I put up my tree last night. And on Sunday, I was at a PJ event, and one of my friends confided that her kids were picking out their tree later on that afternoon. Confided, because it’s something that is still somewhat shameful. And while a part of me understands the secrecy, I do, there’s a huge part of me that doesn’t.
I’m Jewish, and I’m doing my best to raise the next generation of Jewish children. I worked HARD for this Jewish label, I met with a rabbi for close to a year on a monthly basis. I took my two oldest children to a mikvah, and sat before a Conservative Beit Din. I dunked my screaming toddler three times (okay, only twice, because the rabbi took pity on him and said enough was enough). I’ve got my own challah and hamentaschen recipe, candlesticks, I crocheted matching yamulkes for my husband and son. I’ve read and studied and thought and debated and discussed. I’m proud of my Judaism.
But I’m never going to be a Jewish woman who grew up steeped in the culture. My grandmother didn’t make matzoh ball soup, my grandmother was Irish and English and Catholic. I’m not ashamed of that. My mother isn’t a Bubbe with her own challah recipe, she’s Grammy and she decorates wildly and enthusiastically for all holidays, from Valentines Day straight through until Christmas. My kids come from that. I don’t feel like I need to hide that, or be ashamed of it, or pretend that it’s not a part of who I am, and who they are.
I know not everyone agrees with me. I know that there are lots of people who really, really don’t agree with me. People who think that being Jewish is, in large part, defined by what you don’t do, and putting up a Christmas tree and celebrating what, for many, is absolutely a Christian holiday, is perhaps one of the biggest signalers of being Jewish. People who think I’m confusing my kids, and watering down Judaism and perhaps I never should have converted in the first place. I know that.
But I truly believe that I’m a good Jewish mom. I think I’m a good Jewish wife. I think I’m doing my best, to be the best Jewish woman I can be. By showing my kids that you need to honor all that you are, not just the parts that society deems acceptable. That, in the end, all you can do is be true to who you are.
If that means that my family doesn’t understand why I converted, then it’s up to me to educate them. To teach them what Judaism is, to show them why it’s so important to me. To bring them in, as much as I can, so that they can see what I see when I see my oldest teaching my son how to read Hebrew, and hear my baby recite the blessings. If being who I am means that there are members of my community who disagree with me, and think my tree has no place in a Jewish home, it’s up to me to show them that maybe they need to look past the tree to see the Jewish home. To see the PJ Library books scattered all over the rug, and the Shabbat box that came home from preschool on Friday. To see the Siddur on my daughters bedside table, and the bag of yamulkes I keep in my china closet so that guests in our home on Friday night can put one on.
And maybe, just maybe, it’s my job to make it a little easier for the woman who married a Jewish guy and is trying to figure out how to raise her children in a tradition that isn’t hers by birth. Because it’s hard. Really hard. It takes determination, and flexibility and a lot of encouragement and acceptance. There’s a huge number of us, non-Jews who married Jews and we want to do it right. We want our kids to grow up feeling secure and welcomed and happy about both sides of their heritage. Whether that means exploring Judaism and converting ourselves, or not. I converted, and I’m so grateful I did. For my family, for me, it was the right choice. But a dip in the mikvah doesn’t change the thirty plus years of not being Jewish, nor should it. I’m not ashamed of converting, and I’m not going to tell my children that they aren’t a part of my family’s traditions. They are. Their story starts with ours, with my husband’s journey as well as mine.
And in our house, we put up a tree. And we don’t hide it.
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