Can I have this dance?
No.
Not the hora!
We can make our own!
Something…
Ethno-religious with a question mark.
Jewish with a hyphen between the double u and the I
but may nothing ever come between you and I in that way.
Let’s keep the commandments.
Prioritize the justice.
Season ourselves in the rituals.
And God should stay if he wants.
Are we sure it’s he?
Am I being too Jewish by asking that question?
God can stay if she wants.
If they want.
We don’t need to do anything more than exist and dance together.
It would have been enough.
Dayenu.
I don’t want to sit at the head of the table.
I want to make a circle with our arms.
I want to make matzo and pick herbs in the comfort of your air.
Hold my kippah!
Cover me in my mother’s sheitel.
I do a mean Streisand impression.
I want a bar-mitzvah do-over.
I want to be twelve and a half dancing with you
To Pitbull or Usher and losing our minds
not knowing what the future holds.
Gorging on brisket, challah, and gelt
primed for a stomach ache in the morning.
I’ll keep the over twenty five status
so I can rent cars on fun vacations
And the access to sweaty night clubs
where memories are made
roleplaying in the land of familiar strangers
I’ll keep the days playing hookie from work to read poetry
And nerding out about how the weekly parsha defines moments in pop culture
I’ll take Rosh Hashanah in the park
Where we lay and read the Haggadah staring at the sky in between passages
Where we say prayers as poems from the heavens
Where we sing our Jewish Jams
suddenly, becoming barefoot guitar-strumming Hebrew Hipsters
kicking up water in this river of life.
For a moment it feels like we are at the Sea of Galilee.
I’ll take they, them, and theirs.
But I don’t need the rest.
No.
In this dance… I don’t need anything.
No man leading his woman.
No woman following her man.
Just you.
And me.
The Nice Jewish Non-Boys.
