It’s Been 29 Years…
In Pokemon X and Y, video games released in 2013, there is a character named AZ. He spends what feels like eternity - and is in fact much longer than the average human lifespan - waiting for his dream to come true. The moment when it finally does, and he exclaims “it’s been 3,000 years…” was quickly turned into a meme used to represent the thrill of experiencing something you feel like you’ve been waiting for all your life.
I had my own “it’s been 3,000 years…” moment this Rosh Hashanah when I listened to a sermon from Nana’s synagogue where the rabbi explicitly and urgently fought for the destigmatization of mental health in the Jewish community.
His words touched me deeply - as someone who has never felt like there was a place for me in the Jewish community, I saw his speech as creating a welcoming space for the next generation so others don’t have to feel like I did.
As a child, teen, and even in college, I felt the pressure to perform well in Jewish spaces, and that always meant being the same as everyone else. But the only way I could do so was academically - I studied Hebrew so hard that I’m now fluent in it as a second language, and I memorized every tune for every prayer so I could perform at my best during school assemblies and prayer services.
I tried as best as I could to fit in with what was expected of a young person in the Jewish community. I was smart and accomplished, I “looked Jewish” (which was more of a thing years ago than now, thankfully) and did my best to act Jewish, but I couldn’t eat Jewish foods or make lifelong friends at camp or feel an instant connection to Israel the second I stepped off a plane at Ben Gurion airport.
The things I couldn’t do soon overcame the things I could, and I felt like there was no place for me unless I squished down everything that made me me, and just focused on being smart and learning what I was supposed to learn. But the Jewish community didn’t want me - they just wanted that part of me, and if the tiniest part of my real self came through, I was relentlessly bullied and made to feel less than everyone else who could somehow do everything.
My elementary school teachers did the best they could to fit me into a mold and made my parents and I feel like I couldn’t do a single thing right. My middle school principal regularly called me a freak even though I performed very highly in her Holocaust studies class. In high school, I joined United Synagogue Youth (USY), never fit in, and hated every convention (how strange those words sound to me now, as someone who counts down to fandom conventions for months at a time!).
In all of these settings, I performed well. I led prayers in USY for years, and proceeded to join my college’s Hillel and attempt the same. But when I had a mental health crisis in college, the Jewish community wanted nothing to do with me.
It’s why, as an adult, I struggle to go to Jewish events. I bristle at the thought of having to pretend I’m someone I’m not after fighting so long to accept myself as I am.
This rabbi’s sermon made me feel like there could actually be a place for me in the Jewish community.
The first and most important thing he did was to acknowledge the extreme bias against anything “not the same” in the Jewish community. He brought up the Yiddish phrase “shikker is der goy” - meaning “the alcoholic is a non-Jew” - as a metaphor for how the Jewish community wants to perceive people doing things that are socially unacceptable - such as having an addiction to alcohol - as outside of the community.
He said that, instead, we need to consider that “shikker is der yid” - “the alcoholic is a Jew” - and acknowledge the problems people face every day that are swept under the rug in an attempt to present a “model minority” of smart and highly accomplished people.
As an adult, I’m lucky that I can mostly “pass” as neurotypical. Just recently, when I received a speaking engagement to talk about mental health at a local Jewish organization, I was told by the person organizing it that she would have known I was an anxious person, but she would never have known I had an actual mental illness. She meant it as a compliment, and all my life, I was pleased to receive comments like this when my acting skills outshined my mental illness.
But even with my acting skills, I can’t pass well enough in the Jewish community. I can’t eat Jewish food. I can’t wax poetic about my experiences with Jewish people throughout my life. My proudest Jewish accomplishments tend to be more individual - reading the “Harry Potter” series in Hebrew in high school and college, learning my whole Torah portion for my bat mitzvah when I didn’t have to, and educating people about Judaism when they have questions or default to stereotypes.
This rabbi’s words gave me hope that, one day, I may find a place within the Jewish community where I can admit that my Jewish experience has been a mixed bag at best.
Where I don’t have to find a place to hide the little piece of challah I receive after it’s been passed by other people’s hands since I’m too worried about germs to eat it, even if it’s the only food at Shabbat dinner that I’d normally be willing to touch.
Where I don’t have to pretend that going to a Schechter school was amazing or that I didn’t spend the entirety of my two trips in Israel worrying about where my next meal would come from.
Where I can admit that I used the same prayers I memorized to look smart as a child as an essential part of my compulsions.
Where I can admit that, like many Jews, I have questioned God - if for a different reason than many - and have open and honest discussions about how to return to a higher level of faith.
I’ve been waiting 29 years - since I was born Jewish - to hear someone in a position of authority take a strong stance on mental health. Ever since my years in USY in this same congregation, I waited and wondered if there would ever be a place for me - and now, after everything that’s happened, I’m starting to think it might be true.
Michelle Cohen, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.