For my bat mitzvah, I was given jewellery, and a lot of it. My little brother, two years later, was given two shofarim. I remember, in envy, seeing these shiny, curved horns beside him on the dining room table where he was writing thank you cards, and wondering why no one had given one to me. It seemed, in my fourteen-year-old head, that I’d missed out on something, had forgotten to collect £200 when I passed ‘go’, had missed my chance to furnish my life with that particular piece of Jewishness. Jewish homes, it seemed to me, needed to have one – why did I not, when my brother had two?
For my eighteenth birthday, I asked for a record player. It was all I wanted – vinyl was cool, I loved music and it was the obvious choice. But a year later, my brother asked for a complete Talmud, forty leather volumes which arrived in enormously heavy parcels from Israel and squashed my confidence in my own sense of taste and value. I’d only asked for a record player, and my little brother had asked for something so much more precious, important and enriching that I almost felt ashamed. My future home, I thought, would be less complete than his would be. I wasn’t angry or jealous, but I felt excluded. Once again, I’d missed out on acquiring a precious Jewish thing, but this time it was my own fault.
In between these two realisations, I got into trouble at school while my brother went to regular Talmud classes with our movement’s rabbi. I memorised all of the Smiths and Pink Floyd, while he learnt to sing each of the Shabbat services, and once he could do all of those, he moved on to Rosh Hashanah. He was asked to lead services and give drashas on camp, both as a chanich and a madrich, whilst I fell out of the Noam circle and became part of a group which spent Friday nights in basements and on Parliament Hill. I was okay with that, but every now and then I’d look at what he had, and how proud everyone was of him, and how impressive his knowledge and dedication to Judaism was, and I’d wonder how I hadn’t turned out like that. I was just as clever as him, had been just as engaged with my religion, just as ingrained with the idea that to have faith and community and tradition was good. But somewhere along the line I’d veered away from that derech, and I hadn’t become the person I thought, at the time of my bat mitzvah, I would be.
Maybe it sounds farfetched, but I see the jewellery vs shofar receiving as crucial. Something about that difference made me feel excluded: like my brother’s coming of age welcomed him into the religion, called him to be a part of it, and gave him authority and status; whilst mine made me a background pattern, a side effect or decoration. Throughout my teenage years, I looked on in envy at my brother becoming the kind of Jew that I wanted to be, but didn’t have the courage to push in and shout out, “I want to learn, too. Teach me.” He never had to ask for that inclusion – and I never dared. So by the time he was eighteen, I’d counted myself out. It was music I asked for, and a party with booze. I don’t regret it, but I do think his ideas were bigger.
Now he’s just returned from two months at a yeshiva in New York. At university he attends a chavruta group, he’s usually given a service to lead at shul on the high holy days, and it’s he who’s friends with everyone on camp when he shows up ten days late. I don’t dislike my life. I have friends, hobbies and ambition. But sometimes I look at his derech and wish that was the one I was on.
Noa Gendler has just graduated from the University of Cambridge, where she studied English Literature. Before that she attended North London Collegiate School. She is a seasoned Limmudnik and is involved in Marom, the Masorti young adult community.She previously wrote for the JC's Student Views blog
