Vika Krieger

And that was not my experience growing up because there was so many rules about what it meant to be an observant Jew, right, in terms of ethics.

everything about what you eat, literally how you get out of bed, which shoe you put on first.

First, it's the right foot, and then it's the left foot.

And there's like all these things.

Well, this is like, you know, the Jewish version of it.

And now as an adult, I can see how much of it is based in like post-Holocaust trauma, OCD.

I remember always growing up being like, this feels like OCD.

And now I'm just like, oh, yeah, that's like not a coincidence.

Like, when people spend so much of their life having their agency taken away from them and, like, being abused and traumatized, the way they deal with that is by creating these incredibly specific rituals for every aspect of your life.

You've got to wake up, and before you do anything, you have to wash your hands, and there's a certain way that you do it.

Two scoops on the left, two scoops on the right, and then there's a prayer that you say before you do anything, and then which shirt sleeve do you put on first?

Which pant leg do you put on first?

And so, like...

It's for every part of your day, literally every step you take, you're thinking about, okay, what's the Jewishly prescribed way of doing this?

It's almost like there's no room for God.

Yes, in theory, you're doing all these things because you think that that's what God commanded you to do and that's what's going to make God happy, but you almost forget about that because you're just so focused on all the rules that you're keeping.

My life was deeply infused with Judaism.

Every moment of my day was infused with Judaism.

But God was like weirdly absent except for this like hovering background figure that's like keeping a tally of did I put the right foot off the bed when I woke up in the morning.

You know, I think it was like a slow progression.