Missing from the tribe

JOY ROTHKE SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

I know about being different. I grew up in Orange County, Calif., in the early 1960s, when Jews were about as uncommon as chewy bagels.

Nevertheless, there was a small Jewish presence. Perhaps just a handful of Jews sprinkled throughout the county, but in numbers sufficient to support several small synagogues. And, if a bigger shot of Yiddishkeit was required, well, Fairfax was only 30 minutes away on the Santa Monica Freeway, and everyone had family or friends in Sherman Oaks or Encino or the West Side.

I attended "Saturday school" weekly, went to Camp Hess Kramer every summer, belonged to Jewish youth groups and had Jewish friends. That counteracted a series of childhood traumas including the first day of school being scheduled on Rosh Hashanah, being asked by a teacher to explain the "Jewish Christmas" during show and tell, and beseeching my parents (unsuccessfully) to not let us be the only family on the block with an undecorated house in December.

Like a suburban Sacagawea, I lived among the gentiles, and learned and understood their ways. Except for a year living in West Hollywood, and another as a New Yorker in the mid-'80s, I've always lived in primarily non-Jewish communities: Orange County in the '60s, Phoenix in the '70s and, for the last 20-plus years, San Francisco.

I was a Jew, but I didn't think about it a great deal. I had an adult bat mitzvah when I was 40, and belonged to a large Reform congregation. (Where sometimes they didn't see my face for months at a time.) But if I wanted to go to shul or shop for Judaica or buy kosher food or join Hadassah, I knew all were there waiting for me. My level of observance may have varied from year to year, but my identity as a Jew was bred in the bone.

Then I became the Jew in the Jungle. Last year, my husband (a lapsed Catholic atheist) and I relocated to La Fortuna de San Carlos, Costa Rica. This is a little town of about 6,000 people, three hours north of San José, the capital. The area around here is rain forest and the economy is primarily agricultural and tourism-based.

Roman Catholicism is the official state religion and 95 per cent of Costa Ricans are Catholic. (The statistics list the remaining population as four per cent Protestant and one per cent Other.) "Are you Catholic?" and "How many children do you have?" are the questions I'm most frequently asked.

There are Jews in San José, as well as a couple of synagogues, Chabad and B'nai Brith chapters (mostly of American retirees). There's even a small but long-established Tico (native Costa Rican) Jewish community. Their great-grandparents headed south about 100 years ago instead of heading for Ellis Island like mine.

La Fortuna has no Jews but me. It's quite likely that, except for the locals who have travelled outside of Central America, few have ever met a Jew or learned a single thing about Judaism. (Inexplicably popular though, are Star of David pendants. When I asked a neighbor if her young daughter's pendant was a religious symbol, she was mystified. No, she said. Just a pretty star.)

People here aren't anti-Semitic in the least. They are simply unaware of Jews and Judaism. I didn't anticipate this would be a problem for me, because I'm not very religious, right?

No. Wrong, wrong and wrong. Call me a suffering Jew. Remind me of an unfortunate propensity to take things for granted or some strange innate desire to have what's unavailable to me. You'll hear no argument.

I bitterly miss what I treated so cavalierly – services, Jewish libraries and other cultural institutions, the simple ability to purchase a memorial candle for my father's yahrzeit or a package of High Holy Day cards. Most of all, I miss other Jews and my connection to them. Jews are a tribe, and I'm currently a lost member.

What can I do? Pray, for one thing. I never regularly said the morning and evening prayers, but I do now. And I find myself praying throughout the day – for strength, for hope, in thanks. Frequently, I silently repeat the Shema to myself, as a sort of mantra. My mezuzah, packed away three years ago when our apartment was painted, now hangs on my door. I try to study Torah regularly, read any Jewish books and magazines I can obtain (not easy out here) and keep up with Jewish and Israeli news and issues via the Internet. But what I wouldn't give to go to a bar mitzvah, buy a box of matzah or have someone understand me when I say "oy vey."

Joy Rothke is an American freelance writer based in La Fortuna de San Carlos, Costa Rica. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, San José Mercury News and Salon.com. Contact her at [email protected].

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