Downsides to Judaism?
Well, it's that time of year again – which comes for me about three times a year, actually – when the frenetic pace and stress hormone support of finals week wear off and I'm left with a mood crash and plenty of time to indulge it. Naturally, my thoughts turn to a midlife-crisis-like search for the change that would give my life the boost it so obviously needs: would a change of career bring me lasting happiness? What about a new hobby/project? A new gadget (surely an Apple watch would at least keep me amused a while longer) or a new car (my credit union just announced a special deal with Tesla)?
Oddly, this is the first end-of-spring in some years (decades, perhaps) that has NOT brought with it the idea of changing or questioning my religious affiliation. Maybe that is because I am already engaged in an extended process of doing so (becoming Jewish involves a lot of study and questioning, which I've noticed tend to continue after one becomes Jewish, and with all of its odd and wonderful special occasions I haven't had the chance for its newness to wear off yet), or maybe it is because Jusaism really does fit me better than any religion I've yet tried. For whatever reason, I have no feeling of religious wanderlust this year, and I'm happy with that.
That said, in the interest of personal tradition, and because it is a useful intellectual exercise to make sure that one sees the cons as well as the pros of a given situation, I've decided to make a list of a few drawbacks to becoming Jewish, a few problems it might pose in my life going forward. So, from the absurd to the serious, here are my top five.
1. Say goodbye to cheeseburgers, pepperoni pizza, pork tamales, pork ribs, oysters on the half shell, and anything you would find at a southern shrimp-and-crawfish boil. Unless, of course, you don't. The keeping of Kosher laws among my Reform Jewish friends is so sporadic – and their interpretation even more so – that this first "Jewish drawback" seems to be a purely voluntary one. I know Jews who keep Kosher scrupulously, others who do so only at home, others who just decline pork products and maybe ask to hold the cheese on their cheeseburgers, and others who do so not at all. Have I tried keeping Kosher yet? Kinda-sorta. Have I broken down and eaten a slice of pepperoni pizza? You bet. Don't tell my bet din. :-)
2. Say goodbye also to automatically having your most sacred religious holidays off from (or even recognized at) school or work. If you used to be Christian, that is. That said, my understanding is that public schools are required to let students (and teachers?) take off religious holidays where a religious observance is expected or required. This would clearly include Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but I'm not sure about any of the others. I don't know if workplaces are required to give these holidays off. In the we-don't-even-get-sick-days world of college teaching, I'm going to have to see how taking RH and YK off this fall "goes over". Maybe I'll even bring Chanukkah stuff to our department's Christmas party!
Of course, this is not a problem unique to Judaism – Eid al Fitr isn't an automatic day off, and I've seen Muslim students offered chocolate cake during the middle of Ramadan. Score one for multiculturalism.
3. Expect to no longer relate to the majority culture in a lot of ways. In fact, expect to have your religion and culture dissed or dismissed once in a while, certainly in private and sometimes even in public. I have been asked by students why on earth I would choose a religion like Judaism, whether I "feel cheaper yet," and whether I would "do the Christian thing" and give all of my students a passing grade. I have had one student complain to me about her Jewish co-worker. I have gotten all-users emails at work about exclusively Christian prayer events, one of which was on a Jewish holy day. And of course there was the Commencement prayer that began "dear heavenly father" and ended "in Jesus name we pray". Maybe you pray in Jesus name, but I don't any more. Again, more a not-Christian problem than a specifically-Jewish problem.
4. Expect to be somewhat alienated from people who don't understand what you're doing or saying. Baruch attah Adonai is clearly not as common a prayer starter in our culture as "Dear God" (or its many variations). When we are eating with my extended family (or family-in-law) and my kids insist on blessing our food in Hebrew (and they do!), the rest of the dinner table feels left-out, not just because its a Jewish blessing but because they don't have the first idea what it means. Translating it for them helps a little, but the idea of blessing God for making the food, rather than asking God to bless the food and the people eating it, is just about equally foreign to anybody raised in our Christian-derived majority culture. Add to that taking a different day off of work (most Americans consider Sunday to be "the day of rest" for some reason), celebrating different holidays (actually, it's the not-celebrating Christmas and Easter that seems to get people's goat up), and even having different bedtime and waking rituals, and you have a recipe for a family that, if you're lucky, just looks at you and shrugs.
5. Expect to feel left-out of your own religion on a few minor occasions because you weren't born into it. Now, I quickly add here: it's not the people. Not a single Jew I have met in the last year has made me feel the least bit bad about being a "Jew-by-choice" instead of a "Jew-by-birth". They have all striven to include me, and even told me I'm doing a good job of fitting in and contributing the community. No, what bugs me is the language. From "Birthright Israel" tours to prayerbook entries highlighting our long chain of inheritance as a thing-that-makes-us-Jewish, the assumption of Jewish ancestry is frequent enough to make me feel like I will never be as fully Jewish as those who can trace their Jewish ancestry back farther than anyone can recall. It won't stop me from trying, but it is the only one of these five things that really gets to me from time to time.
Well, that was cathartic. Next time I will resume my steady stream of Jewish positivism... :-)
1. Say goodbye to cheeseburgers, pepperoni pizza, pork tamales, pork ribs, oysters on the half shell, and anything you would find at a southern shrimp-and-crawfish boil. Unless, of course, you don't. The keeping of Kosher laws among my Reform Jewish friends is so sporadic – and their interpretation even more so – that this first "Jewish drawback" seems to be a purely voluntary one. I know Jews who keep Kosher scrupulously, others who do so only at home, others who just decline pork products and maybe ask to hold the cheese on their cheeseburgers, and others who do so not at all. Have I tried keeping Kosher yet? Kinda-sorta. Have I broken down and eaten a slice of pepperoni pizza? You bet. Don't tell my bet din. :-)
2. Say goodbye also to automatically having your most sacred religious holidays off from (or even recognized at) school or work. If you used to be Christian, that is. That said, my understanding is that public schools are required to let students (and teachers?) take off religious holidays where a religious observance is expected or required. This would clearly include Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but I'm not sure about any of the others. I don't know if workplaces are required to give these holidays off. In the we-don't-even-get-sick-days world of college teaching, I'm going to have to see how taking RH and YK off this fall "goes over". Maybe I'll even bring Chanukkah stuff to our department's Christmas party!
Of course, this is not a problem unique to Judaism – Eid al Fitr isn't an automatic day off, and I've seen Muslim students offered chocolate cake during the middle of Ramadan. Score one for multiculturalism.
3. Expect to no longer relate to the majority culture in a lot of ways. In fact, expect to have your religion and culture dissed or dismissed once in a while, certainly in private and sometimes even in public. I have been asked by students why on earth I would choose a religion like Judaism, whether I "feel cheaper yet," and whether I would "do the Christian thing" and give all of my students a passing grade. I have had one student complain to me about her Jewish co-worker. I have gotten all-users emails at work about exclusively Christian prayer events, one of which was on a Jewish holy day. And of course there was the Commencement prayer that began "dear heavenly father" and ended "in Jesus name we pray". Maybe you pray in Jesus name, but I don't any more. Again, more a not-Christian problem than a specifically-Jewish problem.
4. Expect to be somewhat alienated from people who don't understand what you're doing or saying. Baruch attah Adonai is clearly not as common a prayer starter in our culture as "Dear God" (or its many variations). When we are eating with my extended family (or family-in-law) and my kids insist on blessing our food in Hebrew (and they do!), the rest of the dinner table feels left-out, not just because its a Jewish blessing but because they don't have the first idea what it means. Translating it for them helps a little, but the idea of blessing God for making the food, rather than asking God to bless the food and the people eating it, is just about equally foreign to anybody raised in our Christian-derived majority culture. Add to that taking a different day off of work (most Americans consider Sunday to be "the day of rest" for some reason), celebrating different holidays (actually, it's the not-celebrating Christmas and Easter that seems to get people's goat up), and even having different bedtime and waking rituals, and you have a recipe for a family that, if you're lucky, just looks at you and shrugs.
5. Expect to feel left-out of your own religion on a few minor occasions because you weren't born into it. Now, I quickly add here: it's not the people. Not a single Jew I have met in the last year has made me feel the least bit bad about being a "Jew-by-choice" instead of a "Jew-by-birth". They have all striven to include me, and even told me I'm doing a good job of fitting in and contributing the community. No, what bugs me is the language. From "Birthright Israel" tours to prayerbook entries highlighting our long chain of inheritance as a thing-that-makes-us-Jewish, the assumption of Jewish ancestry is frequent enough to make me feel like I will never be as fully Jewish as those who can trace their Jewish ancestry back farther than anyone can recall. It won't stop me from trying, but it is the only one of these five things that really gets to me from time to time.
Well, that was cathartic. Next time I will resume my steady stream of Jewish positivism... :-)
Don't forget this one: Be prepared to be innundated from Halloween through January with every Christmas Carol in every store, restaurant, mall, and radio. Of course, you can chage the radio channel, But you can't turn off all that mall music...
ReplyDeleteToo true, Sara! And if you have children of a certain age, expect them to be required to sing those Christmas carols at school. If you're lucky, they'll thrown in "I have a little dreidle" (my least favorite Chanukkah song) in the name of cultural inclusivity.
ReplyDeleteActually, I was not so upset by the music classes, but it did irk me that my pre-K and K aged children were required to *celebrate* Christmas and Easter at school. As in attend parties, bearing Christmas gifts or Easter eggs. I know it's just nomenclature, but couldn't we call them winter and spring parties instead?