Owning Up

The prospect of returning to Israel, for me, held some fears and apprehensions. I was worried about coming back to a place where I had spent a lot of time back when I was much younger, when I was different in many ways. I was especially worried about how the changes in my religious and political opinions would seem to certain people here. I wasn't sure I'd be able to be myself. Maybe my fear of somehow disappointing, or clashing with those people who knew me back then would get the best of me. In the past, when visiting, that might have been ok. For short spurts, I could be conciliatory just to avoid conflict. But now I felt that I could no longer do that. I've thought too much about the things I believe in. I'm proud of the opinions I've developed and the things I've worked for.

This past week, I faced a couple of situations where these feelings were particularly pertinent.

The first was going back to visit the Yeshivah (religious school of higher Jewish learning) where I spent a year before coming to Penn. Now I can't say that back then I was the most religiously devoted person. But I did come out of that year with a certain sense of religious conviction, and certainly with a desire to continue to learn Torah and be an active participant in the Orthodox Jewish community. I was an active leader in Penn's Orthodox community, but over the years my beliefs also changed in many significant ways. I won't go into details, but I have lots of problems with Orthodoxy and many ways in which I think my beliefs might place me outside the pale of mainstream Orthodoxy.

In any case, I returned to Yeshivah and went to say hello to my primary teacher/rabbi there. I was never exceptionally close with him, but I do respect him a lot, and spent many hours over the course of my year there in his class. He was a little more questioning than I've known him to be in the past, and so a question about my 'religious path' at Penn came quickly. There was no dodging the topic. I could either quickly brush aside the question by pretending I hadn't changed much in four years, or try to be honest.

In the past, I've been torn on this point. One complication is that I feel that I represent more than just myself. This Yeshivah has a bit of an internal struggle going on over whether or not they should accept many students who are going to secular universities, as opposed to Yeshivah University or other Jewish institutions. The reason for excluding certain students is that some people believe that limited resources should be focused on those who will be most involved in Jewish learning and Jewish communal life. By admitting that I am not among the most dedicated of alumni, do I hurt the chances that other students who plan on going to secular university will be accepted to the Yeshivah?

Well, this time I felt that I had to be honest. I'm not good at lying anyway, so I'm sure I would just give myself away if I tried to dodge the truth. It actually turned into maybe the best conversation I've ever had with him. When I hide the truth, I have nothing of substance to say. I just try to change the topic, and finish the conversation as quickly as possible so as not to be discovered. This time, I was able to engage him in a real discussion. To actually speak about things I've thought about. And not surprisingly, he also spoke more openly than I've known him to. Clearly these are things he has at least thought about, and while we obviously have a difference of opinions, it was nice to hear some sense of understanding about the things I think and believe.

Later that same day, I spent some time with a close family friend who I grew up with. He has a family of his own now, and lives in a settlement. He just recently moved into a well established Jewish 'settlement bloc' which is widely considered to be established enough that it is expected that it would become a part of Israel proper in any final agreement with the Palestinians. However, the settlement he moved from is much more controversial, and he still believes strongly in the settler movement. While I never agreed with his political views, I now have much stronger feelings in opposition to them. Anyone who's been in touch with me over the past year knows that at Penn I was very active in trying to connect the Muslim and Jewish communities, and particularly through discussions about the Middle East. So I didn't feel like I could just pretend that I don't think about it at all.

Once again, I decided to at least reveal a bit of what I think. I expressed my concerns about traveling to certain areas in the West Bank, which I had been ok with before. I'm not completely sure what my policy will be, with regards to both the morality and safety of traveling to certain areas. But I told him about this uncertainty, so that at least he would know this was something I thought seriously about.

I don't know where any of this will lead. Will it hurt my relationships with any of these people? Will they view me as some sort of failure for not living up to the expectations they might have had for me? I don't know, but I guess I feel that at this point in my life, it's more important to be myself. To let people know what I think, and stop worrying about trying to please everyone, because that never works. And if I am able to maintain my relationships with these people, I think they'll be more real and meaningful than they were in the past.