10 | AUGUST 17 • 2023
PURELY COMMENTARY
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er who declared that I didn’t
have “a drop of Judaism inside
of [me],” then proceeded to
push her way into my attitude
toward Judaism as much as
possible, pressing a siddur
into my hands and urging
me to relearn the words. She
inculcated within me that
insouciance toward school-
work was not the appropriate
attitude and urged me to do
better academically. By the
end of the first semester, I was
the teacher’s pet — and I had
entirely reversed my belief on
what my future would be.
From down here with the
telescope, I was envisioning
a household brimming with
children and warmth, a home
wholly bound by me. I was
cradling a baby while rocking
back and forth before Shabbat
candles. Without anything
more than a teacher’s support,
I could fully see the other
side; there was a comprehen-
sive system set up, imbued
with its qualities of comfort
and stability. I finally just — I
just got it.
There is something deeply
relieving about having one’s
entire future planned out,
especially if they feel medi-
ocre or in despair over what
the modern world requires.
Yes, it requires the price of
buying in — and selling one’s
critical thinking, opposing
political ideals, and anything
that falls into the category of
“different” — but for people
who don’t know who they
want to be, having a ready-
made identity is cathartic.
And I didn’t know who I was.
Thus far, I was constituted
solely of iconoclasm; my per-
sonality was molded by heat-
ed reaction. Nothing came
from a genuine place because
I was under the impression
that earnestness was a bad
thing, yet another product
of growing up in a place rife
with contradiction.
I played the part, albeit
poorly. There was just so
much that had been imple-
mented early on by myself
that I had to start changing,
so much that I wondered if it
was impossible. I didn’t really
care about material things
because I felt that my appear-
ance was a futile project. My
humor was raucous and, yes,
drew laughs, but often left me
feeling as though I was pro-
viding a service rather than
building connection. I wasn’t
graceful and I had no rhythm
and I dropped out of the play
once I found out that I was in
ensemble.
I desired to be feminine but
had stumbled upon the idea
that femininity was reliant
on externals, so I resigned
myself to the bare minimum.
When I glance through the
lens of the telescope, this is
a comet, flickering. I fluctu-
ated so often between fear of
not being one of them and
the desire to be, I was an
amorphous gray puddle of a
person.
Like a historian, it is easy
for me to generalize about
parts of my life by their zeit-
geists and worries. Sometimes
these fears were so all-encom-
passing that it felt like I was
the only person alive. There’s
a poem by Emily Dickinson
on her observations of chil-
dren’s education: “Tell all
the truth but tell it slant —/
Success in Circuit lies/ Too
bright for our infirm Delight/
The Truth’s superb surprise/
As Lightning to the Children
eased/ With explanation kind/
The Truth must dazzle grad-
ually/ Or every man be blind
—” (Dickinson 1263).
As the poem dictates, inun-
dating every child with the
whole truth is an impossible,
possibly harmful task — it
is likely the correct move for
educators to ease kids into
their knowledge. But from an
early age I could pick up on
the fact that “telling the truth
slant” was conflated with
oversimplification, blatant
insulation and the overtly
positive attitude toward polar-
ization.
Those around me praised
the extremes, but in doing so,
they asphyxiated our abilities
to pick up on nuance and
the value of compromise and
balance, sending us reeling in
future situations where those
exact values were in necessity.
At 17, I recognize the posi-
tives and negatives of growing
up in a place that seemed to
have a strange approach to
critical thinking and differen-
tiation from large groups. For
one, while I was perhaps the
exception to this experience,
it’s very safe to have a foun-
dation, even if it exists for the
sole purpose of building one-
self up off of it. For another, I
was exposed to a distinct kind
of logic unique to Rabbinic
literature and was instilled
with the value of, at the very
least, learning something.
But, like I said before, at
17, I’m too close to myself to
know what any of that really
means. All I know is that see-
ing myself now, parsing out
the positives and negatives,
approaching scary situations
with their pros and cons in
lists in my head — it feels
like an entirely new era in my
history.
Esti Klein is a student at Frankel
Jewish Academy in West Bloomfield.
$7.5 Million in
Security Grants
to Michigan
Faith-Based
Institutions
U.S. Sen. Gary Peters (MI),
chairman of the Homeland
Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee,
announced that $7.5 mil-
lion in grant funding will be
awarded to nonprofits and
faith-based organizations
across Michigan to help them
protect their facilities against
potential attacks.
The funding is from the
Department of Homeland
Security’s Nonprofit Security
Grant Program (NSGP),
which Peters has champi-
oned, to help religious institu-
tions, including synagogues,
churches, mosques, gurd-
waras and other nonprofits,
strengthen their security in
the face of rising threats and
attacks.
Peters helped lead the reau-
thorization of this essential
program last Congress and
has helped secure substantial
funding increases in recent
years, including $305 million
in a funding bill that was
signed into law last year.
“Houses of worship in
Michigan and across the
country continue to face
threats and attacks that are
inspired by hate based on
religion, like antisemitism
and Islamophobia,” Peters
said. “While this funding
will be critical to helping
communities feel safer, I will
continue pushing the feder-
al government to do more
to combat the continued
threat of domestic terrorism,
including white supremacist
violence.”