New Archive:

May 2001 Issue

Continued Jewish Learning Experiences:
My Commitment to Jewish Identity

By Reni Gertner

BeaEl Al Flight #001 from New York to Tel Aviv seemed to take forever to get off the ground. When I first curled up in my seat, I was sheltered in a place that felt perfectly comfortable. I was the youngest member of a group of 20 Jewish women from the Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, my own mother included.

But as the plane filled with people, I became an outside observer. I saw around me more young families in traditional Orthodox dress than I had ever seen in such a confined space in my life.

As dozens of young men in black hats davened, or prayed, up and down the aisles, I sat in awe of their constant commitment to observance of daily Jewish rituals. This airplane "course" in Jewish religious observance set the scene for my own one-week immersion in Jewish culture.

When I was growing up, my parents drove me to the synagogue around the corner for Hebrew School three times a week for seven years. I was the first student in Aleph, the first level class, to learn to sing the Hatikva, the Israeli National Anthem. Although I was always a meticulous student who sat in class and paid attention, I was there by requirement.

After graduating Hebrew School, I continued through the additional years of confirmation and post-confirmation classes, performing well largely because I wanted to succeed at everything I did, not because I craved to understand my Jewish identity.

Over time, being Jewish and learning Jewishly has become a personal choice, a commitment to myself and to others. My formal religious education has been like a springboard from which I have jumped into deeper exploration of what it means to be Jewish and part of a Jewish community.

As part of this process, I have become involved in the Boston Jewish community, specifically in a program that promotes education about critical Jewish issues of interest to young adults. Although I had been to Israel twice before in the basic scheme of my formal Jewish education, it wasn't until this past summer when I chose to go in my adult life that I became truly committed to the experience. Traveling to Israel among 100 young adults from Boston this past summer finally taught me that I need to have a place in my own Jewish community at home.

Taking all of these past experiences with me, I flew excitedly again to Israel three weeks ago. Shortly after our arrival, we spent three days in the world of Israeli Jewish women--Karmiel Misgav, Baltimore's "partnership" region in the Northern Galilee.

I watched with the Israeli women as the Misgav High School students performed a Yom Hazikaron Hebrew skit about a young soldier who departs to the frontlines, and it brought tears to my eyes. I had learned about Remembrance Day in Hebrew School and attended Remembrance Day ceremonies a few times at home, but it wasn't until I sang the Hatikvah among my new Israeli friends, that the holiday had any real meaning to me.

My formal Jewish education provided the necessary foundation for me to be able to engage in Hebrew song, but until I sang with Israelis, I knew nothing of the unity our singing could create.

We experienced together the quick transition from the solemn silences of Remembrance Day to the picnics of Israel Independence Day, Yom Ha'atzmaut. I avoided separating from our Israeli picnic for as long as possible.

Holding the hand of one woman, who in that short visit had become a friend and teacher, I could see that she noticed my hesitation. By becoming intertwined with these people and this place, I had learned about Israel and my Jewish identity in a way I never had before. I held on for fear that if I left, if I stopped participating, I would be forced to leave behind everything I had learned there.

Yet, as our Israeli friends sang to us about the larger community we created together, I found a strength inside myself that helped me physically let go. While I didn't immerse myself in Jewish religious observance during my trip, I had truly become entrenched in Israeli Jewish culture, something about which my courses in Hebrew School never even scratched the surface.

A strength inside me grew from the new piece of my Jewish identity that had formed in those three days. I knew then that as long as I chose to nurture my constantly evolving Jewish self, wherever I went, it would grow and always be a part of me.

Reni Gertner is an Associate Editor of Lawyers Weekly USA, a national legal newspaper in Boston, where she can be found wandering the Freedom Trail.

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