10 Reasons I Love Being Jewish
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From kidney donations to a 3,000-year-old prayer still recited today, here are 10 things that make being Jewish worth celebrating.
As we approach the High Holidays, I find myself reflecting on the past year, with all its highs and lows. I realize that many of my highlights stem from the joy and pride inherent in Jewish life. Here’s my list of ways I’m glad to be part of this crazy, unruly, occasionally maddening, but ultimately loving group called the Jewish People.
The Talmud notes that “All Jews are responsible for one another” (Shavuot 39a), and Jews continue to act on this today. When Hamas kidnapped 251 Israelis (not all of whom were Jewish) in 2023, Jews all over the world came together and prayed, lobbied, and demonstrated for their release.
Even in more prosaic times, being Jewish can sometimes feel like being part of one big family. Jewish students arriving at college know they can count on a warm welcome in campus Jewish organizations. Jewish travelers understand they’ll feel at home when they step into local synagogues, no matter how far away from home.
Being Jewish means you’re never really alone; you are linked to a wider Jewish community that cares about you and will step in to help, support, and celebrate together.
Judaism invented the weekend, the original TGIF moment at the end of the week when we can pause, take a breath, and switch our minds to a calmer way of being.
“Six days shall you work and on the seventh day you shall rest” (Exodus 34:21). Thousands of years ago, the Torah anticipated the breakneck business that so many of us experience today and proposed an antidote, mandating a day of rest each week for us to relax, reconnect, and remember that it is our humanity, not our productivity, which truly defines us.
Donating to charity is a key Jewish tenet that Jews have followed throughout our history, and still do today, at record levels. One study found that a large majority of American Jewish households regularly donated to charity at rates that far exceeded levels for other religious groups’ charitable giving.
Tzedakah, the Hebrew word for charity, gives us an insight into Jewish ways of giving. Unlike the English word charity, which comes from the Latin word caritas, meaning affection, the Hebrew word tzedaka comes from the root tzedek, meaning righteousness, justice. Whether you feel like it or not, Judaism places a demand to help others because it is the right thing to do, regardless of your feelings.
Jews lead the world in altruistic kidney donations. Revolutionized in the early 2000s largely by Jewish economist Alvin E. Roth - who would go on to win a Nobel Prize in 2012 - altruistic kidney donation seeks to solve the problem of a persistent lack of living kidney donors by encouraging people to donate a kidney to recipients who are unrelated to themselves. Over the past decade, altruistic kidney donation has become a major source of living kidney donations around the world, with Jews leading the way.
Israel leads the world in altruistic kidney donations, with far more donors per capita than in any other nation. In the United States, fully 17% of altruistic kidney donations are from Orthodox Jews, despite Orthodox Jews making up just 0.2% of the population.
It's incredible to realize that the Jewish traditions we enjoy today connect us to a chain going back thousands of years, anchoring us to the Jewish people. Enjoy matzah ball soup? Its roots trace back to Mount Sinai, when we were commanded to eat matzah instead of leavened bread at Passover (Exodus 13:6-7). Ever marveled at the beauty of Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want..."? King David wrote that timeless prayer over 3,000 years ago. Challah, Shabbat candles, apples and honey on Rosh Hashanah, reciting the Shema - these all link us to millennia of Jewish existence.
It’s a great responsibility and privilege to be the next link in the Jewish chain of tradition.
Judaism encourages us to debate, examine, and grapple with deep questions about life, to consider the opinions of others and formulate our own. The Talmud, Judaism’s core Jewish text, is filled with debates, commentaries on those debates, and even commentaries on the commentaries. Jews are encouraged to think deeply about our actions and our world, and to heed the insights of others who’ve similarly delved into life’s meaning.
To be Jewish is to be an eternal student, refining our understanding of the world around us. It means always questioning, learning, and growing.
The numbers are staggering: 22% of all Nobel Prizes ever awarded have been awarded to Jews. That’s 217 people, including 14 Israelis. This is despite making up just 0.2% of the global population. As your mother might say, what nachas (pride)!
The Jewish calendar is jam-packed with holidays that provide a framework for personal growth, and a reason to celebrate. From turning inward and evaluating our actions over the past year on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, to considering the way our ancestors resisted assimilation on Hanukkah, enjoying uproarious celebrations on Purim, celebrating freedom on Passover, and much more, Jewish holidays encourage us to think deeply about our lives and faith.
When it comes to our children, Jewish holidays give us beautiful ways to transmit our love for Judaism and create beautiful memories together.
Playing Jewish Geography is inevitable whenever Jews meet. “Where did you grow up?” “What summer camp did you attend?” “Saint Louis? Wow, do you know my Aunt Sadie?”
The goal underlying goal is to establish a Jewish connection, no matter how tenuous. Forget six degrees of separation; when it comes to Jews, those connections can shrink right down to two or three.
Jews are also familiar with the quintessential Jewish game of identifying which celebrities are Jewish. “Pink? She’s Jewish you know.” Ditto for Daniel Radcliffe, Rashida Jones, Daveed Diggs, and many others. That urge to make the Jewish connection partly stems from finding the common denominator in this sprawling Jewish community we call family.
Jewish communities have thrived throughout history. Even in the face of persecution, Jews have never stopped contributing to the world: inventing, creating, caring, and trying to make our communities and others a better place.
As Mark Twain famously wrote in his 1899 essay, Concerning the Jews:
If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way.
Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.
His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvellous fight in the world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him.
He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished.
The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?
There are myriad other reasons I love being Jewish, including food, books, music, Jewish traditions, and the beauty of the land of Israel. In the comment section below, share what makes you proud about being Jewish.
