The Smallest Jew Who Ever Lived

Creaky steps. Mildewy carpets. Lots of shushing. Itchy dresses. Rustling of pages as I tried to count every piece of paper in my siddur. Saccharine grape juice. Loud chanting in a language I didn’t know. Being separated over and over again from my best friend because the two of us could not stop talking to each other. Seconds ticking by as I counted to 300 for the “five more minutes” my mom had requested. 294, 295, 296. 297. 298. 299. 300. Time to go!

These are the bulk of my memories of attending synagogue as a child: a beautiful, stuffy room, and Hebrew school that I could never seem to focus on. To me, it was the most awful experience. Yet, when I would complain about it to my mom, begging about the boring classes or the fact that my ADHD made it hard to focus long enough to read Hebrew, she would repeat the same phrase, “You have to stay until you are bat mitzvahed.” 

So, that’s how long I stayed. Not a minute longer. My bat mitzvah was incredible, full of lots of dancing and chairlifting that made me doubt whether or not I truly wanted to leave. But I had made my decision, and I was happy with the life it seemed that I got back. My free time was mine again, so I spent my Saturdays at Pinkberry or the movies. Judaism was reserved for holidays and family. 

Then, something happened: I began to miss my synagogue. Resentment became nostalgia, which dragged me back to glimmering stained glass windows and a sense of community that I hadn’t realized tefillah (musical prayers) could bring me. I was afraid of not being accepted, but I was also excited to see what more I could find in those same halls. When I returned, what I found shocked me: the strongest sense of community I have ever known. Friends were everywhere, and the prayers I had refused to learn in the past turned out to be inside my head after all. I learned what they meant, and I began to look forward to holidays for the chance to go back to the joy of it all. 

Working with the younger generations at my synagogue has made that experience so much sweeter, and I feel more connected to both my religious and cultural ties to Judaism in a new way. Every week, I have the opportunity to come to synagogue and teach 5th and 6th-graders about traditions, culture, history, and prayers. For example, during Hanukkah, I was able to teach the Hanukkah story, play dreidel, and learn about my students’ traditions.

My synagogue turned into a space of celebration, one that I can feel its pull on my chest back to it every time I miss a week. I am tied to it, to these people, as an invisible string hangs from my chest, pulling me back to my childhood and my teenage years in those colorful, creaky halls. 

I now feel myself listening intently to every word of my Rabbi’s sermons, hanging onto her oratory like honey gripping the sides of the jar as I dip my apple slice inside on Rosh Hashanah. 

All of this joy, however, was interrupted the day that I realized how little I knew about Judaism’s other denominations. I knew I was Reform, and I knew about Orthodoxy, but that was about the extent of it. Stepping into the Rising Voices Fellowship retreat for the first time was a celebration of different cultures and branches of Judaism that I had never met or learned about before. On the first day, we were asked to stand in a circle and share our names and our denominations. I wasn’t sure what I was, though Reform sounded familiar. I asked the girl next to me to define Reform Judaism, and she simply looked at me and went: 

“It means you’re the least Jewish.” 

Those six words hit me like a rock. I had never really thought before about the difference between “more” or “less” Jewish, simply that we were all Jewish and that we all celebrated, just maybe not in the same ways. However, now, I was isolated. Too Jewish for my Christian friends, not Jewish enough for other Jews. My temple was no longer a celebration, but a safe haven, since I was no longer “Jewish enough” in other Jewish spaces. Prayers started to sound foreign again, and I felt like that same child, counting the seconds until we moved on to the next activity. 

That weekend, being surrounded by powerful, completely different Jewish women, ended up passing in a blur until I found myself on the train ride back to New York City, texting my new friends. Contemplating that ride, I realized that although the weekend had been incredible, I had a sour taste in my mouth. Because, even after all of our connections despite differences, it is clear that lines can nonetheless be drawn in the sand. But sand washes away, and rather than focusing on the negative, I choose to focus on how that was only at the beginning of many weekends celebrating similarities and differences. 

That person’s opinion may not be the same as it was when she told me that. Though it was difficult, that feeling didn’t deteriorate the world of Judaism I had within my mind; rather, it solidified it. There is no faith without doubt, there is no imagination without reality, there is no joy without the pain to match it. Returning to my temple the week after was even more welcoming and joyful than I could’ve imagined because it made me realize that every person will experience religion in a different way. 

This realization made me understand how important it is to spread the message of Jewish unity over division. Denominations of Judaism may be different, but at the end of the day, none are either right or wrong, because our relationships to Judaism are individual. There is no such thing as “more” or “less” Jewish, maybe more or less conservative. Judaism is our faith in our faith, our faith in our culture, and our faith in each other. It makes no sense to divide ourselves when there are so few of us to begin with. So, the next time you meet someone who is of a different denomination, don’t try to place them on a “Jewishness” scale in your mind, because we are not a spectrum; we are a tree, with branches extending throughout the world, our leaves may be different colors, but that doesn’t mean that one is better than the other.