Question 3: Why are so many Jews so scared of what other Jews will think?

(Hi folks. Been a while. I guess I haven’t quite gotten the hang of substack yet. Or I just haven’t blocked enough writing time into my calendar yet. Or both. In any case, thanks for sticking with me. I do hope that in 5784 I’ll make this more consistent.)

So yesterday morning, my husband Adami and I walked from Park Slope to Williamsburg for brunch. It was the first truly nice day, weather-wise, that we’ve had in Brooklyn for far too long. Neither sweltering nor rainy, a nice breeze, and good air quality to boot! Adami and I try to do brunch every Sunday. Sometimes this means a bagel at the shop down the street, sometimes french toast at home, and sometimes sitting down at a diner or cafe in the neighborhood. Every once in a while, it means a bit more of a trek.

For the unfamiliar, Williamsburg is about an hour walk from Park Slope. They’re both Brooklyn neighborhoods, but because of the limitations of the New York City subway, your best bets for getting from one to the other are an Uber, a bike, or your feet. As you walk, you pass through a few neighborhoods, one gradually morphing into the next as each cluster of blocks introduces itself with its particular shops and style. You know you’ve reached Williamsburg when you get to signs in Yiddish. Lots of Yiddish. Yiddish on school buildings, on synagogues, on signs stapled to telephone poles and streetlights. It’s not just Yiddish— Williamsburg, like many New York communities, is home to a variety of folks including the ever-evolving Hipster — but the presence of Yiddish can’t be missed. That’s because among the people who call Williamsburg home is a large group of Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews. Many Haredim live their lives in as much isolation as possible from secular New York, conducting business and social life almost entirely within their community. There are many rules to their lives, most of which I’m not nearly enough of an expert to comment on, but I do know how important a role modesty plays. For both men and women (this is a community that operates almost entirely within the gender binary) there are very specific notions of what’s acceptable and unacceptable to wear.

This is probably the moment to mention that I had on a spaghetti-strapped romper. Nothing super revealing, but let’s just say I wouldn’t wear it on the bima. I’d chosen my outfit for the weather and a long walk, not for the ultra-Orthodox Jews whose neighborhood I was walking through. Adami, wearing a t-shirt and shorts, was in a similar boat. Despite having dressed for comfort, we both found ourselves a little less than at ease as we considered our impact on our fellow Jews. As we walked, we stuck to the more demographically-mixed parts of the neighborhood, not wanting to accidentally stroll down one of the main Haredi residential streets. Still, we encountered many Haredi folks, including a lot of mothers with small children. Adami always wears a Star of David necklace with a chai in the center, and it happened that yesterday I had on one of mine as well. So there we were, two Jews, worried about what other Jews would think of us.

As a rabbi, I can’t count the number of times that someone’s told me something with the caveat of “I’m such a bad Jew.” This line can precede or follow anything from “I almost never come to Shabbat services” to “I ate the best lobster roll at the beach” to “I didn’t have a Bar Mitzvah” to “I decided to hold my bachelorette party on Yom Kippur.” (Ok that last one I made up, but I’m sure some rabbi’s heard it.)

Some people are proud to be “bad Jews,” others are ashamed, but for nearly everyone it seems to be an armoring-up line in keeping with Dr. Brené Brown’s teachings on vulnerability. Like if we name our “bad Jew”-ness, we won’t have to explain or defend our decisions vis-a-vis Jewish practice. But our Jewish practices are entirely our own.

The truth is that the Haredim in Williamsburg almost certainly wouldn’t see me as Jewish, and they’d see Adami as woefully off the path at best. Even if I were to dress in an appropriately modest manner, I would never be the kind of Jew that community might wish all Jews to be. To them, I may always be a bad Jew, or, well, a bad wanna-be Jew. But I know that my Jewish practices, and the choices I make around my Judaism, are carefully considered. I may weigh different criteria when making my choices, but that doesn’t make them any less valid. The same is true for each of us. Whether we’re Haredi or secular, we each get to make our own decisions using our own metrics. And so the only way to be a “bad Jew” is if we aren’t measuring up to our own understanding of how to live a good Jewish life.

Look, I won’t say that I have no desires for how I wish the Jewish world looked. I imagine most of us do. If it were solely up to me, our shuls would be fuller and our congregants more intensely supportive of one another, our liturgy (and translations thereof) more in keeping with the evolution of the Jewish people, and our collective budgets more in line with justice-oriented values drawn from Torah. My Jewish choices come from my hope to build the Jewish world, and world in general, that I dream of. But I also understand that there are a multitude of ways to Jew, that it’s often through encounters with folks who practice differently from us that we come to better understand our own choices, and that our overall people is strongest not when we are apologetic for how we practice but when we own it.

As we head into the reflective season leading up to the High Holy Days, I encourage each of us to note when we’re nervous about how our Jewish choices might be perceived by other Jews. Maybe this year that’s as far as you’ll get. Just noticing. Maybe, whether this year or in the year to come, you’ll be ready to own your choices just a little more. And maybe one day, on a Sunday in Williamsburg, I’ll walk down the street, encounter a Haredi neighbor, and wish them a “Shavua Tov” with a smile.