The Footnote That Changed My Life

The first thing that ever felt holy to me wasn’t a ritual or a rabbi – it was a footnote.
If you’ve ever felt like religion was a perfection contest you were destined to fail, this story might change that. It’s about the moment I realized Judaism didn’t need me to be flawless – just honest, human, and still trying. And it all started with one line in a prayer book.

See transcript below.

Transcript:

  I didn’t know Judaism was for me until this moment.

The first thing that ever felt holy to me was a footnote in a prayer book.

Because Judaism didn’t expect me to be perfect.

If you’ve ever felt like religion only has room for perfect people, th is story is for you. I was in college.

It was my first time stepping into a synagogue. An Orthodox Jewish one, because I don’t do anything halfway.

It was a little chapel

in a Southern Bible belt town on a Friday night.

I sat in the women’s section alone with a bunch of men in their seventies.

I couldn’t follow the prayers. They were all in Hebrew.

But someone kindly called out the page numbers just for me.

So I stood and sat when everyone else did, but I didn’t really know what was going on.

But mostly I read the siddur, the prayer book.

It was an Artscroll full of detailed instructions.

And then  this one line stopped me dead in my tracks.

It said something like, ” if you forgot to say X, do Y.”

Just like that. No guilt trip. No shame spiral.

Just a solution, a gentle nudge to keep going.

And I remember thinking, wait, what?

A religion that expects people to mess up

and then just tells them how to keep going?? That was not my experience in the Bible Belt.

I was raised in an atheist family.

But completely surrounded by Southern Bible Belt Christianity.

The shame, the fear, the pressure to be perfect.

Even if I didn’t believe it, I absorbed it.

And now I know that I’m ADHD and autistic, messing up is kind of my thing.

That line in the siddur felt like it was written for me.

That’s when I knew Judaism could make space for someone like me.

Someone imperfect, someone human, someone trying.

And I’ve been trying ever since.

Screenshot from posted video with picture of female author with captioned text saying, “I didn't know Judaism was for me until this moment.”
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