Blog Archives

My Thoughts on Christmas

11/22/2010

(Photo credit: By FotoosVanRobin from Netherlands - La Zi Ji (Chicken with Chiles)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8196042)

Over the past few years I've created family traditions on Christmas. Before my daughter was born I would spend Xmas eve with friends at a Jewish-themed comedy show, eating Chinese food. Now I try to spend the day with friends away from the crowds and shopping malls, and the evening with a special movie and Chinese take-out. I would suggest either It’s a Wonderful Life (classic for some) or Dirty Dancing (one of my favorite chick flicks and so Jewish!).

I have to admit Christmas is always complicated for converts. We have family who wants to see us and they are always going to request we join in their celebrations in ways that may make a new Jew question their Jewishness. I've found it can be easier when Christmas and Hanukkah overlap because there will always be activities at your shul to participate in and Hanukkah parties to attend.

By GW, a Conservative female

0 Comments

My Thoughts on Christmas

11/18/2010

0 Comments

For all the years since our conversion I have made a conscious effort to run away from all things Christmas. I did a good job of shutting down all memories of my childhood Christmas experience. I thought I had moved on and by stuffing them down I could ignore them. Since all our Christian relatives were dead it was pretty easy to ignore.

This year, however, I decided it would be ok to have a classical radio station playing while I did my housework - even if it did play Christmas music 3/4 of the time. The other day a simple guitar version with no lyrics of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" came on. For the first time ever since our conversion over a decade ago I sat still for those 3 or 4 minutes and allowed my mind to drift back to my childhood Christmas memories - all the simple little things that were good about the holiday. It was like a power point presentation in my mind - frame after frame of snapshots slowly fading into view. There was the plaster of Paris snowman, reindeer and Santa's sleigh my grandfather in Long Beach installed on his roof each year, the antique porcelain dolls that had been my parents from their own childhoods that we put on the tree, the stockings we had for our dogs, the jello mold my mother made each year, the Bing Crosby recording of White Christmas that was required listening for the weeks before Christmas. Dozens of little flashbacks.

Tears poured down my cheeks and it felt quite cathartic to think about. This quiet little solitary trip into my Christian past was not about religion - but about family connections, traditions, sights/smells/tastes that recurred year after year. have created these same memories for my own Jewish children - wonderful Jewish holiday memories. Just as I remember squirming in my seat during Midnight Mass and long Easter services in my childhood Lutheran Church, my own kids will remember long days at Shul during High Holy Days. They will also remember lighting the menorahs, Seders with friends, our annual Christmas eve Chinese feast and movie with our chavurah and much, much more. I think every year at Christmas I am going to set aside 5 or 10 minutes to be alone and think about my childhood Christmases and allow myself a good cry. Tears of joy, happiness, loss, sadness. I don't really miss Christmas. I miss the people, now all gone, I used to spend it with. Then I will spend the rest of the holiday building closer ties with my Jewish friends and thinking about how to make all the Jewish holidays more memorable for my own children.

0 Comments

What does "keeping kosher" really mean?

11/17/2010

0 Comments

If you ask a group of Jews whether they keep kosher you'll probably get a lot of "nos." But if you continue by asking, so do you eat pork? Shellfish? Bread at Passover? Any food on Yom Kippur? You'll get a lot of people observe some of the laws of kashrut.

Many Jews define keeping kosher as something that only the Orthodox do properly, yet they hold fast to their own dietary choices.

Whatever you do is fine. For you. Don't let someone else tell you that you are more or less Jewish based on the food you eat. You may be more or less observant but food doesn't terminate your Jewish identity.

I do believe that every Jew by choice should consider the dietary laws and take on the ones that are authentic to them. Pausing to think about what you eat is part of living mindfully. Much of Jewish law equips you to lead a life of thoughtfulness.

0 Comments

As a Jew by Choice, do you think about Christmas? My Thoughts on Christmas, by CC

11/16/2010

1 Comment

I've had a significant "turn around." The xmas which occurred during my conversion process was an odd one because I felt obliged to keep up the xmas-celebrating out of some feeling of honoring my own tradition, yet I was starting to see it as "someone else's holiday". In fact I remember telling a friend who is also a convert that she SHOULD have an xmas tree (she was wondering if it was OK) because she shouldn't deny her own heritage.

Well, by this year I completely disagree with that! I see Christmas as an entirely invasive event to which I claim as little ownership as possible. What's further fascinating to me is that I now also associate a religious connection to Christmas which I previously didn't. By that I mean, in my pre-conversion years, Christmas was definitely a secular event, which, while having a religious origin, had no sense of religion to me, since I didn't have a sense of religion. But now, since I do have a sense of (Jewish) religion, I completely associate Christmas with Christian religion, even though I know plain well that for millions of people, my own family included, religion plays no part in Christmas. That makes no sense but is a very powerful feeling.

I've developed a fairly unreasonable resentment that the Christian world has been historically oppressive to the Jewish people, and I now see Christmas as the poster-child of that oppression.

By CC, a Reform male

1 Comment

What Role Does Kashrut Play in Your Life? My Experience, by CP

11/10/2010

0 Comments

We attend a Reform temple that has a full spectrum of opinion about kashrut observance. Some people get around the meat/dairy challenge by becoming vegan. Many are vegetarian, a couple keep a complete kosher kitchen at home and a great many do not observe kashrut at all -even eating pork and shellfish and mixing meat/dairy. While our temple kitchen is "kosher-style" but not strictly kosher - at people's homes and in public their eating varies from family to family.

It made it difficult initially to figure out just how observant we wanted to be about dietary laws. When you would try to get a handle on "how to be Jewish" in our temple community you got a different opinion from everyone. Each person you asked (not surprisingly) thought their way of doing it was "correct."  I remember there being a few big controversies over the years around whether we, as a temple, were going to be Ashkenazi or Sephardic at Pesach - the big 'do we or do we not eat legumes' debate.

In many ways it might have been easier to join an Orthodox synagogue or a very Conservative one where rules are followed more explicitly. All this ambiguity can be challenging for new Jews. When you convert as an adult (especially if you already have a partner/children) it is especially tricky. It's not just your OWN eating practices that you are changing, but theirs as well.

For many of us who have not adopted kashrut laws (or pick and choose when and where we will abide by them) the sense that somehow you are inadequate if you do not follow them to the letter saddens me. We all can express our Judaism in different ways and while one person may be in touch with their Judaism through setting themselves apart from the secular world and being conscious of their Jewishness with their food choices there are others who may adhere to other mitzvot in a very public and passionate way.

I may be mixing meat and dairy but I sometimes find myself on a street corner with an Israeli flag counter protesting a hate-filled crowd of people in my own community calling for the destruction of Israel. I have raised a family of children to be passionate about TikkunOlam - making it their life's work and speaking out in the secular world on behalf of the Jewish community -organizing Holocaustrememberance days and fighting for the separation of church and state in the public square.

So, who is the better Jew? And do we need to judge one another about the food we eat? We all find our place in the tribe in our own way - arriving with different gifts, possibilities, hopes and limitations. While I applaud those who keep kosher, I'm not beating myself up over the fact that I do not.

By CP, a Female Reform Jew

0 Comments

What Role Does Kashrut Play in Your Life? My Experience

11/8/2010

0 Comments

The way I started out is quite different from how I ended. Trying out some dietary practices, however minimally, to explore being Jewish is a good exercise for the new or pre convert. I did that myself, namely excluding pork products, which I previously ate regularly; therefore, it was an actual change. It sort of pained me to give up my daily sliced ham, but I enjoyed the sense that this was one of the things "making me a Jew."

During my first Passover after my (Reform) conversion I went out of my way to observe the laws 100% as much as possible, including details like having no candy bars because they contain corn syrup, for instance. That Passover experience had a radical anti-kashrut effect on me: far from bonding me to kashrut it made me decide that it was all hocus-pocus. It's inconsistent and dishonest to adopt what is effectively an Orthodox practice for one week of the year but ignore other such practices for the remaining 51 weeks of the year. While kashrut is a Jewish practice historically, it's not a Reform practice, historic or current. To me, adopting such dietary practices smacks of "play acting." It's a smoke and mirrors game which gives the illusion of Jewishness but doesn't actually mean or prove anything, certainly nothing Reform.

Far from it expressing insecurity, I think a Reform Jew who is against kashrut is being a tad more legitimate than those who claim to gain something from the relatively arbitrary choice not to eat certain things yet who don't follow the multitude of other "Jewish-making" practices, like not driving on Shabbat or turning on the lights. Reform takes its identity from other elements of religious life, not from relatively meaningless exercises which assume a "holiness" simply because they are done in the name of Judaism. However, this is a big Jewish tent we are all sitting under so a Reform Jew who follows kashrut isn't wrong in my eyes, just looking at it differently.

From CC, a Reform Male

Editor's Note: One clarification: the Reform movement, in the 1999 platform, called for a re-examination of traditional practices, like Kashrut. The movement encouraged Reform Jews to educate themselves in all the mitzvoth, to try doing them, and to make a conscious choice about which ones were meaningful to the individual. Consult your rabbi for a more detailed response to Reform observance.

0 Comments

What Role Does Kashrut Play in Your Life?

11/5/2010

0 Comments

Here's an entry from one of our readers:

Based on my personal experience, Kashrut is one of the markers that truly sets the Jewish people apart from other peoples. While what you eat is, to a certain extent, an expression of one's individuality, it also expresses how one relates to one's community, friends and family. I cannot stress this point enough. The concept of sharing a meal with one's coworkers, relatives and outer community changes when a person begins to observe some of the Mitzvot of Kashrut.

When I began the conversion process, I ate only hekhshered products both inside and outside the home, but after seeing the negative effects my actions were having with my non-Jewish family members as well as the members of my Jewish community who don't keep Kosher, I made the decision to eat unhekhshered hot dairy, meat and fish (from Kosher animals, and with waiting times between them observed as best I can) outside the home while keeping a Kosher kitchen within my home.

To some, it may be hypocrisy and to others it may be sacrilege, but I've found that it allows me to simultaneously maintain a hold on tradition while having the flexibility to honor the people I care about most by partaking of their hospitality.

By DL, Conservative male

0 Comments

My Thoughts on Christmas

My Thoughts on Christmas

What does "keeping kosher" really mean?

As a Jew by Choice, do you think about Christmas? My Thoughts on Christmas, by CC

What Role Does Kashrut Play in Your Life? My Experience, by CP

What Role Does Kashrut Play in Your Life? My Experience

What Role Does Kashrut Play in Your Life?

Thoughts from our Email List

Categories

Archives