Being a Jew is Complicated
The weird experience of being a 21st century Jew
Content warning: I will, with reluctance, be touching upon the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. If this is an upsetting topic for you (as it is for me) you may wish to skip this story.
Es ist shver tsu zayn a yid.
Or as we’d say in the new country, it’s hard to be a Jew.
Less hard than very hard these days, mind you. I’d label the difficulty we face now as more confusion than anything else.
Being a modern Jew is about constantly being unsure where your culture ends and you begin… and possibly not liking the answer.
I’d like to give you a taste of some of the weirdness you get to think about when you’re a 21st century Jew. It’s a more nuanced and odd position than non-Jews might expect. And yes, I will be using the term “Jew,” as often if not more often than the term “Jewish person,” even though…
The name of my identity is also a slur
And I kinda feel like it shouldn’t be? Right?
When you grow up in the special education system, as I did, you’re sometimes told not to let your disorder define you: I am not “sp-ed,” I have special needs. And whatever, I can appreciate that.
