A term is often used to describe those Jews who do not attend Shabbat services every Friday or Saturday (or both). Who do not find themselves acting out any religious pomp and circumstance any time during the year, except during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and ten days later, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.
The term is High Holiday Jew, derived from the High Holy Days that demarcate this time.
It is a common practice, a colloquial way of claiming a lack of religious behavior, yet it applies to many Jews. Myself included — for a time.
Much of my life growing up, my family attended High Holiday services at the same synagogue, the same scratchy theatre seats, beige carpet, and high ceiling. The procession of events at these services never changed. The prayers, pianist, cellist are always the same, trapped in time.
A good amount of stress was put into what I might wear. A dress, typically something conservative, picked from a department store shelf.
Without fault, I could not feel dressed right — always too casual, or too fancy, or too frumpy. The other girls in their sage or pink tulle, perfectly straight hair held back with a bow, little white cardigans — they were perfect, and I was outside. The congregation was white, and I was not — not entirely.
Like most children, I didn’t revel in sitting for two hours and reciting words I didn’t understand. I dreaded it and prayed only for something to sway my grandmother from insisting we go, but the obligation was always cemented, and I would attend. I would smile and play pretend.
And I would try, clawing at the pages of a siddur, reciting the words with my whole heart, but I would feel nothing. This connection that tethered Jews to this place, this ritual, eluded me. Even being a High Holiday Jew, I could not do right.
For most of my life, I have lived with this contradiction. I grew up going to a secular Jewish school, and I loved it, I loved my friends. I rarely felt out of place, as long as I did not consider that none of my classmates looked like me. But classes about Adam and Eve were a bore, and weekly prayers were useless.
I sat at holiday dinners, Seders, and enjoyed the tradition — not the prayers or lack of bread at the table, but the people and their laughs. The way golden light from a dining room chandelier made them look.
In a synagogue, it was always the little things that stuck. The way the sun shines through stained glass windows. The silver decorations on a Torah. How all rabbis speak with the same intonation as if they all took the same public speaking class in college.
I lived in images but never belief.
It has taken me years to acknowledge and fully accept that I may never feel the connection other Jews feel. The tears they shed on Tisha B’Av, commemorating the destruction of the two temples, the invisible connection to Israel, the feeling of belonging in a synagogue community — I will never feel it.
I am a schizoid Jew. An apathetic Jew.
And yet I am still Jewish. My lack does not make me lesser. Only I know what it means to choose how I want to be religious. I will not let it be prescribed for me. I write and swallow the pills myself.
Food during the holidays makes me smile. Latkes, matzo balls, jelly-filled doughnuts. I enjoy having conversations about faith with people, Jews, yes, but those of other faiths, and I can offer the Jewish perspective. The Holocaust and acts of anti-semitism strike a chord, and I feel the sadness.
In many religions and their sects, we have decided collectively that there are specific ways to be “part of.” These rituals and practices are fine and dandy. But their gilded sheen wears when you feel nothing in the act and are blamed for this failure or made to feel lesser.
One cannot fake a connection, and pretending is maddening.
Instead, let us define these terms for ourselves. Let us come to religion on our own, in our way. Medicine shoved down the throat might ease pain, but the memory of how it got there stays permanent.
I’m sitting at the table, and we’re passing around plates of brisket and potatoes. My aunt and grandma tell stories about synagogue politics in the old days, and my uncle laughs as he leans back in his chair. I am a little Jewish girl, and the schizoid part is dormant tonight. This memory goes down easy.
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