When he was 7, a tiny gesture from his grandmother changed his relationship to God

This story is part of the My Unsung Hero series, from the Hidden Brain team. It features stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else.

Shalom Auslander grew up in a strict Orthodox Jewish family, where he was taught to obey all the rules of Jewish written law. If you failed to do so, he was told, you'd be punished in the afterlife.

“It was like growing up in a town run by Tony Soprano,” Auslander said, referring to the fictional mobster. “You did not break the rules that Tony set. Because maybe he'll be OK with it, but more than likely, you're gonna get some broken legs.”

When Auslander was young, he and his mom used to go to his grandmother’s house to visit. As soon as he got there, his grandmother would quietly slip him a forbidden, non-kosher treat: Chiclets, the small, square pieces of gum.

One day, when he was around 7, his mother happened to see their secret exchange.

“And she got angry, and she's like, ‘Ma, what are you doing? You can't give him those, they're not kosher,’” Auslander said. “Eating non-kosher is a big deal in the world that I come from.”

His mother took away the gum, and that appeared to be the end of it. But the next time they went back, when his mother wasn’t looking, his grandmother pulled him aside.

“She looked at me, and she put her finger over her lips and like sort of motioned me into her bedroom, which was right off the kitchen. And she pulls out a box of Chiclets, and she pours a couple in my hand,” Auslander recalled. “And says, ‘Shhh, don't tell anybody. It's just gum.’”

For the 7-year-old Auslander, that tiny act of defiance, by a matriarch of the family, felt like a revelation.

"It was this sort of like crack in the wall of the prison for me,” Auslander said. “Because here was this somebody who knew what she was doing, but felt that in a way, happiness was more important than keeping kosher — than God himself.”

Today, Auslander is a writer, known for books and essays that grapple with his religious upbringing, including Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir and his new book, Feh: A memoir. When he looks back on his evolution, and his decades-long attempt to create a new story about the role of religion in his life, he sees that moment with his grandmother as a certain beginning.

"It opened up my mind to the possibility that maybe there were things that were more important in the world than keeping the strict letter of God's law,” Auslander said.

“And maybe that thing was happiness, and maybe it was love, and maybe it was family ... And I think that I’ve ever since been on a mission to live that way."

My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.