It\u2019s impossible to meet Devorah Ahavah Gerzoff and not sense her vibrant energy.<\/p>\n
Born Jewish, she came to embrace her Jewish identity very slowly. Gerzoff explained that she was raised in a household that didn\u2019t celebrate Jewish holidays. \u201cI\u2019ll often say [about] my parents, though not communists, it was as if we were being raised in a household without real religion, because we didn\u2019t celebrate holidays at all, of any kind, really. Birthdays. That was it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we didn\u2019t go to synagogue. We couldn\u2019t afford it, but it was more than that. There was no interest in it. And my father was very sickly [due to childhood illness]. He had a heart condition all his life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t have a car, there was no money, and there were no celebrations. It was very sad, but I didn\u2019t feel like I was missing out because none of my friends were too observant, either.\u201d<\/p>\n
She grew up in suburban Philadelphia in a neighborhood she described as \u201cdominated by Jewish population but not religious at all.\u201d When she was 10, her father, just 50, passed away. And a donation someone made in his honor to plant a tree in Israel was her first encounter with the country that would become her home seven decades later.<\/p>\n
Her entire Jewish identity was based on cultural identification. \u201cI identified as Jewish because [the family was] Jewish, but it had nothing to do with rabbis or education or anything. It was just a good feeling of having family around and Jewish music and something nice to celebrate.\u201d<\/p>\n
She married in her 20s and, early in her only pregnancy, her beloved brother died. Gerzoff didn\u2019t have any spiritual resources upon which to rely.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was an English teacher, and writing poetry became a sort of therapy for me. It was a consolation in dealing with death, my father\u2019s death when I was 10, and my brother\u2019s death when I was newly pregnant with my daughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have faith in God. Nobody talked about God, except when somebody sneezed, they would say, \u2018God bless you.\u2019 I love to be funny about it. If something bad shouldn\u2019t happen, they\u2019d all say, \u2018God forbid.\u2019 That was the extent of the honorable mention that our creator of the universe would get.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gerzoff had no Jewish education whatsoever… until her \u201cdaughter\u2019s friends were having bat mitzvahs, and I wanted her to have one. You always want to give your children something you didn\u2019t have. You want them to have new and better. Any [Jewish] education she would get was more than I had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rediscovering Judaism<\/p>\n
At that stage, the now-divorced mother sent her daughter to Hebrew school at the Reform synagogue in their small New Jersey town. Her ex-husband \u201ckind of had the same upbringing. It wasn\u2019t important to him, but he didn\u2019t fight me on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once her daughter started studying about her Jewish heritage, Gerzoff said to herself, \u201cGeez, if I\u2019m pushing her to learn something, what\u2019s the matter with me? Why aren\u2019t I doing something for myself? It began very gradually; I looked into educating myself about my faith.\u201d<\/p>\n