Having called Los Angeles home for my entire life, I figured I had seen it all from the Jewish community over my thirty-five years: I davenned at its synagogues, married a girl I first met in youth group, regularly spend my lunchtime at the best delis in the city, and have even laid teffilin in front of my apartment in the Fairfax district. But as I prepared for the real transition to life as a Jewish adult when my first child was born last month, nothing could have prepared me for what came next: the mohel canceled on me. Twice.
Such is the chronicle of the auspicious start of Isaac’s relationship with the Jewish people: on his fifth day of life, the mohel (a Rabbi) called and cancelled because he had a different simcha to attend. On his seventh day, the backup mohel (this one a urologist) sent a text at 5:00 pm on Thanksgiving, the night before the bris, to let us know that he had chosen to perform surgery instead of this mitzvah. Rather than spending my time researching whether the Talmud allowed for any exceptions to the bris on the eighth day when the mohels cancel on such short notice, I scrambled and ultimately found a Moroccan Rabbi a few hours later who would fit us into his schedule.
Struggling to derive some deeper meaning in this series of events, I ultimately settled on the obvious: there are few places like Los Angeles where one can find a mohel with less than a day’s notice in the midst of a national holiday. Only in America, only in 2015.
A few weeks after the miracle of the Thanksgiving Mohel we lit candles to celebrate the great miracle of Hanukkah. On the fourth night we heard a ruckus outside so my wife and I carried Isaac to the window at the front of our apartment to find the orthodox caravanning through my neighborhood. First a convertible with some teenagers singing Ma-oz Tzur to the tune blasted from the speakers in the bed of the truck that followed, and then a minivan featuring a huge electric Hannukiah with the candles appropriately lit. The caboose of this small train was another convertible, and one of the teenagers noticed that in the midst of my apartment building decked with Christmas lights we were standing next to the prominent Star of David in our window. He pointed at us and shouted “Happy Hanukkah,” a special holiday greeting for my family. I returned the salutation in kind, and thought “only in America, only in 2015.”
As the caravan drove away I bounced my child and reconsidered the thought. These past few weeks were undoubtedly the most special of my life, but how much of these experiences are familiar tropes in the saga of Jewish life entitled Strangers in a Strange Land? We are persecuted so we leave and head for a place where we find refuge, and in refuge there is some degree of acceptance as we assimilate a bit into a new culture, and we find comfort until the persecution begins again, when the greater generations of our people pack a bag and our traditions and head for relative safety. Wash, rinse, repeat.
My grandparents and great grandparents were among these generations of Jews who were forced to find a better life elsewhere, and in retrospect they escaped serious consequences. My son will be even further removed from this generation than me, his connection to it being his name and the second hand stories my wife and I can share with him. In this great shtettle of Los Angeles, he will find those competing sentiments that have long characterized Jewish life around the globe: the suspicion that comes with being a stranger in a strange land, and the hope that this time will be different, with the continued opportunity to contribute to this society.
We have a little while before we will truly begin to cultivate the Jewish and American aspects of my Isaac’s identity, but I have started the process by attempting to bless my child on the few Friday nights we have shared together. Though my Hebrew is a bit suspect, I turn to page 311 of the siddur for the timeless blessings of Ephraim and Menasheh, yet I find myself sharing with him an addendum gathered from our people’s collective experience: May you be a meaningful part of this great land you call home, and have the strength and courage to carry our customs and traditions wherever you need to take them.
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