Obviously
by Miriam Fried
Yesterday my daughter reported that thanks to her college Yiddish class, she can say “At the university café, one drinks bubble tea,” in the language of our ancestors. What a feat of Jewish scholarship for a child of mine! When I was in school, I fulfilled the language requirement with a course in Latin—the language of our despoilers—and if there was a Judaic Studies department, I never noticed it. I wasn’t hostile, just indifferent. My parents had raised me half-Christmas tree, half-menorah, and they kept God out of it either way. And yet somehow I’m Jewish now; that’s how peer pressure works, or motherhood, or destiny.
My parents had raised me half-Christmas tree, half-menorah, and they kept God out of it either way. And yet somehow I’m Jewish now; that’s how peer pressure works, or motherhood, or destiny.
My gentile mother used to sing Christmas carols with me and my siblings each December while my nonobservant Jewish father tolerantly napped. It was unclear to me then why he took so little pleasure in another chorus of Jingle Bells, and it’s unclear to me now why he and my mother named most of us after Hebrew prophets and patriarchs. While I did engage in traditional Jewish cultural practices like writing a book report on Anne Frank and visiting Grandma at her socialist summer community, synagogue attendance was not in the cards. It took me years to understand the conclusions people drew from my name and my face regardless. I never lit a single Shabbat candle, but if your name is Miriam Fried, everyone’s going to assume you went to Jewish day school and then interned at Hillel. In college I was bemused by invitations to the weekly challah bake, or the gift of a Chagall-print scarf by the mother of my WASPy first boyfriend. Did these people think I was Jewish or something?
When I was in my twenties, my parents started going to shul and my mother converted, which made me the half-Jewish child of observant Jews who had to keep reminding me where they kept the dairy plates. Then I married (temporarily) a Jew who found synagogue attendance tiresome but had at least been bar mitzvahed, and I began to feel fully Jewish by the power of association. If your parents are Jewish and your partner is Jewish and everyone you meet thinks you’re Jewish, you just start feeling Jewish even if you’ve never said the Sh’ma in your life. I had a Jewish wedding with a conveniently laissez-faire rabbi and when I had a baby, I considered her Jewish too. Maybe I’d grown up a miscellaneous child of the universe, but my daughter was going to belong to something.
We took Isadora to seders with grandparents, sent her to Hebrew school, and attended synagogue on the holidays. Our Conservative shul had an affable gay rabbi who gave dvars heavy on historical tidbits and translation controversies, light on moral instruction. When Isadora’s bat mitzvah appeared on the horizon I began attending services with her on the regular—it was only fair. And when she started taking more hardcore Hebrew classes, I went along too, just for fun. The dangerous kind of fun where you start with the entry-level marijuana, graduate to some light heroin, and before you know it you’re shooting up on a street corner in bedroom slippers. I only meant to tag along with my daughter, and then I found myself lighting Shabbat candles and stumbling my way through the V’ahavta. You know, by accident.
Maybe I’d grown up a miscellaneous child of the universe, but my daughter was going to belong to something.
What I discovered was that Judaism offers the perfect combination of telling people exactly what to do and encouraging them to argue about it. The services double as literature seminars. The songs are bangers. The prayers manage to be both reverential (God is so awesome!) and passive-aggressive (maybe He’d like to consider fulfilling His promises some day?). I liked it all so much I had to tell Rabbi Bob the awful truth: Isadora and I were imposters. Jewish descent is through the mother at birth. So while I could call myself half-Jewish, it was the wrong half; I couldn’t use scholarship and spiritual intention to round up to one. And while my daughter was three-quarters Jewish if you wanted to be genetic about it, you’d have to reduce it to zero if you wanted to follow halacha instead. As Rabbi Bob said, for Isadora to have a bat mitzvah in a Conservative synagogue, she’d need to convert officially. “A formality,” he explained. “Obviously, she already has a Jewish soul. Miriam, you’ll jump in the mikveh too?” Well, yeah. Obviously.
A couple weeks later Rabbi Bob took the N train with me and Isadora all the way to Coney Island so we could immerse ourselves in God’s mikveh, otherwise known as the Atlantic Ocean. We had to go under three times and the water had to touch every part of our bodies lest a single cell remain unsemitized. Our bathing suits were allowed, because the water soaks through, but if we held hands or left the crowns of our heads above the water, the deal was off. Unfortunately, Isadora had never learned to swim. She was terrified. Her teeth chattered. She was, as the beit din warns is the lot of the Jew, overcome by afflictions. Saying the blessings once we got out of the water was much easier. We appreciated that God commanded us regarding immersion. He was so nice to keep us alive, and sustain us, and enable us to reach this day.
The next rite of passage that sealed my identity as a Jew happened on a sidewalk in Brooklyn where the Hasidic sect Chabad was doing outreach. A Christian evangelist has to convince his targets that Jesus died to save them from hell, but Chabad has a simpler task—they only want that Jews should do more Jewish stuff, and that gentiles should behave themselves. The problem was that the Chabad lady waiting outside the grocery store sorted me into the wrong category. I could tell because the card she gave me had a list of the Noahide laws, the seven rules God is said to have given Noah after the flood. They veer from familiar basics (no idol worship) to the oddly specific (no eating the flesh of an animal while it’s still alive). According to Chabad, Jews are on the hook for the 613 commandments that came later, but for everyone else it’s a low bar—just follow the Noahide laws and you’re good. In this way even a goy can help redeem the world, like a toddler who plays a crucial role in getting dinner ready by proudly bringing mommy a spoon.
In my opinion, the Chabad lady had some nerve giving me the Noahide laws. Only seven laws? Me, a bona fide rabbi-certified Jew? I’m playing on easy mode here? Surely this level of Jewdar deficiency constituted a microaggression. So when as a parting shot she told me, “There's only one god!” I said, “Well, I know that, I’m Jewish.”
I only meant to tag along with my daughter, and then I found myself lighting Shabbat candles and stumbling my way through the V’ahavta. You know, by accident.
Clearly my declaration had the ring of truth because she exploded with joy and ran over to her friend to get me a packet of candles for Friday night. Now, did I actually need candles? Of course not—I get Shabbat candles in bulk from the supermarket. But I didn’t have the heart to mention this. It made her far happier to give them to me. Plus, if I’d told her I had candles already, she might’ve dismissed that as an “I gave at the office” type of evasive maneuver. She already found it hard to believe such a person as myself had heard of the day of rest.
“You’re Jewish? Amazing,” she kept saying in her heavy Yiddish accent. “Amazing, amazing.” She was the first person who had ever been surprised that I was Jewish. It was fun being congratulated for it, instead just taken for granted. Usually Jews don’t get that kind of slap on the back for being a member of the tribe unless they’re denouncing Israel at a pro-Palestine rally.
“What’s your name?” she asked. “Oh, I love the name Miriam. My grandmother’s name. Did you know it’s Rosh Hashanah in two days?” Then I had to uphold the honor of assimilated Jews, some of whom know it’s Rosh Hashanah even though they go shopping in jeans with their hair uncovered.
“Amazing,” she said when it turned out that I knew about the High Holy Days. “Where do you live? Brooklyn? Amazing.”
Maybe she thought Jews were thin on the ground here because when approached by Chabad—“Excuse me, are you Jewish?”—many Jews say no simply in order to avoid putting on tefillin in the Atlantic-Barclays subway station.
“There are a few Jews in Brooklyn,” I suggested.
“They know nothing,” said the Chabad lady, sorrowfully. “No Shabbat. Nothing!” I tried to look sympathetic. I was the good Jew. I knew about Shabbat.
“Maybe you would like to take some classes with us?” she said hopefully.
I had to head this off before I accidentally became a Hasid too. “I’m going to shul on Rosh Hashanah,” I told her.
This lifted her spirits immediately. “Amazing, amazing…”
“Good Shabbes,” I told her, just to really knock her socks off, and set off down the hill to the R train with three bags of groceries and a packet of candles to bring light to the world. I couldn’t wait to tell Isadora. I was Jewish. I had officially grown into my name.
Miriam Fried’s work has been published in The Threepenny Review, Scoundrel Time, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ambit, Crab Creek Review, and The Baltimore Review. She lives in Brooklyn.
