I was, to my shame: pale, ineffectual. Not in my body. Never carefree. Slogging, each day a crisis.
In other words, a neurotic Jew. Could see it in the mirror. Italians played sports, fucked like porn stars, laughed in big groups at the table. Friends, family, they leaned and merged, their boundaries fluid…
While I was, in my genes, with the Hasidim–inbred, nearsighted, never looking up from the nitpicking Talmud. Doomed to miss out.
Which is why I hated them. Had the urge to bully, knock off their hats, rip out their sideburns.
Decades like this, decades. The stain, like sexual abuse. Tried to block it out.
Shabbat, the high holidays, Israel, the chai and Jewish star—no. Jewish authors—no.
The false Messiah, whose followers shat on the Torah—that excited me.
A Jewish woman—no.
*
And then, yes. Can’t speak honestly on these early dates, come off like a Nazi. Held my tongue, listened. And then, slowly, slowly, through osmosis, through love…
The root—Canaan, 2000 BC. Archaeology of Jericho. Parchment scrolls. How did the Torah, not that I read it, come together?
With her on Friday night: prayers, but then singing, dancing, hugging. Good wine. I’m…not quite motionless.
Proud Jews. Jews who go to the gym. With bass voices. And the teachings. Love thy neighbor. Oh, my older sister did that, showed me. I formed, much distorted, around it.
The Psalms, the Creation, Abraham and Sarah. God, so often needy, but having his moments.
The Hebrew letters—archetypal, etched, with mysterious antennae.
One night, I bust a few moves! Flapping like a chicken…
*
And then, October 7th. Feels like a Holocaust. And the backlash. ‘Hitler should have finished the job!’
Then you know what? I am part of the us. Not quite singing Hatikvah. Not wearing a yarmulke. But smiling sadly at those who do. Nodding to the young man wearing tzitzit in the park. To the scared but defiant.
Still no flag in the yard. Sympathetic to the people of Gaza. But suddenly alive and mourning the centuries of pogroms. The blacksmith killed by his neighbors.
Friends with the Jew who bought a gun. Admiring, not just Sephardic joy, but Ashkenazi study. Thin Hassid davening on the train—I want to buy you a steak. I’m smiling at you, even subtly pumping my fist. You don’t look up, but that’s ok.
Not just Kafka and Einstein, but you, and the thousands like you pressing their foreheads to the graves of the Tzadikim. Even the landscape around—the Kineret and the hill country, the dry lifeless soil that I once recoiled from.
It’s random, to be born Jewish–right? I don’t know anymore, but a little like Israel itself, when Jews first came from everywhere, many more than expected–my empty places are filling out, with something both familiar and new.