This is just the introduction. It's the opening pages of my memoir, Confessions of a Prodigal Daughter (still a work in progress). It's a little long, so if you can read it all and not get bored...God bless you :)
Sitting in a hotel room in Jerusalem, I am facing my family, and they are waiting for me to come clean about a secret I’ve been hiding for almost a year. This is it, I think to myself. They know. I have prayed for the strength to handle this moment in a mature, reasonable way, but now I have no words…
Of all the stories I’ve read in the New Testament I can relate to the most, the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15:11 summarizes my life reasonably well. It is the story of a man with two sons, one of whom demanded his share of his father’s inheritance before he died. The father agreed to divide his wealth evenly between his two sons, but the younger son chose to squander his share on wild, irresponsible living. When he eventually ran out and began to starve, he came back to his father’s house and asked to be his son once again. Rather than demand an apology or even an explanation for his whereabouts, the father threw him a party to celebrate his return. When the older son chastised his father’s decision to celebrate the return of his selfish brother, the father said the occasion was worth celebrating because “he once was lost, but now he has been found.”
I’ve been the black sheep of my family for as long as I can remember. While my mother, father, brother and I all share the same hereditary sarcastic and at times dry sense of humor, our religious and political beliefs could not be more different. I grew up in a family that embraced cultural over spiritual Judaism. Everything I learned about God was in Sunday school, not in my household. I embraced my Jewish identity as long as it would leave my dietary habits alone. Going to Hebrew school and the occasional Shabbat service was a chore that both my brother and I deeply resented, but nonetheless, it was our duty to both our ancestors and our tiny Jewish community to represent and make our presence there known.
The Judaism that I grew up with was centered on community, social action, and a strong passion for Israel. All of those things are extremely important; however, none of them proved to be a substitute for what I so desperately craved -- a genuine relationship with God.
Over the process of many years, God reached out to me. He called me by name and I became acquainted with the one person in the history of the human race whose name has always invoked a whirlwind of controversy and provocation, more so than any other political and/or religious figure the world has ever known: Jesus Christ.
The name itself, in its full entirety and not the shortened “Jesus” as he is referred to by the Jewish community (because “Christ,” which means “anointed one,” affirms his identity as the Son of God), still has a funny taste in my mouth. To speak of him as a personal friend and not simply a historical figure still feels as obscure as attempting to explain my life story in Swahili.
While I can explain as well as I know my own address the reasons I am drawn to Christianity, there are some things I will never get used to, like simply saying to others “I am a Christian” or “I have to go to church.” “Christian-ese” is a language of its own I hope I never become fluent in. I can’t stand the common clichéd expressions like “born again,” “getting saved,” “accepting Jesus into your heart,” and my personal favorite, “quiet time with the Lord” (I vividly remember “Quiet Time” being a kid-friendly euphemism for nap time when I was in preschool).
My Judaism continues to impact my Christianity in grand and miniscule ways. For example, I have learned to get used to praying with my hands folded, but kneeling feels awkward because it reminds me of how the Jews were once slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and forced to bow only to him. Jewish culture isn’t without its own language and euphemisms, too. “Oy vey!” is a phrase I will likely never outgrow. Being driven to make the world a better place (a goal, nay, an obligation that is the beating heart of what Judaism is all about), I used the word mitzvah (meaning “act of kindness” in Hebrew) in my speech almost as often as the word “like” peppers the vocabulary of a Valley Girl. I still feel more inclined to use the word “mitzvah” in place of any English euphemism; it’s simply stuck with me.
Part of me hopes I never get too comfortable “acting Christian” because then it will be as if I lost whatever strands of Judaism I still have left to claim. My Jewish identity, I quickly discovered, is not something I can change like a pair of socks. My Jewish identity is as permanent to me as my skin, hair, and eye color, my right-handedness, my blood type. I still see the world through Jewish-colored lenses, and my ability to scan a phonebook for all the Jewish-sounding last names has yet to be doctored. But these things alone are no justification as to why Judaism and Christianity can fit together, or why anyone should ever attempt to do so.
I think most Jews admire Jesus in a “look but don’t touch” sort of way. I know I sure did. Throughout my life he was something of an enigma to me, someone I admired from afar like that popular high school boy I could never work up the guts to say hi to. From time to time I flirted with the idea of worshiping him, feeling the same kind of rush as a teen girl who associates with that infamous bad boy her parents warned her to stay away from.
The more forbidden Jesus was to me, the more my curiosity about him grew. But because he was off limits to me, I also resented him for the wedge that exists between Jews and Christians, which I assumed was his fault. Certain events in my life proved to me that he was trying to reach me all along, but I attempted to resist every step of the way, bickering and picking fights with him like we were an old married couple.
No one will deny that Jesus was a great teacher who said great things, but for the Jew, that’s pretty much all that he is.
The most popular question my Christian friends asked me growing up was always why the Jews “reject” Jesus as Lord and Savior, and there are many reasons for that. First of all, I object to the use of the word “reject” when talking about why Jews don’t believe in Jesus. You can deny or otherwise choose not to believe in the divinity of Christ, but to me you cannot “reject” someone who has never been a part of your life in the first place. Jews “rejecting” Jesus as their savior is like a woman turning down a date from a man she has not yet met.
Aside from the biblical, historical, and translational reasons, Jews are much like Catholics with regard to harboring guilt. There have never been many Jews to begin with, but thanks to Hitler and the Holocaust, the number of Jews on planet earth has been reduced to less than 1%. Not surprisingly, to embrace Jesus is deemed equivalent to rejecting the sacrifice of our common ancestors who willingly gave their lives so Judaism could thrive. Secondly, Jewish culture is pretty cool, who would want to give that up?
Thirdly, the feelings of our families and friends are definitely a concern, because a strong sense of community is just one of many reasons why the Jews have not gone extinct. To embrace a religion that has resulted in the persecution of Jews for millennia is considered the ultimate betrayal. Everyone is affected. On that note, even the mere thought of Christianity can bring to mind what countless Jews have suffered when they refused to convert. Lastly, since Christianity is the dominating religion of American society, and most Jews in America are decidedly liberal, Christianity is often deemed equivalent to the raging fanatics that get their own pulpits on national television.
While I certainly understand a dislike or mistrust of Christianity for the above reasons, I must point out that in the same way Christians can unfairly generalize Jews, many Jews can benefit from a lesson on judging the Christian faith for what it really is by reading the New Testament for themselves, and not by taking their lessons from the many people who poorly represent the name of the savior they claim to follow. Christians could also benefit from taking a look at the Talmud as well.
My family and my Jewish friends, though starting to become more accepting of my decision, may never understand completely. To them, it probably seems as if I have squandered my Jewish education the way the prodigal son squandered his father’s money on frivolous, blasphemous things. But unlike the prodigal son, I have yet to return to the home that is traditional, sans-New Testament Judaism. To them – and even to myself at times – I am always going to be a prodigal daughter of sorts. I became lost, stranded far away from what is familiar. I still have yet to be found.
As a pilgrim on the quest to figure out who I really am and what God’s purpose for my life is supposed to be, I have to say that it is not my job, nor is it any obligation, to prove to Jews why they need Jesus to be “complete.” Such terminology still rubs me the wrong way, and reminds me of how small and patronized I felt when I’d run into (literally run into) evangelists on street corners, demanding to know if I was saved. It’s easy to despise Christians for claiming to have a monopoly on the truth, and unabashedly telling anyone who disagrees that they are destined to become a barbecue for Satan.
I will never use such tactics because I know it is not my duty to change anyone; rather, it is my duty to share my testimony in such a way that, at the very least of possibilities, clears up any misconceptions people may have about Christianity, and lessen the gap that is still prominent between Jews and Christians today. These two faiths, both profoundly different and profoundly similar, need each other. We have too much to learn from each other to remain at arm’s length, afraid to cross invisible boundary lines.
While the term “prodigal daughter” is not one that I use proudly to refer to myself, nonetheless I believe it is an accurate way to describe my struggles, my doubts, my fears, and my questions that I’ve had along the way to discovering a relationship with the Creator of the universe. This is not a tale of being lost for a period of time and suddenly being found, nor is it a cautionary lecture to Jewish parents on what can happen if their children do not receive a quality Jewish education. Instead, this is the story of the places I’ve been, the lessons I’ve learned, the struggles I’ve faced, and the pieces of wisdom I’ve picked up along the way.
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