Are you Jewish?

The Jewish Festival of Sukkot has just ended, leaving me wistful for a few reasons. One, it means winter is lurking just around the bend. Two, we have to take down our sukkah, which I love like I loved my cousins' backyard "Fort Apache." But most of all, because it means we leave that special time when any Jew is Jewish "enough" to shake a lulav.

Brooklyn puts the divisions among Jews on display in full color. Drive on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway past Williamsburg and you will see Ultra-orthodox men in tall, furry hats and black overcoats crossing a pedestrian bridge overhead, apart from their wives and numerous children. Pack a picnic in Prospect Park and you will see tattooed, tongue-pierced Ultimate Frisbee-playing Jews eating ham sandwiches on Shabbos. There are many shades in between, but for the most part, the religious and non-religious Jews of Brooklyn mostly look at each other as if through panes of glass, such as when the private charter bus shuttles orthodox Jews from Williamsburg to Borough Park at blinding speed. I watch them pass me on Prospect Park West, feeling myself an earthbound muggle among wizards on blazing broomsticks. And feeling a bit judged, as if contact with me might sully their purity.

But during the 8 days of Sukkot, something unique happens. Rather than maintain their customary separation, young men in black fedoras and overcoats can be seen approaching strangers everywhere -- on the train, in the park, outside Starbucks -- offering a long grassy bouquet and something like a lemon. They speak to women, even women in tank tops like myself. Always their first question:

"Excuse me, are you Jewish?"

As if it were a Yes-or-No question.

The first time this happened, Jordy and I were on the subway. Two Hasidic men asked Jordy first. We assumed a kind of racial profiling, not to mention sexism and evangelism, so Jordy politely said, "I'm not interested." A few days later, though, two young Hasids approached me outside the public library as I pushed sleeping little Duncan in a stroller. They were very young, pimply, and eager. I was touched. Out of context, people don't assume I'm Jewish. I was glad to be asked. And I was curious to explore this ritual, one that begins with a lovely prayer of thanks for bringing us to this moment - an unlikely one in my life for sure. So I said, "Yes."

But what I wanted to say was, "How much time do you have?"

And then I wanted to tell them the story of how I became Jewish, a tale years in the making and by no means finished. I was sure they didn't have years to spend with me -- in fact, I knew the spell that bound us would be broken in just 8 days -- but I would have liked to compare the paths that brought us to this moment when we claimed, together, to be Jewish. I would offer them just these trailer moments:

* me, age 12, sitting in Hebrew classes in Hanover, New Hampshire with my best friend Anna Roland, the daughter of Brooklyn Jews with socialist tendencies who inspired me with their vision of Judaism as a religion that had moved "beyond belief in God"
* my mom and Dad, two goy refugees from the New York country club suburbs, on vacation in Israel in 1965 - why?
* my mom, age 7, passionately in love with a little boy named Johnny Kaplan but advised by her mother that "people need to stick to their own kind, for the sake of the kids"
* mom again, age something like 30, post-divorce, being told by her shrink that she has a "Jewish soul" (By that logic, if my mother is a Jew trapped in a shiksa body, can I claim to be, spiritually speaking, born Jewish? ;-)
* me, age 7, gluing macaronis on Christmas tree ornaments
* me, age 11, in my small New England town reading THE CHOSEN with fascination at such a foreign world
* me, age 14, baking Challah for a school project about "other cultures"
* me, age 16, writing my first piece of fiction about a daughter of Christian Science parents who wants to go to Medical School
* me, age 18, in various Humanities seminars at Stanford agreeing vigorously with Freud that "God is a projection of the father figure," with Marx that "Religion is an opium of the masses," and with Nietzsche that "God is Dead" while watching with sympathy as my poor classmates of faith crumbled under the challenge to their universe.
* me again, age 19, alone on a dark cold night in rural Japan. Writing letters to friends and family back home that reflected the unraveling of everything I thought I knew. Lots of darkness. A letter back from friend Elizabeth to the effect that I was "going places" she couldn't go with me. And from my Dad suggesting that there are contradictory paradigms of reality that one might go crazy trying to reconcile, with recommended reading: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
* me again, age 20, at a Zen temple, eyes half closed, contemplating the possibility that "I" do not actually exist.
* me, still 20, on the Tibetan plateau, spinning the Dharma wheel at a Tibetan temple, contemplating the possibility of reincarnation, or at least the limits of my material view of reality and gingerly giving credence to people who seemed at the very least to have a deeper understanding of their own minds, if not Reality.
* me, still 20, back in Japan before boarding a plane for LA, my sense of myself pulverized and fearful of how I would put the pieces back together.
* me, age 21, having abandoned my pre-med major in favor of the Humanities where I found stories and art that touched on the other realms of reality - or at least human experience - that spoke to me.
* me, age 22, in Mississippi following a love affair with the fiction of William Faulkner. In a Bible study group, eager to plumb the roots of my own tradition better, arguing in very un-Southern-ladylike way with my faithful classmates.
* me, age 23, choosing to have an adult baptism while conferring with Jesus on the side that, while I believed he was a son of God, I actually believe all people are a mix of divine and mortal and that I hoped he was cool with that. One might conclude that I am a joiner, and so I probably am -- I have always found I am pushed further when I jump in than when I watch from the sidelines.
* me, age 24, commissioning a Menorah by an artist in the Mississippi Delta for my boyfriend, one of two Jews from Enid, Oklahoma (the other was his brother). I had our initials cut into the metal. I have always wondered whether he got my initials cut off after we broke up and he married someone else, or just threw the thing away?
* me, age 26, now in San Francisco, clapping and crying at Glide Church. Flash forward two years and I am now up with the gospel choir - among gays/lesbians/bi & transgendered/and a few straight people, blacks/whites/asians/etc., dot.commers and homeless, Christian/Jew/Muslim/Yogis/agnostic, etc.
* me, all ages, in downward facing dog, seeking inner peace/strength/flexibility, etc. through the Yogi philosophy du jour.
* me, age 30, now in film school in Los Angeles. Filming everything from faked car crashes to faked love-making everywhere from borrowed mansions in Chicago to crack alleys in downtown LA, trying to capture essential truths through constructed realities.
* me, age 31, back in touch with childhood friend Jordy Green, now in London. It started with a very vivid dream in which I was wandering the snowy roads of New Hampshire at dusk. I couldn't go home until I found Jordy, and I couldn't remember his long international phone number. Ours is a much much longer story, but let's cut to the chase: August, 7, 2001 I boarded a plane to London to go find out whether our on-again off-again friendship of years had grown into more. I believed I would know when I saw him at Heathrow Airport, and I did.
* me and Jordy, 31, in London, at orthodox Shabbat services at "Cool Shul" with Rabbi Pini. Then later, at Pini's home with delightful wife Sabine and their kids, candles everywhere, lots of cranberry & vodkas, Shabbat dinner. Split frame: Pini at the table telling me Judaism discourages conversion// Pini later, in the kitchen, telling Jordy to marry me and not to worry about the Jewish part because "she can just convert"
* me, lightheaded from my first Yom Kippur fast, looking at the sun setting over the Santa Monica hills on the phone with Jordy, still in London but getting ready to move to LA.
* us, engaged, drinking wine and eating challah until we made ourselves sick, every Friday night without fail.
* me, producing film THE SHABBOS GOY, entering, through fiction, into the bedroom of an Orthodox Jewish couple pained by their infertility and learning on a movie set how to "kosher" a chicken.
* me and Jordy, searching for a rabbi who will marry a Jew and non-Jew, and being rejected by all - even reform rabbis.
* us, age 32, married in a field in New Hampshire by a renegade former orthodox cantor. Our families roasting in the August sun as the ceremony goes on & on. A rabbi would later tell me we are still not legally married, but we disagree.
* me, age 35, pregnant, at Dohány Synagoge, deeply moved by the place and the history.
* a month later, in classes at the University of Judaism in LA, my life and my home becoming more centered in Judaism. Preparations to convert come with my belief that identity evolves. And - as un-American as it sounds - we do not construct it alone. There is a negotiation, and this is OK.
* a few more months, October 2004. I am big as a house with baby. The Red Sox have just won the ALCS. I go before the Bet Din to answer questions such as, "What is your favorite Jewish holiday?" and "Do you promise to raise your children as Jews?" These questions are easy.
(OK, way too many moments to fit in a trailer.)

But before the mikvah bath that will immerse me (and unborn Duncan) and certify us as MOTs (members of the tribe), the harder questions -- "When did you realize you had a Jewish soul?" and "Do you swear to abandon all commitments to other religions?"

To which I smile and offer answers with lots of footnotes, which I justify as some evidence of Jewishness itself.

To be Jewish, as I understand it, is to wrestle with God - the literal translation of the name "Israel." I wrestle with God, but I experience divinity daily. The story of Judaism is one of seeking continuity within change. This too I do. I will never have my friend Anna's beautiful dark corkscrew curls, my friend Mike DeWitt's sense of humor, or my in-laws' taste for Tongue. I will speak Hebrew with a bad accent, get lost in the Siddur on High Holidays, and continue to love mayonnaise and pastel colors. I will not give up my yoga practice or visiting the churches of my loved ones and finding inspiration and beauty there (though I have no hesitation giving up Christmas). I will continue to find art and love the bravest of enterprises, as they lead us into the infinitely specific experiences of being human. Is my soul Jewish? Are not our souls, if anything, beyond categorization?

But Judaism is and will remain my home base. The tradition gives beautiful form to the weeks and seasons of my life and my family's life. It reminds me to sanctify Time when it would otherwise spin by in a tangle of emails, laundry, and playdates. There is no end to what I want to learn about Judaism - from modern Hebrew to the history of Israel to Kabbalah. Living Jewishly pushes me, makes me ask more questions, and introduces more tensions, than not. A stringed instrument depends on tension to make music. I cherish Judaism with the freedom of one who has chosen it, and I practice it with the grateful enthusiasm - and imperfection - of a new immigrant.

We return to the library where my bewildered young Hasid friends listen, Lulav slack in their hands. Next time I will ask, "So, how about you? Are you Jewish?"


********
Watch the kids shake it at the Sukkah party:

Shake Your Lulav from Samantha Davidson Green on Vimeo.