I am Jewish. I am the daughter of a Jewish Mother and a Jewish Father. No doubts. I identify as a Jew. And for many years of my adult life, I have attended a Jewish Reform Temple. I have been very happy with that. I consider my religion a key part of my life and my identity. But my relationship with my religion didn’t start out very well. When I was a youngster, it is fairly obvious that my Mom consumed most aspects of my life. This was no different. I need to caution you that I am writing this as I remember it. This is totally about my experience. Other people might not interpret what went on the same way, but this is my viewpoint.
Our family belonged to a Conservative Jewish Congregation. I remember attending Sunday school. And at a certain point, we began to study Hebrew. I remember the High Holy Days and going to Temple and literally praying that we could get out of there soon. (* If you aren’t familiar with it, the High Holy Days services are long. I would bet that most kids remember the same thing. Maybe not.) I remember my Mom getting dressed up to go to Temple. We weren’t the most observant Jews. We didn’t stick to the dietary laws, for example. But whatever our status as “good Jews”, we did participate. Not in an immersed kind of way, but we were part of the community, I think. I remember that at a certain point, Hebrew school began to be another thing that dragged me down. I wasn’t doing very well. I am sensing a pattern here….are you?
And of course, socially I felt that I wasn’t part of it. I vaguely remember that I had relationships with some Jewish kids. Where they close relationships? I don’t think so. I don’t remember feeling any more secure with my peers at Hebrew School than I was generally. As my Mom deteriorated, I felt outside of it everywhere. And the Hebrew School/Congregation didn’t do any better at reaching out than the public school did. I don’t even remember them reaching out at all. Did they know about Mom? I can’t remember. I don’t remember whether my Mom went to Temple around that time. All I know is that I was almost relieved when the Temple established a building fund and my Father wasn’t able to pay, so he dropped our membership. (One thing that I haven’t told you about is the relationship between my Mom’s mental illness and money.) And I used the excuse of the building fund to try to separate emotionally. (“You see, it’s all about the money.”)
I am a person who believes in God. Perhaps not in a ‘guy in the sky’ way, but I do believe. Did my relationship with Judaism as a child have something to do with feeling like God abandoned me? I think so. I was hurt. I was angry. I wanted somebody or something to come in and make it all better. And if nobody did that, I was going to reject them first. (So there!) However, the connection to my Judaism never went away. I felt a hole. I remember arguing, very heatedly, with high school ‘friends’ who thought my lack of connection to my religion made it imperative that I be saved. Accept Jesus and all will be better. Given the fact that I was an argumentative teenager, I remember that I shut those conversations down rather quickly. Maybe I didn’t shut them down firmly enough, because the conversations kept happening. I always had the feeling that they were disrespecting MY religion. So I must have had a connection on some emotional level.
I slowly started back in college. There was something so freeing about attending a Temple and NOBODY knew about my Mom. Nobody. It was about me. And nothing else. I did learn/begin to understand that other Jewish families struggled with mental illness around that time. I attended a Seder at the home of an interfaith couple. They had reached out to connect with Jewish college kids in the community. I remember lively conversation at the table about interfaith couples and raising children. The woman laughed about the confusion of children mistaking Passover for the “one with the Easter Bunny”. I thought she was bright, funny, a loving Mom…and totally happy. I was shocked when I heard less than a year later that she had committed suicide. I kept thinking about that. She was Jewish. And obviously, she was suffering with mental illness. It was amazing to me that I wasn’t the only one who had dealt with it. I wasn’t normally that clueless about things. I just didn’t understand on an emotional level that others had the same experiences that I did. I felt so different. And she had been Jewish. While very sad, that revelation helped me to gain a little perspective about what I had been through. I learned that mental illness is out there more than we realize. And that even Jewish people could have it. Since I recognized myself as part of that community, that made me feel less disconnected and different. That began, in a sense, my first steps towards healing.
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