Jewish Musings Wednesday, Nov. 9

[hollygail]

What’s on your mind — how to make kugel? This week’s Torah reading? Life goals? Prayer? We are all engaged in weight loss/weight maintenance journeys and we are all Jewish or at least interested in Judaism. We like to eat, we like to discuss. It is our goal here to provide each other support on our journeys, to share experiences, to call on our rich cultural heritage and texts, and to help each other grow spiritually.

Some of us take weekly turns starting the thread:

Frieda (hopefully)?
Holly
Lee
Louise
Lynne
Peachy

And for those of you that stop by to read this thread without posting — you are welcome to, but you are also welcome to chime in. Don’t be shy!

[hollygail]

After burying his wife, it finally occurs to Abraham that his son Isaac isn't yet married. And Abraham does NOT want Isaac to marry a Canaanite woman. So he sends his servant back "home" (to where he, Abraham, came from) to find a suitable wife for Isaac. And we arrive at today's topic.

Marrying within the Jewish people is an important Jewish value. That is why Abraham took great pains to send someone he trusted back to their “home country” — in order to find a member of the extended family for Isaac to marry. This preference for in-marriage has been a Jewish tradition for thousands of years. That is how Jews kept the Jewish people together over the centuries (actually, over the millennia), and passed values and traditions from one generation to the next. Today, many Jews marry non-Jews and many of the children of those marriages are raised as Jews.

I teach Sunday school for a congregation that accepts matrilineal and/or patrilineal descent. Many of my students over the years have had one non-Jewish parent. Yet all of them were raised Jewish. There's even a story that one Friday night (more than 25 years ago; I was a member but my calendar didn't indicate that there were going to be services that evening), the shul was locked when some families with young children arrived. Two of the moms (neither one Jewish) successfully (according to all the accounts I heard) led the kids' service from memory (the siddurim, prayer books, were locked inside the shul...). (Many years later, one of the two joined the tribe, and several years later, the other one did too.) I've also taught in Conservative congregations where the non-Jewish parent actively engaged in raising Jewish children.

Your comments?

[lee058]

Good morning everybody. Hope you are all well and SAFE! Please pray for Israel.

Re today's topic: It was important to me to marry someone Jewish, and it is important for me to raise my son Jewish. We talk about Jewish topics all the time.

Have a peaceful day, Lee

[gazelle18]

This has been a big topic in my family. My parents would have been incredibly upset had either my brother or I had intermarried. And fortunately for me, both of my kids married Jewish people, so we dodged that issue.

But nowadays, a majority of Jews intermarry, so it has become incumbent upon our tribe to view this as an opportunity , as opposed to a problem. And I have come to believe that it is indeed an opportunity. It is certainly more challenging to keep the tribe together when intermarriage occurs. But there is also the possibility of widening the scope and deepening he experience when people marry into the faith.

[peachymom1]

It doesn't surprise me that Abraham wanted his son to marry within the family; what I always found surprising was that Isaac didn't get married until he was 40 years old.

DH and I converted to Judaism together, before we were married, so we were the first Jews in the family. DD35 was adamant about marrying a Jewish girl; she wouldn't even date non-Jewish women. DS32 (the one who isn't dating anyone at the moment) feels the same way; he says he wouldn't marry a non-Jew. Our other DS32, however, is going to marry a non-Jewish woman in a few months. My younger self would have been disappointed, but honestly, I just love this woman, and she's a wonderful match for my son. He's happy, so I'm happy.

I understand the feelings of parents whose kids marry out. But it's out of our hands. We have to get over it and let our kids live their own lives. Besides, you never know what can happen in the future. I would not want to alienate my son or his fiancee, nor miss out on being a grandma to their kids.

[louise]

I had a dizzying day - all good, but still spinning.
I will tryo to read the posts tomorrow.
I did get my bus ticket for Washington DC next Tuesday.