As some of you know, I live in a small village in rural Wisconsin, and ours is the only mezuzah in town. Now, there is a pretty good-sized town just four miles away, and that was once a pretty vibrant center for Jewish life in this part of the state–so much so that the town earned the nickname “Little Jerusalem.” There were three synagogues–two of them, Orthodox–and about a thousand Jewish folks to be had.
Sadly, those days are long gone. There is now just one synagogue left (to which I belong) and a very beautiful and unusual synagogue–nicknamed “The White Synagogue” because it was, well, WHITE with an onion dome–is now a church. The dome is gone. The one stained-glass window, salvaged from the old shul, can be seen down at the Jewish Museum in Milwaukee. The number of Jews have steadily dwindled over the years and now stands at about 45 “families” (keep in mind that some of those “families” consist of a single person). The Jews have simply moved away to better jobs, more vibrant communities. On any given Saturday morning–which is the only time the shul has a service now, led by two lay chazzans–they’re lucky to have a minyan to begin the service. (For those not in the know, a minyan is a critical quorum of Jewish adults required for certain prayers to be said. You need 10 Jewish adults to make a minyan. In a congregation of 40-some odd people, that means there are lots of Saturdays when you just can’t scare up ten people to save your life.)
Now, I am as guilty as the next person of not going to shul on a Saturday morning. Honestly, there’s always something more important to do, whether it’s to write or . . . well, maybe all I do, lately, is write. 😉 Did I used to go more often–as in, every Saturday (and Friday night, when they had the service way back–about seven years ago now)? Yup. Do I feel guilty when I don’t go? Yeah, I do and, yeah, I have a lot more personal reasons why I don’t find the services as fulfilling as I once did–a lot of them having to do with, well, the sort of depression that sets in when you see a community with the slow dwindles.
On the other hand, I am proud to be Jewish; I enjoy being Jewish. Part of the fun of being Jewish at Christmas is to go to a mall, get a coffee and watch everyone else going nuts 😉 Seriously, that we’re the only mezuzah in our village reinforces my pride in being Jewish. You’d think it’d be the opposite, but there you go.
Of course, you feel your Jewishness more pointedly at some times of the year than at others. Not surprisingly, Christmas tends to really ram that point home. [There was a story in the local paper about one of the families in the shul doing the Chanukkah bit, and the article mentioned that there was Christmas music playing in the background as the family lit candles. As the dad said, they’re inclusive 😉 ]
In my own sort of perverse twist, I was at dress rehearsal for “Messiah” on the first night of Chanukkah (Friday) and performing last night, the second night. (Anyone who’s shocked, SHOCKED by this should go to a reform shul on a High Holy Day and count the number of non-Jewish folks in the choir. Happens all the time–and my standard response to anyone who gets bristly at the thought of me singing about Jesus is that music is music, and if I refrained from participating in every choral piece with a Christian base . . . well, I’d be missing out on a fair amount of the choral repertoire. Since I value making beautiful music more than semantics, for me, it’s a no-brainer.)
And, yet, as we were going onstage, one of the other chorus members leaned over and wished me a Happy Chanukkah–something that would have been somewhat unthinkable a few years back. See, what I’ve learned in moving from an urban BIG CITY to a small town in the MIdwest is that there is an unspoken assumption that everyone is the same–and, in this case, that everyone is Christian. I don’t want people to think that I view this negatively so much as I see it as a product of isolation–if no Jews ever visit your town, if you never go to a bat mitzvah, how are you to know? I’ve had Evangelicals–and there are lots of them–come to my door on a regular basis. Now, I’ve got a mezuzah there–it’s kind of hard to miss–but if you’ve never seen one before, it’s more like wuh dat? I’ve educated a fair number of Evangelicals 😉 So, for someone who’d never met a Jewish person before I showed up, for that person to care enough to recognize my difference–it’s a lovely experience, folks.
At this point in my life, for this good Jewish girl, life is a question of finding balance and making the best of a given situation (no mean feat for a Freudian, let me tell you). Ironically, living here has connected me more to a core sense of FEELING Jewish than I ever had when I lived where there was a shul on every block and a Lubavitcher congregation less than a mile away. I don’t feel like we’re the last Jewish outpost on the prairie or anything–and prairie dogs aren’t kosher, which was a real bummer for those first Jewish settlers–but considering that a bunch of my relatives, all Jewish, will eat ham and shrimp and all that and are yet quite, quite Jewish . . . well, I guess what that really suggests to me is that what you are is what you carry within–and that, sometimes, a single flame burns much more brightly, seems so much stronger, when it’s all by its lonesome: when making sure it doesn’t go out is what it’s all about.
