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From the Outside, Looking In

Thinking about and writing about my Jewish identity has been quite a challenging and rewarding process. My relationship with Judaism has changed and developed throughout my life, and I don’t feel as if the journey is over yet. For me, one of the important themes that has remained consistent is one of affiliation and alienation, the feeling of being an ‘‘outsider’’ yet connected at the same time. That theme, more than any other, may have influenced my decision to become a clinical psychologist. As a therapist, I must always remain an outsider to my patients in some fundamental ways. But the connection between us is nevertheless extremely powerful. Growing up, my mother and father were clearly ambivalent about any affiliation with institutional religion. I was born in the sixties and my parents were moderate hippies, rejecting many social conventions yet living a middle-class suburban lifestyle. They both came from a long line of ambivalent Jews, including my maternal grandmother who emigrated from Poland in 1939 when she was 16. Neither set of grandparents belonged to a synagogue, although my paternal grandparents kept kosher. I have no memory of setting foot in a synagogue until I attended a friend’s bar mitzvah at age 13. We did celebrate the Jewish holidays with a festive family dinner, although I had no idea what these celebrations represented. During my early elementary school years, we lived in a relatively non-Jewish neighborhood, and I remember my parents commenting on how different the neighbors were because they were not Jewish. I didn’t understand what that meant except that it made me feel different from everyone else and I learned not to advertise that I was a Jew. There were other secrets as well, including those that I didn’t even consciously understand. It seems that my parents were growing marijuana in our backyard, which they were keeping secret from everyone, including my sister and me. When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher was doing a lesson on debates and wanted the class to debate the legalization of marijuana (this was the early 1970s). None of the children in our rather rural, conservative suburb would volunteer to take the ‘‘pro’’ position so my teacher