So this blog entry will be slightly more personal as it pertains to the ever entertaining holiday season that America
It's very complicated because many people are self hating Jews or self hating Christians and I’m neither. I get to be stuck in some weird limbo, like I’ve been ashamed? to be born half and not whole and having to convert because I wasn’t whole. Because of these weird feelings I’ve always presented myself as a whole Jew with no feelings toward Christmas etc. in order to prevent people from saying I wasn’t Jewish enough or worse yet, not Jewish at all. So now that I’m far more secure in my Jewishness (why now I don’t know), I find myself opening up to Christmas again in a dinner with family kind of way of course but no one really gets that because I’ve been SOOOOO Jewish and leaving behind everything, my ‘traditions’ (in the small amount they might have been compared to a rich Jewish heritage) that I grew up with. It’s very complicated especially because I’m surrounded by non-Jews which means I must make sure to draw a fence around myself and my feelings in order to not let any Christmas in, again so people won’t say I’m not Jewish or Jewish enough. Some people seem to believe that Jews born from a Jewish mom who have a Christmas tree are way more Jewish than I who wouldn’t even dream of that in my own home, some people seem to see it that way, as if those born ‘whole’ can have these little christimakkah trees or celebrations or whatever that all is and I can’t (not sure that I’d want to but the fact is I’d never entertain the thought).
I see the reaction in some peoples’ faces when I tell them my mom isn’t Jewish but my dad is, I always feel the need to make sure that they know that and that I converted (so I’m ‘real’). It’s got to stem from something other than my ex boyfriend and his family and all of the feelings, ideas and actions that occurred during my conversion time, so what could it be? And why does it arise now?-Because I’m dating an extremely supportive non-Jew? And how do I let Christmas in without loosing my Jewishness? As ridiculous as that seems to even type because clearly I couldn’t and wouldn’t loose it now, I’d have lost it after the ex if anything and I didn’t, because it’s who I am, it’s who I always was, and it is who I will always will be. It’s like I created this anti-Christmas self in order to self preserve the Jewish self, why I don’t know, and I know that it could be coming from feeling that others might see me as an inadequate Jew, even though that’s insane as I’m far more involved (because I want to be not because I’m forced) than most born Jews, so why this feeling? Why this need to separate so much? Why this need for an 89 mile fence around myself in order to not let Christmas in……
