Religion is everywhere. It’s a highly relevant topic in world history and in our lives, irrespective of our relationship with it. I learned this truth at a young age: Easter egg hunts in second grade, Christmas carols in middle school, and now at Georgetown—my first time at a religiously affiliated school. The irony that seeps into and engulfs my thoughts on the subject is difficult to ignore. I was raised in a non-religious home, yet I constantly think about religion and my place in its world. This past Easter accurately represented my relationship to it. I was confronted with its undeniable relevance, despite my lack of personal connection to it.
I visited the Bible belt this past weekend to spend Easter with my roommate and her family in Nashville, Tennessee. The first night we visited a family friend’s house to celebrate Shabbat—a Jewish day of rest and the seventh day of the week. After attending many Shabbat dinners at friends’ houses in high school, the meals have become my favorite religious ceremony for two reasons. The pre-dinner assortment of cheese spreads is an absolute winner, but it also helps mitigate the Jewish guilt that has accumulated over twenty years of my rock-and-roll secular lifestyle. The latter occasionally infiltrates my thought, but fades somewhere between the fennel salad and orange-glazed chicken breast.
Religion, at least in practice, has been absent from the majority of my life. My parents rejected it long before my birth. And though their current thoughts on the subject are undoubtedly shaped by their experiences under the Soviet regime that condemned it, they are not spiritual people. We intermittently celebrated Christmas in my formative years but mainly to pacify confused neighbors. We celebrated Christmas to be American, to “fit in.”
Growing up, my friends were among the confused. They saw Christmas lights in the window and instantly prompted: “But aren’t you Jewish?” I couldn’t give a precise response that didn’t involve a breakdown of Marxist ideology, so I resorted to a noncommittal shrug of the shoulders.
This most recent Shabbat dinner was not unlike the others. My friend introduced me by my conspicuously Jewish last name, unfounded expectations formed, and excitement over shared ancestry turned into mild disappointment and confusion over my nonexistent knowledge of Judaism. The remainder of dinner then included short teachings of Jewish traditions in some small attempt to provide me with the religious education of which I was deprived. The pity in the room was palpable and took form in cautious looks and gentle, rising intonations. It was sharp and heavy, and I hated it.
I felt a familiar feeling two days later sitting alongside my friends and their families during Easter Mass. They told me how to dress and act in church. I knew their instruction was innocuous, but I sensed in them some irrational fear that my unfamiliarity with religion would prompt me to wear a costume with “I reject the Lord, Jesus Christ” stitched along the sleeves.
My friends whispered the significations behind rituals into my ear for the remainder of the religious service. They wanted to share an important part of their upbringing with me and I was grateful for that. They tried to lessen the feeling of exclusivity that was perpetuated—perhaps unintentionally—by the Mass, especially parts such as the inescapable discussion of Christ’s crucifixion and those who were responsible for it.
It was clear to me that I was not a part of the communities to which my friends belonged. I was not baptized just as I was not bat mitzvahed. And though I do feel some vague connection to my Jewish ancestry, especially with a pamphlet titled “For Non-Christians” in hand, I feel an overall strong detachment from religion. And I feel good.
Religion is everywhere, but I’m comfortable with its absence in my life. That small, lurking feeling of exclusion does find its way to me, but its nothing more than a moment among others.
So, friends, please continue to invite me to your dinners to tell me a story about your life, or to share BBQ chicken wings with me, but don’t invite me because you think I need religion. Let me climb the mountain myself, with God’s help or without it.
