A Global Community of Interfaith Families
Today, you can read a Q and A with me over on a blog called Moms Are Human. Blogger Elizabeth Katz (no relation) is a young intermarried mom who contacted me for more information on the “both” option for interfaith families. Maybe because my interfaith identity often means I see more than one viewpoint on an issue, I try …
I just returned from a summer trip to Massachusetts (where I was born and raised) and Rhode Island (where I went to college). It got me thinking about my roots as a New Englander, and as a sort of cultural Christian. Many Jews and non-Jews understand the idea of cultural Judaism: the concept that someone may not …
Continue reading “Cultural Christianity, Boston Brown Bread, and Airport Security”
On Sunday morning, my husband’s family decided to walk to the chapel in the beach community where they have been summering for generations. I was pleased when my teenage daughter agreed to walk with us and attend the service. As much as I love our community of interfaith families, as much as I believe that …
I have taught every grade level from kindergarten through high school. But my favorite students are middle schoolers: just opening to the world, still tender, but surging with energy. Adolescence is a threshold, a liminal state, a state of being both child and adult, and I am inordinately attracted to the liminal, to bothness. Yesterday, …
Recently, my teenage daughter experienced a formative moment: someone expressed negative feelings about her Jewishness. Frankly, I was thrilled. The fact that she has faced a moment common to all of us with Jewish identity means my plan to raise my children with strong connections to both Judaism and Christianity is working. My children, with only one Jewish grandparent, could have passed …
I called my mother yesterday and told her I was making corned beef for Saint Patrick’s Day. I thought she would be pleased, because she often points out that I put more emphasis on my father’s Judaism than on her English-Scottish-Irish heritage. And she is right. Whenever my siblings and I were asked in school …
Continue reading “Interfaith Corned Beef: Irish and Jewish for Saint Patrick’s Day”
Every year, I don some festive garb, and head to our interfaith community‘s Purim celebration. It has been said that most Jewish holidays fit one recurring theme: “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat.” Purim certainly fits that template (along with Passover and Hanukkah). Growing up in a Reform temple, the notion that …
Last night on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart was bemoaning the fact that his interfaith kids ditched Hanukkah as soon as they found out about Christmas (his wife is Catholic). I suspect this was just schtick, or perhaps he’s not trying hard enough on the Hanukkah end of things. Interfaith parents tend to fear the commercial …
Continue reading “Why Interfaith Kids Love Hanukkah (Even If They Get Christmas Too)”
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. …
Most interfaith Jewish/Christian children share a set of pivotal moments, epiphanies that help to forge our interfaith identities. These realizations well up in response to confrontation with the following facts: Hitler targeted interfaith children as well as full-blooded Jews. Hitler did not make a distinction between matrilineal and patrilineal half-Jews. Many Jews (sadly, even Reform …
Being Both 