A Christian Woman

Thoughts on Rosh Hashanah and all that you can't leave behind

A Happy New Year to my worldwide family!

I hope you are all able to celebrate as you want, whether that means going to services, having family to your house for dinner, live streaming a service, or just going about your business. Let’s all take a moment to be grateful that we have freedom of religion in this country and that we still have the ability to celebrate our religious holidays as we choose.

That freedom is marred, of course, by the terrifying tide of antisemitism. Synagogues are not as safe as they should be. I remember being relieved to see security and a metal detector at the Reform synagogue I attended for a time. They eventually took the metal detector out and stopped having such a security presence. This concerned me. We are not safe, not Jews, not Zionists who are not Jews, and not even Christians. If there’s anything we’ve learned since October 7, it’s that we are not safe in the West.

I won’t be attending services tonight. I never did find a synagogue that I could feel comfortable in. I began to study with an amazing Conservative Rabbi, thanks to my old college friend who has been incredibly kind and helpful on this journey. As I began to take very seriously the thought of converting in a tradition where I could feel more at home, a series of events happened that made me wonder if I could leave my Christianity behind.

Health issues in my family made me ponder how little time we have with those we love. A big THANK YOU to my Jewish friends who put my family member on their list for the health blessing. Friends all over the world are praying, including in Jerusalem. It has been my experience that Jews got yer back when it comes to prayer and concern for family. No wonder - faith and community have kept them alive for thousands of years.

Reflecting on my history as a Christian:

My ancestors were likely pagans who painted themselves blue in the green highlands of Scotland generations ago, along with some Protestants from England and maybe Germany. There may be some Jewish on my Dad’s side. I do not know much about my ancestors. They came here, became Americans, and that was that.

What I do know about is my more recent family.

My great grandfather on my mother’s side was left with five little girls when my great grandmother died of a massive stroke at the age of 27. She had given birth to seven babies, two of whom died, and her body gave into the family curse of stroke. My great grandfather immediately quit drinking alcohol and built a little church in the woods in Florida, where he served God until he died. He raised the girls with the help of my great-step grandmother. For my thirtieth birthday my mother gave me the ring that was my great step-grandmother’s wedding ring, and I wear it to this day. I never take it off. That ancestry lives with me.

My grandparents on both sides were Christians. My father’s parents never missed a Sunday in church until they were very old and sick. They loved to dress up in their suits and sit in the same pew every single Sunday. I remember my grandfather talking about how the young people at church never spoke to them, so he decided to speak to the young people. By young people he could have met people in their fifties, but he enjoyed making friends in church.

My father’s siblings were all serious Christians. My uncle was an ordained minister like my Dad. My other uncle was very involved in the church, along with his wife and children. We are a believing family.

Did they do the Christian thing all the time? Absolutely not. My grandfather was guilty of many sins, as I later discovered. But I try to focus on the good.

My mother was ordained in 1972 and served churches until very recently. When I was a baby, my dad went through a phase where he didn’t believe in infant baptism. So my mom baptized me in the bathroom sink. My dad never found out. I don’t think he would mind now.

I became very involved in the church as a teen, and preached at my own adult baptism service. “Let my people go” was the theme and my text was from Exodus. Funny that I choose a text from the Hebrew Bible. The Old Testament always appealed to me more than the New. Does that mean I’m Jewish, or a Christian who is reverent about our heritage? When Christians forget that Jews are our brothers and sisters, we run into a lot of trouble. I wish progressive Christians would take a moment to pray on this.

I almost went to seminary to become a United Church of Christ minister like my mother. I was accepted to Union Theological, which is at Columbia, and I had written my $250 check for a deposit. The night before I was going to send it in, my mom asked me, “If you could do anything other than go to seminary next year, would you?” I paraphrase. I said, “If the AFL-CIO called me and asked me to be a union organizer, sure, I’d do that.” I was very involved in the student movement in support of the striking unions at Yale.

The next day I got a call from a recruiter for the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute, and I became an organizer for twenty years. I always said, “If that wasn’t a sign from God, I don’t know what is.”

I don’t regret being an organizer at all. Those were the best years of my life, and I know that I did God’s work in the world by helping nurses get better working conditions and better conditions for their patients.

During that time, I continued to be active in the church. I was usually the only single young person there. I read liturgy, served on committees, baked for coffee hour (coffee hour is an article of faith with me), and even preached when lay people were allowed. The search for community went on.

Community was found with a group of Liberian immigrants who attended my church in Bucks County, PA, in the late 1990’s. What I loved about them was that they actually believed in God. While the white church members were very nice and attended church regularly, they often seemed to be going through the motions. The Liberians had a faith that they counted on when they faced terrifying persecution.

One of my favorite stories was how Reverend Jeremiah, the pastor of the Liberians, had been aboard a ship out of Liberia when it was raided by the military.

“Do you have any weapons on board?” a solider asked him.

Reverend Jeremiah held up the Bible and said, “Yes. We have the Word of God.”

That, my friends, is faith.

I had hoped to find a liberal Christian man to marry, but I never did. There aren’t a lot of single ones around. If I had been an evangelical Christian I would no doubt have married and had kids, but from very early on in my life I was skeptical, even fearful, of evangelicals. The Reagan years were not a good time to be a single mother or the child of one, and I don’t forget how evangelical Christians were not kind to people like us in their messaging.

Things are very different now. I am not afraid of evangelical Christians. I’m afraid of people on the Left who celebrate murder.

On a walk with a friend this morning, the one who said, “I wish Netanyahu would let those hostages go,” a few months ago, I heard her mock Mrs. Erika Kirk’s message of forgiveness for the man who shot her husband. The same mocking is happening all over the Facebook pages of old friends.

“I think it’s much better to talk about forgiveness than to incite more violence,” was my reply.

The conversation did not go well. Charlie Kirk quotes taken out of context, the usual. I changed the subject. Flowers and cats, flowers and cats.

Since I grew up Christian, Mrs. Kirk’s language is familiar to me. Having a personal relationship with Christ is not a foreign concept. Even some in my old progressive church would say they had a personal relationship with Jesus, though some would eschew that characterization. It does not need to be threatening, and I wish people would see how very offensive it is when they make fun of others’ religious beliefs.

Funny… I can’t imagine a single one of my Jewish friends, from Reform to secular to Orthodox, ever making fun of a Christian’s beliefs. Maybe it’s happened, but I’ve never heard it.

I’ve never been hung up on the idea of a historical Jesus or the divinity of Christ. But I have always been culturally Christian, and a believer in the God of Jesus and Israel.

So at the moment, I remain a Christian Zionist. I may go back to church sometimes, but to churches where the Bible is read and preached, where you know you’re in church, not at a political rally. The little churches of rural Pennsylvania where my mom sometimes preaches are like this. I love the small churches with their simple Protestant architecture and stained glass portraits of the saints and scenes from the Bible. These feel comfortable. I know the words. No one has to project The Lord’s Prayer on a screen so I can read it.

I am loyal to my Jewish brothers and sisters, in Jerusalem, Boston, New York, Portland, Chicago, North Carolina, in Judea and Samaria, and let’s not forget Gadi and his two cats in Tel Aviv! But am I a Jew? Probably not.

These days particular loyalty goes to my Jewish women sisters of Substack: Jill, Rivka, EKB, AB, Gavriella and Tzlil, to name just a few. Wishing you a Happy New Year, however you are celebrating.

And to all, Jewish, Christian, and none of the above: peace, freedom, flowers, and cats.

Whether you want cats or not!