| Student Opinion |
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| Written by Liz Orenstein | |||||
| Monday, 01 November 2004 | |||||
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Sharing the Matzah Ball On the drive home from Hillel last week, a friend asked me if my roommate is Jewish. I replied that she is not. But upon further reflection, I realized that my roommate might beg to differ. Molly’s answer, had she been in the car with us that night, would have been that, having lived with me for nearly three years, she is “practically Jewish.” In Molly’s terms, anyone she has any connection to is “practically related” to her. This goes for the famous actress who is the daughter of her mother’s tennis partner, it goes for her old roommate’s new husband, and it goes for me. Living with me, Molly has been through the Rosh Hashanahs and the Yom Kippurs. She has screamed and shouted with a gragger in hand on Purim, and she’s lit candles with me on Chanukkah. Molly slurps all the matzah ball soup I bring back from home and voluntarily eats matzah with me on Passover. She has listened to me practicing haftorah, and she has seen the arts and crafts projects I created for the religious school class I taught. Molly has even been known to say “oy.” To Molly, this makes her practically Jewish. All this got me thinking: can one be “practically Jewish”? The technical answer comes easily – no. Without a Jewish mother, you cannot technically be Jewish. Even with a Jewish father, according to the Talmud, you are not Jewish unless your mother is Jewish. My mother is Jewish, so I am Jewish. Molly’s mother is not, so Molly in turn is not. But technicalities aside, Molly is the first to reach for the matzah, not me. She is the first to want to light the Chanukkiah (partially because I’m terrified of fire). And if Molly came to my house for Rosh Hashanah or Passover, she would win the Matzah Ball Eating Contest we seem to have every year. Like the Wise Child on Passover, Molly is not afraid to ask questions, and when she does, she listens to the answers intently. She knows the stories and the traditions and sometimes can detail them better than I. When it comes down to it, being “practically Jewish” may be just what Molly is. Molly can still believe in what she wants, but she can enjoy some of the cultural, traditional, and phenomenal aspects of Judaism (and by phenomenal, I mean my mother’s matzah ball soup). It may be blasphemy to some, but Molly takes the parts of Judaism she likes best and makes them hers. She may not agree with all aspects of the religion or even fully understand the meanings behind the things she enjoys, but she can talk the talk and walk the walk; and unlike most Jews, she even likes matzah. So to Molly and all others who consider themselves “practically Jewish,” I say Mazel Tov!
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