When my husband read an early draft of this essay, he asked, "Why doesn't her partner have to support our daughter? After all, they agreed to raise children as Jews." What does it mean to raise a Jewish child?
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If the Book of Ruth, text customarily studied on Shavuot, were written with today's interfaith couples in mind...
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What are the ethical and spiritual messages in Judaism? What are we supposed to learn? And who is Derek Eretz anyway?
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NEXT: A Division of Birthright Israel Foundation connects Birthright Israel trip alumni and their peers with meaningful Jewish living and learning opportunities nationally, locally and in Israel.
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What were you taught about your LGBTQ heritage? Kick off Boston Pride Week with a retelling of the story of LGBTQ liberation using the Passover Seder model. June 1st, Boston, MA.
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Supporting rabbis and cantors looking to engage interfaith couples and families in their communities and help them make a stronger connection with Judaism.
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A great way for Jewish professionals and volunteers who work with and provide programming for people in interfaith relationships to locate resources and trainings to build more welcome into their Jewish communities; connect with and learn from each other; and publicize and enhance their programs and services.
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Check out all the news posts by the G-dcast team! But don't forget to stop by the Network blog (written by InterfaithFamily staff) and the Parenting Blog too!
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Tag Archives: SpiritualityLife Cycle Innovations
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A couple recent articles relating to Jewish life-cycle events caught my eye. For starters, via Jewschool we learned about a Wall Street Journal piece looking at birth ceremonies. Specifically: Manhattan lawyer [Epstein] recently asked New York federal judge Kimba Wood to grant him a day’s reprieve in a criminal trial to attend the bris of his grandson. Epstein’s daughter has not yet given birth — so he doesn’t yet know the sex of the baby. But Epstein wanted to give Judge Wood ample notice to consider his request, given that his daughter’s due date is Dec. 3, smack in the middle of the scheduled trial. Fantastic! I then learned of virtual If dating, shopping and watching TV can be revolutionized by the Internet, why should bar and bat mitzvahs be immune? Parents who once might have turned to their local synagogue for Hebrew lessons and spiritual guidance are now turning to Google… It was interesting but it’s too bad that they focused on the downside of group learning – or highlighted the ease of individual learning. Learning with others (chavruta especially) holds many benefits for both religious and secular studies. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that our clergy referral service isn’t just for weddings – we can direct you to clergy for all life cycle events, from a baby naming or bris to bar or bat mitzvah to weddings and funerals. Interfaith Couples on the BJFF Big ScreenThe Boston Jewish Film Festival is right around the corner – November 3-14. There are a couple screenings of particular interest to interfaith families, or those interested in interfaith and/or intercultural issues. The first is the film Me and the Jewish Thing, a documentary about, and by, Ulrik Gutkin. Through conversations with his wife, Signe, we learn that Ulrik, who is Jewish, and Signe, who is Christian, do not share the same opinion about the need for circumcision. Ulrik, a 4th generation Danish Jew, feels strongly that their son should be circumcised. Signe, however, sees circumcision as a “medieval” act of mutilation and cruelty. The film covers four years of the couple’s life, spanning from the last weeks of Signe’s pregnancy, through the first few years of their son Felix’s life. Interwoven with Ulrik and Signe’s ongoing debate, we learn about Ulrik’s Jewish history, his attachment to his religion and culture. In addition to questioning the physical purpose of circumcision, Signe wonders why it’s important to Ulrik to become more Jewish, make a film about this Jewish topic, when Judaism wasn’t a big part of Ulrik’s life prior to having kids. Ulrik struggles to articulate why he feels strongly in favor of circumcising their son. As it becomes clear to him that their son won’t be circumcised, he looks for other ways to impart Judaism on Felix, though he and Signe again feel differently about those efforts. While this documentary demonstrates a difficult issue that many interfaith couples are faced with, we at InterfaithFamily.com encourage couples to discuss potential conflicts in advance. We have plenty of resources about circumcision, if that’s the specific topic in question; we’re also offering an online group for interfaith couples to learn how to make decisions while still respecting both partner’s religion. Screening with Me and the Jewish Thing is a short documentary called Michal, Matthias and the Unborn Child. Unlike Ulrik and Signe, Michal, an Israeli Jew, and Matthias, a Christian German, start discussing what their religious life would look like were they to have children together in the future. They visit a Jewish day school in Berlin, where they live, and meet with another local Jewish Israeli and German couple who are raising their children as Jews. Michal and Matthias are able to see these children, and their father, who is not Jewish, participate fully in lighting the candles, making blessings over the wine, and sharing a Shabbat dinner together. This process is open, respectful, and proactive. We definitely approve of their early dialogue! See Ulrik and Signe, Michal and Matthias (along with a third short film, Hasan Everywhere) on Thursday, November 11 at 4:15pm at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Stay tuned for more reviews! On Perceiving God…Our good friend, Rabbi-Jamie-Korngold-on-MSNBC-Oct-8-2010.htm">Rabbi Jamie Korngold, was on MSNBC’s Jansing and Company on October 8th discussing perceptions of God with David Campbell, co-author of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. Rabbi Korngold is author of God in the Wilderness and the Executive Director of Adventure Rabbi, the Boulder-based organization which offers amazing and innovative local and national programs that are inclusive of interfaith families and take advantage of the natural inspiration of the outdoors. David Campbell did an excellent job describing how Americans perceive God and how these perceptions can shape how one votes. He looks at how the “growing inter-mingling” in our relationships (read: interfaith relationships) also impacts our understandings of God and how we vote. Rabbi Korngold talked about how the Jewish view is that God does not directly intervene in a single act but rather inspires us to make the world a better place. Repairing the world, or tikkun olam, is an essential part of the traditional Jewish covenant with God. The hope is that those who relate to the idea of tikkun olam, that there is a divine responsibility within all of us to repair the world, will keep that in mind when seeking out candidates and will vote for those with similar beliefs. Spiritual JourneysAn interesting article appeared in the most recent edition of our local Jewish newspaper, The Jewish Advocate, outlining the interfaith, interreligious, intercultural practices of one of our community members. Friday afternoon he goes to the Mosque for the Praising of Allah on Shawmut Avenue in Roxbury for the Jumu’ah prayer. By 6 p.m., he is at Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, throwing on a tallis to drum for the Shabbat services. He returns to TBZ on Saturday morning for Torah study and services. Sunday he begins the day at the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Roslindale and then heads to his own church, the Unitarian Universalist First Church of Roxbury. Wow. That’s quite a commitment! He and his interfaith family are members at Temple Israel in Boston, where his three daughters, who were raised Jewish, all had bat mitzvahs. Possibly of interest to our readers in the Boston area, For a class at TBZ, Rabbi Waldoks asked White to draw on his personal experience. On four Tuesdays beginning Oct. 19, he will teach a class at TBZ called “Spiritual Journeys: Sharing Our Personal and Communal Narratives.” It sounds like it will speak to those of us who continue to grow and wrestle with our Judaism – and those who are in interfaith families/relationships. Resources on Jewish EthicsI’m gearing up to teach at Havurat Shalom‘s Tikkun Lel Shavuot–I’m planning to do a class on the Jewish Spirituality Resource Guide. I wound up writing a lot about how Jewish ethics fit into Jewish spirituality. You can have a lot more discussion of ethical than spiritual questions in a class setting, I find. The Jewish Publication Society has created a new website to accompany their new series of books on Jewish responses to contemporary ethical issues, Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices. The site includes a blog with some awfully high-powered writers (presumably excerpted from the series) a apparently permanently open chat window for discussing the issues, and forum with some incendiary starting questions. Hot stuff! The second thing is a book review of Susan Handelman’s Fragments of Redemption by my friend Adina Levin. Why a book review? Because it contains a lucid and easy to understand discussion of Walter Benjamin. That’s not something you come across every day. The third thing is a website that helps people write ethical wills, called www.ethicalwill.com. Writing an ethical wills is a Jewish cultural custom that anyone can adopt–the practice of putting on paper the moral legacy you’d like your children, grandchildren and students to have from you. What do you think are the most important insights you’ve learned in your life? If you are having a major lifecycle event, like a wedding, a bar or Earth DayToday is Earth Day. Zik Daniel, whom I follow on Twitter, linked to a Carl Sagan video. It’s Sagan reading his speech, “The Pale Blue Dot.” Yes, Carl Sagan was Jewish. He was also a true agnostic about God, a skeptic and a secular person. Nevertheless, the videos circulating on the internet with his speeches feel intensely spiritual. As I’m still mulling over the experience of writing the Jewish Spirituality Resource Guide for our site, and trying to think about how to talk about these difficult, intensely personal subjects with my kid, I am filled with appreciation and love for Sagan.
Meaningful Spiritual Practices and New Translation of PsalmsI have often felt uncomfortable with the word spiritual. It’s usually used in a way that makes me feel inferior, because I don’t know if my experiences measure up. I mean, I get a lot out of traditional Jewish practice, like prayer and making blessings and doing mitzvot and stuff like that, but I can’t say that what I’m getting is spiritual. It’s a little zap or zing of feeling, something emotional, but maybe that’s not spiritual? I don’t know. I also get a little thrill reading poetry or listening to religious music in other traditions, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or Mavis Staples–but is that a spiritual thrill? Nevertheless, I wrote a Jewish Spirituality Resource Guide for our site, after about three months of research and introspection–and kvetching. (The kvetching was surprisingly fruitful, if utterly unspiritual, because people responded with their insights in the face of my whining.) I thought a lot about how interfaith families have unique opportunities for hiddur mitzvah, making the performance of commandments extra beautiful and excellent. After I wrote my piece, I found this blog post on jewsbychoice.org, Three Meaningful Spiritual Practices for Rural Isolated Jews. I love this! The practices that I chose for my guide were very community-based ones, and I am so happy to see something about how to find something meaningful on your own. Another nifty thing I came across after I wrote my guide was Pam Greenberg’s The Complete Psalms: The Book of Prayer Songs in a New Translation. I’m friendly with Pam and really excited about this new edition, which becomes available today. You can read and hear an interview with Pam on the pbs.org website. Psalms are a really important part of Jewish (and many Christian!) worship services, so a new translation that gives a chance to rethink them is very exciting. (Plus I’m so stoked to realize I watched Pam working on this at the Diesel Cafe! That’s just nifty, you know?) I’d love to hear from you about your meaningful spiritual practices. No More Rubber Cement!This is amazing. I knew something like this was going to be invented, but I’m still blown away. IFF’s partner and friend, BBYO (the organization formerly known as I started making a sample service on the site, just so I would know how it works. (I didn’t print out, because the last thing I need is to have to find a respectful way to dispose of paper with the divine name printed on it.) Right now they have four choices: Friday evening, Saturday morning, Saturday evening services and Grace after Meals. As you may know, there are set prayers in Hebrew for different occasions–these are the ones that youth group members need the most frequently. You can choose a traditional service or only components of it to build your own custom service–Hebrew prayers, with translation or transliteration, with two choices of layout of the components and places to insert other introductory or inspirational texts. If, like me, you used to participate in Reform youth group services back in the dark ages before personal computers were common, you know that we did, in fact, use actual scissors and rubber cement to lay out services with these components. Now, it’s true that this site doesn’t give you the opportunity to change the Hebrew liturgy. You can’t paste a text from the Talmud into the Psalms, as we sometimes do at my We already love BBYO around here. Check out this great article, Teenagers In Love which shows how enthusiastic teens from interfaith families feel about the youth movement. This buildaprayer.org site is such a nifty resource that I would be excited about it even if we didn’t already think BBYO was awesome–go look! The Anglo-Jewish School Case, RevisitedOver the summer, we blogged about a British Court of Appeals decision that involves the British government in the question of who is a Jew. In short, a student applied to London’s JFS (formerly the Jews Free School, largest Jewish school in Europe) and was rejected on the grounds that his mother’s conversion to Judaism was not acceptable to the Chief Rabbi of the United Congregations of the Commonwealth. The family sued the school, and lost, and then won on appeal. Last week, the New York Times reported on the progress of the case to the British Supreme Court. There’s a lot of backstory to this case, some of it having to do with the structure of British society and the place of Anglo-Jewry within it. There are 97 Jewish schools in the UK out of 7,000 publicly financed religious schools. All of the Jewish schools are under the auspices of the United Synagogue and therefore nominally Orthodox–but not all of them restrict their admissions to Jewish students. At least one, the King David School in Birmingham, a city with a shrinking Jewish population, is 50% Muslim. Many Christian schools of various denominations require religious practice tests–but they don’t have the challenge of not being able to write on their Sabbath when students go to worship, as Jewish students do. Another piece of the backstory is the general acceleration of moral panic over self-definition that seems to have afflicted the entire Jewish people in the last year and a half, with the Israeli high rabbinical court declaring conversions invalid after the fact on what seem from my perspective to be entirely spurious grounds. In Britain, according to Miriam Shaviv in The Forward, the Chief Rabbi had already declared in 2005 that two women who’d converted in Israel (and therefore with an an Orthodox rabbinical court) weren’t Jewish enough for the United Synagogue, because they weren’t Jewish enough to pass muster with Haredi (trembling, or far-right Orthodox) Jewish authorities on the rabbinical court. Those families didn’t fight back–the family of the child in the present case, who was rejected in 2007, did. (Shaviv points out that the judge who ruled in the family’s favor on the appeals court is Jewish.) I need to write at length about this moral panic over conversion and self-definition, because it’s incredibly painful for a lot of people in our lives. It’s probably enough for now to say that even with all the backstory, I can’t understand the rationale for keeping motivated kids out of a great Jewish school, or taking the risk of getting the government involved in that school’s admissions policy. Perfect Book for the Days of AweI love how some people want to generously include the whole world in their greetings on Rosh Hashanah. It makes me smile to see people greet each other on person and on the internet. Now we’re in the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur called the Days of Awe. The traditional greeting for this period is “Gamar Hatimah Tovah,” a good completion of being sealed (in the book of life. Of course it’s also more than OK to keep saying “Happy New Year.”) It’s during this period when people often take the opportunity to repair their relationships with one another. One book that I’ve been enjoying in the last couple of weeks is Dawn Light by Diane Ackerman. It’s a book of essays about rising early to see the sunrise, and what other things in the natural world Ackerman was able to observe. She is the author of A Natural History of the Senses, a book that made a big impression on me, and the bestselling history book about Poland during the Second World War, The Zookeeper’s Wife. Ackerman writes about getting up early and observing the natural world. She does an excellent job of including Jewish spiritual and cultural practices in world cultural contexts, and the way she, as a seemingly non-religious person, is respectful of religion as a human artifact in general. I liked the essay in which she repeats all the Hebrew names of Venus, the dawn star. The book is just right for this time of year. It’s not about God or sin, but it is about wonder and awe, and to some extent about how life is ephemeral. She addresses a friend, a poet who died suddenly:
That reminded me of the first prayer in the Jewish liturgy in the morning, “I am grateful to you, Living God, for restoring my soul in Your great faithfulness.” It’s a great book to be reading now, with the themes of this season in mind. |
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