The Spiritual Stretch of Single Motherhood

If the only spiritual challenge I faced in raising my son, Ari, was that of merging my Judaism with my Buddhist practice, I would have felt comfortably stretched. After all, I have chosen to raise Ari solo. One of the side benefits of that, you would think, is that I can choose his spiritual identity. Since I am a Jew with a Buddhist practice, I spent a fair amount of time fantasizing--while pregnant--about how I would bring Ari into this world spiritually. I really enjoyed creating his Bris--being the one in charge of how I would begin his Jewish journey. Ari would be comfortable in both traditions, I planned, but would consider himself Jewish. I have spent quite a bit of my life dwelling on my spiritual practice--getting a masters in theology, studying at a yeshiva in Jerusalem, sitting on Vipassana retreats in Massachusetts. So I felt competent to be Ari's mother and his spiritual teacher, thank you very much.

But the best laid plans of mice and moms go awry--in some of the wackiest and most wonderful ways. When Ari got lead poisoning before he was even a year old, my family urged me to get out of my apartment immediately. I called up a dear friend whom I had met when we worked together at a Buddhist meditation center and invited myself to stay with her husband and her 16 year old for a month. We've never left.

Rebecca and baby Ari.

My friends love Ari and he adores them. He gets up every morning and says their names, and kisses them when he goes to sleep at night. Clearly he has come to think of them as family. So do I--albeit the unwieldy, nontraditional kind. They are not Jewish; my friend's husband and son don't have a Buddhist practice either. Along with her adult daughters, they are secular agnostics, from a Christian tradition. This does not mean that they invoke Jesus--though he lurks in some of the older children's books beloved from my friend's childhood. Religion as such is not a comfortable fit for the majority of occupants of the house where Ari and I now live.

The Dalai Lama said that, "My true religion in kindness." My friends are practicing every day in hundreds of ways. They took Ari and me in, allowing me to save thousands of dollars while I live with them and finish more graduate school, and allowing Ari to become a part of their amazing, active, intellectual and dynamic family life. They cultivate in Ari qualities that I lack: patience, discipline, openness, playfulness. I am unendingly grateful to them.

But I do feel I have to be vigilant. It is not easy. Sometimes I feel I am watering down each tradition in my effort to elide one into another. Or I feel I am not making enough of an effort to daven with Ari or to meditate with him. Either way is hard enough--what now when my friends ask if we will celebrate Christmas with them with all the trimmings? And what about my own yearnings, sometimes, to just settle down and have fun with them, and stop resisting the tide to enjoy such a fun, yummy, musical, holiday as Christmas or as festive, joyful and communal as Easter? What will I teach Ari then and what will this mean for his self-understanding as Jewish?

This is all made more complicated by the fact that my father is Jewish and my mother was raised Armenian-Episcopalian, and that I was raised as an atheist Jew who celebrated Christmas and Easter with my grandmother. I loved those holidays as much as I loved Passover and Purim. I still do. I made a choice as an adult to consider myself Jewish--but I could never and would never renounce my mother wholly by converting and considering myself a "daughter of Sarah." My mother's father taught sacred (read Christian) music at Yale and was a brilliant organist. The music beloved of my mother's childhood is also beloved by me; and I still have a deep affection for those traditions that she and my beloved grandmother--from whom Ari gets his middle name--made musical and fun. And yet, I grew up betwixt and between, always, as I used to say, "half odar (non Armenian) and half goy (non-Jew.)" That was not what I wanted for Ari.

When my dear friend--almost like a second mother to Ari by now--begins to sing a canon round to Ari, I worry. I worry in part because I love the music--I want to sing along. Do I want to eliminate Bach from Ari's musical diet? Of course not. But then I fret: what does it all mean for Ari? When I make a Friday night meal for everyone but omit the candles and the challah and wine--I worry.

And yet, I talk about a yearning for a sukkah in the yard and my friends--who love building projects--light up and say, let's build it! So my son may grow up with something that I never had--a sukkah to decorate and sleep in and eat in. Just the fact that we wake up in the morning and sing, "Elohai Nishamah Sh'Natata Bi Tahorah He" (G-d, the soul you have given me is pure) means he is getting more of a Jewish upbringing than I did. I like this traditional meditation from the Jewish morning service because it resonates so beautifully with the idea of a loving Buddha-nature. When I sing the Sh'ma to him as I put him to sleep at night, translating it as, "Listen, we are One" I am still giving him more of a Jewish upbringing than I did. I read books on bringing your child up Jewish; I worry. The former is at least more of a Jewish upbringing than I had. (The worrying part is a tradition my parents passed on to me.)

But do I regret that Ari and I face this challenge? Obviously not. I wouldn't trade in the love that we share with our friends for anything. Besides, we are a living example of one of the major tenets of faith: we are not in charge here. Of course I don't really get to decide how Ari will see himself spiritually. That is one of the scary and amazing parts of being his mother. Every day that he helps me recognize that I must surrender, I am grateful--to my dear friends, to my spiritual teachers and communities, to Ari himself--and to G-d--for giving me such an opportunity to see the endlessness of that truth.