Tale of Two Shtetls
I’m a very bad Jew. What I mean is, despite fitting the arbitrary but universal definition of Jewishness by having a mother who’s part of the tribe, my religious ethnicity is a fluid, vague ambivalent entity I’ve struggled to make sense of with varying degrees of interest since I first sat around with my family watching Fiddler on the Roof. My mom is a Sephardic Jew from Egypt and my dad, a Greek, anti-religious zealot who blames all the world’s evils on man’s tendency to bow down before various and sundry temples of hypocrisy. To complicate matters, when my parents immigrated to the New World, they brought many old world customs along with them ‚ in my mom’s case, a habit of religious self-denial.
Other
In fairness to her, being Jewish in post-colonial Egypt meant second-class citizenry, so the less people knew, the better. Once she settled into a Waspy North American suburb, she kept her religious identity a secret, describing her ethnicity variously as “French” or “Greek.” To this day, I’m sure close childhood friends don’t know (and mostly don’t care) that I’m a boychick. Once she was assured that there would be no pogroms ravaging our middle-class suburb, she was too embarrassed to fess up, and the fiction continued. Holidays meant the Christmas tree prominently displayed in the living room, while the menorah burned privately in the kitchen.
I remember bringing home a form from high school once, which asked me to fill in my religious affiliation. The choices in those pre-PC days were Christian, Jewish and Other. Feeling it was probably none of the school board’s business, I was instructed by my mom to pick Other. After my friends caught a glimpse of my form, it became a running gag for the next couple of days as they labeled me with every obscure religious affiliation they could think of. But really, religious persecution has never been a part of my world.
“Are You Jewish?”
If you walk along Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg on a Friday evening, there’s a good chance you’ll be approached by one of the Hasidic men in a dark overcoat, hat and shaggy beard ‚ asking “are you Jewish?” to anyone who looks vaguely Semitic. My first instinct is to lie or ignore him the way I would any other street vendor hawking anything from Greenpeace to used blenders, But I feel as if I’d be lying to G-d, so reluctantly I say yes. He goes into his spiel like a used car salesman: “You wanna get mitzvahed? It only takes five minutes.” I pass up the offer, but later wonder how administering a five-minute ceremony to a complete stranger brings either one of us spiritual fulfillment. He invites me to his temple with the promise of food and alcohol.
I find out later he’s part of the Lubavitch sect who have a small family-run temple called Chabad House above the mini-mall (right on top of a store that sells G-strings and bawdy greeting cards for the hisperati.) For this growing Hasidic sect, it’s all about getting Jews closer to God and they are duty-bound to bring as many as they can into the fold, even if it’s only for a few minutes at a time.
Tin-foil Menorah
I decided to pay the Chabad House folks a visit on a Friday night. As I approach the door at the end of the hallway of apartments, I feel the same mixture of intimidation, cynicism, guilt, suspicion and fascination that always accompanies my visits into temples of any kind. I’m greeted by a young woman named Esther dressed in 19th century garb, but otherwise sounding as urbane as any other young Brooklynite. She stirs a soup with boulder-size matzo balls and sets the table for the evening’s dinner as she talks to me. She expresses disbelief at my ignorance of all the Jewish customs and her words are tinged with a kind of pity, the way someone reacts if you tell them you’ve never heard a certain band or seen their favorite TV show. As she talks about what she and her husband do and the wide spectrum of people they pray with, my mind begins to wander, as it inevitably does when faced with such extreme piety. I notice her piercingly blue eyes, how perfect her white skin is and how real the wig she’s wearing seems. I wander around the room, which calls to mind a modestly funded community center. There are silver menorahs made of tin-foil pasted against the window and cartoon images of devotion on the walls, along with the inescapable portrait of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson‚ the movement’s last rebbe, who some believe is the Messiah set to return one day.
A plastic screen separates two sets of metal folding chairs where the prayer services will take place. For the ultra-orthodox Hasidim, men and women are kept separate when communicating with G-d. I ask Esther why the Lubovitchers are the only ones who actively recruit members. “Oh, that’s just when we need 10 people to make a minyan,” she explains to me innocuously. Kind of like getting quorum at a meeting, I think to myself. Later, I find out that proselytizing is indeed a big part of their schtick, but first I have another temple to visit.
That same night, I take a cab uptown to the B’Nai Jeshrum synagogue at West 88th Street. Founded back in 1825, this world-famous temple is at the other end of the religious spectrum. It’s a notoriously hip congregation, which offers all the things the orthodox approach doesn’t. Inside, I find a standing room only service already in progress within a gorgeously ornate interior. The service is rocking along to an organ-infused beat and feels like a sequel to Jesus Christ Superstar. For a brief moment, I’m in bliss. Far from being separated, teenage boys check out the girls standing around and whisper comments to each other even as the congregation bow their heads in prayer. The one-hour service runs the gamut of emotions, from quiet mournful humility to unbridled aisle-dancing celebration.
A rabbi riffs on the RNC’s “Rambo-style militarism,” makes a plea to get out the vote and introduces a couple of pre-teen girls who thank G-d for everything from Popsicles to warm puppies. While I’m initially transported by the spectacle, by the end of the hour, the experience is marred by having to listen to an assortment of spoiled Upper West Side brats tugging at their mom’s Anne Klein skirts. And I’m left wondering if it’s not all so much Bourgeois pretense — a kind of spiritual tax paid by those in the Upper Manhattan echelons. As I leave, I’m given an invitation for a Jewish online dating game for 30-somethings.
Hoping for a counterbalance to the spectacle, I return to Chabad House and find a locked door. I look up from the street and see a dark figure in a round fur hat hunched over a religious text.
“You look Jewish”
I think those times when I identify with being Jewish — seeing an Israeli athlete win the nation’s first Olympic gold medal, I feel pride swelling up despite myself… News reports of Jewish citizens slaughtered on buses fills me with a irrational urge to take up arms and defend a homeland I’ve never even visited. On the other hand, if someone tells me I “look Jewish” I’m offended and vaguely insulted.
The thing is, I don’t believe in God. But I enter synagogues on holidays and do some version of praying. So what is it I’m worshiping? Recently, I did a ceremony that involved being slapped by palm fronds amid the bustle of human traffic outside a midtown library. I felt both ridiculous and elated. If my mom had witnessed the scene, she would have been bursting with pride, while my dad would have been appalled at such an archaic spectacle — and they’d both be justified. The attempts at communicating with God I encountered were sort of desperate and hypocritical, but they were also beautiful and confusing and ridiculous. And maybe most importantly, the only link with a rapidly diminishing past.