My Judaism in Action
When I was a child, the Jewish community was very much a part of my everyday life. Like many modern reform Jews, my involvement wasn’t strongly religious — it was just part of who I was. I attended Jewish camps, I performed in Jewish theater productions, and I participated in a Jewish youth group. As a teen, I spent every weekend with the friends I made through these experiences.
Like many kids, I’m sure I took for granted how safe, welcoming, and secure it felt to have a group of friends from similar backgrounds whose families shared values similar to my own and who loved me and cared about me. It’s hard to tease out how much that had to do with Judaism or that it was simply my good fortune to land in a loving and supportive group of friends.
I had a Bat Mitzvah when I was 13, for which I worked hard as I did my regular schoolwork. I liked meeting with the rabbi and didn’t struggle much through the Torah portion (the part that understandably intimidates many kids), but the memories of its meaning are fuzzy. At my ceremony, I may have spoken about Jewish values and beliefs and the importance of service, but I honestly can’t recall the details. I enjoyed celebrating with friends and family, but I don’t think I really felt I had become a “Jewish person” in the world or began to actively apply what I learned.
My family spoke occasionally about politics I was growing up, and though I can’t recall specific learning moments, I understood certain things as fact: that everyone deserves basic human rights and dignity, that there should be enough resources to go around, that injustice and racism are real. My mom proudly told me that my grandfather marched for civil rights.
One of my most salient childhood experiences took place one night when, while driving home, my mom, my brother, and I noticed a woman walking with three young children along a road near our neighborhood. She looked a little lost; something wasn’t right. My mom pulled over, asked if they were ok, and took them to our house (something we’d never done before). The woman had left an abusive husband to live with family, who then turned her and her children out on the streets at night, with no money, no car, and nowhere to go. My mom remembers my brother getting stuffed animals from our room to give to the kids; she shares that memory sometimes.
I think my mom called a domestic violence shelter and connected the woman to a safe place to sleep. They may have kept in touch a little after that, and I believe she may have been able to find her way to some stability.
This was just one small, direct act; it’s not as though we were kind to this woman because we were Jewish or because we were specifically taught to perform such actions, but somewhere along the way, I connected our Judaism to this experience and how easily a heart could open to someone else. I developed a sense that when you are a member of a community that has suffered, you learn to see clearly the struggles of others and to stand up when you observe pain and injustice. This was my earliest sense of what Judaism in action means to me.
Though my values were solid early on, I won’t claim to have done incredible feats of activism and service as a young adult. I do recall attending some political rallies, joining a social justice action group when I was a social work student, and being a prominent voice in the classroom on conversations around social justice. I often struggle with self-doubt, but I never questioned my beliefs and the value in speaking up and giving voice to ideas that are right and just, even if some find them contentious.
When I became an “accidental activist” after the Sandy Hook shooting, I threw myself into that work. I remember sobbing to a fellow activist who was with me on a particularly emotional day when I met a mother whose six year-old son was killed at Sandy Hook School. I told my friend that it felt as though something big and important had always been waiting for me, though I didn’t know it was there until it threw me to the floor. Becoming an activist wasn’t actually a choice — it was a calling, it was a part of me that was suddently not just something I felt on the inside, but something I was living on the outside. I came to see this so clearly as the truest form of my Judaism in action — the place I could channel all my hopes for and fierce commitment to a better, safer, more just future for every single person. The best and most cherished part of my Jewish identity.
Over the course of a few years, I had a dialogue with a Jewish friend from high school who took a very different political road than I did. After Trump won the 2016 election (and after I cried and cursed and then put my armor back on), he asked me to meet him for lunch to discuss some heated social media threads we were involved in. There were so many disagreements during that conversation that I can’t remember them all, but I do recall telling him that I felt strongly that being Jewish means standing up for everyone, and his response was, “Yes, we stand up for everyone, but who’s standing up for us?”
I gave this some thought, and I do feel there’s a conversation to be had about how centuries of anti-Semitism and the hatred we continue to face has sometimes been ignored or even purposely pushed aside in the progressive movement due to conflicts around Israel (a topic for another day).
But what this friend said just does not work for me. We don’t suffer in silos; our suffering is connected. If the Holocaust can happen to one group of people and slavery can happen to another, then we must always be vigilant to make sure that these massive, generational traumas don’t happen again. We can — and should — fight for ourselves and others. Empathy for the human stuggle does not get used up once and then evaporated; it grows and grows indefinitely. And what better reason to stand up, if not to use lived experience as fuel to stop the cycle of dehumanization, violence, and abuse?
Recently, I’ve been exploring ways to engage more with the Jewish community, and I don’t know what will come of it. Whether or not this leads me to join a synagogue and give my kids a Bar Mitzvah, I plan to continue celebrating holidays, baking the occasional challah, and teaching my kids about justice. And I know for sure that I will always, always put my Judaism into action, fighting to create the world I want to see, one that knows no hate, no violence, no suffering in the shadows — a commitment passed down to me through generations of survival.
