Category: Religion

Jewish Identity and Excellence: The Challenge of Impossible Standards

On the first two nights of Passover (or just the first night in Israel) Jewish people gather for a ceremonial dinner called a Seder, where the story of Exodus is retold. The centerpiece of the Seder table is a special plate, on which is placed six symbolic foods, each meant to represent an aspect of the Jewish people’s suffering as slaves in Egypt, and the way they gained their freedom. One of the items on the plate is an egg, and oddly, the egg is not a formal part of the dinner, so the symbolism of it is not directly addressed as part of the stages of the Seder. As a child, I always wondered what the egg was about, and asked a teacher of mine about it. Even though I learned later that his answer is not the official explanation, it resonated with me.

What he said is that the egg is not like other foods. When you heat an egg, it gets harder, and stronger. He said that this represents the Jewish people who were slaves in Egypt. I see now that his explanation was a variation of the saying “The same boiling water than softens the potato hardens the egg.” Pharaoh thought to soften the potato by working the Jewish slaves harder, and subjecting them to increasingly more cruel and harsh conditions. It didn’t soften them though. Like the egg, it made them stronger.

Another fixture on the Seder table is a bowl of saltwater, and in many families the egg is dipped in it prior to eating. The saltwater symbolism is pretty direct, representing tears. The symbolism, my teacher explained, is that the oppression-hardened egg is not the final lesson. Enduring slavery and Pharaoh’s hell would not be anyone’s choice as a way to become strong. Under the weight of this misery, the tears of suffering are the salt that layers over all aspects of life.

The metaphor applies just as well today as it did in biblical times. It has been said that many in the world apply impossible standards to the modern state of Israel, and that this is by design. It’s meant to trap Israel into an unwinnable game with eradication as the price of losing, said eradication being the clearly stated endgame of those who have opposed her existence since the beginning. It’s not hard to see the parallel to Pharaoh’s strategy here. Apply increasing pressure on Israel – pressure not applied to any other country – and eventually, she must break. We are seeing it in real time, right now.

As a consequence, by extension this increasingly impossible standard is then applied to all Jewish people across the globe. All 0.2% of us. This is not a new phenomenon. Jewish people have been subjected to impossible standards for thousands of years. With respect to anti-Jewish sentiment, the current situation in the middle east is the latest excuse. But what the people who do this don’t understand is the actual impact that has on people who are born Jewish. They don’t understand why that forces us to excel, which must certainly be maddening to those that wish to see Jewish people suffer. Before I explain my thoughts on why this happens, I want to make clear that I don’t think it’s Judaism as religion that does this, per se, although it is difficult to measure and potentially unweave from Jewish culture the effects of being held to impossible standards over millennia. Rather this drive to excel is the effect on a group of human beings born into a world that continually ups the ante on what will be tolerated. A world that from the outset seems to never afford them the same tolerance for humanity afforded to others. For context, let me give you some personal background.

I have been a high school math teacher for almost 25 years, with the exception of two years I spent on secondment, lecturing mathematics at The University of Waterloo. At the start of my career I worked in three different public schools in in the Greater Toronto Area, in neighborhoods with very different demographics from each other. Then I transitioned to teaching at a Jewish high school. As part of my ongoing work with Waterloo, I also have had the pleasure of working with thousands of students across Canada, as well as internationally in India, Singapore, Malaysia, China, and Ghana. These days I do a great deal of tutoring and mentoring, so I have the opportunity to work one-on-one with hundreds of high school and university students. As a result of these experiences, I’ve encountered students from a wide spectrum of countries, cultures, races, religions, and financial backgrounds. And there is one comforting and beautiful lesson I’ve learned:

Teenagers are fundamentally awesome people.

Despite cultural, geopolitical, and socioeconomic differences, the brilliance, goofiness, and awkwardness is universal. So too are occasional bouts of acting like an idiot. And the ability to be able to turn these characteristics on and off when the situation really warrants it is also universal. They’re ultra cool adults-in-training who still have the little kid in them but are learning how to manifest the grown-ups they will become. All while learning about and exercising their inevitable independence from older generations. They score huge victories. They make huge mistakes. If the child is the raw material, then the adolescent is the forge from which the ultimate adult emerges, tempered into that special alloy of perfection and flaws that we experienced adults all know we are. Witnessing this blossoming is an honour, and is what makes me so grateful to be an educator. For a teacher, students are like your kids, and when I witness them just being teens, I feel legitimate happiness. Even when they’re acting like idiots.

Take for example, school excursions like field trips and sporting events. Any teacher will tell you what a mixed blessing it is to supervise these, especially overnight trips. Those overnighters! There’s nothing quite as stressful as being responsible for dozens or even hundred of other people’s children out in the wild. Responsible for their safety, and also for their behaviour. The blessing is to be there to watch them experience and interact with the world outside the classroom. You see them behave respectfully to strangers. You see their curiosity. You see their enjoyment of each other. You also sometimes see them act like fools, and these are the times when you have to intervene. I have supervised more excursions than I can count, and many of them were multi-day trips to a different country. It’s stressful, but it is incredibly worth it.

So when I prepare a group of teens for an excursion I always tell them that I want them to have the best experience. I tell them how much I love that I get to be a part of it. And I make sure they understand the behaviours we expect, even while knowing that they often have slightly different plans of their own. But when I’m preparing a group of Jewish students, my presentation always has an extra request:

Hold yourselves to a higher standard.

See, if a stranger sees a large group of teens outside of school, they often have certain ideas about what they can expect, and some of that is negative. For example, if a large group of teens was eating lunch in a public space, and left a lot of litter, many people would disgustedly react with a thought more or less like damn teenagers – don’t their parents teach them to pick up after themselves? If the teens are being overly boisterous, you will often see strangers shaking their heads or looking at them angrily. In these situations, you will even sometimes see strangers intervene and try to modify the behaviour. Hopefully it doesn’t get to that stage, and as a chaperone you always do your best to make sure you are the one intervening, but people will be people. This is all normal.

It all changes though, if the group of teens is identifiably Jewish, say, because the boys are wearing kippot (aka yarmulkes or skullcaps). When it’s Jewish kids, the perception is no longer that it’s a group of annoying teenagers. It’s now a group of annoying Jews. The mutterings change from damn teenagers to damn Jews. Their Jewishness trumps their adolescence as the attributable factor for their unwelcome – albeit normal – behaviour. It’s not fair, but it is true.

That’s why I always tell my Jewish students that they must hold themselves to a higher standard. Not because of me, or because of arbitrary rules, and certainly not because it’s fair, but because whether they like it or not, they are ambassadors for all Jewish people. So be extra respectful, extra courteous, and keep that adult switch flicked to the on position. Because the world might cut you some slack knowing that you’re a teenager, but that slack gets gathered right up if you’re a Jewish teenager. And you know what? The kids always do it. They do hold themselves to a higher standard. We inevitably get comments from bus drivers, tour guides, other coaches, and even just regular people interacting with the group that the kids are so polite and respectful, and so nice to deal with – much more so than most groups of teens. This ability to live up to impossibly high standards has nothing to do with being Jewish, but the need to tap into that ability – and thus discover that you can – has everything to do with it.

Being judged more harshly than other teens because you’re Jewish isn’t fair. It’s not a choice anyone would make or a preferred strategy to learn how to rise above. It’s just reality. The reality that says to the sports teams from Jewish high schools that when you are playing at non-Jewish schools, kids will throw pennies at you. And if one of your basketball players commits a foul, the spectators will shout about dirty jews and their dirty play, so keep the fouls to the barest minimum. It’s an impossible standard.

The lesson in this runs deep and lasts a lifetime. First, it teaches the kids that they have the inherent power to be better – better than they even need to be. It teaches them that to be Jewish often means not giving bigotry and hatred an excuse, even and especially when that means behaving better than others. It teaches them that as much as we might wish otherwise, the world is not a fair place, and never will be, so play the hand you’ve been dealt instead of the one you wish you had. It teaches them that the best way to fight antisemitism is to act with honour, grace, and excellence. It also teaches them that you can let down that guard and be “normal”, but only when you’re amongst your own, and that breeds a strong sense of community. Ultimately, this lesson remains with the kids as they grow in to adults. They learn that they have the power to hold themselves to impossibly high standards. They achieve greatness as a result.

It’s ironic really. That impossible standards can make you impossibly great. But there it is.

Thanks for reading,

Rich

There Is (No) Fire

There is no fire
he said
They just want you to think there is so you will be afraid

But there is smoke coming out of the vents
I am afraid.
Shouldn’t we leave?

That’s not smoke
he said
It’s vapour from the air conditioning

But those people over there are dying from smoke inhalation
I am afraid.
We should leave.

They are not dying because of the smoke
he said
(wasn’t it vapour?)
They are dying because people die

But the door is hot to touch, and there is smoke coming from underneath it
I am afraid.
Can we leave?

The smoke is because the door is burning
he said
(wasn’t there no fire?)
But it’s just the door, not the room we are in

But there are people screaming in the next room that they are burning
I am afraid.
I’m leaving.

The fire is in the house around us
he said, blocking the windows
(wasn’t it just the door burning?)
This room is not on fire, so we are safe here

But I am getting very hot, and the air is getting hard to breathe
I am afraid.
I wish we had left

The fire in the room is your imagination
he coughed
(did my imagination make you cough?)
The w

The Shiva Friend

In the Jewish faith when a person dies, there is a formal grieving process that includes something called sitting shiva. The general idea is that the immediate family of the deceased ((children, spouse, siblings, parents) gather in one place and mourn intensely for seven days. The ritual comes from the Hebrew word for seven, which is sheva. During this time the mourners are visited by anyone who wishes to pay respects. Mourners are expected to be uncomfortable in their grief, so you will often see them sitting on low chairs. You will also often see them wearing torn clothing (or symbols of torn clothing), and in order to avoid vanity, you will often see reflective surfaces in the shiva house obscured somehow. Sitting shiva is not hosting, so mourners are also not expected to entertain, clean the house in preparation, or arrange for any food/refreshments for themselves or others. They are not really even supposed to get up when someone arrives, so you will often see the door unlocked or even slightly open, as people arriving are meant to let themselves in. I am not an expert in the strict rules regarding shiva, so I will not attempt to explain it further than that, and I apologize if even in that short explanation I have gotten something wrong. If you want to learn more, this link has some good articles: https://www.shiva.com/learning-center/sitting-shiva.

I will add that the observance of shiva varies quite a bit, from number of days to how many hours/day visitors are expected, but the theme of it is consistent: mourners gather to grieve, and the community gathers to support them. The grief and shock of losing someone so close to you that you are in a position of having to sit shiva is more than disorienting. It can be completely destabilizing. You don’t even know what you need, and you’re often not in a position to take care of even the smallest details. Your world is splintered, and there is a sort of terrible tide that carries you forward that you are helpless to resist. It’s awful. But sitting shiva is a very deep and meaningful way to begin the healing process. Personally, having lost both my parents, I have sat shiva twice. And I found that it was like that trust exercise where you close your eyes and fall backwards. When you sit shiva, it is like falling backwards into the arms of the community. And right there standing at the front of them all, is the person (or persons) I call the Shiva Friend.

At my age, in addition to the times I have sat, there have been quite a few shiva houses for me to visit. In almost all cases – definitely mine – I have seen a Shiva Friend at work. It is one of the most beautiful and selfless acts of friendship that manifests. I was moved to try and write about this at a recent shiva of some close friends of ours, whose mother had passed away.

In Jewish tradition the funeral is supposed to happen within 24 hours of the death, although sometimes it takes a bit longer, and shiva starts right after the funeral, so there is not much time. The Shiva Friend doesn’t ask if there’s something they can do. They don’t say “if you need anything, anything at all, call me,” although there’s nothing wrong with those sentiments. The Shiva Friend is next-level though, and it takes a very special kind of heart.

The Shiva Friend shows up at the shiva house as soon as they find out someone has passed. They know that soon there will be many people coming and going, and even though the mourners are not supposed to be hosts, everyone knows that you want the place to look nice. I have witnessed these friends cleaning houses so thoroughly that they were dusting baseboards in the bathroom, and cleaning the crumbs out of the toaster. But that’s just the first stage. They also know that it is tradition for there to be food for the mourners and the visitors, and that the community will also want to show their support by providing meals. The Shiva Friend will usually arrange for the food on the first night, and make sure it is all set up before people arrive. They will coordinate with people who want to contribute a meal to make sure that it is organized and that food arrives and is ready on time. They are at the shiva every day, supervising, cleaning, making sure the mourners are comfortable and not troubled by the things that would normally trouble a person who has crowds of people arriving at their home. They stay at night after everyone has gone and make sure the leftovers (and there are so many leftovers!) are wrapped up and refrigerated, and that the place is clean.

Nobody asks them to do this. It is not an occupation. They simply take that burden. They don’t even think about whether they should. They just do it. And what’s even more special, is that it’s often not the person you would think of as your closest friend. But when you see it happening, you realize just how special of a friend they are, and how you need to make sure they understand how much it means to you.

You don’t have to be Jewish to be a Shiva Friend. I have often seen this act performed by non-Jewish friends. In fact, you don’t even need a shiva to be a Shiva Friend. It’s a manifestation of friendship that says:

“You don’t have to ask. You don’t have to repay me. There is no ledger to be balanced. I see your need. I am in a position to help. And I will help. That is all.”

I don’t think everyone is capable of this, and I think that’s ok. But I do know that if you have someone like that in your life, you know how blessed you are. And if you are that person, I see you. I appreciate you. I thank you.

Thanks for reading,
Rich

“How Does it Feel to be Jewish?”

I’m Canadian. I was born in Montreal, spent time living in Calgary, and now reside in Toronto. My first language is English, which I speak with a weird fusion of Montreal and Calgarian accents. I’m white. I don’t “look Jewish”.

But I am.

I went to Hebrew school until the end of grade 9, when I entered the public school system. The public high school I went to was in a neighbourhood that had a high density of Jewish families, so even though I was no longer in Hebrew school, there were still plenty of Jewish kids around, though we were not the majority at the school. My friend group in high school was about 50% Jewish. We were all very close. It was a good time. We shared holidays. We experienced teenage angst. We learned to drive and we learned to derive (calculus joke – not sorry). We would not have said we were “tolerant” of each other. That would have made no sense to us. We were friends. We enjoyed our friendships. We enjoyed sharing our experience. I didn’t know how rare that was for a Jew in the diaspora because it’s all I had known. Then I went to university.

I studied mathematics at The University of Waterloo. It was, and still is, a great program. A lot of my Jewish friends chose to go to universities based on the Jewish population there, but I did not. Waterloo had the best math program, and math was my thing, so that’s where I went. Waterloo had almost no Jewish students. In all my time there I only met 3 others. And in my specific program, the Math Teaching Option, I was the only one. It didn’t bother me. I made a lot of great friends. I actually thought it was cool to experience a world outside the Jewish bubble I’d grown up in. It felt more real, because it was.

For better and for worse.

This was the first time in my life I would hold the designation “the Jewish person I know” in the eyes of many of my friends and acquaintances. Definitely not the last though. As a Jew living in Canada, you learn that’s very often what you are. You become the representative for an entire religion which has many sects, exists in many cultures, and has that country in the middle east that is in trouble all the time. People don’t generally discover that I’m Jewish right away because my Judaism is not discernible by my looks, demeanour, or dress, and I don’t lead with my name and religion anymore than anyone else does. But once they do find out, the questions start. Here are some of the questions I’ve been asked. I know you are going to think some of these are not true. I assure you they are.

“Is it true Jews love money?”

“So what’s the whole story of Israel and the Palestinians anyway? Why don’t they want peace?”

“Your nose looks normal. Did you have a nose job?”

“Do Jews really have horns and a tail? Do you shave your horns down?”

“Do Jews really use Christian blood to make the bread they eat on Passover?”

Crazy, right? But you get used to it. Sometimes I answer patiently. Sometimes I play it off as a joke. Sometimes I use sarcasm. It depends on who is asking and how I am feeling. But of all the questions I’ve been asked, the one that I always think of first when this comes up, and the one whose answer I’ve thought about most often, came from a fellow student in the Teaching Option at Waterloo. I think she was waiting for a moment when she could ask the burning question she was trying to wrap her head around. We were at a barbecue with a large group, and found ourselves sitting next to each other. She looked at me with a kind of confused wonder and asked

“So how does it feel to be Jewish? Like, to not have the love of Christ in your heart? That must feel so weird.”

I was struck right away with the understanding that to her, I was an alien. More than that, that I was an alien who knew it and knew what it would be like to be a native, was choosing not to be, and could therefore explain how it “felt” to not be something I had never experienced being. We had both grown up in Canada. We both spoke the same language and were both interested in becoming high school math teachers. We took the same classes and had occasionally worked together on the same assignments. My perspective to that moment had been that we were peers. It shifted immediately when I realized what her perspective was.

My answer at the time was to play it as a joke. I said something like “Feels amazing. Like a party in your head that never stops.”

But I wish I could go back in time and answer her properly. Here’s what I’d say.

When you’re young, it feels beautiful. You learn songs and prayers that children all over the world are learning. Every Friday night you have dinner with your extended family at your grandparents house and the food is amazing and there is so much love.

When you get a little older, you learn that there are a lot of people who will assume you’re Christian and wish you a Merry Christmas, and you should say “Thanks! Merry Christmas to you too!”

When you get a little older still, you learn that there are times when you should deliberately hide your Judaism, because even though we are proud Jews, you don’t have to advertise. You also develop an instinct for when to hide it. It’s a gut feeling. Sometimes you get it wrong though, and then you get blindsided by a visceral hate you can barely comprehend. The day I got beaten up by two kids who wanted to see my tail is a particularly painful example. I had zero clue what they were talking about. I didn’t know there were people who believed Jews had horns and a tail. I was so bewildered and scared, that if I could have shown them a tail to make them stop, I likely would have. I was 12 years old. I never told anyone.

As you get older you begin to understand that there is a significant segment of the world population that hates you. They never met you, but they hate you. They hate you so much they want to kill you. They believe once Jews are dead their problems will go away. You learn about the holocaust. You learn that’s why your uncle never talks and has a number tattooed on his arm. You learn that’s why your father has no cousins, and so you have no second cousins on your father’s side. Because even though his father was one of ten children, he was the only survivor of Hitler’s drive to exterminate Jews. You learn that during the holocaust, most non-Jews did nothing to protect their Jewish neighbours, and often betrayed them. You learn that during the holocaust, nations denied Jewish refugees entry. You learn that Canada was one of those nations. You learn that it’s history, but a history that we should never forget.

Then you learn that there are organizations whose charter it is to kill all Jews. And although they are in the Middle East, you learn that they have visible support in this endeavour all over North America. You learn to live with the low thrum of fear that someone will target you, or an institution you frequent, because of this hatred of Jews. You see it happen regularly. You learn that over the last few years in Canada, religiously motivated hate crimes have declined overall, but hate crimes against Jews have been increasing. According to Statistics Canada, they have increased by 52% since 2020.

Suddenly being the “only Jew someone knows” becomes complicated. You have a responsibility to represent all Jews. To explain Israel. To show that we’re human. I’ll say that one again: In interactions where you are the only Jew, you consciously make efforts to demonstrate that you – and by extension all Jews – are human. It’s a heavy responsibility. But you take it on. You have no choice. It’s literally about survival.

Then one day, in 2023, over 1400 Jews are massacred in a single day. Babies are murdered in front of parents. Parents are murdered in front of children. Families are burned. Woman are gang-raped and taken prisoner. It is all filmed by the people doing it so that they can share their victory with the world on social media and news sites. And in the days that follow, you watch people celebrating that it happened. You see further calls for death to Jews. You see this in Canada. Friends tell you to be balanced. Celebrities cheer the murderers. Elected politicians in North America call an event during which a terrorist is filmed cutting a Jewish child out of its mother’s womb, thus killing them both, a heroic act of resistance.

And next, the world starts accusing Jews of genocide.

That’s how it feels to be Jewish. I wish I’d told her. Though I doubt she’d have understood.