Authentic Self and the Assimilated Jew, Part 3: Secular/Assimilated Jew?

I put “Assimilated Jew” in the title of this series because “Authentic Self and the Assimilated Jew” had a nice aesthetically-pleasing alliteration to it. But honestly, I don’t self-identify as a secular Jew or as an assimilated Jew.

Secular?

I don’t consider myself secular because in spite of my imperfect or non-observance of commandments, Judaism still has a significant impact on my life. I believe in G-d. My imperfect/non-observance of commandment is not a reflection of a belief that G-d does not exist. I think G-d exists, and while I do not know what I believe with respect to divine reward and punishment, I believe G-d prefers that I keep the commandments. The reason I don’t keep commandments is because the price of keeping them is more than I am willing to pay at present, come what may.

It’s not that I don’t believe in Torah or mitzvot (commandments). It’s that to be honest, there’s a limit to how much I’m willing to give up in order to keep mitzvot. Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/young-man-reading-a-book-in-hebrew-4034442/

And I don’t consider myself a secular Jew because I’m making a lot of life choices based on Jewish observance – decisions like which community to live in, looking for a place that is within the eruv, looking for a home that is walking distance from the synagogue that I’d want to attend.

Honestly, I seriously question whether these decisions are worth it. Honestly, I would love to not have these constraints and be able to drive to shul, move out to a nice, reasonably-priced place where I want to live with at least two bedrooms, adopt, and finally start raising a Jewish child. For better or worse, I have chosen to stay married to a self-identified Shabbat-observant Jew, so I am stuck with these constraints impeding my life choices in a way that secular Jews I know are not. And yes, I frequently question whether or not this is a good decision, but that is not the point. The point is that Judaism, for better or worse, driving enough of my life choices such that in spite of my imperfect or even outright non-observance of Shabbat, I really don’t feel secular.

Side Note: Judaism As A Religion

Judaism isn’t just a religion. Many Jews, religious and secular Jews alike, feel a Jewish peoplehood connection, or a cultural connection with Jewish tradition, even if they don’t connect with the religious obligation element.

Stock photo model engaged in Jewish cultural traditions (there’s no religious obligation to decorate your door with a felt “Happy Hanukkah” sign or stand outside with a tray of jelly donuts. Photo by RODNAE Productions: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-woman-carrying-tray-of-fresh-doughnuts-6115294/

Strangely, the peoplehood connection doesn’t resonate so strongly for me. I feel connected to my family and local Jewish community, but oddly, I don’t feel much inherent connection to world Jewry at large. Israel has never felt like home to me; even after multiple trips to Israel, Israel still feels like a foreign country that is less foreign than other countries.

I don’t connect to Jewish cultural tradition as much as one might think. Neither my parents nor my grandparents really cooked traditional Ashkenazi Jewish dishes. The non-religious obligation family traditions that give me the warm fuzzies are ones that we invented relatively recently, not ones that were passed down from generations. And I come from a long line of proudly secular, proudly American Jews on both sides – there aren’t family traditions passed down through generations.

TL;DR – It’s not that I have no connection to Jewish peoplehood or Jewish cultural tradition. It’s more that primarily, I see Judaism as a religion. A religion I do not follow in full, but nonetheless, a religion.

Assimilated?

I also don’t consider myself an assimilated Jew. To me, assimilated implies giving up part of your identity/culture/observance to become part of an outside majority community. I don’t consider myself assimilated because the motivation for me to give up observance wasn’t secular/non-Jewish society.

I stopped keeping Shabbat because the experience of keeping it sucked. I quit keeping Shabbat because I was too inept at time management to get everything done before candle lighting, and I was sick of the sense of failure I felt. I quit keeping Shabbat because I didn’t find it relaxing and restorative. It made me sick to keep sacrificing 1/7 of my life for an experience that felt tedious and pointless when I could be doing something more enjoyable,rewarding, or productive with that time.

In other words, I didn’t drop observance in order to assimilate and fit in to a larger secular society. I dropped observance because I had issues with the experience of being observant – issues that would have existed regardless of what everyone else was doing.

All or Nothing?

In the midst of all these jobs, I got married. When we were dating, Husband and I were on the same page with respect to Jewish observance. Husband still kept Shabbat when I decided to quit.

To his credit, Husband didn’t consider this a marriage dealbreaker. Still, Husband strongly encouraged me to keep as outwardly Shabbat-observant as possible, including telling my job I kept Shabbat and that I needed to leave early on Fridays. Once you give up a religious accommodation, Husband reasoned, you’ll never get it back if you want to keep Shabbat again.

He had a point, but I didn’t care for the all or nothing mentality it seemed to create. Was it really that one had to keep something perfectly in order to keep it at all?

Authentic Self?

The other part of this series title is “Authentic Self”. As mentioned in my previous posts in this series, it’s become a buzzword in certain workplaces. It makes sense in some ways. You shouldn’t have to not wear your hair in natural hairstyles, and you shouldn’t have to make up an easier-to-spell-and-pronounce name because your coworkers are unwilling to learn yours.

One reason I don’t like it is because, like most buzzwords, it takes on another meaning. In theory, “being your authentic self” at work sounds like a wonderfully inclusive concept. In practice, if you’re a white, cis, heterosexual male, no one cares about your authentic self or wants to hear about it in the workplace.

Another reason I didn’t like the concept is because it operated under the assumption that everyone wants to be their authentic self at work. Maybe my authentic self prefers boundaries between work and the rest of my life. Maybe I just didn’t want to share that much of my authentic self at work.

Self-portrait of me hiding behind an office plant instead of sharing my authentic self at work. Photo by Min An: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-a-boy-near-leaves-1126621/

But I also wonder if another reason why I didn’t like the “authentic self at work” concept was because, after all the changes in Jewish observance and attitude towards Jewish observance over the years, I honestly didn’t know who my authentic self was anymore.

Self-portrait? Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay