So, in May of this year, we finally embarked on our decidedly 'non-Jewish' round the world trip. But, in every country to which we went, we had moments where we were clearly reminded of our religion and in a different way each time. We were surprised at how often this happened and how Jewish we were made to feel at certain times. We both live in North West London, an affluent Jewish area of England. Although we didn't go to a Jewish school, and didn't have only Jewish friends, we were both completely used to being around people who understood that we didn't eat sausages, or go out on Friday nights -- all of our non-Jewish friends would have no trouble understanding words like Shabbat, shlep, or heder (Hebrew School)! While travelling, however, we were constantly forced to remember our Jewishness in ways we didn't think we would -- from eating out, to politics, to the words we used, we realized that our religion is more a part of who we are than we had previously thought.

The first stop on our trip was Japan, which was definitely the most difficult and so the most rewarding. In Japan, you are clearly marked out as a tourist by your appearance alone, and it is no coincidence that the Japanese word for a foreigner is gaijin, or barbarian. We found ourselves constantly stared at in the streets, discussed, giggled at, photographed, and even patted on the head and often felt that we were the first westerners that some people had ever seen. With our dark curly hair, pale skin, and unfamiliar eyes, not to mention our relatively loud voices, we were always a center of attention.

The most difficult thing about being Jewish in Japan was definitely the whole eating thing. We are both from a secular background and we will eat non-kosher meat, but not pork or shellfish. As I'm sure many of you know, it's usually really easy to find items on a menu that don't contain those ingredients, right? Well, it gets a little more difficult when the menu is in Japanese, and you're in a sushi restaurant. We quickly picked up the words for 'vegetables' and 'rice' and would keep repeating them to the frustrated waiter until he understood. This was usually successful, as far as we know, but frankly, we could have been eating anything. I know that on one occasion at least, I bit into what I thought was a vegetable dumpling and found a small purple tentacle in my mouth. Interesting...

While our unfamiliarity with the culture and language was usually amusing as opposed to irritating, by the end of our three weeks there, we found ourselves tired of our 'otherness' and wanted to be somewhere where we weren't so obviously different. So we went to Australia, where, reassuringly, we weren't the only people in the country with curly hair.

Australia is very similar to England and America -- English speaking, easygoing, tolerant, and multi-cultural. Strangely enough, the only time our religion was made an issue was among other English people. We took a trip out to Fraser Island, a rainforest island off the coast of Northern Australia, which meant being put into a group with 9 strangers, being given a Jeep, a tent, and a shopping list, and being told to get on with it. As you might be able to guess, it required spending 3 days in a very confined space with people we had never met before. We explained to the guys who had volunteered to cook for the group that we didn't eat pork, and they said they would buy us chicken for our sandwiches, and beef sausages, so no problem there.

However, there were also four girls in our car, the same age as us, who had all been to the same Catholic school, and had evidently never met anyone Jewish before. They noticed on our first day that we weren't eating ham, and when they asked us why, we told them that it was because we were Jewish. This was, to our amazement, an absolutely foreign concept to them. As I already said, we are used to dealing with non-Jews who live in a culturally diverse community, and understand Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and various other dietary laws. But these girls just didn't know what to make of us. They asked us how long we had been Jewish, whether we 'got married' or 'even call it married,' and if we spoke another language. It was a real shock to us. The girls weren't anti-Semitic or racist in any way, and they didn't think badly of us for being Jewish -- they just couldn't understand it. We may as well have been from Mars. It was a real reminder to us that we are a minority, and that we have no right to expect anyone else to be familiar with our traditions and laws, and similarly, we probably don't understand other people's cultures as much as we'd like to. We also realized that our behavior shaped the way that those girls will view Jews for the rest of their lives -- that's a huge responsibility that we didn't even know we had taken on. And, I suppose, in a small way, as members of an ethnic minority, we take on that responsibility every day.

The other and most significant 'Jewish incident' of our trip was spending Rosh HaShanah in Cuba. Unfortunately, I was asked by the community there not to say too much about it in any kind of publication, because it could cause trouble for them with their government. But I can tell you that we were lucky enough to be able to spend one of the most important times of the Jewish year with a small, but fantastic, community. They made us feel like part of their families and insisted we stay for meals and talk to them. We were told amazing stories, and wished we could do more to help these people, who, in a short space of time, had come to feel like members of our own families. Like everyone in Cuba, the people we met were desperately poor and unable to buy even basic medical items and children's toys. Because of the regime, it is also impossible to send supplies to them by post - they pretty much have to be smuggled in by people posing as tourists. [If you want to find out more about helping the Jews of Cuba (and they do really need our help) then please look on the Internet at www.jewishcuba.org for more information.]

Without wanting to criticize my many friends who did choose to spend a year in Israel, I hope that I have shown here that it is not only possible, but easier in many ways, to increase your Jewish identity without taking part in Jewish-run program and activities. There is a definite value in remembering that we are a minority, and I believe that it is only by increasing our understanding of other cultures that we can truly appreciate our own.

[Re-posted 07/15/07; originally posted 12/5/02]