4 | SEPTEMBER 5 • 2024 J
N

essay

Challenging the 
Walls Around My 
Jewish Identity
T

here is great power to holding 
a pen in your hand, your 
thoughts flowing from your 
mind, your words filling the once-
empty space. The pen in your hand 
feels like the scepter 
of your identity, and 
you point it between 
your heritage and your 
present to write your 
future. 
I want to explain 
how I learned to 
hold my own identity 
scepter. 
When I arrived at college, I was 
stunned by the open welcome of 
my college’s religious and spiritual 
Jewish leaders. They allowed me 
to ponder my religious cognitive 
dissonance, giving me the freedom 
to shape my own Jewish identity. I 
was free to wear whatever clothes 
I wanted, to explore my religious 
surroundings and to interrogate my 
relationship with Judaism. I was able 
to openly explore the Judaism I was 
raised in to find my Jewish identity 
on my own terms. 
This was a sharp contrast to my 
experience growing up in Jewish 
day schools. In middle school and 
high school, I often felt afraid to 
ask specific questions related to my 
Jewish identity; I feared my teachers 
would see me as a “jester.” 
My classmates generally seemed 
to accept the specific halakhic 
teachings and interpretations of 
passages from the Tanakh that we 
were taught. It seemed fine with 
them that we never questioned 
the frameworks behind these 
interpretations. We also never 
addressed the fact that a portion of 
the class did not uphold halakhah in 

the way we were being taught. 
I was also taught, however, that 
to be Jewish is to question and to 
engage with doubts. If there was 
no questioning, there would be 
no Talmud. If there was no doubt, 
belief would never be strengthened 
or certain. And yet, by teaching me 
that for every aspect of Judaism 
there was one correct way, one path 
to be followed — one box in which 
we should exist — the adults around 
me made clear that there were 
limits to what we could ask. We 
were not to push too hard on the 
walls surrounding our beliefs and 
practices. 
And so, because I was never 
taught to question and never taught 
to doubt, I never expressed my 
doubts, but rather shoved them into 
an uncomfortable corner of my box. 
When I first arrived at college, 
I told my new friends that I was 
firm in my belief. I knew my values, 
and I knew that I did not intend to 
change. But hearing someone else 
express doubts for the first time led 
me to articulate my own. 
This new acquaintance questioned 
everything: love, food, our daily 
existence. Most of all, he questioned 
religion. As he sat at a meal in the 
Chabad building, he asked: Why 
do we have Judaism? Is there truly 
a God? At first, I was shocked. He 
was asking these questions while 
eating food provided by Chabad and 
sitting with the friends he had met 
attending Chabad events. Wasn’t 
religion the source of his happiness 
and security? But ultimately, as he 
continued to question God, religion 
and Judaism, and still continued to 
be a member of the community, I 
started to ask myself whether it was 

me who was failing to see clearly. 
I admitted to myself that as I sat 
for years in the box composed of 
my high school’s Jewish values, I 
had always been a little unhappy 
there, a little frustrated with my 
own religious stagnation. I stepped 
outside of the box to a space where 
there were no longer limits to my 
questions or my doubts. I read 
writers from other movements 
of Judaism. I met with leaders 
and students of different Jewish 
organizations. These students and 
leaders all represented different 
models of Jewish thinking. I 
questioned, judged and doubted. 
I came to realize that, rather than 
shattering me, leaving the box of my 
high school Jewish thinking could 
allow me to discover and express 
who I am more fully. 

So much of my education had 
been shaped by fear of loss: the 
fear that the mesorah, the tradition, 
would be lost if the school allowed 
students to question Jewish practice 
at all. But I do not believe that 
acknowledging differences in the 
Jewish practices of students in the 
classroom is dangerous. Voicing 
doubts, questioning norms and 
recognizing different religious 
practices in our households will not 
erase our past or destroy our future. 
There is a reason why a number 
of students each year graduate 
Jewish day school and choose to 
forgo any connection to Judaism. 
Jewish day schools need to find 
a balance between maintaining 
standards and allowing questions 
that prevent students from feeling 
boxed in, from feeling alone, from 

Chana Fisher

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