Failed ambitions I have many.
I can't stomach sake, and I can't play the guitar, and I am not a runner.
I quit being vegetarian, I can't speak another language, and I don't knit.
This is cool, but I didn't make it.
I did not grow up to be Pocahontas, which was my dearest wish at the age of five. Speaking of children, my own watch TV. Also, I'm not Jewish.
Bizarre as it may sound, something about discovering The Diary of Anne Frank amidst the sad, sad swamp of middle school flipped a little switch in me that, for the longest time, turned The Chosen People into My People. Please understand: I never truly set out to be a Jew. I never tried to convert, nor did I embark upon the serious study and reflection such a decision would require. But the history, rituals, and bravery seemingly so endemic to the Holocaust narratives I devoured were extremely compelling; I couldn't imagine not hoping to have been born into them.
At the age of eleven I'd never given a thought to Christian mysticism or the millions of dedicated religious who stepped out of society at large to devote their lives to Christ, but I became a weird little fount of knowledge on the tenants of Orthodox Judaism, and Hasidim in particular. I probably couldn't have recited all Ten Commandments, but I knew all about the elements of halacha. "Why are we always talking about the New Testament?" I grumbled once to my parents in the car on the way to church. "The Old Testament starts with the Torah, and that's what Jesus grew up with, isn't it? Shouldn't it be more important to us?" I read about Messianic Jews and decided they were either crazy or absolutely brilliant. Judaism and Jesus-- two great tastes that taste great together! What's not to like?
Except, uh...how does that work?
It was only much later, as a college student, that I realized this sort of idealization for the essentialism it was; just the sort of philosemitic cherrypicking that's repeatedly been so destructive to the Jewish people. As Adam Kirsch points out in his review of the book Philosemitism in History, "Ideologies deal in abstractions, and to turn a group of people into an abstraction, even a 'positive' one, is already to do violence to them." Important and sobering. My intentions, though, were good, and my Jewish friends humored me. One boy's mother assured me that if not for my height, my nose and hair would be enough to let me pass in synagogue. Though I cringe to imagine the now-forgotten conversation that must have preceded that statement, I have no problem remembering that I felt thrilled.
Here's the deal, though.
The problem-- which is not a problem at all-- has always been Jesus. He's just really hard to shake, and believe me, I've tried multiple times. During that whole doubting/disillusioned/drifting period of my twenties I tried to just up and stiff him with the check, but he kept hanging out in the hotel lobby smiling patiently by the fish tank.
...which is next to a Pub! Well played, Jesus. Well played.
Up I'd zip to this floor or that, hopping off to explore the spirituality of yoga in one room and Buddhism in another, and eventually Unitarianism, but I kept needing to check in on him and he persisted in always just patiently being there until one day I decided that this whole thing had descended into artifice, grabbed his hand, and walked with him out into the bright sunshine. (It both was and wasn't just that easy.)
I was recently asked what made me commit to the church after so many years adrift, and my knee-jerk reaction was that it was conceiving Eva. It's true that preparing to become a parent adds a sort of "shit or get off the pot" urgency to most things in life, and I was eager to feel more settled into my relationship with God, but it wasn't that simple. It was more that with pregnancy, I removed the blindfold from my eyes and realized that Jesus was hanging around for a reason. He loved me. I couldn't find that core of love in anything else, and I couldn't say I hadn't tried. It was time to be honest with myself.
Here's something I would say to people experiencing the sort of doubt I had then: how does that strike you? Forget all the trappings of church and denomination and politics and childhood experience for a second, and ask yourself this: has there ever been anything about the story of the life of Jesus that you find appealing? Anything about which you say "That sounds nice" before you hit the "but" that drives a wedge between you and the first sentiment? I'll say that while the love is what grabbed me and made me stay, it was the kick-assery of how Jesus dealt with the moneychangers to which I repeatedly returned. He got mad, he yelled, and he knocked tables over in public. This man was an activist, and he was pissed off, AND he was divine? I could get behind that. Furthermore, he hung out with the dregs of society. He was serving the people that, when I looked around the borders of my own life, I knew I needed to be serving, too, so that made sense to me. So I reached out a little in a tentative, exploratory sort of way, and God immediately reached back, and I retreated, and we danced that dance for a while until I stood up to be counted, but the main point is that I think that's an OK way to start. Small. After all, that's what God did-- made himself small, in the form of a man, so that we could relate to him and understand him and ultimately hand him all the ugliest parts of ourselves. Which he accepts, and forgives.
Jesus. He's the Jew that convinced me to be a Christian, though it took me a while to get there. And while some part of me will always be thrilled when I spot a mezuzah on a doorpost, I'm more excited right now to be exploring the nooks and crannies of the faith into which I was born and, eventually, voluntarily embraced.
This post was originally published August of 2012.
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