How Can This Jewish Teen Connect to her Judaism

I don’t feel a spiritual connection with God or the Jewish community. How do I start feeling that I belong?

Dear Lauren,

I am Jewish by birth, but growing up I wasn't raised with a great emphasis on my Jewishness. I knew it was there, and occasionally we celebrated holidays (Chanukah and Passover, mostly), and I know many of the stories and parables of our ancestors. I love my Jewishness. But I don't feel a spiritual connection with God or with the Jewish community. I didn't go to Hebrew school growing up, I don't have many Jewish friends, and despite my mother being Israeli and most of my family living there, I don't know any Hebrew.

I'm starting college in a few months and I know I'll have opportunities to make connections there. But I always feel like I don't belong with the other Jewish kids due to my lack of knowledge, a Hebrew/Jewish sounding name, and the fact that I'm multi-racial. I don't know where to start to get a better grasp on the more religious part of Judaism, and where to insert myself in the community. What should I do?

Let me start with the last part of your question, in which, basically, you say, “I don’t feel I belong with other Jewish kids because I’m not perfectly like them.” Do you know how many experiences and relationships we humans miss out on because we’re nervous: “I won’t be able to do it perfectly, so I’d rather not try”?
I read an interview with Karl Lagerfeld (of Chanel and Fendi). He said the most extraordinary statement:

“I like antique lace, antique sheets, beautiful quilted covers, but everything is white. In white you can hide nothing. I have everything – sheets and nightshirt and robes – changed every day. It’s such a pleasure to go to bed in the evening in a beautiful bed with beautiful sheets and beautiful pillows, everything flawless, in a freshly pressed, long white smock. It’s perfect.”

Everything white? Everything “flawless?” A freshly-pressed nightshirt? “Perfect?” Those words doesn’t describe Real Life. You can’t live an authentic life in a white house with white sheets and white clothes and white furniture. Real Life is never perfect or flawless or clean or white. It’s messy and dirty and complicated and full of imperfect fits and stubborn stains that won’t come out – and even more stains yet to come.

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