Yesterday I was asked a question that has since stirred quite a bit of reflection about my sense of my own Jewish identity. The question was: “what is your first Jewish memory?” My first instinct was to scan my mental data bank for childhood images of Shabbos candles, a seder, first day of Jewish day school etc.  Within seconds though I realized that something about my search for an answer didn’t feel right. It hit me that what was presenting the challenge was the assumption that subtly underlay the question; that is, the notion that one’s experience and/or memory of experience can be parsed out into categories and then labeled Jewish or non Jewish. The logical corollary of the question is that there is ‘non’ Jewish memory. At first glance, the question might seem straight forward enough. But when I had to actually answer it, it inevitably brought up the more fundamental and difficult question about what is Jewish? and what does being Jewish mean to me? What quickly became clear, which I now realize is a prominent theme in the blogs that I have written, is the idea that for me being Jewish is not something that I experience as separate and distinct from other aspects of my life or identity. It informs my sensibilities and world view, and as such, is one of the central lenses through which I experience the world.

So, in the end, I was unable to answer the question. For even if I thought broader, beyond looking for memories of obvious Jewish rituals, where would I stop broadening my reach? What about memories of my parents or Bubbie speaking to me in Yiddishisms? Does language fall within the realm of ‘Jewish’? What about the fond memories of my Bubbie’s food, recipes from the shtetle? Does food fall within what we consider Jewish? What about hearing talk about the ‘war’ and ‘Europe’ (code for the Holocaust)? When does history and politics count as Jewish? What about memories of earliest friendships, when all my friends were Jewish, and my neighborhood was Jewish? When does the social count as Jewish? For me anyways, the answer is that it is all Jewish.

Without doubt the highlight of the summer, if not the whole year, was our family trip to Israel. I have to admit, while I was looking forward to the trip the whole year leading up to it, I was also anxious about the logistics of traveling with three small children on an 11 hour plane trip, schlepping in and out of cabs, hotels, and restaurants, figuring the whens and wheres of ‘naps’, and contending with the heat on top of everything else. After having been there and back, I can confidently say that the heat, the schlep, the exhaustion and everything else was overwhelmingly worth it.

Like many Mom’s today, I was a bundle of nerves. My oldest started grade 2. No problem on that front, he went like an old pro. It was my middle child that I was worried about. It was his first day of a brand new school. He started Junior Kindergarten, and for the first time was going for a full day, instead of his usual 11:30 pick-up and then lunch with mom. I tried not to show my nerves and put on the bravest and most excited face I could muster. He seemed nervous but ok. When it was time to say goodbye though, the tears welled up and he could barely eke out a ‘mummy, please don’t leave me here’. OY!!! For any mother who’s been through this, you know how heart wrenching it can be. I spent the rest of the day anxious and wondering what my baby was doing at every moment. I counted the hours until I could go pick him up. Unable to wait it out to the bitter end, I caved and went 45 minutes early so that I could peek into the classroom and observe him. (OK, ‘spy’ on him … you mothers know exactly what I’m talking about). I envisioned him clinging with tears to the teacher, breathlessly waiting for signs of the days end and for him mummy to reappear.

I just watched a PBS interview with Abigail Progrebin (yes, daughter of Letty Cottin) talking about her book Stars of David: Prominant Jews Talk About Being Jewish.  I got sucked in right away because the topic of the book is something that has long fascinated me – the construction, experience, and expression of Jewish identity in North America. I should state at the outset that I have not read the book, so this in NO way pretends to be a book review, but rather my reaction to Progrebin’s discussion of the themes that she explores in the book and the kinds of conclusions she draws within it.

She explains that of the many people she interviewed, ranging from entertainers like Dustin Hoffman, Joan Rivers, Steven Speilberg, and Larry King, to US Supreme Court Judge Ruth Badder Ginsberg and feminist Gloria Steinam, the vast majority did not describe themselves as ‘religious’ or ‘observant’. Rather, one of the common themes expressed by the group is the strong ‘feeling’ of being Jewish, in a way that is detached from ritual or observance.

This is a sentiment which I myself have heard many times. It begs exploring, and is something to which I have given much thought over the years. It strikes me as amazing that we, as a people, with all of our diversity and wide range of observance, can (for the most part) agree that somewhere in our souls we feel Jewish, feel part of something bigger than ourselves, feel part of our history.  Its a feeling that resists definition. Surely part of what informs this feeling is the historical, political, and sociological fact of persecution and being branded ‘Other’ within outside dominant cultures. I would speculate though that the much larger part that is informing this feeling comes not from the ‘outside’ but from the wondrous wisdom and tradition within Judaism that has accumulated and been passed down for thousands of years.

This sense of feeling Jewish in the way that one operates in the world, in one’s sensibilities, in one’s world view, and in one’s core values, is something that many people feel in their gut, but lacking a foundation in Jewish knowledge, don’t necessarily know where it comes from or what exactly is grounding it.  I think that it so important that we connect our sense of feeling Jewish to an engagement with the tradition within which this feeling is embedded – however that engagement expresses, and it is unique to each person. In the absence of making this connection, what do we pass on to our children?

I just made my son a party for his 7th birthday.  Thanks to an incredible website called echoage.com, the party was environmentally friendly and socially conscious.   Echoage was founded by two Toronto moms who were frustrated by the excess and waste of the typical birthday parties that their children were attending, and the values and messaging that their children were absorbing  in the process. The two moms came up with a wonderful alternate. Here’s how it works. Through the echoage website, you email your invitations to all your guests (its paperless). The guests are then asked not to buy and bring a  wrapped gift to the party, but rather to make a modest contribution online, half of which goes to a charity of the birthday child’s choosing, and the other half goes towards the birthday child so that they can buy one meaningful gift.

After my son’s soccer party, it was so refreshing not to have to load up the car with a heap of gift wrapped presents, and then even more refreshing not to have a heap of barely appreciated gifts (because of the sheer quantity of them) and a ton of wrapping and toy packaging sitting on my living room floor.

What I love even more though are the values that are being  taught by making an echoage party – and they are completely consistent with the Jewish values with which I am trying to infuse in my home. First of all, from a mussar perspective, making an echoage party took my family, and all of the guests we invited to the party, out of automatic. Instead of just feeling uncomfortable with the excess pervasive in the birthday party culture today, we actually did something to call it into question, and generated much thoughtful dialogue amongst the many guests in the process.

One of the prevailing, taken for granted assumptions that was questioned in all of this is the idea that the birthday child is entitled to many gifts. So ingrained is this sense of entitlement owing to the birthday child, that in some rare negative feedback I actually heard one mom say that she would never do an echoage party because she didn’t think that it was ‘fair’ to her child to be ‘deprived’ of presents.  But the concepts of ‘fairness’ and ‘deprivation’ only make sense here if we are working from a very materialistic and egocentric starting point. This is not what our Jewish values teach us. Our Jewish values teach us that we do not exist alone and we do not exist for ourselves. Rather, we live embedded within relationships and community that are defined by responsibility and obligation to one another. Having the birthday child give half of their birthday money to tzedakah (charity) helps to keep the child mindful of this fact. Also, the idea of consuming less and reducing waste further helps to make the child mindful that we are all partners in our obligations to the planet. This too is a Jewish value.

In the end, there were still plenty of gifts from Bubbies and Zaidys, and aunts and uncles. To say that an additional eighteen from class mates would be excessive is an understatement. My son had a wonderful birthday, truly appreciated and enjoyed opening the gifts that he did get, and, in his own small way, helped towards saving the environment and giving money to an excellent cause.

After 12 years of marriage, the jig was up. The time had finally come to host my own seder.

During most of my married years I had usually flown to my in-laws, which was the central hub for my husband’s family to gather, as they are all dispersed. In the off years, usually when too pregnant to fly, my mother and aunt always split the seder two nights. Due to various circumstances, Pesach would be in Toronto this year, and after 40 consecutive years of my mother and aunt making seders, I thought that it was finally time to have the torch passed on.  Although I was excited, which is why I volunteered, I was also completely overwhelmed at the sheer size and logistical complexity of what I had undertaken. Because I do not spend most Pesachs in town, and even when I have I wasn’t making seders, I simply I had not accumulated the vast arsenal of dishes, pots, pans, etc that would be required to pull this off. “Matzah brai” or scrambled eggs on paper plates has always been a Pesach staple for us, and has suited us just fine thank you very much. I have to confess, the idea of turning the kitchen over full out sent me spinning into a fantasy on more than one occasion of picking up, turning the key, and taking the family to Cancun or Florida on one of those ghastly expensive “Kosher for Passover” holiday packages.

Well that didn’t happen – and I’m so happy it didn’t. These past days and weeks of list making, organizing, shopping, and then more list making, organizing, and shopping have been some of the most exciting, touching, and meaningful moments that I have shared with my children. We have pulled together as a family and been working as a real team. Everyone is delegated responsibility, even if that means my four year old schlepping all over the city to ‘keep mummy company’, help choose the brand new seder plate, or picking out his favorite Pesach treats at the grocery store.

While it’s wonderful to be a guest at someone else’s seder, there is something incredibly empowering about having the opportunity to run the seder in a way that reflects one’s own vision regarding both the style and content of the service; more specifically, in a way that reflects the values and lessons that one wants to pass on to their children. And so, while the seder will be neither at my mother’s nor my mother-in-law’s this year, but instead in my home, the passing on of the torch is so much more than being the one to make the chicken soup and matzah balls. Rather, the passing on of the seder torch is precisely what one of the central themes of Pesach is all about – the commandment to teach our children, to pass on memory from generation to generation, and to do so in ways that elaborate, add, and enrich. In conducting the seder at our house this year, my husband and I feel privileged, and humbled at the same time, to be adding another chain in the long link of Jewish history.

My 6 year old son recently had a PD day which fell on a Monday – the day of my weekly Torah class. I had initially assumed that I had only two options available to me. I could either skip my class and take my son on some kind of outing, or I could leave my son at home for a few hours with our nanny and his 1 year old sister. I really didn’t want to miss my class, and yet neither did I want to leave my son at home knowing that he’d probably get sucked into the dregs of TV. It then hit me that I could solve this dilemma by simply taking my son with me to class. This idea excited me to no end. I had always had fantasies about doing serious study with my children as they grew older, but I never dreamed that this early I might be sitting side by side with my 6 year old, Chumash in hand, both attentively listening to a class on Shmot (Exodus).

Anticipating that he might get bored after the novelty of it all wore off, we came prepared with a notebook and pencil crayons for him to draw. He sat quietly for the whole hour and a half of the class, busy with his drawings, and periodically gazing up at the teacher, taking in a little here and a little there.

In that moment I felt so incredibly proud to be a Jewish woman. To have the opportunity for my son to experience first hand the energy of a room full of Jewish women all gathered for the single purpose of studying Torah was thrilling. That it was a woman teaching who happens to be a brilliant scholar is the best example I could give him that women can not only be students of Torah but erudite teachers of it as well.

It was about ten years ago (I am now 36) that I discovered how exciting the study of Jewish text could be -from Torah and midrashim, to Prophets, to Talmud, to Medieval Rabbinic commentary. For me, text study has opened a door into an exhilarating, rich, multi-layered, and complex world of theology, philosophy, ethics, social justice, psychology, legal theory, and politics, from a Jewish world view. Text study, and the invitation that it brings to reflect upon, question, and actively shape one’s sense of what it means to be Jewish in the world, has played a large role in shaping my identity as a Jewish woman.

It is within this context that I want to relay a troubling conversation I had the other day with our Hasidic friends over Purim dinner. When we get together, they often ask: “So, what are you so studying these days”? In the past, we have gotten into chumash conversations, or conversations about Tanya. All was fine. This time it was different. I excitedly told them that I was studying women and Jewish law, and that we were tracing current halachot all the way  back through to their origins in Torah, and examining how the origin of the laws evolved to how they are practiced today. This of course requires study of Talmud. Now I know that talmud study for women in my friends’ community is not something that is systematically institutionalized. Nevertheless, I was surprised by the conversation that was to follow. Both the husband and the wife met my disclosure about what I was studying with great suspicion. Why, they wanted to know, would I be examining talmudic texts?  What was my ‘motivation’ in studying the mishnah or gemarah on an issue when we have the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law). Why look back? Was it simply for intellectual curiosity they wanted to know? Looking back, they insisted, would be of no help or value in determining how to practice a certain halacha today – which, in their eyes, took precedence over anything else.

Surprisingly, the wife vocalized even more suspicion and concern than her husband. Very bluntly, she warned, “if not done with the right teacher and the right motivation, what you are doing could be very dangerous”. “Dangerous”, I asked, “how so”? She explained the fear that people could inappropriately use the talmud to justify and legitimize changing current halacha and overriding the Shulchan Aruch in the process.

A lengthy conversation ensued, in particular about the value and importance of text study for women. The gist of their position can be summarized as follows: First and foremost, Judaism is about ‘doing’, specifically, about keeping the mitzvos. In the absence of keeping all the mitzvos (referring to people like me who do not live within a strictly halachic framework) spending time studying Talmud, for example, is more than just ridiculous, but is politically very dangerous with respect to where it could lead i.e. the potential questioning or undermining of the halachic system. To put it another way, my friends primary and indeed ultimate concern is the practice and preservation of halacha.  The way in which I was studying, they feared, not only didn’t ensure the practice of halachic Judaism, but potentially undermined it. Basically, it just didn’t make sense to them Jewishly. The husband put forward an analogy to help express this puzzle for him. He said, its like wanting to buy a car with all the best and latest technology, but not even having a driver’s license. Part of what was troubling to me about this conversation was that on a certain level something resonated with me about the argument. Yes, Judaism is about the doing. While study is at the very cornerstone of Judaism, at the same time, study must lead to action, or else there is something going wrong.

What concerns me though about my friends’ particular formulation of this problem is the approach to Judaism that rests at its foundation – an ‘all or nothing’ attitude. Basically, ‘you want to study Talmud or some obscure midrash, fine, first do all the mitzvos, then maybe we can talk’. It leaves little room for multiple expressions of our Jewish selves by creating an inside/outside dualism which pivots on the notion that there is only one ‘authentic’ way of being Jewish.

So, back to Jewish text study. Unlike my friends, I don’t want to get caught in what I see as the confining trap of looking at study strictly in terms of how it will refine my daily practice of halacha. This is far too narrow. Rather, I like to look at text study as a wonderfully open invitation. An invitation to delve into an ongoing, dynamic, and rich conversation, which has been going on for thousands of years, about the ways in which I can express myself as a Jewish women in the world. In short, an invitation to engage Jewishly in the world.

The other night my son was having a typical 6 year old moment. He was down on himself regarding an incident at school. In a sulking and defeatist manner he exclaimed that he just wished that the world was a perfect place, that nobody would make mistakes, and that everybody could just be happy. In response, I was just about to go into my automatic spiel about how we are not meant to be ‘perfect’, that we learn this in part through our examples of the matriarchs and patriarchs in Torah, and that making mistakes is how we are meant to learn and grow.  Something stopped me though. It was the reflexive response, but somehow it didn’t resonate with me in this particular moment. I felt I needed to shift perspectives.

What struck me about my son’s little tirade was the glaring absence of any sense on his part about the role of his own agency in the shaping of the world around him. This was a mussar insight. In the short time that I have studied mussar, that which has most impacted me is the idea of our incredible power as individual actors to shape our world, and the concomitant responsibility that attends this power. It is this insight that I attempted to convey to my son, in the best 6 year old language that I could find.

I offered to him a different possible way of seeing the world. Instead of seeing the things in your life that that you don’t like as ‘bad’ things that are happening ‘to you’, perhaps you could reposition yourself to the things that are bothering you, to perhaps understand them differently, and to think about the role you might be playing in creating and reacting to these things. I also, in Mussar fashion, tried to shift him away from an ego driven focus. It’s wonderful, I told him, to desire the world to be a better place. But I cautioned him that the desire cannot be motivated by him simply wanting it to be better so that it would be better for him. We talked about the concept of tikkun olam (repair of the world), how we are all interconnected, and that because of this interconnectivity he had the power to make huge differences in the world with seemingly tiny actions.

What sunk in? How much actually registered? Who knows? He’s only 6. What is exciting for me though as a parent, is that mussar is helping to give me another set of tools to inform the way that I mother. This is also exciting for me Jewishly. It underscores the fact that I express myself as a Jewish woman and mother, not in isolated moments connected to obvious rituals – like making a sedar, my son’s bris, or an infrequent trip to shul.  Rather, my Jewishness infuses and shapes the very way that I relate to the world.