I never really thought about how Jewish New York City really was until I was here. It is not an exaggeration when tell you at least one in every ten men was wearing a kippah, and in Brooklyn? Forget about it. And after being in Europe for so long, where Jews in Paris feel the need to hide their religions, where German Jews walk through daily reminders of the Holocaust, where the entire Jewish quarter of Prague stores the collected artifacts of Hitler’s almost “extinguished race” it was nice to be in a country with religious tolerance. That of course is not to say that America doesn’t have their own problems with ant-Semetism or bigotry but when you walk into bagel shop an you can buy any bagel because there is a kashrut symbol specifically for the bagels but warning against the sandwiches you can’t help but feel a sense of progress.
I learned a lot about myself on this trip. I learned how to budget my money effectively. I learned how to book hostels and travel between countries. I learned how to navigate around foreign cities. I learned how to spend money when it was worth it and keep money when it wasn’t. But one of the most important lessons I learned was that I should never, and never have to, give up my religion or my traditions to fit into a country.
I have met Jews of all types all over the continent. I’ve learned about Roman Jews who were in exile before the Second Temple. I’ve partied with Chabadnicks in Venice. I’ve spent Passover with Sephardics in Paris. I watched as David wrapped tfillin in front of the oldest synagogue in Europe in Prague and seen a medieval synagogue that still uses only candles (over 1000 of them) to light their services in Amsterdam. And through all of these experiences I have felt an immeasurable source of pride for my people, my nation, in exile. Though I do not dress modestly, though I do not wear a kippah, though I don’t have a “random wig, a witch nose and a beard” as Macklemore would describe it, I wore my Judaism like a badge of honor around Europe, unafraid to tell hostel goers who I was, where I was from and what that meant.
Maybe it’s for that reason that I didn’t feel like much of a tourist in New York, maybe we were just so tired out from the trip. We did most of the toursity stuff but with a local twist. We took the Staten Island Ferry (which I have discovered I pronounce wrong according to my New York friend) to see the Statue of Liberty. We walked Times Square, Washington Park, the Empire State building, Rockafeller center and the 9/11 memorial without ever feeling the need to go up or inside anything. We saw the skyline from Brooklyn Bridge Park and had real New York pizza, cheesecake, deli food and even pickles from The Pickle Guys. We were tourists but locals at the same time and we had a blast.
The trip is coming to an end, there’s one more wrap up post coming in a few days, but for this one I didn’t want to focus on the stuff we did in New York because it wasn’t all that special compared to Europe. But the feeling I had while walking around Crown Heights in the middle of their Lag B’Omer parade surrounded by thousands of Jews all singing “I’m a Jew and I’m Proud” was. But honestly, at the end of the day, I’ve spent 18 Shabbats, Purim, Passover, Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron, Yom HaAtzmaut and Lag B’Omer away from my family and friends and I can’t wait to get home.
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