I moved to NYC in 2019 to go to rabbinical school. The reasons why I thought that was a good idea and the reasons why I would make a terrible clergyperson in the existing system aren’t relevant here, but it was a goal I believed in passionately and sacrificed greatly trying to make it happen. I loved Judaism so much and found a home in it and wanted to help other experience the same. It’s ironic, then, that moving to NYC and rabbinical school destroyed my relationship to Judaism.
Before we get to how things are for me now, let’s step back and look at a snapshot of me before packing up to move here. The backstory doesn’t matter so much, but where my Judaism was in that moment matters greatly. Judaism was my life. I worked for a Jewish nonprofit, specifically with Jewish clients and the Jewish community. Almost all of my friends, including online, were Jewish. My free time reading was all theology and I met regularly with the rabbi to learn Mishnah. I kept kosher with very little complaint. I moved the prior year within walking distance of my shul so I could observe more traditionally. I was at every Friday night service, most Saturday mornings, and a pretty regular attendee at Saturday afternoon/evening services. I sat on committees, led a queer group, planned Pride Shabbat, helped an initiative to increase minyan attendance, and probably even more than that. When I say it was my life, I really do me that it was my life. And I was happy enough with that fact to drop everything and go to rabbinical school.
But things fell apart pretty much immediately. Aside from a few good Friday services at a popular shul, I struggled to find any sort of religious community. They were all too big for someone as self-conscious and introverted as 2019 me. The people connectors that were so key in me becoming part of the community I just left didn’t seem to exist here and I couldn’t seem to sustain conversations without that help. I felt like an awkward outsider where ever I went, so it wasn’t too long before I stopped going. Of course this damaged my sense of community, but the real loss with my spiritual life.
Kabbalat Shabbat services were the core of my spiritual life, the moments I had an emotional connection with God that helped sustain me throughout the week. It had always been a flaw in my spirituality that I couldn’t access it otherwise, but it was pretty easy to ignore it before I moved. The services at my shul were consistent and exactly what I was looking for and therefore became accustomed to. There was some variation and experimentation, but I generally knew what to expect and reliably had deep spiritual moments. It was very place and person specific, so I found myself incapable of accessing that spirituality when I moved.
To make matters worse, this occurred at the same time as a serious mental crisis. I was suffering immensely and unable to find any relief. My medication wasn’t working and the prescriber I got after a coverage gap didn’t believe me, despite my therapist pleading with her to help me. My therapist couldn’t soothe me. I couldn’t soothe me. Maybe it wouldn’t have ultimately made a difference, but I didn’t even have spirituality and God anymore to soothe me when they had before.
I entered Yom Kippur that year unable to be in a religious community. I davened on my own and sobbed the entire time because I no longer felt God. I had feelings of being punished and God turning away from me, but the dominant feeling was one of absence. God was just…gone. I was ashamed because here I was training to be a rabbi and God was gone. I tried to talk about it with a couple of trusted people, but the only response that resonated was a friend (and a rabbi) telling me that there was no shame in leaving NYC to return to my prior community. My relationship to God and Judaism was without question more important than rabbinical school, but I talked myself into staying.
It was too late anyway. God’s absence opened my eyes to a lot of the things about Judaism and the Jewish community that I was ignoring out of love. I was experiencing oppression and discrimination across several identities that only continued to escalate before I ultimately dropped out of rabbinical school. I saw how others suffered the same oppression and discrimination, often worse than I did and in even more ways. I experienced continuing and worsening alienation from the Jewish community. I learned the hard truths behind the nice lies we tell about queer inclusion and feminism and, unlike my peers, I wasn’t able to reconcile the stated beliefs with the actual laws and ultimately refused to do so. I saw the ways in which those around me held personal views that didn’t align with their public views. I looked at my own values and found them wildly detached from what I was being told to believe and share with others. And, on top of it all, I found myself interacting with a Judaism devoid of emotion when that had been my primary relationship to Judaism and ultimately God.
So, for those and many more reasons, I walked away from all of it. I dropped out of rabbinical school. I stopped keeping kosher, aside from preparing kosher meals in my shared apartment (if moving wasn’t so expensive…). I don’t observe Shabbat at all, like working and doing commerce level of non-observance. I can’t remember the last time I even tried to daven and it’s been months since I even bothered to think about going to shul, in person or online. Working outside of Jewish contexts, I interact with and befriend people who aren’t Jewish far more often than anyone who is. My dating/sexual relationships have exclusively been with men who are not Jewish.
“Um….are you even Jewish then?”
Yes. There is no undo on conversion, as much as I’m sure there are people out there who would love to invalidate my conversion just because of how it’s working out right now. Of course, this story generates a lot of questions, especially about how I relate to things now. How I explain it to myself and those who ask is that I’m Jewish, emphasis on the “ish”. And when they ask if I believe in God? Probably, but we don’t talk anymore. God left and I stopped talking to Them because the absence and the injustice hurt too much to try anymore.
This is the first in what will become an ongoing series processing how I went from a deeply religious Jew coming to NYC for rabbinical school to someone that is very much alienated from the community. See below for other posts in the series.
Michael Faccini 
One response to “God and I Don’t Talk Anymore”
[…] This is part of what will ultimately be an ongoing series processing how I went from a deeply religious Jew moving to NYC for rabbinical school to someone who is Jew-ish and actively alientated from Judaism. See the initial post here. […]
LikeLike