Over the summer, I was having lunch at the Ivy in London with a friend of mine from Camp Livingston when we started laughing about lactose intolerance and were brainstorming a comedy sketch about how it would go down. I said, “This is so Jewish!” to which he responded by pausing and looking at me and asked, “Does everything have to be Jewish?” I paused. I have been thinking about this question ever since. My knee-jerk reaction was to say “No, no, not at all,” but on closer examination, my answer is: yes, everything has to be Jewish. My dear friend from school at Royal Holloway University of London, Sienna-Faye (SF) Philip and I discuss this often — does everything have to be Jewish?
SF and I recently were going on a Shabbat walk. Before Shabbos came in on Friday, I told her to come to mine at 2. She drove. We walked and talked about what it seems all of our conversations turn to at one point or another: how to be Jewish.
Both of us were raised Reform. My late mother, Rabbi Janice Garfunkel ate shrimp. SF has a kosher kitchen. We’re both on our individual Jewish journey, but it’s nice to have some company along the way. Although some level of Judaism has always been a part of my life, the thought of becoming more religious didn’t come to my mind until I went to Alexander Muss High School in Israel, where we spent nearly every day learning about Jewish history and religion, but even then my Judaism was still more secular, and more focused on Israel than the religion itself. It wasn’t until last year when I really started feeling like I was not where I needed to be spiritually or religiously. While I am turning out to be more frum (observant) by the day with no particular destination in mind, I find myself going to SF frequently asking if I seem like I’m going off the rails. She calls this my yidlife crisis.
SF, on the other hand, is much more grounded in her Judaism than I am. SF is a member of Finchley Reform Synagogue, where her mom spends a great deal of time volunteering and her dad is on the council. SF was heavily involved in the Federation of Zionist Youth (FZY) and Reform Synagogue Youth (RSY) and she still goes home most weekends to go to shul and spend time with her family. SF is in an interesting position, because her mother was raised more Orthodoxly (although she now plays a major role at their Reform shul, and she was the first female mazkirah of FZY), so she is at an advantage simply because she knows quite a bit, and therefore is able to make informed decisions about her Judaism.
So, where are we right now? Everyday it seems that SF and I call or see each other and begin our conversations talking about a new development in our Jewish identity. It usually circulates around these three topics: lifestyle, marriage and Israel. Lifestyle is based on the traditions and mitzvot that we decide to uphold/keep. SF’s mom in North London keeps a kosher kitchen with only certified kosher meat and two sets of everything for meat and dairy, but she also has a set of plates and cutlery for what she calls “the traif plates.” SF has a similar approach to her mother, defining her younger years as a middle ground between Judaism and the rest of the world. After shul on Shabbos day, she would go out with her family friends to lunch in a restaurant. Her best friend from her childhood was a Japanese girl whose family would know to give her the same food, just without the ham. With this, she was able to experience the London diversity that surrounded her while still maintaining her Jewish foundations.
Going back to our Shabbos walk… unsure of how the conversation gets started every time (it’s almost definitely because of me), we were discussing using our phones on Shabbat. I don’t anymore. She asked me if not using my phone really made me feel closer to God, closer to Judaism. I said it does. In turn, I asked her what she does to make her Shabbat spiritual, to which she replied by saying that the fact that she dedicated time to learning the guitar to play at our services on Friday night brings the same healing glow that I feel when I am shomer Shabbos. In our interview, I continued to press her about assimilation in the Western world that we live in. I asked how we know it’s gone too far. She said it’s when we aren’t different at all.
Her more assimilated approach (I use this word “assimilation” with a great deal of care, because it can be thrown around as an insult when that is the last thing I wish to do to the Reform movement) has prepared her not only to be a more cultured individual, but also more equipped to deal with antisemitism. SF, unlike many North London Jews, did not go to a Jewish high school or sixth form/college. The big three are: JCOSS, Yavneh and JFS. JCOSS is the Reform one, and to be chosen to go to it, one’s name must be pulled out of a raffle or if you have a sibling that already attends. SF’s name was not chosen. In turn, she went to a regular high school where she was the only Jewish student, and her whole friend group was Muslim, wherein lies our constantly evolving and differing approaches to antisemitism. Although I went to Sycamore, which wasn’t a Jewish school, there were still around 30% Jews. I was never really a minority at Sycamore. Consequently, I never had to deal with being much of an outsider. While I would see half my Hebrew school class in AP U.S. History, SF was learning how to put on her friends’ hijab for her. That isn’t to say that SF did not have a strong connection to her Jewish life. Not only was she involved in the Jewish youth groups I’ve previously mentioned, but she also chose to take religious studies outside of school, because it was that important to her. She also finds herself in company with members of United Synagogue (Orthodox) often, saying that those family friends of hers only go for the high holidays, yet she attends shul almost every Friday… So is observing Judaism through strict halakhah twice a year automatically better than being religiously reform every day?
During this academic year, although we face a great deal of antisemitic remarks in passing, SF has had two bigger scale encounters with ignorance. The first came from a friend who asked how SF felt about people losing their jobs in Hollywood, since Jews control it, afterall. Instead of losing her cool like I would have probably done, SF took this as an opportunity to inform her about antisemitic tropes and how they are harmful and untrue. Now her friend is one of our biggest allies, even defending SF on nights out when people say being a Jew is gross. On the other hand, not all of her experiences have ended so positively. A Muslim classmate of hers took an interest in SF’s Hebrew name necklace, and once she found out she was Jewish, sparked even more of an interest. SF thought she was safe, and had found a friendship similar to the ones she had when she was younger… until Israel was mentioned, where the classmate defended Hamas, referring to them as freedom fighters and saying that October 7th was an act of resilience. Although SF attempted, the same understanding that she received from her friend was not found in her classmate.
I admire SF’s bravery in confrontation. So often do we hear a lack of willingness for conversation from the other side, we forget that we are also at fault for being too scared to speak on the subject with outsiders. Just recently a friend of mine told me he couldn’t even speak to a Zionist and ended our friendship. I was tempted to show SF and say, “Look! It’s never going to change!” but then I remember all of the instances that SF has found herself in, speaking to an antisemite, able to find connections to them because she has spent her own time getting to learn about other cultures and religions, giving her a foundation of understanding. Not every experience will turn out as amazing as her friend, and not every experience will turn out as poorly as her classmate. An Iranian classmate of hers was so surprised that SF knew what ghormeh sabzi was that she thought maybe this girl does know a thing or two, and then they were able to do something that is rare in our generation — listen to one another.
SF is an inspiration of what Judaism should look like. Her living testimony says that we should not focus solely on sticking to one another, and that the focus of Judaism should not solely be how frum we appear to be if it is not coming from a place of pure intention. SF has never felt compromised in her Jewish identity, and I think that is something that we should all aspire to feel like. After ending the voice recording, and the many voice notes that poured through that night, we met up the next day and agreed that we should come back and look at this in a year and see what’s changed, because that’s how we know we are doing things right.