In my latest bout of iconoclasm, I've decided to follow German Jewish customs.
It took me a while to grow into this decision. My sense is that when one converts to Judaism, one should choose a particular minhag (custom, though in this case the word has culture-of-origin overtones) and practice Judaism through that minhag's prism. However, nobody told me that I needed a minhag when I joined the tribe, and for a while I maintained a snotty-nosed, "Well, nobody told me I had to pick one" attitude.
For years though I was attracted to the idea of learning and adhering to German Jewish customs. I'm a Jew of German descent, and even though that German descendancy isn't Jewish, it still seemed like a nice way to go. However, I didn't consider this idea too deeply or too practically. After all, I reasoned, although I was attracted to the idea of going Yekke, I was sooner or later bound to marry someone. That someone most likely came from somewhere non-Germanic (German-descended Jews making up just a tiny portion of the Jewish immigration to America post-1880). That someone would likely feel a not-uncommon twinge of discomfort at things German. If it was my whimsy versus that someone's gut-negativity, then there was no question that that someone's family tradition would prevail.
And so it was that I never looked too deeply into German Jewish customs. Ironically, I lived in Washington Heights in upper Manhattan for a year, in the heart of the largest and most solid German Jewish community in the world, and I never looked too hard at the culture.
After I left Washington Heights I moved south to Washington DC (I'm fond of W's), where I was dating S---. It just so happens that S--- (name concealed, Victorian-novel-style) has strong German ancestry, his grandparents having moved from Germany to New York when S---'s father was young. No one in S--'s family is particularly observant, so what traditions we keep are pretty much mainstream traditional-halakhic-egalitarian-observant-minyan-lovin' Judaism. Through the courtship process I didn't think about S---'s ethnic background as relating to my desire to take on a German minhag.
And then, something happened....
To be continued.
