[dropcap]The[/dropcap] year was 1982 and the 12 kilometer run for Soviet Jewry was attended by thousands of people who cared about their plight.
Dressed proudly in my “Free Soviet Jews!” t-shirt and armed with enough water to fill a small swimming pool, I sprinted enthusiastically for the first half-mile or so, waving to friends along the sidelines like a notable in a parade.
But it wasn’t long before I noticed my breath quickening, my knees hurting and the sad fact that I was falling far behind the faster, more experienced runners. They sped past me without even breaking a sweat.
My husband and I completed the race together in just under an hour, a feat which, as far as I was concerned, qualified us for the Olympics. We may have been new at the running game, but the very fact that we finished made us happy and proud. That race taught us Rule Number One for Running: What you lack in experience and speed, you can always make up in determination and energy bars.
A race represents different things to different people. For some, it is the possibility of excelling at a sport and surpassing others; for others, it is the challenge of beating a prior personal record or running on a more demanding course.
For my husband and me on that chilly December morning, it was a chance to make a powerful political statement about the urgent need to free the Jews in Russia, persecuted for their religious beliefs and prohibited from leaving the country. It was a chance for us to let others know that we cared about their freedom because we understood how precious our freedom was — living openly as Jews in America.
[dropcap]Freedom[/dropcap] to be Jewish in America is a right guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. It secures for all time the right to live as Jews without government interference; to practice our faith without fear of arrest, confiscation of property, or personal tyranny of spirit.
When I was growing up, I learned about the Constitution in school but never connected it to the fact that my family could go to a synagogue or celebrate Passover without fear of government interference or reprisal. In fact, since we didn’t engage in many Jewish customs or rituals, I never really thought about the freedom I had to be Jewish.
In our home, my father’s idea of keeping kosher was not putting bacon on his cheeseburger.
Between my father’s reluctance to practice Judaism and my mother’s lack of religious training, we muddled through events like the Passover seder, where every other page in our Maxwell House Haggadah was marked “Skip.” (It wasn’t until I was in my teens that I realized that “Skip” wasn’t some long lost cousin but rather a directive to shorten the service!)
Still, even though we didn’t keep a traditionally observant home, there were things in my house that were Jewish to the core. Like the food in our refrigerator, for example. Sour dill pickles in jars as large as paint cans dripped pickle juice onto containers of stuffed cabbage and noodle kugel with raisins. When my friends came over, they were offered seltzer and mandelbread instead of the traditional milk and vanilla wafers.
[dropcap]Walking[/dropcap] through our home, you learned something about my parents that spoke volumes about their sense of being Jewish. Books about world history, art, literature, philosophy, finance and religion filled the shelves in our living room and den. My parents’relationship to Judaism was associated with a love of learning and an unrelenting insistence that their children get a quality education.
Added to that was the way my parents viewed philanthropy.
No gift was too much when they saw a need, but it was always made anonymously. My father refused to let others know the amount he pledged to any campaign, yet he was the first to stand up at a synagogue meeting in October of 1973 to commit his financial support to Israel during the Yom Kippur War, encouraging many of his reluctant friends to do the same.
[dropcap]What[/dropcap] I took away from my upbringing was not the ability to recite specific blessings, but a foundation upon which I have built a Jewish life and home with my own family.
My beginnings may have been meager by some standards, but they taught me a very important lesson —that being Jewish is not like being in a race. We all begin at different starting points; we all run on different paths and confront challenges along the way. It’s not so important where we begin but that we begin — wherever the place we find ourselves and at whatever age or stage in our life.
Being Jewish is not like being in a race. It is not about getting to the finish line first or faster or with more medals than other runners. Being Jewish is about making the journey, deciding to find the path and begin to move closer — to ourselves, our family, our traditions, our culture, our ethics, our history and our people. When we begin to do so, we can appreciate our unique destiny.
As the noted Jewish scholar and philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig once said: “For the modern Jew, observance is no longer a matter of the all or the nothing. One only has to start. Nobody can tell where this beginning will lead.”
Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News