Keith Marks: A Profile in Jewish Life
Name and Current Locale: Keith Marks, Putney, VT
What you are doing now: Prior to COVID, my family and I moved to Vermont from Florida. After a nationwide search, Next Stage Arts offered the Executive Director position, giving my family and I the opportunity to move to New England. My wife, Tehila, is originally from Israel. Before leaving Florida, Tehila and I owned a healing center, where she taught Pilates in her fully-equipped studio. We met while studying for my master's degree from Tel Aviv University. We have two children, Tahgel, aged nine, and Silan, aged five.
What do you do beyond your work? The arts, travel, and the bundle of health/wellness/spirituality have had prominent roles in my life. During my twenties, I was fortunate to live in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. During my travels, I developed a dedicated yoga practice, trained as a neuromuscular therapist, and studied various spiritual disciplines. I hosted and co-produced a weekly radio show on Jacksonville-based NPR station, had a record company, and produced numerous arts events through various nonprofit ventures.
What was your upbringing like? I had relatively little to no interest in my Jewish identity. After my bar mitzvah, I unplugged, not feeling a sense of connection nor spiritual fulfillment in my youth. In my late teen years, I got interested in Eastern Spirituality, and through my travels, had the opportunity to connect with different paths. It was my studies in Israel that my Jewish identity began to reconnect. After living in Israel, I couldn't deny a certain sense of connectivity. Since then, I've grown more interested in Jewish paths like Renewal and Reconstructionist.
How would you describe your connection to Jewish life now? My wife speaks Hebrew with the kids, and we instill a sense of Jewish identity into who they are. While we aren't religious, we do light Shabbat candles, invoking the separation of the week from the Sabbath. We discuss holidays and read the history of each. Intellectual debate, conversations around spirituality, and leading a life of purpose are embedded into a lot of our Jewish connectivity.
How has your Jewish identity evolved over time? I've begun to see the depth and wisdom in a lot of the religious practices. Shiva, Shabbat, Shmita, and various other Jewish traditions, rituals, and ceremonies are being seen in a new light. The wellspring of their meaning and depth can not be denied. The other aspect that I've gotten in touch with is being really comfortable with Jewish intensity, Jewish humor, and intellectual competitiveness. Oh, and have I mentioned the food?!
Share one interesting Jewish experience or insight in your life: Shiva is a powerful connection to the wisdom and the depth of Judaism. When I lost my father, my family's shiva felt perfunctory and superficial. It was something that we were supposed to be doing, but it didn't provide much depth, if any. As I've learned about what shiva is, it's the opportunity to allow those powerful waves of emotion a place to come out, they allow for an individual/family to have the container to process and work through those emotions. A non-Jewish friend passed away a few years ago. There was a memorial service for him that felt more like a BBQ than a memorial. I walked away thinking about how the practice of shiva is a powerful tool for the community to hold space for one another.
How has your Jewish identity made a difference in your current life? I think just being aware of my Jewish identity has allowed me to navigate my professional and personal life. When I'm in a room with Jews, the intensity can go big and bold, but when I'm with a wider audience, I know I need to give space and maybe go a bit slower. I'm full of ideas, curiosity, and a sense of Tikkun Olam. That type of questing for making things better motivates me in all aspects of my life.
What do you think is special about Jewish life in Vermont? I find the Jewish community in Vermont to be very accepting of everyone, which I greatly appreciate.
What you value most about your Jewish identity: I value our broad and expansive sense of time:
“JEWS HAVE SIX SENSES. Touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing … memory. While Gentiles experience and process the world through the traditional senses, and use memory only as a second-order means of interpreting events, for Jews memory is no less primary than the prick of a pin, or its silver glimmer, or the taste of the blood it pulls from the finger. The Jew is pricked by a pin and remembers other pins. It is only by tracing the pinprick back to other pinpricks – when his mother tried to fix his sleeve while his arm was still in it, when his grandfather’s fingers fell asleep from stroking his great-grandfather’s damp forehead, when Abraham tested the knife point to be sure Isaac would feel no pain – that the Jew is able to know why it hurts.
When a Jew encounters a pin, he asks: What does it remember like?”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
