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Am I A Jew? from page 47
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December 20 • 2012
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In neither place did he receive
a Jewish education. No Hebrew
school, no bar mitzvah, no
Hebrew name. (An Orthodox
rabbi in Monsey who arranged
an impromptu "bar mitzvah" for
Ross one Saturday morning gave
Ross the Hebrew name Moishe ben
Abraham, which he never uses.)
His primary exposure to things
Jewish were seders and Chanukah
celebrations at relatives' homes.
"My focus" as an adult "never
strayed from the secular aspects of
the holidays, allowing me to view
them as not substantially different
from, say, Thanksgiving, or the
Super Bowl," he says.
In fact, he writes: "There
have been years when I skipped
Passover, Chanukah and
Thanksgiving — but never the
game.
"I lived a minor sort of double
life — fake Christian in Mississippi
and secular Jew in Manhattan:'
He says his mother, who has
remarried and converted to the
Episcopal faith (but is not practic-
ing), is proud of her son's book.
Ross says he's not a believer.
"Although I am not an atheist, at
least not exactly — drop me in the
proverbial foxhole and I will pray
with commensurate fervency — I
have no particular affinity for
God," he writes.
Ross, who has three young chil-
dren, has intermarried twice; his
first wife grew up Catholic; now
he's married to a woman from a
Buddhist home — they're not rais-
ing the kids in any particular faith.
Faith? "I'm not a fan of the
term," he wrote on his blog
(theodoreross.net ). "I have faith
in a great many things — death,
taxes, the futility of man and the
Mets, the rain in Spain falling pri-
marily in the plain — but 'faith'
strikes me as an indeterminate
word used in the service of a vague
state:'
But the children's book had
sparked his "What am I? Who am
I?" questioning — which is why he
embarked on his journey of self-
discovery.
His travel choices veered toward
what he calls the extremes, the
periphery, the "oddities" of Jewish
life, he says in his cramped
Midtown Manhattan office, where
he works as articles editor at Men's
Journal. For reasons of time and
funding, he couldn't follow his
interests everywhere he wished:
"The world of Jews is too big:'
Ross' background is admittedly
atypical of most American Jews, he
says. He doesn't purport to speak
for other Jews; but his position
as someone with a strong Jewish
identity but no formal connection
to the "mainstream" Jewish com-
munity (a resident of Park Slope,
Brooklyn, he's not a member of
a synagogue) makes him, demo-
graphically, a typical American
Jew.
Just don't imply that he comes
from "a weak" Jewish background.
He bristles at the implication. Who,
he asks, propping his loosely tied
running shoes on a pulled-out
drawer of his desk, says that some-
one who grew up in a city with a
large Jewish population or who
went through a standard religious
school education or who now lives
an Orthodox lifestyle has a stron-
ger Jewish background?
Many Orthodox Jews, he says,
operate "by rote," following strictly
delineated rules of behavior:
"There's no thought that goes into"
what they do.
He says a Jew like him, secular,
who makes occasional forays into
Jewish tradition (for example, he
erects a "pop-up" sukkah at his
home every year), is "constantly
confronted by choice. Everything
you do is a process of conscious
thought:'
In Israel, researching his book,
Ross met an official of the Jewish
Agency. At the end of the inter-
view, Ross asked him "a final
question, one that I resisted asking
most people:
"So tell me. What do you think?
Am I a Jew?
"He shrugged," Ross writes.
"Why not?" answered the offi-
cial. "Yes, you're a Jew."
What's Ross' own answer to his
question?
"By any reasonable measure,
I am Jewish," he says. "I am," he
writes on the last page of his book,
"a Jew. I believe that. I am entitled
to believe that. I could not make it
otherwise even if I wished.
"I have asked the question," Ross
writes. "I will continue to do so.
That will have to be enough:'
At the speeches he's given since
the book came out, he hears two
questions frequently.
"Lots of people ask, 'Now that
you've [written the book], "what
do you do?" That is, what Jewish
practices have you taken on?
"That's a fair question," Ross
says.
Then they ask, "Are you...? Are
you Jewish?
"I tell them," he says, "to read the
end of the book:'
❑