By Ruth Nemzoff and Miles Goldstein, a Junior at Brandeis University
Q:What is tradition? What Is familiarity? What is meaningful and what is habit? And what does all this have to do with my Judaism?
A: Each successive time I return home from college, my hometown feels less like a familiar place and more and more like a tour of what’s new. The bus lane has opened up on Second Street, the McDonalds is now a Burger King, and there’s a new park near city hall.
In contrast, when I first went to college, everything seemed different. Every face, street corner, and classroom was a new environment and an invitation to figure out the kind of person I wanted to be.
When I’m away from home, seeing all the new Jewish experiences available to me makes me feel a bit like a kid in a candy store. I can visit a Chabad Hillel, go to a Reconstructionist Shabbat, or even learn about alternative forms of Judaism. Something about the distance from familiarity emboldens my sense of adventure.
But recently, I returned home for the High Holidays, now a Junior in college, and went to the synagogue in my hometown where I have belonged since birth. It was there I was accosted with changes. In the year I’d been gone, the color of the prayer books was different. A new cantor was there who brought in new songs.
The chair the B Mitzvah kids sit in when they aren’t leading the congregation moved from the left side of the bimah to the right. The candlesticks given out to newlyweds in attendance on Friday nights were no longer gifted by the sisterhood, but instead by the synagogue as a whole.
So much was the same. The Rabbi’s dry wit was as sharp as ever. Challah and Manischewitz were still served in the lobby after Friday services. Two brothers still passed out little Hershey’s candies to all the children leaving Saturday services.
More importantly, the synagogue still held the same values I found comfort in, the commitment to learning at all ages, the honor and respect given to the elderly while still giving young families a voice. Why, then, did I feel so uncomfortable?
I’m sure some of it has to do with returning home at a stage in my life where I’m still staking out my independence. It seems that, away from home, new opportunities excite me, but when I’m back home, even the most minor of changes can be unsettling.
I wonder, maybe, if I’m just afraid of seeing remnants of my childhood change. I could be too closed-minded, unwilling to give the new cantor a chance because I so loved the old one. But I think it’s deeper than that.
Tradition makes us feel safe because it preserves the things we want to keep. But tradition can also feel constraining. It can blind us to new activities and experiences that might encroach upon what feels safe and normal. When I’m bothered by something that seems contrary to my tradition, I can never tell if it is motivated by fear of entertaining something new or if it’s my Jewish upbringing guiding me in the right direction.
I feel like there is something uniquely Jewish about this dichotomy. In the times of the Talmud, the Sages remarked how different communities were from each other. It began to cause great tension, to the point where communities would split apart over small discrepancies in practice. Sometimes, I feel like I myself might split apart, quarreling over what feels new and what feels familiar.
How do I know what parts of tradition are really important? When the chairs on the bimah are on a different side, it feels wrong, but I know that the configuration of chairs is not what I will hold onto as I figure out how to live my adult life as a Jew.
In college, there is no shortage of new Jewish ideas and experiences. I could spend several lifetimes trying them all. But I can also get paralyzed by that number of choices. I might spend so much time disliking the new that I never learn what feels right for me. I find that I’ve learned the most about what kind of Jew I want to be by talking to people who aren’t Jewish.
I’d never met someone who didn’t know what a Seder was before I went to college. It was a question that caught me off guard. But when I answered it, I found myself highlighting certain aspects. I explained the importance of telling the passover story, that the meal was both celebratory and symbolic, and that my father designed our own family Haggadah with my sisters and I that we now use every year. In that short explanation, I learned far more about what was important to me as a Jew than I did quarreling over minute changes I saw in my synagogue.
I have a similar experience when talking to people whose relationship to Judaism is in flux. Maybe it’s a kid from a Reform family who has found a home in an Orthodox circle, maybe it’s someone who grew up observant who now considers themselves only ethnically Jewish. I learn, from listening to them, what kind of things are important to me. When the former reform Jew tells me how important having a shabbat dinner every Friday night is, I realize that I don’t share that same value. These differences make me reflect on my own choices. I truly could choose to completely change how I approach Judaism, or even abandon it altogether. But I’ve chosen not to do that, in part, because of tradition.
Tradition, I think, is not what makes me feel safe or unsafe, what feels exciting and what feels mundane. Tradition is what I value when I have to find common ground with non-Jews or Jews who practice differently than I do.
As I think about it, I don’t want to live my life afraid to change tradition. I hope that my religious practice changes as I go about life and my needs morph. I want to constantly re-evaluate what Judaism means to me. Judaism is a multi-faceted, dynamic, and deep religion, and that is the kind of life I want to live. I don’t want to force my Judaism into a box ordained by the practices of the synagogue I grew up in and reinforced by a fear of trying new things. I hope I will always be both open to new ideas and comforted by the old ones.