Here’s the reason to take the lead, as the mother, and enroll the kids whether or not they decide they want this as an activity.

Jewish life is not an activity; it’s part of one’s identity. I can tell you what happens to the kids who decide, in college or later, that yeah, this is something they’re interested in.

They go to shul, and shul is unwelcoming because they feel like strangers. Like goyim. They don’t know how to do anything. They can’t read Hebrew, they can’t daven, they don’t know how anything goes. Nobody is reaching out to them and looking to their “faith”, because this is a Christian trope, and it’s not how Jewish communities go. Jewish communities are like families: you’re in or you’re out. We don’t proselytize, remember? There’s no smiling chaplain reaching out to pull you in.

So the young (or older) adults leave, feeling bruised, and if the desire persists, they go to Chabad, the only Jews who do proselytize — at less observant Jews. At Chabad, they’ll be taught all about the Rebbe who is Moshiach, and they’ll also be introduced gently and with cholent to Jewish life. If they’re not too stable, they’ll be as susceptible as people are to any cult, and the women will wear long sleeves and skirts and suddenly be knocking themselves out keeping kosher and all the rest, and dating hairy obese young men who subjugate them. It doesn’t usually last, but sometimes it does.

From there, usually, they make their way back over to an American shul, or synagogue, or temple. But — and it’s a very important but — they always feel like they’re doing it wrong. Even after a decade, they feel like their status is provisional, not like real Jews. Because others there just know how to do it. Were born with it, grew up with it. It’s a terrible thing to hear from these returnees, too, that insecurity and uncertainty. These are the people who become pillars, who give their children strong Jewish educations, who are obviously Jews. And yet they’re deeply insecure. It’s terrible because for a Jew, a shul anywhere in the world should be home. A Jewish community should be home. Who else will make our home? Ask the children of survivors. So there, where they should feel and want to feel at home…it’s very difficult. They feel like adult adoptees, or converts.

You can go to shul, should you feel so inclined, and you won’t feel that insecurity. Yeah, yeah, there’s always someone who knows more, and maybe they do something different from what you learned. But it won’t be that different, and you know you’re a Jew. That’s what your parents gave you, and that’s what your boys aren’t getting.

That non-Jew I was married to: Eleventh-generation American. Grandfather helped found Marblehead. I went the whole Goodbye Columbus nine yards. And you know what? He envied me my sense of background, my roots. I was astonished. Granted, he was nuts, but I never expected to hear this from a Real American(TM). The fact is, though, he grew up American Vaguely Christian Nothing, in an atomized culture where people knock around connected to nothing. So yes, now I see it. You didn’t grow up that way. I know French Jewish kids growing up that way, but you’d be amazed how much yiddishkeit makes the jump, and besides they’ve got nonsense philosophy and revolutionary history and other forms of Serious Culture, not video games. They aren’t growing up American Vaguely Christian Nothing.

I won’t noodge you again, but think about it.

amyamy