We all want to belong. To something greater than ourselves, to have a community, a tribe, even just to have a family, biological or chosen.

The last few weeks have been a serious trial of my personal sense of belonging. Getting (mostly) off of social media has helped stem the tide of belabored bullshit. “You are either with us or against us,” whatever the “us” is, is a big red flag for whether you actually belong to a certain group or whether your belonging is conditional on saying and doing the “right” things.

Work in the kitchen has provided a sense of place and community. Kitchens ave historically been my “safe spaces” and sanctuaries. Everything has a place, a purpose, and my belonging in them is undeniable and absolute- by my experience and skills if not myself.

“Matt the Baker” is only part of me though, and leaning into that solely for my sense of belonging is dangerous. I am also an American, a Jewish man, more a leftist than anything else politically, and fundamentally a human being.

“Belonging” to any of those things has been intensely difficult lately, but I still feel the need to have a tribe and not be a “man without a country” when things get tough.

We have to learn to belong, first and foremost, to ourselves.

If there was ever a book written for this feeling of isolation and disconnection, it would be Dr. Brene Brown’s Braving the Wilderness. Her definitions and description of the quest for “true belonging” makes clear the beauty, terror, difficulty, and freedom involved. Quoting Dr. Maya Angelou, Brown describes “true belonging” as when you belong “everywhere and nowhere at all.”

This is the metaphorical wilderness used in the title- the terrible feeling of rejection and isolation that comes when you forego saying or doing the “right” things to keep belonging to your chosen group because they are not true or reflective of you personally. “If I can be me, then I belong. If I have to be like you, then I just ‘fit in.’”

“Fitting in” means hiding parts of yourself to avoid rejection or feeling alone. It means “going along to get along” and tamping down nuance, questions, and issues you have with the group to avoid being excommunicated.

Getting a tribe is not worth losing yourself.
Your integrity is not worth a feeling of belonging, and any place where you truly belong will value that integrity rather than demand it be subsumed.

Ideally that should be our families and the communities we build for ourselves, but ultimately it should first and foremost be ourselves.

The last few weeks, thanks in large part to the anonymous cruelty and absolutism that comes so easily over social media,, I have heard over and over again from people and groups I felt like I “belonged” to that “you either sign on to our philosophy unquestioningly, or you are not one of us.”

I was called a “typical white Republican male” for insisting that antisemitic attacks on Jewish homes and communities in America and abroad are not “resistance.”

I feel no sense of belonging among those who are so “pro-Israel” that they’d say the Palestinians “had it coming” or support Netinyahu’s actions regardless of the collateral damage and innocent lives lost.

I have been mocked and insulted for saying that Hamas is a terrorist organization, that Pro-Palestinan rallies that don’t make clear that the object is the Israeli government and not Jewish people as a whole or staying silent on nakedly antisemitic actions and attacks are terrifying and alienating to Jewish allies.

“Not real allies then.”
“Your privilege is showing.”
“That not antisemitic!” (Love hearing non-Jews screaming over Jews about that.)
“Stop with the crocodile tears.”
“This isn’t about you, you know.”
“Sorry you support genocide/apartheid.”

My initial emotional response was rejection and despair. “They don’t have my back. I don’t belong.”

Then came anger and rage- “Typical. They never had our back. It’s always just been us Jews against the world. The rest are happy for our help when we show up for them, but they haven’t forgotten that we are Jews– we can’t either.”

Both responses are about craving belonging. First the feeling of rejection by one group, then crawling into the bunker of another to get good and mad. Meanwhile horrors persist in the world, nothing gets done but more screaming, and it all gets worse.

But taking time out from the screaming (myself and from others) brought silence. Not peace and quiet, but silence and time to figure out the language I needed and what this particular “wilderness” will look like. It looks like this:

I will not let others dictate my positions and morals to me.
I will not let a sense of belonging be held over my head in exchange to towing the party line.
I will not be defined by hate and spite, and I refuse to engage in dehumanization and false dichotomies. I would rather be defined by how human I can be and how I can light candles rather than curse darkness.
The only approval I need is my conscious.

It is scary and a little sad, but I am learning that the reasons I belong in my kitchen are the same reasons I can belong to myself. My knowledge, my compassion, my capacity, and my moral compass.

Stay Classy,