Would you choose to be Jewish? - opinion

Have you ever stopped to think: if you weren’t born Jewish, would you choose to be Jewish?

If you’re honest, the answer might be no. Why would anyone opt in? Ours is a people eternally persecuted, mistrusted, and hated. Our homeland is a pariah among nations. Our religion – at least on the surface – is a maze of restrictions: 613 mitzvot (commandments), including 365 “do nots,” one for every day of the year. It’s hardly the pitch for a “feel-good” lifestyle.

And yet, here we are. Most of you reading this were born Jewish. You didn’t get a choice. But maybe that makes the question even more urgent. If Judaism has been handed to us by accident of birth, how do we transform that inheritance into something chosen, something lived deliberately and proudly – rather than passively or resentfully?

I was confronted with this question in a powerful way just a couple of weeks ago. I had the privilege of teaching a group of young Nigerian men and women – students, engineers, accountants, lawyers – aged between 20 and 40 who had come together for a week of intensive Jewish study. They were highly educated, deeply intelligent, and above all, thirsty for Torah.

These were people desperate to be recognized as Jews. They believe themselves to be descendants of the lost tribe of Gad, exiled by the Assyrians around 720 BCE. Whether or not history bears that out is moot at this point, but what struck me most was their sincerity, their searching, their joy.

They are not chasing Judaism for status, or family habit, or out of the dull routine so many of us fall into. They are not hoping it will make them popular in the world – if anything, black Jews may be among the most discriminated against minorities imaginable. And yet, they come to Torah out of love. Out of choice.

When I taught them, their questions sparkled with purity. They had no interest in our endless divisions. They didn’t know or care about black hats versus knitted kippot (skullcaps) or no kippot, religious labels, or denominational politics. They simply wanted to live Torah, to embrace the commandments, to be part of the nation of Israel.

They face enormous hurdles on that path – bureaucratic, religious, and yes, racist. The rabbinic establishment in Israel and elsewhere has often met them with suspicion and elitism rather than open arms. But I’ll leave that conversation for another day.

The point is this: these young Nigerians, who might seem so far from us, hold up a mirror to our own Jewish lives. They remind us of something we forget too easily: that Judaism must be chosen.

For us, it was “handed to us on a silver platter.” We were born into it. But is that why we value it – or why we take it for granted?

Each of us, in every generation, faces the same challenge: how to make Judaism deliberate rather than passive. For some, that means choosing to give rather than take when we come to shul. For others, it means educating our children not to see mitzvot as chores, but as opportunities to live with blessing. For Israelis, it may mean treating the defense of the nation not as someone else’s problem but as a sacred responsibility – sending our children to the front when necessary.

The point is not that our choices look identical. Jews in London, in Jerusalem, in New York – in Lagos, Nigeria – all face different challenges. But every Jew everywhere is summoned to the same underlying question: will I drift along in my Jewishness, or will I embrace it as my own?

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo has called the alternative “existential dullness” – a spiritual inertia where we do just enough to look Jewish, but never enough to feel Jewish. It is the dull ache of a people that lives its heritage out of habit rather than love.

I’ll confess: I wrestle with this choice, too. On a recent work trip to the UK, I had to visit a bank in a neighborhood with a strong Muslim presence. As I walked down the street, I hesitated: would I wear my kippah openly, or slip a baseball cap on top and try to pass unnoticed?

It wasn’t a hypothetical decision – it was a moment of truth. Was I going to live my Jewishness deliberately, or tuck it away for safety?

I thought of those young Nigerians. What would the Bnei Gad do? They would never hide their Jewishness – not after fighting so hard to embrace it.

That, perhaps, is their gift to us. Those who come to Judaism from the outside, perhaps a lost tribe – who labor through the tests and the paperwork and the skepticism, remind those of us on the inside of what we so easily forget: that Judaism is worth choosing.

It is worth choosing even when it is hard; worth choosing even when the world despises us; worth choosing even when mitzvot feel like restrictions, because they are actually pathways to blessing.

The Torah itself commands this: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life.” (Deuteronomy 30:19)

Too often we read those words as if they were meant for someone else – our ancestors, maybe, standing on the edge of the Jordan. But they are addressed to each of us, every day.

As Rosh Hashanah approaches, this question could not be more urgent. The High Holy Days are not about nostalgia or ritual alone; they are about choice. They ask: What does it mean to me to be Jewish? How am I going to celebrate that Jewishness, not resent it? How am I going to live it, not just inherit it?

The people from Lagos and beyond whom I met on Zoom while sitting in my offices in Israel and the UK showed me that this is not a given. It is not automatic. It is something I must choose anew.

Would I choose to be Jewish if I weren’t born into it? I can’t know for sure. But I do know this: being Jewish is the greatest privilege of my life. Not because it is easy, but precisely because it is hard. Not because the world loves us, but because the world needs us. Not because mitzvot are convenient, but because they are demanding – and demands shape us into who we are meant to be.

The Nigerians have already made their choice. The question is: Will we?