At Passover this year, my 87-year-old father will preside over a long table of children, grandchildren and in-laws gathered in a Florida condo. As part of a sprawling family tree of Italians, French-Canadians, Germans, Irish, Jews, Catholics and Episcopalians, we all take turns reading the traditional Jewish blessings and commentaries. Of the 30 or so people around the table, my father will be the only person descended from four Jewish grandparents.
An interfaith Passover is nothing new. Tradition commands that we welcome the stranger to the Seder table and share the story of the Exodus from Egypt. The epic saga of flight from slavery and struggle for religious freedom has inspired gospel Seders shared by Jews and African-American Christians since at least the 1960s. And those of us in interfaith families have always included Christian family members and friends at our Seders with relative ease. This year, intermarried Washington power couple Cokie and Steve Roberts (she's Catholic, he's Jewish) published a new Haggadah (the liturgy of prayers and readings used at the Seder table) describing their own interfaith Seder.
Easter, on the other hand, presents more of a theological dilemma for the estimated 1 million American families led by intermarried Jews and Christians. For interfaith families raising Jewish children, the most common strategy is to limit any Easter observance to the more secular side: the baskets and eggs and bunnies.
But for some of us, that is not enough. My family belongs to a growing network of independent communities determined to educate our children in both Judaism and Christianity. In Chicago, Boston, Denver, New York and Washington, interfaith families are coming together, not to mix Passover and Easter together, but to make sure our children understand the distinct religious meaning of both holidays, and not just the secular trimmings. We encourage our children to contemplate the possible interpretations of Easter, rather than avoiding the topic: physical or spiritual resurrection, history or literature, inspiring metaphor or inscrutable mystery?
Last year, our community in Washington D.C., the Interfaith Families Project, created an Easter service for interfaith families. Why can't interfaith families go to churches on Easter? They can, but the Jewish partner may or may not feel truly welcome, especially if those preaching somehow missed the Pope's recent reminder that the Jews were not responsible for the death of Jesus. More than one interfaith family I know has been traumatized by an Easter sermon. But also, for many intermarried couples, it feels very different to sit together as equals in a service designed for interfaith families, as opposed to being in a house of worship where one partner plays "host" and the other is a tolerated "guest." Our children sense when their parents feel equally welcome and comfortable, and they thrive on this sense of balance.
Can a Jewish parent go beyond forbearance, to find actual meaning in the religious themes of Easter, while remaining Jewish? At our interfaith Easter service last year, Georgetown University's Rabbi Harold White, Spiritual Advisor to the Interfaith Families Project, explained that resurrection was a familiar concept to Jews in the time of Jesus. Traditional Jewish (and Christian and Muslim) beliefs include the idea that everyone will be resurrected in the "end-times." But more broadly, the metaphorical themes of renewal in spring, and of a spirit that lives on somehow after death, are universal.
The aim of our interfaith Easter service, and of our interfaith community in general, is not to create a new religion, or a confusing mash-up, or to convert anyone, or to become "Jews for Jesus." Rather, we want to provide a deeper level of religious literacy for our interfaith children, to go beyond jelly beans and chocolate matzahs, to truly wrestle with the theological consonance and dissonance inevitably represented in our families, and in our increasingly interfaith world.
After the Easter service, our community holds a pancake breakfast, a tradition in many churches. But we also serve matzah brei (eggs and matzoh, fried in a separate griddle) for those avoiding bread during Passover. We realize all of this enthusiastic celebrating across boundaries will make some folks, and most religious institutions, uncomfortable or even distressed. As an interfaith child raised with one religion, I can attest to the benefits, and the drawbacks, of the "whatever you do, just choose one religion" pathway. But as the parent of interfaith teenagers raised with two religions, I can also attest to the benefits, and the drawbacks, of this radical new route.
As a family, we gain emotional satisfaction from thriving at the center of a community rather than feeling tolerated at the periphery. And we gain intellectual satisfaction from keeping the two religious traditions in dynamic equilibrium, acknowledging that they are interconnected, that we are all interconnected.
Susan Katz Miller, a former Newsweek reporter and former Board Chair of the Interfaith Families Project, blogs at On Being Both. She is writing a book on interfaith families celebrating two religions.
Follow Susan Katz Miller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/beingboth
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Thank you! For some interfaith families, choosing Judaism as the sole religion for the children works for the entire family. Other families (like mine) choose the (more controversial) "two-way street." Part of my point in this post is that the Jewish partner can engage with the Christianity of the Jewish partner rather than avoiding it, while remaining Jewish. But each pathway for interfaith families has its advantages, and its challenges.
Secondly, I celebrate all Jewish holy days and recognize the G-d's covenant with Israel. What Jews/Christians need to recognize is that the Levitical Priests of Jesus' time had to be the one to sacrifice Him; ONLY the priests could present the Passover Lamb (which Jesus was) to Him. It was divine order, not murder. Had the Jews not presented Jesus to be sacrificed, G-d would not have accepted the it and we would not be grafted into the plan of salvation through the line of Abraham. And the Jews should not be ashamed of this! You know the importance of presenting a perfect sacrifice, without blemish, is to G-d. Your fathers presented a beautiful sacrifice, holy and acceptable to the Lord! I thank you:)
See, I didn't even have to teach that.
There is unity when people believe what is true.
It is so much easier that way!
As a favor to me, please don't make distinctions between ethnicity and religion - it just confuses all of us with cross-hairs on our backs. We might get the idea that we're going to be spared because we are "only" ethnically Jewish. We must have a clear signal to run for the bushes if there's to be any sport in crusades and inquisitions. Luckily, fundamentalists of all stripes (including Jews) tend to target less zealous folks in their own ranks first, so it gives us all-the-way-different people a running start before the lead starts flying in our direction.
How about a bit of love and charity for Easter, bub?
I suppose they didn't know what correct doctrine was bad then.
We all know Sunday is the first day of the week and the Sunday after Passover is the "Feast of First Fruits".
The churches really did intend to be separate from Judaism and took deliberate steps to make that happen.
There is no one way.
Read Jesus own words on this topic in the book of Mathews 10:32/39:
32 “Everyone, then, that confesses union with me before men, I will also confess union with him before my Father who is in the heavens; 33 but whoever disowns me before men, I will also disown him before my Father who is in the heavens. 34 Do not think I came to put peace upon the earth; I came to put, not peace, but a sword. 35 For I came to cause division, with a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a young wife against her mother-in-law. 36 Indeed, a man’s enemies will be persons of his own household. 37 He that has greater affection for father or mother than for me is not worthy of me; and he that has greater affection for son or daughter than for me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not accept his torture stake and follow after me is not worthy of me. 39 He that finds his soul will lose it, and he that loses his soul for my sake will find it.
"Then the Lord said (In Isaiah), "Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote,"
That was hundreds of years before Yeshua was born ...so the truth remains that very often neither the Jews nor the Christians honor the Lord with their hearts.
We have to confess that only our Maker Himself is our Savior because there is no one else who can save us.
My reply!
I am not threatened - for I will not hide or compromise my love for Jesus in front of non believers! But good try!:))
Happy Equinox!
If you want to get really technical with your kids, Jesus was a Jew and the last supper was indeed a Passover seder. That is where any similarity or comparisonÂs end between the two holidays.
You asked: Can a Jewish parent go beyond forbearancÂe, to find actual meaning in the religious themes of Easter, while remaining Jewish? I doubt it. However, the Easter Egg hunt is an imitation of the hunt for chametz (leavened products) which takes place in observant Jewish homes before Passover. If you consider your children Jews, emphasize their Judaism, not Judaism's comparisonÂs to ChristianiÂty. I do not see why you should need to find religious meaning in the themes of Easter for children being raised as Jews.
I don't believe children can be raised in both religions simultaneoÂusly. (Now cue all those who will disagree with me and cry how well rounded they turned out to be.) Those children usually don't pick a religion because it makes them feel disloyal to one of their parents.
Time will tell. Good luck.
If there isn't a push and pull between parental beliefs, interfaith relationships and childhoods can work. You are raised as one faith while understanding the other.
Good point on the Easter egg hunt, though. Keep up the vigilance, or they will steal all of our best ideas. Next thing you know, they'll steal the whole Old Testament - aw heck, too late.
Today, we are both atheists and don't give a flying fig about adult fairy tales. Voila.