Article Discussion: Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother Reflections on Being Part of An

I’m the grandchild of a Mexican-American immigrant who joined the Navy to fight in WWII and a Jewish couple who fled Germany in 1939. My Catholic grandparents and Jewish grandparents loved each other, took vacations together, and sat together at my brother’s Bar Mitzvah. My only living grandparent today, my 90-year-old abuelo, still comes to Passover and eats his daughter’s matzo ball soup (made from her MIL’s recipe). Although my mother turned away from Catholicism before she married my father (she’s never officially converted but she considers herself Jewish now), her family shaped our home as much as my father’s did. My brother and I identify Jewish, but we also joined my mother’s family in mostly secular Easter and Xmas family celebrations, which we continue to value. Being from an interfaith (and mixed-ethnicity) family creates a different kind of a Jewish experience. But it also allowed me to recite the Kaddish in a Catholic cemetary for my abuela, knowing she would have appreciated it.