The Lubavitchers are out in force; it's coming on to Shavuot, and they're stationed by the subway at Grand Army Plaza.
My grandmother always used to say, "I feel sorry for anyone who's not Jewish." She and my grandfather were fiercely dedicated and faithful. They were founding members of their temple in Sacramento. At her funeral last week, I heard much about this: how they literally helped build the temple, arriving with shovels, my grandfather laying down linoleum; how they went to Europe to get the temple's first Torah, which was rescued from the Nazis in Czechoslovakia; how they did the same for the temple we joined in King of Prussia, PA, giving them their first Torah (also a rescued Holocaust Torah) on the occasion of my sister's bat mitzvah; how every Sabbath the bimah would be decorated with flowers from my grandmother's garden; how she loved to dance when the Torah was carried through the temple.
If it weren't for my grandparents, I wouldn't be Jewish. Of course that's true in an ethnic sense (my father was brought up as a Methodist) but also in a religious sense. My sister and I were brought up faithless, although we always attended church with my father's parents and temple with my mother's parents. The family story -- almost a myth at this point -- is that when I was 8 and my sister was 11, we decided that we wanted a religion, and my mom took us shopping, going to different religious services, and we eventually decided that we wanted to be Jewish. I don't remember any of this. I do remember before that, a took a small metal cross from my grandma's church -- they had a basket full of them, they said G O D horizontally and L O V E vertically -- and I carried that around like a talisman for a while. It felt good, having it in my pocket, like it would protect me. Mom found it and asked "what's this?" I was embarrassed; I don't remember what I said. Not long after that, we joined a temple.
I've always been conscious of Judaism as a choice, that we very easily could have become Unitarians. (My parents were going to a Unitarian church for a while; my sister was even christened.) It's lent me a certain perspective on the relationship between religion and faith. That religion brings you close to your faith, not the other way around.
I pass pretty easily for a gentile. My father's blue eyes, my now even-more-preppy-sounding name of Everett-Lane. When abroad, I'm mistaken for English or Irish. Debbie's aunt once said to me, "you look so -- American!" Usually when I tell people I'm Jewish, they're a bit taken aback. So when the Lubavitchers ask me if I'm Jewish, I usually say "no."
There are a lot of Jews who can't say "no" to that question. There are others who are, or have been, forced to say "no" to that question. I think about them. I think about the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe. I think about Israel, and why I've never been there, and the hard choices about survival. And I think about my grandmother.
So this time, I said "yes."
| Family | Essays |
