On the fourth day of the eight-day photography intensive course I’m taking, we had a speaker talk about how she turned her blog into a business. She started out just posting all sorts of random things on her page, and then started narrowing it down to pictures and recipes from her baking. The pictures of the food made our stomachs grumble. Delectable macaroons, little cakes, petite cookies, fun milkshakes, you name it. And even though I keep kosher, I confess that I would’ve loved to have some—I mean, I’m the type who occasionally watches the Food Network for fun, and I always stay on the lookout for dessert. (It’s the classic stereotype—I eat too much and feel full, and yet as both the Gemara and my grandfather say, there’s always room for something sweet.) Then the speaker, about three-quarters through her presentation, surprised all of us. “And I brought some treats!” she cried out.

The room erupted in wild cheering, a thunderous applause, people were crying—okay, it wasn’t that dramatic, but everyone got pretty excited. Everyone except me.

“Oh no,” I thought. Given that I keep kosher, I wouldn’t be able to partake… Oh, my God, are those cheesecake macaroons? Green-tea-flavored black-and-white cookies? (Winner of the Guinness World Record for most hyphens in a food name.) I didn’t know those were possible! Even the coconut macaroons—which (when kosher) are a Pesach favorite that I usually steer clear of—looked great.

Obviously this article is not about how after 16 years of keeping kosher I finally broke my personal trend. The plate was passed around the U-shaped table we were sitting at, and when it reached me, I simply passed it to the next guy and mumbled something about not wanting. And then again when it came back around so people could take seconds. I mean, desserts are like potato chips, you can’t have just one.

I don’t know if I was the only religious Jew in this group. I don’t know what the other non-Jewish kids think of Jews, although given how it was a pretty nice group I doubt it would’ve been a problem had I shown my yarmulke and tzitzit. (I wore my yarmulke beneath a baseball cap and had tucked in my tzitzit.) But it opened up an interesting question to me: When being one of the only or the only Jew in a group of non-Jews—something I know many adults, including my own parents, deal with in the workforce on a daily basis—what do I reveal about my religion, if anything? If I’m not violating any mitzvot at all, does it matter if they know I’m Jewish or not?

As a teenager, this is a somewhat new question to me. I mean, back when I was younger, I actually attended a public camp in Teaneck that had both Jews and non-Jews. (The camp provided kosher food.) I remember (since I’m bad at forgetting these sorts of embarrassing incidents) how I probably made too much of a deal there about my yiddishkeit. I may have worn baseball caps, but I often brought Judaism up in different ways way too much to the point that maybe I just made myself too different, too separate from the others.

Here’s an example: a non-Jewish kid had a pack of Mike and Ike’s, and I really, really, really wanted one. I asked for one, and he said, “Oh, they’re not kosher.” So I launched into a whole seminar about kosher and the OU symbol and trying to find it on the package and that the OR copyright symbol isn’t it and all that. Finally, we reached the conclusion that yes, Mike and Ike’s were kosher and had the OU. “So can I have one?” my disconcerting younger self asked my friend.

His answer? “…No.”

Let’s leave his personality out of this for a moment. Maybe he didn’t act so nice, but how should I have acted? Was it really worth it trying to give a whole speech on kashrut just for one candy? Did that actually really backfire and alienate him from me at that moment (thankfully, it didn’t matter later on) because I had played up our religious differences a bit too much?

I feel pretty strongly connected to my religion and my God. I do my best to follow the Torah and mitzvot, especially with ideas like kosher. Yet I know that much of the world I’ll be interacting with in the future doesn’t necessarily understand all that. I mean, when growing up, most of the kids—myself included—are usually in a pretty Jewish environment. Jewish schools, Jewish after-school clubs or teams, Jewish shuls (then again, I didn’t think there were any Catholics starting a Young Israel anytime soon), etc. There’s nothing wrong in this sense of community, in creating an environment where our religion is the main focus and it’s the paradigm to use in our lives. But then comes the real world, where you interact with not only Jews, not only even different types of Jews with varying levels of observance and traditions, but also non-Jews. To any adults reading this, this may seem overly familiar at this point, but to myself at least—and to plenty of teenagers who are starting to expand beyond their own communities—this is something new.

What do I reveal about my religion? What if I don’t need to reveal anything?

Let me take it back to my photography class. Everyone in it has a pretty strong common interest (I’m sure you can guess what it is). And it doesn’t really stand out that I bring my own lunch (most people do), or that I didn’t take a dessert, or even that I didn’t eat at all on Shiva Asar B’Tamuz. Would it have been different had I shown my kippah? Quite possibly yes. People could’ve made judgments, or brought up the topic of my religion, or made it matter more in some way. Maybe I could’ve made a Kiddush Hashem, or maybe some of my classmates would’ve shown their true colors. I’m personally fortunate that my experience went like it did, with no trouble, when I know others have had difficulty with navigating the differences between them and others, and that in the work world—where you usually can’t wear a baseball cap—things could be different.

But even so, I’ve realized that I don’t need to let religious differences get in the way when it comes to this class, or friendships, and connections I have with non-Jews. I just don’t need to bring up the topic; there’s still other ways I can find common ground with other people. Religion doesn’t need to matter there, as long as I stay true to myself and as long as it keeps mattering to me.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go look up some macaroon recipes. How does the chocolate cheesecake flavor sound?

Oren Oppenheim, age 16, lives in Fair Lawn, New Jersey and attends Ramaz Upper School in Manhattan. He spends his free time writing and reading, and hopes to become a published novelist. You can email him at [email protected].

By Oren Oppenheim