Almost a year ago, I wrote my first real post for JVoices, which generated more response than anything else I’ve written. The original story is here, if you haven’t read it.

One of the basic tenets of Judaism, as far as I’m concerned, is that no matter what you do, someone will always tell you how to do it better. Whether it’s the flowers on the bimah, your repetition of the amidah, your High Holiday outfits, or your kashrut, someone else will always tell you with horrified delight that you’re not doing it right. Forget “two Jews - three opinions,” the truth is that “two Jews - three criticisms” makes more sense. And the guy who confronted me in New York didn’t pull me aside quietly to give me his opinion, as the shul-going kvetchers do; he made it an unnecessarily public chastisement.

So it’s a year later, I’m living in Jerusalem, and my observance level has increased, but I still think that the interaction shoud never have happened. I walk around Jerusalem wearing my kippah on shabbat, and I arrive at my ulpan early each weekday morning with tefillin marks clearly visible on my arm… and I walk by many, many orthodox Jews on the way. Not one of them has ever commented on my “outlandish” behavior.

The interesting thing is that even though I now keep shabbat and kashrut, there are still people who insist that I’m not doing enough. And generally, these people are still not from particularly observant backgrounds. One morning this past week I overheard a woman first denounce Reform Judaism as not being “really Jewish,” and later in the same conversation say nearly the same thing about the Ultra-Orthodox. When she started vehemently railing against Reform rabbis for performing same-sex marriages, I got up and left; there are some battles that just aren’t worth the blood pressure points - but it was obvious that she had a strong internal idea about what “real” Judaism was, and nothing was going to change it. (and she obviously hasn’t heard yet that her own Conservative movement has begun sanctioning same-sex marriages as well!)

Two weeks ago a new comment was posted on the original post, in which Shimon makes an excellent suggestion:

I would like to think we could encourage each other in less sanctimonious ways. (You could have invited this fellow to crack open the siddur with you in shul that day, or he might have encouraged you to skip the latte and offer it up as tzedakah instead). Still might (seem) judgemental, but if you can turn the moment into a collective mitzvah, ah!

I really love this idea of inviting people along to see what you’re doing when they criticize you for doing it, and I wonder what would have happened if we had invited him along for services. Now I’m in Jerusalem, where wearing my rainbow kippah around town is a big deal because I’m a woman wearing a kippah, and the rainbow doesn’t even register to most people. But if I do get any negative comments from the peanut gallery, maybe I’ll try inviting them along to my egalitarian shul. Even if they don’t accept the invite, I wonder how much it will affect their ideas about Jewish practice to know that they are welcome at my shul, even though I probably wouldn’t be welcome at theirs.