Are Jews from outside of established communities less Jewish? Or are they more Jewish because they embody the “lost,” more authentic, and traditional ways of being Jewish? I am neither less Jewish nor more authentic as a Jew from Japan, which does not have a long-standing, continuous Jewish presence.
I am simply a Jewish person from a less established and sparsely-populated Jewish community. In my case, that meant that Passover—my favorite holiday—was marked by simplicity. Passover, an intensely home-centered holiday, always held a special place for me, partially because of the challenges it posed.
Getting food for Passover was difficult. I remember how every year we would receive an order form with about five food items on it: Matzah, matzah meal, matzah cake mix, gefilte fish and grape juice. Everything comfortably fitting into a sparsely populated one sheet of paper. My mom would look it over, fill it out, and send it back to the Tokyo Jewish Community Center (now known as the Jewish Community of Japan) and a few weeks later, we would receive a box with the items we ordered.
We mostly ate a rice-centered diet flavored with miso and soy sauce during the year so the matzah-centered salt and pepper-flavored diet during Passover seemed bland. But also, spiritual because of its simplicity. I would carry around my matzah lunch or snack with me wherever I went so my friends would notice, ask questions, and I would talk about my Jewish heritage and practice. It made me feel special when most times my difference translated into feeling ashamed because it made me less Japanese.
Passover to me was the embodiment of simplicity, shedding our lives of everything unnecessary, just the way our ancestors had to shed everything in order to flee from bondage. Imagine my surprise then when I walked into a grocery store in New York City shortly before Passover and I saw a whole corner dedicated to Kosher-for-Passover bread, cereal, cake, pastries, coke, etc. Also a fridge full of assiduously labeled Kosher-for-Passover cream cheese, yogurt, orange juice, etc. I…I…My eyes bugged out.
Passover was the time of tranquility and simplicity. At least it was, in my hometown of Tsukuba. The abundance of Kosher-for-Passover products looked like gluttony and extravagance.
What was this for? How can you look inside, reflect, and imagine being in another place at another time as your ancestors if you are so obsessed with staying within the legal confines, but finding every single loophole to make it feel more familiar? Was not Passover supposed to be a challenging time?
I was confused.
I was also confused by the competition among the Jewish students I was in college with about how much they hated matzah. They would say “only goyim like matzah!” and they would attribute that to them not having to eat it for one week straight every year. But I grew up eating only matzah every year for a week straight and I loved it. The clear message was that you were goyishe if you didn’t dislike matzah. Uh-huh.
Going to a college full of Jews from the most established Jewish community outside Israel taught me a lot. It showed me that while I grew up totally confident in my Jewish self, that many saw me as an outsider. Many Jews also seemed to think that being Jewish was an insurmountable hurdle if they were not part of a large, established community. I’ve seen this attitude especially among American Jews who grew up not in or around one of these well-established communities in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago. I think they are letting Jews from more established communities define what it means to be Jewish in Maine, Indiana, or North Dakota—but it doesn’t have to be that way.
There are so many ways to be Jewish, whether you are in a well-established Jewish community or not. Isn’t that why there are many different Jewish traditions depending on where a particular community rooted itself?
My experience having grown up in a place where it was significantly more difficult to practice Judaism (not because of physical danger, but because of lack of access) gave me a rich experience of Passover. While it is much easier to be a practicing Jew in the U.S., the hegemony of the more established communities over the less established ones, and the continuing atrophy of those less established communities because of that, bothers me.
I miss the simplicity of Passover in Japan and the richness of my Jewish experience growing up there. And I wonder if this is something that I can convey to my children where being Jewish, because it’s so much easier, makes people rely on crutches they call “necessities.”