“My Big Fat Greek Wedding” was one of those romantic comedies I loved watching when I was a teenager. The heroine takes her life by the reins and finds the man of her dreams. Together, they overcome many hilarious family antics (including an endless supply of Windex and a misunderstood Bundt cake) with just the right amount of drama and angst and live happily ever after. I still find myself today looking at my bony cat and saying, “You need to eat, I could break you like a chicken!”
Looking back on “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” as an adult, I was initially dismayed: It seemed as if protagonist Toula Portokalos (Nia Vardalos) had only found belonging and happiness with Ian Miller (John Corbett) when she had a makeover and went white. bread to fit in with white girls (in exchange for the moussaka she was teased about as a child). But upon further reflection, I realized that she hadn’t given up anything that had been meaningful to her or brought her happiness: she found the balance that suited her by straddling the world of the family heritage and the American society in which she grew up. up.
As someone who was once Orthodox Jewish and now decidedly isn’t, Toula’s balance of tradition and assimilation speaks deeply to me. Toula and Ian’s relationship is also deeply connected to all of us who have had interfaith relations or come from interfaith backgrounds.
For me, the analogy is profound: on many levels, Toula’s journey as she searches for this balance in her life parallels mine. In the film, Toula grows up feeling out of place as a minority girl, surrounded by the Anglo-Saxon majority. Rather than feeling proud of her Greek heritage and culture, she feels a sense of shame. But at home, in her own family’s culture, she feels trapped and limited by family and cultural expectations. This is deeply relevant to any Jew who has struggled to reconcile a different Jewish family life, American culture, and their own personal identity.
I’ve also experienced this struggle between my own Jewishness and predominantly American culture throughout my life — although it’s worth noting that I still have a lot of privilege as a non-binary white-presenting person. My family began pursuing our Jewish heritage when I was a teenager. Coming into Judaism and coming out as a Jew in south Georgia was basically like being the star of an unadapted version of “Where’s Waldo?”,» in which the objective is to find the one who does not belong. When we moved to Atlanta to live in a real Jewish community, I didn’t suddenly feel like I’d finally found my place to belong. If anything, I felt like an alien at my Orthodox Jewish girls’ high school, where no one was as exposed to secular American culture as I was, and where I wasn’t as exposed to Judaism as they were. I felt like in every space I moved through, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, I was perpetually condemned to being an outsider, straddling a divide between two very different worlds.
Later, once I left Orthodoxy, I found myself completely distancing myself from my Jewish identity. I felt ambivalent about Jewishness in all its aspects, which created a deep sense of shame within me. I tried hard to bury my Jewishness as much as possible, seeking refuge in a “basic white girl” facade. (Again, there is a plot of privilege in this area that cannot be ignored.) But I also initially felt shame about American culture, like when I felt secretive and guilty for bringing a Christmas tree in my living room for the first time since I left the Orthodox world.
All of this led me to begin a relationship with someone who ended up being anti-Semitic. My judgment was so clouded by my own sense of shame that I didn’t even realize it at first. It was only after several months of dating, especially once I met his family, that I started to understand. Sometimes it was subtle, like my boyfriend making fun of a mutual friend’s Passover seder he attended (without inviting me, by the way), or his family treating me like I was “exotic.” (the irony is not lost on me). But this became more obvious as time passed, for example when we talked about our future together, my boyfriend made it clear that our future children could not visit my adult siblings during the Jewish holidays and that we could never celebrate with them. , or how his parents told me that after hosting a mutual friend’s Orthodox family for a weekend, the rule was “no more kosher Jews” in their vacation home.
What I missed growing up was the number of different Jewish spaces, of all sizes, shapes and colors. There are not just a few distinct options in the Jewish world; Jewishness is a rainbow spectrum of diversity in every way. No one should feel obligated to stay in a Jewish space or identity that doesn’t suit them. Finding my place through the progressive and radically inclusive synagogue where I began working created space for me to find balance between my identities.
In “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, Toula ends up marrying the man of her dreams. He embraces his entire identity, even the parts that previously embarrassed him, like his wacky Greek family. He shows that he is ready to support the identity balance that suits him best. In my story, my boyfriend and I broke up after realizing our lives were going in completely different directions and we couldn’t each support the person the other needed to become. For me, part of that healing was accepting identity – not the identities imposed on me by American culture and Jewish culture respectively, but My own Jewish American identity. In my story, my big Jewish breakup (or maybe it was a breakup)through?) was an ending just as happy as Toula’s marriage. From there, I was able to finally explore what my own white bread and moussaka equivalents were, and how I wanted to mix and match them in my Jewish and American identities.
I’ve shaped my own Jewish identity, and that makes some people uncomfortable, suspicious, or awkward, but it doesn’t bother me as much anymore: I have a better sense of who I am, and that gives me the confidence to move forward. to present myself. and eliminate any awkwardness or closed-mindedness I encounter. I am a multidimensional being – we all are. We do a grave injustice to ourselves and each other when we expect everyone to fit into a strictly one-dimensional box.
The film ends with Toula’s young daughter on her way to Greek school, complaining because she wants to go to Brownie Scouts instead. Toula responds warmly: “I know, I know, but I promise you: you can marry whoever you want. » After regaining more confidence in my identity, I am pretty much a parent. I want my own child (who also complains about going to Jewish Sunday school every weekend) to grow up with the sense of balanced identity that I had to fight for for so long. My personal motto around my Jewish American identity that I carry with me in every interaction these days (as a parent, as a Jewish educator, as an individual) is this: Regardless, YOU decide what being Jewish means to YOU. No one can choose for you. I hope that by claiming this space for myself, I help keep space open for others to do the same.
Late catch is a series about Alma where we revisit Jewish pop culture from the past for no reason other than the fact that we can’t stop thinking about it?? If you have a pitch for this column, please email submissions@heyalma.com with “Late Take” in the subject line.
