Getting Passed Over or Jewish Angst

Most holidays don't interest me. I spent Thanksgiving waiting tables without feeling any loss. I spent Yom Kippur fixing up the house from the hurricane damage. Its a typical pattern: I blow off nearly every Shabbos, Sukkot, Purim, Shavuot holiday and simply act like the rationalist bad ass I am. In Israel I celebrated these holidays because they actually felt like real celebrations. Its kinda like how you can feel festive on your birthday if everyone around you is getting pumped up for it, but if you are by your self you feel like a pathetic jerk blowing out sad candles on the cake you just baked. In the homeland celebrating these events just made sense. Here, it is just awkward.

So this year I missed out on Passover. It is my favorite holiday. You get a great meal and a discussion about the meaning of slavery, freedom, religion, revenge, hope, nationalism, all in the context of multiple glasses of wine and singing. I have spend quite a few Passovers away from my family--it is the fate of the Diaspora Jew that the ideal travel times for seeing family corresponsd with the holidays of the host country not of the family--but even in these cases I usually know enough Jews that someone invites me over and I can get my Passover on.

This year my landlord is my only local Jewish friend. He invited me over but because he was having a huge international family reunion I didn't show up. I didn't feel like being the one non-family member at his table. So I spent the holiday eating ice cream and reading a criticism of Kantian geometry. It is a pretty good paper, and reading it cheers me up, but I am surprisingly depressed about missing the celebration.

So it’s a strange situation. Like a Birthday, I realize that holidays are simply arbitrary points on the calendar—and yet, like a Birthday they are emotionally difficult to ignore. Something about that date makes you think about your age. Something about the Jewish holidays makes me think about the kind of Jew I have become. I don’t think I ever be a sentimental boob about holiday spirit and what not but I think it was a mistake for me to miss out on the celebration. I will not ignore this holiday again.

I want to be able to celebrate the Jewish holidays without feeling like a lonely birthday boy. To do that, I have to find a place within the American Jewish Community and this is actually a pretty hard thing for me to do. The religious component of this community doesn’t look kindly on my lack of interest in performing ritual activities (I don't pray or keep kosher or keep Shabbat) or my disbelief in Rabbinical and Scriptural Authority—while the reform component doesn’t take kindly to my disinterest in maintaining the shallow bonds of shared gyms and swimming pools. I don't like to socialize and I don’t know where I can fit in. I would feel like a liar going to synagogue everyday, but I feel like a liar pretending these holidays aren’t important to me. What would Jesus do?