Because I Am a Jew

When the embassy representative asked my mother why she wished to leave Belarus, she did not say, “Because I dream of living in Manhattan,” or “Because I want to become successful.” She said, “Because I am a Jew.” My brother, who was seven months old then, bounced idly on her lap. It was he, many years later, who went to Israel before any of us, he who stumbled into a Jerusalem yeshiva and changed his life. 

Since Oct. 7, I have returned to the series of decisions that brought me to Orthodox Judaism, as though disentangling a mass of interconnected choices could ease the pain of this past year. If I had remained fixed in my secular life, the foolish logic goes, if I had continued to move with the current of my non-Jewish peers, then maybe the part of my soul that mourns with my people would have been quieter. In other words, if I had never discovered what being a Jew actually means, then maybe it could have been easier to be a Jew now. As Anthony Patch laments in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Beautiful and Damned,” I could have “[gone] on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world,” wholly removed from the most crucial facet of my identity. 

Of course, this is utterly untrue. Jews everywhere, from all different walks of life, are hurting with our brothers and sisters in Israel. This is not a war that is being fought in a tiny, distant Middle Eastern country. This is a war that we carry with us in London and New York and Sydney. But what an Orthodox life offers is the security of fellowship, the assuaging promise that I will not have to compromise my belief in the Jewish people’s right to statehood in their ancestral homeland. As a student at Yeshiva University, I do not worry about being physically assaulted for admitting that I am a Jew. I do not fear opening a discussion forum to see my classmate posting threats of murder and rape. The homogeneity of my community protects me from the very nightmare my parents glimpsed in Minsk. 

A few days ago, I was speaking to a friend of mine who is also a ba’al teshuva. We were tiptoeing into the memories of our pasts, remembering those times we helped our non-Jewish friends decorate their Christmas trees and how we felt a little flutter in our chests when our public schools plugged electric menorahs into the wall. “We’re lucky that we made it out in time,” she joked. I laughed, but the words stuck with me. We did make it out in time. This is not to undermine the necessity and beauty of interfaith dialogues and the importance of working alongside people with whom you disagree. Yet in a very real sense, my friend and I were lucky enough to exit a world that would have asked us to straddle contradictions or enter free fall. We were lucky enough to access the full spectrum of the Jewish experience, to usher ourselves into a reality where Judaism shines brightly without any diminution of its light. 

In his 1944 essay “Halakhic Man,” Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik writes, “When halakhic man approaches reality, he comes with his Torah, given to him from Sinai, in hand.” It is this Torah that I have turned to countless times since Oct. 7, it is this Torah that has carried me and so many others through. The minutiae of my days is governed by a sense of order and responsibility that has kept me grounded throughout this year; at the most fundamental level, mitzvot have anchored me. My friends and I return home from school each weekend for Shabbat, and those 25 hours without reading the news are a luxury that cannot be praised enough. And when this dark, interminable night stretches out as far as our eyes can see, we mumble sleepily through the morning prayers. “Blessed are You, our G-d,” we say, “King of the Universe, who girds Israel with strength.” We wake up, and we remember.

The minutiae of my days is governed by a sense of order and responsibility that has kept me grounded throughout this year; at the most fundamental level, mitzvot have anchored me. 

Had I never opened myself up to Orthodoxy, my life would have been easier in many ways. But it is falsehood which is easy and truth, as grueling as it is, which is worthwhile. Because I am a Jew, I am grateful for the effort behind the pursuit of a noble life, and the richness of the freedom I am allowed to earn. Because I am a Jew, I am grateful for a community that does not ask me to leave any part of myself at the door. What would remain, I wonder, if I had to make that choice today? I can only hope, with the sharpness of hindsight, that I would walk toward the life I lead now, because I am a Jew.

Rebecca Guzman is a Straus Scholar at Stern College for Women.