Moses Weeps: Jews Under Attack

In the aftermath of Oct. 7th, 2023, I felt a need to connect with other Jews that I had never--to be really honest--felt in my life before. Who else would understand the emotional trauma of being subjected to a global onslaught of hate and lies?

With that in mind, I joined a Reform shul (that's a fairly loosey goosey sector of Judaism, as far as liturgy and cultural zeitgeist). I was raised Reconstructionist, which--as its name implies--is more true to tradition, while giving women full and equal to status to men, something that to me is imperative for me to participate.

I had barely set foot in a temple since my own Bat Mitzvah some 54 years earlier. Other than a few relatives' Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and a few visits for solace when my father was dying 14 years ago, I was fine not actively participating in a regular and local Jewish community.

It's hard to explain to goyim (non-Jews) the social tightropes we walk as Jews in America--and this was BEFORE Oct. 7th. Unless you are Orthodox and that's your primary world, you learn to traverse between "the world of Jews" (which varies far more than most goys realize, based on your diaspora background, socio-economic status, and current geography, not to mention your personal degree of frum--the Yiddish word for "piousness" or "being observant, religiously speaking") and the larger goyishe universe of everybody else.

I was raised in very mixed circles, with nannies from German Catholics to Dutch Episcopal to Irish Catholic. My own mother died when I was five, and she was from two lines (from Ukraine and Germany) that were very assimilated and not very religious at all.

My father's parents were more classic American second-gen immigrants from what was then Russia and is now Poland. They were rougher around the edges than my mother's refined parents--my grandmother on that side came from Jews who had voluntarily left Germany and land ownership in the 18th century (which was VERY unusual for Jews at that time: almost unheard of). Her great grandfather came stateside in the 1850s, and was well-heeled, very assimilated, and could easily move among Christians with grace.

So I inherited the full cultural spectrum of the Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jewish-American experience, from fancy and blendable to poor ghetto survivors who didn't even speak English.

Like many fourth-gen (on my father's side) children, I was sent to the best goyishe schools, but also attended Hebrew School three days a week, two after school and one on Sundays.

After my Bat Mitzvah, I stopped going to Hebrew School and barely went to temple, as previously mentioned. And may I add that while we celebrated the Jewish holidays at home and I have happy memories of doing so (Hanukkah, Purim, Passover, Sukkot), we as a family didn't attend services, except for maybe on the High Holidays (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) and I don't even have strong memories of doing that.

But Oct. 7th changed everything. Having seen numerous Nazi-made movies in Hebrew School as a child (it was a very different time and I believe it was good we saw them), I could never have imagined such sentiments could be repeated in the modern world.

But here we are.

Now--18 months later--I have found that while the Reform shul has genuinely lovely people as members, their world visions and mine generally do not mesh. How so? I carry, and am the Queen of Situational Awareness. Most of them do not. There are armed security guards, of course, but entering a building is such a small part of security concerns for Jews these days, and it doesn't feel vigilant enough to me.

Politics? They are pretty much all uber liberal. It makes me stabby.

Finally, it is a very senior set, which is sort of funny, given that I am about to enter the last year of my sixties myself. They just seem like my grandparents' gen to me, not mine.

And so, I will not renew my membership when it expires this summer.

There is a Conservative shul near  me (that's a designation in Judaism that has nothing to do with politics, but with religious practices). I have attended events there, it's very nice. But I still don't see the MacAbbeean badassness I crave.

For now, I think I will remain a free agent and just attend events as I am drawn to them. I enjoyed Shabbat services to a degree---and was glad to refresh my Hebrew after so many years--but I'm not  an "every Saturday morning no matter what" kinda chick.

Jews are wanderers, by history. And all who wander are not lost, as Tolkien so wisely noted. 

My own wandering will recommence.