Our favorite Indian restaurant was jam-packed when we arrived, one of those nights when every table is full and you are so close to the diners at the table next to yours that, despite your best efforts, you cannot tune out their conversation. Halfway through our meal, a woman and a young man who was unmistakably her grandson were seated at the two-top next to us. Even without the grandmother's large chainecklace, they looked (as my Russian Jewish father-in-law would say) "typically Jewish," and given our neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, there was nothing atypical about that.

Try as we might to concentrate on our own conversation, we could not-they were, after all, only inches away. The grandson had just returned from a life-changing semester abroad in India, and was intoxicated by the experience. He ordered proudly from the menu, explaining the dishes to his grandmother and how they differed from what he had eaten there. He described how he had decided to major in Eastern Religion and hoped to get back to that part of the world. He talked about the Bhagavad Gita and the teachings of his favorite Hindu masters. His grandmother listened patiently, but seemed bewildered by her grandson, who was unshaven and long-haired but otherwise looked just like her, yet was learning Sanskrit and had had his world thrown open by a country, people, and culture completely foreign to her. She never said it, but you could see it in her eyes: "India? What does that have to do with you, a nice Jewish boy?"

As Jewish Americans, we have the greatest blessing our people has ever known: freedom. A freedom that grants us not only the ability to vote and educate ourselves and live as full citizens of our great nation, but also to explore faiths and traditions and cultures besides our own and to choose any of them for ourselves. If the Hindu masters move my soul more than the teachings of the Rabbis-well, it's a spiritual free market in 2012 America. I can choose to be whoever I want to be. 

The most important question of our time is, therefore: Why should I? Why should I choose a Jewish life? And more than just a "Jewish" life-which might consist of nothing more than bagels, gefilte fish, and a penchant for Seinfeld reruns: Why should I choose a life of mitzvah, of Jewish commitment and action, when there are so many other compelling religions and spiritual paths?