Are you a Jewish Brit or a British Jew?
Growing up, my Saturdays were spent at faith school. These mornings combine in my memory as a blur of Hebrew lessons and various artistic endeavours, from which my parents accrued several clumsily decorated menorahs, candlesticks and mezuzahs. In later years, candlestick making and challah baking gave way to heated theological debates. On one such morning, my class was asked by the rabbi: "Are you a Jewish Brit or a British Jew?"
The question was designed to probe the nature of our relationship with Judaism. Are you a Jew who happens to be British, or a Brit who happens to be Jewish? Which is the core of your identity and which is merely accidental?
At the time, I declared myself a Jewish Brit. For five days out of seven I attended a Church of England school. I had a few Jewish friends, but generally my life had little to do with Judaism. Of course, there were times when my Jewish identity came to the fore: doing the candles on Friday nights, celebrating Passover and the notable absence of Father Christmas in our household. On the whole, I lived a secular life punctuated by Jewish moments. First and foremost, I was British.
As I got older, my visits to Synagogue became less frequent. I stopped attending the Jewish Youth Movement, where I’d spent childhood summers, and eventually went off to university. Once there, being Jewish faded even further into the background, playing an increasingly minor role in the fabric of my life. However, as Judaism took up less physical space in my week, month and (eventually) year, it began to loom larger in my consciousness. The more independent I grew from my Jewish roots, it seemed, the more rooted to Judaism I became.
Perhaps post-Brexit I don’t feel as proud to be British as I once did. Perhaps the recent resurgence of antisemitism has made being Jewish feel urgent and important in a way that it didn’t before. Or maybe, as the only Jew in my friendship group, being Jewish has become newly identifying, impressed upon me as a defining, individuating feature. Whatever the reason, if asked that question today I would give a different answer. Being Jewish, I am increasingly coming to realise, is an inescapable and integral part of who I am.
Judaism is inscribed within my family history – marked, like so many others, by the loss and displacement of the Holocaust. It is inseparable from my childhood memories, which are diffused with nostalgic smells of challah and Shabbat candles. It reveals itself in the muscle memory with which, attending synagogue, I feel my lips reciting the Shema and feel the ancestral familiarity of the psalms. I feel it when I meet another Jew abroad and discover a shared history, culture and community that transcends language or nationality, and in the sharp defensiveness and solidarity that arises when I hear of antisemitic attacks.
Today, I no longer feel tied to my British roots, but I know who I am. Regardless of who I marry, however complicated my relationship with my faith, and however much time passes between my visits to synagogue, I will always be Jewish.
By Tasha Kleeman
This essay was shortlisted for the JR Young Journalist Prize 2020. Follow Tasha on Twitter: @TashaKleeman.
Read the other prize entries on the JR blog.