Jewish Moments: a Jew in Jesusland

It’s been a while since I’ve posted what was originally intended to be an every-other-week cataloguing of “Jewish moments,” so I feel like I owe you all an installment!

The fact is, two months post-conversion (and two years and some change post-getting-started) the new-car-smell has all worn off of my Judaism, and there are fewer moments in my life that make me notice being Jewish. It just is what I am now, and that has mostly led the religious side of my life into a comfortable sort of routine-and-boring. Which possibly means that it is time to find some way to kick it up a notch, but for right now I’m enjoying the ability to “just be” for a while. 

But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been some moments that made me feel my Judaism, mostly due to being a Jew in a part of the country that is most definitely “Jesusland.” There are so many moments when my religion gets held up in sharp relief against the backdrop of a mass culture that largely assumes a weird mix of boiled-down Christianity and secularism-that-still-wears-trappings-of-Christendom as a common basis for everything it does. 

So, from the appalling to the inspiring, here are a few “Jewish moments” from recent weeks...

From the mildly appalling...

There was a moment when I was teaching a college class on muscle contraction, as one does, and I compared the interaction of two proteins and an interloping third molecule to a love triangle playing out at a middle school dance (an idea I have to admit came from a particularly creative student from way back when). An odd comparison, but the students like it. Anyway, I went on to compare the protein that stops muscle contraction to a chaperone at a dance who keeps the students from touching each other … when suddenly a student (a former public school teacher who evidently has experience in these matters) shouted out “leave room for Jesus!”

I was taken aback. I was amused. I was appalled. I stood there for a few beats in stunned silence. In that time, several students echoed (or expressed approval for) the phrase. It is apparently common at junior high dances around here for teachers and other chaperones to tell the students to leave enough room between dance partners for Jesus to stand between them. I didn’t know what to say: act amused by this quaint little Christianity-assuming practice, or tell them that if a public school employee ever tells one of my kids to leave room for Jesus in his dancing life, they will find themselves at the receiving end of a lawsuit faster than...who are we kidding, even if that were a sue-able offense, I can’t afford the legal fees!

I ended up telling my class that if it were my kid, the chaperones would have to tell him to leave room for Elijah instead.

There have been many times lately that my students have openly pleaded for Jesus to help them in my class: on exams, of course, but even on relatively minor in-class activities that they hadn’t done the required preparation for. I have often fantasized about publishing a disclaimer in my syllabus that I have an agreement with Jesus, one Jew helping out another after all, that he won’t help anybody in my class except when they keep up with their work and study their touches off. 

And there was the time not too long ago when a Sirius satellite radio saleswoman was giving me her sales pitch over the phone (don’t ask me why I answered - I must have been expecting a call from someone that day) and asked what kind of music I listen to. I told her, truthfully, that I had been listening to a lot of Jewish Rock lately. Her turn for stunned silence. Then she hemmed and hawed through a response that went something like “we don’t have stations that cater to particular religious groups or faith traditions”. I hadn’t expected them to, but there is an online Jewish Rock Radio streaming station, so I thought maybe...

But then her tone brightened again and she happily blurted out that “for our religious customers, we have a variety of Christian Rock stations.”  

Face, meet palm. 

Did she not realize that Christian Rock is catering to one particular religious group? It may be a big group, perhaps even the majority in these here United States, but it is still not for all “religious customers,” especially one who just admitted to listening to *Jewish* Rock. 

I didn’t have anything nice to say, so I didn’t say anything at all. 

To the mildly inspiring...

There was a moment recently when one of my students told me that she admires how my kippah always matched my outfit. 

Now, I should explain that roughly four fifths of the outfits in my professional wardrobe involve shirts that have some shade of blue as the major color, and the kippah I usually wear is blue and light gray. But we are supposed to show school spirit on “wear red Wednesday’s,” and so occasionally I wear a red shirt and a red kippah to match. Any other outfits get a black kippah with a rainbow of colors woven into the margin, which pretty much matches anything. So it’s not like I have to work hard at this. 

But the fact that one of my students noticed my religious headgear matching my shirts - heck, the fact that one of my students noticed my appearance at all and felt that there was something positive that needed to be said about it - was touching. One positive point for inter-religious relationships!

Speaking of which, there was the day that one of my colleagues decided to use the faculty mailing list to call for the faculty to host a Christmas party to honor all of the various support staff that make it possible for us to do our jobs (which would be necessary since our administration was threatening to cancel the party they usually host, claiming College-wide budget shortfalls). I heartily seconded the idea, since our hard-working staff deserve the show of support and appreciation, then added a question: “as a person who celebrates Hanukkah instead, do we always have to call these things “Christmas” parties?”  I hit send and waited for the backlash. 

You see, the previous year our administration had sent out invitations to a “Christmas Party,” then recalled those and re-sent them as invitations to a “Holiday Party” instead. The sudden change in the name of the event drew snickers from various faculty, but one particularly outspoken curmudgeon stopped by my door to complain about the name change. Even after I mentioned that I for one appreciated the change, since my family celebrates Hanukkah, he blustered on with a tirade about how few African-Americans actually celebrate Kwanzaa (because apparently the two winter holidays, in his mind, are Christmas and Kwanzaa). So I had no idea what reaction I would get. 

At first, there was no reaction at all. It seemed the conversation was just going to ignore my comment. Then, to my pleasant surprise, one faculty member after another started agreeing that a “holiday party” was more inclusive and, therefore, a better name. I was touched. And when the administration finally came to their senses and un-canceled their party, I noticed that it was called a Holiday Party as well. 

Now, I am under no illusions that those who plan this party will put even so much as a nod to Hanukkah into their decorations or foods or activities, which I thoroughly expect to still be entirely Christmas-themed, but the name change is at least a nice start. 

And one more bright spot: in the midst of a public-high-school choral season liberally sprinkled with Christian liturgical music taught as “standards of Western music,” I was startled to see listed in the all-Region all-female “treble choir” program the title “And Miriam Sang.”  My son clearly was not going to be singing in that group, but my curiosity was piqued and I had to hear it. As I expected, the song was a choral celebration of Miriam’s song from Exodus, in Hebrew no less, though mostly it was many many repetitions of the phrase “shiru l’Adonai” (we sing to God). 

I was impressed that they had gotten a bunch of high school girls to sing in Hebrew, though as my son Ryan pointed out later “it was pretty easy Hebrew” – with nary a chet or chaf (the guttural consonants) nor even any alef’s (glottal stops) in the middle of words. And it might or might not have been Jewish in authorship: the song alternated at one point between “Adonai” and “HaShem” as addresses for the Divine Being, as if the author couldn’t decide whether to write for an Orthodox audience or a Reform one. 

But the point is that they had a nod to Jewish music, in Hebrew, in a public High School choir concert. Small victory, but I’ll take it!

Any Jewish Moments (or related moments, if not Jewish) in your life lately? Feel like you need to borrow a few of mine? Discuss away, dear readers!