My Jewish Journey

I grew up as the first-born son of a deeply religious father. His family owned a kosher butcher shop in Berlin. My mother and her family were assimilated until Hitler reminded her and them that they were Jewish. Both parents managed to get out of Germany – late; my dad in 1937 and my mom in 1939 after Kristaalnacht. And they embraced Judaism as a foundational element of embracing each other.

My Jewish education, the Jewish calendar, and religious practices were defining elements of my upbringing.

We kept kosher and observed the sabbath (Shabbat), going to weekly services and refraining from work, writing, driving, television, or playing piano. In my teens as I got interested in Saturday evenings with friends, I developed amazing expertise at finding the first three stars in the late afternoon sky that signaled time for Havdalah, the candle-lighting ceremony marking the end of Shabbat. I put on tefillin (a pair of black leather boxes worn on the forehead and left arm containing scrolls of parchment with verses from the Torah) and prayed every morning until well into my teens. Before heading off for the Kol Nidre service that marked the start of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, my father would prepare strips of toilet paper so he wouldn’t have to tear it for the 24 hours to follow. My parents built a sukkah (the makeshift shelter recalling my people’s wanderings in search of sanctuary) and invited the entire congregation, easily 150 hungry souls strong, for a hearty meal following the annual Sukkot prayer service. My mother cooked and baked for weeks in advance. My sister reminds me that we had a huge freezer specifically for this annual kosher food fest.

The practice of Judaism even shaped my acting out. I would sneak up to my room to write and do my homework after Shabbat lunch. After keeping kosher through college and most of the summer beyond, a cheeseburger – bacon bleu, medium rare – became my symbol of liberation from the orthodoxy of my youth.

Later, Cathy and I tapped into what we felt were the most meaningful elements of that tradition. We made sure to have Shabbat dinner with our two boys every Friday night. We set up my parents’ sukkah (now 70 years old) and invited – and continue to invite - friends and family for a meal. With our grown sons living nearby with their families, we host Passover seders. Even if we don’t have weekly Shabbat dinners, we make it a point to periodically have the family over for in-gatherings of our two sons, the wonderful women they’ve brought into our lives, and our special grandsons to acknowledge Shabbat and holidays as special family moments, much as they were when I was growing up.

I cherish the Jewish reverence for learning and for the pursuit of wisdom, as well as the invocation to live an ethical life. I love the very Jewish idea of tikkum olam, repairing and caring for the world and all its peoples. We care about justice for all, everywhere. I appreciate that there is no Hebrew word for “sin,” as in immoral or unethical behavior worthy of eternal damnation. Rather we speak of “missing the mark” with an invitation to take better aim next time. Some of the sacred music moves me to tears, and much as a bacon cheeseburger may long ago have become a symbol of independence, a bagel with cream cheese and lox is homecoming. I like that we look at our Rabbis as learned, wise, and caring teachers, not preachers. I’m grateful, too, for the sense and experiences of family that are at the heart of who I am.

As our boys grew, we began to search for a Jewish community for them and us. We started out at a nearby synagogue with the same Conservative Movement affiliation and services I had known as a child. We went there for a High Holiday service and were treated to a sermon I had heard often as I was growing up, chastising “once a year” Jews. We hardly found this rebuke and disdain for anything but traditional and orthodox practices to be inviting.

We then went to another nearby synagogue, this one affiliated with the Reform Movement, and had a wonderful talk with the Rabbi. I screwed up my courage and told him I was not sure about God and was quite sure I was not comfortable with the traditional anthropomorphic God-centric prayers and services.

He assured us that one need not believe in God to be Jewish, just struggle with God, and pointed to the statue of Jacob wrestling with the angel outside the chapels at Brandeis University, my alma mater. He then told us a story about Moishe, an observant Jew, and his friend Shmuel, an atheist. Moishe asked his friend why, as an atheist, he comes to weekly Shabbat services. Answered Shmuel, “You come to be with God. I come to be with you.”

Good answer.

One of my earliest childhood memories is walking hand in hand with my father on the way to synagogue every Shabbat and holiday. Like Moishe, he went to be with God. Like Shmuel, I went to be with him.

We became members, came to appreciate the intellectual and spiritual engagement, some beautiful music, and family programs for our sons, not to mention a lot of warm company. It wasn’t perfect. There were years when I found that sailing on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur offered a more moving and spiritual experience than being in the Sanctuary. The sea’s winds and waves were a place I could find sanctuary.

And I welcome the Jewish invitation to cherish difficult conversations.

So, let’s have some.

Being part of an observant family – more than nearly all other households – distinguished the Kaufmans in Hollis Hills, NY where I lived as a child. It drew a circle around us, held us to one another and provided great strength and comfort.

That circle was pierced by Mrs. Aronson, the brilliance behind my high school theatre program. She pointed out the downside to living within that kosher circle, the fact that most everyone else was kept outside. She wondered how you could be part of the larger community if you can’t break bread with those around you.

I’ve been wondering ever since.

By extension, how am I to hold the idea of being part God’s “chosen people” when the attendant corollary is “We’re it; you’re not!” Jews can be - and are - perceived as coming from this place of being special and uniquely blessed and better, and that doesn’t reflect my values or serve us so well.

Then there’s God.

When I hear words like “ask God for…,” “God commands,” “God blesses,” “God forgives,” or “God loves,” I say “Really?” In my understanding, God is a word we use as a surrogate for answers to unanswerable questions. To focus on those large questions is as moving as it is important, but speaking of God as a being – the language and conversation that permeate our liturgy – is a distraction. It takes me away from the spiritual, the mystery, the unknown and unknowable. It takes me away, too, from what John Kennedy, a Catholic, wisely reminded us - that the real work must truly be our own.

So, can I be Jewish – a member of the tribe that gave us monotheism – when theism (mono or otherwise) doesn’t compute for me? The whole God conversation feels to me to be a distraction from what binds us to one another, disempowering “we the people,” not to mention the agency and divinity in each of us.

And then there’s Israel.

I hate that Jews the world over are bitterly divided by the politics of today’s Israeli government and by the domination in Israel of the religious right. I know that division up close and personal. Someone I know to be a wonderful, intelligent man and who I considered a close friend yelled at me, letting me know in a loud, angry voice that I had failed him for not having used my voice and my public office to defend Israel in the face of those who would criticize her on campuses, in corporate boardrooms, and in the halls of government. He couldn’t accept that I saw Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, as a thug and the author of ill-advised, if not immoral policies – destructive and self-destructive policies. He fired me as a friend.

For me, the law that the Knesset, Israel’s Congress, passed affirming Israel as a Jewish state, even at the expense of Israel as a democracy, is a gross violation of both my democratic and my Jewish values.  I feel for those disenfranchised by contemporary Israeli policies – Palestinians, Arabs, non-orthodox Jews. I fear for the future of Israel. I was one year old when the state was founded. Will it survive not only its hostile neighborhood but the internal contradictions playing out on the Israeli stage today?

The recent horrific, inhumane Hamas attack was a brutal reminder of Israel’s vulnerability. The wounds were deep, and hardly any Israeli family was left untouched. The Israeli response, on the other hand, has worked to wipe out the world’s expressions of sympathy and compassion in the face of that assault. On October 7, Israel was seen as the victim of Hamas’ ugly aggression. Within weeks, Israel was seen not so much for legitimately defending itself and punishing the aggressors as for the abhorrent overreach of its military and its government, and the massive loss of life and human suffering in Gaza. Bad military actions rooted in bad political decisions have marked the Israel-Hamas conflict ever since – on both sides.

And this brings me to a very personal and painful moment in my Jewish journey. I knew that Israel was born of the Holocaust that my parents experienced. It was to be a beacon for Jews, the bulwark against antisemitism. And yet, Israel’s actions have fueled antisemitism’s rise, opening the floodgates of hatred rather than protecting us from it.

Worse yet, this is occurring at a moment of rising totalitarianism across the globe. I find myself channeling my parents who had to flee Germany in their teens at an earlier moment of ascendant totalitarianism. I find myself wondering and worrying about my and my family’s safety and survival in this land of my birth, the land that provided sanctuary for my parents, but a land riven by deep divisions, our democracy facing fundamental challenges and an uncertain future.

So, where does this find me at this juncture of my complicated travels with Judaism? Both the complications and the journey are ongoing. Invite me to reflect on religious precepts and practices, and I’m likely to decline. But help me sort out what to show or what to say to my sons and their sons about Jewish roots and values, and you’ve got my attention. More of my journey is behind me than in front of me. Theirs lie much more ahead. And I’m here to be with them.