Arcadia England

A number of important Jewish holidays take place in the Fall. Our guest blogger, STEPHANIE POKRAS, who is studying at Hertford College, Oxford, shares her experience of observing these in a foreign country.                                                                             

My Jewish identity has always been an integral part of who I am. While I belong to the American Reform movement, my sense of spiritual obligation and need for traditional practice has always been stronger than many of my reform peers. To put this in perspective, I was raised by a Rabbi and Jewish Educator who met in Israel for a rabbinic school program. As a result, I grew up keeping kosher, attending synagogue multiple times a week, and saying the shma and hashkivenu before bed each night. To me being Jewish isn’t just a religion or ethnicity, but a way of life and moral code that influences many of my everyday decisions. Therefore, I was understandably nervous about spending the high holidays, the most important days in the Jewish calendar, in a foreign country.

One of the first things I abruptly realized upon my arrival in Oxford, is that like most countries these days there is a strong undercurrent of anti-Semitic rhetoric in England. Only a few weeks ago, the Labour Party deliberately planned a no-confidence vote against a Jewish MP who spoke out against systemic anti-Semitism for the eve of Yom Kippur, when she will be unable to defend herself due to religious obligations. These types of things, although perhaps not at the government level, also happen in the US. However, unlike in the United States, I felt ungrounded and alone. In face of this, it became incredibly important for me to find a strong Jewish community here in Oxford, and luckily I succeeded.

The Oxford Jewish Synagogue is a squat modern building with an electric blue door reminiscent of synagogues in Safed. It is by no means a beautiful temple, but it is incredibly spiritual. Immediately upon arriving, I was welcomed into the community, not as a visitor, but as an equal. Within five minutes of being in the synagogue, I had been drafted to help set up the chapel for Rosh Hashanah services and was engaging in a lovely conversation with the Rabbi’s mother, an amazing woman and a Holocaust survivor who escaped on the kinder transport.

The services themselves were just as warm as the welcome. They were held in a small chapel that vibrated with the voice of the congregation. On Rosh Hashanah, I was able to hold a private tashlich ceremony (the ritual of throwing bread into running water to symbolize washing away the sins of the past year) right outside my dorm on the Thames.

Services on both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were wonderful– dare I say enjoyable? Can services on a day meant for atonement be enjoyable? If so, it it certainly the closest I’ve ever gotten. Despite this, the holidays were also quite hard. The high holidays have always been a time for family for me. I can’t even remember how many times during Yom Kippur services I’d lean over to whisper apologies to my sister or mom, or how many times I proudly heard my dad give a sermon that I knew was months in the making. This wasn’t the first time I had been away from home for the holidays, but it was the first time I wasn’t able to easily call them. I missed my Dad’s sermon, I didn’t get to hear my sister sing for the first time for Kol Nidre services, and I struggled to find time for family. I was undoubtedly homesick.

My homesickness was compounded by the type of Judaism practiced at this synagogue, which felt somewhat alien to me. Reform Judaism is a purely American movement, and while Progressive Judaism in the UK is similar, it is also just different enough to make me feel consistently unbalanced. Even more strange to me was that the temple was a pluralist congregation- meaning it catered to all denominations of Judaism. Coming from a place where many Ultra-Orthodox Jews wouldn’t be caught dead worshiping with Reform/Progressive Jews, the idea that all denominations could share worship was both surprising and incredibly appealing. For the first time in a long time, I truly felt that Jews were a unified people despite our different geographies, histories, and ideologies. 

What really cemented this feeling of unity for me was the blasting of the shofar. During the high holiday season we blast the shofar, a ram’s horn, to call us to attention. To startle us awake and remind us to begin contemplating our actions and wrongdoings of the past year. However, this year the shofar took on an entirely new meaning for me. The shofar not only calls us to attention, but it connects us. Everywhere around the world whether you are Sephardic or Ashkenazi; orthodox, conservative, or reform; British, Israeli, or American we all blow the shofar on the high holidays. In the middle of services, I came to a realization. While I may not have been able to celebrate the holidays in the same room or country as my family, we were still celebrating together, connected by resounding blast of the shofar, members of a unified, global, Jewish community.