Passover Jew Angst

By Sara

Passover. Great holiday. Eternal source of existential agony.

I’m Jewish, yes? Well, ethnically, for sure. My family is made up of Jews from Belarus and Romania/Transylvania (suck your blood, blah, blah, vampire joke) who take the culture seriously but the religion…well, not so much.

Supposedly, all sets of my parents’ grandparents were Orthodox, and then their parents (my grandparents) were all Conservative, but my parents, as first and second generation Americans, kind of let that all go. They sent me to Secular Hebrew School for five years, where I learned all about the culture but not the actual religious rites, and that was that.

However, my situation growing up was very different from theirs, and that, of course, made my relationship to Judaism a little more complicated.

My parents were both raised in Jewish neighborhoods in the Bronx. Growing up, they were in the ethnic majority (at least until high school). Being Jewish was just a fact of life.

I grew up in a very Italian- and Irish-American town on Long Island where I was one of about six Jews in my grade. Even though my parents and I barely practiced (every third year or so we’d go to temple for Yom Kippur), Jewishness became a very important part of my identity. As it happened, we lived directly next door to the Catholic church that was attended by about 85% of my classmates. This was a constant source of amusement. Jewish jokes? I was there…and maybe the one making them. Being Jewish made me stand out. So I made it work in my favor.

Anyway, this is all background. The point is, I don’t really practice but being Jewish is very important to my identity.

So every year when Passover rolls around, I go home to my parents’ on Long Island and we get out our little Maxwell House Haggadahs and do a superfast version of the Seder and sing a song or two and eat matzoh ball soup (which, incidentally, is delicious. But I digress).

And every year I think, well, I’m very busy…and we don’t really practice anyway…so this year I won’t go home.

And then I feel guilty and wonder who I am and why we even bother doing anything anyway and maybe I shouldn’t go since I don’t do much else but if I don’t go then it’s like I don’t do anything and isn’t it important to preserve one’s heritage especially if one’s heritage is dying out because frankly the number of Jews is quickly receding and isn’t it about family anyway and then I just go home and do it.

I feel guilty for being fake if I celebrate. I feel guilty for being fake if I don’t.

So, well. Happy Passover.