Being a Jew vs. performing Judaism

Scene 1: A family prepares for Shabbat on a Friday evening. Special candlesticks are taken out of the cupboard (which also houses ritual objects for holidays), special wine glasses set on the table, and the challah covered. The family recites blessings over each: candle-lighting, wine, and bread. The floor in the adjacent living room is covered with Jewish children's books and toys. Perhaps as they eat, they discuss the weekly Torah portion that they'll be studying at temple the following morning.

Scene 2: Another family on Friday evening. Mom makes dinner with whatever ingredients are found in the refrigerator and when all is prepared, she sends word around the house like a game of telephone. "Dinner's ready." It's unlikely that blessings will be recited - there isn't any challah, anyway. But there will be wine and heated conversation, though not about Torah.

I'll spare you the annoyance of guessing which family is Jewish, as I suspect you know where I'm going with this. Both of these families are based on families I know. The first, a couple and their daughter who Ilan and I met in California, recently invited us over to celebrate Shabbat at their house. The mother and daughter have already converted to Judaism, and the father is well on his way - all drawn to the religion after time spent with Jewish friends who have a belief system and are part of a religious culture that seems to suit this couple better than anything they grew up with. The second family, of course, is Ilan's. They have a Jewish matriarch and all of the children were raised Jewish. Dosage-wise, they've been my model Jewish household for the past two years or so.

Both families are Jewish, either by choice or by birth. But Ilan's family doesn't HAVE to choose. They ARE Jewish. And the first family HAS to choose, because that is exactly what MAKES them Jewish.

I was discussing these two families with my Jewish therapist recently (seriously), and explaining what I've heard already from so many Jews: Converting is great and all, but only born Jews really "get it." My therapist likened conversion, in this sense, to drag, and the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with her. How does one "perform" Judaism? In the same way that my femininity - complete with short hair, a jeans-and-tee-shirt uniform, and often unshaved armpits - is perceived by most to be more "authentic" than the femininity of a born-male in high heels, big hair, and lipstick, why is the Jewishness of a Shabbat-loving convert less authentic than that of a born Jew who may not believe in God and only goes to services on high holidays? Is my vagina that important? Or a bloodline? And can you imagine what a cagefight would look like between my vagina and some symbol for Jewish bloodlines? Feel free to submit artistic interpretations.

I welcome thoughts on if and how it could be possible for a Jewish convert to be Jewish without having to perform. If you're Jewish, is telling people enough to make it so even if you rarely perform the associated rituals? Especially in reform traditions, is being Jewish a "feeling" that you either have or don't have? Is it a personality trait? How can Jewish converts overcome the very real handicap of not being born Jewish? Help!

The more you know...

"The more you know, the more you know you don't know shit."
-Ben Folds

At age sixteen I knew that I was pretty much all set and couldn't get any more knowledgeable when it came to dating and my future. (Let's be serious, though, who doesn't know everything at sixteen?) I've always hung around Jews, growing up in Haifa, Israel, and then emigrating to Brookline, Massachusetts, affectionately known to some as "Baruch-line." My default setting, so to speak, was to be around Jews. To date within the community or the "tribe" came as naturally to me as the guttural sounds of Hebrew or blowing out the Channukkah candles and screaming "Happy Birthday!" at the top of my lungs.

I've heard quotes like "You can't help who you fall in love with." Or "That's just how the Matzah crumbles." I wrote these off since I already knew everything about J-dating. I even had a couple discussions with friends about dating within the tribe, and my philosophy was simple: "If you fish in the salmon pond 100 percent of the time, you can't possibly come up with a barracuda or a swordfish." (Yes, I did once use this analogy in conversation.)

So how did we get to this moment? The one where I am now contributing to a blog created by my non-Jewish girlfriend? This is the 20,000 shekel question. Could it be that a year of intensive Hebrew study and cultural immersion in the Land of Milk and Honey led to a burn out and subsequent need to go to the opposite extreme? Could it be that after 23 years of living as a Jew and approximately 7 years of dating Jews, I needed something completely different in the form of a girl from another world? Could it be that my usual salmon and lox lost it's usual appeal? (All metaphors aside, I just the other day told Rachel that lox were one of the few things I still salivate over now that I eat mostly plants, but that's another story.)

*****

Some of us will always go fishing in the salmon pond and that is that. Some of us may go have a taste of swordfish and say, "Well, that was delicious, but I don't think I'll have that everyday for the next 25 to 60 years." Some of us are pretty indiscriminate about who we date when it comes to religion.

So did I go looking for something new and found it? No, and then yes. When I met Rachel I had zero intention of even going down to the pond that day (okay, metaphor finished), but we found each other anyway. I was skeptical at first of even considering dating someone who wasn't Jewish. I thought, what's the point of dating someone now if I know I'm going to marry someone else later? How can I fully invest myself knowing she's not Jewish? I put those questions aside long enough to find out that some connections don't fall within what we're used to, or what we're brought up with. This became apparent when I found myself walking miles and miles out of the way of my house, or even hers, to continue our long conversations about everything.

Although I do think that in some ways our relationship grows regardless of my Jewish identity, at the same time I think our personalities match so well because of the values and traits I learned and inherited within my family and the larger Jewish community.

I'm 25 now and looking back nearly a decade, I can see how naive I was at age sixteen. I'm glad I can now say I know everything there is to know about dating. Really though, Ben Folds said it best:

"The more you know, the more you know you don't know shit."

Shalom out,

Ilan