Year of the Beet: A New (Vegan) Passover Chapter

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  Seder plate by Martha Legg Katz

This week is all about making plans to honor the Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist, and atheist connections in my extended three-generation interfaith family, during Passover and Easter week.

For me, that’s nothing new. What’s new this year is making sure there are vegan options for the Passover seder and Easter dinner, for my daughter and her boyfriend. She converted him (to veganism) during Veganuary this year. (And I learned the hard way to say Veganuary with a hard “g”). The vegan shift this year is a reminder that families are complex, identities and practices change over time, and love continues to leap across boundaries.

First, the good news. Charoset is vegan! Horseradish is vegan! Parsley is vegan! Matzah is vegan! And there are multiple recipes out there for vegan versions of the other dishes that feel most important to our family at the seder: matzah ball soup, and chocolate toffee matzah for dessert. Also, shifting in this direction aligns with something I have felt for years, which is that serving meat and potatoes after all the traditional appetizers is, well, just too much food. I’d rather feast on the foods unique to Passover—as much charoset as I want, as many matzah balls as I want–and then skip straight to the chocolate toffee matzoh. So that’s what we’re doing, people.

Because in this, the first year without my father, our Jewish patriarch, I am leading a seder in my own home. I would rather travel hundreds of miles to have my father at the head of the table, as he was last year when he was 93. But instead, here I am, bereft, an orphan. Now I am the oldest sibling in the oldest generation of our family.

It’s not my first seder as a leader. My husband and I spent six years in Senegal and Brazil, far from family, and had to lead our own seders–except for one delightful year when the U.S. Ambassador to Senegal and his Jewish wife hosted, and we got invited to an embassy seder of Jews and Christians celebrating in a predominantly Muslim country. I am grateful for the richness and complexity of our lives so far, and for the long generations in my family, and for all of the traditions we are passing down to our young adult children, and for all the new ideas they are passing back up to us.

And so we will celebrate this week, with nostalgia and con brio, with poetry and social justice, with family and friends, with old rituals and new. This year, I feel emboldened to create and innovate and expand the welcome, by honoring the vegans, and using a roasted beet instead of a shank bone on the seder plate, even though my father (who was resistant to change) would not have approved. Because religious practice is inherently metaphorical, and those metaphors shift over time in response to the community context and deeper understanding of all the beings who share our globe. And because, after a lifetime as a daughter, I am now the senior Jewish person in charge. And so, for Passover 2019, we embrace the beet.

Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of The Interfaith Family Journal (2019), and Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2013). Follow her on twitter @susankatzmiller.

Passover and Good Friday, 2018

Photo, Susan Katz Miller

In both Christianity and Judaism, the dates for the major spring holidays are guided by an intricate dance of the moon and the sun–the lunisolar calendar. This means Passover and Holy Week (from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday) often overlap. And this year, Good Friday and the first Passover Seder fall on the same night, maximizing the logistical challenges for interfaith families who celebrate both religions. (I first wrote about this convergence in 2012, and again in 2015).

Theologically, many interfaith families experience more cognitive dissonance in the spring, when Passover and Holy Week overlap, than they do in December, with Hanukkah and Christmas. The idea that the Last Supper was a Passover Seder is tantalizing, though historically debatable. But for Jews, this idea may also raise the red flag of supersessionism—the problematic idea that Judaism was simply a starter religion in the evolution of Christianity.

The contrasting moods of Passover and Good Friday may also contribute to the dissonance. Good Friday is a solemn commemoration of the crucifixion and death of Jesus. A Passover Seder is a joyous celebration of the exodus from slavery in Egypt, involving feasting and drinking. (Though this joy may be tempered by acknowledging the violence of the plagues, frustration over the long history of Middle Eastern conflict, and the ongoing effects of slavery and colonial oppression worldwide).

Meanwhile, in the realm of the practical, both Passover and Good Friday involve culinary restrictions. And they are both traditionally marked in the evening. So the overlap this year may pose a greater logistical challenge than the overlap of Passover and Easter (which is celebrated mainly in the morning and afternoon).

So, how to honor both, with grace under pressure? Keep in mind that every family celebration, especially when there are small children involved, is going to be imperfect. As inspiration, I offer the words of multifaith bard Leonard Cohen: “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Below, I suggest some possible strategies for this year:

1. Move the Seder. Many Jewish families celebrate multiple Seders–before, during, and even after the official eight days of Passover. If Christian family members want to fast and attend church on the night of Good Friday this year, consider shifting the first Seder to Saturday night. Some families might even wait to have a Seder on Sunday or Monday night, when the mood will be more festive for both Jewish and Christian family members.
2. Adapt the Seder. Some Christians may be fine with going to a noon service on Good Friday, and then a first Seder on Friday night. And some interfaith families will feel they must hold the first Seder on the traditional date. In this case, it would be thoughtful to adapt the Seder main dish, if your Christian family members are avoiding meat for the Good Friday fast. So, salmon instead of brisket? Or, explain to extended family ahead of time that your Christian family members may skip the brisket and wine, but partake of the matzoh-charoset-horseradish sandwich and matzoh ball soup, egg and parsley.
3. Adapt Easter. Whether you have your first Seder on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or later, look for ways to make Easter easier for Jewish family members. For breakfast, we like to make matzoh brei (eggs scrambled with matzoh) instead of the traditional Easter pancakes—the savory protein dish offsets the sugar rush of Easter candy. And at Easter dinner, my interfaith family serves lamb, a Passover tradition in many Sephardic homes, rather than ham. (Be aware that there is a big debate about whether and what kind of lamb you can eat at Passover). Avoiding ham reduces the culinary dissonance, even in a family like mine that doesn’t keep kosher the rest of the year.
4. Curate. Trying to reenact every single family Passover and Easter tradition in one weekend may cause parents and children to melt down like Peeps in the microwave. Every family, whether monofaith or interfaith, curates the family traditions they want to preserve, and sets aside others. So, as much as I loved the idea of the Easter cake made in the shape of a lamb, we skip this tradition. I don’t love cake made from matzoh meal, and the idea of cutting into a lamb cake always bothered my vegetarian daughter. Our preferred dessert for the weekend is matzoh toffee brittle. On the other hand, we always make space for dying eggs. We’re a family of artists, and it pleases me that the hard-boiled egg is connected to both holidays.

As always, creating successful family holidays depends on putting yourself in the shoes of others, and clear communication. If a strategy works for you, try to tune out the self-proclaimed experts telling you that you are doing it wrong. Be confident in the knowledge that the different ways to celebrate together are as numerous as the leaves of spring grass.

Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2015), and The Interfaith Family Journal (2019). Follow her on twitter @susankatzmiller.

Passover: Aimee Helen’s Southern-Style Charoset Recipe

From the archives: Originally posted on March 24, 2010. Happy Passover, all!

In the late 19^th century, my great-grandfather Emanuel Michael Rosenfelder left Bavaria and became a circuit-riding rabbi, serving Jewish traders and merchants along the Mississippi River, in Natchez, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. When he registered to vote in 1876 in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, the clerk, obviously unfamiliar with Jewish theology, recorded Rabbi Rosenfelder’s profession as “Minister of the Gospel.” In New Orleans, he met and married my great-grandmother, a teenager who had been living in a Jewish orphanage after her parents died in a Yellow Fever epidemic. Fleeing the threat of tropical illness, the Rosenfelders journeyed north up the river and settled in Louisville, Kentucky. My grandmother was born and raised there, one of eight children, and they gave her a Southern francophone name, Aimee Helen.

In preparing for the Passover Seder next week, I turned to Grandma’s charoset recipe, written out for me in her shaky handwriting on a translucent scrap of onion-skin paper. The typical Ashkenazic (European Jewish) recipe for charoset is a mix of chopped apples, almonds, cinnamon and sweet kosher wine, and in many families, the big debate is whether to include raisins. Meanwhile, the Sephardim (Jews from Spain, Portugal and the Middle East) make charoset with desert fruits including dates, figs, pistachios and pine nuts. Charoset, served on matzah as part of the ritual Passover meal, is meant to represent either the mortar used by Jewish slaves when building the pyramids, or the sensual foods mentioned in the Song of Songs.

But Aimee Helen Rosenfelder Katz’s charoset reflects the sojourn of her family  in the Deep South, surprising us with oranges, bananas and pecans. I grew up on this charoset at Passover each year, and I love the tart sparkle of the oranges, the smoothness of the bananas, the sweet pecans. She was a bit of a southern belle, my Jewish grandma, with very proper manners, and a private girls’ school education. But she was also an intellectual role model, with a French degree from the University of Louisville, and graduate studies at Barnard. During Word War I, she taught French to American soldiers heading off to fight in Europe.

Someday, her first great-grandchild, my daughter Aimee Helen, will inherit the charoset recipe, a tangible reminder of the uniquely American story of her Jewish ancestors. At the Passover Seder, we are commanded to explain the religious significance of each of the seemingly incongruous objects arranged around the Seder plate: the egg, the roasted shank bone, the parsley, the horseradish… In the same way, I feel commanded to explain to my children the significance of each disparate family tradition, each story, each character on the colorful plate representing their heritage. Given the complexity and depth and resonance of the stories from our Jewish family, I cannot imagine raising my children solely as Christians. But neither can I imagine ignoring everything else on their family plate.

Aimee Helen’s Southern-Style Charoset

3 peeled and grated apples

2 peeled and grated oranges

2  chopped bananas

1 squeezed half-lemon

1 cup chopped toasted pecans

½ cup chopped raisins (optional)

½ tsp cinnamon

1 tbs sweet kosher wine

Sugar to taste

Mix all ingredients and give it some time for the flavors to mix and deepen. It only gets better the next day. Aimee Helen noted, “I prefer pecans, but almonds if you prefer.”

Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2015), and The Interfaith Family Journal (2019). Follow her on twitter @susankatzmiller.

Passover: Three Generations of Interfaith Family

Passover and Easter are fast approaching, and I am still immersed in speaking and traveling in support of my book, Being Both. So I am reposting some essays from the archives. This one dates from the spring of 2010. Enjoy!

Our spring break starts today, and my two teens are genuinely ecstatic anticipating our annual family gathering in Florida. Every year, my parents reserve beachside condos, have a rental piano delivered, and invite all four of their children, the spouses, and seven grandchildren for a weeklong family swim, gab and jam session. If we’re lucky, and this year we are, we get to celebrate both Passover and Easter together. For the Seder, all of my mother’s family, her sister and children and grandchildren, join us. My father will lead the Seder with Haggadot shipped down each year in a box full of beach towels.

As in many families, we go around the table, each person reading the next Haggadah passage in turn. We clap along when we sing Dayenu. We fill the cup and open the door for Elijah. We sing Had Gadya, the allegorical cumulative Aramaic song about the water that quenched the fire that beat the stick, and recite all the Who Knows One? riddles in a single breath.

It is neither the longest nor the shortest Seder in the world, nor is it particularly progressive, though I have introduced an orange to the Seder plate, as a reminder of those who have been excluded. I suppose it is a fairly typical Reform Seder in America. The funny thing is, my father is the only one at the table, of the twenty or more family members, who is “100% Jewish by blood.”  The rest of us are a family tapestry of three-quarter Jews, half-Jews, quarter-Jews, Jews-at-heart, Jewannabes, agnostics, atheists, secular and practicing Catholics, and other assorted Christians. What we have in common, besides our family ties, is a high degree of familiarity and comfort with this central Jewish ritual meal, built up over the the fifty years of the happy marriage of my interfaith parents. As far as I’m concerned, everyone at the table is part of the interfaith spectrum, part of my tribe.

My father, the patriarch at 86, has spent fifty years teaching all of us the art of the Passover meal, tending this motley flock, quietly spreading, by example, his understanding and joy in Jewish practice. He has succeeded, to the point where my young French-Canadian-Italian-German-Irish-Scottish-English cousin, who does not have one drop of “Jewish blood,” whatever that is, but who grew up celebrating Passover with my family each year, went off to college, and, too far from home to join us, tried calling her campus Hillel to see if she could have Seder with them. The answer was no. Which reminds me of the time I was rejected from a Seder table for being a patrilineal half-Jew. But that’s another story.

And so I return to my recurrent (some would say obsessive) themes. Interfaith families can be close and happy and successful. Interfaith families can be “good for the Jews” in that they educate both interfaith children and extended Christian family about Judaism. But also, many Jewish institutions still exclude rather than welcome, even at Passover, when it is traditional to “welcome the stranger.” And this exclusion drives some of us to seek out the network of independent interfaith family communities in which to raise our children.

I am troubled, as are many others, by the concluding Seder words ”next year in Jerusalem.” Most of my interfaith tribe rebels against the idea of an Israeli state that promulgates exclusion based on religious identification. So no matter what my mouth says,  my brain will probably be thinking, ”next year with my family, in Florida again, please.” For Passover, there’s no place I’d rather be.

Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2015), and The Interfaith Family Journal (2019). Follow her on twitter @susankatzmiller.

Passover and Easter in Interfaith Families Communities

This time of year, many interfaith family communities sponsor events for Passover, and for Easter. Below, I round up links for those who are seeking out ways to celebrate as interfaith families. Some of these events are designed to be educational and are often held before the actual holidays: a model Seder to teach the meaning behind the various rituals and readings, or a discussion of the various perspectives on Easter within interfaith families. Other events are celebrations, often identical to more traditional holidays, except that they are designed by and for interfaith families.

Many interfaith families, even those with children in interfaith religious education programs, continue to attend church and synagogue, and to celebrate important holidays with extended family. But they still also enjoy learning with, and celebrating with, a community made up entirely of interfaith families. For others, either because they live far from relatives, or because they have not found church or synagogue homes, celebrating with an interfaith family community provides a crucial way to stay connected to Judaism, and Christianity, in a context that is inclusive.

For those who live near an interfaith family community, here are some upcoming events. This Sunday morning, the Interfaith Families Project of Greater Washington DC will host a potluck community Seder. On that same morning, the Interfaith Families of Greater Philadelphia will host an early Easter gathering, with an egg hunt and egg dying. And in Suffern, NY, the Orange/Rockland/Bergen counties chapter of the Interfaith Community (IFC) will have an Easter and Holy Week event designed to share the meaning of the season and its traditions, followed by an Easter egg hunt and a bunny hop race. In the afternoon on Sunday, the Westchester chapter of IFC will hold also hold a model Seder and Holy Week event, in Larchmont, NY.

Next weekend, on Sunday March 24, the Long Island chapter of the Interfaith Community will have a Palm Sunday service in Brookville, NY. On Tuesday March 26 at 4pm, the same chapter will host a model Seder at 4pm.  During Passover, the Interfaith Families of Greater Philadelphia will have a Seder on Friday March 30. And the DC interfaith group will have an Easter service, and a pancake breakfast, on Easter itself, on March 31. Events in Boston and in lower Manhattan happened earlier this year, but if you live in those locations, contact them now so that you don’t miss the events next year.

For those who live elsewhere, you have at least two options. One is to find progressive religious institutions in your area that will welcome interfaith families. Most progressive churches welcome interfaith families, though very few provide specific programming for them. Many Jewish communities now welcome interfaith families (though they probably don’t approve of educating children in both religions), and many are holding community Seders. Check out Jewish Community Centers (JCCs) and Hillels (on college campuses) as well as synagogues and havurot (smaller, informal, or independent Jewish communities). Many Unitarian-Universalist communities have a also significant proportion of interfaith couples, and they may also be hosting holiday events you could join.

The second option is to build a new interfaith families community in your area. Inviting a few families for a Seder, or an Easter celebration, could be a great way to start.

 

Susan Katz Miller’s book, Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family is available now in hardcover and eBook from Beacon Press.

Passover and Easter: Interfaith Family Afterword

The hardest part about celebrating Easter and Passover with my extended interfaith clan in Florida is extricating ourselves from the multigenerational lovefest–and leaving behind all the leftovers when we fly home. My family gathers from England, California, New York and Washington. For three days this year we planned, shopped and cooked for the Easter dinner and the Passover Seder. When we drove to the airport to get the kids back to school at the end of their spring break we regretfully left behind the leftover brisket, roast potatoes and carrots, matzoh ball soup, charoset, and chocolate-toffee matzoh for my siblings and cousins with later school vacations. Oh, and a spiral-cut honey-baked Easter ham (from one of those “Hams R Us” stores), and lots of Easter candy.

Once again this year, my 87-year-old father was there to preside over our Seder. Each year  seems unbearably precious to me, and we move heaven and earth to be there. We also illegally move giant glasstop dining tables from three condos into one, to fit all 20 family members. And my father hires a piano company to move a piano in for two weeks, so that he can play the jazz standards and Pennsylvania polkas and Irish reels that form the soundtrack to our multicultural lives. We make a joyful noise: one year we were threatened with eviction.

My sister from New York is raising her kids Jewish–my nephew is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah. (My mother is his only Christian grandparent). My brother and sister-in-law from California are raising their three kids Catholic. (My father is their only Jewish grandparent). My seven-year-old niece is attending CCD classes, preparing for her First Holy Communion, and she said a lovely grace at Easter dinner, dressed in her spring dress and tiny gold cross.

My niece, and her siblings, attend a Catholic Montessori school, and they had just taken part in the school’s reenactment of The Last Supper during Holy Week. After years of Passover in Florida with us, they understand The Last Supper as a Seder.

So this year at school, my Catholic nephew, age 9, who has a prodigious memory, stood up and sang “Dayenu” at The Last Supper. His Catholic teachers know that his father is Jewish, and are accepting and encouraging of the Jewish knowledge he brings to their community. Apparently, they egged him on, asking for more authentic Passover material, at which point he recited the entire “Chad Gadya” in English (“…then came the stick that beat the dog that bit the cat…”).

It is doubtful that the apostles sang Dayenu (apparently a medieval German melody) and Chad Gadya at The Last Supper (though Chad Gadya is written in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus, and may date back to that ancient period). And I worry that the violence of Chad Gadya (which may or may not be an allegory for all of the empires that conquered the Jews throughout history) may have puzzled my nephew’s Catholic schoolmates.

But I have to love my nephew’s pride in his Jewish knowledge and interfaith family, and his mastery of Passover ritual. It also happens that he found the afikoman this year, for the third consecutive year, and was rewarded by his Jewish Grandpa. Last year, he read the four questions (in English). At times in the past, he has worried about the fact that his father is Jewish, about his father’s anomalous religious status in their nuclear family. And he seemed comforted to learn, recently, that his father has a strand of Catholic ancestry. Though we were raised as Jews by our Protestant mother and Jewish father, our great-grandfather Michael Gorman probably was born a Catholic in Clonmel, Ireland (before emigrating to America and marrying a Protestant). With the convergence of Holy Week and Passover this year, interfaith children had a chance to better integrate their own interwoven families, the connections between the religions, and the Jewishness of Jesus.

My Catholic nephew will always have a visceral memory of his Jewish heritage–the surprising bite of horseradish, the comforting scent of soup, the rhythmic clapping of aunts and uncles, the thrill of discovering the hidden matzoh. And I bet my Jewish nephew will remember his little Catholic cousin reciting grace at Easter dinner. Whether given one religious label, like my nieces and nephews, or two (like my teens), I hope, I believe, that interfaith children immersed in family religious ritual, in their own complex ancestry, will naturally mature into ambassadors, teachers, and bridge-builders between religions.

 

Susan Katz Miller’s book, Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family is available now in hardcover and eBook from Beacon Press.

Passover and Good Friday

This year, I am fielding calls from reporters wanting to know how we handle the dilemma of Passover starting on Good Friday. I know that, especially for young couples just starting their interfaith journey, this convergence of important holidays may create stress. Say, for instance, your in-laws are expecting you for a raucous Passover seder featuring four glasses of wine and glazed brisket: this could be an alienating experience if you are also commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus and avoiding meat on the solemn Friday of Holy Week.

As interfaith families become the norm in our culture, rather than the exception, all of us must learn to empathize, to see our own practices through the eyes of the “other.” And as each interfaith couple learns to listen deeply and to support one another, I can imagine that serving salmon, rather than brisket, might be a reasonable accommodation in some families this year.

I have to admit that rather than adapting our menu, our family is doing what an awful lot of American families are doing these days with all sorts of holidays: moving the date of our celebration. Somehow, this does not seem sacrilegious, since many of us attend multiple seders each year anyway, often spread out over weeks. Our community interfaith seder was last week, before everyone started leaving town for the school spring break to have Easter and Passover with family. Other themed seders such as women’s seders, or social justice seders, are often held well ahead of Passover week for the same reason. And families and friends may schedule multiple seders throughout Passover week, in order to celebrate with more than one group.

My interfaith clan won’t have our seder this year until Monday night, because being together is more important than the precise day we celebrate, and because we want to respect the climax of the Christian liturgical year. My siblings are flying to Florida from around the country to be with my parents, and we won’t all be gathered until Sunday anyway. At that point, we might as well have a proper and separate day of celebrating Easter, since our extended interfaith crew includes both practicing Catholics (who will go to an Easter service) and small children (who will want to eat chocolate and dye eggs). Part of respecting the differences between our two familial religions involves giving each holiday proper space to breathe, and avoiding blending them together. But I suspect that inevitably this year, some of us will spend Easter making matzoh balls.

After years of blogging around the cycle of Jewish and Christian holidays, I thought I would provide a round-up of links to my past posts on Passover and Easter. For culinary musings, you can read about my Grandma’s southern-style charoset with bananas, oranges and pecans, about the “Easter” recipes in her 19th-century German Jewish cookbook, and about what to do with leftover matzoh, jelly bean, and Peeps. And on Joan Nathan’s blog, alongside her terrific flourless chocolate cake recipe, you can read my tips for making the Passover seder more accessible for both Jewish and interfaith guests.

To address the “Spring Dilemma” head on– the theological harmonics and feedback produced by the proximity of Easter and Passover, read about how one father talked to his young interfaith daughter about the story of Jesus, about my experience of Easter as a mystery and a metaphor, and about being Jewish at a sunrise Easter service.

And for more about how my motley interfaith clan celebrates, you can read about it on this blog, and in my infamous “Interfaith Easter, Oy!” essay from Huffington Post (with 240 passionate comments), this year reborn on the new Better After 50 blog.

However you celebrate, wherever you are, I hope you have time to slow down this holiday weekend, to take in the rebirth of spring, to appreciate the old people and the babies and the tender teenagers gathered round, as we partake in these ancient and evolving rituals together.

 

Susan Katz Miller’s book, Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family is available now in hardcover and eBook from Beacon Press.

Jewish Autumn, Christian Winter…

Growing up, my family often went apple-picking after Rosh Hashanah services. My Jewish New Year memories are intertwined with the cidery scent of apples rotting in the grass, the sound of bees buzzing, the long angle of late New England sun, and the brisk air that meant the excitement of new school clothes.

In autumn, our interfaith community celebrates Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), and the harvest festival of Sukkot. It may, in fact, appear that we are giving Christianity short shrift, because the “must do” Jewish holidays are stacked up front. When prospective members come to check us out in the fall, the Jewish partner in the couple tends to feel perfectly comfortable. If I can, I give those Jewish partners a heads up that as winter approaches, they will need to reckon with Christianity.

After a transition through the mostly secular Thanksgiving period, we shift into what I think of as our Christian season, with Advent and Christmas. We celebrate Hannukah of course. But since Hannukah is not actually among the top five Jewish holidays in terms of importance, we don’t attempt to give Hannukah and Christmas equal weight. “Being both” is not about distorting either religion to create false equivalencies. We do not have a Hannukah bush, or menorahs on our Christmas tree. Instead, we celebrate Advent and Christmas with as much historical integrity and spiritual depth as we can muster, to offset the commercial Christmas so prevalent in American culture. Jewish partners learn to accept, or not, seeing their children light Advent candles, sing carols, and talk about the birth of Jesus, that nice Jewish boy.

In spring, “being both” comes to a head with the twin week-long celebrations of Passover and Holy Week. Most interfaith families know this as the season of true “interfaith dilemma.” Jews are forced to confront the idea of resurrection. Christians are forced to confront the historical anti-Semitism associated with Easter. Everyone in the family must negotiate the “chosen people” language embedded in the Passover Seder, and the horror of the drowning of the Egyptians. And we must be nimble diplomats to avoid making a mishigas of meals with extended family featuring Easter buns, matzoh balls, ham and brisket.

With the end of the school year, our interfaith community goes into sleep mode, as do many religious communities. For some strange and convenient reason, there are no major holidays in either Judaism or Christianity during the summer. Instead, many of us use this time to reflect on whether or not we will recommit ourselves to the communities we have chosen—especially those of us who are wandering Jews, wandering Christians, or both.

 

Susan Katz Miller is the author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family, from Beacon Press. She works as an interfaith families consultant, speaker, and coach. Follow her on twitter @beingboth.