resonate and have meaning in their own lives in new ways or, sometimes, in ancient ways made new again. And from my particular vantage point, these modes are working. They are giving people connection, and a sense of pur- pose, in Jewish life right now. SOMEHOW, completely by accident, I’ve become both a participant and an enthusiastic witness to some of the most exciting and hopeful changes unfolding in North American Jewish communal life. And I have discovered that true be- longing really happens only when we are authentic and vul- nerable and fully ourselves — no matter how initially alone in the wilderness that might make us feel. I am a person who never truly felt like I belonged in any Jewish community, until suddenly, accidentally, surpris- ingly, it happened. I was raised in a baal teshuvah family— a family that gradually became Orthodox over time. A deep love of Juda- ism shaped my early life. First, we went to a Reform temple. Then a Conservative congregation. Eventually, we stopped driving on Shabbat and began walking to our local Chabad house. (Naturally, there was a local Chabad house.) By the end of fifth grade, I was enrolled in a Lubavitch day school, where I successfully acquired a lot of learning and also a lot of intense religious trauma. Part of that trauma was encountering a hard truth: that large parts of Jewish knowledge—Talmud, for exam- ple — and significant areas of Jewish practice had, with a few notable exceptions, been historically and deliberately kept from Jews like me: women. Judaism, I realized, existed in stratified segments, not just by denomination or affilia- tion but by gender. By access. By who is allowed to engage with Jewishness, and in what ways. That was tough to wrestle with, because I longed to un- derstand, appreciate, and embody everything I could about Judaism. I was truly devout. My family kept kosher. I dressed modestly, hiding my elbows, collarbone, and knees from view. I prayed thrice daily to God, with whom I felt a power- ful and personal relationship. On Shabbat mornings, I was on the women’s side of the mechitzah before most of the men rolled out of bed for minyan. I noticed this discrepan- cy and I internalized it, but I set it aside. For the time being. Any mitzvah, any commandment, that I was allowed to do, I did. I wanted to live up to what God expected of me, what my people expected of me, and what my Jewishness called upon me to do. What being part of a Jewish commu- nity required. At seventeen, I helped prepare someone for burial as part of the hevrah kadishah, the sacred burial society. At eighteen, I was cleaning the mikveh. When I was nineteen, I made Passover for our family when my father was hospi- talized and my mom was focused on his care. What I sacri- ficed in aluminum foil, totally covering all the surface areas of our kitchen, I gained in pride. Throughout all this time, I was under the mistaken im- pression that there was only one way to be a “good Jew,” and that’s what I was striving for. I had not yet encountered
Even before the horror of October 7, and the pain and disillusionment that have followed for so many of us, shift- ing social norms and cultural tensions were already chang- ing how new generations of North American Jews have understood themselves, and where we belong in the Jew- ish community. The great talmudic sage Hillel, who lived during the end of the first century BCE, once said, “Do not separate yourself from the community.” He knew then the importance of community, and to this day that need re- mains. But what that community looks like, acts like, be- lieves in, holds dear, how it manifests its Judaism, and who gets to belong — that is what is evolving so dramatically in this current moment. There are very good reasons for this tectonic shift. North American Jewish legacy institutions, those that once de- fined communal life and gatekept what was considered “real” or “normative” diaspora Judaism, are in, well, a bit of a pickle. To many younger Jews, these institutions have lost credibility, and their moral compass. We see them fighting primarily over the actions of the Israeli government and ego. As a small personal example, I can never trust the Anti-Defamation League the same way again after their shameful rationalization of Elon Musk’s infamous one-armed salute. The chasm between the val- ues of legacy institutions and the needs of the Jews they al- lege to serve is vast. The analogy this brings to my mind is Biblical: the enormous pit that opened up beneath the feet of the insurrectionist Korach and his followers during the forty years that Moses and the Jews were wandering in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt. We wander in another sort of wilderness now. Despite desperately spending hundreds of millions to “engage” unaffiliated or alienated Jews, it feels like most (certainly not all, but most) Jewish institutions are not succeeding in this endeavour. The yearning to belong within our own communities is so innate that we will do a lot to try to fit in, to try to make it work. But we all know — or perhaps we have been — some- one who has felt deeply betrayed by the exclusionary pol- icies and attitudes of “status quo” Jewish organizations. I think of the marginalized and under-indexed fellow Jews: Jews of colour, queer Jews, interfaith families, patrilin- eal Jews, Jews living with disabilities, Jews without the fi- nancial means to live close to a Jewish community or pay synagogue dues, “Off the Derech” Jews. People too often tokenized, and rarely centred, represented, or supported in the ways they need. But here’s a plot twist: yes, this moment for North American Jewry is a crisis, but it’s also an opportunity. Chaos, as one of my favourite authors, George R. R. Mar- tin, writes, is a ladder. As these conventional mechanisms have foundered, there are new forms of Jewish commu- nity emerging right now—vibrant, compelling, full of heart, deeply rooted in our heritage and ancestral wis- dom, and in our shared diaspora experiences. More and more Jews are discovering alternate modes of engaging with Jewish identity and finding community: formats that
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