Being a jew as always been a core part of my identity. Yet I had no problem making that an additive quality to my life. I always enjoyed Christmas in a secular way of course. Peace on earth good will to men was a wonderful concept, And although I did  go off the deep end for a few years as a new home owner with decorations and cookies I finally put it in perspective: made that time if the year a time to do charitable acts and even relieve Christians who had to work in hospitals or soup kitchens so they had a chance to be with family. A tree had a wonderful pagan element to it and I enjoyed the lights and snow and songs. So even though it was the only christian holiday celebrated in my jewish home it wasn’t problematic for me. And then I moved to Montgomery. And being so outnumbered and so misunderstood and so foreign to people who had knee jerk beliefs that every one else must think like them or be damned. I recall a funeral the first fall in the south. A woman who ran a clinic where I volunteered had shot herself in the head and I ient to my first Southern Baptist funerals. The preacher talked about how joyous it was that she was with Jesus while her seven year old son and shell shocked husband sat trying not to cry in the first pew. And then the preacher went on to talk about pagans who would never get to heaven. And I understood. He was talking about me. The pagan in the room.  Maybe a few Catholics were there and they were pagans too. And I knew I had to start taking a stand. I took a job in  a local county school system. They had never had a Jew work there. Most had never SEEN a Jew and they had to invent a policy to cover the Jewish holidays that fell in the fall. They served ham. Word got out I didn’t eat it and they started serving chicken too. They prayed before lunch to jesus and word got out and they changed it to God. Slowly they tried to accommodate me and I appreciated every  step they moved towards tolerance. I can honestly say I never experienced any overt anti-Semitism the south. But what happened was worse. I became reactionary. In that I mean I began behaving in ways that I felt were expected of me not in ways that were filed with heart. I had joined a temple. That was a given because you can not be unaffiliated with some religion and survive socially. But I got far more involved than I wanted to be involved. Sure it was  the only way at first to meet a liberal and eventually I came to be best-est-est friends with  a woman who fills me with joy and inspiration, but I paid a huge price. I learned that Rabbis could be petty and lie and gossip while they preached against those things. I learned that Rabbis would have affairs with congregants and steal and not fess up to it when confronted by witnesses. I learned that Rabbis cheat and plagiarize and make excuses and take credit for others ideas and  many of them are control freaks and not well educated in any area other than Judaism. I learned that I never wanted to know a Rabbi as intimately as I knew Rabbis  in the south and I never wanted to be on the board of a federation or a temple because there is nothing spiritual about those aspects of Jewish life.  I even pressured my husband in my reactionary immersion in Judaism and  that was unforgivable and I have asked his forgiveness. Oh yes there were good things. I learned more. I developed an absolute comfort about Jewish knowledge and teaching and  holidays and Hebrew and what I knew and didn’t know  and what were limits were. And I learned that one could not believe in God and still be a good job and any religion that works from a position if hatefulness and exclusion is not for me. So here I am writing this blog instead of dressing to go to a Selichot service. Maybe writing this will get me up and going, with a pillow and a candle and a sense of adventure. And maybe this time I will do Judaism my way- only with heart and only when it pulls the best from me and never when it leaves me angry or annoyed or stooping to the pettiness I have seen in other people. L’Chaim  and lets really mean it.  L’Shana Tovah.