Jewish identity and self as outsider among non-Jews during childhood
Richman: By the age of eight or nine my little schoolmates were preparing for their First Communion and they were all excited about the big event. When I spoke to my parents about it, they simply said that we were Jewish, and that we did not celebrate this event. I was deeply disappointed. I think it was the first time that I realized that we were different from others and that difference was called
‘‘Jewish.’’ I determined to convert as soon as I would be old enough to do so.
Brown: As a Jew, I was deeply other … Being a Jew was at first another way to be different from the other kids at my mostly Protestant elementary school: get on the Hebrew school bus, skip after-school athletic events and social get-togethers, go study for another two hours.
Heffer: Steeped in Jewish culture, my family was part of a small enclave of Jews who had chosen to leave the safety of a larger Jewish community and make their homes in a Catholic neighborhood. I believe this was the beginning of my understanding of feeling like an outsider … I was frequently reminded that I was different. I was the ‘‘Jewish’’ friend when introduced to friend’s families, or when I went to friend’s country clubs and told not to let anyone know that I was Jewish.
Jewish identity highlighted when among non-Jews
Brown: In a neighborhood where we were the first Jewish family and few other Jews ever lived, Jewishness was my foreground identity among my peers.
Bergman: When I lived in the South, being from New York was synonymous with being Jewish. I felt awkward being lumped into a category that I did not fit into. How could I explain that, while I was Jewish, I did not observe religious holidays or attend synagogue? Ironically, after moving to Alabama I decided that, for the first time in my life, I wanted to attend services for the high holidays. I felt a need to affiliate with other Jews and explore further what my Jewish identity meant.
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Cole: I think this was really the first time that I realized—really realized—that I was Jewish and not everyone else was … I tended to gravitate toward the other Jews in my small town … Over the years it has become clear to me that as I moved further away from Jewish population centers I have identified myself more and more as Jewish … I believe, based on my personal experience, that wherever there is a very small Jewish population, a Jewish identity will become much more important than it might otherwise be.
Connection/identification with people of other minority identifications
Cole: I find myself, and this has been true for a long time, gravitating toward my ethnic minority colleagues, toward the lesbians and gays on my campus, the international students (one of whom is a young Palestinian male). We have a usually unspoken common denominator. We’re not really outsiders, and I wouldn’t use words like ‘‘oppressed’’ or ‘‘nondominant,’’ but we share a recognition that a threat or a slur or some kind of tension may be right around the next corner. We seem to have an innate desire to champion the underdog.
Firestein: I came to believe deeply that being different can be a good thing and that it is possible to take pride in our differences rather than feeling ashamed of them … it is perhaps not a surprise that one of my closest friendships originating in the SMU days turned out to be with an African-American man involved in a polyamorous relationship …
Dworkin: My childhood was similar to that of many first and second-generation children of
immigrants. My parents struggled between wanting me to keep some of the old cultural traditions and wanting me to fully assimilate into the mainstream culture.
Heffer: Grandpa John came to the United States at the age of 11 … Looking at the photographs on display at Ellis Island, I was struck with their rich ethnicity, with faces alive with hope, joy, pain, and mischief. These stories encouraged my adventurous spirit. They opened my eyes to the struggles people have taken on to find safety in their worlds and peace in their hearts.
Kaschak: But if I came home even five minutes late I was met with uncontrolled screaming and arms flailing wildly, release for her own terror: ‘‘You could have been lying dead in the street.’’ Two lifetimes away, the Cossacks of her mother’s childhood pursued her own daughter down the streets of Brooklyn … Be careful. Trust no one, especially yourself. Like so many African-American mothers who have had to warn their children and who wait anxiously every time they go out to see whether they arrive home that day intact.
Ancis: My Jewish identity, related messages received, and readings by authors like
Angela Davis and bell hooks have enabled me to see parallels in experiences of racism, sexism, heterosexism, anti-Semitism, and other social ills.
***Ancis: At the same time, my experience as a Jewish woman allows me to be cautious around making interpretations about parallels between various oppressions … While Jews are certainly not unique in their experience of oppression and discrimination, each group’s oppression is unique to their own history. To proclaim to understand someone’s experience because one has had similar challenges in some way is presumptuous.
Distance/disconnection/points of divergence from other Jews
Holtzman: For most of my life I have perceived myself as marginal to whatever group I found myself in, including groups of Jews … being a secular Jew is an active process. Secular Jews value the culture and work to preserve it and pass it on to the next generation … Thus many of the things that were culturally Jewish about us remained unlabeled fragments with no organizing framework to hold them together... Culturally, I don’t feel qualified to claim the title ‘‘secular Jew,’’ but I do feel Jewish enough to reject the pejorative label ‘‘bagel and lox Jew,’’…
Bergman: Since I had never participated in religious school, I was not quite prepared for the indoctrination into the religion that they are now experiencing … my outsider status in my current nuclear family.
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Dworkin: My sympathies with the Palestinians and outrage at the Israeli government sometimes met with criticism from other Jewish faculty …
Mirkin: … while I have chosen this tradition, I do not think it is any better than religions chosen by others … I know that Judaism has birthed some individuals who interpret the religion in ways that devalue others.
Stepakoff: …my opposition to circumcision, a practice that many Jews mistakenly view as a defining characteristic of Jewishness, means that a large majority of Jews would consider me not to be truly Jewish and, if made aware of my views, would not include or welcome me… my feminism, political views, criticism of Israeli governmental policies, and opposition to circumcision sometimes cause me to feel separate from other Jews
Ancis: In some ways, synagogue attendance and participation in Jewish related events in the south has required a certain amount of conforming, something I was not used to… So in some ways I felt part of and connected to this Jewish life in the south, and in other ways I felt like an outsider.
***Cole: … the comfort that comes from the familiar, of feeling safe among ‘‘my own kind,’’ and feeling just a tiny bit on edge when that’s not the case.
Insider/outsider in Israel
Bergman: My head was now swimming with identities: American, Jew, Israeli, Kibbutznik! In the end, I wore my dress and, if my father had been there, he would have sighed in relief that I had chosen my American identity. Once again, I would belong but yet not belong.
Brown: Here in Israel, where I am surrounded by people who talk as I do, eat as I do, move through the world in familiar patterns, I am at home and still the other, a visiting American with rusty and
inadequate Hebrew.