One Woman’s Jewish Life, Essay Example

My interview with Helen X was both informative and interesting, and conveyed to me as well how religion may so powerfully reflect and influence social being.  Helen is a Jewish woman who has lived in Chicago most of her life.  She is widowed and 71 years old, and of an upper middle-class background.  She has one son who lives in California and a limited social circle; she maintains that it is difficult to make new friends as she gets older, and she prefers those she has known for long years.  Helen’s life, as she expressed it to me, is essentially based on attending synagogue services, meeting occasionally with her few friends, reading, visits to the city’s parks and museums, television, and Facebook and online shopping.  She describes herself as both fortunate and content.

Helen attends services at the Anshe Emet Synagogue near North Chicago, and she has been a part of the institution for many years.  She told me that she and her husband had both been active in the synagogue and, after his death, she felt a need to maintain that connection.  As the interview commenced, I asked Helen what being Jewish means to her in terms apart from the temple.  At this, she was amused and made jokes about my age and my not being Jewish; the implication was that the answer could only be known to another Jew.  When I pressed the point, however, Helen said that it had been a vital part of her girlhood.  Raised in the Midwest, there were few other Jewish families in the community, and her parents reinforced to her the need to honor their faith despite this.  Helen insisted that her parents never judged or criticized other faiths, but there was always a distinct sense that being Jewish was different and, to her, “special.”

She recalled with affection services when she was young, and how the intoning and singing of the rabbi moved her.  Even being with other Jews at these times was important, she said; it gave her a sense of feeling less isolated, even if the others were largely strangers.

Even so, Helen was at a loss to describe what the religion itself meant to her.  She related that she had been taught to honor God, to learn the basic history of the Jews, and understand that her people had greatly suffered over the years, but the exact nature of the faith, she expressed, was to her more a matter of living life as her parents had taught her.  This in turn translated to the need to keep close to other Jews, and maintain the holidays and rituals even when they were largely unknown to her community.  Helen described to me how she prefers Jewish weddings, for example, over those of other faiths, because she associates them more with feelings of joy combined with reverence.  It was clear to me, and in everything related by her, that Helen has a definite pride in being Jewish based on its being different from the mainstream she always knew, rather than because of any strict adherence to the faith itself.  She think of being Jewish, in her own words, as: “who you are.”

When I inquired as to specific elements of the religion in her life, Helen laughed and asked me to keep a secret: she dislikes most Jewish food, and prefers French and Italian.  She recalled that, as a girl, she disliked the gefilte fish served during Seder, which marks the beginning of Passover.  She enjoyed the rituals of chanting, washing, and commemorating each dish, but the food was distasteful.  More than anything Helen loves the music of the faith, even as she admits it is not necessarily appealing as music.  She said that it made her feel “important” as a girl, and that it was mysterious and powerful to her.  This in turn stays with her because she remembers how her parents spoke of coming to the Midwest from Poland, and how it was vital to them to bring the ancient traditions with them.  When I asked if she ever learned the meanings of the songs, she shook her head, saying that it was unnecessary; being Jewish, she claimed, means somehow knowing the meaning because of who and what you are. She went so far as to say that it is a thing someone must be born with.

As the interview went on, I gained a very strong sense of Helen’s Jewishness as completely bound up within her identity and social being.  To begin with, she mentioned that she very much likes keeping up with the synagogue online because they report on the major events of members, such as deaths and births.  This keeps her connected to the temple at all times even if, as she put it, it is not quite as much fun as Facebook.  The updates equip her to know what to say, and sometimes bring gifts, when she attends services.  Then, Helen and her female friends of longstanding tend to gather before services, attend together, and then spend the rest of the day socially.  The synagogue provides her with a foundation in the community, even if her circle is small, and she said that it adds direction to her days as well.  Helen in fact referred to a Christian acquaintance whom, she observes, lacks this kind of center.  Helen actually asked me if it was true that most Christians neglect their churches as time passes, because she believes this is a serious mistake as one grows older.  Faith, she asserted, is critical, not because of a need for God, but because life strips away so much else as one ages.

Ultimately, Jewishness for this woman was candidly expressed as a complete way of life, even if she could not identify precisely how the Jewish faith exists in strict terms.  It is for Helen about identity and, when that identity is shared with others, a unique feeling of community largely based upon a sense that it is different from the others.  Helen enjoys the singing of the rabbis very much, as she esteems the solemnity and happiness combined in Jewish weddings.  She values the rituals of the holy days as well, but this too is linked more to feelings of comfort and mystery than to any real knowledge of the faith.  It is all the more interesting, then, that Helen’s commitment to the synagogue is so strong.  It is the foundation of her life, as Jewishness is for the core of identity, because it has always been her life. Lastly, and importantly, there is absolutely no sense of regret or omission regarding Helen’s acknowledged ignorance of the faith.  This in fact reinforces how it is for her an aspect of personal being. Being Jewish gives her life a center, so it is a faith very much composed in her mind of all the other aspects of her life, and faith and social culture then become as one.