When two traditions dance.

That time I had a Jewish flavored Eucharist.

Blessed Zomick’s Challah, the bread of my childhood.

I identify as both Jewish and Christian: Jewish by birth, and Christian by “adoption.” I go to a few churches and synagogues, and I’m figuring it out as I go along. The best way I describe what I’m doing is “dual citizenship.” Though, if Christianity is a language, I speak it with a thick Jewish accent. I’m not interested in combining the faiths, but I adore it when they are in dialogue with each other. A great example is this video of Cantor Julia Cadrain from Central Synagogue who sang a Shaker hymn in response to the weekly Torah passage. I currently get my interfaith fix from a Zoom discussion group I run with a rabbi and a minister, which began at the start of the pandemic. However, one time I was fortunate enough to have a Jewish-flavored Eucharist that helped me better understand the contours of my mixed spiritual heritage.

It all started when I met Sarah*, a seminary intern at Judson Memorial Church, one of the two churches I attend. She grew up Christian and was in the process of converting to Judaism while pursuing a master's for a career track in studying Jewish texts. Judson is the sort of open-minded church where a seminary student like Sarah could get an internship. Naturally, my curiosity was piqued by her story of a spiritual journey taken in a direction opposite of mine. Sarah also had the bubbly, direct, speaking-a-mile-a-minute demeanor that I warm to very easily (and a type of personality easily found in New York City). We decided to get lunch and trade stories about our spiritual adventures. As I explained my journey into two faiths, I mentioned a second church that I attend: St. Lydia’s, a Lutheran dinner church. As I explained its unconventional structure, her gaze intensified. There is something about a low-key dinner church run out of a Brooklyn storefront that gets people’s attention.

At St. Lydia’s, the center of the service is a free meal given to all who attend (the food is quite excellent). This dinner service structure reflects many early Christian communities, likely inspired by the fact that eating and conversation were a big part of Jesus’s ministry. Another difference is how the Eucharist bookends the service: the bread is given at the beginning, and the juice is given at the end, putting the majority of the service inside of the sacred Eucharist ritual. Also, St. Lydias is a place open to a wide range of beliefs, which allowed a small Jewish contingent to develop in its community. All the “Lydian Jews” still identify as Jewish while being a vibrant part of the community. For what it’s worth, St. Lydia’s is a Lutheran church with hardly any Lutherans. Sarah wanted to come, and she asked, “Can I bring some challah?”

I decided to go a step further and ask our minister, Christian if we could use her challah for the Eucharist. I was not sure if this would be crossing a line, but Christian agreed. The chance for my two faiths to be spiritual dance partners filled me with sparkly glee. The phrase “Challah Eucharist” rang in my head for the rest of the week.

Rev. Christian Scharen whose soulful and inclusive theology is as dreamy as his smile.

The Eucharist happened in the church’s backyard since this was the summer of 2021 and we were still figuring out how to gather in a pandemic. The Eucharist starts with Christian passing a basket of bread. As it moves between people (about 8-15 souls) we tell each other, “This is my body,” and then consume our bready lesson in the immediacy of the divine. 

Ritual’s power is rooted in repetition. We see the same thing over and over and over, which knocks us out of our menagerie of worries and concerns: a basket of bread being passed between hands, the recitation of a phrase, the chewing, listening, and watching. Something else takes over, something captivating, something hypnotic: for a moment the universe contracts to the size of a pinprick, and we are transported. While there is a lot of disagreement about what Eucharist means and how it should be performed, I see a two-thousand-year-old lesson that sacredness can fit in your hands, that holiness is within the ordinary, and that God is already inside of you. 

St. Lydia’s usual communion bread, a par-baked Rosemary Ciabatta. 

But that day, we used challah: the bread of my childhood, the blessed bread of Sabbath, the bread my dad used to make French toast on the weekends. My parents always bought a Zomicks’ challah, which is cakey, chewy, and sweet. Countless times in so many spaces, I held a piece of this sacred bread and thanked God for its presence. While in Christianity, the term “bread of life” has a very specific context, I kept thinking of the term in light of the spiritually nourishing gladness that came with challah. The challah that night was lighter and less sweet, but in my mind, it was the challah of my childhood, and I was about to use it as a sacrament of my Christian faith.

As I took a piece of challah, I thought of the Jewishness of the bread in my hands and the Jewishness of the bread at the Last Supper, the origin of the Eucharist ritual. Admittedly the bread Jesus used was something very different (definitely unleavened, since it was Passover). As I handed the basket to the person next to me, I told them “This is my body.” My mind turned to my Jewish body, whose Jewish understanding of faith, worship, and spirit was invaluable in my ability to make sense of and connect to Christianity. It is Judaism that taught me a particular flavor of questioning, joy, study, and sanctity - all of it dripping with mysticism. I thought of how Christianity started out as a Jewish reform movement that blossomed into something else after the tragic death of Jesus, and how I was consuming two thousand years of tradition and transformation. Though he was a rabbi, today Jesus is seen as both Jewish and not Jewish; and in a way, I feel both Jewish and not Jewish. I was less alone in my seeking. I chewed my ecstatic revelation alongside this Jewish bread, in a Jewish body.

This was not the only bit of Jewish representation that night. Being a dinner church, cleaning up the space is a communal activity that concludes with a “gathering song” so we can assemble and conclude the service. St. Lydias had its own summer intern, Mary*, who was inspired to sing Hevenu Shalom Aleichem, an Israeli folk song, as the gathering song that evening. The song has only one lyric which translates to: “We come to greet you in peace.” (You can listen to it here). Though Mary grew up Christian, she learned the song from her choir days. I was impressed that she knew it would be appropriate to use at that moment – and that she nailed the melody. 

There was one final overlay of Jewishness on this Christian worship service which had twelve people, four of them Jews (myself, Sarah, and two members of the St. Lydia's community). It seems that word of the Challah Eucharist got out beforehand because someone brought black and white cookies for a post-service treat. These desserts are not expressly Jewish, but they are really popular among Jews of Eastern European extraction like myself. I could not get enough of these as a kid, and I still am unable to pass them up, which is unfortunate because they contain a billion calories each and I now have the metabolism of a 39-year-old. There is some vagueness to the history of the black and white cookie, but if you want to do a deep dive, read this and this.

The glorious caloric bomb, otherwise known as the black and white cookie.

I was honored by these celebrations of Jewishness that were inspired by the challah Eucharist. While my dual faith identity has been accepted at the churches and synagogues I’ve gone to, I’ve felt rather alone as I walk this path, each of my spiritual communities knows only half of my experience. But that night all of me was seen and celebrated, and I felt extra welcomed. I left buzzing with excitement as I skipped taking the subway and walked the eleven miles home. Along the way, I looked up lots of versions of Hevenu Shalom Aleichem on my phone and listened to the entire soundtrack of Fiddler on the Roof.

Speaking of blessings and seeing God in the synchronicity of things. I didn’t think of looking up the actual date of the service until I got to finishing up this article. It was June 13th, 2021. A year ago this week. A miracle of miracles indeed.

*Names changed for privacy.

Thank you for reading Belief and Being. If you like what you read, feel free to share it.

Belief and Being is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.