'Wait!JENKINS? Is that a Jewish Name??'

*this piece was orginally written for Colchester District Jewish Community'  bi-yearly publication 'KOLCHESTER.'

Growing up in a mixed faith household already can make one feel as though they are on the backfoot. Throw in growing up within the perimeters of the US Army, and in a household of two very different cultures: Midwestern rigidity and Deep Southern mannered frankness, and one can see that cynicism runs deep and exhaustion begins at home.

I was born in Stuttgart, Germany to a Midwestern mother and a Southern father. My mother had grown up Methodist until she was 14.  My father had been raised Methodist, although by the time I was on the scene, his major faith was the US Army. My mother had begun to daydream of converting to Judaism in her mid-teens, inspired partly by her father’s deep questioning of his own faith and his friendship with an Orthodox Jewish man that he loved like a brother. The 2nd half may or may not have been inspired by reading Herman Wouk’s _Marjorie Morningstar_ and an interest in family history. 

It transpired that my great-grandmother’s family had immigrated to the US in the mid-1700s, converting from Judaism to Moravian Church. Why they would convert from one persecuted faith to another, I still don’t know. I also don’t know when the idea to raise her children came into being and I can’t ask, since she died in 2015 after an explosion on the Oklahoma Turnpike. 

I only know that by the time I was on the scene, I was the only person with my name in a three-village area, that my would-be god parents godparents (one a former a Luftwafte pilot), only ever called me by my middle name until I was 12.  I have clear memories of of him saying ‘It matters not! It matters not!’ and of her hugging me close. The last time I saw him, he hugged me fiercely, apologising.  I wasn’t quite sure what they were apologising for, at first. That awareness would come later.

Growing up ‘Jewish’ in the Army is almost an oxy-moron. True, in larger Army communities, you can find the occasional Rabbi working as a chaplain. And in most large-ish cities in the US you can find a Jewish community of some description to which you can attach yourself and your ragtag children. 

Whilst we lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, we benefited from the proximity of lovely neighbours who included us in their family and religious celebrations without question.  My earliest memories loop Hanukah and Christmas together. 

Nowadays, some 30 years later, there is a lovely reform synagogue on Three Rivers Road in Gulfport, Mississippi – a long-overdue sight.  In Germany, it was more of a challenge. By ‘challenge,’ I mean I spent a lot of time at sites of Holocaust atrocities – such as Dachau, for my eighth birthday. My mother’s approach seemed to be that if we couldn’t participate actively in ‘living’ Jewishly, we would carry our faith by remembering the dead. 

Returning to the US, first to Fort Knox  (nearest Reform community 2 hours away in Louisville), then to Dayton (nearest Jewish community 10 minutes), it became more odd to my mind that we didn’t go to synagogue, that I wasn’t preparing for my Bat Mitzvah. Until one day – I walked into an argument between my mother and grandmother, the gist of which was ‘You are not Jewish?! Why do you keep  saying you’re Jewish! You were raised Methodist!’

The argument went on for another few rounds by which point, I had retreated to my closet (I process things in confined spaces, a quirk if you will) where I hatched my plan. We were Jewish, darn it! And I was going to make sure of it.
There is a standing rule that a convert must be turned away numerous times before they are permitted into the fold, so to speak.  I feel for the first few Rabbis I approached. It must have quite something to receive first letters then increasingly impassioned telephone calls from a preteen intent on being ‘bona fide.’ Whilst I was working on the mechanics of the problem, my mother had retreated to Genealogy, looking for answers.  Before Ancestry.com, et al, there were hours spent in Mormon libraries and records offices, desperately trying to appear bored because it wasn’t like I didn’t have enough problems – a reader, gangly, with a mouth full of orthodontics, specs  and haphazard sense of style – I spent a lot of secondary school quite literally stuffed in lockers.

Finally, after years of championing rabbinic teams in the Dayton area, an advert appeared in the local paper. ‘Interested in learning more about Judaism? Come to Temple Israel and join our class!’  I enrolled both my mother and I and launched the syllabus at here one evening.  She had no choice, I told her. She had made this our path and she was darned well going to walk down it with me. ‘You decided we’re Jewish’, I said cracking my knuckles. ‘Now let’s be Jewish. LET’S DO THIS.’

It is only recently that I have wondered what must of gone through her head at the sight of her daughter, jaw set angry and angst-filled, desperate to fit. My mother was about as shy as a claymore mine. She was a force of nature. When she wanted something or saw a perceived injustice, people got out of her way, not often of their own volition.  But this religion thing, this call to a faith...this terrified her.

The initial course lasted 6 months.  We got a certificate at the end. No real instruction on how and it took me several years to find out that I was not alone in the pondering of ‘how’ to be Jewish. There are libraries on subject, as we know.  For me, the most useful literary guide has been Laurie Colwin, just  as Florence King is my hallmark of Southern Womanhood. I will sleep with whomever and where ever I choose, but I do not smoke standing on the street.
But my brief flirtation with a orthodoxy came via more study with  a rabbi in Memphis, Abba Eban, and the Judaic Studies department at the University of Cincinnati. When I speak of 'my' rabbi, I speak of Rabbi Abie Ingber, then the director of the Hillel, later the Director of Interfaith Relations. Laurie Colwin spoke to my confused sense for being a modern Jewish woman, but Abie cemented the relationship between religious faith and the intense spirit of social action with which I had been  raised.  When I decided to move to Czech in 1999, it was Abie who encouraged me to have an Orthodox conversion so that ‘if I died, it would be as a Jewish. ‘ I concurred and so more study, an appearance before a rabbinic court, followed by the mikvah ensued.  

But I still moved around, a ‘Wandering Jew’ in human form, as my uncle Hy (not a blood uncle, but family all the same) calls me. I flitted from place to place, coming to England – partly to become an archivist and partly because of a (nice Jewish) boy from North London.
Ironically, through the breakup was mutual, one mark against me was apparently that I was not Jewish enough, ancestors and documentation aside. There is an irony here, no doubt. But that is for another day.

I married a non Jew and have hatched 3 Jewish children. I keep a haphazardly Jewish household and forgot to light Chanukah candles the year my mother died. I’ve paid dues to Synagogues that to me feeling more like I was attending a tiring wedding at a country club than a religious service.  I have also watched communities become fractured because of the variations in their approaches to Judaism. My most experience  New Orleans was a stark example of this disconnect and it was one of my greatest fears about folding my family in to this wonderful community.  I love our quirks and idiosyncrasies and I love the sense of joyous communion air experience when we share a service.   And I think that is what I want most from a community: the acceptance and genuine appreciation for every member that I have seen. And I am just incredibly chuffed and privileged to be a part of it.