A New Week with Many Questions

This evening my fellow year in Israel students and I gathered at the HUC Jerusalem campus for a learning shabbat session and Havdalah.  We were there among many friends of HUC and a wonderful group of HUC alumni.  It was wonderful to have so many well wishes from HUC Alumni.  I truly feel part of a very special community.

The discussion session this afternoon was far ranging but centered upon how to teach about Israel.  Let me start by saying that I do not have any answers to any issues at this point.  I can only listen to facts, opinions, and interpretations and try to process all of that through my own lens.

Well, exactly what is my lens and why is it important.  My lens, I think, may be a little unique amongst my peers.  I didn't come to HUC by what I think are familiar routes.  Like almost everyone, I went to religious school and Hebrew school as a child, I had a Bar Mitzvah, but then, I checked out.  Essentially, for many years, I was what one might call a secular American Jew, or a dormant Jew.  I was among the unaffiliated.  If anyone asked me, I was Jewish.  But, I wasn't participating in the community.  I wasn't going out of my way to be Jewish.  I wasn't seeking any connection with the Jewish community.  The Jewish community was pretty easy to avoid.  In the US, Jews are only about 2.2% of the population.  I was too busy trying to catch up with the American dream to be bothered by my Jewishness.  Then I had a child and the whole game changed for me.  By that time, I was almost 30 years old.  I had missed the confirmation, the youth groups, the NFTY trips to Israel, the Birthright trip, the Jewish young adult groups.  Now I was reentering Jewish life as a parent.  I think I have made the most of it so far.  I'm not complaining.  It's just that my experience is different.

I come here knowing what it is like to be one of those unaffiliated.  I know what it is like to feel like I don't need anything from my Jewishness.  I know what it is like to choose to make a life with someone who is not Jewish, to intermarry.  I know what it is like to try to raise children in a home where grandparents come from two different faiths.  I know what it is like to be one of those people that are talked about as if they have made terrible mistakes in their lives, that they abandoned their Jewishness for something less meaningful, like they something lost.  On the other hand, I also know what it is like to walk through an open door.  I know what it feels like to be embraced by open arms, to be respected and loved unconditionally by my rabbi, by my congregation, by my Jewish friends, to be reunited.  I know how I got here.

And now, I'm here in Jerusalem to tell you that all is not lost.  Of all the flaws I could point to in my Jewish upbringing, all the things that could have been done better to ensure my lifelong, continuous active participation in the Jewish community, aside from all the non-Jewish life choices I made, I think I did okay.  I did marry a nice Catholic girl and we had a child together.  We both recognized that my Jewishness was central to who I am although I was not religious in any way at the time.  We chose to raise our child in a Jewish home.  We had another child.  My then wife even converted to Judaism.  Even though my ex-wife has now chosen a partner who is not Jewish, she and our children maintain a Jewish home.  I have an American/Israeli Jewish girlfriend, "significant other" as they would call her here, with two wonderful children as well.  So, I think, at the least, my +/- is at +3.  I think that's pretty good.  As a defenseman, I'd be pretty okay with that (a little hockey lingo there . . .  pick up a copy of The Hockey News and you'll get it).

So where do I go from here.  One of the things I think I heard today was a challenge.  The challenge is this . . . how do we reach outside our synagogue walls, outside of the group of people likely to walk through the synagogue doors on their own, in order to bring in those who may find meaning in an observant Jewish life?  How do we reach me when I was 18, 22, 27 years old and show me that Judaism has something meaningful to offer me; that I can bring meaning to my life and the lives of others through my Judaism?  How do we as a Jewish people keep someone like me from walking or drifting away, becoming that dormant Jew?  How do we bring them back if they end up there?  How does Israel enter into that process?

I don't know the answers at this point.  All I have, like most everyone else, is questions and my own experience.  I do feel that a large part of the answer lies in the centrality of Israel in Jewish thinking.  I think some of the answers lie in how I came to be here in Jerusalem.  I will spend some of my time here trying to answer some of these questions about myself, and I'm sure the rest of my rabbinate trying to answer them for the sake of everyone else.

Shavua Tov.