Jewish Talk

Celebrating Passover in a Christian community

Encouraging questions and open communication

We live in a neighborhood with a very active Christian community. This means that every Easter, we are surrounded by community egg hunts and lots of Easter excitement. Now that our children are older, they no longer mind missing the trappings of Easter, but they are very sensitive to being perceived as different. As we prepare for our Passover Seder and study the meaning of our rituals, our kids naturally ask lots of tough questions about Easter.

When the kids were little it was easy to emphasize the similarities between our celebrations. Because Passover requires us to rid our house completely of bread, we had elaborate "bread" hunts as we cleaned, complete with prizes to reward the effort. Our crafty daughter decorated beautiful afikomen bags to use during the seder, which we dutifully hid for the children to search for during the long meal, and we even boiled eggs to include on our seder plates. Any questions about Easter egg hunts and decorating eggs were easily answered with "you get to hunt for bread and then later hunt for the beautiful afikomen bags you've made."

Now that they are older, they've started to ask about the connections between Passover and Easter. We've told them the Christian story, but they ask some interesting questions. For example, "why is it traditional to eat ham on Easter when Jesus would certainly have kept Kosher and shunned that meat?" I suggested that it might be to emphasize that Christians have broken away from their Jewish roots, but I don't actually know the answer. Fortunately, our kids like the discussions as much as the answer so these questions always lead to lively debates in our house.

Keeping Kosher

Tough Choices for a Busy Family

Our family keeps conservative kosher. This means we eat in restaurants and at non-kosher friend's houses but we keep kosher rules in mind with each food choice. I find that bringing G-d into mundane tasks, like eating, reminds me to think outside of myself. Even when I choose to eat a non-kosher meal, I pause to think and that keeps G-d in the equation despite my choice to "break the rules."

As our children have gotten older, these choices have gotten harder.

Kosher food costs more than non-kosher, the kids get pressure from their friends to try new things and school lunches offer an appealing alternative to busy mornings. Despite these challenges, our kids choose to follow the rules most of the time and when they break them they do so in a thoughtful manner that I am proud of.

For those who don't know, kosher is more than avoiding pork and shell fish. The rules of kashrut, or keeping kosher, require that milk and meat never touch or be included in the same meal, that animals be treated humanely in life and that they be slaughtered painlessly. The rule necessitating the separation of milk and meat reads that "the calf shall not be cooked in the milk of it's mother." It is literally understood as the requirement to keep the two types of food separate at all times, but the underlying imagery is one of kindness and compassion toward the animals we eat. This especially speaks to our children and while they are sometimes curious about the tastes of forbidden foods, they have not been tempted by cheeseburgers.

Torah Study for Kids

One-size Doesn't Fit All

Fascinated by Torah study, our 9-year-old son delves deeply into each story. He asks questions about how the miracles could have happened and why each particular story was included when so many others were omitted. This deep curiosity is actually what has frustrated him about religious school and has led us to decide to fully homeschool his religious education.

The last time we attended services at our synagogue, we kept him with us instead of sending him with his peers to the Junior Congregation most attend. He read the entire Torah portion along with the associated Midrash, or explanatory stories, included in the text. He was so engrossed that he refused to participate further in the services with the exception of listening to the Rabbi's drash, or sermon, about what we had just read. At the conclusion of the service, he asked us if he could stay and read the Torah every Saturday in the future instead of going with his peers.

Herein lies our dilemma.

While it is wonderful that he is so deeply interested in this aspect of his Judaism, it does nothing to help him find a place within our community unless he chooses to become a Rabbi. Since his heart is set on becoming a chemist or a marine biologist, I seriously doubt that ordination is in his future. But there are no deep and meaningful Torah study groups for young children in our neighborhood. Religious school is focused on building a Jewish identity in terms of observances, ritual and a connection with Israel. He is thought to be too young for Torah and Talmudic study, which frustrates him and actually alienates him. Our Rabbi invited us to start a group, but assured us that no one she knew would come. I wonder if that is true. For now I'll do my best to satisfy his curiosity. But I'd like to find a few peers for him as well.

Purim Play Disaster

Teaching kids about anti-semitism

My daughter loves being Jewish so much that when we decided to send her to public school for Kindergarden she got angry with us for denying her a Jewish day school experience. So we were shocked when, after a Purim play, she declared that she was done being Jewish.

For those who don't know, a Purim play is a traditional reenactment of the Biblical story of Esther. In it, an evil advisor named Haman persuades the king to kill all of the Jews in his kingdom. The king agrees until he finds out that his favorite wife, Esther, is Jewish at which point he rescinds the order and the Jewish community is saved. Our daughter was so horrified at the idea that people were mean to Jews that she declared herself "not-Jewish." Interestingly, Purim is a happy, silly holiday. It is one of the few occasions when Jewish adults traditionally get drunk. For the children, there are Purim carnivals and costumes to look forward to, but our daughter fixated on the cruelty rather than on the fun.

As you can imagine, we were terrified by her potential reaction to Passover's detailed description of the Exodus, but she didn't get upset. So what was it about Purim? I think it was the casual attitude. Passover deals dramatically with anti-semitism while Purim addresses it with humor. I wonder if this isn't by design. In both cases the emphasis is on overcoming adversity and maintaining our Jewish community, but the approach is different.

Navigating the Hebrew School vs. Soccer Debate

"We've learned some very interesting things together and our children have been inspired to ask some fantastic questions."

There is a hot debate being held in conservative synagogues across America right now regarding the education of our children. On the one side, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism is urging synagogues to set up schools which meet minimum standards. On the other, families struggle to maintain a Jewish household amidst growing academic demands, sports and social commitments. Both sides attest to wanting to raise joyful Jewish adults who maintain close connections with their synagogue communities throughout their lives, but they don't always agree on the way to get there.

In our family the clash between these very real demands on our time has been intensely stressful. As our synagogue has tried to make religious school "fun" and "meaningful" the content has shifted from a focus on Torah and Talmudic study, or bible study and Jewish law, to one of Jewish ritual and a repetitive discussion of the holidays. Since we talk in depth about each holiday at home, our children began to rebel. Saying that they didn't see why they needed to choose religious school over other activities since they weren't learning anything, and demanding the ability to sleep in at least one morning a week.

Since I didn't have a good answer for them, I started homeschooling our Hebrew curriculum and stopped fighting with them three days a week. It's been great for our family. We've learned some very interesting things together and our children have been inspired to ask some fantastic questions. But we've had to give up a lot too. Our kids B'nai Mitzvot will not be held in our synagogue, since minimum religious school attendance is mandatory, and we feel somewhat disconnected form our Jewish community because of our alternative choices. As a result, we've begun working with our Rabbi on some compromises that enable the kids to stay with soccer and sleep in sometimes but still participate with their religious school peers. Stay tuned to see how it plays out!