On Being an Animist and a Jew

“You can’t be both an animist and a good Jew” the self-appointed spiritual teacher, and author, hissed at me on the phone a few years ago.

I didn’t know how to respond.

She was referring to one of my dear friends, whose manuscript I’d asked her to edit.

Though she’d agreed months before, she now was refusing to do the work after reading it, stating that the author “embodied the Patriarchy.”

The writer is both an animist and a Jew.

She is also dear to me.

I didn’t know what to say, so I got off the phone feeling like somehow I had something to apologize for.

The shame of those words coming out of her mouth made me feel nauseous and shut down.

“I’m an animist and an invisible Jew. “ I thought to myself.

A few months ago, after shifting back and forth in my mind about going through with my conversion, my Jewish mother Jane asked me about my hesitancy.

I had initially seemed so clear about my decision.

I offered her many excuses, such as not having enough time to take the required classes, being certain I couldn’t learn Hebrew, and the fact that the brilliant female rabbi at the shul we attend is retiring, and I didn’t think I’d like any other rabbi as much.

Jane remained quiet as I talked, probably because she knows better than to confront me head on when I’m defending my own denial.

There was something else. Something that began to dislodge.

Something I’d intentionally, publicly, masked.

Since I was thirteen years old, I have known that, not only do I have a Jewish soul, but also, that I had a past life in Europe during the Holocaust.

I remembered it the first time I heard about the Holocaust, when we watched the mini-series with Meryl Streep in the 8th grade.

Afterwards, I could not get out of bed or go to school the next day.

Even now, when I read books and watch movies that move me, touch me or make me cry, the ones that shatter me, that I leave the theater with, that haunt me forever, are about the Holocaust.

And yet, I cannot leave them behind. I cannot stop watching them, even when they prevent me from functioning for days after.

The night after Trump was elected, like so many of us attuning to the fractal of fascism that had been unleashed in our collective history, the first thing I did was to book a flight to D.C. with my daughter, to go to the Holocaust Memorial. I was frantic to look at the timelines on the wall there, the ones that show the rise and fall of the Third Reich. I needed to confirm what I was sensing, in that space, not alone at home in New Mexico. Because, I was terrified and knew that I’d felt this way before.

When I was with my second Jewish husband, before I married Cid, I learned how to cook traditional foods, tentatively began to explore conversion, and made Shabbat dinner for us every week.

I also felt desperate to raise my daughter as a Jew.

His mother joked that if I converted, he’d have to as well.

When she said it, the whole room laughed.

Only to me, it wasn’t funny.

His lack of his desire to live as an observant Jew, coupled with his inability to stay faithful to me, was a blow.

Around the same time, I met a Jewish filmmaker who had made a documentary about the Occupation of Palestine, also a special interest, bordering on obsession of mine.

She was quite magical and spoke of Jewish mysticism and the Kabbalah.

I confided in her that I knew I was a Jew, despite the fact my mother and father’s families are from England, Ireland, Scotland, and France.

I shared with her that not only was I fixated on the Holocaust, not only did I marry into not one, but two Jewish families, and not only would I never consider having a child with a man who wasn’t Jewish, but I had actual, somatic memories the first time I visited Austria as well as each time I stepped foot in Germany, even if only on a layover between flights.

The filmmaker paused.

She then told me that she had heard that many European Jewish women, Polish in particular, who had been so shattered by the trauma of the Holocaust, that they had reincarnated into gentile families in the next lifetime, seeking safety.

Later, some realized their mistake and were trying to find their way back to the tribe.

A little bell went off in my head, a bell I’ve carried with me all of the years since: “Yes, that is me.”

I knew that I had been Austrian, not Polish, based on the way my feet joyfully remembered the cobblestone streets when I first arrived in Vienna on a business trip at the age of twenty-five, but everything else about the story was the same.

After my heartbreaking divorce to the second Jewish husband, fifteen years ago, I committed to my own deep Ancestral retrieval path.

That, in turn, ultimately led me on a journey outside of time to retrieve my magic–Old magic.And a deep yearning to find my way back.

When I finally shared this all with Jane a few months ago, I ended up sobbing hysterically over Facetime. I could barely breathe and was gulping for air. Her witnessing and most importantly, believing me, ended a life of self doubt and feeling out of my right place. My journey to belonging had begun.

On Yom Kippur morning, this year, I woke up crying again, this time in my Manhattan hotel room. I was in New York to attend services with Jane later in the day.

What I uncovered under my tears was a sense of profound shame, coupled with existential pain, that I had abandoned my people, my community, and my tribe, though it occurred in another lifetime.

I felt the desire to apologize to every Jew in the world, past, present, and future that I was sorry for leaving. I realized that I’d rather be with my people, no matter how great the risk, or terror, or Anti-Semitism.

In a break-out session during the services, I had the opportunity to share my conversion story with the rabbi and a group of members.

Several women came up to me afterwards with such warmth and welcoming.

I realized that it has always been in the presence of Jewish matriarchs that I have felt most at home. It’s also where I have always seen myself looking back at me.

Other Jewish women don’t find me to be too much.

Instead, it’s where I’m celebrated and where I’ve always been celebrated. There’s no “trying.”

Once I was able to consciously grieve and make amends in my heart, not necessarily to G-d, but to my global family of Jews, even the ones I vehemently disagree with, even the ones who would dismiss me, and certainly to the ones who have always embraced me, I felt settled.

After the services, I felt ecstatic.

My wonderful somatic therapist, Jan, a Jew and an animist herself, tells me that she finds it fascinating, even revelatory, that Jewishness brings me such pleasure and joy.

Sometimes she laughs in amazement.

I like making her laugh–she is so full of goodness and always reminds me that I already belong.

The return to my Jewishness is my most mystical story of all.

It took a lot of Spirits, on a lot of timelines and a lot of miracles to get me here. The entire journey has only deepened my magic.

Hebrew is, in fact, a language of old magic. Yiddish too.

And, Kabbalah?

One of the most enduring magical systems on the planet.

So, yes, one can be a good Jew and an Animist.

I’m on my way.