this woman’s work

More on faith on culture

Nov 23, 2006 Adoption, Judaism, Race, Spirituality

I think I must have done a really really horrible job of explaining so I’m going to re-explain.

Both my kids are being raised in the Jewish faith, as in their formal religious education is happening at our synagogue. They are also being raised less formally with some understanding of Christianity because their father is a Christian. (He’s non-denominational but in short he believes that he needed to be saved, he finds comfort in his bible and he is humbled by Christ’s teachings.) Because it’s easier for me to talk about my beliefs than it is for their dad to talk about his, when Noah asks big questions I answer from a Jewish perspective as I understand it.

We’re not so great at the trappings of either of our religions. Judaism — even Reform — has a lot of trappings and this is one of several reasons that our kids are at temple instead of at church. (The other major reason being that churches are not comfortable places for me and Brett enjoys services at synagogue.) It’s pretty easy to embrace Christianity — you just become Christian. But Judaism has a lot of formal rites that can be confusing and off-putting and to learn them now will make it easier for them to live Jewish later, if they choose to.

That’s our immediate family: non-denominational, liberal Christian and very Reform Jew. Our extended families are everything from Christian Scientist to Athiest to Catholic to Pagan. They have some exposure to all of that but their faith teachings spring from my Judaism and Brett’s Christianity.

Now to further explain why I feel it’s important that Madison have exposure to Christianity:

1. Her birth family, as I said, is French-Catholic. Her grandparents met in Catholic high school (Jessica’s last name is french). Her history on both her maternal and her paternal grandparent’s side is Creole way, way back. She should have a cultural understanding of that because it’s a rich part of her birth heritage. (Noah, as an aside, is jealous that Madison has a busier family tree than he does because we’ve talked about this.)

2. Also her birth family, even when they don’t practice Catholicism do practice Christianity. It’s a big, huge part of their lives and the emails and things we get from them reflect this. She needs to understand this so she has a shared language or at the very least understands their point of view. (Also as an aside, her adoption into a Jewish-identifying family was a concern for some of her first family and we’ve made a point of letting them know that they don’t need to censor their faith with us.)

3. Likewise, Christianity is a very important part of the African American community at large. Open up a copy of Essence if you don’t believe me. Christianity is assumed in a way that Islam is not. “Church clothes,” gospel music, biblical teachings — they are important cultural touchstones. Madison is going to miss out on a lot of cultural touchstones by virtue of growing up in our white family and I can’t try to replicate them for her. What I can do is offer her an understanding of them by actively seeking out members of the community who are willing to educate her about them. (Our babysitter is one person who is helping us with that.)

I don’t think that Madison has a “true” religion that I can ferret out by looking at the color of her skin or her family tree. I certainly don’t have the hubris to enter into the debate happening in the black community about the relevance of Christianity — what do I know? I’m a white Jew! I’m not talking about faith, I’m talking about the cultural experience of religion. So teaching Islam does not seem as important to me as teaching Christianity in a casual cultural context. We’re all for formal and informal multicultural religious education and the informal part is, to me, about addressing the immediacy of a shared cultural experience. This is also why I haven’t gone out of my way to expose my children to Buddhists — we don’t know any. (We know some people who are casually interested in Buddhism but no one who is a practicing Buddhist.) Likewise, in my need-to-happen-more forays into local African American community, I’m seeing a default to Christianity. I have also been explicitly told by several black people that I need to expose Madison to Christianity. So far the only two people who have brought up Islam are two bloggers here. (one on this blog, one on LJ)

A woman wrote me (commented here) awhile back about being a Jewish woman with a child from Guatamala and she said that her son’s birth religion is Catholic but she can’t teach him Catholicsm because she’s Jewish. I understand the dilemma — but I’m NOT talking about raising our children in their birth faith. I’m talking about giving our children an understanding of their birth culture.

Here’s something of an example — one reason I think people assume I’m Christian is that I understand some Christian language. I understand what “the world” means. I understand what it means when someone says, “I was convicted on that.” One of the guys who assumed I was Christian used some of that language and I didn’t ask him what he meant and now I realize that by knowing his language, he was able to more comfortably (and surely unconsciously) make an assumption about me. I was welcome in a discussion we went on to have that I might not have been otherwise. (Sometimes I’m troubled by this because I worry that I’m lying by omission but he never asked so there didn’t seem to be a proper way to back up and explain. Anyway.) I want Madison to grok the language.

It goes back to some old posts (too lazy to dig them up) I had about American-Family and math camp. To be Chinese, her husband quite clearly says, means to go to math camp. So should all white parents of adopted Chinese children sign up for math camp? Well, maybe. If math camp has the opportunity to be a shared touchstone that will make it easier for said child to enter into his/her birth community, then math camp has way more importance than just, you know, math camp. It’s a cultural experience that can give a child options.

There are black kids at our synagogue (not many but they’re there). The difference between them and Madison is that they all have at least one black parent. Those children may have to struggle to define what their blackness means to them (or what other people’s assumptions about their blackness means to them) but it will be a different struggle than Madison’s and I think I need to be more proactive than those other parents need to be.

I don’t want to dictate Madison’s experience by telling her that there is one more legitimate way to be black than another (that it is more legitimate to be Christian or Muslim or to embrace the example of Ethiopian Jews). Her experience as a child of African American heritage is legitimate because she is legitimate. BUT I do want her to know what the world at large is talking about. Even if she never has a chummy time in someone’s kitchen getting her hair done, she needs to know that lots of other black women do and that sometimes people will look at her skin and think she shares an experience that she doesn’t. I don’t want her to be broadsided by this — I want her to be prepared, at the very least to be prepared to know that she doesn’t know things but also where to find out. I want her to feel comfortable finding out. Having some shared language will, I know, make her search easier.

The reason I know how painful it is to be ignorant of things that feel like they should have been a birth right is that I’m a second generation interfaith Jew who converted at 30-something. It’s hard sometimes to participate in temple activities and I can’t help but wish my parents had given me an idea of what was going on even if they didn’t want to teach me the faith of Judaism. (It’s a relief to be able to talk about grandmother’s hamantaschen even though I didn’t even know that’s what they were until I went to my first Purim celebration as an adult.) Sometimes I don’t mind being ignorant but lots of times I want to (irony alert) pass as a regular old Jew. Sometimes Madison will want to be able to blend in, too, and I will do my best to open doors so she can craft her own identity instead of being stuck with the one we’re foisting on her.

What Madison’s faith will be is entirely up to her — she may end up feeling strong ties to her French-Catholic ancestry, or her dad’s mom’s Christian Science history, or she may say to heck with all that and become Mormon. Being a second-generation interfaith family, I feel that religion has way more to do with following your heart than with following familial dictates. But I also know that sometimes we look for — and find — truth by following our roots. Madison has a lot of roots. She has those that came to her by adoption, she has those that come from her first family and she has those that are part of the shared history of African Americans. It’s easy for me to share my faith and to share my family’s faith (including her dad’s family) but it will take special effort on my part to share the religious culture that she lost by being adopted. My post was about making that special effort because I want her to have access, should she choose to exercise it.

I’m not sure what that will look like but I imagine I will follow the lead of our local (i.e, Columbus) African American community and seeing where it leads us. Also it comes from studying black history, reading books with black protaganists, and yes, from reading Essence. (I don’t subscribe anymore but I did and I learned a lot — about hair and about religion to start.)

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