Ruminations Of A Secular Israeli

To belong to something. Something deep, eternal, something that is bigger than us. To know that belonging comes with a price. They’ve already tried to burn me, kill me, expel me, convert me, but the fact is that I’m still here. Because I am a Jew from the Land of Israel, a proud runner in the longest relay race in history, a member of the most select club in the world.

Ruminations of a secular Israeli
Yair Lapid • Yediot Achranot Friday Magazine
Translation: Didi Remez • Coteret.com

To be a Jew.

To think that you’re different from other people who aren’t Jews, but to get angry when it turns out that they think the same thing about you. To say, “all in all there are only 14 million [Jews] in the entire world, what is 14 million?” So you can tell about the Jew you met in Kamchatka, the last place in the world you’d expect to find a Jew. To stand in the ancient graveyard in Prague, in front of the Maharal’s grave [Rabbi Judah Loew], and to read the Hebrew letters etched in the stone. To feel for a moment that you are etched in stone a bit as well.

To be a Jew.

To know which Jewish actor had a Jewish father and to be surprised that Bill Gates isn’t. To say “Einstein, Freud and Marx,” despite the fact that you’ve never read Einstein, Freud or Marx. To think that every “Cohn” and “Kane” must have once been Cohen. To meet an intelligent gentile and to say about him, “he’s more Jewish than you.” To tell people that you had great rabbis in your family despite the fact that you don’t know exactly what it was that was so great about them. To inherit from your grandfather leather-bound copies of the Talmud with gold lettering, to put them on the shelf and to say to yourself that one of these days you’ll read them.

To be a Jew.

To want perpetually to be someone else. To know that every Jew you’ll meet feels the same thing because that’s a Jewish trait. To talk with a taxi driver who wants to be a singer, with a waiter who has an idea for a start-up company, with a lawyer who says that one day he’s going to write a book. To say, “In France there are people who are waiters for their entire lives, and they don’t have a problem with that.” To feel that there is a problem with that.

To be a Jew.

To hear that someone painted a swastika on the wall of a synagogue in Bolivia, and to feel that it’s your business. To read about how anti-Semitic comic books are sold in Japan and to say, “Think about it, they’ve never met a Jew in their lives.” To be profoundly insulted when someone says to you that the Holocaust isn’t an acceptable argument. Only we’ll decide when the Holocaust stops being an acceptable argument, and that time hasn’t arrived yet.

To be a Jew.
 
To see a picture of a tall and skinny blonde and to say to yourself that Jews don’t look like that. To be in a perpetual fight with three kilos, three children and three accounts, a Jew who wakes up feeling anxious at three in the morning because of something that tomorrow will appear to be foolish. To ask to be excused in the middle of a meeting if the word “mom” appears on the screen of your cellphone. To say, “Americans see their children once a year,” but not really to understand how they can.  To announce that this year you won’t be at the Passover Seder because you’re flying to London. To delay the flight to London until after the holiday.

To be a Jew.

To complain about the long movies that people make at every Bar-Mitzvah, and then to go and make your kid a 22-minute-long movie that includes a photograph of him at the age of one in the bathtub. To sing enthusiastically “Kol sasson vekol simha” [part of the Jewish wedding ritual], but under no circumstances to remember how the song continues from there. To know the melody from the blessing before reading the Torah [the reference here is to a Bar-Mitzvah boy] even thirty years later. To stand during prayers on Yom Kippur and to ask yourself when the shofar is going to be blown [marking the end of the day of fasting]. To walk into a synagogue in a foreign country and to see Jews sitting by a wooden table reading Hebrew. To walk up to them and to say “Shalom to the Jew” because despite the fact that you don’t know one another, you really do.

To be a Jew.

To keep a kippa in the glove compartment of your car just in case you get stuck having to go to a funeral. To tell your guest from abroad, “Yad Vashem, the Western Wall tunnels and you’ve got to see the new museum.” To think secretly that people with white beards are smarter. To love your neighbor like yourself because you can’t stand yourself. To tie your sister’s sofa to the roof of your car for a move and to tell your brother in law, “what’s the matter with you, we’re family.”

To be a Jew.

To think that Jews in the Diaspora are a little more Jewish than you but also a little less, and not to bother trying to reconcile that contradiction. To quote Maimonides as if you knew him. To know that you’re no less a Jew than the most Ultra-Orthodox Haredi in Mea Shearim, but to squirm a bit at the sight of the rabbi who co-married Chelsea Clinton along with a priest. To say about the red string around Madonna’s wrist, “that’s not Judaism” as if you really know what is.  

To be a Jew.

To know that the most important thing in life is family, and the most important thing in family is what you eat. To make “Grandma Tzipora’s meat patties” ten years after she’s been dead. To tell your mother, “you’ve got to open a restaurant.” To have a family dinner on the holiday eve, a barbecue for the holiday lunch, dinner after the holiday is over, and in the middle to eat from the cake because Jews can’t resist pastry.

To be a Jew.

To talk too much about the kids, too much about money, too much about work, too much about how we talk too much. To be worried all the time that someone is cheating you because, after all, every Jew has an Uncle Reuven who once lost everything. To long for a town you’ve never visited, and for a house you’ll never return to. To know that sometimes things end badly. Not to understand Jews who returned to Germany after the war, but to think that you’d already be a millionaire if you were in America. To call a relative in America who became a millionaire and to ask if your kid can sleep at his house.

To be a Jew.

To belong to something. Something deep, eternal, something that is bigger than us. To know that belonging comes with a price. They’ve already tried to burn me, kill me, expel me, convert me, but the fact is that I’m still here. Because I am a Jew from the Land of Israel, a proud runner in the longest relay race in history, a member of the most select club in the world.

Comments

[Garnel Ironheart]

He's probably more Jewish than most of the people in Meah Shearim, you know?

[ah-pee-chorus]

what a thoroughly enjoyable piece!! i am proud to be the authors jewish brother.

[Choni Davidowitz]

I maintain that a secular Israeli is much more "Jewish" than an "ultra-Religious Jew in the Diaspora.
The next generation of the former are much likely to become Torah Jews in Israel whereas the offspring of Religious Jews in the Diaspora will eventually assimilate.

[Alter Kocker]

This is the real essence of Judaism.

[Maskil]

Beautiful!

[jay]

Choni, if it was inevitable that the offspring of religious Jews in Diaspora would eventually assimilate- there would be no Jews left. Two thousand years of Diaspora would have ensured universal assimilation.

[Alter Kocker]

Why is it immediately assumed that Diasporan Jews will immediately assimilate? There have been Jews in Europe for how long? And they did not assimilate. The ultra-orthodox in Israel trace their lineage from little places such as Poland, Lithuania, Russia.

Unfortunately, Choni, you are talking out of your ass!

[Maskil]

Yeah, I guess jay has a good point on that one. Jews have always been factionalized and certain factions ended up assimilating, in whole but usually in part, and the remainder ended up merging back with the persevering faction(s). If Jews remain in galut the same is likely to repeat. If Jews remain in Israel without changing their approach to diplomacy, politics and autonomy history tells us that the Jewish population will eventually return to roughly four hundred while the lion's share of the Jewish nation will be dominant, though oppressed, in galut.

[dlz]

Yair Lapid is an unfortunately rare phenomenon: an Israeli journalist who is open-minded and honest. Halevai that there were many more like him.