When I was seventeen, I used to beg to go out on Friday nights. My friends would congregate at one house every week after school, and they’d stay until late, drinking cheap wine bought from the wilfully ignorant man in the corner shop who’d decided they were all eighteen and didn’t ask any more questions. It was an institution for the group.
Unfortunately for my parents, I fell in with this crowd rather than the no-Friday-nights group with whom I’d gone on Israel tour. I can imagine that it would have been easier for them, and for me, if my friends had all been more like me – the rows over the Shabbos table would have been less frequent, I wouldn’t have had to work so hard to stay included, and I could have continued enjoying Friday nights at home with my parents and frustratingly undemanding younger brother.
Then again, perhaps it was healthy to have something to rebel against. My very liberal, tolerant parents never put an unholy amount of pressure on me about anything (except for the morning of my Physics GCSE, when my mother sat in the car outside the exam hall with me and plutzed about the fact that I could not remember a single one of the necessary equations or rules). They bought me nice clothes, fed me good food and took me on fun holidays. With my parents, I never really had much to complain about. And they were sympathetic when I (regularly) hated teachers; when girls at school were horrible; when (Jewish) boys didn’t fancy me. They looked after me and were supportive in all manners. So it was only natural that at some point we’d come to an impasse, and that’s probably a good thing, otherwise I might have developed those neuroses for kids who are never told ‘no’.
Unfortunately, if you send Jewish kids to non-Jewish schools, they may well end up being friends with non-Jews. And then, unfortunately, Jewish kids will be forced to choose between a healthy relationship with their nice Jewish family, and the friends and teenage years they want. It was a particular sticking point for me because I hated school and didn’t have many school friends; finding a solid group of friends from somewhere else was a miraculous surprise that didn’t hit me until sixth form. Finally, friends – and I was missing out on the most crucial events.
Luckily for me, we came to a compromise – I would stay for dinner, and not rush away from the table, but once everything was done and any guests had left I could rush over to Tufnell Park and join in the festivities. But it was a torment, checking my phone under the table to see when I could leave, worrying if I was too late to be involved, anxious every week that I’d miss something and be left out. Sometimes I wonder, if I’d gone to a Jewish school, or just bonded with the people on my tour (as everyone else seemed to do), would it have been easier? Is segregation the price Jewish teenagers must pay for a less stressful social life? Or would there have been something else to put me on edge, and to argue about with my parents?
Noa Gendler is a final-year student at the University of Cambridge, studying English Literature. Before that she attended North London Collegiate School. She is a seasoned Limmudnik and is involved in Marom, the Masorti young adult community.
