On Feeling Jewish
One author wrestles with contradiction and embraces complexity
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.
Not long ago, my sister went for a routine endoscopy at a medical office in downtown Manhattan. She ran into our cousin in the waiting room; she was also there for a routine endoscopy. With the same gastroenterologist.
“Nothing has ever been more Jewish,” my sister laughed.
When I enrolled my daughter in Hebrew school for the first time last year, I told my husband it was because I wanted our children to feel Jewish. What did that mean? It meant feeling like part of a community. It meant feeling responsibility to that community on every level. It meant understanding history. It meant feeling pride, but sometimes also fear. It meant learning the Hebrew alphabet in a song and vying to play Esther in the Purim play.
Being Jewish—feeling Jewish—is in some ways rife with contradiction. It’s about Marjorie Morningstar and Anne Frank. It’s about laughing in the face of pain to cope with pain. It’s about never forgetting, but moving forward. It’s about feeling persecuted but also chosen. It’s about healthy paranoia and unhealthy paranoia. It’s about thinking you have a brain tumor and actually having IBS.
At the Passover seder, we repeat the refrain, “In every generation they rise against us to annihilate us.” Right now, with anger coming at us from all sides, no matter what our political beliefs, being Jewish feels a lot like that. It feels perilous and confusing, especially when we try to explain the why to our children.
But that’s still not all it is. Because being Jewish fundamentally means something that is so important and too often absent in our world right now—it means being able to hold two truths at once. It means not just allowing for nuance of thought, but pursuing it. It means accepting that there is not always only one right and one wrong. It means confronting ugly and uncomfortable realities without flinching. It means embracing complexity and, in our hardest moments, each other.
Nora Dahlia Zelevansky is the author of novels Competitive Grieving, Will You Won’t You Want Me?, and Semi-Charmed Life, as well as the co-author of nonfiction book, Roll Red Roll: Rape, Power, and Football in the American Heartland. Her upcoming romance Pick-Up (written as Nora Dahlia) hits shelves on 12/3/24. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, ELLE, Vanity Fair and many others. She is also a book coach/editor and ghostwriter. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two kids and enormous cat, Waldo.
Nora was on Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books to discuss Competitive Grieving. Listen here.
Instagram: @noradahliazelevansky
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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