It’s this very question that I find myself grappling with today… How Jewish AM I…Really? Technically, I am very Jewish. I was born to two Jewish parents, went to Hebrew school, had my Bar Mitzvah at age 13 and then what? Since 1983 the whole definition of my religious beliefs have been muddled. From Age 13 to 18 I spent most summers at Jewish Summer Camps. I enjoyed the communal Jewish experience, the community shabbat, singing Jewish songs around the campfire… if you asked me at the end of a never-long-enough summer, I would answer ‘VERY JEWISH’. But the with the return to school and the soon to follow ‘High Holidays’ my passion and connection would quickly fade.

By Yom Kippur while fasting I’d quickly change my answer to ‘Not Fucking Much’. You see, I hate Yom Kippur. Despise being ‘trapped’ at temple, pressured not to eat anything. I dread the ever repeating service where my most common activity is flipping through the pages of the sedur to find when the damn thing is going to be over. And it’s always puzzled me, how exactly did my passion and love get so quickly transformed?

This cycle of love and dread has continued through most of my life. There have been times where I have embraced my religion, held my arms out wide and then held it close. Then there are times when I’ve crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash. One of the most challenged times for me with my relationship with my religion was when my father died young from cancer. Since that point I’ve never really been able to fully reconcile a belief structure with such a rigid view of the universe and the death of someone who I loved dearly and who by all accounts was a good man.

At times I think I’ve stuck around Judaism out of pure pressure. I mean my religious path was always well established – I’d get Bar Mitzvah’d, go to Israel after being ‘Confirmed’, Marry a Jewish Woman and raise my kids Jewish. And while I’ve deviated from that path, I’ve always felt that I’m locked into it. At 13 I did have my Bar Mitzvah, but almost the next day I told my parents that there was no way in hell I was going to study any more and get confirmed. To this day I still haven’t been to Israel. I married a woman who converted to Judaism and yet every member in my extended family married someone who isn’t Jewish. I don’t really celebrate Shabbat, only go to temple to drop off my kids at Hebrew school and no longer fast on Yom Kippor.

I do have quite pleasant memories of my Bar Mitzvah. I can remember riding the long bus ride from Moraga to Danville (where I had a short stint in private school) listening to my Torah portion on a Walkman the size of a brick. My mother brought over the DVD copy of my Bar Mitzvah tape the last time she visited, and I was of two minds about the whole thing. The first, that the party and all those people were more about relatives and friends of the family than anything else, and second that I look like I had a really great time.

But mixed with any good memories are ones which are not so fond – fighting with my parents (usually my mother) about exactly what we could or could not eat on Passover (I mean corn syrup in coke…give me a break! Also I never understood the idea of a passover cake!). Also many of my memories of temple involve either being bored out of my mind, or the feeling of being trapped…. flipping pages, looking for when it will all over.

When I start to really think about how religion even fits in my life I have an impossible time reconciling something that makes me miserable with something I’m supposed to be doing. What is this for exactly? I’m not trying to be coy, I don’t think I’m every really clear WHY I’m struggling with being Jewish. I mean, shouldn’t it be obvious? Shouldn’t it be clear why I’d go to temple, why I’d celebrate holidays, why I’d what to teach my kids the same things I was taught?

And yet, I find myself joining and quitting congregations in a town far too small to be changing dates at the dance. As I stood last week, arms crossed, ready to explode at my son’s Hebrew school I realized that I had to start dealing with my real feelings about it all. The issue which got my blood boiling was the explanation of a series of annual benchmarks that my children had to meet in order to be granted a date for a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. While this might on some level be entirely reasonable, I mean kids do have to learn what they need to learn in order to have a Bar Mitzvah, the idea that there’s some standardized testing of sorts for faith just struck to the core of my problems with my religion.

After all…. Isn’t religion supposed to be something you feel inside, something that connects you to others and something you WANT to do!? When did a sort of standardized testing get into the mix. And then it hit me, the feeling of being trapped, flipping through the book to find out when we’d be done… it’s the same awful feeling I felt in school when I wasn’t learning and wasn’t having any fun. It’s the same… YOU HAVE TO… feeling I felt growing up, when my destiny wasn’t in my own hands.

So with the annual renewal form sitting on my desk I’m drafting another letter of resignation to another congregation I’m going to no longer be a part of. It’s like agreeing to have your car towed away… What the fuck do you do next? And that’s where I am at, or rather it’s much more complicated than that…. Because it’s not just about me, I have a wife and kids. So it’s not only my own beliefs and connections but the responsibility for my children’s.

So back to that question… How Jewish am I Really?! I’m starting to think that the answer really isn’t important. The truth is, on some level I AM Jewish, but I don’t think that really needs to be measured. My path clearly isn’t an easy one and I realize that I need to not let the expectations and impressions of others dictate what and how I do. Perhaps if there’s some way to find my way back to those not-nearly-long-enough summers and that feeling I had so long ago.