From a series of my FB posts: The ethnic tribal national peoplehood component of Judaism took me the longest time to get (as compared to the Torah and God components, which seemed self-evident). I remember walking into temple for the first time and I had never been around so many fat short people who appeared to descend from the in-breeding and horrible conditions of the ghetto. They didn’t have that hale hearty handsome WASP look I was used to. They looked squashed.
Another big shock in my journey into Judaism was meeting all the Jews who had no allegiance to Judaism, Jews or the wider society. They were the proverbial rootless cosmopolitans. They cared neither for Christian mores, Jewish mores, or American mores. Instead, they worked in media or dodgy enterprises.
Another thing that surprised me in my journey into Judaism was the lack of pieties in regular conversation. Nobody wished me to have a nice day. Instead, they asked for my tax returns.
Judaism in practice turned out to have as much in common with Christianity without Christ as the ways of the ethnic Chinese or Japanese I’ve met (focus on family, education, surviving as a minority culture and preserving your heritage).
In my journey into Judaism, I couldn’t get over how nobody but freaks cared about what I believed about God. No normal Jew gives a damn about theology or salvation into the next world. I grew up in a Seventh-Day Adventist world where theological controversy was the main thing and friendships were dissolved over it, all by people illiterate in the original languages of the Bible they were arguing over.
I discovered in Jewish life that what you believe about God is a private matter, while whether you keep a particular level of kosher, such as cholov yisrael, is a communal matter that separates or joins you to your fellows.
In my first few years in Judaism, I was so concerned about whether my fellow Jews believed in God. I wanted to rule them out of normative Judaism if they didn’t. Eventually, I learned it’s almost the cool thing to say in Orthodox life that you don’t believe in God, so long as you observe the commandments and preserve the community. Atheism or agnosticism are considered lovable eccentricities. Even Orthodox rabbis have confessed it to me.
In Jewish life, I found that people cared far more about what I did than what I said. It was hard to fool the Jews. I got exposed right quick.
The rabbis were willing to convert me to Judaism after a length of time and stringent tests, but at no point did they ever give over the slightest sense that I was doing them a favor by joining the Jews. No Jew ever gave me that sense. Christians bayed for my soul, Jews could care less about my soul.
I’ve never met a Jew who was exorcised by the great sin of fornication while that was considered about the greatest sin in my upbringing, the true determinent of whether or not you believed in god. Jews don’t seem to get angry about prostitution either. There might literally be a whore house next to their shul, as there is in 90035, and it doesn’t matter to them. Me? I can’t pray to God while imagining the Asian ecstasy available next door for just $120.
You walk into a Jewish home and you get this barrage of questions and instructions, “Don’t go in this room, don’t touch this, this is milkich, this will be fleishig, you ate by whom, who converted you, why you still single, what you do, are you gay?, do you know eli, he’s from Australia? Do you mind a zaftig girl?”
Jewish life bestows many gifts and makes many demands. It’s an intense way to live. I was new to Orlando and to its Conservative shul Ohev Shalom in 1993 and this complete stranger was introduced to me and asked me what did I need? Did I need a job or a car or what? I asked for a recommendation for a doctor for my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and he got back to me with that (I never saw the doctor, I figured I couldn’t afford him). I’ve slunk away over the years from many of the gifts/demands of Orthodox Jewish life.
I’ve found Jews a difficult people to con. I’d go to minyan and afterwards, half the crowd would just sit around and complain about the rabbi, the chazzan, the shul, the goyim, with this relentlessly negative and bitter and corrosive attitude. The rabbis advised me to stay away.
I would just sit there trying to learn about Judaism and Jewish life, and these Jews were just so critical of everything.
I grew up watching my dad preach and people getting deeply moved and I thought, hmm, how can I do something like this?
