When my Chabad rabbi first told me the words that would shift my perspective about my Jewish identity, we were chatting with a group, having — as Jewish tradition goes — gone off course into a conversation about what it means to be Jewish in the modern age. Within our group, we had different opinions about what it looks like to be a university student and to be Jewish. But then our rabbi stopped the conversation with the phrase: “A Jew is a Jew is a Jew.” Just like that, a complete thought, circular and irrefutable. To say the least, it stuck with me.
I had begun learning about my family’s Judaism barely a year prior to this moment. The knowledge hadn’t dropped from the sky, but came slowly in fragments from various stories from my grandmother and my father. But once it came into focus, I couldn’t unsee it. I spent the year learning, attending services, lighting candles, and asking questions, trying to understand what it meant to be part of the people whom I had for a long time imagined as “other.”Â
This phrase landed with more weight than I expected. It wasn’t this theological statement; it was an affirmation, drawing attention for its sheer simplicity. It’s not the phrase “you can eventually be one of us.” It’s not “you’re kind of one of us.” It’s “you already are.” I think about this phrase and its sentiment a lot, especially now, during Jewish American Heritage Month and coming up on two years into my journey with Judaism — which to me, is now less about becoming Jewish than it is about realizing that I already was. That little distinction is what matters, because while most of my learning has been about holidays and traditions and history, it has also been about confronting the little anxieties about my legitimacy. Do I count as a Jew? Is my experience as a young Jew valid? Is there some small threshold or finish line of observance that I have to pass before I count as in the group?Â
The phrase “a Jew is a Jew” cuts through these doubts with a Talmudic stubbornness. The Talmud doesn’t ask how one practices, or where their grandparents are from, or whether they’re Ashkenazi or Sephardi or Mizrahi or Ethiopian or American or Israeli. Or Orthodox or any other type of Jew that is out there. The Talmud does not ask me to be fluent in Hebrew. It says “you belong.” Â
The Jewish world is not monolithic. You could walk into any shuk across the globe, and you’ll meet Jews with a variety of traditions and ideologies, and politics that differ tremendously. I see Jews on every side of the political spectrum, on every side of the ideological spectrum, and I believe that this vastness is what makes us unique. Some of us might sing Lecha Dodi in a major key, while others chant it in Judeo-Arabic. Sometimes we face each other at protests or argue in a classroom, and then bond at Shabbat dinner the next night. There are so many different ways to be Jewish, and every single version is unique and perfect in its way. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew.Â
The phrase, while maybe repetitive, has become a constant saying for me. It reminds me that the Jewish people are not a single picture, but a mosaic with each tile shaped and shifted by time, place, and memory, one that comes together to create this beautifully unique design. I don’t have to dilute my individuality to be a part of something larger than myself. It’s my individuality, my individual Jewishness, that strengthens the whole.Â
There is an incredibly welcoming feeling when stepping into a culture that has always held a space for you, even before you realized it. There is familiarity within the community, and I no longer study Judaism as an outsider hoping to gain entry; I study it and I learn it as someone who is already home.