A Reconstructionist Story - Home at Last

I used to think that my story was a unique one, but now I know better. Yes, the cast of characters in mine is unique and there are certain aspects of my story that differ from anyone else’s but the basic theme is as familiar as any modern fairy tale.

Once upon a long long time ago I met a boy who was raised in the Church of England. Although I was Jewish and he wasn’t we knew that our love mattered more than pretty much anything else, and so we got married. We’d both grown up in South Africa during the Apartheid regime, pledging allegiance every Friday at school assembly to a flag that was drenched in blood and tears. After our pledge, came the prayers and the hymns and then it was on to history and math. We both knew that something wasn’t right, but when we asked the adults why black kids weren’t allowed to go to our schools and why you went to jail if you fell in love with someone of the wrong color, we were scowled at and told, “This is the way it works. This is the system. If you don’t like it, then leave.”

By the time we immigrated to the United States, barely out of our teens, we didn’t think much of flags, prayers or uniforms. The words of Bob Dylan and The Who resonated more than those of any politician or religious leader. And of course, there was John Lennon’s Imagine. It was easy to imagine a world with no religion to turn to. Who needed it?

Yes, our story is a familiar one. A man and a woman from different faiths meet and fall in love. Both reject their religion for many years. Then kids come into picture and at some point, either gradually or suddenly, religion does start to matter. If the mother is Jewish usually that becomes the religion of choice. Then comes the tricky part – finding a congregation that welcomes you just as you are – a family that is flawed in the eyes of many Jews, but one that is committed in its own way to living as Jewish a life as possible.

My son Daniel was nearly thirteen when we reached this stage. He was nearly thirteen and he wanted to have a Bar Mitzvah and his parents had taken too long to get their acts together. We’d spent a year of Sundays though, attending a program called Pathways To Judaism which taught us a lot about what being Jewish actually means and we all felt the same way: Being Jewish felt right to us and we wanted to integrate it into our lives. It was during the Pathways to Judaism program that my husband decorated a beautiful kiddush cup, one we’ve sipped from and recited the blessing over every Friday night ever since.

So my son wanted to be called to Torah but everywhere we went we were told it was too late for him to join a class of his peers. To this day I wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t found Congregation Dor Hadash, a Reconstructionist congregation in San Diego, where a truly wise woman named Barbara Carr just happened to have started a program called Teen Torah, for families just like us and for kids just like Daniel.

I’ll never know the answer to that but I do know that he wouldn’t have spent the next two years learning about Jewish ethics and values and going to Torah study on Saturday mornings. And a few days before his fifteenth birthday, he wouldn’t have been wearing his first tallit and chanting from the Torah. My husband chose the blessing and silk screened it onto the collar of Daniel’s tallit. The words in English are: May the unseen sparks kindle the greater flame.

Last year it was my daughter Miranda’s turn to lead the service and chant from the Torah at her Bat Mitzvah. Unlike Daniel she’d spent three years at Dor Hadash in a more traditional program, preparing for the day. At the beginning of the service Norman and I presented her with her first tallit, just as we’d presented our son with his. Although he has not a drop of Jewish blood in his body, Norman’s eyes filled with tears as he watched her proudly drape the purple silk across her shoulders. I’m not sure if this actually happened, but when I think of that moment I picture him leaning over and gently lifting her long black hair up and allowing it to fall down her back and over the purple fabric.

When we first joined Congregation Dor Hadash neither of us had quite got over our aversion to organized prayer, so we told ourselves we were joining for the sake of our children. But we found the Reconstructionist prayer book deeply meaningful, with its poetry and meditations, and Rabbi Roberts spoke words that we absorbed as gratefully as soil absorbs rain after a long dry season. And then there was the music -- melodies that at first sounded strange but gradually grew to feel comforting and familiar, whether we understood the words or not. Despite ourselves it wasn’t long before we were actually looking forward to going to services. You see, this was not just about being Jewish, it was about being part of a spiritual family, a family that doesn’t turn away its kids because they love someone of the same sex, or because they marry someone of the wrong religion, or because they ask too many uncomfortable questions.

There are many families like ours at Congregation Dor Hadash. In my daughter’s B’nai Mitzvah class many of the children had Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers. One child had a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. Although Dor Hadash fully accepts all non-Jewish partners, they insist that when a child enrolls in their religious program there is a commitment from the parents to raise the children as Jews. This is because they believe that Judaism is a way of life, a religion of immersion. They also insist on parent participation in every sense of the word. The fathers, including the non-Jewish ones, often get as involved as the mothers. They drive their kids to class, go to services, sit in on parent-child classes. And every time I watch one of those non-Jewish dads kvelling with pride as he presents his child with their first tallit, I feel my heart give a little flip of wonder. And then gratitude. For if it weren’t for this open hearted congregation and others like it, where would we all be? What would become of our children?

There’s a very real fear in the greater Jewish community that intermarriage will bring about our demise. And although it doesn’t have to be so it will be so if the door continues to be pulled tightly shut in many congregations and held cautiously ajar in many others. I remember how it was when my husband and I decided that we wanted to be married in a Jewish ceremony. We must have been turned away by two dozen Rabbis. Eventually we managed to find a wild-eyed man with food in his beard who married us in his dark, slightly rancid smelling living room. Not quite the spiritual experience I had hoped for.

Not one of the Rabbis we approached ever invited us to sit and talk with them – there was no discussion, no hint of possibility, only a flat NO as soon as we told them that the groom to be wasn’t Jewish and wasn’t planning to convert. I’ve spoken to other interfaith couples who have similar stories. No, it isn’t hard to see how an experience like this could have a dampening effect on a young couples’ tentative spiritual beginnings.

There is a short commentary in the Reconstructionist prayer book that says, “Acknowledging our ancestors reminds us that what we are is shaped by who they were. Just as an acorn is shaped by the oak that preceded it and yet gives birth to a tree uniquely its own, so we are shaped by our ancestors yet give rise to a Judaism all our own.”

As far as I can tell that’s pretty much what Reconstructionism is about. And it’s what keeps many of us connected to our past, grounded in the present and hopeful about the future. For just as there are many Jews who shudder at the thought of young girls chanting from the Torah there are even more of us who shudder when the Powers That Be proclaim: “These are the rules. What we have here is written in stone and there’s nothing you can do or say that will make it change and if you don’t like it, then leave.”

You see, for many of us who aren’t fortunate enough to stumble into spiritual homes that accept and embrace us, that’s exactly what we do – we leave and sometimes we never come back.

And what kind of happily ever after ending is that?

THE END