On the eve of Passover, the Jewish holiday of redemption and freedom, I cannot think of a time that I have felt more like I am in exile. The last few days have witnessed some—how shall I say this—struggles with my job that have leaked over and become struggles with my Jewish identity.
Now that most of you are presumably thoroughly confused, let me take a few moments and explain. On Wednesday afternoon of last week, I sent an email to my faculty manager asking him if I could take off on this Tuesday to attend a Passover Seder. I explained to him that it was an important Jewish holiday, but I already knew him to be a seriously observant Christian who has many times expressed his delight with my Jewishness, so I didn’t expect to run into any trouble. Unfortunately, that is exactly what I got, in the form of a sternly-worded email that, in no uncertain terms, questioned my commitment to the company and my dedication to my students. I would be allowed to take Tuesday off, but in exchange, I would be forfeiting my right to the seven days of unpaid professional development (read: vacation) I had for the year of my contract.
To say that I was caught off guard would be an understatement. Granted, I did take a day off from work when my family was here visiting me in December, and I have missed three days because of illness, including one earlier this week. Having said that, I have taken my job very seriously and, at least in my opinion, have been doing pretty solid work as a teacher for the last 7 months. I know that the company I work for has extremely rigid policies, especially when it comes to taking days off, but I thought that I wouldn’t have trouble with a religious holiday.
I know that it probably wasn’t my boss’s personal choice to dock my vacation, and his explanation that “Korean companies aren’t like American companies” rings true— despite my limited experience with either, I have learned in the time I’ve been here that in a lot of ways, things just don’t operate the same way. It was one of those frustrating moments when I felt really powerless and pretty unappreciated, but I know that I can’t let that bring me down or affect my work or personal life.
In any case, I did my best to deal with the frustration over the weekend, and started to think about the coming week and the holiday. I’d been talking about Judaism a lot to Rira in the last few weeks, trying to explain my upbringing, the people and place I come from. I’ve also been telling her all about Passover, and invited her to come to the Seder with me to get her first Jewish experience, up-close and personal. It has been a long time since I’ve done anything Jewish (again, read: Rosh Hashanah), and the idea of participating in a Seder in Korea with a Korean was getting me pretty stoked.
I RSVP’d to Chabad earlier in the week that I would be joining them for the second night of the holiday and bringing a friend with me. Everything sounds good, right? Wrong. I got an email over the weekend from the Chabad Rabbi that he was excited to have me and my friend, as long as “he is Jewish.” Of course, I didn’t specify in my first email that the person I was bringing was a woman, not to mention the fact that she was my Korean non-Jewish girlfriend (I had a feeling those details were extraneous and would be better left unwritten).
Now I was in a pickle; I had a couple of options, none of which seemed particularly attractive. I could not respond to the email and just show up on Tuesday night with Rira in tow. I doubted they would turn us away at the door, but I didn’t want to expose her to the potential awkwardness of being the only non-Jew (and let’s face it, she doesn’t really look very Jewish—which is of course fine by me) there. My other option was to reply to the Rabbi and basically, well, lie. A number of elaborate stories were running through my head. I could say that her grandfather was an American GI and she had just recently found out that he was Jewish. I could claim that she descended from a long-hidden sect of Korean Jews, something like the lost tribe of the East.
In the end, I decided to tell the truth—well, at least not to lie; making Rira pretend to be someone she’s not for a room full of inquisitive Jews just didn’t seem fair. I emailed the Rabbi back and told him that my friend had “Jewish roots” (the vagueness of that term was entirely intentional) and was very interested in learning more about Judaism and the holiday.
The email I got back was as blunt as it was unpleasant: “if her mother is Jewish, she is Jewish. If her father is Jewish, she is not.”
I know halacha (Jewish law). I understand that Chabad is an orthodox organization, and respect their right to believe what they want to believe. But this email just did not sit right with me. The fact that they would turn away a person interested in learning more about Judaism on the most celebrated holiday of the Jewish calendar, a holiday built around asking questions and exploring identity, honestly made me sick to my stomach. Forget that Rira isn’t Jewish, or that she is Korean. What if she were American, had been practicing as a Jew her whole life, but had only a Jewish father? Does it even matter if her father is Jewish? What if she was Caucasian instead of Korean? What does it say that she’d be able to “pass” as Jewish in that case, but not the way she is now?
A hundred questions swirled through my head, all of them circling around the absurdity of this rule. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had some pretty serious changes in religious perspective over the last couple of years, leading me to question a lot of the laws of the religion I grew up in and still call my own. But this one, perhaps more than all the others, offends me on a deep level. To judge a person’s spiritual and religious identity on nothing but their blood brings to mind one terrible historical example, one that I generally hate when people make references or comparisons to (I think we all know what I’m referring to). I just don’t know how else to see it.
I returned the Rabbi’s email with one of my own, explaining in the best and most respectful way that I could what I felt of his policy, and informing him that if Rira was not welcomed at his Seder, then I would consider myself unwelcomed as well. He replied, explaining that there are a limited number of spots at the table and that he wanted to insure that all Jews have a place to go for the holiday. I get that, and it made me feel a little better. But it doesn’t change the way I feel about his policy in general. I was embarrassed to explain the situation to Rira, and told her that I hoped this wouldn’t shade her view of Jewish people as a whole. But honestly, how could it not?
People wonder why Jews have a less-than-positive reputation in some places around the world, and an incident like this takes a serious toll on my own relationship with the organized religion, even if Chabad isn’t a group that I would normally associate myself with.
So here I am, spending the first night of Passover in Korea with a serious philosophical dilemma on my hands. I am going to go to the Seder tomorrow night because I respect the Rabbi’s limitations and feel like it’s important to me to do something for the holiday. I imagined that this would be a chance for me to reconnect as a Jew, while at the same time sharing an important part of myself with someone that I care about and whose opinion matters to me. Now, our shared Passover experience will be relegated to letting her taste some matza that I bring home. I’m not sure how I’ll feel when I am sitting at the table. Probably a lot more like my ancestors than I have at any other Seders in the past. Apparently, I’m more in galut than I ever knew I was.
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