KESHER

Although I was reared in a conservative home and schul, most of my jewishness came from a Jewish camp I attended in the Poconos...and it was great. Singing, dancing, and living Judaism was who I was.

Once I went to college, things changed. I broke up with a long-term boyfriend from high school...and that's when the backlash erupted. My friends and family were upset...they had liked that guy blah blah blah. When I told them a few months later that I was with someone new, they flipped. You might think he was a convicted felon or mercenary, but no...He was a non-jew.

My friends from camp, who I had entangled so much of my Jewish identity around, began to estrange themselves from me. I wasn't in a-e-phi and I didn't attend Hillel...I had become an outsider. That year I went to high holidays at my schul outside Philadelphia and felt completely removed. Everything I had loved from my spiritual summers, was far far away from the hub-bub of people chatting away in services and admiring each other's newly-purchased-holiday attire. I began to think I just didn't fit in anymore--maybe I had changed--maybe I wasn't Jewish.

For the next few years, I lived a New York lifestyle without thinking much about my Judaism. I would put up a fight, but still be dragged to schul with my family on the holidays. Even after the guy and I broke up, my camp friends and I still didn't speak. My family, on the other hand, was ecstatic about my new "change of heart." And even through all of that, I felt a closeness to something greater. I wasn't sure what or why or how, but I did.

This year I went to schul for the holidays at a place down the street from our house, a place called Kesher Israel. Rather than a pulpit Rabbi spitting gospel in front of thousands, a congregant delivered the sermon. He spoke of connection--a fitting topic in a place called "Kesher." "Kesher Israel," he explained, "is a place where there is community and that community shares a belief." "Without a community of believers," he continued, "a belief is meaningless."

And here I am-- living in Moishe House Philly. For the first time my spirituality is connected with the life I lead. It is this hand-made community that gives my belief meaning.