I recently traveled from where I live, Oakland, to my hometown of Atlanta. When the plane landed at the airport, I went to the women’s room. On my way out, the bathroom attendant gave me a brilliant smile and said, “Have a blessed day and a happy Easter.”
After a few seconds of cognitive dissonance (where was I again?), I warmed up all over. The South is so open about religion, Jesus is even in the bathroom. I was home.
Religion is so front-and-center in the South. There are churches everywhere. In my hometown, it is illegal to sell alcohol on Sunday. Everyone wishes you a “Merry Christmas” at checkout; there is no debate.
Growing up Jewish, I naturally struggled with where I fit into the culture. The idea that religion — and a religion that wasn’t mine — peppered everyday conversation made me feel left out and invisible. The Christian youth group met in my public high school on weekday afternoons. To boot, I was tiny, brainy and Semitic-looking. I didn’t worship like anyone else I knew, and I sure as heck didn’t look like them either.
Like many Jews, I went through every manner of reactive phase to overt Christianity: feeling proselytized to, talking back (“I don’t celebrate Christmas. I celebrate Chanukah”) — and spending hours in the gospel tent at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
Though I was always engaged in the struggle of how to piece it all together, it wasn’t until my adult life (and participation as a fellow in the Wexner Heritage Program) that I realized the dominant culture may dominate the culture, but it doesn’t own the conversation about religion or anyone’s relationship with God.
I started talking out loud and in public about my relationship with my religion, my religious institutions, my holy books, my cuisine and, yes, my God. What a liberation! Through publicly owning my own sentiments about my religion, I get to join the discourse. Moreover, I gained a deeply satisfying appreciation for my childhood culture that was dominated by a real, visceral, physical and present-tense relationship with God, albeit the Christian version of the deity.
As Jews, we may not talk about “having a blessed day,” or “calling up God on the phone” or “being so blessed.” But we certainly have our share of those feelings every day: when we see our children, when we eat delicious food, when we puzzle through life’s quandaries.
I now know that when I visit the South, wishes for God-filled days are a way of sharing the bliss of trust in the order of things and of gratitude for their existence. They are part of what visitors say about how nice people are in the South.
And if a woman who works in a bathroom at an airport can spread that sentiment, then so can I.
The folks in Georgia are nice partially because they’re in conversation with the Divine every day. It’s like keeping kosher or doing yoga: a daily, conscious practice that aims to remind you of everything for which you are grateful.
When I receive these warm wishes, it now gives me a chance to reflect, in my very Jewish way, upon my blessings. I am so blessed! And I bet you are, too.
Shira Levine of Oakland is president of Fanchismo, an online community strategy consultancy. She chairs the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s innovation committee, serves on Urban Adamah’s board and is a past board member of American Jewish World Service.