Weeks before I met my husband, I went to Israel on a
Birthright trip and pranced down twisting streets belting out Hebrew songs,
swept up in the fervor of the group. I shared my feelings in drum circles and
slipped a note into the Western Wall expressing the hope that I’d find love that
year. When my wish came true, the trip was so fresh in my mind that I could recount to Josh in detail the spectacle we’d made of ourselves, dancing through the desert in some proto-flash mob. When he joined me in rolling his eyes, I loved him even more.
But when I confided my belief that my prayer wedged into the Kotel had brought us together, he snapped: “I don’t buy that.” It was a J-Date algorithm, not mysticism, that resulted in our brief courtship and prompt engagement. It was the first instance of my faith colliding with his skepticism. But he wasn’t just skeptical; he was a staunch atheist.
Granted, I’d never dated someone unabashedly religious. My ex-boyfriends had all partaken of the “boys will be Jewish boys” tradition: hiding in bathroom stalls to avoid Hebrew school, listening to the World Series on headsets hidden under their yarmulkes at Yom Kippur. But they drew the line at renouncing their faith, and their behavior seemed more rooted in mischief or even ambivalence than flat out non-belief.
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