Passover 2011 is half-way over, my muscles ache from work, and I am once again rudely reminded of a personal issue of which my close Jewish friends are already abundantly aware: my Jew-Envy.

Simply put, I am a WASP, the boring, tasteless Wonder Bread of ethnicities.  Granted, I am a quarter Cherokee Indian (a paltry eighth on both sides), but I was raised WASP.  What does this mean?  It means I grew up devoid of tradition.  Of course, we did do the same thing every year for holidays, but these habits were completely upstart without any grounding in something as impressive as thousands of years of history.  We, like all WASPS, made it up as we went along, with one finger in the wind and the other on the untouchable pulse-beat of the stubbornly whimsical yet wondrous matriarchs of the family: the grandmothers.

For Christmas, my Mommoo (that’s a grandmother) always makes her holiday, beautifully garlic-ridden Chex mix as does my Nana (another grandmother) with her slightly milder take.  Turkey breast is a consistent staple on both sides with varying degrees of fixin’s: mashed potatoes, gravy, and dressing on both sides, with Mommoo bringing the delicious variant of oysters in the dressing, a green bean casserole, fresh homemade silver-queen corn, and apple sauce, while Nana ramps it up with a sweet-potato casserole and a radical Jello-salad.  For dessert: Mommoo rolls deep with her succulent Pecan Pie / German Chocolate Cake tag-team, while Nana sticks with the controversial crowd-pleaser that is her Lemon Dessert.  For Thanksgiving, the meals are typically identical to Christmas on both sides with a Pumpkin Pie finale as a variant.  As for Easter, a spiral ham is the standard fare with Nana, accompanied by a hash-brown casserole, and her baked beans.  On my father’s side, Mommoo is usually able to take off her culinary cap with the tradition being a pilgrimage to Grayson Lake, a Kentucky State Park, for their annual Easter buffet, a Mecca for the obese and cholesterol-slaves of the Southwestern Ohio / North Eastern Kentucky complex.  Even as a child, I knew that this was a sloven shit-show of humanity that would be hard to top much less aptly describe here.  The twisted perk of the trip laid in taking the plentiful left-over, buttery rolls from dinner, wrapping them in napkins, loading them into the women’s purses, and smuggling them outside to the lake, whereupon we fed them to fatten the poor geese that didn’t know any better and certainly didn’t have access to a competent cardiologists.  A cruel, ironic, indubitably WASP twist to the evening…

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining about my family’s holiday fare and activities.  But it was and is our own haphazard creation, constantly evolving over the years lacking any substantial historical roots other than recipes out of Southern Living that “worked” and whatever the prevailing culinary hipness that was stewing in the muddy waters of the Ohio River and evaporated into the ether of the Tri-State area.  Once again, there is nothing amiss with any of this.  I looked forward to every holiday gathering and never questioned any of it…  Until I moved to New York City and was introduced to Jewish culture.  It was then that I found myself yearning for this awesome practice of tradition.  Of course, as I have outlined, my family has tradition on both sides.  However, when we ask ourselves the ominous, existential question “Why?”  the answer comes back: “Because this is what we do.”  For the Jews, the answer comes back a resounding: “This is what OUR PEOPLE have been doing for thousands of years,” and, more concretely “This is Jewish law.”  In terms of significance, the latter obviously eclipses the former.

 

Having grown up in West Virginia and gone to college at College of Charleston, SC, I had never really met a Jew until I moved to Brooklyn in 2004.  My knowledge of the Jewish people was two-fold and pathetic: (1) Around 6 million had been killed in the Holocaust and (2) They didn’t worship Jesus as the son of God.

Being a film buff, I had of course seen Aronofsky’s Pi, but had no idea what Hasidim was about.  When I first arrived in Brooklyn to scope the neighborhoods in 2003 prior to making my move, I brought my bike, and, amidst my reconnaissance of the neighborhhods, found myself in Hasidic Williamsburg with wide-eyes and a subtly perplexed brow, convinced that I had landed on another planet.

I moved to Brooklyn in early April of 2004, and, unbeknownst to me,  Passover, was rapidly approaching.  My first indication of this fact came to me at Union Square on my walk to the train: a Hasidic male approached me and asked, “Excuse me…  Are you Jewish?”

After a moment or two of pointless deliberation, I responded: “No.  Sorry…”

“Thank you.  Have a nice day,” the Hasid said, as he quickly and coldly retreated to his next commuting prospect.  I watched from afar, and it seemed that his next intercept was a score: he had found a fellow Jew.  Upon realizing this, the Hasid persuaded his brother to perform a quick Hebrew prayer with him on the streets of Union Square East involving a bizarre device that I came to later know as the Phylacteries.  In the Jewish religion this act of prayer-persuasion is referred to as a mitzvah, which can refer to any of the 613 Jewish laws but also, in more modern times, performing a good deed completely lacking of self-interest, or, in this case, advocating a fellow Jew to perform a prayer for their own good rather than yours.  This selfless act takes only a few minutes, and there is no judgement made by the more Orthodox Hasid on his less traditional brethren.  After the prayer is completed, the Hasid hands the Brazilian a pamphlet, and he goes on his merry way: no telling him about the immanent end of days, no preaching of repentance, just an extremely cordial prayer amongst two men who happen to be Jewish.  What is the real tie that binds them?  Both of their mothers are Jewish.  They are born into this beautiful tradition and are, accordingly, intrinsically and, more importantly, ethnically linked.  This is the first of many reasons for my envy of the Jews.

Secondly, in my opinion, it is more of an ethnicity than a religion.  Not to discount the religious aspects of Judaism (obviously it is a religion), but even non religious Jews show up for Seder.  The ethnic aspect of it lends one a sense of belonging.  Anybody can be Christian.  Anybody can be a Catholic.  Anybody can be a Buddhist.  Anybody can be a Baptist, etc.  But you can only be Jewish if your mother is a Jew.  I already hear it: “You can convert!”  No, you can’t.  Converts will never be Jews.  Converts can study and observe Judaism as much as they want, but they will never be truly Jewish in the same way that, no matter how much Guinness I drink, I will never be Irish.  This too saddens me.

Thirdly, I envy the Jewish religion because it is the only religion out there not trying to convert you.  They don’t want you.  The Hasid I spoke of above, upon hearing my gentile admission, did not try to sermonize about how Judaism would save my soul or better my earthly existence; on the contrary, he very politely wanted nothing to do with me.  Other religions foraging the streets of New York are much happier to find a non-believer so that they can convert and thus boost their numbers.  Not the Jews: they don’t want me, and, accordingly, I only want them that much more.

Fourthly, they are the only religion with their own language, viz. Hebrew, another fact that adds to the argument that it is more a ethnicity that a religion.  Only Jews speak Hebrew, and I find that inexplicably and extremely cool for no reason whatsoever.

Lastly, I greatly admire the peculiarity and exact details of their observations.  This Passover, every Jew on the planet is following the same Order of the Seder more or less and abstaining from leavened bread.  Same can be said of fasting at Yom Kippur and the less stringent, but still traditional, fare of Rosh Hashanah.  This can not be said of any other religion, minus Islam and Catholicism to some extent, but with mush less specificity, and, as I’ve already stated, I could easily convert to either of these non-ethnocentric religions.

In conclusion, I want to be Jewish because they don’t want or need me.  I admire their tradition, yet I can never be Jewish.  I’ve accepted this.  Now, there’s nothing left for to do but smother my WASP sorrows with a ham and cheese sandwich.

Happy Belated Passover to all my Jewish Friends!  I wish I were one of you!