How to Keep Your Jews Jewish

In 1986, I found myself in a place in life where I was "searching" for a deeper meaning. I was a junior in college, had great friends, pursuing a degree that greatly interested me, generally enjoyed life, but was finding something lacking.

I could feel parts of the inner me crying out for more.. something deeper... and I did not know how to fill that need. I grew up in a relatively secular Jewish household. My Grandparents, Gd rest their souls, were phenomenal people who helped build the congregation of Temple Israel in Natick, Mass (home of the beloved Rabbi Harold Kushner of When Bad Things Happen To Good People fame. I grew up attending High Holiday services at Temple Israel but did my Jewish education at Temple Beth Sholom in Framingham where I attended and graduated Hebrew School and became a Bat Mitzvah. I went on to enjoy United Synagogue Youth (USY), a high school youth group among Conservative Synagogues and had a strong Jewish identity. I served as a CIT at a Jewish Day Camp. I loved being Jewish.

When I moved to Portland, Maine my Junior year of high school, I no longer continued in Jewish activities because I found the Jewish community in my area at that time... a bit exclusive... and didn't much care for newcomers from Boston, particularly the second wives of the former husband of another Jewish woman in this small community. Thus ended my active Jewish life. Admittedly, it was my choice and my personal perspective and probably horribly misguided.

Even with all this background and education, I felt pretty uneducated and lacking in the understanding of how to live as a Jewish woman. I felt awkward around those who knew how to light candles on Friday night and lead minyons and grew up attending temple on Shabbat weekly. If i don't' know how to do something well, i don't like doing it at all. Maybe that is why I didn't pursue my Judaism further.

I wish to the bottom of my soul I had been able and willing to move past this feeling of awkwardness and gotten involved with Hillel or particularly Chabad during that time. Where I could have learned about how to be Jewish practically speaking.. and learned that Judaism can be experiential and life-changing and joyous. That, as a Jew, I was able to engage in a meaningful communication with Gd.

But I didn't.

Instead, I would ask my Catholic friends, dutifully on their way to Mass each week, to pray for me. I thought that their prayers would be answered. I had no knowledge or assurance that my prayers did more than hit the ceiling of my dorm room. I felt envious of their Solid Box of Faith. They knew their parameters and felt very comfortable within them.

Enter the exuberant lively loving-kind born again Christians. One woman in particular seemed very interested in becoming my friend. And, I give her great credit, she genuinely did. No strings attached. She wasn't a drinker, but she would come to my dorm room and have a single glass of wine with me to get to know me. She really did want to know me. And her enthusiasm for her faith was contagious. I asked a lot of questions. Anyone who knows me is nodding and smiling. Sheri of a thousand questions. I need to know it all.. every angle.. every perspective. She was involved with an organization called The Navigators whose purpose is essentially discipleship.. or bringing christians to maturity in their faith and being people to bring others to maturity in their faith. They were people of great integrity and treated each other and others with great respect and honor. I was pretty out there... loud mouthed opinionated party girl and they all loved me anyhow.

So this is how it happened. I wanted the peace of mind they seemed to have. I liked how the men pulled chairs out for women. I liked how they prayed and felt completely confident that someone was on the other end of the call listening. Their beliefs were life changing and seemed to make them better people for it. Thus far in my life, I hadn't seen anything like that and I wanted what they had... but please... can't I just have all that without the whole Jesus thing????

This went on for a number of months and one day I realized that I had decided I wanted in. Now mind you, I did NOT believe the tenets of their faith. I did NOT believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, was crucified and raised on the third day, was, in fact, God, and died for my sins. I didn't. I WANTED TO. But most of all.. I wanted the end product. I wanted joy and passion in my belief system. Hell. I wanted a belief system period. I wanted to have a two way dialogue with whomever i was praying to. I wanted to know i was being heard and was cared for. Born again christianity was the only vehicle I knew of to get me there. I vividly remember my thought process of rationalization. It went something like this:

"OK. Let's move past the 'did this happen'... COULD the Almighty have done those things if s/he chose to? Well.. yes. Then, if s/he COULD have.. they maybe s/he DID. Who am I to say???" and it was from there I was able to make the leap.

Don't let me mislead you. I do nothing half way. When I do anything, I do it 200% or I don't do it at all. Those of you who know me are nodding and smiling. I dived headlong into Christianity and learned the language and customs and rules. They were not easy for me. I loved to party, swear, and I surely loved sex. Wait until marriage? SERIOUSLY????? That part took a while to take root. But again.. let me not mislead you. I lived this life fully for a very very long time. Eventually this became who i was.

I moved to Oregon where I lost nearly all of who I was in the previous 21 years of my life and allowed people to shame me into shedding the traits that made me me. Outspoken and opinionated feminist woman? "Aww Sis, I can't wait to see how the Lord works in you.." (translation: I need to love you because you are spiritually family, but GOD ALMIGHTY would you refine this obnoxious woman already?????) I used to joke that a good christian woman was the Four S's. Sweet, submissive, serving and sedate. I felt I was none of those.

I would love to sugarcoat this to you and say i snapped out of it within 8 months and remembered who I was. I did not. I married someone who expected the S4 woman and I was dead set on being the best. I spent 18 years in Christianity and I gave it 100%. For those of you who have concluded i was never really a "real christian", you are wrong. I refuse to document everything here because frankly I would rather put it in my past. You are going to have to just believe that if anyone CAN be a Christian, I was one.

I left Christianity over a period of many years. I am going to document the process of what I call the "unraveling sweater" from the very first to the very last. The purpose of this blog is to explain WHY I went into Christianity. How a nice Jewish girl from a good Jewish family... an educated headstrong woman with a Jewish education could become a B.A. and for so very long.

And that is why I am titling my blog "How To Keep Your Jews Jewish".

Living in Eugene has shown me a side of Judaism I never grew up with. Nobody here resembles the Jewish people I grew up with. The main synagogue here was reformed (I believe) when I first moved out here but is now Reconstructionist. I grew up in Conservative Judaism for my education and "Conservadox" Judaism for my social and High Holiday experience. Big differences.

I began visiting synagogue (where I grew up, we call it temple) while I was still a Christian occasionally. The people leading the services used bongo drums and played guitar and many people were as enraptured by the liturical singing as any charismatic or prophetic church I had ever gone to. Eventually I met other Jews who passionately loved Gd and their Judaism and lived it out in such a way that made me just as "jealous" as the BA's in college did.

And since then I have learned of the Renewal movement in Judaism that i still know very little about.. where there is great joy and excitement in services. Dancing and singing and hand raising even. SERIOUSLY???

WHERE WAS ALL THIS WHEN I WAS SEARCHING??????? Why is it that evangelicals can sweep up all the spiritually hungry people and I totally missed out on the chances to discover this in my own religion??? I feel robbed and deeply regretful. If i could change my path, I would do so in a heartbeat. My regrets are deep and painful.

You cannot imagine how difficult this is for me to "come out" about my past in a foreign religion when i have tried so very hard to keep this quiet and firmly IN my past for the last ten years or so. WHEN my Jewish colleagues and friends read this, and I fully expect them to, I will lose credibility and will bring suspicion on myself. They will probably believe me to be a closet Messianic. I am not. I just am a painfully honest person who cannot stand to be anyone but who I am and I would rather have people hate me for who I am than love me for who I am not.

Now, my ability to pursue a spiritual life is tainted by a christian world view and experience and I feel crippled from enjoying an experience in my own religion with my own people resulting from so many years in a foreign religion that i never felt remotely at home in. Everyone knew i was the Jewish one and, be it because of my Jewishness or because of my New England isms, I have never ever fit in. Not even a little.

So I guess my point of this blog is to encourage my Jewish family: Conservative, Ultra Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist, Renewal, BuJews, whatever you are.. "evangelize" your own. There are deep spiritual needs of many and they should not have to go outside their faith to satisfy those needs. We need to together make Judaism vibrant and relevant and welcoming to our own. I know now this is possible and there are options. Unfortunately I now have to find a way to detox my world view and the extremely destructive things I learned over those 18 years and to get certain cult like leaders out of my head and heart to be able to move forward as a Jewish woman who can unfold spiritually and be who I was meant to be in whatever form I choose.. but within the confines of my own people.

When I graduated Hebrew School in 8th grade, i expressed an interest in "Hebrew high" but had no mentors or role models to help me along that process. I dropped the ball. OH how I wished one person in that synagogue had taken me under their wing.. I was bright and promising.. but in a poor single parent family... and steered me in the right direction. OH how I wish someone would have told me about Birthright (if it existed back then) and connected me practically to my roots. OH how i wish that Chabad and Hillel had actively sought out Jewish Freshmen at my enormous University and followed up with us helping us to find a Jewish home at college. OH how I wish the first time I tried to visit temple in Eugene at the High Holiday services the first year I moved here I hadn't been accosted at the door by a woman demanding i write a check for a donation or I would not be allowed in. That was truly my turning point away.

I have three people in my life now that turned me home during my questioning period.. during my unraveling of the sweater. If not for those three people, I am not sure where I would be today. The first of those three people, Rivka, had the holy unique calling of finding all the Jews hopelessly lost in the churches and messianic groups and bringing them out and back into the Jewish community. She was mistrusted and misunderstood (and still is), but I can say with all assurance that if it were not for her audacity, tenacity, and shameless outspokenness, I might still be lost in the foreign religion. She found me and told me "this is NOT Jewish and I can bring you back to your people and help you re enter your community again."

Years later when I was well on that path, I met two Jewish men who embodied passion for Judaism and Gd in their own unique ways and showed me it is possible to be exuberant and passionate and be Jewish and that finished me off.

I don't know where to go from here. I am trying so hard to find my way. I am terrified of organized religion and letting anything rule, ruin,or order my life ever again. And yet there is still that hunger still in my spirit for something more.

(photo of my beloved Grampa and me on the day of my Bat Mitzvah)