A Lonely Jew on Pesach
My isolating aversion to holidays.
It’s been decades since I attended a family seder. A number of factors, from family dynamics and estrangements, to my disagreements with them about many things, especially Israel and Palestine, made it too painful and difficult for me.
The joke I’ve made to friends is that in the spirit of Passover, I freed myself from…Passover. As it happens, I’ve also freed myself from all the other religious holidays with the disparate factions of my family, and from synagogue attendance in general.
It sounds harsh, even to me, when I string these words together in a sentence. I’m trying not to be too hard on myself, though, to compassionately consider how complicated it is for me to be an agnostic, ethical humanist, and feminist daughter of clergy, not to mention a “divorce kid” still traumatized by being shuttled back and forth between homes an hour apart so that every holiday, each parent could have me present for their celebration—leaving one lonely parent for me to worry about while I was with the other.
My liberation from all of that has felt vitally necessary, but it’s hardly been an easy or ideal remedy. It has left me feeling lonely and adrift, socially, culturally, and spiritually, a condition that has worsened as I’ve gotten older as a (happily, but still) childless person, and struggled to find like-minded community. Admittedly I haven’t done an earnest search for such community, in part because on the occasions when I have celebrated with other people and their families, I’ve felt as if I was betraying my own, making it difficult for me to be fully present and to meaningfully engage.
For several years, a friend’s sister who lives in Kingston hosted Brian and me for some Jewish holidays. I appreciated it, and I came to love her and her family. But despite enjoying moments around their welcoming table, the whole enterprise was so emotionally complicated for me, I would excuse myself several times to go and cry in the bathroom. Her father, a sweet man whom I like very much, couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to go to the progressive/hippie Woodstock Synagogue with them, and would pressure me to join them. I struggled to explain that it wasn’t as if I just hadn’t found the right temple; it was that temple, in general, was traumatizing for me as a wayward clergy kid.
A few years ago the friend’s sister and her husband divorced, and that was the end of celebrating holidays with them. Even though I found aspects of those nights to be tricky and bittersweet, I mostly miss them. But I haven’t looked for anything to fill that void; I keep myself in an uncomfortable limbo that in my mind might be less uncomfortable than either further cutting myself off from religion altogether, or the trial and error of finding what might work for me in this realm that I have always found so fraught.
Now and then I’ve tried to find my own way. One year, at the last minute, Brian and I invited a handful of friends over for a makeshift seder. I do not own a seder plate, so we printed out an online photo of one and placed it in the middle of the table. Everyone brought a dish. It was…okay. It still felt like I was betraying my family, so I never did it again. But in hindsight, it was better than the nothing I do now. Maybe I should give that another try.
Another year, 1998, I went with some friends to The Knitting Factory’s “Cyber Seder” at Avery Fisher Hall. (It was called “cyber” because they were recording and “netcasting” it, lol, but I can’t find video of it anywhere online.) Knitting Factory founder Michael Dorf had invited me because I had written for Paper Magazine about the club’s move from Houston Street to Leonard Street (another of those many clips I can’t locate), and also because he wanted me to try and persuade my dad to perform at the following year’s seder. (My dad could not wrap his head around the concept and dismissed it out of hand.)
Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, and others performed. It was…okay. A decent distraction for me, providing a vague sense of community. In hindsight, another thing that was better than the nothing I do now. Maybe I should give Dorf’s seders—these days at City Winery—another try, too.
I don’t know. Every possibility comes with a mix of comfort and discomfort for me.
***
This Passover, the pain around my arms-length detachment from my family and Judaism has been ratcheted up several notches. Israel’s war on Gaza is a topic I must entirely avoid with them, lest our tenuous bonds further break down. I feel utterly heartsick over what is happening, we don’t see anywhere near eye-to-eye, but I don’t think I can bear further rupture.
I’ve reached a level of isolation—from them, from my heritage and culture—that has come to feel unbearable, and I think I have to finally do something about it. What, I’m not sure. But I’ve got to step out of this limbo and try to figure it out.
In other news…
I was going to take a break from in-conversations at bookstores, but I cannot say no to Lucy Sante! If you’re in the Catskills, come hear us talk about I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition, at The Hound Bookstore in Roscoe on Friday, May 10th at 6pm. It’s a ticketed event. Please join us…
Your essay hit a nerve. I'd been thinking all day about how much I enjoyed the seder I hosted last night, because instead of going through the motions, it felt like everyone around the table was truly engaged—we had good discussions and nobody complained about how long it was taking to get to the meal. Even better, I didn't feel massive guilt when we abandoned the after-dinner part to watch a playoff hockey game (our team's leading scorer, who had a hat trick, is the best Jewish hockey player currently (or ever, really) in the game. His name is Zach Hyman. Tablet ran a feature about him last week.) This lack-of-guilt is significant because I've spent much of my life trying to define what it means to be "a good Jew." My dad was a Reform rabbi who grew up Orthodox, and I know he struggled with that kind of guilt, too; his family was not happy with his decision to turn his back on his observant upbringing, and their disapproval contributed to the depression that led him to take his life at age 46 (on Purim. File under: how to wreck one of the few fun holidays on the Jewish calendar). Before he died, when I was 13, he drummed it into my head and my older sister's that we were not to marry out of the faith. My sister made a horrible marriage to a Jewish guy. This is an oversimplification of what happened, but basically I watched, learned, and married out of the faith. That led to more guilt. I moved to a city with a small Jewish population, where my kids didn't even have a Jewish youth group to join. More guilt. When they were old enough to be independent, they went to school on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. More guilt. Too much guilt. Being Jewish gives me structure, comfort, and a sense of history and connection. But I'm not so blind as to fail to understand that religion is a form of brainwashing. Feeling guilt about something that should provide you with structure, comfort, and connection seems counterproductive. There are many ways to be Jewish—another rabbi told me that about 15 years ago, when I unburdened myself to her. That's helped me to make peace with my practice. If you lived closer, I'd say "Come to Edmonton next year, and join us at our seder." But I hope you'll find a place where you can feel less lonely in your Judaism. It's in your head. You want it. You'll get there.
I’m so sorry to hear about the weight of that estrangement. If you haven’t already read/listened to Sharon Brous, that might offer some avenues for next steps…