Jewish Behaviour

(Hat tip: Failed Messiah)

One long going controversy over Jewish behaviour is the debate over what exactly qualifies as such.  For those in the non-religious community, any activity performed by a Jew seemed to be included.  Woody Allen movies, anti-Yom Kippur feasts, as long as a Jew does it it's a Jewish behaviour and the folks involved are acting Jewish.
At the other end of the spectrum, any activities not specifically referenced in the halachic literature, from the Talmud on down, seems to be excluded.  This much more rigid definition does provide a certain sense of clarity and consistency that the liberal definition lacks but is also very exclusionary.  While most frum Jews will agree that a mixed university dance put on by the JSU is not a Jewish activity, most non-religious Jews will disagree vigorously.
Somewhere in the middle, however, are those activities which are Jewish in a more nebulous way.  They're not written down anywhere in the official sacred literature but they are activities and ways of thinking that have preoccupied our nation for centuries, if not longer:
To be a Jew.

To think that you’re different from other people who aren’t Jews, but to get angry when it turns out that they think the same thing about you. To say, “all in all there are only 14 million [Jews] in the entire world, what is 14 million?” So you can tell about the Jew you met in Kamchatka, the last place in the world you’d expect to find a Jew. To stand in the ancient graveyard in Prague, in front of the Maharal’s grave [Rabbi Judah Loew], and to read the Hebrew letters etched in the stone. To feel for a moment that you are etched in stone a bit as well.

To be a Jew.

To know which Jewish actor had a Jewish father and to be surprised that Bill Gates isn’t. To say “Einstein, Freud and Marx,” despite the fact that you’ve never read Einstein, Freud or Marx. To think that every “Cohn” and “Kane” must have once been Cohen. To meet an intelligent gentile and to say about him, “he’s more Jewish than you.” To tell people that you had great rabbis in your family despite the fact that you don’t know exactly what it was that was so great about them. To inherit from your grandfather leather-bound copies of the Talmud with gold lettering, to put them on the shelf and to say to yourself that one of these days you’ll read them.

To be a Jew.

To want perpetually to be someone else. To know that every Jew you’ll meet feels the same thing because that’s a Jewish trait. To talk with a taxi driver who wants to be a singer, with a waiter who has an idea for a start-up company, with a lawyer who says that one day he’s going to write a book. To say, “In France there are people who are waiters for their entire lives, and they don’t have a problem with that.” To feel that there is a problem with that.

To be a Jew.

To hear that someone painted a swastika on the wall of a synagogue in Bolivia, and to feel that it’s your business. To read about how anti-Semitic comic books are sold in Japan and to say, “Think about it, they’ve never met a Jew in their lives.” To be profoundly insulted when someone says to you that the Holocaust isn’t an acceptable argument. Only we’ll decide when the Holocaust stops being an acceptable argument, and that time hasn’t arrived yet.

To be a Jew.
 
To see a picture of a tall and skinny blonde and to say to yourself that Jews don’t look like that. To be in a perpetual fight with three kilos, three children and three accounts, a Jew who wakes up feeling anxious at three in the morning because of something that tomorrow will appear to be foolish. To ask to be excused in the middle of a meeting if the word “mom” appears on the screen of your cellphone. To say, “Americans see their children once a year,” but not really to understand how they can.  To announce that this year you won’t be at the Passover Seder because you’re flying to London. To delay the flight to London until after the holiday.

To be a Jew.

To complain about the long movies that people make at every Bar-Mitzvah, and then to go and make your kid a 22-minute-long movie that includes a photograph of him at the age of one in the bathtub. To sing enthusiastically “Kol sasson vekol simha” [part of the Jewish wedding ritual], but under no circumstances to remember how the song continues from there. To know the melody from the blessing before reading the Torah [the reference here is to a Bar-Mitzvah boy] even thirty years later. To stand during prayers on Yom Kippur and to ask yourself when the shofar is going to be blown [marking the end of the day of fasting]. To walk into a synagogue in a foreign country and to see Jews sitting by a wooden table reading Hebrew. To walk up to them and to say “Shalom to the Jew” because despite the fact that you don’t know one another, you really do.

To be a Jew.

To keep a kippa in the glove compartment of your car just in case you get stuck having to go to a funeral. To tell your guest from abroad, “Yad Vashem, the Western Wall tunnels and you’ve got to see the new museum.” To think secretly that people with white beards are smarter. To love your neighbor like yourself because you can’t stand yourself. To tie your sister’s sofa to the roof of your car for a move and to tell your brother in law, “what’s the matter with you, we’re family.”

To be a Jew.

To think that Jews in the Diaspora are a little more Jewish than you but also a little less, and not to bother trying to reconcile that contradiction. To quote Maimonides as if you knew him. To know that you’re no less a Jew than the most Ultra-Orthodox Haredi in Mea Shearim, but to squirm a bit at the sight of the rabbi who co-married Chelsea Clinton along with a priest. To say about the red string around Madonna’s wrist, “that’s not Judaism” as if you really know what is.   

To be a Jew.

To know that the most important thing in life is family, and the most important thing in family is what you eat. To make “Grandma Tzipora’s meat patties” ten years after she’s been dead. To tell your mother, “you’ve got to open a restaurant.” To have a family dinner on the holiday eve, a barbecue for the holiday lunch, dinner after the holiday is over, and in the middle to eat from the cake because Jews can’t resist pastry.

To be a Jew.

To talk too much about the kids, too much about money, too much about work, too much about how we talk too much. To be worried all the time that someone is cheating you because, after all, every Jew has an Uncle Reuven who once lost everything. To long for a town you’ve never visited, and for a house you’ll never return to. To know that sometimes things end badly. Not to understand Jews who returned to Germany after the war, but to think that you’d already be a millionaire if you were in America. To call a relative in America who became a millionaire and to ask if your kid can sleep at his house.

To be a Jew.

To belong to something. Something deep, eternal, something that is bigger than us. To know that belonging comes with a price. They’ve already tried to burn me, kill me, expel me, convert me, but the fact is that I’m still here. Because I am a Jew from the Land of Israel, a proud runner in the longest relay race in history, a member of the most select club in the world.
Why is this important?  Yair Lapid is not someone that would ever be mistaken for a Torah observant person, yet it is clear from his writing that he is a Jew.  He senses a connection to the Jewish nation and it is important to him.  He can't quantify it, he can't isolate it but he knows he is a member of a long tradition, of a people that have kept their special identity since leaving Egypt 3500 years ago and that it matters.
Indeed, this is probably one area where even the most chiloni in Israel is light years ahead in terms of his sense of Jewish attachment from his secular counterpart in North America.  Despite all the idiocies of Satmar theology and its concern about Jewish assimilation in a non-Torah state, the chilonim have maintained a deep tie to the Jewish nation, one not found in any book but an emotional and metaphysical one that is more real.
It is this connection that joins us all and which we need to nurture in all our brethren, religious or non.