Being a (Mostly) Shiksa in Brooklyn

A Pedi Sukkah in Downtown
Brooklyn last year

More than any place I've ever worked, New York City is very aware of Jewish holidays. Last month I had to meet deadlines before colleagues took time off for Rosh Hoshanah. During the high holy days parking for the synagogue on my street spilled down the block. Now it's time for Sukkot, and the Pedi Sukkah guys are out in force again. It's really an ingenious setup: they pedal portable booths around Brooklyn and offer passersby the interwoven tree branches and citron for the traditional Sukkot blessing.

"Are you Jewish?" The question is inevitable if I make eye contact, and sometimes even if I don't. I always feel like I'm letting them down when I say no.

I try for an ecumenical encounter instead. "Hey cool, religious devotion in public! I like Psalms too. High five!" But they're interested in member retention, not evangelization. Chabad-Lubavitch groups remind me of Opus Dei at times - well funded, well connected, trying to inspire their coreligionists to embrace traditional devotions. Likewise, the Hasidic schoolgirls I sometimes see on the subway are always clad in the universal homeschooler uniform of long skirts and layered tops.

For the record, I'm not entirely a shiksha. By blood I'm 25% Jewish, but on my Dad's side so it doesn't really count. My paternal grandfather grew up a very secular Jew and then embraced Catholicism when he met my grandmother and her devout Italian parents. Probably the most Jewish things about my LaVigne great-grandparents were that they ate schmaltz as children and eventually retired to Boca Raton. Still, my relatives and I have never completely lost those roots. Our surname looks French because an Ashkenazi ancestor was trying to avoid persecution, so the story goes. We throw around Yiddish expressions and talk loudly with our hands. My grandpa loves lox and keeps his freezer stocked with blintzes. He grew up in his parents' grocery stores, and the family passion for finding good deals is deep in my DNA.

Especially before I took my husband's name, acquaintances have often assumed I'm not a goy. Almost everyone on my dad's side has this problem. When I worked at history camp the teenage boys called me "Jew Hair." There have been awkward moments when someone wishes me L'shanah Tovah or asks what I'm doing for Hanukkah. Last Good Friday I had literally been in Penn Station five minutes when a beaming Orthodox woman told me "Happy Pesach!" (I was wearing sensible black shoes with tights and a modest dress, should have seen that one coming.)

So I can "pass," so what? At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I feel a kinship with the children of Israel that I cannot shake. Perhaps my sadness at declining a Sukkot blessing comes from a desire for unity. I wish I knew the Hebrew alphabet and all the holy day traditions and we could pray together to the God we both believe. We already read the same scriptures.

Even if I'm not really part of the club, the Jewishness of NYC gives me hope. In a cosmopolitan city so often associated with secular excess and iniquity, one of the world's most persecuted religious groups has made a home, flourished, and left an indelible mark. The men in sidelocks and yarmulkes boldly striding down the street remind me I don't have to be ashamed of being a religious person. If New York has room for them, it can welcome a "nice Catholic girl" too, even if her life is far less exciting than Carrie Bradshaw's. You might seem wicked, Gotham, but deep down you are holy.