Are you Jewish Miss?

On being Jew-ish?

Last week one of my students, but one I don’t know well, asked, “Are you Jewish Miss?”

I thought for a moment.

“I usually don’t bring religion or politics into school, but you asked. It is likely that there is Jewish on my father’s side, but I was raised Christian. Why do you ask, dear?”
I always address the children as “dear” or some such, also as sir for the boys. I affect my best Mary Poppins accent. Sometimes when they come running and ask if I have stickers I say, “Of course I do sweetie, the seventh graders would rip me from limb to limb if I didn’t, now wouldn’t they, and we can’t have that!” in an exaggerated slightly British accent. I’m developing this character as I go.

She said, “Because you dress very modestly.”

Well, that is true.

My school outfits are long sleeved shirts, below the knee skirts, leggings on the cold days, black or cat socks (can you wear cat socks on your job?) and teacher shoes. Obviously not picked out to be seductive. I’m going for professional and comfortable. It’s a long and uncertain day, and I walk to and from the school as well as up and down many flights carrying heavy bags and now all my own worksheets and copies.

If my fashion says anything, it’s “I can’t afford new clothes.” I’d love to get some more fashionable things to wear, but with uncertain employment and only one full week of shifts since winter break, I simply can’t afford anything unnecessary. So I make it on the clothes that I have and I am grateful. I am able to wear clean clothes and greet the students in something appropriate, even if it doesn’t exactly show me off. I am not the point. They are.

I’m glad that my students see me dressing modestly. They know that I’m not Muslim because I don’t cover my hair, but I do dress a bit like an Orthodox Jewish woman. I show my collarbone and I don’t plan to stop, but I’m usually covered other than that. I’ll lighten up perhaps as it gets warmer.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve had time to consider the messages we send with our clothing. Women in this country in large part have choices about what messages we send. I always picked more conservative, feminine clothing, but when I was young there was no shortage of slut shaming for me.

“Your skirt is slit up! You’re trying to attract men!”

“You grow your hair long to attract men!”

“You do your nails to attract men!”

Long before the backlash against wacko feminists, I was brutally bullied by a group of harpies in Burlington, Vermont. I was 27, running the largest organizing campaign ever to be won in Vermont and the largest campaign to be won that year in the country. Done at 27. Organizing Director of my own union in PA the next year, and for a decade. I can understand those who have come to power young.

Ah, the slut shaming. Too thin, too pretty, too something. Too curvy, too open about liking men, whatever. Perhaps the seeds of my conservatism were sown then when the guy I was dating, former and later Chief of Staff to Bernie Sanders, abandoned me to deal with the harpies and went on vacation without me. Feminists who claimed that any interest in men was suspect.

I came home from that experience a tremendous professional success, but personally shattered. My experience with my union had its own problems, but brought me back. I was the leader of the nurses for a decade, and completely united in purpose with my Executive Director in a way I’ve missed since we both left.

We are still good friends. One of the things of which I am most proud is that I’ve remained close with almost everyone who has ever been close to me in my life. If I loved you once, why would I not love you now?

The feeling of co-creation… I was not exaggerating when I said when I’m in, I’m all in. If I’m in, I’m in. I am always thinking about the mission.

I’m older now and I have learned, perhaps the hard way, the value of putting limits on how much you allow your job to be your life. My dad called me a “Workaholic” during those years. My work was my whole world. My social life, my best friend, my everything. That’s not sustainable. We all need healthy relationships with family and friends outside of our paid job.

But that highly driven madness still peeks its little head out. And thinks that it might, just might, be able to find a way to be useful in a new world.

I’ve always felt most comfortable with my Jewish friends. We share a bond that I can’t describe. The Israeli I fell in love with is the one who thinks there is a genetic explanation for it, and that I am really Jewish, but to me it’s not about blood. It’s about brain and heart. You can teach skills - you can’t teach heart. My heart is Jewish and Christian, just as my skin is Celtic and burns easily.

My heart breaks less easily than it used to. But it still does break.

That driven madness to do what others say is impossible… that fire behind the eyes. Do you recognize it sometimes?

It’s why I’ve led workers in organizing campaigns and on strike. It’s how I held myself together through things that most people can’t imagine.

It’s also why I do zen meditation and commune with a therapy tarantula. Never overestimate your emotional strength. Refuel as necessary.

But I miss it. I want so badly to be all in.