Back to the Fold
Reconnecting to Judaism
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
I.
I join a Jewish sorority in college. Our mascot is a giraffe. I go to frat parties where my boyfriend isn’t invited and even though I never cheat on him, sometimes it feels like cheating, how close I get to other boys. I don’t tell my boyfriend when a frat guy runs his fingers through my hair at a party.
“Looking for horns,” he says.
“They didn’t want to be paired with us,” our Social chair tells me. “They don’t like Jewish girls.”
I break up with my boyfriend junior year. I meet someone else over the summer. He says he loves me; he says he doesn’t know if love is enough.
When we fight, he brings up my ex-boyfriend. We only fight over the phone, and I can hear him smoking a cigarette.
“Go back to your f*cking k*ke boyfriend,” he yells.
I know I should hang up, but I wait for something else to happen, the phone pressed hard against my cheek.
II.
I'm at the movies with a new guy. We barely know each other, but everything is funny. We fall into our seats and I recognize a woman in the row ahead of us from my old writing group. I’d gone online and searched for some place I could bring my stories. I say her name and she spins around.
“Who is your friend?” she asks.
“I met him at church,” I say, and let the word hang between us.
I was raised Jewish, but my last boyfriend was Christian and took me to services every week. I went because I wanted to belong. When we broke up, I kept going, as if I’d left something behind and wanted to find it.
“I hope you come back to the fold,” she says, and turns around to face the movie screen.
I want to ask her how her writing is going. I want her to ask me the same, because I have been writing—a lot. I want her to read my mind. I want her to take my hand.
I don’t know yet that she has cancer. Two months later, she dies.
III.
The rabbi is an hour late to meet at my parents’ condo on the beach. I wait with my mom, my brother, and two friends. It’s required to have witnesses when I recommit to Judaism. When he finally arrives, we walk down to the beach and everyone watches as I step into the ocean—the mikveh. The waves are strong, but I recite the Shema and dunk my head at the pause of each verse.
I start going to temple every Tuesday night for a small Torah reading. The rabbi, who is also 25, has a wife and a newborn. Each week, he reads the Torah portion and we discuss its meaning. I am mostly quiet; I come to listen.
I meet his wife for coffee and she brings the baby. We sit outside and the baby sleeps in the stroller. I have so many questions for her. I want to know if she’s happy, if she likes being the wife of a rabbi, if the baby brought her joy, if she thinks I'm a bad Jew because I can’t read Hebrew, if she thinks she’s a good Jew, if she thinks anyone is really a good Jew, if she knows how to be happy, if she thinks anyone is really happy, if she believes you need to let happiness happen to you or if you must go out and find it, if she thinks I’ll ever be happy.
VI.
My rabbi sends a message every Friday afternoon. Last week he wrote, “We need to hold each other close with love, friendship and Ahavat Yisrael.” I Google what it means: “Love for one’s fellow Jews.”
I give every message a heart, so he knows I’ve seen it. I'm not sure he knows how much it means to me, though, to still receive these blessings, these prayers.
When I thought about ending my life two years ago, I called this same rabbi. He picked up the phone right away and told me that my life was important, that I have so much to offer the world, that God made no mistake in creating me. That I have a responsibility to embody the Torah as best I can.
VII.
Two directors sit next to me at a cafe. They are casting a play. “She’s too…Jewy,” one says to the other. “That nose!”
For most of my life, I told people I was culturally Jewish but not religious.
My husband buys me a Star of David necklace from Tiffany’s and I'm nervous to wear it in public.
I keep my daughter home from daycare on The Day of Rage.
Well-meaning text messages wish me a “Happy Yom Kippur.”
There are so many gaps here, so many moments left out in my account of coming back to the fold. Somehow, none of these pieces ever feel like enough to tell the story of my Jewishness.
I think of my old piano teacher, who used to go outside while I practiced and stand beneath her live oak tree and talk to God. She would brush the leaves with her fingers and I would watch her mouth move, unable to hear her words. She would close her eyes and I would envy her proximity to the divine.
And now my husband takes my daughter outside each morning and they stand in the shade of the Silver maple tree. She reaches for a leaf and feels its smooth surface. She’s gentle with it, delicate. I find myself admiring her—the way she marvels at something greater than herself.
Brittany Ackerman is a writer from Riverdale, New York. She earned her BA in English from Indiana University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University. She has led workshops for UCLA’s Extension, The Porch, HerStry, Write or Die, and Lighthouse Writers. She is a 3x Pushcart Prize Nominee and her work has been featured in The Sun, MUTHA, Jewish Book Council, Lit Hub, The Los Angeles Review, No Tokens, Joyland, and more. Her first collection of essays, The Perpetual Motion Machine, was published with Red Hen Press in 2018, and her debut novel, The Brittanys, is out now with Vintage. Her Substack is called taking the stairs.
Instagram: @suboatmilk
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
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