Judy Gold - To Judaism and Back

 

 

My mother was born in 1922. When she started grammar school, she would leave every day at 3 o'clock and run across the street to the synagogue to sit in the Hebrew school class. Girls didn't go to Hebrew school. It was 33 boys and one girl. She went every single day for seven years after school and sat in the boys' Hebrew school class voluntarily. 

 

When the boys became bar mitzvah, after they had all become bar mitzvah, they decided they were going to do something a little special and confirm my mother on Shavuot, which is the holiday which tells the story of Ruth. And my mother's name is Ruth. So, they confirmed her at the synagogue, something small. She, of course, called it the first Bar mitzvah, but I looked it up and it was not the first bar mitzvah. [audience chuckles] But she thinks everything she does is just grand.

 

So, when I was growing up, my mother, of course, had a very kosher home. Every Friday night, we had Shabbat dinner. Every Friday night, we went to synagogue. I hated going, but they did have brownies afterwards, which I really enjoyed. We were very religious. I mean, in a conservative way. We had a sukkah in the backyard. My mother would not knit on the weekends, or there were certain things-- I mean, we would drive sometimes, but she kept her little rules. And anytime we used the wrong spoon, meat spoon for dairy, say we used a meat spoon for ice cream, my mother would take a huge screaming fit, the entire neighborhood would wake up. 

 

I don't know if you know this, that you have to actually, in order to re-kosher the utensil, you have to bury it in the earth for three days. So, in our case, we used houseplants. [audience laughter] We grew up with all these Jewish customs and traditions. My mother made us go to Hebrew school. My brother and sister and I, she made us go to Hebrew high school. And I hated it. I hated it so much. I grew up in suburban New Jersey. My mother grew up on the Upper West Side. She would tell me stories about the city and how suburban New Jersey was like living with a bunch of farmers. So, that was really positive and wonderful, but the girls were really kind of jappy. 

 

When it came to bar mitzvah time-- I was already 6 feet tall and in the marching band, so I was really popular. [audience laughter] I was invited to a few bar mitzvah’s, and they were so lavish and over the top. I remember Mindy Weissman came out of a cake with sparklers, very religious. [audience laughter] Lori Blinder rented this entire hall. Everyone had like ball gowns on. They had live bands, virgin daiquiris. It was the most-- people went to Shea Stadium. It was unbelievable.

 

So, when it got to my bar mitzvah, I thought, "All right, this is my time to be cool. I'm going to be popular. I'm going to have a really cool party." My mother said to me, "Listen, Judith, it's not about the party. It's about the religious experience." And I was like, "Ma, look at me, I need this party." [audience laughter] She said, "Too bad, Judith." We had a little dinner before, then my bar mitzvah, then a little dessert after. [audience chuckles] And for the prizes-- They used to give these giveaways. My mother got little change purses for the girls and keychains for the boys. I remained a complete nerd for the rest of my time in suburban New Jersey. I was completely unpopular.

 

I got to high school. It was kind of annoying. My parents were very old. They were 20 years older than most of my friends' parents. They told me everyone hated the Jews on a daily basis. [audience chuckles] Anytime I brought a friend home and I would introduce them, my mother would ask me if I thought they would hide me. [audience laughter] So, I grew up in this paranoid religious household. If the paperboy came to collect his money on Sabbath or on a Jewish holiday, my mother would take a screaming fit at the door. I never ate school lunch because it wasn't kosher. 

 

So, when it became my adolescence and my time to rebel, I started sneaking Burger King in the backyard. I would take newspaper and put it over our picnic table in order to not de-kosher or anything. It was my kosher Switzerland zone. [audience chuckles] And there, I would eat my cheeseburgers. Everyone else was smoking pot and drinking, and I was eating cheeseburgers in the backyard. When I got to college, I thought, "I'm free." I discovered shellfish, [audience chuckles] lobster. I rebelled completely. I was like, "I'm done with this. I am going to assimilate 100%, and that's it. I'm sick of all this crap." 

 

Well, I graduated college. I realized I was gay when I was growing up, but I came out after college to my inner circle. I moved to New York two blocks from where my mother had grown up, and I started doing stand-up comedy.  When I was 27, I was living with my partner, and I had come home that afternoon and there was a message on my answering machine from my mother. She said she thought that my father had a heart attack, that they were at the swim club and that I should come to the hospital. So, I took a shower, and I got in the car, and I drove to New Jersey. By that time, it had been early evening. I walked into the ICU, and there was my mother sitting there in her bathing suit. She still had her bathing suit on. 

 

I brought her home, and I opened the refrigerator, and there was this bowl filled with bean salad that she had made for my father for dinner that evening. And I thought, "My father's never going to eat this bean salad." He was on a life support system for six days. At the end of those six days, when we finally unplugged him, my brother, sister, mother and I were standing around his bed when he took his last breath. We all looked at each other and recited the 23rd Psalm. 

 

When I got home, we met with the rabbi. The funeral was the following morning. And two things I remember at the funeral, is that I was getting picked up in a limo and I thought, "God, I thought the first time I got picked up in a limo, I'd be going to some award show or something, not my father's funeral." I remember the sound of the dirt hitting the coffin and I thought, "This is so final." 

 

We all got home and there's a Jewish custom where you wash your hands after you visit a cemetery. After you go to a funeral, you wash your hands before you enter your home to wash the death off of your hands. So, I followed that custom. I washed my hands. And for seven days, my family and I sat Shiva. Every night, people from all over the community came, and they recited the Mincha service, the Maariv service, and the mourner's Kaddish. The whole community came together. I followed all of these customs. After the seven days, there's another custom where you walk around the block as-- For the first time, not as a mourner. And you re-enter society not as a mourner. 

 

So, my brother had gone home to Arizona, and my mother and I and my sister decided we were going to take this walk around the block. We took our walk. And on that walk, I thought to myself, "What would I have done the past two weeks if I didn't have Judaism? I wouldn't have known what to do. I know how to mourn and now I know how to enter society not as a mourner." I decided I was going to go wherever I was doing stand-up, I was going to find a synagogue and go say mourner's Kaddish every Saturday. So, I went on the road, Cleveland, Albuquerque, Boston, and I would look up Conservative synagogues. 

 

Meanwhile, all night I'm cursing over the sound of a blender in a comedy club, people smoking and calling me a dyke. [audience laughter] And then, Saturday morning, I would get up and I'd put on a skirt and I call a cab and I'd go say mourner's Kaddish for my father. I remember thinking, "I know all these songs." I remember looking at the people thinking, "God, I know everything that's in their refrigerator." [audience laughter] Well, a few years later, my partner and I decided that we were going to have children. We got an anonymous sperm donor. I looked at the religion catalog and picked a Jew. I decided to kosher my kitchen, because that's how I had grown up and I decided that I wanted my son to have Friday night dinners just like I had growing up. 

 

So, we started this tradition where I didn't work on Friday nights and my kitchen was kosher. I would scream anytime someone used the wrong utensil, but I did not put them in the plants. I couldn't deal with that. [audience laughter] But plus, we live in New York and I don't even have any plants, so I don't know what I'm talking about. But I embraced this whole tradition, even though I had the most non-traditional life that anyone could have. 

 

Last year, Henry, my older son-- I enrolled them both in Hebrew school, because I have to go to Hebrew school, they have to go to Hebrew school. [audience chuckles] Henry is 14, Ben is 9, and they both go to Hebrew school. And last year, Henry became a bar mitzvah. My partner and I had broken up a few years earlier, and I had met a nice Jewish therapist. We are in a relationship. My partner is in a relationship with someone else as well. When I introduced my mother to my partner, we went out to lunch, and my mother said she wanted to pick up the check and asked if I could go into her purse and get out her change purse. I went inside and there was the change purse from my bar mitzvah. 

 

A year later, Henry became a Bar mitzvah. We went to synagogue, and he stood on the bimah and his four moms, his two moms and his two stepmoms [audience laughter] stood on either side of him. [audience laughter] I opened the ark, he took out the Torah, and he started walking around the synagogue before he read his Torah portion. I walked behind him, and everyone kept going in my face saying, "Mazel tov, mazel tov, mazel tov, mazel tov." I just was overwhelmed with emotion. He brought the Torah back to the bimah, and he put it down, and it was the same bimah that his grandmother had got confirmed on 74 years before. I thought to myself, "Oh my God, I am the ultimate Jewish mother. I have created a Jewish man."