At the age of 60, I embarked on a life-changing journey—one I never expected. Born into a secular Jewish family, I grew up without even a glimmer of Jewish knowledge. my family lit the menorah before putting up our Christmas tree; we attended easter egg hunts and had a Seder. That’s about it for me—no Hebrew school, no ritual, no learning other than my mother telling me I was expected to marry a Jewish man. Surprisingly, given the depth of my Jewish upbringing, I did. We were hardly observant, although I did make a great brisket and matzah balls.
Some things in life are easy, or so we think, especially when we’re young. College? A breeze. marriage? everybody’s doing it. Kids—why not, I raised a puppy, how hard could having a home, career, and kids be?
Then we age, mature, and learn. Sometimes this leads to confi dence, sometimes to fear. And depending on our mindset, some of us grab at opportunities for new experiences, and some of us run away and hide. I used to be a hider, but a series of fortuitous coincidences led me on a totally unexpected, and often amazing, path. It’s a story I want to share with you—not because I’m special; on the contrary, if I can take advantage of life’s offerings, so can anyone.
An Educational Journey
My educational story ended—or so I thought—with college graduation. I chose not to attend graduate school, but went to work, while my fiancé put in his time in the military. This was the Vietnam era, and men, even Jewish ones, were being drafted. He opted for the navy, preferring a couple of years at sea to any time at all in the tropical jungles of Southeast Asia.
We married, and I worked as a writer for different companies. We moved around for my husband’s career, and I worked in each city we lived in. Our friends, our pastimes, our customs were anything but Jewish. We never discussed it. That’s just the way it was, for a woman who hadn’t seen models of observant behavior as she grew up.
When our son was born, we joined a reform shul. Several years later, I got involved in some Jewish study groups, including the Florence melton Adult mini-School courses at my local JCC. I helped to found a Conservative shul, but still didn’t adopt a more religious lifestyle. At the same time, I continued to pursue a career in writing, editing, and public relations.
Then, a few years ago, I was hired to write for a Jewish weekly newspaper in Atlanta. After several years, my editor asked me to cover the Orthodox community. I didn’t even know where in the city it was located. But, of course, I accepted the challenge, donned a hat, and drove to the modern Orthodox synagogue on Shabbat.
Taking my seat in the back row on the women’s side of the mechitzah, I hadn’t a clue what was going on. I couldn’t read Hebrew; wasn’t familiar with the prayers (all in Hebrew); didn’t know when to stand up, sit down, bow, sing, or be quiet. So I asked a woman sitting in front of me. She graciously moved back and patiently answered my questions. If I hadn’t believed in Providence before that day, I do now—she was the rabbi’s wife, one of the smartest, gentlest people I’ve ever met, and we have become dear friends. And from that week, I have virtually never missed a Shabbat at shul. People began inviting me to stay in their homes, to share meals. I was quite fortunate that my husband was willing to agree to this arrangement.
As luck would have it (and if I were writing fiction, I wouldn’t expect you to accept this as a possible plot turn), earlier the same week the president of a prestigious local university had invited me to audit classes on campus. I’d been covering stories at his school for some time, and had worked closely with him to keep them accurate and positive.
more luck—I didn’t know it, but my modern Orthodox synagogue turned out to be the spiritual home of a number of professors at the university, and I was destined that fi rst Shabbat to meet several of them. On hearing my story, they all invited me to audit their classes—in topics as divergent as Jewish law, Jewish ethics, Holocaust studies, American Jewish history, Hebrew, archaeology, and anthropology.
Being an Auditor
I was hooked. At almost retirement age, I began thinking of going back to school! But why not? Being an auditor puts you in a very special position, as professors decide your level of involvement. most wanted class participation, but after getting to know me, few demanded I write papers or take tests. The benefits went both ways: I loved the learning and grew from it, and this was a revelation to the undergraduates I shared classes with. They learned that education doesn’t have to stop with graduation, and it was a joy to be able to help them with my skills and life experiences. I have since found that many colleges offer this kind of continuing learning to seniors at reasonable fees. Check out the options in your state—especially with state schools. It’s worth the investment of time and a few phone calls.
Because most of the teachers I knew were Jewish and taught in the Jewish studies field, I tended to concentrate on those courses. And I quickly developed a passion for Humash and Talmud. One of my professors, seeing my fascination with talmudic logic in his Jewish ethics class, invited me to join the shul’s daf yomi class, which meets seven mornings a week. That meant leaving my home, a forty-five-minute drive away, before 6 Am most days.
But the time investment didn’t bother me. I was addicted—to the logic, the law, the glimpses I was offered into ancient Jewish life and the rules we still live by today. Talmud study for women is not a timehonored Jewish tradition, maggie Anton’s excellent novels notwithstanding, but it is catching on today, both in female-only and mixed groups. There can be uncomfortable moments when a woman studies with men. The rabbis of antiquity were not, shall we say, always complimentary to women, and there is not an imaginable topic that the Talmud does not deal with. But as my daf yomi teacher tells me, “We’ll just deal with it.” And we do.
More Intensive Jewish Study
After three years of study, one of my professor friends suggested to me that I try a more intensive immersion experience in Jewish study. She contacted the drisha Institute for Jewish education in New York, a school that specializes in teaching text to women of all ages. With her help, and the help of drisha, I spent five weeks in Manhattan, learning about topics I hadn’t even known existed just a few short years before. I studied Talmud, painfully translating words from Aramaic into English with the help of a dictionary and a very patient chevruta (study partner). There were classes in halakhah (Jewish law), tefillah, kashrut, Hebrew, and many other topics— too many to make choices easy! I wanted to learn it all. meeting and getting to know other women—some who had grown up observant; others, like me, tasting this phenomenal culture for the first time—made me sad, thinking of all the years I’d wasted. But rather than focus on the past, I resolved that this would be just the beginning of a new life for me, that I wanted to try on the observant life, see what it held for me, and learn all I could about Jewish law, practice, ritual, and custom.
I entered into talks about the coming year with the people at drisha, though financially I knew that living in New York and paying school tuition was a real stretch. And then, as if God were playing a game of chess with my life, I met rabbi daniel Landes, the director and rosh hayeshivah at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. Rabbi Landes was speaking at Mechon Hadar, a co-ed learning center where young Jews study. I had attended several evening events at this vibrant institute. When I met rabbi Landes, he suggested I come to Israel for a year at Pardes. Thoughts of staying in New York flew out of my head. me in Jerusalem? not in my wildest dreams had I ever envisioned the possibility!
Three weeks later, passport in hand, I was on a plane to Israel. I was most fortunate that my son was grown and living independently. My husband, who travels for a living, said, when I broached the idea, “For forty years you’ve gone where I asked, done everything for our son and me. It’s your turn now.”
Living in Jerusalem
Living in Jerusalem, traveling around the country, studying Jewish text in the places where it happened, was more like a dream than a reality. To read about biblical Israeli fi ghters trekking through emek refaim, and then returning home on a street of that name, brought a whole new reality to Jewish history. Visiting the Israel museum with one of the Pardes teachers, seeing the charred ruins of a palace that the Bible tells us was burned, taught me about the confl uence of Bible story and archaeological history. Looking out the windows of Pardes, seeing the hills of Jerusalem while reading the Psalm, “I will lift my eyes until the hills” (121:1), knowing this was the landscape david had in mind when he penned those words, was beyond description.
The streets and shops of mea Shearim, the mechitzah at the Kotel, davening with the Women of the Wall, experiencing the devotion and exuberance of the women of Shira Hadasha, these are topics for another day. Shopping in stores where just about anything you might buy has a hekhsher (rabbinical supervision)—what a pleasure, except, of course, that the directions were in Hebrew, and mine never got good enough to read product labels or follow directions. The shuk (marketplace), the buses, just being where most people are Jewish—outside of Boro Park, where could you find that in the United States?
And Pardes! I was double or even triple the age of many of my fellow students—even of some of my teachers. But age didn’t matter. The most important thing I have learned in this quest is that if you’re an inquisitive, attentive learner, the color of your hair or the wrinkles on your face are irrelevant. It bothered me at first that I knew less Hebrew than just about anyone. But I was able to offer expertise in other ways, and kids were eager to work with me where I fell short.
And I wasn’t alone. As at drisha, there were a number of “older” learners at Pardes. I think the biggest thing I took away from the school was that we’re each unique in our own ways, from the boy with shoulder-length peyos (sidecurls), to the natural poet whose “I Am a Jew” YouTube video has gone viral, to the teachers who live in towns over the Green Line. I have learned that my age doesn’t matter. I wish I’d done all this when I was 20 or 30, but who knows if it would have clicked then?
I know that as a woman, an older person, I have been offered amazing opportunities. But the lesson I learned is not to ignore those chances. Take them, savor them, learn from them, and give them the openings to let you grow, change, evolve. I’ll always be grateful that circumstances, good friends pushing me and encouraging me, and a supportive family helped, but in the end, we all have to be willing to grow our own wings and employ them. What I want to know now is—where next? I’m looking for the answer to that question. Your turn now!