Yesterday, my wife, Pegi, suggested that I should name this blog "Confessions of a Wondering Jew." Wondering is what got me started on this lifelong quest for spiritual identity. It is also what keeps me wandering—often into places where my wondering gets me into difficulty with others, especially when it comes to matters of faith.
I am sure that I did some religious wondering as a child, but the trouble really began when I arrived at University of Wisconsin in 1967. Growing up in Louisville, I had little everyday contact with other Jewish kids—mostly limited to the dozen who were part of my Reform Temple confirmation class. When I arrived in Madison for my freshman year, my private dorm was composed of an interesting mix of about 100 Jews from New York or Chicago and 50 Hispanics who were attending a high school completion program for children of migrant workers. Meal times were interesting, to say the least, and I found the Hispanic and Jewish cultures to be equally foreign.
I managed to make friends with most, but by my third week was already heavily involved in picking a fraternity. The other Jewish kids were considering one of the three Jewish fraternities (Zeta Beta Tau, Pi Lambda, Sigma Alpha Mu). My Jewish roommate and I rushed the Jewish fraternities, but were both more interested in the gentile fraternities like Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Beta Theta Pi (my step-brother had been a Beta at Miami of Ohio). I was surprised to find myself being actively rushed by the notoriously anti-semitic Sigma Chi!
Ultimately, my roommate joined SAE. For reasons that I still don't understand, I picked ZBT which was the largest of the Jewish fraternities. Maybe I was influenced by the full-time chef that they had wooed away from one of the top restaurants in Madison. Growing up, I had always "wondered" why my gentile friends seemed to have bland casseroles for dinner while we always had roast, steak, or chicken along with salads, side dishes and desserts. Maybe the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, even when it comes to picking a fraternity!
Or maybe it was because the gentile girls on campus seemed very foreign to me with their Nordic features. These Wisconsin girls felt distant to me. On the other hand, the Jewish girls from New York and Chicago were a lot more attractive and certainly more plentiful than anything I had ever experienced in the Louisville. If I remember correctly, there were only three girls in my temple confirmation class and the only one to whom I was attracted . . . well, let's just say she was intellectually-challenged.
But many of the Jewish girls in Madison were beautiful, and because you had to have top grades to get into UW from out of state, they were intelligent and quick-witted. These young women came to the ZBT parties. So, let's just say I wandered into ZBT for food and romance. And that is when the "wondering" began in earnest.
I was Jewish and familiar with Orthodox traditions through my father's shul (synagogue) and I had been educated in the Reform Jewish traditions of my mother and step-father. By the way, religious holidays were a nightmare for me. I went to shul with my father on Friday nights and Saturday mornings, and still had to attend Sunday temple services with my mother, and let's not forget about Sunday School!
Fraternity life showed me a Judaism that seemed neither Reform nor Orthodox. These kids from New York and Chicago (mostly with Reform upbringings), were so much more "Jewish" in a way I had never experienced. They weren't observant like my father's family, didn't keep kosher, didn't go to services, but seemed steeped in Jewish culture that was unknown to me. I began to wonder if I even knew what "being Jewish" was.
And even though they were Jewishly different, none of us seemed interested in Jewish thought or practices. Other than our Jewish backgrounds, we felt no different than our "Christian" schoolmates. Well, maybe we were a little more interested in politics and protest against the Vietnam war, but we were all listening to the same music, smoking the same weeds, experimenting with the same hallucinogens, and slipping and falling on the same icy sidewalks on the way to class. [I seemed to always fall on my gluteus maximus right in front of the private dorm where so many of my Jewish girlfriends lived!]
So, I began to wonder what was the difference between Jewish and Christian students. Was there really anything to religious background at all? Was there really a supreme God? Did any of this matter? Was there any such thing as a meaningful spiritual experience? And then I read Timothy Leary.
