Episode 11 - David Ilouz
Podcast link: http://www.bronfmancenter.org/podcast/david
Introduction: You’re listening to Opening The Tent: Stories of Jewish Belonging, an original podcast produced by the NYU Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life. Our guest today is David Ilouz, a sophomore in Global Liberal Studies, studying politics, rights, and development.
David: So, I have been part of the Jewish community, in a pretty intense way, basically from day one. I went to a Jewish day school, and then another Jewish day school and then the third Jewish day school, and then NYU, so this is really the first time in my life that I’ve been in an academic setting that’s not also an inherently Jewish setting.
The first time I remember my Judaism or my Jewishness sort of standing out for being different, was a moment in, I want to say second or third grade, when my school, which at the time was a Modern Orthodox, emphasis on the Orthodox, school, and took us on a field trip, and afterwards took us to a park for lunch, and there were some kids from a different school playing kickball or something in the park, and they wouldn’t let us join because we were wearing yarmulkes, we were in kippot, and this one kid goes ‘my dad told me about you guys, don’t you have horns?’ and that was like my first, yeah, that was my first interaction with antisemitism, but it was also my first interaction, realizing that being Jewish is like a thing, right, like, I guess it’s this moment where I consciously realized that I was Jewish and that in being Jewish I was different from a lot of other people. I had sort of a period of like disillusionment with Judaism, a little bit.
Following my parents divorce when I was 10, my mom, who comes from a less religious family, much more secular a lot more like community oriented than like faith oriented.I spent most of my time in that sort of sphere of my life and a lot less in the other sphere, and I sort of, I almost came to resent the sort of religious aspect of the religion and the community, and at the time I was going to a Modern Orthodox school, and I was sort of like in the phase, the period of self discovery, when it came to my sexuality and to be sitting in an orthodox school where our “talk” had quotes from the Torah, and no mention of homosexuality except that it was not a good thing, and at the same time to be seeing the split in my own family in terms of Judaism, as well as in terms of other things, I sort of came to a period there was a moment in my life where I told myself, I can’t wait to grow up and, like, renounce all Judaism, from my life. I can’t wait to like throw this all away and just sort of move on. I swung to this idea that like, I don’t want Judaism in my life. And then it was just sort of a gradual like maybe I like the community, or the food, or like these small things.
You start in one place, and you have an idea of where you want to go, and you just sort of go back and forth in in, like a snake like direct you know you’re not always going directly towards where you want to end up, you kind of go in different directions, and maybe end up somewhere totally different and maybe end up where you intended to end up. I feel like there wasn’t a specific moment that brought me back into a desire to be part of the Jewish community. I feel like it was a lot more gradual, it was just sort of small things that made me appreciate different aspects of the community.
Closing: Thanks for listening. This episode was produced by the b|hive story collective at the NYU Bronfman Center. Subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts for new episodes every Monday.
