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.
My identity as an observant Jew fractured when I was 20. My parents, born and raised in Winnipeg by eastern European immigrants, clung fervently to their identity as Jews. They raised us girls with three rules: attend the local university to acquire a profession; marry a Jewish man; stay in Winnipeg. My sisters, ten and seven years my senior, followed orders. They learned Yiddish. They stayed in Winnipeg, developed professional careers, and married Jewish men. They had children and raised them in our family’s way: synagogue on major holidays; Friday night dinners at my parents’ house; Hebrew school; bat and bar mitzvahs.
I was the rebel. Unlike my sisters, I hated Hebrew classes and balked at studying Yiddish. I didn’t see any value in learning a language that nobody spoke. From seventh grade through university, I focused on French instead.
I was just young enough to catch the wave of a new generation—rock music, social upheaval, civil rights protests, the Vietnam war, the women’s movement, birth control. I learned the guitar and sang protest songs in the bathroom, improving the sound by removing the towels and bathmat and recording myself on a reel-to-reel.
At the University of Manitoba, I defied my parents by refusing to limit my romantic prospects to Jewish boys. The world was so much bigger than the Jewish community, and I wanted the world.
At 20, I fell deeply in love with a young medical student who had grown up in a devout Catholic home. He had come to hate religion, and was determined to convince me that there was no God. One September afternoon, I picked him up in my car and we parked on a side street to talk. I had just left Rosh Hashanah services.
“Bonnie, you’re not a Jew,” he said. “You’re a person.” I argued back: I was a Jew and a person. But he didn’t back down.
“It’s a story,” he kept repeating. “Read Bertrand Russell’s book, Why I Am Not a Christian, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”
I read the book, and by the time I finished it, I no longer believed in God. Forty years later, I still don’t believe in the kind of god described in the Torah or the Bible or the Quran. But I’m still a Jew— because being a Jew is about much more than believing in God. It is also about family, and a set of cultural beliefs about what matters: scholarliness, philosophy, psychology, love of books, familiar food, comedy, altruism, care for others, generosity, and instant connection with other Jews. Whatever we believe, Jews belong to a worldwide club that will invite us in.
I did comply with some of my parents’ advice: I acquired a profession, attending graduate school, becoming a psychologist, and eventually going into full-time practice. The ex-Catholic med student and I broke up, but I married another non-Jew—a soulful, insightful, generous and hilarious comedy writer, whom my family loved. My husband and I celebrated a secular Christmas, but no other Christian holidays. In my dining room sit the gleaming brass Shabbat candlesticks my grandmother brought from Belarus, but I've never said the prayer over them.
When Covid hit, my family was scattered across Canada, while I was in Portland. My sisters are still in Winnipeg, but their children and some of their grandchildren have left. With all of us locked in our homes, my oldest and most observant niece, Shelley, started an online tradition: Friday night Shabbat Zoom. For an hour each week, we would come together virtually, from four different time zones, and share stories from our lives. At sundown, Shelley lit the Shabbat candles. She broke off a piece of challah that her husband had baked, and sang the Shabbat prayer with her sons. We all said “Amen,” and toasted with wine.
This Jewish ritual held our scattered family together. Although I don’t believe in God or light Shabbat candles in my own home, I know deeply in my soul that I am still a Jew. It’s part of my identity, and nobody can talk me out of it. Shabbat shalom.
Bonnie Comfort has been a practicing psychologist for 30 years. Her psychological thriller Denial (Simon & Schuster) was published in eight countries and translated into five languages. Her latest book is Staying Married is the Hardest Part: a Memoir of Passion, Secrets and Sacrifice.
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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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Wonderful article and much of it resonated with this Irish Catholic. I do believe in a God of my understanding but there’s so much more to my Faith. Thank you for capturing the richness of our respective communities.
Beautiful. I needed that. Thank you, Bonnie. Shabatt Shalom.