Who Gets to Belong?

BELONGING. Throughout Jewish history, belonging to the Jewish community — be that here in the diaspora or in Eretz Yisra’el — has always been the enduring strength of our people. It manifests in how we show up for each other in times of joy, and how we give strength to each other when the pendulum swings to times of fear and danger. We find ourselves in one of those latter moments now. It is — and this is an understatement — a challenging time to be Jewish in a world which is vocally, vehemently, and violently conveying to us how little it believes we belong on the face of this earth.

Jewish responses to this moment often reflect a generational divide. Often, those with longstanding history with, investment in, and loyalty to the community tend to be protective of status quo expressions of that community. What I see in my own demographic of millennial Jews, and in our younger Gen-Z siblings in Moses, is many Jews distancing themselves from being Jewish altogether. Others are taking the diametric opposite approach and diving headfirst into finding new ways to embrace their identities.

Even before the horror of October 7, and the pain and disillusionment that have followed for so many of us, shifting social norms and cultural tensions were already changing how new generations of North American Jews have understood themselves, and where we belong in the Jewish community. The great talmudic sage Hillel, who lived during the end of the first century BCE, once said, “Do not separate yourself from the community.” He knew then the importance of community, and to this day that need remains. But what that community looks like, acts like, believes in, holds dear, how it manifests its Judaism, and who gets to belong — that is what is evolving so dramatically in this current moment.

There are very good reasons for this tectonic shift. North American Jewish legacy institutions, those that once defined communal life and gatekept what was considered “real” or “normative” diaspora Judaism, are in, well, a bit of a pickle. To many younger Jews, these institutions have lost credibility, and their moral compass.

We see them fighting primarily over the actions of the Israeli government and ego. As a small personal example, I can never trust the Anti-Defamation League the same way again after their shameful rationalization of Elon Musk’s infamous one-armed salute. The chasm between the values of legacy institutions and the needs of the Jews they allege to serve is vast. The analogy this brings to my mind is Biblical: the enormous pit that opened up beneath the feet of the insurrectionist Korach and his followers during the forty years that Moses and the Jews were wandering in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt.

We wander in another sort of wilderness now. Despite desperately spending hundreds of millions to “engage” unaffiliated or alienated Jews, it feels like most (certainly not all, but most) Jewish institutions are not succeeding in this endeavour.

The yearning to belong within our own communities is so innate that we will do a lot to try to fit in, to try to make it work. But we all know — or perhaps we have been — someone who has felt deeply betrayed by the exclusionary policies and attitudes of “status quo” Jewish organizations. I think of the marginalized and under-indexed fellow Jews: Jews of colour, queer Jews, interfaith families, patrilineal Jews, Jews living with disabilities, Jews without the financial means to live close to a Jewish community or pay synagogue dues, “Off the Derech” Jews. People too often tokenized, and rarely centred, represented, or supported in the ways they need.

But here’s a plot twist: yes, this moment for North American Jewry is a crisis, but it’s also an opportunity. Chaos, as one of my favourite authors, George R. R. Martin, writes, is a ladder. As these conventional mechanisms have foundered, there are new forms of Jewish community emerging right now — vibrant, compelling, full of heart, deeply rooted in our heritage and ancestral wisdom, and in our shared diaspora experiences. More and more Jews are discovering alternate modes of engaging with Jewish identity and finding community: formats that resonate and have meaning in their own lives in new ways or, sometimes, in ancient ways made new again. And from my particular vantage point, these modes are working. They are giving people connection, and a sense of purpose, in Jewish life right now.

SOMEHOW, completely by accident, I’ve become both a participant and an enthusiastic witness to some of the most exciting and hopeful changes unfolding in North American Jewish communal life. And I have discovered that true belonging really happens only when we are authentic and vulnerable and fully ourselves — no matter how initially alone in the wilderness that might make us feel.

I am a person who never truly felt like I belonged in any Jewish community, until suddenly, accidentally, surprisingly, it happened.

I was raised in a baal teshuvah family — a family that gradually became Orthodox over time. A deep love of Judaism shaped my early life. First, we went to a Reform temple. Then a Conservative congregation. Eventually, we stopped driving on Shabbat and began walking to our local Chabad house. (Naturally, there was a local Chabad house.)

By the end of fifth grade, I was enrolled in a Lubavitch day school, where I successfully acquired a lot of learning and also a lot of intense religious trauma.

Part of that trauma was encountering a hard truth: that large parts of Jewish knowledge — Talmud, for example — and significant areas of Jewish practice had, with a few notable exceptions, been historically and deliberately kept from Jews like me: women. Judaism, I realized, existed in stratified segments, not just by denomination or affiliation but by gender. By access. By who is allowed to engage with Jewishness, and in what ways.

That was tough to wrestle with, because I longed to understand, appreciate, and embody everything I could about Judaism. I was truly devout. My family kept kosher. I dressed modestly, hiding my elbows, collarbone, and knees from view. I prayed thrice daily to God, with whom I felt a powerful and personal relationship. On Shabbat mornings, I was on the women’s side of the mechitzah before most of the men rolled out of bed for minyan. I noticed this discrepancy and I internalized it, but I set it aside. For the time being.

Any mitzvah, any commandment, that I was allowed to do, I did. I wanted to live up to what God expected of me, what my people expected of me, and what my Jewishness called upon me to do. What being part of a Jewish community required.

At seventeen, I helped prepare someone for burial as part of the hevrah kadishah, the sacred burial society. At eighteen, I was cleaning the mikveh. When I was nineteen, I made Passover for our family when my father was hospitalized and my mom was focused on his care. What I sacrificed in aluminum foil, totally covering all the surface areas of our kitchen, I gained in pride.

Throughout all this time, I was under the mistaken impression that there was only one way to be a “good Jew,” and that’s what I was striving for. I had not yet encountered the idea from Bamidbar Rabbah that the Torah has seventy faces — that there are countless doorways into, lenses on, paths of perceiving, and ways of understanding, connecting to, and interpreting Jewishness. I felt that a lapse in my observance or faith would be a slap in the face of the Jewish people, of my ancestors, of my family. That would never be me, I said to myself. I wasn’t going to be the weak link, the break in the chain from Sinai to now.

So in college, I majored in Judaic studies. This wasn’t exactly a pragmatic thing to do, but it does demonstrate how deeply invested in and obsessed with Jewishness I was.

And yet, I began to feel the first real discord, a sense of alienation, enter my heart. Particularly, I’ll readily admit, I struggled with how I saw women being treated in some Orthodox communities. When I learned about agunot, Jewish women unable to be free of a marriage because their husbands refused to grant them religious divorces, I was stunned. This was not the Judaism I had thought I understood. The misogyny was so glaring that it could not be rationalized.

I want to stress at this point: I am referring only to my personal experiences and observations. I am not the Lorax of all formerly Orthodox, Chassidic-adjacent women. I speak only for myself and how I discovered I did not actually fit, I did not actually belong, perfectly within that specific paradigm of Judaism.

My junior year of college was a deeply traumatic one for several reasons, including the passing of my beloved father. The upshot was that even though I never would have predicted this could happen — to me of all people, who had such a strong belief in God, such a strong Jewish identity, such a strong commitment to being part of the Jewish community — one day I realized that the feeling of God was gone from me. I could not find that Presence in my heart anymore. It was devastating. It was terrifying. I felt lost, adrift, and afraid.

Despite what some might believe, you cannot force that faith to come back. You can’t put the divine metaphorical toothpaste back in the tube. Like Naomi in her grief in the Book of Ruth, what remained to me was bitterness toward the God I thought I knew.

Because of this spiritual crisis that had ambushed me, I was convinced that I had to completely sever myself from my Jewishness to avoid being a disingenuous hypocrite.

Dear reader, in my mind’s eye I can see your eyebrow lift. You might be thinking that my response was rather extreme. I was taking self-exile too far. And you would not be wrong in your assessment. But I was young, and foolish, and had so thoroughly internalized the guidelines I had been taught on what is or is not acceptable Judaism. So I extracted myself from Judaism entirely.

It was excruciating.

Sure, I was thrilled I could wear miniskirts and short sleeves. But I also discovered that miniskirts can’t actually heal a broken heart; they just don’t wield that level of sartorial power. In so many ways, I wanted to be part of the Jewish community, but I no longer felt like I had a place within it.

Many years went by.

I wasn’t actively doing anything particularly Jewish, other than working at Jewish nonprofits, because what else was I going to do with that incredibly pragmatic degree?

At the local Federation, I was burned out and miserable. And the behaviour I witnessed there reinforced my belief that I had no more value to the Jewish community. I was taken off of projects I built and loved because I wasn’t “connected” enough, had not attended the right exclusive Jewish programs, did not have a recognizable family name.

However, that place did give me one thing I will always be grateful for: a lunch and learn. I often joke that it was perhaps the one time in human history that a lunch and learn actually changed someone’s life. I know this because the life that got changed so dramatically was my own. And the ripple effects from that moment changed other lives, too.

The speaker was Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory.

A philosopher, leading Jewish thinker, and chief rabbi of the UK, he was an incredibly powerful communicator of Jewish ideas; he spoke about something called daf yomi, the practice of learning the entire Babylonian Talmud — this massive, vital, multi-vocal text of the Jewish people — at the rate of one double-sided folio page per day. Rabbi Sacks described daf yomi as a beautiful way to connect with fellow Jews the whole world over. We may speak different languages, and live completely different lives from each other. But in this learning, we would meet together in the pages of Talmud, every day.

For a cycle of seven and a half years.

His words were a spark, a catalyst. I could do this. I wanted to do this — to set my feet on this path of learning. Perhaps learning Talmud was my way back to a Jewish identity, or maybe a way forward to a new one. One that was right for me, that I could fully embody.

I began my learning with my fellow daf yomi participants on January 5, 2020. It was an act of rededication to us, to the Jewish people — that was the joy part. But, because of the eternal Jewish oy-joy dichotomy, I was determined that it be something else, too. During Hanukkah just a short time prior, there had been a series of horrific antisemitic attacks in New York and New Jersey, including a machete assault against Jews lighting the hanukkiah. How deeply I wish I could say things have improved since then, but we know the acts of hatred against us have in fact descended to worse depths. My learning, I decided, would also be an act of defiance against those who hate us. This would be my seven-and-a-half-year fuck you to the antisemites.

Every single day that I learn, that you learn, that we learn, that we continue, is a rebellion, is an act of resistance, an act of defiance. It gave me a sense of power, of continuity — of, yes, community.

The pandemic forced all of us daf yomi newbies to figure out ways to learn online. Thank goodness for the existence of virtual resources like Sefaria. And so, after about two years of learning Talmud, which were also two years of living through the pandemic, and two years of lurking on TikTok like so many in search of connection and laughter in apocalyptic times, I decided to do something very outside my comfort zone.

To help myself retain what I was learning, I started making short, reaction-style videos to what I was encountering in the Talmud and posting them on TikTok. I called the series “Daf Reactions.” In it, I reimagined Talmud study for the social media age: accessible, something that anyone with an internet connection could discover and enjoy. I tried to bridge Jewish tradition and modern pop culture, weaving ancient wisdom into the fabric of today’s conversations and current events, with my own blend of slightly snarky commentary and heartfelt emotion.

Like a lot of folks who started experimenting with new ways to embody Jewish culture, connection, learning, and spirituality during the pandemic, I didn’t expect that talking to my phone camera, alone in my room, about something I loved and dearly desired to engage with would end up changing my life — never mind anyone else’s. I thought only five other people would ever see or enjoy or find value in these videos, in my specific approach to Jewish learning.

But sometimes the world is weird and wonderful. To my astonishment, the videos I create have resonated with thousands of people around the world who, like me, are finding, forging, or rekindling their own unique connections to Jewish community and identity. In many ways, my story is a microcosm of the seismic shifts happening across North American Jewish life.

I was wrong, you see, about my audience being five people. Within a month, Daf Reactions — the study of ancient texts meeting an extremely modern format, through a feminist lens — had gone “Jewish viral.” People had strong reactions to my reactions.

Some of that was negative. The hook for a lot of the criticism that popped up in newspapers, blogs, and on Israeli TV news was: here I was, a non-religious, blonde woman with dramatically winged eyeliner and her collarbone exposed, making daf yomi reaction videos. And I was speaking like a millennial. Sometimes there was swearing. Sometimes, I highlighted the sexual innuendo that was present in the text all along. Who had given me permission to do such things?

It was a scandal. Minds were blown; fainting couches were summoned. Some people were absolutely incandescent with rage. Some rather extreme communities sent out memos warning people against my nefarious influence.

I was told I was destroying the Jewish people. By learning Talmud, and then talking about it online.

But what truly shocked me was not the hate I received. What amazed me were the incredible, enthusiastic messages I received from thousands of Jews and non-Jews around the world. People who embraced what I was doing.

People who felt disconnected.

People who had been discouraged from asking questions.

People who had never seen themselves represented in Jewish learning.

People who felt like the organized Jewish community didn’t welcome them for one reason or another. People who said that laughing and learning was helping to heal their religious trauma.

People on a conversion journey who found learning with me helped them.

People who wanted accessible Jewish content that didn’t make something as fascinating and beautiful as Judaism somehow as boring as watching paint dry, and, instead, presented it with as much fun and joy and personal authenticity as possible.

And so, to my shock, a delightful, chaotic, nerdy community grew around the videos. (I assure you, not in a weird Shabbtai Tzvi sort of way. In a good way!) A few months after folks discovered my videos, I had such a surreal experience: I, an outsider, a loner, discovered that some people from around the world had chosen to dress up as me for Purim. Now the mind that was blown was my own.

My platform became a space where people actually wanted to connect, learn, and be Jewish on their own terms. Where they felt they had the permission to do so.

I can’t tell you how many people have said, “If my Hebrew school teacher had talked like you, I might’ve actually paid attention.” (Obviously, the lesson is that Hebrew school teachers should be swearing more. Do not worry, I’m just kidding. Or am I?) For all of these people, the videos demonstrated that having personal reactions to a text is not only okay, but actually an integral part of forming real connections with that text.

And for the folks who don’t have any experience with Jewish learning at all? For them, I’m delighted to be a gateway drug.

Part of what the Daf Reactions community — now thousands and thousands strong across Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Bluesky, Threads, and other platforms — values is that I am not in any way a representative of any organized Jewish group or denomination. I’m not a rabbi. I am not affiliated with any organization they feel they cannot trust, or worry may have ulterior motives. I’m just a massive nerd for Judaism, a fellow learner, inviting people to walk side by side with me on this journey, and trying to show them as many of those seventy faces, (old, new, renewed) as I possibly can.

Yes, there are risks for emergent online expression, as anyone who has gone online in the past few years can tell you: insane levels of antisemitism, algorithms blocking Jewish content, platform volatility. When TikTok was briefly banned in January 2025, our joyous, eclectic crew of Jewish learners panicked — not because we’d lose a fun and silly app where any object could prove to be made of cake, but because we’d lose this place of connection. Social media is where so many people who once felt left out of Jewish life have finally found a home, a new paradigm of community, despite all the deep, painful failings of these platforms.

I made sure my community spans many platforms because of this. This is also why I love to continue the engagement in person as a scholar-in-residence at synagogues and organizations across the country that truly, deeply understand why this all matters, that see the value of embracing these new ways to belong Jewishly.

This past Shavuot, moments after reading with horror about the terrible antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colorado, I delivered a keynote speech at a Tikkun Leil Shavuot event in Manhattan. The room was filled with Jews of all kinds: Orthodox women with their hair covered, queer Jews with fabulous purple hair, men with long beards who looked like they study Torah in the beit midrash all day, elders, teens, beginners, academics. All of us learning together. All part of this beautiful constellation, beautiful kehillah, of Jewish life. And I felt more part of a community in that moment than I ever have before, united together, bonded forever in Am Yisrael.

Daf Reactions, a project that began as something small and personal, has become something much more. It is my tikun: my repair, my healing, my Judaism.

My deepest hope is that others might find their own meaningful connection to Jewishness in ways and forms that feel right to them — that speak to their lives and resonate deeply. Our texts are not relics. They are living, breathing inheritances. They are not the domain of the few, but the birthright of all Jews regardless of denomination, gender, observance, or economic status.

Daf yomi itself, though it may feel like a longstanding tradition, is a relatively new practice in Judaism: only 100 years old. A nanosecond in our long history.

There are religious gatekeepers that tell us the only Jews who can speak with learned authority on anything pertaining to Judaism, Jewish history, Jewish law, or Jewish learning are going to be easily identifiable: just look for the beard and the hat! (Excellent branding, by the way. Hard to compete with that.) Nobody else can really be trusted to know what they are talking about, you see.

But they are so wrong.

As Rabbi Sacks wrote in a d’var Torah called “A Nation of Storytellers”:

“Throughout the book of Devarim, Moses warns the people — no less than fourteen times — not to forget. If they forget the past they will lose their identity and sense of direction and disaster will follow. Moreover, not only are the people commanded to remember, they are also commanded to hand that memory on to their children. This entire phenomenon represents a remarkable cluster of ideas: identity as a matter of collective memory; about the ritual retelling of the nation’s story; above all about the fact that every one of us is a guardian of that story and memory. It is not the leader alone, or some elite, who are trained to recall the past, but every one of us.”

This isn’t a blanket call to abandon all legacy institutions (well … maybe just a few), but it is a call to evolve. When institutions respond to alienation with defensiveness instead of curiosity, they render themselves obsolete. And they will be left behind.

The vibrant, emerging communities forming right now aren’t “Judaism lite.” They’re not “for the aesthetic,” or unserious, although, yes, they’re often joyful. There are more than I can list here. Judaism Unbound and the UnYeshiva. SVARA. Ammud: The Jews of Color Torah Academy. Lab/Shul. Maharat. IKAR. Beit Toratah. Reboot. The Kohenet movement. Temple of the Stranger. They are real, resonant, deeply rooted in Jewish learning, history, and spirit.

These new modes of Jewish life have fuelled a revolution in online cultural and religious engagement. It’s reshaping how we learn, pray, connect, and lead; it is building communities that transcend geography and denomination, and that people genuinely want to be part of.

These aren’t breakaway sects. They’re breakout models.

Jewish tradition is rich with reinvention. The Talmud itself is a remix of voices across generations. It’s a conversation — messy, multi-vocal, sometimes contradictory — but always alive.

The question before us now is simple: How do we keep the eternal flame burning without burning people out?

The need for community hasn’t gone anywhere. So we build. We reinvent.

We’re not walking away from Judaism — we’re walking toward it. Just on paths that better fit our lives, our values, and our stories.

As Rabbi Benay Lappe of SVARA (tagline: “a traditionally radical yeshiva”) puts it: “If your house is burning down, do you rebuild the same house? Or do you build a new one that doesn’t catch fire so easily?”

I think we know the answer.

To add to the statement of the great sage Hillel: do not separate yourself from the community. Instead, create community that will never separate from you. Because you belong to it, and it belongs to you.