By Ed Harris, Jewish Sound Columnist
I recently visited Los Angeles, which delivered a sharp reminder, in the form of spectacular weather, that I don’t live there. Every choice we make represents a set of tradeoffs. Seattle is glorious — for at best six months of the year. The rest of the time we try to convince ourselves we don’t mind a climate so gray, damp and cold that the chill doesn’t merely impact our bodies but goes down to our very souls. If it weren’t for the constant traffic and endless sprawl, Southern California would outrank Seattle easily in every category, especially given its large Jewish community. Plus, their extensive network of medical marijuana clinics makes pot as widely available there as here, so we don’t even enjoy a hipness edge.
Jewish life in Seattle is similarly tolerable, as long as you don’t mind (except for Seward Park residents) being a permanent minority, like an Ethiopian immigrant in Minnesota. Being outnumbered doesn’t matter much, as Puget Sounders are generally polite, respectful and welcoming of diversity. On the other hand, I miss the casual banter of being told by a colleague at my old job in New York, when he saw my car for the first time, “Oh, I see you bought a Ford tsuris.”
At a recent job I worked for a company with several hundred employees. We had, to my knowledge, one other Jew on the staff, who as it happened lived in Seward Park and maintained a shomer Shabbat lifestyle. My boss noticed I requested time off for all the Jewish holidays (well, maybe not all of them: I dutifully reported to work on Tisha B’av, Lag B’omer and the second day of Sukkot) and one day asked me if I was as “religious” as my colleague.
I considered briefly going into a detailed response regarding the various categories of commandments, including purely ethical ones that are not as immediately observable as wearing a kippah. Just as putting on a helmet does not automatically turn you into a football player, choosing to don a skullcap (knitted, black, etc.) does not automatically mean you refrain from gossip or use honest weights and measures in business dealings. I decided for the sake of office politics to avoid the lengthy philosophical discourse and simply reply, “No,” the other Jewish guy was more religious.
Back in 1990, when I began my first job in Seattle, my daughter Gabriela was a tiny baby. A colleague asked if we were excited about her first Christmas. I explained our family had a different religious tradition. This coworker had heard of Hanukkah, but had not yet worked with anyone who actually observed the Festival of Lights. My Jewishness was as quaint as wooden shoes.
In Los Angeles, as in other Jewish centers — New York, Florida, Tel Aviv — one can be Jewish by osmosis, no effort required. You don’t have to get in your car and drive to shul for contact with fellow Jews — you are constantly surrounded by them. Here, the Jewish community is a shtetl, albeit distributed across a large geography.
I have a friend who is a descendant of one of the founding Sephardic families from Rhodes that first established the Jewish community in the Emerald City. She said that as a teen growing up, all the boys in her social circle were distantly related cousins, and therefore unsuitable romantic interests.
Another young woman I know moved from Seattle to a large East Coast city simply because she had run out of local Jews to date and wanted to find some new prospects. She succeeded in implementing her plan, and today is a married mom. I imagine women in Los Angeles are as disappointed in men as women everywhere, but they don’t have to relocate because they’ve exhausted the supply of local Jews.
If things hold true to form the weather will turn nice again in a mere five months. Until then, I’ll have to content myself with going to synagogue, one place I can be confident I’ll find some Jews to socialize with. Fortunately, I’ve already found my romantic interest, so that particular Seattle limitation doesn’t affect me.
Ed Harris, the author of “Fifty Shades of Schwarz” and several other books, was born in the Bronx and lives in Bellevue with his family. His blog, Fizz-Ed, and additional information about his books are available at www.edharrisauthor.com.