In college, I have discovered how traditional my once
liberal minded community at home can quickly become. Unleashed from my Jewish
day school into the wild reality of college, I allowed myself to pop my Jewish
bubble and delve into my campus’s diverse religious life. Some weeks I
experimented with the Hillel, while others were spent with the Christian
Fellowship, Catholic Student Union, and the Asian Student Association’s
meditation and Buddhist groups. My first semester has been nothing short of
unique as I divided my time equally among the different religious traditions,
picking and choosing the beautiful parts of their faiths to shape my own and
excluding the conflicts. I figured that a new college zip code translates to a
new religious identity as well, and I have been truly content as a college
spiritual seeker.
The phone calls with my family and friends, however, proved
that this love of spiritual experimenting was certainly not mutual. For every
conversation that I shared my excitement about new classes and passions outside
the Jewish world, I heard a cautionary and hesitant silence on the other end of
the line. For every week I spent with the Black Students Association or
Buddhist student club, I felt a moral obligation to attend a Hillel event
because of the lingering nervous silence that I imagined coming from my
grandparents. Finally, in order to assure the nervous loved ones around me—and
myself-- that my spiritual quest is simply to find common ground, I called a
Buddhist. Since Jews today are somehow more open to Eastern religions, I
figured calling an Evangelical missionary would strike too many nerves within
my traditional minded family and friends. Given that my school’s religious
tolerance is far greater than its diversity, I called Allentown’s local
Buddhist temple in hopes of learning which aspects of Buddhism are fluid in
different communities and which cause tension in my Jewish bubble.
The Tibetan Buddhist monk patiently listened to my spiritual
journey filled with its peaks and downfalls and laughed genuinely when I asked
what kind of sheltered white Jewish girl enjoys religion hopping. His
answer---heartfelt and frum—has
impacted me in ways that no textbook or article ever will: “You can be Jewish.
You can be Buddhist. You can be Christian. People, however, will use their
titles to rip off whatever prefix you give yourself. But you are also Emily.
And that name, no matter what title it follows, is indestructible. No power in
the world—except perhaps God—can take that from you. Everything else is simply
extra.”
How is it that a Tibetan Buddhist monk who had never even
met me before assured me that my identity is secure, yet my community is so
internally concerned with these other religions that secure it for me? Communities
across the Jewish spectrum, while too divergent from one another to even eat at
the same table, all seem to agree that Jesus, the Buddha, Allah, and Ganesh are
the “Others” and are clearly not Jewish. Jews use all these “extra”
titles—Christian, Buddhist, Atheist, Muslim— in order to define ourselves
relationally; we are so quick to define ourselves by what we aren’t rather than who we are and what
values we stand for.
I heard a story of a traditional Jewish man whose neighbor
was a devout Buddhist Bhikshu, or priest. The Jewish man, convinced that the
Buddha shrines in his neighbor’s home revealed his idolatrous religion. One
night, irritated by the idols glistening from the priest’s window, the Jewish
man marched over to the house and knocked furiously on the door. Upon answering
the door, the priest welcomed in his neighbor to which the Jewish man responded
angrily, pointing at the Buddha sitting on the window: “Your faith is idol
worship! How could you worship a statue and convince people that that god as
the Jewish god?!” The Buddhist priest, taken aback, walked over to his Buddha,
opened the window and dropped it from out of his home, letting it shatter to
pieces on the ground. “Let me see you do that with your Torah,” he responded.
Sometimes I feel as though our community is guilty of
following the footsteps of that Jewish neighbor, only realizing the tenets of
our faith after separating ourselves from those outside of it. Perhaps there is
a thing or two that can we learn from the Buddhists, whose values of the Self
leave the Other feeling just as peaceful and reassured. Perhaps if we learn how
to see the beauty of our faith rather than pinpointing the flaws in that of
someone else, we will reach common ground. Perhaps if we learn how to interact
meaningfully with the religious others rather than draw harsh boundaries in
between us, then the spiritual quests like mine in college will be treated
exactly as they should be: as unique walks of faith that help make our Judaism
wholly and holy.