Many years ago, a PR client asked me to collaborate with her on a medical book. She was a hardcore Christian who saw Jesus in all aspects of healing. I asked her if she might want to work with a Christian editor, given how heavily Christian the whole thing was, but she said she specifically wanted to work with me.
So, after full disclosure that I do not believe Jesus exists — or, at best, that he was a rabbi like any other rabbi — and that I am a flaming Jew, I said okay and proceeded to work with her on the book.
How was I able to simultaneously honor my own belief while also honoring her belief that Jesus was a deity?
First of all, Judaism honors all religious paths to Gd, so I grew up with that pluralistic orientation. But in addition, my own ideas about religion center around Gd being divine light that expresses itself through a prism. Where someone stands changes the reflection of that light. So I see many reflections of the divine as able to exist at the same time, because we are all created by Gd in a splendid diversity of perception.
In the years since, I have also come to understand that this understanding applies within religions themselves.
There are Jews who practice Judaism in ways that are utterly foreign to me and that, to me, are a bastardization and distortion of core Jewish precepts. Among this group are people who consider themselves highly religious. I used to fight it: This is what Judaism is, or was, or was intended to be.
But I’ve since let go of that struggle. I’ve come to feel that how we understand our own individual religion can very much be a reflection of who we are.
And that, too, as I think about it, is a very Jewish idea. We have the Talmud, which is basically a bunch of rabbis arguing with each other, while simultaneously respecting their diverse opinions.
Many years ago, I had a friend who had grown up as a secular Jew and then married a religious Muslim man. He kept trying to convert her, and it was a constant source of dispute in their marriage.
Then they got divorced.
With the space of not being pressured to convert to Islam, she started exploring it. She found her spiritual home in it and converted.
It was illuminating to watch her fall in love with Islam and share with me why. Among other things, she talked about how Islam forbids forced conversion and instead wants people to convert out of the rigor of intellectual persuasion.
That was wild to me, because my family’s personal experience of Islam was one of forced conversion, persecution, and subordination for 1,300 years.
And it was eye-opening to me in particular as the daughter of a Jew by choice. I think people who convert can have the purity of knowing the intended principles of a religion in a way that is not necessarily reflected in how that religion has been practiced by people who were brought up in it.
People fuck things up constantly.
I think it’s critically important to give room for all people of a religion, culture, or geographic region to express their perceptions and experiences. Even if a religion itself declares that only one person or institutional entity can define what it is about, I think we need to hear the experiences of everyone.
Of course, that in and of itself may be a very Jewish lens — one that is anathema or even abhorrent to different religions — but it is still what I believe.
I also think it’s really important to be clear about and challenge troubling aspects of a religion without condemning an entire religion as a whole. There can be complicated and contradictory aspects of one religion, culture, or geographical region.
One of the things that really disturbs me in contemporary society is seeing how discernment and complexity are being collapsed into dogmatic ideology and conformity, which are then being posited as intelligence or devotion to morality — when, in fact, they are the exact opposite.
Amidst this shitshow, I’m looking forward to sharing my unique understanding, practice, and love of Judaism.
My father grew up in the ancient Babylonian Jewish community that was forced to flee modern-day Iraq in 1950. My mother grew up in an American Christian home and, as a seeker, studied religions until she found her spiritual home in Judaism.
During a generation when non-Ashkenazi Jews were busy trying to assimilate into Ashkenazi culture, my mother celebrated my father’s Iraqi Jewish heritage, which in turn made him proud of it. And so I grew up in a headstrong Iraqi Jewish home, learning our authentic traditions and often isolating from the mainstream Jewish community in order to protect those traditions.
An Iraqi/Egyptian Jewish activist once told me that she was blown away that I was born and raised in America but have the consciousness of an immigrant.
I’ve since come to recognize the uniqueness of my perspective. I embody a hardcore, old-school, traditionally-grounded Iraqi Jewish practice, alongside a very American cultural identity, which has made me able to transmit it and excite people to participate in it — even decades ago, when Sephardic wasn’t sexy and Jews were trying to be white.
Through my new KHAZZOOM Studio and KHAZZOOM Salon series, I look forward to transmitting that Judaism now: the Judaism I inherited, protected, wrestled with, lived, and loved — and the Judaism I continue to celebrate and co-create for future generations to come.
FInd out more at KHAZZOOMstudio.com.