One of the things I've tried to do this year is become more observant. Due to a lot of issues with basically my entire life falling apart and being rebuilt, a lot of my day-to-day Judaism fell through the cracks. You can go back and see the beginnings of it in some of the older blog posts here. It was the same old story of unemployment, dissolved marriage, foreclosure, move on, meet someone new, start getting better, new job, new life. Regardless of the details of how it happened, it happened. Over the course of the past two years or so, something kept gnawing at me. I was putting my life back together, I was getting to a good place again but I was leaving something out.
I had to sit and examine my new life. The answer was obvious. As I went through the process of rebuilding my life I was subconsciously leaving out Judaism. If asked I would readily identify as a Jew but I had not attended a service in well over 5 years. My youngest children hadn't been to synagogue more than a handful of times since their upsherin when they were three years old. I had transitioned from someone who loved going to synagogue and worrying about having Jewish grandchildren to someone who occasionally felt a pang of guilt on Saturday afternoons if he saw a Jewish reference on television. This was not who I wanted to be and more and more the guilt and the emptiness grew in me.
After recognizing the problem not much changed for me. I went through every day pretty much the same. Along the way I started paying more attention to what I ate. It slowly evolved from ordering the bacon double cheeseburger to no bacon, to no cheese, to ordering the tuna sandwich or getting a salad. Slowly I started trying to schedule less on Saturdays. But I still felt that something was missing.
One of the first things I had to address in my own life was to stop being the resident "Uncle Tom" Jew for my goyishe boss. I had allowed an environment to grow around me where I would offer mild protest or chidding over borderline racist or anti-semitic remarks but never rock the boat too much. I was fast becoming a self-hating Jew on the road to assimilation and I had to bring it to a stop as soon as possible. But once you let a situation like this get established it is very difficult to fix it or stop it. The attitude of "why is it a problem now but it was fine last week?" or the inference that you are the problem for being a hypocrite.
As we all struggled through the ordeal of the 2016 Presidential Election here in the United States, I was becoming more aware of the news. Racial incidents seemed to be on the rise, anti-muslim opinions were openly voiced on social media, and the foul smell of anti-semitism started to waft in from the political fringes. I know all of this has been here for a while and, for the most part, has always been a part of our lives, but lately it felt as if people were being more bold with their statements.
Post-election Thanksgiving dinner with the extended family went about as well as could be expected when you're a liberal Jew who supported Bernie and then Hillary, and the extended family are nominally Christian Trump supporting conservatives. The hours of conversation about how Trump was already fixing America a full two months before being sworn into office was more than enough to make the trip a bucket of fun for all involved.
I felt something inside of me pushing back and demanding to be heard. I was not the person I wanted to be, or needed to be. I had allowed one person and one set of bad choices lead me down a road that took away something in my life that gave me peace. I had to get it back.
Sometime in mid-December, as the holiday season approached, I wore my kippah to work. I didn't do it the next day and a fellow manager asked me why not. I explained that I used to wear it all of the time years ago but due to work and trying to get back on track with my career I hadn't felt comfortable wearing one. That was only part of the truth. The other part was that I had let my life falling apart let me become a bad Jew and I didn't have the strength of character to represent the tribe anymore. We all know the old trope that if someone is rude in public, he's just rude; but if someone wearing a kippah is rude in public, then it is proof that all Jews are rude.
Part of why I chose to take off my kippah the first time was my own shame at not being a good Jew. Part of the reason I couldn't put it back on was my own cowardice and the fear of being pushed down again. But now I was a manager. Now I could make sure that no one was pushed down.
So I started wearing my kippah, on and off in mid-December but over the holiday vacation season and starting everyday during Hanukkah, I wore my kippah and I haven't taken it off since. Early on there were a few glances, hushed comments, and awkward questions but that wore off as we all moved into January and the new year.
What changed because of my kippah? Internally I felt way more guilt or shame when I walked into a non-kosher restaurant. Early on I made a point to keep a baseball cap handy to hide my shame. Luckily Chicago won the World Series, so I had an excuse to always have my Cubs cap handy. Externally, at work at least, I started noticing that certain people were talking to me more. I was a new manager, but I was also openly Jewish. Now I seemed to be father confessor to some, therapist to others, and champion to the downtrodden. If you work at my office and are a minority, live an alternative lifestyle, or belong to any other "non-Old White Man" group then we have most likely met and had a conversation or two.
I know there are more important things I should be doing to increase and improve my observance level but this was just the first step. Or perhaps, better put, this was the first rung on my ladder of increased observance. There's more to the story and more rungs on the ladder have been climbed, but we'll talk about those in upcoming posts.
I had to sit and examine my new life. The answer was obvious. As I went through the process of rebuilding my life I was subconsciously leaving out Judaism. If asked I would readily identify as a Jew but I had not attended a service in well over 5 years. My youngest children hadn't been to synagogue more than a handful of times since their upsherin when they were three years old. I had transitioned from someone who loved going to synagogue and worrying about having Jewish grandchildren to someone who occasionally felt a pang of guilt on Saturday afternoons if he saw a Jewish reference on television. This was not who I wanted to be and more and more the guilt and the emptiness grew in me.
After recognizing the problem not much changed for me. I went through every day pretty much the same. Along the way I started paying more attention to what I ate. It slowly evolved from ordering the bacon double cheeseburger to no bacon, to no cheese, to ordering the tuna sandwich or getting a salad. Slowly I started trying to schedule less on Saturdays. But I still felt that something was missing.
One of the first things I had to address in my own life was to stop being the resident "Uncle Tom" Jew for my goyishe boss. I had allowed an environment to grow around me where I would offer mild protest or chidding over borderline racist or anti-semitic remarks but never rock the boat too much. I was fast becoming a self-hating Jew on the road to assimilation and I had to bring it to a stop as soon as possible. But once you let a situation like this get established it is very difficult to fix it or stop it. The attitude of "why is it a problem now but it was fine last week?" or the inference that you are the problem for being a hypocrite.
As we all struggled through the ordeal of the 2016 Presidential Election here in the United States, I was becoming more aware of the news. Racial incidents seemed to be on the rise, anti-muslim opinions were openly voiced on social media, and the foul smell of anti-semitism started to waft in from the political fringes. I know all of this has been here for a while and, for the most part, has always been a part of our lives, but lately it felt as if people were being more bold with their statements.
Post-election Thanksgiving dinner with the extended family went about as well as could be expected when you're a liberal Jew who supported Bernie and then Hillary, and the extended family are nominally Christian Trump supporting conservatives. The hours of conversation about how Trump was already fixing America a full two months before being sworn into office was more than enough to make the trip a bucket of fun for all involved.
I felt something inside of me pushing back and demanding to be heard. I was not the person I wanted to be, or needed to be. I had allowed one person and one set of bad choices lead me down a road that took away something in my life that gave me peace. I had to get it back.
Sometime in mid-December, as the holiday season approached, I wore my kippah to work. I didn't do it the next day and a fellow manager asked me why not. I explained that I used to wear it all of the time years ago but due to work and trying to get back on track with my career I hadn't felt comfortable wearing one. That was only part of the truth. The other part was that I had let my life falling apart let me become a bad Jew and I didn't have the strength of character to represent the tribe anymore. We all know the old trope that if someone is rude in public, he's just rude; but if someone wearing a kippah is rude in public, then it is proof that all Jews are rude.
Part of why I chose to take off my kippah the first time was my own shame at not being a good Jew. Part of the reason I couldn't put it back on was my own cowardice and the fear of being pushed down again. But now I was a manager. Now I could make sure that no one was pushed down.
So I started wearing my kippah, on and off in mid-December but over the holiday vacation season and starting everyday during Hanukkah, I wore my kippah and I haven't taken it off since. Early on there were a few glances, hushed comments, and awkward questions but that wore off as we all moved into January and the new year.
What changed because of my kippah? Internally I felt way more guilt or shame when I walked into a non-kosher restaurant. Early on I made a point to keep a baseball cap handy to hide my shame. Luckily Chicago won the World Series, so I had an excuse to always have my Cubs cap handy. Externally, at work at least, I started noticing that certain people were talking to me more. I was a new manager, but I was also openly Jewish. Now I seemed to be father confessor to some, therapist to others, and champion to the downtrodden. If you work at my office and are a minority, live an alternative lifestyle, or belong to any other "non-Old White Man" group then we have most likely met and had a conversation or two.
I know there are more important things I should be doing to increase and improve my observance level but this was just the first step. Or perhaps, better put, this was the first rung on my ladder of increased observance. There's more to the story and more rungs on the ladder have been climbed, but we'll talk about those in upcoming posts.
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