"I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member," Groucho Marx would say. And although so many of us don’t say it, we feel the same way.
Are you ashamed to be Jewish? Or should I reword that – are you ashamed to act Jewish publicly?
These are hard questions and definitely won’t be resolved in these few lines. But it may be somewhat of a comfort to know that we, as Jewish people, have always faced this challenge, and dealt with it in various ways. All too often however, the way of dealing with it was to “retreat into our shell”, to hide our Jewishness and hope that nobody would notice.
Tomorrow we will read the Torah’s description of the desert that our ancestors traversed. It reads as follows: “That great and awesome desert, [in which were] snakes, vipers and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water,” (Deut. 8:15). The commentaries tell us that this verse metaphorically refers to our experience in exile, wherever that may be.
It is in our perception of the world around us as “that great and awesome desert” that causes us to feel as though we don’t belong. If we focus, however, on the unique privilege and great merit that we have to be Jewish; when we focus on the fact that we have a uniquely Jewish soul, that has sustained our people throughout years of physical persecution; when we cultivate our knowledge of what it means to be Jewish, and not just kvetch about the challenges, then we will have the courage to stand up for who we are.