Counted as a Member of Jewish Community

An encounter at synagogue a few weeks ago during the Yom Kippur evening service called Kol Nidre gave me pause. That evening, about halfway through the service, a strange man entered the synagogue and took a seat at the back. There was nothing about him to cause alarm; however, I belong to a small and intimate rural congregation where I know everyone and I didn’t know him. He came in late in the service and did not wear a prayer shawl or yarmulke. A couple of years ago, I surely would not have taken any notice. However now, in the current climate of hatred and blatant anti-Semitism, my thoughts went a different way.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reports that hate crimes against Jews more than doubled in 2018 from the previous year. Hate crimes in California increased by 21%. Here, in California, Nazi graffiti is not categorized as a hate crime. So spraying a swastika on a synagogue is not a hate crime, just vandalism. I find this appalling. FBI data shows that Jewish people and institutions are the most frequently targeted religious group for hate crimes nationwide, accounting for 58% of religious-based hate-crime incidents. Muslims are the second most frequent target, at 18.6%. (Source:  CBS News, 2018.) Anti-Semitic incidents constitute half of all hate crimes in New York City. In 2018, there were four times as many hate crimes against Jews in New York City than against African Americans (New York Times, 2018), even though Jews make up 13% of the population of New York and blacks make up 24%. Black Lives Matter, and my people also can’t breathe. I do not cite these statistics to compare suffering but rather to point out that while anti-Semitism is widespread it often remains invisible in public spaces where discourse on racism occurs.

As a product of history, with family who died in the Holocaust, and living in this historical time of continued oppression, unleashed with greater fury under this government, I looked at the stranger in my midst that Kol Nidre evening and instead of feeling a wave of welcome, I felt a wave of terror. I imagined him drawing a gun and firing on my community. I looked around at the familiar faces of those I have known these many years, those for whom I have great affection and affinity, and imagined bullet-ridden bleeding bodies. My heart thrashed loudly in my throat. I considered where to run, where to hide, and whether I should drop to the floor and act dead. What was I thinking? I was thinking that I and my community are in danger. We are vulnerable, hunted, viewed by many as the source of all evil, just as much now as we were hundreds of years ago during deeply ignorant times. We continue to live in ignorant times. The myth of blood libel is alive and well.

Embraced in the sacred space of prayer, I calmed my mind and slowed my madly beating heart. I convinced myself that the stranger was simply a fellow Jew, away from home on a holiday, who had found a local synagogue and come for Kol Nidre. That was more plausible. That was the truth. The next morning, during Yom Kippur services, the rabbi invited congregants up for an aliyah. This is the honor of reading from the Torah or standing at the altar while it is open. For this particular aliyah, she invited anyone who wished to stand up and be counted as a member of a community. I went. I wanted to stand before the open Torah to be counted as a member of my Jewish community. As I stood, it occurred to me that standing up as a Jew is an act of defiance. It is an act of courage, and always has been. I take a risk openly and proudly declaring myself a Jew. My ancestors took this risk. Some of them died for it. I hope I don’t.

As I stood at the open Torah, I also had another thought. This one brought me great joy and great comfort. It was the opposite of my fear of the stranger the previous evening. I reflected on the beautiful way that a Jew can enter a synagogue anywhere in the world and be welcomed, as I should have welcomed the strange man at Kol Nidre, and would have if I hadn’t let my imagination run wild. When my father was presenting at a math conference in Berlin a few years ago, and it was the weekend of my grandfather’s yahrzeit (anniversary of his death), he found a synagogue near his hotel and walked over there for Sabbath services so he could say Kaddish for his father. The moment he came through the door, congregants warmly welcomed him. The rabbi gave him an aliyah. In 1983, my parents moved to Tennessee from the town in upstate New York where they had lived for more than 30 years and raised me and my brothers. My father had taken a teaching position at the University of TN in Knoxville. They joined a synagogue immediately. After only a few short weeks in Knoxville, my mother was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. I was expecting a baby soon, and could not go to her. The Jewish community (that my parents had only just joined) mobilized. They took terrific care of my parents through the ordeal, which my mother survived. One woman in particular ensured that my parents were looked after, with meals brought to the house and people checking in to help out. This woman became a dear and continuing friend to my mother in all the years that followed. A Jew can walk into a synagogue anywhere in the world.

Last year I met a young man, a stranger among us, at our synagogue. He came to Sabbath services one evening with his girlfriend, who is not Jewish. He is a Sephardic Jew from Paris. He had met his girlfriend in Taiwan when they were both enrolled in a summer language intensive to learn Mandarin. The girlfriend is now in her senior year at the City of 10,000 Buddhas Dharma Realm College. I befriended these two remarkable young people, and my husband and I have enjoyed many an evening of dinner and conversation in their company. In the spring, they landed in a problem situation with housing and so we took them in to stay at our house for a little while. Soon after, the young man was forced to return to France. But they remain very much together as a couple, and she has been to see him in Paris, and will go again soon. His girlfriend told me recently that when he told her he was going to call me when they had their difficulty with housing, she asked if that would be OK and he replied, “of course, we’re fellow Jews, I know she’ll offer to help.” Of course. This young man and his parents will travel here in May for her graduation, and we have offered to host a party for her at our house. Last week I had an email from him in which he said that he has told his parents all about me and my husband, and that his mother wants to meet “the Jewish mother who took such good care of another Jewish mother’s Jewish son.” A Jew can walk into a synagogue anywhere in the world.

On the one hand, I have a greater fear of the stranger than in times past, and on the other hand, I retain my affinity with my fellow Jews whether I know them personally or not. For that matter, I retain my desire to welcome the stranger, any stranger (Jewish or not) in my midst. Therefore I vow to work harder to conquer my fear so that I can continue to openly welcome the stranger. I must resist, and not allow the oppressor to change my heart. A Jew can walk into a synagogue anywhere in the world. My people. I wish to stand up and be counted as a member of the Jewish community. Defiant. Courageous. Fearless. Not easy. I am blessed to have been born a Jew.