Watering the Tree of Life - My notes on growing your (my) Jewish connection
As an atheist, who was raised in a not particularly connected (but fairly believing) household, I've put together my own attempt to connect with my paternal line
As promised - my path to retvrning to some Jewish cultural literacy.
Context
As most of you know, I'm half anglo/half Ashkenazi. The anglo side (my mom) was a convert to Judaism from divine revelation (not joking). That said, she didn't have deep cultural Jewish ties, as much as she studied at a woman's institute.
My dad was raised conservative Jewish in Boston in the 30s/40s. Much more conservative than conservative today. After his dad died, and he joined the military, while he would do High Holy day services, he wouldn't do much more.
By the time I came around he really wasn't connected with the Jewish community much at all. I did Sunday school, and got Bar Mitzvah'd via Chabad, but I wasn't in a Jewish community. For Jews in the audience, I had no idea what z"l was for the longest time.
I dropped services entirely as soon as I could, too. And, well, I'm an atheist. But I want to pass the religion and culture down to my kids, especially in case they have a greater yearning for G-d than I do.
Language
There’s no particular order here, but I think any particular serious approach to this requires you to learn Hebrew to at least a moderate level. Here’s my personal approach:
Duolingo: While this is going to teach you modern Hebrew rather than biblical Hebrew, it will help drill you on the letters and the basic grammatical concepts. I’m not all the way through yet, so we’ll see where this goes. As it improves, my plan is to continue to—
Biblical Hebrew: I don’t have a particular recommendation here yet — there’s threads on reddit, etc. Biblical Hebrew is somewhat different than modern Hebrew. It has vowel marks, singing marks, etc. However, you need to know the letters and sounds first before you can really tackle this. While working on this I am also using—
Interlinear Texts: I purchased the ArtScroll Yom Kippur text, and will be doing similarly with the Chumash (5 books of Moses) soon. It’s just to get into the flow of reading the Hebrew with the English.
I suspect there’s also a benefit to watching Israeli TV, etc. but I hate too much audiovisual medium. Services help as well, in addition to being repetitive enough you can start picking up the sounds.
Religion
Once again, if you’ve somehow missed this, I’m an atheist. However, cultural engagement with Judaism requires engagement with religious rituals, and I want my children to be able to seamlessly (or at least seam-minimizing) return to Judaism, which means I have to re-engage with the religion.
Even if you don’t regularly make it to services, consider listening/watching from some kind of Livestream. Beth Yeshurun, the largest conservative congregation in the US as well as the one I occasionally attend, streams on BoxCast (a Roku app), as well as on their page.
Here is roughly my attempts on how to increase my education and engagement.
Education
Parshah. Yes, read your Torah portion each week. Chabad.org has a great reader, though I know there’s probably disagreement. There’s a ton of these out there. I like Chabad’s because it has in-line commentary.
Try to go a little deeper on commentary. I use Aleph Beta , which has a variety of levels of lectures and commentary that are released with the weekly or festival subject, as well as other content not tied to the calendar. I’ve also had The Little Midrash Says recommended to me. It’s for kids, but my knowledge here is, well, basically for kids.
Go beyond just the Torah. Read the rest of the Tanakh - Nevi’im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings). I haven’t done this yet. You can find some pretty aggressive plans to read through the Tanakh in a year. As an example.
So this is all kind of table stakes, and I really want to say that there’s enough reading that if you want to engage with the community and understand what people think, at some point you’re going to probably need to engage with a Torah study group led by someone more educated. There’s zillions of specialist books, commentaries, whatever.
There’s other work that can be important to engage with as well. The Shulchan Aruch (‘Book of Jewish Law’). Maimonides. Philo. Obviously, the goal is to get to the point you can engage with the Talmud directly, if you so choose.
My personal goal is to get my Hebrew and broad background knowledge to the point that I can tackle Daf Yomi, the 7 year, globally synced reading plan of going through the Talmud a page a day.
Community
This is easier in some ways, harder in others. Find a synagogue, try to make it out for services occasionally (or more often if you’re religious) and go to holiday events. Take your kids to holidays. Meet other Jews.
Make the foods your ancestors might have. Explore other Jewish foods that they might not have.
Consider sending your kids to Sunday school.
Try to understand what brought your family to where they are today.
Culture
Breaking up religion and culture is certainly a choice some people might disagree with, but I did want to separate it out. There are things that are culture that are about the cultural legacy, and there are things that are contemporary culture.
That said, culture is lived, not merely read about. So I’m going to suggest, first, you familiarize yourself with what it means to live a Jewish life. On the more liberal side, you might check out Living a Jewish Life. On the more Orthodox side, you might consider To Be A Jew (which is what my mom has).
Here is a not particularly well structured series of thoughts about culture.
What is the historical structure of Israelite people, how did it lead into the diaspora, and how did that diaspora lead into the different cultural factions of Jews today? For example, the cultural differences between Litvaks and Hasids.
What are the different traditions that Sephardim, Mizrahim, and Ashkenazim bring to the table? What is your family?
What are the little elements that more culturally immersed Jews might have picked up on but you didn’t? Stories. Apocrypha. Lay beliefs. I personally am tackling this with some of the following readings:
Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews (Sefaria link) - an attempt to synthesize all the thousands of little midrashim and aggadahs into one cohesive narrative. Includes a lot of apocrypha, heavily sourced.
The Book of Legends/Sefer Ha-Aggadah: Legends from the Talmud and Midrash
When Jews who are deeper in that culture converse, what is some of the slang (see: z”l) and loan words they use? What are the institutions they talk about?
Connect, explore, see what grabs you.
Conclusions and Resources
This was written up pretty fast, and is based on how I think about it. I can’t really put enough emphasis on the fact that if you are trying to increase your connection with this heritage after a life away - perhaps more than a generation away - it will feel overwhelming. Judaism has a 3500 year cultural legacy, and even today the amount of variety is dizzying in its scope (I have often compared the various Hasidic courts to being like ‘competing kung fu schools for Torah’).
Find community. More religious, less religious, whatever - people who you can connect to and talk about it. Try to avoid incessantly bringing it up as you learn more about your heritage (a mistake I’ve made a few times) - but sharing doesn’t hurt either.
And if you feel a G-d shaped hole in your heart, then return.
I hope these resources and approach help you out!
Some additional links, mostly from my Amazon wishlist:
Paul Johnson’s “The history of the Jews” is incredible