Less-than-inspired by the traditional Passover seder? Burnt out on the same old Four Questions? Searching for soup sans chicken, or a song to replace "Who Knows One"? Why not shake things up with an alternative or themed seder? Here are five ideas to get you started. Try one, or mix them up.

	Eco-Seder Buy all organic foods, from local venders, when possible. When you’re dealing with fresh veggies and kosher meat or fish you don’t have to worry about things being kosher for Passover, so you won’t spend insane amounts of money buying margarine made in Monsey or whatever. The Jew and the Carrot has a great list of Kosher Organic wines for your four cups. Plan on talking about freedom from oil dependency, and about the benefits of living a greener life. Remember, we were heading towards a land of milk and honey, not of formula and corn syrup. You can list ten plagues of waste, four sons who react differently to global warming, and four questions about how we can change our individual and collective behavior in the future. Birkenstocks optional.
	Freedom Seder There are still literally millions of slaves in the world. On a holiday when we celebrate our freedom as Jews, it makes sense to spend some time exploring the issue of contemporary slavery. Head to Not For Sale to get educated on the issue, learn about abolition activism, and donate money to free slaves. Stories of redemption told side by side, whether they involve crossing the Red Sea of using the Underground railroad, are always thought provoking, and you can brainstorm ways to get the larger community more involved in abolition advocacy and programming.
	Interfaith Seder If you can gather a mix of faiths at one table and talk about how each person views their personal slaveries and redemption (because remember, it’s as if you personally came out of Egypt), you’re bound to have an interesting evening. If you want some help guiding your seder, try the one at Interfaith Family. Ask each guest to bring a kosher for Passover interpretation of a classic dish from their community, and host a discussion about the ways that communities pigeonhole each other, and how interfaith dialogue can redeem us from self-imposed slavery. Open the door for a Unitarian, instead of Elijah. Be sure to have grape juice on hand for those who can’t drink wine, and ask everyone to teach a song at the end.
	Women’s Seder There are a number of feminist haggadahs and women’s seders available. If you want to start your own, invite your girlfriends for a night of female bonding over good wine and Miriam’s cup. Retell all the parts of the haggadah focusing on the female characters—the midwives, Shifra and Puah, Pharaoh’s daughter, and Miriam. Put some Debbie Friedman on the stereo. Ask your guests to each bring a short story, essay, or poem to share by or about a Jewish woman they admire. Make sure to have plenty of oranges on hand for the seder plate.
	Veggie/Vegan Seder There’s nothing free or fair about the lives of animals raised for food. Passover is an opportunity to reflect on our own freedom, as well as the lack of freedom other living creatures face. Pick up some copies of Haggadah for the Liberated Lamb, which focuses on vegetarianism and animal rights. The Jewish Vegetarian Year Cookbook includes a menu for a seder table. Better yet, the Vegetarian Pesach Cookbook features recipes specific to the holiday. Talk about what you can sacrifice in your own lives to replace and honor the symbolic, sacrificial lamb. Replace the egg on the traditional seder plate with a flower to represent life and Spring. Replace the shank bone on the traditional seder plate with a beet, as allowed in the Talmud. Use this quote from Einstein as a jumping off point for discussion: "A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the 'Universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security."

This week, Reform Grand Rebbe Eric Yoffie spoke at the convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). In his speech, Yoffie deplored the "profound ignorance" of Islam in the US, and its demonization by "opportunists." Yet at the same time, Yoffie challenged American Muslims to combat the anti-Semitism that is rampant in the Muslim world.

The Reform movement determined that ISNA was a genuine partner for interfaith dialogue after it shifted its position from terrorism is bad (except when it is against Israel) to terrorism is bad (even when it kills Jews.) ISNA's efforts to allay Jewish concerns were met with skepticism elsewhere in Jewish Alphabet soup.

Fortunately for ISNA, while the URJ represents 1.5 million congregants, a plurality of affiliated American Jews, while the AJC represents...the AJC (although to be fair, it performs its role as the Jewish Brookings Institution quite ably).

Continue reading...

Interfaith Grandparenting: Help Bubbe help you!There has been a whole lot of conversation lately about the role of the grandparents in the lives of interfaith children.  And with my own (non-Jewish) mother in town for a post-Easter/Passover visit, I'm feeling the issue in a personal way.

She called a week ago to say, "So, is Mose old enough for Peeps and Jellybeans?"  (He's not yet one and a half)

What should I have said?   "Umm... no.  Because he's only Jewish years old!" 

Instead I said, "No, both are still a choking hazard.  Why don't you just come down and we'll find him a nice treat together."  So then yesterday we got him an "Easter" milkshake, which he promptly spilled down his pants. Delightful.

But it's no small thing... the role of grandparents.  It's a very real issue, and today I wanted to offer some resources for families where this is becoming a "situation." 

Because (in the best cases of intermarriage) our generation may be creating new models for the Jewish family. We may be sitting in therapy, learning to communicate, and finding new expressions of shared ground to bridge the religious gap.  We may be setting clear boundaries. 

But our parents are... well, old.  And they're used to things being done a certain way.  And most of the time, they really do just want to help and support us... but they don't understand the lives we're constructing.  And they don't want to "intrude" a lot of the time.  But they don't know what crosses the line. 

How can they, if we don't tell them?

And then... in the worst cases, we're NOT sitting in therapy, or finding new ways. We're sticking our heads in the sand and hoping there just won't be any problems.  We're deciding that  "the kids can choose a religion when they're older" or pretending religion doesn't matter "if there's love". And our poor parents KNOW that's insane, but they don't know how to help us.

So here are some books and websites they can turn to, for help in helping us (and maybe they'd make good gifts!).  I'm sure there's more out there, and we can try to build on this, but here's a start!

Books:

Twenty Things for Jewish Grandparents of Interfaith Grandchildren to Do...

Mingled Roots: A guide...

Grandparenting Interfaith Grandchildren

Websites and articles:

Grandparenting Your Interfaith Grandkids 101

For Grandparents of Interfaith Grandkids

Grandparents Learn Strategies for Interfaith Grandkids

Interfaith Marriages Can Be Tricky for Grandparents

And there are some classes and programs too:

In New York!

In Philadelphia!

In Houston!

And elsewhere too... grandparents can find classes to help them navigate these tricky situations.

It should be said that most of the resources we've seen so far are produced by the Jewish community, for the Jewish grandparents of intermarried families.  But I think we'll see more resources soon for the non-Jewish grandparents of Jewish children too.  We've come a long way since the days when the Catholic church suggested people run out and get the babies secretly baptized, to protect their immortal souls...

Leavened Goodness: Jesus is all about the sandwichI've had a lot of experience with naviagating holidays and intermarriage. First as a kid, and then, more recently, as a wife and mother.  It's never a perfect situation, but it can be interesting. It can lead to meaningful dialogue and new traditions... and the non-Jewish members of my family don't (as a rule) get in the way of my own Jewish practice.  Typically, they're supportive and loving.

Of course, I've had to make concessions.  Over the years I've come to terms with the fact that my husband (however supportive he may be) will never offer to fast for Yom Kippur himself .  He'll never want to go to services with me every week.  But to be honest, most of the Jewish boys I know feel the same... and as a rule, our arrangement works okay, so long as hubby's okay with raising Jewish kids, paying suynagoge dues, and never ever having bacon on the breakfast table.

But then comes Passover. 

Every year, I struggle at Passover.

Because it's HARD to give up all chometz.  Especially for a carb-loving man like my husband.  He's not a soup and salad kind of fellow. He's a cereal-for-breakfast guy, a big-ass-sub-for-lunch guy.   And eight days is a long time to go hungry.

It's not like he doesn't like Passover. He likes the Seder a lot, as well as the fruit slices, the merengues and macaroons.  But as he said yesterday, "You know how important the sandwich is to my daily survival..."

Though suddenly here is is, suddenly living in a house with no bread.  And let me tell you... if you didn't grow up with matzoh, it loses its charm after the first day.

So what to do?

In past years, I've made no effort to clear out the chometz. I've just left things as they were, and eaten around the bread myself.  This year, (I think because I want my son to see how it's supposed to be done) I really cleaned the house out, and now my husband is starving. 

He's not complaining much, but I feel bad.  Because this isn't his culture, his faith.  And he's so good about all my Jewish stuff.

So now I'm thinking that we need some kind of compromise. I've been considering making him a special "Daddy's chometz" box in the freezer. So that I won't have to see it, and the kids won't be able to get to it, but hubby can still nuke himself a roll and make a sandwich when he wants.  Maybe I'll paint on the side, "property of Hubby Jones (not his real name)" and we can say it belongs to him, and not me (though of course legally his chometz is my chometz).

That's the best I've been able to come up with. So far.  The "Daddy's Chometz" freezer box.  A new invention.

But I think I can do better, and I'm wondering if any of you have ideas on this matter. How to deal with the intermarried chometz?  I'm wondering (even for those of you not intermarried) if roommate situations have provided creative solutions to co-mingling with the Christians?

I could use some help...

Books: The greatest Jewish resource of all.

As a rule, I try not to let Faithhacker slide into becoming an interfaith advocacy site… NOT because I’m not involved with interfaith Jewry (which obviously I am) but because I think it’s really important that this blog cover a wider range of topics than my own obsessive focus…

But today, with Kerry (the king of all things interfaith-full, in my humble opinion) leading the charge above the Jewcy fold, it seems appropriate to bring up intermarriage in a general kind of way.

It seems worth mention that there are many different kinds of conversations people are having about intermarriage. And for those of you NOT embroiled in this particular Jewish dialogue, it might come as a surprise that our interfaith debates are as heated as any other Jewish conversations.

You might be interested to know that we, the interfaith Jewish world, often don’t agree with one another at all. There are a number of issues on which we part ways. For instance, a lot of folks don’t like the semantics I (personally) choose to embrace (half-Jew among them). And I don’t personally like the idea of trying to “find and catch” the intermarried and turn them Jewish, as some folks do. I also HATE the idea of “encouraging conversion”, but I’m equally put off by the idea of blending our rituals with the rituals of other faiths.

And we could argue and wrestle with these topics all day…

But instead, I thought it would be more useful (especially if you’re following Kerry’s dialogue) to point you in the direction of a just a few of the many books and resources on intermarriage, from a variety of Jewish corners… so that you (who must have your own thoughts on the matter) can find something that meets your needs. (be warned—I don’t actually LIKE these books for myself, and haven’t read them all. But we aren’t the same person, you and I!)

Some places to start:

Self-helpish Reading
The Complete Idiot’s Guide
The Interfaith Family Guidebook
Raising Your Jewish/Christian Child
The Intermarriage Handbook
Mingled Roots: A guide for Jewish Grandparents
Introducing My Faith and My Community

First Person Accounts/Anecdotal
Interfaith Families: Personal Stories
Inside Intermarriage
Half/Life (full disclosure—this one is mine)
The Half-Jewish Book
Black, White and Jewish

Though of course, the BEST book about an intermarried family is Franny and Zooey. Not sure if it will help you find your intermarried way, but if you haven’t read it, you MUST!

The Jerusalem Post has a story today about Jewish (Israeli) Scientologists.  Which lends a whole new twist to the conversation over whether one can be a Jew without believing as a Jew. 

If we accept that you don’t have to believe in God to be a Jew… this brings up a new (equally hard) question… Can you be Jewish without believing exclusively in the Jewish God. 

It’s funny… the ranks  of Jewish Unitarians (Jewnitarians), Buddhist Jews (BuJews) and even Hindu Jews (HinJews) are growing, and I haven’t heard a word of protest from the pluralistic Jewish world.  But for those of you who are totally cool with Jews of other faiths… how do you feel about this?  Jewish Scientologists? For real?  These people are apeshit crazy! 

What about Jewish TM practitioners (i.e. Yogic Flyers-- where I lived in Iowa, we had a LOT of em.  We called em floaters)?  And if you’re that pluralistic, if you  can extend that far, where does that leave us with the Jews for Jesus? 

Seriously, folks… ignore your gut and use your logic… where do we draw the line?  I’m lost on this. Can anyone help me?  If we don’t have to believe in the Jewish God to be Jews, where do we draw the line regarding Jews with other gods?

Our third Faithhacker Survey comes to us from Jewcy reader "Sara", who describes herself like this… I was raised in an ultra-reform (my Dad let me stop going to hebrew school when I was ten so I could do community theatre). I considered myself a conservative Jew in college, and now I'm married to a man who was raised Baptist and live in a far-flung suburb of Atlanta.

Do you believe in "G-d?" If so, what does that word mean?

Yes. I find myself frequently referring to G-d as a male, but I like
the idea of the Shekinah. While I'm not sure what the face of G-d is,
I do believe that Christians and Jews look to the same G-d... even if
we don't agree on the Messiah. I'm not sure if G-d has a hand in our
every day lives, but there is no doubt in my mind that there is a Book
of Life and that the length of our days is in His/Her hands.

Does this question make you feel uncomfortable at all, and if so, can you explain those feelings a bit?

No. I wish that I could explain my feelings better, though. I do get
defensive when people question my faith because they know that I'm not
"affiliated" and because I'm intermarried. I always think that my
answers aren't good enough, that I'm some sort of fraud.

Do you believe in an afterlife of any kind? If so, can you tell us
something about it?

Hmm. Yes, I believe in Heaven, and there are people who I truly
believe are going to be spending time in some sort of Hell (or, at
least I hope so.) I don't think of Heaven as a place, per se, but
rather the way our souls live on. My Grandma is deceased, but I know
that I hear her sometimes (like when I was in Santa Fe last year for
the first time.. but it had been one of her favorite places to visit
and I was sure that she was with me) and, like the scene in "Fiddler
On The Roof", she appears in my dreams along with other relatives. I
also think that I believe in "previous lives". I'm honestly not sure
what the Judaism has to say about that.

Do you pray? If so… How? When? Why? Try to be as specific as you can… bearing in mind that prayer means many things to many people.

I pray all the time. Usually it is a very informal, "G-d, please...." I do always pray in the morning in the shower... but it isn't the formal Morning Blessing. I try to remember to give thanks before I go to bed, but I admit that I don't always remember. It is important to me to have a relationship with G-d. I don't believe that you have to be in a synogogue to pray. G-d knows my intentions and that is all that is important.I do go to synogogue for Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur. It is one of the few times that I believe in the power of communal prayer. My faith in the Jewish people as a community is always renewed when I go to temple. I should probably go more often. I pray for a multitude of reasons: for peace, for the well-being of my loved ones and for complete strangers, for my students, for strength in the face of adversity, for forgiveness. Even when I feel most disconnected from the Jewish community, prayer reminds me of who I am and what I believe.

Can you tell us something about how prayer makes you feel? Is there an
effect on you?

It reminds me that I am part of a bigger story. That I am one woman in
a long and proud line of Jewish women who prayed before me. It calms
me and (usually) restores my faith in the power of G-d. When I am in
temple praying the guilt that I frequently feel for NOT spending more
time on my faith is lifted. Especially Yom Kippur right after 9-11 and
Katrina. I cried during Kol Nidre because the words lifting up to G-d
were the same beautiful prayers said every year, but those moments
reminded me why we actually say and believe them.

Have you ever had an experience you'd call "spiritual" or "mystical"?

When I moved to Chicago after college, I thought that it would be a good time to join a temple. I was visiting different temples to see which one felt right and one Friday night I walked into temple and the Torah reading was about Sara laughing at G-d. I knew it was a sign.

My time in Bandelier National Park was by far the most "mystical". It
was my first time there, and I wasn't expecting a religious
experience. But when we were looking up at the canyon walls and the
ruins a ladybug landed on my shoulder. I promise you that it was my
Grandma and I could hear her laughing in the wind. I hadn't been
planning on climbing up to the ruins, but I was compelled to. I felt
such a connection to the world and to flowing time. I know it sounds
corny. The ladybug stayed on my sleeve until I came down from the
cliffs. When it flew away the breeze died down and the laughter
stopped. I felt such peace. Talking with Mom the following week,
before I could say what happened, she reminded me that Bandelier was
one of Grandma's favorite places to visit when she and my Grandpa
travelled the country on their Harley Davidsons. I thank G-d all the
time for allowing me that moment.

Do you think that belief in G-d and prayer are important parts of being Jewish?

Yes. I don't think it matters how or where you pray, but I do think
that it is essential to connecting with your faith.

Are these questions important to you? Do they bug you?

They don't bug me at all and I think that they are important. One of
the great things, I think, about the Jewish faith is that it allows
and encourages us to question our relationship with G-d.

Thanks so much for playing, Sara!

Katharine Jefferts SchoriKatharine Jefferts Schori might be presiding over one of the biggest schisms in Christendom since the Reformation. As the new head of the U.S. Episcopal Church, Schori has caught flack from the Worldwide Anglican Communion (WAC) not only for being the first female head of a national Anglican church, but also for supporting the ordination of gay bishops. Schori, in turn, has made it clear that the Anglican conservatives obsessing over such ordinations are not only wrong, but fighting the wrong fight. She wants to move the Episcopal Church’s attention from debating the presence of Jesus ...

Last night I spoke/read with Jim Keen, for a group in Atlanta, as part of the Jewish Book Festival, and someone mentioned this new population study!  Making news all over.

As the number of Jews in the United States is thought to be flat or falling, the Jewish community in Greater Boston is growing, fueled by an unexpectedly high percentage of children in mixed-faith households who are being raised in the Jewish faith, according to a new demographic study.

It's a big deal, people, because it indicates what we all WANT to believe-- that outreach works, that a concerted effort to educate our assimilated/intermarried communites will turn the trend.

Not that we can turn the tide of intermarriage-- I think we're way past that. But maybe we really can turn the tide in bored/disinterested Jews, and parents too afraid to confront issues raised by intermarriage.

It makes me really happy!!!

GrandpaThis story in the Forward is really fucking funny (to me).  A family reunion for all the children of King David...

Funny because... well, it just is.  I've often wondered about the particulars of Jewish bloodlines. As a mongrel myself, I can't take such things too seriously.  Especially when there are thousands of years in play. 

But it's actually something we talk about a lot lately, in connection to the intermarriage "situation".  We talk about it in hushed tones, or at the dinner table.  We used carefully selected words.  But we do talk about it ("we" may not mean "you" but it does mean "a lot of people").  We don't want our kids to "marry out".  And a lot of people don't see converts the same as "the rest of us."

You may not want to hear this, but I swear people say this shit. 

"She doesn't LOOK Jewish!"

I bring it up here, at Faithhacker, because it is another part of the equation of "faith" that I've been poking and prodding at for a week. 

I did a reading and talk in Washington DC not too long ago, an event for those interested in intermarriage.  And there was a real live Nazi in the crowd, who got up and asked me about the Jewish "race."  He wanted to know why we're so interested in our "race". I (not realizing quite who he was or what was going on) tried as best I could to answer him, without giving him any ammunition, but after the hour was up, an event coordinator rushed up and got very upset. She said we should never use the word race at all.

"We are a peoplehood," she said, "a nation... not a race."

Now, how does this connect to faith? Because for some people, the blood is directly related to this idea of cultural heritage.  A fourth generation secular Moldavian Jew does not have Moldavian pride, but they may be a "strong cultural Jew."

And though for many, this heritage is about politics, art, literature, language, food, music... for some it really is about skin tone, dark hair... it's weird, but there are these people out there...

And for me, a relationship to faith makes a lot more sense as a lowest common denominator for what it means to be Jewish.  Which is not to say "belief in the traditional Jewish God" so much... but rather the idea that when you thyink about faith and belief, you do so through a Jewish lens, rooted in the tradition of Jewish faith.

(though of course most of all I just wanted to post this link... isn't that nuts? How many of you out there are related to a biblical king?  I bet the super-Christians love this shit-- since David was Jesus' Grandpappy too)

Manya Treece has written something pretty wonderful for SoMA Review, about how her evangelical (which, btw, is NOT the same as "fundamentalist") grandmother helped her explore her Jewish faith.

And this is of great interest to me, not only because I-- like Manya-- had a Christian grandmother (or even because I also, oddly enough, lived a block from the Reform Congregation in Chattanooga, TN) but because I'm interested in how often it is our non-Jewish experience of "faith" that teaches us to be comfortable with the "faith" elements in Judaism. And the language of that faith.

Why is that?

I think maybe it's because most of the time, when we do use these ooky religious words, we say them in Hebrew, a language many of us don't actually know, to say words like "God" and "Holy." To "pray." And in Hebrew, those words connect us back to something ancient and historical, even though the translations of such words make us itchy. They remind us of a high school trip to Jerusalem, of "the past."

But shouted in, say, a grocery store, in plain English, "The Lord is Our God" sounds freakish and weird. It sounds... Christian.

Because Judaism isn't a religion like that. It's smart, academic, political. Sarcastic and cynical even.

Am I wrong?

So, given a Reform/Secular Jewish education, I knew, by middle school, that "Jews don't have to believe in God" and it was actually the Catholics is my own life (I grew up in Maryland, which is heavily Catholic) who helped ease me into an awkward ease with words like "prayer" and "faith" and "God." Or "G-d."

But enough about me. What about you? What do you say if someone asks (as I am doing now I guess) DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOD?

And then please tell me whether you've had outside (non-Jewish) experiences that affected the way you practice as a Jew.

And then (if I may be so bold) I'm also curious about your religious upbringing. What flavor of Judaism did your family practice (or not)?

(Oh, I hope I haven't scared you off)