Maayan Rosenfield ’17

“…what’s become clear to me now is that if I show up in liberal spaces, I want to bring my Jewish identity with me.”

Showing Up with My Jewish Identity
I think this is a time full of contradictions, with many battling emotions and identities. It’s a challenge to maintain my liberal commitments and values without neglecting other principles I hold. I want to preserve my ability to empathize with various groups, including Palestinians, and stand up for causes I care about, even though I feel my beliefs and sense of belonging in some of those movements have shifted.

A few years back, there was an LGBTQ march and organizers banned a pride flag with a Jewish star because they said it resembled the Israeli flag. I had been to other similar marches like the Women’s March, and I remember being slightly bothered but okay when I heard about that, thinking we could still focus on rallying together for a shared cause. But what’s become clear to me now is that if I show up in liberal spaces, I want to bring my Jewish identity with me. I want to carry Jewish symbols. It’s important for me to show that, as a Jew, I’m part of that community, too.

This tension between identities continues to manifest in current events. Recently, a professor at Brown was deported. She had attended Nasrallah’s funeral, but it remains unclear if her deportation followed the appropriate process. My brother went to a protest against her deportation, supporting the principle of due process, especially given the recent pattern of questionable deportations. When he arrived at the protest, there were people openly supporting Hezbollah. He thought, this is not what I was expecting the protest to be. He felt really conflicted, wondering: should we protest alongside people like this to stand against something happening in our country that we find awful and illegal? But if they are legitimizing support for Hezbollah, to what extent are we welcome here, and is this even a space we want to be in and support? I have experienced similar conflicts when public health colleagues share articles irrelevant to their work that criticize Israel in ways that draw on anti-Semitic tropes. Do I maintain these relationships given our other shared goals?

These are upsetting examples of what’s going on right now in the U.S., and the broader conflict many are experiencing between liberal and Jewish identities. More fundamentally, it raises the question of what it means to maintain a liberal identity when extreme voices have become louder in certain parts of the movement, leaving many of us wondering where we belong.

Making My Commitments Explicit
I was at home in New York for Sukkot on October 7, visiting my family. As we read the news, my mom literally fell to the floor—she immediately understood the magnitude of what had happened while the rest of us were still processing.

At shul that day, I felt deeply connected to our community. We sang, read poetry, and performed a subdued version of the Hakafot. It was a beautiful moment of coming together as a community, sharing in deep sadness. People cried and many had loved ones directly impacted.

After the Chag ended, I opened my phone and checked social media. The contrast was overwhelming—it was when I first broke. I saw friends celebrating October 7th, something I never expected. I’m generally liberal and had always given campus movements the benefit of the doubt. But seeing outright support for Hamas from people I knew was unimaginable.

I was just as shocked by the silence from my close friends. While many didn’t condone what happened on October 7th, I kept wondering—why hadn’t anyone reached out to check in? I felt deeply betrayed. It took me a long time to come to terms with their silence, to make sense of why so many people reacted the way they did. 

It made me wonder to what extent I had made my commitment to Judaism and Israel apparent in my interactions. I’d become less observant in college, and I wondered if there were ways I was putting aside my Jewish identity in certain spaces. I realized people miss a fundamental piece of me if I’m not showing up as my full self. I have begun to more intentionally share my Jewish identity in liberal or secular spaces, and hope it might encourage people to consider my perspective and show up for my community. While it’s harder now to feel belonging in these various spaces, it feels more important than ever to do what I can to make Israel or America better—as my liberal values push me to do—while maintaining pride in both countries and hope for their future, a sentiment that I think has been lost in some liberal American communities.

This year, after moving back to the East Coast to be closer to them, I’ve had more opportunities to reconnect with the friends who had been silent. I’ve been trying to both give the benefit of the doubt and forgiveness, while also articulating my experiences and making my commitments explicit.

Between Two Worlds: Navigating Jewish Identity and Universalist Values
Like many Jewish Americans, I’ve been navigating being part of a Jewish community in a secular world, trying to figure out when to turn inward towards Jewish community and when to continue pursuing outward, universalist goals.

I work for Medicaid and after October 7th, I questioned why I wasn’t working in a Jewish field, directly serving the Jewish community. It made me reevaluate my career path, which, up to this point, had been guided by universalist values. I started thinking, ‘Should I go to Israel? Why am I not doing something for my people?’ I felt both guilty and lonely.

Then, I went to Israel for a week and a half. The trip filled me with a strong sense of community and belonging—something I had deeply longed for the previous year, when I was dating someone who wasn’t Jewish and living in a community with fewer Jews nearby. 

Upon returning, I further questioned whether I should spend a year in Israel or change my career to serve Jewish community. Soon after, I spoke with my mom, and she said, “I think you’ve been longing for community, and you suddenly found it in Israel. You’ve been missing that in a deep way. But you don’t need to move to Israel or change your career, what you’ve been looking for is community.” I began to tear up, realizing how much this resonated with me. At that moment I understood that I could continue my life on my existing path and still find the community I had been seeking.

I started keeping Shabbat again and moved to Cambridge specifically to be part of a strong, young Jewish community. I’ve recently rediscovered the joy of keeping Shabbat. I’d forgotten how much I loved it. I’ve enjoyed turning towards my Jewish identity as a source of joy. 

However, as I reflected on these questions, I realized I still wanted to stay on my secular career path, staying true to the values I’ve always cared about. I could find smaller ways to contribute to Jewish community, like Tzedakah or smaller community leadership roles, even if that’s not my career. With everything that’s happened recently federally (e.g., significantly cutting federal funding for Medicaid and other social safety net programs), my work for Medicaid feels particularly important. And I remain proud and enjoy living in America, integrated and in dialogue with a diverse community.