I happened to attend the bat mitzvah of my friend Pamela’s daughter and was drawn in by the splendor of the sanctuary, the urgency of Rabbi Peter Rubinstein’s sermon, and the expressive voice of Cantor Angela Buchdahl. It was love at first sound.
Outside, I phoned my husband: “We have to join this place.”
Ever the realist, he said, “You spent ninety minutes there.”
“I’m just telling you, Dave: this is where we should be.” I knew I wanted to keep listening to this clergy. I wanted to keep coming back to that room.
I signed us up the following Monday. Dave trusted my gut and went along.
Central draws people in quickly. Suddenly, I was safeguarding Friday evenings to attend services—Central’s largest weekly gathering, which numbers hundreds and feels ebullient and sacred. The music penetrated, the spoken prayers felt unforced.
I enrolled my children in the weekly religious school and delighted in watching them bow during their abbreviated tefilah (prayer) service and learn Hebrew alongside their new friends. For Ben’s “mitzvah project” (community service), he chose to visit regularly with a Holocaust survivor and was affected by his stories.
But then Ben hit a roadblock, when he was saddled by severe anxiety in the seventh grade—a discomfort that was compounded by the loss of his friend Jacob, age ten, to brain cancer. Ben told us that he saw no point in a bar mitzvah or praying to a God who could let a ten-year-old die. I wrote to Senior Rabbi Peter Rubinstein, asking sincerely for help; I had no clue how to parent this moment.
Peter suggested that Ben stop by his office, and one meeting changed everything. Peter managed to connect with Ben in a way that no teacher or therapist had. Over the next few months, Peter talked Ben through his sense of religion’s futility. One day, out of the blue, Ben told us he wanted a bar mitzvah after all.
Ben and Molly became bar and bat mitzvah two years apart in ceremonies that seized my heart. During each service, I felt my children uplifted by a ritual that conveyed, This is about you and also beyond you. None of this lasts without you. I cried at the same two moments: when the rabbi passed the Torah scroll from the two pairs of grandparents to Dave and me and then to our child—a physical passing of the tradition—and also when they received a private blessing from the rabbi in front of the ark. I don’t say this lightly: it felt as if God was close by that day. Central Synagogue brought home the idea that my mother had predicted years ago: Judaism is a train that circles back to pick you up.
So with all this newfound connection, why did I feel compelled to go further? I think because the more I did grasp, the more I saw what I didn’t. It bothered me that I had never lived the entire Jewish calendar. I couldn’t explain Shemini Atzeret. I wanted to fill in the gaps, not just asking what Tu B’Shvat means but why it began and its relevance today.
One rabbi, Irwin Kula, posed two questions that guided me throughout my yearlong undertaking: “What do we hire a holiday to do for us? What is the yearning to which the holiday is a response?”
I wanted to know what each holiday does. Not that I would sit back, fold my arms, and expect fairy dust; I’d do my part, leave my skepticism at the door, be as active and open as possible. I hoped to be taken somewhere. The land of the holiday-knowers looked compelling, grounding.
Of course, multitudes of Orthodox Jews follow every holiday as a matter of course, but most Jews in the United States are not living by the Jewish clock, nor even aware of what happens when. (The holiday dates change every year according to the Hebrew calendar, which is tied to the moon’s cycles and is impossible to memorize; many holidays officially begin at sundown the night before, often lasting more than one day depending on the holiday: Rosh Hashanah is two days; Sukkot is eight or nine, depending on whom you ask.)
I wanted to understand what we non-Orthodox Jews are missing. Not just the facts and figures of Judaism, but their expression in real life. I wanted more of the intensity that I’d observed other people feeling.
The much-dissected Pew Research Center study of 2013 revealed that most Jews do not connect their Jewish identity to Judaism. I wanted to find out if that’s because we haven’t really looked there.
So I took the leap. I began a column for the Forward newspaper, called “18 Holidays; One Wondering Jew,” a journey generously shepherded and supported by the Forward and then expanded considerably for this book. I promised readers I’d dissect and digest every single Jewish holiday, no matter how obscure, promising to write before and after each major one—to share my preparation first, my experience afterwards. (For the less famous holidays, one chapter seemed sufficient.) I aimed to climb the scaffolding of a more rigorous Jewish life without knowing the outcome.
Yes, I could predict all the roadblocks:
1. Judaism’s schedule is a bear. I committed to writing about eighteen holidays because when I started counting them, I came up with between eighteen and twenty, depending on how one tallies the major and minor festivals and fasts. I leaned toward a clean eighteen since it’s a significant Jewish number: every Hebrew letter has a numerical value and the word chai (life) adds up to eighteen. Chai also means “raw” or “uncooked,” an apt adjective since I considered myself an unbaked Jew.
2. The Sabbath is considered the most important holiday of all, but I thought I’d lose my audience if I wrote about all fifty-two. I wrote about two, without counting them in the total eighteen.
3. I like eating. The idea of graduating from one difficult fast (Yom Kippur) to six didn’t electrify me.
4. Synagogue services are typically long, and, let’s be frank, not always riveting. I decided to research and visit different temples and independent prayer groups across denominations, which would mean significant pew time.
5. My kids and husband didn’t sign on for this. Now, not only did they have to participate (at least a little), but they’d have to hear about it (a lot). They said that they were game, but I wasn’t so sure. I apologized in advance because I’d be absent at odd times (one penitential service, Selichot, began at midnight; on Shavuot [the giving of the Torah], people study all night till sunrise).
6. I apologized to my Central clergy because I’d be peripatetic for a year. I apologized to my husband because I’d be running off to spend hours without him, sitting in other shuls on the High Holy Days when we normally sit side by side.
7. I realized my method might appear quirky or hypocritical: I would be observing Jewish holidays without being observant, eating ritual foods without keeping kosher, designing a personal seminary without getting a degree. This would be an expedition, not a conversion. I was clear, but others might not be.
8. I worried that I’d be perceived by the Orthodox as a tourist or trespasser in what adds up to their way of life. Even though, even in Orthodoxy, there is no one way. I’ve met observant Jews who don’t keep every fast, who parse kosher rules very personally, who discard one rite but wouldn’t skip another. Judaism has become highly customized, and the labels of Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, and Orthodox are all moving targets.
9. My Hebrew is pathetic. I first learned the language in college (taught by a dynamic professor who used the Israeli Top-40 pop countdown to drill vocabulary), then promptly forgot everything I’d mastered because I stopped using it, then relearned enough to chant my Torah portion, then recently went on Craigslist to find a tutor and found Joel Goldman, a very sage, very Orthodox instructor who looks