The Middle Seat – 10 Lessons I Learned from a Jewish Girl

Plane conversations can be some of the most interesting, if not the most revealing. Yesterday I had the middle seat on a 3 hour flight back to Boston. At the window was a young woman whom I was to discover was an Orthodox Jew. On the aisle was a middle aged gentleman who was afraid of people, afraid of flying, afraid of cities and that was just the beginning – he lived in the Maine woods. The contrast could not be more striking. Window seat – Jewish girl: Middle seat – Evangelical Christian woman: Aisle seat – frightened Agnostic man (more on him in another post).

My conversation with the young woman got me thinking. Why do people dread sitting next to a chatty Evangelical Christian, but would feel completely comfortable sitting next to this young committed Jew? Let me share ten things I learned from her that taught me one important lesson.

1. Education – Junior at Brandeis, a highly respected Jewish sponsored university outside of Boston. She chose Brandeis because she wanted a strong Jewish community and a good education.
2. Major – Jewish Education with a minor in Hebrew. Would allow her to work in Jewish schools and teach regular classes as well as Jewish studies. Her calling was to be bi-vocational.
3. Family – Close family who treasured their Jewish faith above all. Father heads a New York seminary. Mother – is teaching at the graduate level in Jewish Education. Brother is figuring out where to go to college – she’s hoping he’ll choose a school with a strong Jewish community.
4. Dreams – she loves archery. She is on the college Archery team and would like to compete more at the National level, and maybe someday at the Olympic level. She works hard six days a week at archery and happily rests on the seventh.
5. Dream Roadblock – The Sabbath. She will not compete or practice on the Sabbath. One competitive group allows her to shoot twice on Sunday (a problem, since two competitions in one day can be grueling). The other national organization has not made a provision for those who honor the Sabbath. At this time she does not know how far she can raise her ranking. Without competitive experience at the national level, which would require her to compete on the Sabbath, she may forfeit her dream because of her commitment to God’s command.
6. Fun – doing things with the larger Jewish community. Recently she went with some friends to MIT where they sponsored an event called “Jews on Ice”. It was a fun time to get together with other Jewish kids from other Boston area colleges and ice skate They had fun and fellowship as a faith community.
7. Work – this year she’s returning to the Jewish camp she has worked at for 6 years. She loves mentoring Jewish young people.
8. Vacation – spending a week with friends at a special Passover camp. Celebrated Passover and deepened their roots in their faith.
9. Reading – a “Chick Lit” novel in Hebrew, given to her by a friend. She wanted to see if she could read a whole, fun novel in Hebrew. This was not classwork – this was her way of immersing herself even more into Jewish/Hebrew culture.
10. Demeanor – Completely comfortable in her identity as a Jew. Content and happy with her past, her presence and the future as it seemed. Spoke easily and freely about her faith, her commitment to it, and without one trace of regret at the cost (i.e. not competing on the Sabbath). Engaging and not threatened by sitting with a committed Christian woman.

What did I learn? Sometimes the best testimony we can give for Christ is simply sharing our lives and our story in a straight forward, happy, contented, unapologetic manner. I found this girl so appealing. I found myself thinking, how fortunate she is to be a Jew with such a strong identity, radical devotion, committed community and a faith informed direction to her future. I want that! And, I want to share that as candidly and winsomely as she did with me.

Anyone sitting next to her would have come a way with a similar feeling – I want that! I hope to work on that, and pray that I can contentedly, candidly, winsomely – with no guile or intimidation share with people my life in Christ, next time I’m in the middle seat.

P.S. It goes without saying that this is not a post about the lostness of being a Jew without being completed by Jesus’s work on the cross. It’s a post about common grace and lessons learned. As I walked down the jetway and said good-bye – I prayed for her. I prayed that the Father would draw her unto himself. I pray for her now.

Part 2 can be found here.

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Tagged as: Culture, Evangelism, Judaism, Vocation