My Years of Jewish Learning

The years 1980 to 1986 were difficult years in my life.  I could tell you several stories about my life, between the ages 21 to 27. Any one of them would be true, and all would tell less than the entire truth.

I was perhaps a romantic, interested at once in science and reason, and in poetry, religion, and mysticism. I was searching for a way that science and religious mysticism could live together in the same world and in the same coherent self. They simply had to all be true in their own way, and people who didn't see that (which seemed to be just about everybody) frustrated me.

Looking for something deeper and more real - the sort of spirit quest that might have led others to Tibet or India - I took a year and half leave of absence from Reed College to go to Israel. While for many people Israel was "familiar", for me it was exotic, in a sort of Tibetan sense. I was determined to define what it meant for me, and not bend to its meanings. This was not an attitude of mind that was likely to lead to becoming a part of Israeli society.

But I was alienated from America, from college, from myself, and looking for a radical alternative, and Israel seemed to be something completely different. I didn't want to live in the America of Ronald Reagan. I just didn't want to be part of it, didn't want live in a place that could elect such a man.

In the five and a half of these seven years I spent in Israel I sought to connect with the Jewish half of my identity and ancestry (my father's background), and to establish myself in a new and foreign place. In a sense I also sought to flee the influence of my mother, although interpreting that in cultural terms rather than psychological terms may not have been very helpful. You might say that mine were the actions of a young man in search of identity, and the fact that I could say to myself in those years "you are acting like a young man in search of identity" did not make this any less so, as I hoped it might at the time. It's curious how self awareness does not always change one's actions or alter one's path.

Over these years of 1980s I came to understand that the mismatch between myself and the religious Israeli culture in which I lived was too great for me to find happiness. I was not a Talmud scholar or a Rabbi. I wanted to be a scientist and to be open to all the thoughts and ideas of the world. And besides, let's be serious here - I hadn't a clue how to make a living in Israel. And to be even more serious here - I became deeply depressed in Israel in the mid-1980s. In my alienation and depression, I discovered myself as a citizen of America in a cultural and political sense, and in the sense of personal identity, and began to turn back to America.

The only things that remain with me today, besides the memory of a few teachers who imparted a great deal more knowledge of orthodox Jewish religious practice than I actually use in my daily life, are the memories of some dear friends from that time who gave me the support and love that got me through those years.

I also know I wounded some people. I cannot have been an easy person to be a friend to in these years - the unhappiness was deep.