What does it mean for me to be Jewish in 2023? And how do I do it?

I came to Jewish communal life in my thirties after my mother died.
Typical, actually.

I had a mobile childhood and adolescence owing to my father's employment at the time.
When you move every couple of years it's tough to put down roots or make lasting friends, so I gave up on that effort after awhile.
I didn't start really learning how to build longer term friendships until college and beyond. And even then, it wasn't easy. I transferred twice and didn't finish my Bachelor's degree until twenty years after high school.

But my connection with Judaism clicked, and stuck, and it's been a big part of my life for over two decades.

I have had to learn a lot about community along the way, and not all of it was fun. Jewish community is it's own special world, with lots of built-in expectations and mores that are hugely dependent on who your parents are and where you went to summer camp and who you married and how many kids you had. And how much money you earned. And what neighborhood you could afford to live in.

Yeah, it was all of that.

I was able to transcend a large part of that by having musical talent and ability, and by dedicating that ability to making Jewish music. I couldn't transcend all of it, or most of it, but I transcended enough of it to feel welcomed in Jewish circles and that felt good after being such a loner in childhood.

Today, I find myself at a crossroads of sorts.

Between my age and medical issues getting in the way of working, even of making music, and where and how I live (low income and in a place that is not densely populated with Jews), and the current anti-Jewish climate sweeping large parts of the country and the world, how do I do this thing called living Jewishly now?

I just left a community that treated me like a resource rather than a soul. If I affilite again it needs to be somewhere that I can be a soul first. It needs to be welcoming and kind and gentle, and it needs to be a place where I can ask hard, good questions and not be shouted down for doing so, or stared at for not toeing some party line that I didn't know about.

Maybe that's a lot to ask for in a city like Portland.
Maybe I'm asking for the wrong things.
Maybe it's time for me to not be Jewish first, but maybe second or third in my sense of identity.
I don't know.

But I don't know how to be Jewish right now, and it feels like I have no one to bring this to who isn't polarized in the current climate.

Can I be anything other than polarized?

I think I'd like to be.

I feel trapped between a huge wave of people who support ending the existence of a Jewish state and the establishment of a Palestinian-majority state in its place -- and a smaller but equally well-equipped group of people who insist that Israel must remain a Jewish state, a Jewish homeland, because the Holocaust will keep happening over and over until the Jewish people are safe or destroyed (there are no other options in this line of thinking).
Both of these groups demand a certain level of fighting, of aggression, to bring about their respective visions.

Is it possible to be Jewish and not be a flag-waver?
Can one be happily Jewish somewhere in the middle between exceptionalism and damnation?
Can one be Jewish -- and stay Jewish -- and also be a pacifist?

I don't know.
I haven't the faintest idea.

And if there is no middle ground, then what have I been doing with myself and with my abilities for the last 25 years? Has any of it been truly valid? Or real?

 I'd like to think so, but lately I'm not sure.

Because access to the beautiful center of Jewish community as I know it requires resources I don't have, and it is really hard to keep cheering it on from the cheap seats without wondering what I'm doing.

It's a pretty lonely winter for me just now, and perhaps it needs to be for a time.
Perhaps I need to spend some time off by myself figuring things out, without the security of "belonging."
Maybe I need to get back to where I was when I was young in order to get clear of all the noise; and to get clean of it, too, before I can decide what really makes sense.

So don't look for me to get all FOMO about Jewish music conferences and stuff in the next couple of months. Don't look for me to wave a flag, other than my own flag of Bethness, while I sort all this out. Things will be kind of quiet here for a little while.

Cheers.