Home Presentation for College Homecoming Sabbath, January 3, 2003
(Good evening. I'm Martha Lackritz and I'm a senior at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.)
In a way I think it's more difficult to talk about my Jewish experience in a northeastern university, where Jews are not hard to find, as opposed to in Texas, where we are more of a minority. On the other hand, religion plays an interesting role because the idea of a practicing, spiritual person – of any religion – is becoming somewhat of an oddity in an intellectual community, where we are proud to say that we are of Jewish heritage, but less quick to claim any certainty in our beliefs. So struggling more perhaps with my own personal identity, I have to wander slightly from the college campus to approach the topic.
As a student of literature, it helps to think in images, so bear with me.
I read once that during the Crusades, Christian warriors discovered a new species of rose in the Middle East, which they then introduced to Europe for the first time. This always evokes a striking image in my mind – of these Medieval Aryan Crusaders tearing back North through Europe, leaving the burning homes and bodies of “infidels” – Muslims and Jews primarily – behind them. Yet in their arms are these beautiful flowers, fresh buds that bloom bright red across Europe for the first time.
Of course, this is mostly in my head, and you're probably wondering what it has to do with Judaism and university life anyway. Well I came across this fact while doing research on a piece I was writing for a literary journal at Brown. The essay itself approaches the origin of the rose in mythology and folklore, playing on the obvious cliché of delicate petals emerging from a stem barbed with thorns.
I began writing the essay shortly after returning from a year abroad, which was undoubtedly the most eye-opening year of my college career. Last spring, I found myself interning in Paris with an association of immigrants. Paris has the second largest population of immigrants in the world, and the third largest Jewish population (preceded by Israel and the U.S.). The largest immigrant group in France is Arabic. This makes for interesting tensions. First there are the series of scattered synagogue burnings a month into my arrival, in response to Israeli politics, and then there is the near election of a right wing extremist whose mission is to purge France of Islam: extremism, after all, stems from a desperate desire to “embrace” one's identity at the expense of all others. And on top of this, our president reveals that there is an “axis of evil” – an unholy trinity, if you will – that is on the edge of destroying the planet.
So there I am, mystified, and ready to defend my Americanism and my Judaism despite some of their less-than-perfect representatives. Two years in college did little in terms of “reevaluating myself” compared to what one week abroad can do.
Then I fall in love, I think. It's Paris – isn't it supposed to happen that way? And he's Muslim. And he's Arabic. And what's so scandalous about that? Nothing, if we're secure in what we believe.
I'm at a pay phone outside my apartment. “He's Moroccan,” I'm telling my mother, “Did you know that Morocco has the fourth largest Jewish population in the world?” I hasten to add. “Did you know that the Arabic word for “one” is wahed – just like echad, adonai echad?”
And I'm flash-backing on the video we watched during confirmation retreat with all the engaged couples of different religions that end up tragically separating because of this one, essential difference. But I'm not getting married anytime soon. The odd thing is how much I regained a sense of Jewish history and identity in getting involved with someone of such a different background. For the first time in years, I find myself describing Jewish tradition, as though truly claiming it as my own. Then there is also this process that two people confront: giving and taking, teaching and being taught – things that today's governments, unlike two kids in their early twenties, do not seem very capable of doing. All of these things become critical when one finds herself in a foreign environment, where we're forced to accept, or at least confront, who we really are.
At Brown, it is hard not to be among secular Jews. We're all over up there. But most of us don't think much about it – because there's nothing to challenge it. It's a given. In reality, it is outside this intellectual bubble that one confronts real questions of identity.
So back to the rose – if you're still with me. Did you know that in an eighteenth century mystical Judaic text known as the Zohar, the people of Israel are portrayed as a thirteen-petalled rose?
Needless to say, the essay about the roses ended up in all different directions – but that image sticks with me: a powerful reminder of people at war, of beauty at odds with hypocrisy.
Months away from my diploma, I am still more than unsure of my religious and ideological convictions, but I think I began to understand where to look for them: if college, or home, or synagogue is the sole place where we attempt to reaffirm who we are and where we come from, we will always find it slipping from us. Without appreciating, and understanding the differences in society, we can never face our own.
Roses, by the way, have proven to be incredibly adaptive. Strong roses dig deep beneath the ground, their roots networking the dark crevasses of earth. Beneath sanguine petals is a stem armored with thorns. Beneath the thorns is the rose's lifeline: roots, like veins, push ruthlessly through the dirt. They are breathless, and totally buried beneath that wiry stem with a tiny, blushing flower balancing effortlessly on top. In all its various origins, hybrids, and homes, the rose remains: a survivor, a wanderer, a flower whose roots must know many soils in order to save its bloom.
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