I got home late tonight from a former student’s bat mitzvah party. She led services this morning, chanted Torah (wonderfully), haftarah (wonderfully), smiled happily throughout the wonderful kiddush lunch (delicious), and danced with her friends and family pretty much the whole night long after Havdalah service.
I kept thinking I’d leave, and then I’d get sidetracked one more time by one of my former students, or their parents, or my friends from the congregation, or even the new people that I met today. And I stayed and stayed and stayed, until suddenly the last dance ended and the DJ told everyone good night and it was time to leave.
At one point, though, the DJ was playing Hava Nagilah, and the bat mitzvah girl and her family were in chairs being held up over the heads of four strong men, and then everyone was on the dance floor and I realized, you know, I like being Jewish. I like my religion, I like my culture, I like my music, I like my people.
I truly don’t understand what it is about us that sends the haters into paroxysms of rage. Tonight, though, I simply didn’t care. Rachel was a happy, happy girl today, and there were dozens of Jewish children from age four to the late teens who were having a phenomenal time enjoying being with each other, whether it was dancing the horah or the limbo.
I had a blast, too, because about a dozen of the kids were my former students, some of whom I hadn’t seen in five years. It isn’t often a sixteen-year-old boy gives his former fourth-grade teacher a hug when she says “Oh my God!” as she suddenly recognizes that the young man whose face she was sure she had seen before but couldn’t place was Matthew B., who was in fifth grade (and a lot smaller) when they last met. (He’s finishing his junior year.) And he initiated the hug, no less.
It was wonderful mixing with the people from my former congregation. I saw my fellow teachers, my students’ parents, congregants that I liked and hadn’t seen in ages. It was my community, something I never really had in New Jersey.
I had a lovely time. So much so that I’m planning a Dalet class reunion after the high holy days this year. I spoke to the caterer tonight. Yossi’s the man who catered my adult bat mitzvah two and a half years ago. I doubt we’ll have dancing, but we’ll have food and conversation and fun. Really, moving to Richmond was the best decision I ever made in my life.
“I realized, you know, I like being Jewish. I like my religion, I like my culture, I like my music, I like my people.
I truly don’t understand what it is about us that sends the haters into paroxysms of rage.”
My daughter and I were having a conversation along these lines about 30 minutes ago. I remembered my mother saying how easy it must be to be a Protestant English man, and my daughter saying how hard being Jewish had become.
But it’s what we are, and personally there’s not a lot I’d change about it, apart from the unrelenting hatred, of course.
Well I’m off to listen to Itzhak Perlman “In the Fiddler’s House”.
Have a lovely day :).
“I truly don’t understand what it is about us that sends the haters into paroxysms of rage.”
Antisemitism isn’t about Jews, it’s about antisemites. They are born losers who can’t own up to their incompetencies and failures so they blame everything on da Jooooos.
Just look at all of Israel’s enemies in the Arab/Muslim world. They have taken trillions of dollars from the West for a mineral they couldn’t even figure out how to get out of the ground without Western technology, and they have nothing to show for it except a bunch of backward, repressive medieval societies. That is at least as much a source of their resentment and hatred as the fact that Israel takes up a tiny sliver of land near them.
Why the hate?
Jealousy is the main reason.
Big Guy Upstairs has had over a 5000 year relationship with the Jews.
There are many who have tried to deny that chosen people, first line relationship, casting aspersions, trying to push out or destroy history. Trying to wipe out the Jewish people.
No matter how hard they try, no matter what they do, they will never be first in his eyes or heart.
And that is what pisses them off so badly.