The Other

It took me a few days to remember a time when I felt like a minority. Being a white, heterosexual female, I am usually within the majority of every locality I occupy.

My hometown of Burlington, Wi has a racial makeup of 92.8% white. Every teacher I had growing up was white. The vast majority of my peers in school and youth group were white. And almost all of my friends growing up were white; not by choice, but by circumstance.

Additionally, being heterosexual meant that I never feared that I would not be able to marry the person I love. Nor did I ever feel the need to “come out.” It was always assumed, to my understanding, that I was straight.

And although being a female can be argued as being a minority, I never felt like I was, strictly because I was a female. Almost all of the jobs I have held can be referred to as “female-orientated” or stereotyped being strictly for women.

But the one and only time that I have felt like a fish out of water, was when I attended services at my husband’s synagogue for the first time.

Not only was my hometown known for being white, its population only believed in Christianity, and I was raised to do the same. My mother raised my brother and I to be Catholic. One of my closest’s high school friends is Catholic, the other is Lutheran, a few people I went to school with were Mormon, and that is just about the extent to the variety of religions to choose from.

So when I went to college and met my husband, he was the first Jewish person I had ever met in my entire life. And as we got closer, he invited me to take part in his synagogue’s Friday night service.

As I walked through the doors, I immediately felt like I did not belong. Almost as if the congregation could sense that I was not of the Jewish faith. No member of the temple ever did or said anything to me to make me feel this way, but it was because of my own knowledge that I was different. And as the services went on, the feeling of being “the other” loomed heavy on me, especially during moments that were sung or spoken in Hebrew.

But the one thought that could not escape me, was that I wished someone would reach out and tell me that I belonged there. I longed for a member of the congregation to validate my existence within their crowd, but it never happened.

And I don’t blame any of them, I still to this day am unsure if they knew that I was not Jewish. But it was enough to me that I knew, and that made all the difference.

This experience taught me to look out for those outsiders, or those who feel removed from the circle. Everybody, at some point in their lives, has felt like “the other.” And because of this, I feel it is important to be especially astute to the surroundings of a gathering and be consciously aware to avoid exclusivity.

Besides, as humans, we are all part of the same crowd.

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