Some Reflections from a Bad Jew

By an American

I’ve always been a proud mutt. First generation American on my (Cuban) dad’s side, third generation on my (Russian Jewish) mom’s. By matrilineal accounting, this makes me Jewish, especially since my mom’s mom was, as was her mom’s mom, and so on as far back up the line as anyone can account for. Growing up, I was, in my own eyes, an ordinary American kid, and my Jewishness and Cubanness were just superficial glosses, something more interesting than being merely American, unhyphenated.

My mother would complain, correctly, that I was far less interested in my Jewishness than my Cubanness. Cubans just seemed so much more exotic than Jews, who, as far as I could tell, just looked, talked, and acted like normal white Americans. Plus, my mom’s side of the family were more New Yorkers or New Englanders than Russian Jews, and not a single one attended synagogue or seriously participated in Judaism. My dad’s side, meanwhile, came from Cuba, including my dad himself. His childhood home still stands in Havana. My grandparents and their siblings spoke with accents. All of them were bilingual. Naively, in a country with such a large hispanic population and in a county that was home to the DC area’s large international population, I thought my Cuban side set me apart somehow, made me personally more interesting.

Of course the stories of my Russian Jewish ancestors always fascinated me. For example, my grandfather’s father was a menshevik sent to Siberia at the turn of the 20th century. His brother mailed him cash and a Polish passport (the Czar did not have people checking the prisoners’ mail the way that Stalin later would) and he paid a peasant to take him by sled to the Trans-Siberian Railroad. He made it, he got out of Russia, and eventually made his way to New York. Another favorite is my grandpa’s maternal grandmother, who broke a chair over the head of a Russian soldier who was getting fresh with her. They did not wait around to learn how that would play out, and they too ended up in New York.

These are exciting family stories, and they did make me feel a little Jewish in Fairfax County, Virginia, where Jews are a relative rarity. Even then, I knew Reform Jews who actually attended Synagogue, and did not celebrate Christmas and indeed were justifiably irate when it was assumed that they would. Especially when it was nominally another Jew doing the assuming—that is, myself, when younger and more foolish.

I was not very Jewish in Fairfax County and DC. I am hardly Jewish at all in New York, where I work alongside Conservative and Orthodox Jews and live a stone’s throw away from a large Hasidic community. Here, it is I who become uncomfortable at people’s assumptions, that I am like them or at least like the other New York Jews they know.

“Aren’t you going to be out that day?” A coworker I had not even realized was Jewish asked me, at a little startup I worked for in 2013. I didn’t even know what she was talking about at first; I’ve never really paid attention to the Jewish calendar (although as a parent of children in the New York public school system I am certainly aware of it these days). And I had never told her I was Jewish.

Probably the most bizarre incident of all came at that very job, possibly on that very holiday, when I did indeed work. The front desk messaged me to say there was someone there asking for me. I was not expecting anyone so I went to the front to see what it was all about. There waiting for me were two Hasidic Jews. The conversation that followed was very confusing, and it ended with me having the vague sense that perhaps they were attempting to guilt trip secular Jews about the holiday, but they left down the elevator without incident. To this day I have no idea how they even knew to ask for me; did they just go floor to floor asking for various biblical names and the first man’s just happens to also be the first alphabetically? A mystery I doubt I’ll ever solve.

Their first question was to ask, “are you Jewish?” This is a question I have encountered a number of times since coming to New York. It feels, to me, like a rather invasive question to ask a stranger.

I have never really understood how my grandfather felt about being Jewish. He was born David Tilevich, son of Abraham (the menshevik turned New York pharmacist) and Gertrude (daughter of the woman who broke the chair over the head of a Russian soldier). He was a tugboat captain in the war, and after the war he changed his surname to Tilson. This was while his father yet lived! I do not know if he did it to seem less Jewish or if it was to avoid any association with Russia. I could have asked him; he passed away only three years ago (his obituary does not mention his Jewish background). I’m not sure I ever could have mustered the nerve to ask directly, though; how do you frame that question without making it sound like an accusation?

My grandfather was quite anti-religious and this was not reserved solely for his attitude towards Christianity. He had little patience for Judaism either. There was always an energy towards his anti-religiousness that was quite alien to me. I went through a loud atheist phase one year in high school, but we all go through phases in high school. For the most part, as someone raised in a completely secular household, having no family church or synagogue, religion has largely been a matter of intellectual curiosity to me. My nonbeliever friends who grew up in conservative Christian households have always held a far more emotionally intense attitude towards religion than I am truly capable of mustering. I imagine something like this must be the explanation for my grandfather’s attitude, although as far as I am aware he was not himself raised in a particularly observant household.

One Sunday this past September I had brought Max, our three year old, to play in the playground of his older brother’s elementary school, which is open to the public on weekends. Two Hasidic men approached and asked if I was Jewish. “None of your business,” I told them curtly. They were persistent. Another parent there, the mother of one of Elliot’s former classmates, volunteered that she was Jewish (news to me, but never a surprising thing to learn of someone in our neighborhood). They attempted to recruit her to drive them somewhere, for reasons unclear to me. She politely declined. They attempted to pressure her into it a bit but eventually returned to the question of whether or not I am Jewish.

After a few unfriendly replies on my part they clearly realized I’d have just said “no” if I wasn’t, and they blew the shofar for me (being a bad Jew, this was an instrument I had never heard of before) and said some sort of prayer. The upside of this was that Max found it very entertaining.

As they left they said rather assertively, “you will always be Jewish.” Knowing it wasn’t the greatest thing to say in mixed company, I couldn’t help but gripe about these “pushy zealots.” The other parent took my prickliness in the same good grace she had taken their assertiveness. With fondness, she recounted growing up by Jehovah’s Witnesses that would frequently come to save their souls. Her father would let them in, offer them a refreshing drink, let them try to save his soul for some period, then see them on their way. They all knew each other and it was perfectly fine. She did not say it, but from her story I took away: surely if her family could cope with that, I could cope with this?

I was not entirely sure what ruffled me about their behavior. Part of it was their showing up—two adult men who had not brought any children of their own—on a playground, a place for children, but also for families to mingle. Their complete unwillingness to be told to mind their own damn business and buzz off. But most of it was their sense of entitlement, their feeling that they had a claim on me.

I hold, as I said, an intellectual curiosity about Judaism and the history of Jews, much like the curiosity I hold for the history of Cuba or Spain. Save for the members of my own family, however, no Cuban or Spaniard can make any claim on me—I am an American. And no Jew but my own family members can make any claim on me. I owe them nothing other than what I owe any other acquaintance, neighbor, American, or member of the human race. I feel no greater affinity for them; indeed I hardly understand at all what it means to be properly Jewish, and I do not regret that fact in the slightest. I am a bad Jew, without remorse.

On October 7th, the terrorist organization Hamas perpetrated an attack on Israel that was shocking in both its scale, in its brutality, and its indifference to distinctions between adults and children, never mind civilians and soldiers. I would describe my feeling at learning more and more details about this event as akin to my feelings when I read The New York Times’ report on what Russia had done at Bucha. I was horrified and outraged, as a fellow human being. I was disgusted by the apologists for Hamas’ actions sitting comfortably in wealthy nations like my own, as I have been with the apologists for Russia. It being Israel otherwise did not factor into my reaction except that, in as much as I am here in New York, I know very many people who are from Israel, or have family or friends or coworkers there, and are dealing with this very personally. In the case of Ukraine, I had one Polish colleague at the time who could speak to the refugees that had come to her city, and her fear of the war on their doorstep, but I was otherwise at a large remove from the matter.

There is one other rather important difference in the case of Israel as well: I immediately feared the price that Gaza’s residents were going to be forced to pay for Israel’s retribution. Not that I think I am speaking from some position of authority when I comment on the matter: the situation in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, and their neighbors, is complex and a terrible mess, far be it from me to jump in and claim to know the best course of action now or ever (though like Benjamin Wittes I think there are things, such as cutting off power, fuel, and food to Gaza, which are quite simple, and demand a simple condemnation).

Nor for that matter am I an authority on the geopolitics of Eastern Europe. However, no one has ever implied that there is an Eastern European nation which has any claim on me, despite the fact that my actual ancestors spent generations there. But there are people who actually believe that I could reasonably be accused of disloyalty to Israel. A foundation in Israel famously underwrites “birthright tours,” implying that people like me have a birthright claim to be in Israel. This is more explicit and official in Israel’s “Law of Return.” I reject the premise: I have no such birthright. Were I to take a trip to Israel, it could in no meaningful sense be understood as a “return.”

I am American. Like many Americans, half of my family were not born in this country. Like even more Americans, none of my great-grandparents were born in this country. But my father’s family—like my Russian Jewish great-grandparents before them—became Americans, and I was born and raised one. When I lived abroad, I was able to immediately recognize a common ground with other Americans that went beyond the fact that English was our first language. With Cubans, I often am reminded of members of my family close to my heart, and this immediately draws me to them, makes me want to share stories. This feeling is not nonexistent, but quite faint with Jewish people, even Jewish Americans, though my family are Jewish Americans. It simply isn’t the same, for reasons I can’t entirely put my finger on. Perhaps my family had simply been here too many generations, were too American themselves and not so overtly Jewish. I do not really see them in the many Jewish New Yorkers I interact with on a regular basis.

And Israelis are as foreign to me as the people of any other country with which I have no direct experience.

As an American, I incur the obligations of citizenship. I also have other obligations that come with being a father, husband, brother, son, and friend, along with the more contractual variety of obligation that comes with being an employee and coworker. There are the basic things that make up the obligation to behave with basic human decency, and to sometimes find it within ourselves to go beyond the bare minimum of kindness or generosity.

There are no other grounds to claim me, even if it does make me a bad Jew to insist so.