When my defining trait became unremarkable
My mom likes to say that until I was about seven, as far as I was concerned Judaism was something she had made up. I wasn’t really sure why we lit candles and ate special bread every Friday night, much less why there was one week a year when we couldn’t eat any bread. But in second grade my parents finally started sending me to Hebrew school, which I tackled like most things in life: probably a little more than was necessary. It started small, with joining the children’s choir, actually enjoying attending services and holiday programs. A few years later I became a teaching assistant in the younger grades. By the time I was in high school I was serving not only on the board of my temple youth group but on the temple’s Board of Directors; I was organizing events for Jewish youth every month, going on weekend-long regional retreats four times a year, periodically flying across the country for national gatherings, and even going to a summer camp specifically affiliated with the youth movement of Reform Judaism. Plenty of young Jewish people have similar experiences all across the country — what was notable about my experience was that very few people around me were doing the same.
I was born and raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota, a state where Jews make up less than 1.5% of the population. Minnesota as a whole is a whopping 81% white, with the most-represented heritages being German, Norwegian, Irish, and Swedish. Unsurprisingly, this correlates with 50% of the state being Protestant and a total of 74% being some variety of Christian. I never really resented being a religious minority, because I loved being Jewish and having something that made me special. When I was little I loved bringing in edible dreidels (made out of a marshmallow, a pretzel, peanut butter, and a Hershey’s kiss) and matzo for my elementary school classes. But I did, over time, grow weary of having to constantly explain the minutiae of my daily life and faith-related traditions. I became pretty adept at identifying whether or not someone was Jewish, because most of the time they weren’t. I was the only Jewish student in my grade until middle school, and in my graduating class there were only about six of us out of a class of 650 — the other five were all good friends of mine. My other closest friends were people I met through youth group activities. Around my Jewish friends, I felt like there was more of a mutual understanding. We had common traditions, common songs learned at summer camp, and a common feeling of being a little too aggressive for the midwest (I was voted “Loudest Senior,” so interpret that how you will.) I didn’t have to try to make myself any smaller; I didn’t have to resist making references to Jewish culture because no one would understand them. I often felt like I was being tokenized or like my presence made the white Christians feel like they were living a little dangerously. It was rarely explicitly based in my Judaism, but rather in associated traits; I was often the only non-blonde friend or “the funny one” or “the sassy one.” I faced occasional anti-Semitic comments but most of them were more rooted in ignorance than anything else. The Jewish parts of my life were where I felt the most like myself, and I fantasized about what it would be like to be less of a minority.
But then it actually happened. I decided to attend Wesleyan in part because of the large Jewish population. By the University’s estimates, 600–700 undergraduates are Jewish, which translates to 20–22%, a significant step up from Minnesota. Soon after my arrival I learned that no one actually cared that I was Jewish — not in a bad or dismissive way, but it wasn’t a notable quality the way it had been my entire life. I didn’t mourn being “different,” because at the end of the day having a fun, novel trait didn’t outweigh the emotional labor of being so different and being expected to explain myself at every turn. It was more of a sudden transition which I hadn’t been expecting; I had been the Jewish girl for so many years that I wasn’t sure what my “thing” was without it. So many Wesleyan students come from places where Judaism is assumed, like New York and Boston. Being Jewish for them was just a part of life, not an extra effort they had to make. I tried getting involved in Jewish life on campus but it wasn’t for me — it’s a lovely community and it’s great for a lot of people but just wasn’t quite what I was looking for.
When I got to campus, I started exploring other activities and parts of my identity that had always been there but always quieter than the Jewish parts. I became involved with theater and tutoring and working for reproductive justice. It took me a while to recognize that while Judaism no longer had its own time slot on my Google calendar, it still informed everything I did and how I acted in my daily life. Theater, for me, is a way of making the world a brighter place; tutoring is a way of helping others; the pursuit of reproductive justice is a call for equality. All of these are core Jewish values and make what I do more personally meaningful. These may not be explicitly Jewish pastimes but for me they are a way of expressing my Judaism, and it’s okay if no one else knows the deeper meaning they hold.
For my first few semesters at Wesleyan, I struggled with feeling like a “bad Jew” because I was no longer celebrating holidays like Tu Bishvat, let alone attending services every week. At home I felt like I needed to prove my Judaism, but I learned that it’s possible to be just as Jewish as I ever was without feeling the need to perform it for someone else. I may not know each week’s Torah portion, but my Jewish values will always inform my priorities and actions, and my Judaism is not made less significant when it is more commonplace.
