A brief exchange with an Israeli locksmith got me thinking today. I tweeted about it:

Israeli locksmith noticed our mezuzah and gave us the family discount. Sometimes I miss being Jewish. =(

Am I still Jewish if I’m a Christian? It all started yesterday. My across-the-street-neighbor, who is also a teacher at my daughter’s school, informed me that Nellie (the Basset Hound) had escaped about a month ago and ended up in her yard, looking for treats.

She said that after a frustrating half hour on the phone with our vet (Nellie’s tags have our vets’ number, not ours) she got him to give up our home address, which confirmed that Nellie was in fact, ours.

“When I walked her back to your side of the street,” the neighbor said, “I noticed that your front door was wide open.”

My husband and I are not typically good at “getting around to things,” like changing the burnt out porch light bulb, getting our dog proper address-bearing dog tags or fixing our faulty front door. Each of these neglected tasks carries with it a different level of consequence.

The porchlight? Meh. Basically we’re only annoying ourselves by not fixing it.

The dog collar? Slightly more important. If Nellie’s name and address had been on her collar our neighbor wouldn’t have had to call our vet.

The faulty front door? Potentially catastrophic. As my neighbor pointed out, we were lucky it was just the dog that got out. “Next time it could be your daughter.”

Think she’s over reacting? I don’t either. That’s why I called the locksmith.

It should be said that the visit from the Israeli locksmith fell on my daughter’s last day of kindergarten, In other words, I’m a basket case, a soppy, sentimental mess.

Because today it struck me in no small way that my daughter will never be in kindergarten again. She will never again be 5. She is growing up. She is leaving behind her baby self, her toddler self, and now her kindergarten self. As if watching her deftly apply lip balm like it was a Chanel lipstick hadn’t spelled it out for me already. The last day of kindergarten is brutal.

Accent reveals all

I could tell by the locksmith’s accent when I talked to him on the phone that he was from the Middle East, and I was surprised. You don’t often encounter a Middle Eastern locksmith in Houston, so when he arrived I studied his features, and almost instantly pegged him for an Israelite. An actual Israelite, not a methaphorical one.

Christians will often read the Old Testament and interpret the many references to the “Israelites,” as references to them —to Christians, or what some call, in my opinion indelicately, “completed Jews.” In other words they see themselves as Jews whose Messiah (Jesus) has come, seen, and resurrected. Christians believe themselves to be, and I among them, God’s chosen people regardless of whether they have Jewish ancestry.

After a few minutes of small talk with the Israelite locksmith, let’s call him Shmuli (a dog trainer in the Israeli army, he offered to talk Nellie off our hands), he spied the mezuzah next to my front door. A mezuzah is a tiny, plastic encased Torah excerpt, verses from Dueteronomy, traditionally hung in the doorframe of a Jewish home. An observant Jew will kiss the mezuzah as he or she comes and goes, reminding themselves with each kiss of the pre-eminence of God’s word. It was a gift from my Israeli friend, Dori.

“Are you guys Jewish!?” he exclaimed.

My husband and I looked at each other, not knowing what to say.

“I am,” I replied, a little guiltily.

“You get the family discount!” he said.

“I’ll have to cook you something then, “ I fired back, assuming the New York Jewish mother persona I often enact to the delight of my Southern, Christian friends.

“But, actually,” I said, “I don’t cook. How about coffee?”

The locksmith got to work and I started the coffee, my guilt growing as I considered that I might be taking a discount under false pretenses.

Am I still Jewish or not?

What level of consequence (Meh, Slight or Catastrophic) to my ethnic Judaism did becoming a Christian carry?

Complicated relationship

I’ve avoided this question pretty well over the 11 years since my conversion. Perhaps it’s because I’m usually estranged from the Jewish side of my family, i.e., my father.

I rarely see him or speak to him, and so I don’t often have to explain the peculiarities of how I, a Jewish girl from New York, became a Christian minister in Texas. The conversation happens only about once every three or four years.

It’s comical, actually. It’ll go something like this. My father, who is Jewish and nearing 83 will ask, “So what have you been up to?”

“Same old thing,” I will answer, hedging. And then quietly, “You know, just working at the church.”

A disciple of the Rat Pack and a very amateur comedian, my father will casually reply, “Cameron, did anybody tell you? You’re Jewish!”

“Bah Ha Ha Ha!” he’ll bellow, clutching his ribs. “The Jewish Minister!”

I’ll force a chuckle. But to me, it isn’t really that funny.

My relationship to my Judaism, like my relationship to my father, is complicated.

It’s only since becoming a Christian that my father has insisted on my de facto membership in the most elite club on earth; God’s chosen people. If you’re not born into it, you’ll have a helluva time passing the entrance exam. Judaism couldn’t be more different from Christianity in that respect. Christianity is evangelical; all you need to be accepted into Christianity is to believe.

A hairstylist friend of mine started visiting a local synagogue some years ago in the hopes of becoming Jewish. She’d done her research and had always been interested in Jewish culture. She thought Judaism would be a good fit for her. After a few weeks of introductory classes, a rabbi pulled her aside, pointing out that since she didn’t have a Jewish parent, nor was she married to a Jewish man, she was going to have a very hard time converting. He gently suggested she give up her quest, which she promptly did.

Judaism is matrilineal, passed down through the mother. As a college professor once explained to me, “You always know who the mother is.”

Since my mother is not Jewish I was never really Jewish, at least to the more Orthodox among my childhood classmates. I think the above-mentioned rabbi would likely agree with them. But to Christians I was definitely Jewish. It seemed to them, all I needed was a distant Jewish cousin, or distant Jewish aunt to be Jewish. In fact, when I was a kid I begged my Dad to sign us up for membership to the local swim club that some of my waspy friends frequented. The club offered swimming in the summer and ice skating in the winter; a suburban girl’s paradise.

“We can’t join the bla bla bla country club,” he said. “Stop asking,”

“Why not!” I demanded.

“Because we’re Jewish.”

I was stunned; I’d read The Diary of Anne Frank, I knew what he meant. But why was this happening to us?

After a beat I asked, honestly, “Are we Jewish?”

I’ve often spoken of my Jewish heritage proudly but distantly. Why would I be emotional about something I was never really sure of? But lately, when something decidedly Jewish occurs (like meeting an Israeli locksmith) I get emotional. I long for an ancestral home I’ve never visited, or may never return to. It’s like how I feel watching my baby say goodbye to her kindergarten self. Next year there will be wonderful new adventures in first grade. But she’ll never again be in her very first year of school, with her very first teacher.

I attended more than a hundred bar and bat mitzvah’s in middle school, and dozens of Friday night Shabbat dinners as a kid, so many in fact that I accidentally memorized the accompanying prayer.

I found myself reciting it from memory a few years ago, in unison with my friend Dori as she prepared a Shabbat dinner for some of her curious friends, myself included. As my lips formed each familiar, yet exotic word, my heart climbed in my chest, like a rollercoaster wincing up the track. It was emotional, it was exhilarating, it was sad. Sad because Judaism is a part of me, the part I understand the least, but yet a part I love and miss.

Many Christians like to think that we are all Jewish, because Jesus was Jewish and because we are, mysteriously, somehow hidden in Him. But I can’t help but think sacrifice is an indelible part of this equation. I can’t help but think reconciling these two very different parts of me is just not that easy.

Sometimes, like today, an Israeli locksmith in my living room with his warm accent and matter of fact hospitality, I really wish it was.

“I sure am gonna miss this place!” my daughter exclaimed as she climbed into her car seat, now a Kindergarten graduate.

“Me too,” I replied. “Me too.”

Cameron Dezen Hammon writes the blog Hipster Christian Housewife.