Interfaith Marriage: A Love Story

 

I have two very tangible reasons to believe that interfaith marriage can be an unqualified success:  my mother and father. My parents met in 1953, when they shared the last cab from Logan Airport on a rainy Boston night. For seven years, they courted on and off, cautious in part because of their religious differences. My father is a rabbi’s grandson from an isolated community of Jews who sometimes resorted to marrying cousins rather than marrying out. My blond-haired, blue-eyed Episcopalian mother had contemplated applying to a Protestant seminary after college. So at first, the idea of marriage seemed like a true leap of faith.

But leap they did, and went on to raise four children. This weekend, my parents hosted a family dinner and dance to kick off a season of celebrating 50 years of the strongest and happiest marriage I have ever had the privilege to encounter. When I called my mother and told her I was going to write about the anniversary celebration, she said, “Why would anyone want to read about that?” I guess she was thinking of Leo Tolstoy’s insistence that happy families are all alike.  But the media rarely depicts happy interfaith families: those stories tend to focus on conflicts and dilemmas, especially as the “holiday season” approaches.

Tolstoy also wrote, “What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.” My parents dealt with their religious differences by deciding to raise us as Reform Jews. But the “interfaithness” of my extended family was obvious this weekend at the exuberant anniversary celebration. My mother’s family (Episcopalian and Catholic backgrounds) flew up from Florida to my father’s hometown in Pennsylvania, joining about 40 of my father’s extended Jewish family who gather there each year for Thanksgiving. The vast majority of the Jewish cousins in my generation are in interfaith marriages. But the Rabbi from the temple where my father had his own Bar Mitzvah was one of a handful of guests from outside the family.

One brother, who is raising his children Catholic, began the celebration with an adoring toast. My sister, who is raising her children Jewish, read a rhyming verse she’d written about that fateful taxi ride. I’m the one raising my children as both: I read a schmaltzy poem of thanksgiving. As a highlight, my youngest bachelor brother performed my parents’ official love song, “My Romance.”

With a live band and a packed dance floor, the boomer generation then shouted the words to “We are Family” by Sister Sledge. Later, I spotted my Episcopalian husband with his arms around the shoulders of my Jewish cousins, dancing in a tight circle of men during an extended klezmer sequence. I had to wave off cousins who wanted to lift my parents on their chairs  at the center of whirling horah circle—they are 87 and 79 years old, after all. But mostly, my parents did not sit, they danced together. Though my mother can’t stand without support for long, my father held her as they “swayed” to Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington tunes from their heyday.

The adoration between my parents is constant, powerful, a high standard for the rest of us to live up to. When my mother was in the hospital a couple of years ago, my father serenaded her on a piano in the nurses’s lounge, playing “My Romance” each day until she recovered. The nurses all fell in love with their love story. Who wouldn’t?

So if I’m sometimes a starry-eyed optimist, if I insist that interfaith marriage can work, that interfaith families can be close and vibrant, that interfaith children can be happy, that it’s all good–I have my reasons. Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad.

Thanksgiving, Interfaith Style

The Pilgrims who celebrated the first Thanksgiving were pious Christians, giving thanks to a God they clearly thought of as a Christian God. But they were also thanking the great leader Massasoit and the Wampanoags who helped them to survive the first deadly winter in their new world. Theologians suspect the Pilgrims modeled their Thanksgiving after the harvest festival of Sukkoth in the Jewish Bible. We do know that the Pilgrims had fled Europe in order to gain religious freedom, and that they were inspired by the Jews fleeing Egypt. So while it was created by Christians, and the Wampanoags sat through church services as part of the celebration, Thanksgiving started out with pretty good interfaith credentials.

Nevertheless, many Jewish immigrants took a while to warm up to the idea that they could celebrate this American feast, and some ultra-Orthodox Jews still ignore it. My children have a picture book about a little girl in a tenement on the Lower East Side of New York in the early 20^th century, who learns about Thanksgiving in her public school, and then has to use all of her Talmudic rhetorical skills to persuade a rabbinic court to let her celebrate it.

Yesterday, our community of interfaith families met to give thanks together. If you visit us on a Sunday morning, you might encounter any one of three different types of gatherings. Sometimes, we celebrate a Jewish holiday, sometimes, a Christian holiday. And some weeks, we celebrate a theme or value held in common by the two religions: social justice, service to community, joy, mystery, blessing new life, ecology, or in this case, gratitude.

Yesterday, we sang the Dutch Protestant hymn “We Gather Together” and our rabbi, Rabbi Harold White, recounted how he used to sing this hymn in public school as a boy in Connecticut. As a rabbi who has spent his long career in a Jesuit context at Georgetown, Rabbi White is ideally suited to helping the Jewish partners in our community appreciate Christian prayers and songs: this one poses no challenge to Jewish theology.

Rabbi White also gave Christian partners and Jews raised without much religious education a Jewish context for Thanksgiving, mentioning the three harvest thanksgiving holidays in the Jewish calendar: Passover, Pentecost, and Sukkoth. He also read from list of the daily Jewish prayers for thanks—for waking up, for the functioning of our digestive systems, for washing hands, eating, drinking, travelling. Then four community members got up to express gratitude: my teenage daughter read her own quirky list, giving thanks for photographs, sofas, foliage, musicals, and inclusivity. And our Reverend Julia Jarvis’s twin teenage daughters sang a Taylor Swift song, “The Best Day,” about a girl thanking her mother for love and support. All the moms were sniffling.

At the end of this gathering, we broadened out to include the numerous atheists and agnostics in our community, some of whom arrive on purpose at the tail end of the gathering, just in time for the more cerebral adult discussion group. This week, we concluded with a secular song that inspires  appreciation for both nature and humanity, whether or not one believes in a God:

What a Wonderful World

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

The colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shakin’ hands, sayin’ “How do you do?”
They’re really saying “I love you”

I hear babies cryin’, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
Yes, I think to myself, what a wonderful world

I Brake for Poetry

I am wary of the schmaltzy universalism that sometimes pervades the world of multifaith encounters. In our interfaith families community, we strive to preserve and hold the funky particularities of Judaism and Christianity, even when this leads to dissonance, instead of dwelling always in the safer zone of overlapping interfaith values.

But recently, my husband came home with a poem that found its way through my defensive cynicism. Peace activist Christopher Matthias  wrote the poem to read at an interfaith conference on corporate responsibility. I love that his poem contains both timeless religious imagery, and more angular modern references. Chris works for an order of Roman Catholic nuns. So I thought I better write for permission to post the poem, warning him that this blog takes the radical position of advocating raising children with two religions. He wrote back, “I would be more apprehensive to share permission if your blog were not radical.”  So here’s the poem.

THIS, HOLY THIS 

Nothing.

Silence.

Like the breath held.

Pregnant.

Ready to. Ready to. Ready to flare forth!

Om………………..

The sound of creation vibrating all life from the center

Like the vibrating lips of the aborigine through the didgeridoo

Telling the story of how THIS, HOLY THIS arrived and flows in tones of hydrogen and light.

We are learning your name as it is spelled out.

Creation. Life. Our God.

We hear you underwater;

In the wind;

In the bells;

In each other.

We have known your loving kindness:

Our mothers’ affection;

Our fathers’ embrace.

We are spelling out your name life by life, life after life;

Our holy charge to play our part—to dot an “eye”

As the desert fathers and mothers searched for home.

As Buddha touched a sacred moment under the Bodhi tree;

As Ganesh first swung the trunk of his newly given pachyderm head;

As Samson pushed apart the pillars—blind—shamed—but loved by you;

As the Sufi poet spins himself to ecstasy,

As Rumi found the words:

If anyone wants to know what “spirit” is,
or what “God’s fragrance” means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close. Like this.

As Peter stepped out on the water;

As the medicine wheel is painted on the regalia of a dancer, dancing for his honor, for his people’s honor, for the love of you…

As the sisters took off their habits after centuries;

As they struggle to be just as much your church as their brothers;

As two pines from Lebanon were nailed together

to suspend a man from Nazareth until he exhaled no more.

As sinners and saints ate bread,

Drank malt liquor,

Told jokes bother clean and dirty.

As wars erupted,

As fish ate fish ate fish;

As Mary said her “Yes!”

As Joseph Dreamed;

As Moses held out his arms;

As Miriam played her trick;

As people threw snickers wrappers in garbage cans;

As beads crossed the devotee’s fingers;

As children were conceived;

As children were not born;

As morning came;

As icicles melted;

As peace was sought with picket signs, hunger strikes, songs and letters,

As Gandhi placed calloused feet one in front of the other;

As gossip spread;

As Shakespeare crossed out words he didn’t like;

As mountains fell;

As we have doubted our place in all of this;

As the grandparent died;

As we forgot the beauty of difference;

As the young man died;

As we found ourselves in our opponents;

As the sister from Seattle died;

As we threw our heads back and laughed at ourselves;

As memories were lost;

As a lover proposed;

As oranges were blessed;

As papers were filed;

As curses were spoken;

As those who are on the same team fought instead of yielding, forgiving, and renewing their commitments to each other.

As they passed through it—beginning again, and again, and again.

As fields were planted;

As poison filled the ocean;

As millions died in genocides;

As stories of beauty saved, changed, and vindicated lives;

As atheists made sacred the time of one life.

As miners never emerged from the belly of the earth;

As wind turned chimes—revealing the harmony of the two sides of this touching the two sides of that.

As the nautilus grows and grows, echoing the shape of the universe;

 As we ask you to be with us as we speak our part of your name

Day by day

Choice by choice

Forgiveness by forgiveness

Voice by voice

Coast by coast

Bite by bite

Child by child

Love by love by love by love by love by love.

Ten Things I Love About Islam

I spent three formative years living in Senegal, a stable democratic country that is more than 90% Muslim. I emerged with a deep appreciation of Islam, and I believe my experiences as an interfaith child helped me to be open to forming these positive impressions. My friend Surabhi commented on my blog post “Ten Things I Love About Christianity” that there are probably ten things we love about each religion we come to know. So I was inspired to write a personal and somewhat random list for the third of the three Abrahamic faiths.

1. Ethnic Inclusivity. Muslims don’t think of themselves as a tribe. Indonesia, Mali, Jordan—three Muslim countries, three different races. I am inspired by Malcolm X’s 1964 “Letter from Mecca,” in which he begins to overcome his own racism when he sees Muslims of all colors praying together
2. Humility in Worship. When we lived in Dakar, our apartment balcony looked out on a street that was filled each Friday with the faithful bowed down in prayer. Businessmen in European suits and embroidered African robes, and the lowliest street sweepers in rags, all would roll out their mats side by side in the street and kneel down together.
3. The Sound of the Muezzin. President Obama remarked on the evocative sound of the call to prayer. We used to spend weekends on the Senegalese island of Goree, where our friend Harriet had a house with a rooftop terrace covered with Mauritanian leather pillows. We would lounge up there, drinking tea right under the megaphone on the mosque next door. Each time the call went out across the island, it moved and thrilled me.
4. Islamic Design. In Islam, the prohibition against making figurative art evolved into gorgeous calligraphy, and murals and tiles in intricate patterns tied to the rich history of Arab geometry, algebra and astronomy.
5. Islamic Architecture. I remember the silhouette of a splendid minaret against a huge orange moon rising from the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Dakar. And the ancient mud mosques of Djenne, in Mali, are worth the endless bus ride from Bamako. Magnificent, like dip-drop castles by way of Gaudi, each spire topped by an ostrich egg.
6. Sufi Dancing. I’m a sucker for a circle dance. For all my half-Jewish ambivalence about Israel, I adore Israeli dancing, and Greek dancing too. The Sufi zikr, ecstatic chanting and dancing, has developed a tremendous following in the United States and Europe. Some Westerners seek to divorce Sufism from Islam, and to avoid the Muslim label. I like to credit Islam with giving birth to a practice that has such universal appeal.
7. Senegalese Music. The Islamic brotherhoods of Senegal have inspired music appreciated around the world. I groove to the Muslim references in songs by Toure Kunda, Baaba Maal, Youssou N’Dour, and anything by the deeply spiritual Cheikh Lo.
8. Rumi. The ever-popular thirteenth-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic, widely appreciated for his ecumenical philosophy, was nonetheless a devout Muslim.
9. Hagar. Mother of Abraham’s son Ishmael, and thus the matriarch of Islam, Hagar was exiled in the desert, but survived and prevailed. Israeli peace activists who advocate for a two-state solution in the Middle East now cite her as inspiration. Charlotte Gordon’s fascinating new book revolves around Hagar’s central role in the founding of the three Abrahamic faiths.
10. Jesus the Prophet. I’m not the first to realize that the Muslim view of Jesus–that he was one in a line of prophets descended from Abraham–could actually fit into my Jewish (or at least Jewish/Christian) world view. As an interfaith child, I look for these opportunities for a personal “meeting of the three faiths.”

“Oh, You Mean THAT Interfaith…”

As an interfaith child, I am acutely aware of the increase in “interfaith” activity since 9/11.  So yesterday, I went to the unveiling of the global Charter for Compassion, an interfaith project launched by the non-profit  TED and one of my intellectual heroes, religious writer Karen Armstrong. Then, I blogged about it at Jewcy.com.

Armstrong is a daring and deep thinker, and when I went up after the presentation to speak to her about the interfaith families movement, she seemed intrigued. But too often, theologians and clergy in interfaith “dialogue” put a heavy emphasis on  maintaining the boundaries between religions. We are exhorted to be very clear about our own personal and singular religious identities, and then make field trips across the boundaries to embrace and challenge each other. As religious adventurers, we are then supposed to return to an even more profound understanding of our own religion. Kind of like going to another country, eating exotic but possibly dangerous food, and then coming home with a renewed appreciation for America, for home.

This is all swell. But it is not particularly relevant to those of us who live with more than one religion in our families, or in our very beings. And surprisingly, the burgeoning cohort of interfaith marriages and interfaith children are rarely even mentioned, let alone invited and included, in these interfaith events. We make everyone uncomfortable, because we represent the blurring of those boundaries. What happens when you cross a boundary to embrace the other, and instead of returning home enlightened, you actually progress to making babies with that other, and commit to forming an interfaith family? The official interfaith dialogues between religious institutions, between clergy members, between well-meaning congregations, do not want to hear about dissolving boundaries.

And yet, interfaith children are here. And I would argue that as travelers who decided to stay and go native, who decided to forgo the comforts of home and instead become bicultural, we have a lot to offer to these interfaith palavers. Some of us who grew up with parents from two religions can act as the ideal tour guides. A lot of us are fluent in two religious languages, and we have spent a lifetime translating from one to the other.

We have gotten ourselves into a semantic situation where “interfaith” has two very separate meanings. Searching for “interfaith” on the web, on facebook, on twitter, turns up a lot of institutions and programs and events, in what seems like every town in America, especially since 9/11. And this is a good thing. But to get to the level of interfaith I’m talking about on this blog, an intimacy found between spouses, between parent and child, between two religions found in a single body, you have to type in “interfaith families,” or “interfaith marriage,” or “interfaith children.”

British Court Stands up for Interfaith Children

My pulse started racing when I read in the New York Times this morning that the British government has stepped into the center of the hopelessly snarled “Who is a Jew?” debate. A court ruled that basing school admission on whether or not the applicant has a Jewish mother is discriminatory under British law. If Britain’s Supreme Court upholds the ruling, life will become easier for interfaith children who want to identify as Jews.

 

The court heard how the Jews’ Free School, one of 7000 religious schools in Britain receiving government financing, refused to admit a boy for not being Jewish enough. Although he has a father who was born Jewish, and a mother who converted, she was not converted by the Orthodox. The family sued for discrimination and lost, but the Court of Appeal overturned the decision in the summer.

The court argued that basing school admission on the religion of the applicant’s mother was an ethnic test, and not a religious test, and that whether the criterion was “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist, makes it no less and no more unlawful.”  Last week, the case was before the Supreme Court, which is expected to give a final ruling before the end of this year.

As a result of the Court of Appeals ruling, the school has already shifted to a new admissions policy which requires applicants to meet certain litmus tests of  Jewish practice, rather than relying on parentage. This mirrors the shift among Reform Jews in America after 1983 from matrilineality as the test of Judaism, to proof of sufficient Jewish practice.

As a (patrilineal) interfaith child, I certainly agree with the court that religion is a set of beliefs and practices, not an ethnicity, and thus cannot be inherited. To say otherwise is deeply offensive not only to interfaith children, but to people who convert to Judaism, including adoptees who are converted as infants.

As an American, I hold dear the concept of separation of church and state, and I’m a bit aghast at the very concept that the British government is funding religious schools. So there is a certain amount of irony in the fact that the co-mingling of public education and religion in Britain led to this groundbreaking legal ruling on the discriminatory nature of matrilineal descent. I do find myself wondering, if the US government funds vouchers to parochial schools, does that give us power to demand the same scrutiny by courts here?

Yet in America, where only about 10% of Jews identify themselves as Orthodox,  interfaith children have many more options for Jewish community and Jewish education than in Britain, where Orthodox Jews constitute a majority and appear to exert a power akin to that in Israel. Here in the US, we have schools representing multiple forms of Judaism, and the freedom to create our own communities in which Judaism is truly a matter of belief, not ethnicity.

The President’s Interfaith Family

All this time I’ve been relating to Barack Obama as a fellow interfaith child, because his father and stepfather were Muslim and his mother’s family was Christian. Not to mention his wise interfaith Buddhist half-sister, and his wife’s cousin the rabbi. Now, it turns out he has a half-brother who is half-Jewish. And of course, many Jews in the blogosphere have been quick to point out that Mark Obama Ndesandjo is “halachically 100% Jewish” because his American mother, teacher Ruth Nidesand, is apparently Jewish. Although so far, Mark Ndesandjo has made no comment on his own religion, as far as I know. Ndesandjo spoke to the press about his connection to the President for the first time this week, in conjunction with the publication of a novel that appears to be heavily autobiographical. The topic of religion was reportedly barred in the ground rules of the press conference.

Why do we care? The idea that this could be the first American president with relatively close Jewish (step or half) family members appeals to our tribal pride. Almost 80% of American Jews voted for Obama: many of us continue to want to claim him, we crave the thrill of nachas. We don’t know much about Ruth Nidesand, but  we know she managed to escape from what Ndesandjo depicts in his book as an abusive and alcoholic Barack Obama Sr. She raised a son who went on to get a physics degree from Brown (my alma mater), an MBA, learn Mandarin and classical piano. In short, I suspect that Ruth is a strong, smart woman, in the same mold as Ann Dunham, no surprise there.

But me, I’m primarily intrigued by Ndesandjo, not because of his Jewishness, but because of his bothness: both black and white, both Muslim and Jew, both African and American. We are just beginning to see Muslim and Jewish intermarriage, so any Muslim/Jewish interfaith child in his forties is of interest to me, by definition, as a fellow pioneer in interfaithness. I imagine that he fled to China to escape the relentless efforts to stuff him into identity boxes: black, white, African, American, Jewish, Muslim, as well as to escape the traumatic memories of abuse by his father. Ndesandjo says he’s thinking about publishing his memoirs, and I hope he does. I don’t really care if he’s capitalizing on the Obama name to sell books—I know how hard it is to sell books these days. We need more interfaith children to tell their stories in order to help us all grow into our hybrid future together. And we need to hear the stories of “and/both”  people of all kinds (whether adopted, converted, biracial, immigrant, bisexual, intersexual, bilingual or otherwise bicultural).

Halloween, Interfaith Style

On Saturday night, I was out late partying with people dressed variously as a dying newspaper, Facebook (the culprit), Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. On Sunday morning, I woke up, shook off my candy hangover, and went to celebrate All Saints and All Souls Days with our interfaith community.

Halloween is the quintessential interfaith holiday, with both pagan and Christian roots, and an enthusiastic following among Jews. When I was growing up, no one questioned that American Jews should celebrate Halloween. But then again, it was an era when many Jews celebrated secular Christmas.

More recently, fear of assimilation and a return to deeper Jewish practice triggered a lively debate on whether or not Jews should celebrate Halloween at all. As an interfaith family and community, our thirst for full educational disclosure drives us to explore the religious origins and meaning of the holiday, rather than staying on the secularized, commercial surface. And thinking about the history of this interfaith holiday, and even developing a specifically Jewish perspective on Halloween, enlivens and enriches the holiday, and imbues it with special resonance for interfaith families.

The Spiritual Leader of our interfaith community, Reverend Julia Jarvis, stood in front of the hundreds of members of our community on Sunday morning and explained the pagan origins of Halloween, and how a Roman Pope encouraged the incorporation of this pre-Christian festival into the Catholic calendar, and the distinctions between All Saints and All Souls Days. A Catholic member of our group, married to a Jew, recounted with wise humor how praying to Saint Gerard, patron saint of motherhood, gave her comfort and strength when she was facing infertility.

Next, our Spiritual Advisor, Rabbi Harold White, stepped up to give a Jewish perspective on All Souls and All Saints. He made the distinction between the Christian veneration of dead saints, and the mystical Jewish tradition of the 36 righteous people (Lamed Vav Tzadikim), akin to living Jewish saints, who walk the earth in each era. He also compared the restless souls of Halloween to the dybukkim of Jewish folklore: I imagine the Christian and Jewish spirits roaming together among the living, neither of them able to settle into their graves.

Then our folk band lead us in singing  Mi Sheberach, a prayer of healing, while community members placed rocks into a bowl in remembrance of their personal saints, or loved ones who struggle or are gone from us. This is a ritual our community adapted from Unitarian congregations, but by singing a traditional Hebrew prayer, we both comfort our Jewish members with a familiar song and help to create a connection in our children to Jewish practice.

So what did our interfaith community take away from our All Saints and All Souls gathering? The sizable contingent of adult atheists and secularists in our community enjoyed the cerebral and historical perspective. The practicing Catholics appreciated recognition of the spiritual side of these holidays, so often overshadowed by pumpkins and chocolate. Children heard an affectionate reflection on saints from a Catholic parent. They learned from our rabbi that this is a Christian holiday, but that Jews can have a respectful and appreciative perspective on it. And they learned about the Jewish tradition of the 36 righteous, and about dybbukim.

We mourned and provided comfort to each other as a community. And then, to emphasize the continuity of life even in the face of death, the band struck up a rowdy rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Community members leapt into the aisle and joined hands to dance in a line that wove around the room: it was a joyful interfaith hora, New Orleans style. My 12-year-old son darted from his place in the band and joined the dancers, playing a djembe strapped to his chest. I am betting that he will remember that there is more to Halloween than candy, and that he will feel in his bones that belonging to an interfaith community can be both a cerebral and ecstatic experience.

My Debut on Jewcy.com…

Check out my first post on Jewcy.com. According to The Guardian,  “Jewcy has become a cultural icon at the forefront of a new wave of Jewish culture and pride.” The Jewcy editors describe themselves as “devoted to helping Jews and their peers expand the meaning of community by presenting a spectrum of voices, content, and discussion.” So do they consider me a Jew or a peer? I don’t know, but they read my blog and liked it enough to invite me to write for them, and I like the fact that they have the chutzpah to consort with me.

My avatar (the little photo that signifies a post or comment from me) on Jewcy is these interlocking rings, signifying the three spaces inhabited by interfaith children (Jewish, interfaith, and Christian). The interlocking rings are also the logo for the Interfaith Families Project of Greater Washington.

We’ll see how it goes. So far, I’m getting flamed on their site, as I thoroughly expected to be, by people telling me I’m not Jewish enough. But hey, the traffic to On Being Both just shot through the roof as Jewcy readers check out my blog, also as expected. So maybe a few of these readers, while not sticking their necks out to defend me on Jewcy, were looking for a blog like mine and will become loyal readers of On Being Both.

In the meantime, don’t worry. My primary blog is still On Being Both, because this is the community devoted to grappling with being interfaith children, and interfaith parents.

The internet seems to be quickly destroying journalism as we know it and the possibility of being paid for content. Painful. On the other hand, before blogging, I would not have been able to obsessively communicate and interact with the interfaith community around the world.

 

Ten Things I Love About Judaism

Three out of four of my children’s grandparents grew up as Christians. So why am I insisting on raising my children with Judaism as well as Christianity? The philosophical, political and psychological reasons recur as themes throughout this blog. But since I recently posted the Christian stuff I love, I thought I should also list some of the things, big and small, I love about Judaism:

1. The Music. Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin,  the Klezmatics and Shlomo Carlebach, Regina Spektor and Matisyahu. I feel a kinesthetic rush of communal joy when dancing in a circle, singing ancient, minor melodies.
2. The Middle East Connection. Even though Israel is deeply problematic for interfaith families, I feel the pull of the Mediterranean. I belly dance, I pine for my estranged Arab sisters, I hold eggplants over the burners of my stove to make baba ghanouj from scratch.
3. Hebrew. It’s diabolically difficult, but exposing our children to it makes their neurons sprout, right? Personally, I enjoyed puzzling it out as a child. The idea is that Hebrew will stimulate their potential for both math and mysticism.
4. Feasting. I’m not just talking about Ashkenazi deli food here, though I admit to eating chopped liver straight out of the container, like peanut butter. I’m talking about the way food is central to Jewish practice. The sensuality of the perfumes and textures and rituals surrounding food—bitter herbs and haroset, the Tu Bishvat seder and the braided challah.  Food to Jews is both sacred symbol (thus food for the intellect), and primal earthly delight.
5. Bibliophilia. As the publishing industry collapses in on itself like a dying star, Jews will be the last to forsake investigative reporting, editing, newsprint, reading books. I suppose it’s because the Torah is so central to Jewish practice. I intend to stand with my people and be the last one to cancel my newspaper subscriptions.
6. Tikkun Olam. Every religion stresses community service. It’s one of the most defensible aspects of religion. But I find particularly evocative and mysterious the Kabbalistic conept of a broken world that needs to be put back together, the impulse to gather and fit together the shards of a shattered vessel. Although the original story ends with the termination of the material world: kind of a downer.
7. Thirst for Justice. From Jewish support for civil rights in the twentieth century, to Jewish lawyers working pro bono on LGBT equality cases today, the thirst for justice creates good in our world. Is it the ancient memory of slavery? The recent memory of deadly persecution? It doesn’t matter why, it’s a good thing.
8. Minority Empathy. On a related note, it builds character to grow up as an outsider in America: to empathize with other minority groups, to cultivate the stance of critical, thoughtful observer. To stand out is to invite discrimination, but to withstand discrimination is to become stronger.
9. Compatibility with Atheism. I love a religion that includes a significant contingent of practicing adherents who don’t even believe in God. Personally, I’m agnostic. But I find very appealing the idea that ritual, a sense of community, even spirituality, can all be accessed by doubters and even rowdy nay-sayers.
10. Shabbat. Turn off your cellphone, log off facebook, say no to the essential meeting. Sit and eat with family. Give thanks for light, and wine and bread. Sing, and smell the spices. All children crave this peace: Christian children, Jewish children, interfaith children.