Thursday, February 14, 2019
On being Quaker and Jewish
I write this in response to a friend's blog post, in which he talks about his struggle around identity and being both Quaker and Jewish.
When I married my first wife we agreed to bring up our kids both Quaker and Jewish. That was easy enough since we weren't either of us all that religious in terms of regular attendance anywhere. I associated myself with Quakers but had never really joined. She was actually experimenting with Christianity through being married to me. She was later to go through Reconstructionist Judaism, Sufiism, and finally a kind of Hinduism, although devotees of the Sri Sri might deny any firm connection. At the time we were both young and just wanted to raise our kids pleasantly in both.
When she first got into Judaism was when the boys came home saying they couldn't be both Quaker and Jewish. That was because their Sunday School teacher told them that. If Quaker was Christian, then it wasn't Jewish. I hit the roof, and said, yes you can be both, for two reasons.
FIrst was that they were kids. If you're a kid you have your parents' religions by default, and you aren't expected to make up your own mind. As a Quaker I wouldn't pressure them anyway, since they are their own people, and would ultimately make up their own minds in the process of growing up. But for the time being I wanted to give them my Quaker religion the same way she wanted to give them Judaism, and I had no problem with that.
Reconstructionist Judaism is heavily into the symbolism: the songs, the rituals, that kind of stuff. Rituals are kind of opposite of Quakerism, but I still didn't see a conflict. They could live the testimonies, they could learn to live non-violently, and they could still do all the Jewish rituals; there was nothing in there that contradicted anything. To me Quakerism is all about practicing what you preach, walking the walk, doing good, and being as good on Monday as you were on Sunday, or First-day, as we might say. There is nothing contradictory in there with saying blessings or following certain practices at Passover. One can participate in both religions.
If Quakerism demanded a absolute allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ, I would say, ok, you can't be both. And some branches of the religion are probably into that. At some point you would have to decide if you were totally into Jesus or if you really wanted to get deeper into Judaism, which would definitely lead you away from that direction.
But Judaism, like Christianity, is a very diverse religion. There are Quaker-like Jews, and atheist Jews, and devout Jews, and Fundamentalist Jews. Saying that you can't be both implies that you have defined both Judaism and Quakerism as exclusionary. Why would we want to do that?
When you have an interreligious marriage the couple has to find what works best and live by that. I have heard of a Jew marrying a Baptist and they both became Presbyterian, because they could both live with that compromise and it seemed to be fine with their kids. When you straddle the religions, i.e. going to one one Sunday, the other the other, then basically the elders of any given church might not be happy, but you the couple, and your kids, will at least experience both.
So this rabbi came and told us that we had to bring up our kids Jewish, and that was it. They had to have a bris, and they had to live by the regulations of Judaism, in order to be Jewish, it was that simple. As for Quakers, he made a comment about oatmeal and I bristled. He obviously knew nothing about it. But he felt like he had the authority to define for us who could be Jewish and who definitely was falling short. My wife believed him, but by that time, she wanted out of the marriage, and was looking for things that would make me mad. I pointed out that we'd agreed to bring them up both. She insisted she wanted to bring them up Jewish. It was a standoff.
To me, many of the rituals, song, language, etc., were cultural, and I would never dream of taking their culture from them, or denying anyone their culture, or suppressing one's culture in one's household. If you have a culture, it's your culture, if you have a religion, that's your religion. Why would one give these things up for love or anything else? If you didn't care about religion, that would be one thing, but if you didn't care, it wouldn't be a religion, now, would it? So we had a standoff. In the process of divorce my lawyer told me to stand up for my religion, and I did. I got the kids fifty percent of the time and they continued to go to Quaker meeting.
I still see no contradiction; I still encouraged them in every way to participate in Judaism. As she went off to Sufiism and the Sri Sri, I didn't stand in the way of that either. That's what I like about Quakerism, if someone wants to explore another path, we just say, go ahead. It doesn't threaten us to have you come back knowing more about how people feel about G-d and the divine.
My first wife and I divorced on Valentine's Day of 1997 because that was the day the courthouse was available. I met my second wife on Valentine's Day of 2000, but that's another story; she's much more aligned with my religion, being Quaker with a healthy dose of atheism thrown in there and a kind of AA, higher-power type theology. With our religions aligned, it's much easier carrying on, but I grew up in a bi-religious household (my father, atheist/agnostic, my mother, Presbyterian) and I was always ok with straddling the fence. The family the parents make lives by the religion the parents set up. If they don't practice one, or practice strong morality without religion, or strong religion without morality, the kids will pick that up one way or the other. My family had strong morality, value of education, and respect for each other's space in that regard.
My sons were shattered by the whole divorce thing, as they were ten and five at the time of the divorce, and it made us both poorer and me a little angry; I felt betrayed. I survived, though, and so did my Quakerism. I kept my respect for Judaism and today am making a shalom quilt for one of my Jewish grandchildren; there will be at least three of these, as there are three Jewish grandchildren already.
My older son, however, is Quaker, and the younger one, like many millenials, has more or less cast away religion, and I can't blame him, as the whole thing can be somewhat damaging. He, the younger son, is very knowledgeable about Jewish and Quaker ways. He also knows well the Sufis and the SriSri. He has noticed however that pushing religion around is not necessarily a good way to get a girlfriend. He has, in the past, expressed a desire to bring up kids in a Jewish way. He's also, at times, let go of that, if not entirely, than at least mostly. He's finding his way.
Being both can be exhausting and draining. Any two religions can give you two lifetimes of things to think about, but we only have one lifetime, and each religion will in its own way reach into your soul and grab it. It's the higher ups of a religion that want your children, 100% of them, and I love Quakerism in that it doesn't have higher-ups, and doesn't play games like that. If a religion wants you to find G-d, then it should lay off its trips about what you have to do with your kids and just help you find God. Find G-d, and quit drinking, and tell the truth, and stay away from drugs. To me it's primarily a practical matter. If it's helping you live a better life, it's not hurting you. And it shouldn't be contradicting anyone else who's doing the same thing.
You can tell I don't get much into the Scripture side of it, or the theology. I actually think religion and grammar have that in common; they're really not all that complicated. We have rituals together that make us feel part of a group, but that's different from helping us contact our higher power and live by the ways of truth, love, and honesty. We don't have to know scriptures to do that or to live right, and we don't have to live by any books that tell us we can't read other books. We are ultimately responsible for ourselves and our own path, and the point where religion boxes us in is the point where we need to tell religion to go take a hike. I was ready to say that to that rabbi, but he had his own problems anyway, and, it all worked out ok, at least from my perspective.
When I married my first wife we agreed to bring up our kids both Quaker and Jewish. That was easy enough since we weren't either of us all that religious in terms of regular attendance anywhere. I associated myself with Quakers but had never really joined. She was actually experimenting with Christianity through being married to me. She was later to go through Reconstructionist Judaism, Sufiism, and finally a kind of Hinduism, although devotees of the Sri Sri might deny any firm connection. At the time we were both young and just wanted to raise our kids pleasantly in both.
When she first got into Judaism was when the boys came home saying they couldn't be both Quaker and Jewish. That was because their Sunday School teacher told them that. If Quaker was Christian, then it wasn't Jewish. I hit the roof, and said, yes you can be both, for two reasons.
FIrst was that they were kids. If you're a kid you have your parents' religions by default, and you aren't expected to make up your own mind. As a Quaker I wouldn't pressure them anyway, since they are their own people, and would ultimately make up their own minds in the process of growing up. But for the time being I wanted to give them my Quaker religion the same way she wanted to give them Judaism, and I had no problem with that.
Reconstructionist Judaism is heavily into the symbolism: the songs, the rituals, that kind of stuff. Rituals are kind of opposite of Quakerism, but I still didn't see a conflict. They could live the testimonies, they could learn to live non-violently, and they could still do all the Jewish rituals; there was nothing in there that contradicted anything. To me Quakerism is all about practicing what you preach, walking the walk, doing good, and being as good on Monday as you were on Sunday, or First-day, as we might say. There is nothing contradictory in there with saying blessings or following certain practices at Passover. One can participate in both religions.
If Quakerism demanded a absolute allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ, I would say, ok, you can't be both. And some branches of the religion are probably into that. At some point you would have to decide if you were totally into Jesus or if you really wanted to get deeper into Judaism, which would definitely lead you away from that direction.
But Judaism, like Christianity, is a very diverse religion. There are Quaker-like Jews, and atheist Jews, and devout Jews, and Fundamentalist Jews. Saying that you can't be both implies that you have defined both Judaism and Quakerism as exclusionary. Why would we want to do that?
When you have an interreligious marriage the couple has to find what works best and live by that. I have heard of a Jew marrying a Baptist and they both became Presbyterian, because they could both live with that compromise and it seemed to be fine with their kids. When you straddle the religions, i.e. going to one one Sunday, the other the other, then basically the elders of any given church might not be happy, but you the couple, and your kids, will at least experience both.
So this rabbi came and told us that we had to bring up our kids Jewish, and that was it. They had to have a bris, and they had to live by the regulations of Judaism, in order to be Jewish, it was that simple. As for Quakers, he made a comment about oatmeal and I bristled. He obviously knew nothing about it. But he felt like he had the authority to define for us who could be Jewish and who definitely was falling short. My wife believed him, but by that time, she wanted out of the marriage, and was looking for things that would make me mad. I pointed out that we'd agreed to bring them up both. She insisted she wanted to bring them up Jewish. It was a standoff.
To me, many of the rituals, song, language, etc., were cultural, and I would never dream of taking their culture from them, or denying anyone their culture, or suppressing one's culture in one's household. If you have a culture, it's your culture, if you have a religion, that's your religion. Why would one give these things up for love or anything else? If you didn't care about religion, that would be one thing, but if you didn't care, it wouldn't be a religion, now, would it? So we had a standoff. In the process of divorce my lawyer told me to stand up for my religion, and I did. I got the kids fifty percent of the time and they continued to go to Quaker meeting.
I still see no contradiction; I still encouraged them in every way to participate in Judaism. As she went off to Sufiism and the Sri Sri, I didn't stand in the way of that either. That's what I like about Quakerism, if someone wants to explore another path, we just say, go ahead. It doesn't threaten us to have you come back knowing more about how people feel about G-d and the divine.
My first wife and I divorced on Valentine's Day of 1997 because that was the day the courthouse was available. I met my second wife on Valentine's Day of 2000, but that's another story; she's much more aligned with my religion, being Quaker with a healthy dose of atheism thrown in there and a kind of AA, higher-power type theology. With our religions aligned, it's much easier carrying on, but I grew up in a bi-religious household (my father, atheist/agnostic, my mother, Presbyterian) and I was always ok with straddling the fence. The family the parents make lives by the religion the parents set up. If they don't practice one, or practice strong morality without religion, or strong religion without morality, the kids will pick that up one way or the other. My family had strong morality, value of education, and respect for each other's space in that regard.
My sons were shattered by the whole divorce thing, as they were ten and five at the time of the divorce, and it made us both poorer and me a little angry; I felt betrayed. I survived, though, and so did my Quakerism. I kept my respect for Judaism and today am making a shalom quilt for one of my Jewish grandchildren; there will be at least three of these, as there are three Jewish grandchildren already.
My older son, however, is Quaker, and the younger one, like many millenials, has more or less cast away religion, and I can't blame him, as the whole thing can be somewhat damaging. He, the younger son, is very knowledgeable about Jewish and Quaker ways. He also knows well the Sufis and the SriSri. He has noticed however that pushing religion around is not necessarily a good way to get a girlfriend. He has, in the past, expressed a desire to bring up kids in a Jewish way. He's also, at times, let go of that, if not entirely, than at least mostly. He's finding his way.
Being both can be exhausting and draining. Any two religions can give you two lifetimes of things to think about, but we only have one lifetime, and each religion will in its own way reach into your soul and grab it. It's the higher ups of a religion that want your children, 100% of them, and I love Quakerism in that it doesn't have higher-ups, and doesn't play games like that. If a religion wants you to find G-d, then it should lay off its trips about what you have to do with your kids and just help you find God. Find G-d, and quit drinking, and tell the truth, and stay away from drugs. To me it's primarily a practical matter. If it's helping you live a better life, it's not hurting you. And it shouldn't be contradicting anyone else who's doing the same thing.
You can tell I don't get much into the Scripture side of it, or the theology. I actually think religion and grammar have that in common; they're really not all that complicated. We have rituals together that make us feel part of a group, but that's different from helping us contact our higher power and live by the ways of truth, love, and honesty. We don't have to know scriptures to do that or to live right, and we don't have to live by any books that tell us we can't read other books. We are ultimately responsible for ourselves and our own path, and the point where religion boxes us in is the point where we need to tell religion to go take a hike. I was ready to say that to that rabbi, but he had his own problems anyway, and, it all worked out ok, at least from my perspective.
Friday, February 08, 2019
Cloud Quakers invite everyone to Meeting for Worship/Worship sharing SUN 7 pm US Mountain Time, on Zoom. This week's query: Does it matter if there's an afterlife? Join us on Zoom (download Zoom, dial 373 452 424). All welcome!
Friday, February 01, 2019
cloud quakers
online at zoom, 7 pm us mountain time (8 in chicago, 9 in new york, 6 in california)
download zoom (~5 minutes, like skype), dial 373 452 424. all welcome!
we are quakers. we minister to each other; we share testimonies and support each other in living peacefully on this earth.
online at zoom, 7 pm us mountain time (8 in chicago, 9 in new york, 6 in california)
download zoom (~5 minutes, like skype), dial 373 452 424. all welcome!
we are quakers. we minister to each other; we share testimonies and support each other in living peacefully on this earth.
