Midlife Shabbat: Why I Finally Decided to Embrace Being Jewish

After years of feeling like an outsider, our writer begins to explore Judaism at the age of 48.

I took a deep breath and entered the synagogue sanctuary. “Shabbat Shalom,” a smiling woman greeted me and handed me a prayer book. I looked around furtively, hoping that I wouldn’t see anyone I knew. How would I explain what I was doing there? Oh hi, it’s just me, a 48-year-old woman who has been allergic to organized religion her whole life, exploring religion and identity in midlife, nothing to see here. Some people’s midlife crises take them to sex clubs; mine took me to shul.

I sat in a pew and tried to look like I belonged. Like I knew what I was doing. Like I always went to Friday night services. Like I was Jewish.

Am I Jewish? This question has followed (and sometimes haunted) me my entire life. I grew up the daughter of a Jewish father and Christian mother, in Taylorville, the county seat of rural Christian County, Illinois. Yes, it’s really named Christian County. My great grandfather, known to everyone in Taylorville as Harry “Pop” Summer, had emigrated from Poland in 1906.

Family legend has it that Pop was trying to get to California in 1910 but ran out of money in Taylorville, so he set up a shoe repair store there. The shoe repair store became Summer’s Shoe & Clothing Store, which my grandfather and then my father eventually ran. I knew of only two other Jewish families in Taylorville, neither of which had kids my age. 

An Episcopalian WASP, my mom had grown up in New England and somehow been convinced to move to Taylorville to be with my dad. My dad’s three siblings all married Jews, and I was quite close with that large side of my family—grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. My parents didn’t raise my brother and me with any particular religion. “You can choose when you grow up,” they always said.

We didn’t go to church or temple, we didn’t say grace before dinner, and we didn’t celebrate religious holidays except for Christmas. Which I guess is a religious holiday, being about the birth of Christ and all, but it was a purely secular occasion for our family to enjoy each other over a decadent meal and lots of gifts, and to celebrate the end of the busiest season in retail. Religion just wasn’t a thing for us. 

But it sure seemed like a thing for other people. Throughout childhood and adolescence, I was often the target of casual antisemitic microaggressions. In second grade, a kid pushed me to the ground, taunting, “You’re a Jew devil worshiper.” I knew he was an idiot, though a faint voice inside my head wondered, Is that true? I didn’t know anything about Judaism or being Jewish. In my freshman year of high school, I arrived at school one December morning to find that a group of senior boys had festooned my locker with construction paper Stars of David and a crude drawing of an old man who was supposed to be Hanukkah Harry. Who is Hanukkah Harry? Am I supposed to know who he is? 

My limited experience with Jews wasn’t that welcoming either. Around fourth grade, my dad started taking my brother and me to Hebrew school on Sunday mornings at a temple in Decatur, a larger city about 40 minutes away, because he wanted us to be “exposed to Judaism.” I’m not sure what prompted him to do this, other than that living in Taylorville, we were surrounded by Christianity as the default.

My cousins lived in Decatur and went to the same Hebrew school. I think my dad thought that would help us fit in, but it didn’t. I hated every second of it. I hated not having friends there, I hated not fitting in, I hated making hamantaschen for Purim in the synagogue kitchen. After a year or two, my dad relented to our pleas and released my brother and me from this obligation. I was relieved that I didn’t have to feel like an outsider every Sunday morning anymore, but I would always remember what one of my cousin’s friends said to me on my first day there. “You’re not really Jewish, right? Only your dad is Jewish, not your mom, so you can’t be,” she said, in the cruel way unique to 10-year-old girls.

More than making me question my Jewish legitimacy, though, these incidents made me feel deeply alone, and somehow ashamed for not being like everyone else either in my town or in my family. The singular pain of not fitting in, of being different from and feeling rejected by everyone else, is an ache that digs in deep as a child. Like a parasite, it takes root and feeds on each slight, each rejection, each casual but cutting remark, until it becomes part of our story and our soul.

I moved to New York in my early 20s and have been here since, delighted to live in a place where I could be anonymous and belong however I wanted. Still, I continued to be defined by how I didn’t fit in. Jewish boys I dated were mystified by my family’s Christmas traditions, which seemed incontrovertible proof of my Christian-ness, even though I just saw it as proof of having grown up in America. Non-Jews I dated were thrilled that I was, to them, Jewish (one of them said “So that means my family gets us for Christmas, right?”). 

To Christians, I was Jewish. To Jews, I was Christian. To myself, I was just me. Neither here nor there. I never felt like I belonged in Taylorville. I never felt like I belonged with my large, warm Jewish side of my family, despite our closeness. Religion made me uncomfortable. I saw it as a mechanism to exclude, to keep people (me) out, to say “You are not of us.” This sense of non-belonging permeated the rest of my life as well. I always felt like an outsider—in law school, with friends, at work, on the mom scene, you name it. I had started to accept that maybe I just wasn’t someone who belongs somewhere.

Then my son was born. My son’s father is a patrilineal Jew like me, which technically makes our son also “half Jewish.” My lifelong skepticism, sometimes bordering on cynicism, waned as I witnessed this beautiful creature grow into existence. I didn’t worry about him learning about Christianity; it’s in the air we breathe and the water we drink in the United States. But I wanted him to know more about his Jewish identity than I did growing up. I wanted him to feel like he belonged. I wanted to be able to answer questions if and when he had them. But I didn’t know how to do any of this, because I didn’t know much about being Jewish. I barely knew what to do with a menorah at Hanukkah—we never had one when I was growing up.

When Trump was elected in 2016, the stakes got higher. Incidents of antisemitism increased. Nazis marched in Charlottesville while chanting slogans against Jews. Temples became sites of bloodshed and murder. I flashed back to that kid in second grade. I had thought and hoped that by being raised in Brooklyn, my son wouldn’t be called a Jew devil worshiper like I’d been. But that started to feel like less of a certainty. It became harder to ignore that many people in this world wanted Jews to be gone. Those people included me (and my son) in that. Whether I identified myself as Jewish was irrelevant; they did. 

Then October 7 happened, and things changed yet again. In the past, I had told myself I was too uneducated to have an informed opinion about Israel and the Middle East. But really, I never felt like I had the right to have an opinion, given my muddled background. After October 7, I tried to learn as much as I could about the decades of conflict. But I kept coming back to the fact that I didn’t know who I was as a Jew. As a human, I abhor and condemn the atrocities being inflicted on Palestinians, but as a maybe-Jew, I had no informed sense of what, if anything, Israel meant to me. Am I Jewish? echoed louder and louder. I couldn’t ignore the question anymore.

I cold-emailed a rabbi at a nearby Reform synagogue. The email read, in part, “I’m not sure exactly why, but for the last few years, I’ve been curious about my religious upbringing (or lack thereof) and curious in exploring my Jewish identity. Specifically, I’m hoping to explore whether I am Jewish, what it means to ‘be Jewish,’ and whether I could learn to be Jewish.”

I felt ridiculous. Here I was, 48 years old and asking a rabbi if he thought I was Jewish. Shouldn’t I know that at this point in my life? I was also sure, if he responded, he would tell me I wasn’t Jewish, just like a Jewish Studies 101 professor had told me in college. 

He invited me to meet with him. And so it was that I found myself sitting in a rabbi’s book-lined, cozily cluttered office. A framed diploma from the University of Chicago hung on the wall, which put me at ease. He may not know Taylorville, but at least he knew the Midwest. He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his abdomen. He looked to be in his mid- to late 50s, with a soft, warm, slightly bemused mien. I felt comfortable almost immediately.

My life story poured out of me. He listened patiently, occasionally interjecting with clarifying questions. I rambled on, nervous and unsure of what I was doing there. He let me fizzle out and then paused before responding. 

“You’re not asking so much whether you’re Jewish,” he said. “You’re asking ‘how much of my Jewish heritage do I want to claim?’ You’re asking how much of your Jewish heritage fits into your identity.” Yes, yes! That is exactly what I am trying to figure out.

“So, how do I do that then?” I asked him. 

“Start slowly,” he said. “Just dip your toes in first.” 

He suggested that I attend a few Friday night services and then come back to him for another conversation if I was still interested, and we would go from there. 

So I did. Sitting in that pew, I hoped no one noticed that I didn’t know the words to sing along, that I didn’t know where to face when welcoming in the Sabbath Bride (or who she was), that I didn’t know when or how to bow. Surely everyone there knew I didn’t belong. 

The rabbi saw me and smiled. I couldn’t follow much of the service, but the vibe felt surprisingly optimistic and even light-hearted. At one point, I unexpectedly teared up when I thought of Pop and wondered what he would think of his great-granddaughter going to Shabbat services in Brooklyn more than 100 years after he came here. 

When we were asked to greet our pew neighbors and introduce ourselves if we didn’t know them, the woman sitting next to me immediately turned to me. “Shabbat Shalom, I haven’t seen you here before, are you new?” she said all in one breath. Busted. 

“Oh, hi, I mean, Shabbat Shalom. Yes, this is my first time here,” I said. 

“Do you have kids, are you married?” she said. I told her I’m divorced and have an 11-year-old son.

She smiled and rattled off all the other people she would introduce me to later, including the head of membership, the temple president, the head of the Hebrew school and so on. She leaned in and whispered to me like a girlfriend, “There are a lot of single parents here, just so you know.” I introduced myself to the others sitting near me, all of whom were sincere and welcoming. 

I left the synagogue that night feeling strange, almost dizzy. I was overwhelmed with observations and questions and was looking forward to talking more with the rabbi. Walking home and reflecting on how friendly and embracing everyone had been, I realized that they all had assumed that I belonged there. That was a strange feeling. I hadn’t had to prove myself or answer any questions or be on the defensive. They simply welcomed me in, allowed me to feel like I belonged. 

I’m still not sure exactly why I’m exploring this. Maybe it’s being a parent. Maybe it’s the growing antisemitism infecting our society. Maybe I want to feel more connected to my family and my ancestors, to something that is fading as I confront my own parents’ aging and mortality. Maybe in the midst of American democracy crumbling around us, I want something to believe in. Maybe I’m trying to make up for lost time, for not growing up with even a secular Jewish culture. Maybe it’s just a plain old midlife crisis. Maybe I’m trying to unlock some mystery in myself, to find some kind of grounding, some kind of connection. 

Maybe I just want to belong somewhere. 

Am I Jewish? I’m less concerned with that particular question. My question now is what does it mean to me to be Jewish. During his sermon, the rabbi said that worship involves taking risks, that showing up means giving in to “what might happen.” I don’t know yet what it means to me to be Jewish, but I’m prepared to take that risk and find out how I want to claim my Jewish heritage. Maybe that’s the most Jewish thing of all.

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