We don't talk about it much, but every Jew in America has an Ash Wednesday story. Kind of like how every Chinese restaurant in America has a Christmas story and every gentile— in the north Chicago-land area, anyway—has a Yom Kippur story. Most of these tales of ethnic bewilderment adhere to a similar albeit extensive story line. Basically, it involves running into a member of another religion/ethnicity/ect at their most spiritually exposed and being unable to process it. Call it a momentary loss of liberality.
Hmm..I should probably back up a minute here. Not every Jew has an Ash Wednesday story, just those I've discussed this with. Heck, I'm sure many Hindus can also attest to an Ash Wednesday story or two, let alone all the world's Protestants. So it's not just us. No "Zionist Secrets Revealed" here. Sorry, Ms. Zerbisias.
Although, I think the Jewish reaction to Ash Wednesday represents something unique in the modern "us & them" ethos that keeps the world spinning. Whenever I see a Catholic with an ash cross on his head, I am overwhelmed by two contradictory feelings, both taking turns at predominance. Either I am grateful or I am concerned.
Maybe it's the notion, however subconscious, that on this date some two millennia ago, our status as "killers" was sealed and shouts for our slaughter given international legitimacy. Not that I consider Ash Wednesday a call for the defensive. On the contrary, Ash Wednesday is perhaps the only holiday in the world which, almost by default, forces people of differing faiths to understand, though never fully accept, the things that divide them. We tread carefully though, because for one day a year, it's literally in our face.
Still, all inter-faith circle-jerking aside, real feelings of anxiety percolate every Ash Wednesday and it's not by accident that I spend most of that day avoiding eye contact with certain individuals. Those ashes means something to non-Catholics in general and to Jews in particular. In many ways they signifiy the day the first shoe finally dropped.
I'm exaggerating, surely, in today's America it's really very easy to be a Jew. None of us are concerned about being refused access to the Bryn Mawher country club or being forced to live (or not to live) in certain neighborhoods. There are no pogroms, no fever-swamp "Elders of Zion" kind of stuff, and besides the occasion kook professor or far left/far right zealot, few people here seem out to "get us." I'm not saying anti-Semitism doesn't exist, just read Pat Buchanan or Alexander Cockburn (the later wrote an entire book about how blaming the Jews for X,Y or Z while openly advocating the wholesale destruction of their state isn't at all anti-Semitic, and anyone who says so is just tying to stymie "legitimate criticism of Israel." A rather funny read in a pathetically self-delusional kind of way.) as evidence of that. I myself have experienced it only twice, and the second time was more ignorant than malicious.
Yet still, part of being a Jew is an acceptance of the "otherness" innate in ourselves and other religions. Part of that "otherness" remains the often violent gulch that twins our mutual pasts; and nothing exemplifies this better than ash on the forehead. This is in contrast to the "oneness" proclaimed by Eastern faiths, a philosophy that sounds nice in theory but as a Jew, I simply cannot abide. This is nothing new, by the way, Jewish thinkers have long drawn distinctions between "oneness" and "otherness" so don't think I'm being terribly original here. Nevertheless, I still believe these concepts must overlap and conjoin.
I'm not going to delve into my Ash Wednesday story, it's rather dull and not pertinent to the point I'm trying to make. The fact that I even have a story to tell is evidence enough of the intractable presence of religious "otherness." None of us will ever be able to remove ourselves from the isolation tract so long as religious anxiety remain unabated.
Paranoid and intolerant? Maybe. And the deeper one's faith the harder it is to sensitize one's self to the pains that divide us. When such seemingly innocuous things like ashes on Ash Wednesday inspire trepidation—no matter how much respect coincides—than things have turned sour on the corner of faith and know-how.
Clearly there is so much more to being a Jew or a Catholic or Muslim or an atheist than the beliefs that divide. No one needs me to tell them that. But don't underestimate the positivity inherent in those very differences that can teach us so much about the world.
