knowledge, my mom received little if any Jewish education. Her parents did belong to a synagogue for a while, but my grandfather dropped out because he thought all the members were "crooks" (businessmen who took advantage of their customers, especially the Christian ones), and as a business owner himself, he didn't want to associate with people like that. I would have to say that overall, my mom's impressions of other Jews were fairly negative; as a very sensible person, she saw a lot of the traditional observances as annoying and superstitious, and the people who followed them often "holier than thou." e.g., after her mother's funeral, she got bawled out by a rabbi for helping set up the house for visitors rather than sitting shiva. She thought the rabbi was ridiculous. So I picked up on a lot of her negativity about Jews.
Seventh: I have a cousin who is Orthodox (baal teshuvah, not sure how to spell that). He and his brothers got the usual track of Reform Jewish education until Bar Miztvah. He was drinking himself to death until he "got religion," and I am glad that he did. I was the person who came to his defense when his mom and my mom complained about how difficult it was to accomodate his needs. Would they have preferred that he be dead, rather than alive but "weird"? His religious belief saved him, and who am I to question that?
so... I am, in fact, an "Accidental Jewess." That phrase came up after Ben and I met, and he revealed how importnant it is to him that his wife be Jewish. And I am Jewish enough for him, much to my surprise and delight....
