Keeping the Faith
With little understanding of the boundaries between culture, religion and playing dress-up, my youngest child Ian seemed to grasp at a young age that we were a religious blank slate of a family. Not entirely, as I was raised vaguely Christian with a healthy thread of agnosticism. My husband Rich would probably describe himself as a devout member of the Episcopal church based on his Sunday School attendance and year as an acolyte. Aside from a sprinkling each Christmas and Easter, we first introduced religion to our children in 2016 when I started going to a nearby Quaker Meeting House, attempting to sit quietly and make sense of a new world order. My husband responded by checking the schedule for services at the local Episcopal church, so a couple times a month, we would take our slightly confused children to various institutions on Sunday mornings when their ice hockey schedule allowed. They seemed to enjoy it and even participated in a pageant or two. Eliza, my daughter, suddenly wanted a Catholic First Communion. “I want a big party! I want to be in God’s family! I love those fancy cookies! Where do they get those cookies?” She said, all in one breath.
Ian enjoyed the art projects at Quaker Sunday School and happily sang the Christian songs at his Episcopal preschool, but he soon had his heart set on something else. During an Interfaith Thanksgiving service at the Community Synagogue in Rye in 2018, Ian saw a hat on many young boys that was not part of his extensive dress-up wardrobe, and he wanted that hat. “Mom, I’m Jewish,” my five-year-old declared. Of course, that didn’t go over well with the two older siblings, who were quick to explain that he couldn’t be Jewish because our family is not Jewish. He dug his heels in further. “I am Jewish. We went to the Jewish place and now I’m Jewish. Can I have one of those hats?”
The older kids continued to tell him why he couldn’t have a yarmulke, and why he couldn’t be Jewish, but I took a different approach. If this boy wants to look into the Jewish religion, why not? We’re religious dabblers. Why not let him dabble in the Torah rather than the Christian Bible? But without a clear understanding for when it is and is not appropriate for a boy who is not Jewish to wear a yarmulke, I shied away from fulfilling that request until…about a week later, on the first night of Chanukah, we went to a friend’s band performance. As their final song, they played Adam Sandler’s Chanukah and handed out yarmulkes to everyone in the crowd. Ian, already asleep, would wake to find that someone — perhaps the Elf on the Shelf — answered this wish. Holiday miracles do exist.
When Ian discovered the golden yarmulke in the morning, he shrieked with joy and put it on his head. I did explain the origin of this gift; I wanted him to know that to be Jewish, you have to do more than ask for a yarmulke. But still, he was so happy. That afternoon we were running an errand at CVS and Ian spotted a menorah. $6.99, including the candles. We bought it. And some dreidels and a dreidel jigsaw puzzle, along with some Peanuts-themed Avent calendars. Ian insisted that we light the candles each night, and we talked about the Chanukah story and the Jewish religion. The other kids eased up and took a turns with the candle lighting. My older son’s friend and my half-Jewish Presbyterian minister sister-in-law, Carrie, delighted in serving as resources on Judaism when Ian sat still long enough to ask questions and listen to the answers.
Not long before Ian took an interest in Judaism, he had developed a passion for ’70s rock music, and with his older brother’s guidance, KISS was his favorite band. Some mornings while I was brushing my teeth, barely awake, I heard “I Was Made for Loving You” blaring from our record player. For Christmas 2017, my older brother Sam gave Ian a child-size Gene Simmons costume, proving one can purchase almost anything online. The costume even had a mask with a giant Gene Simmons tongue. In the height of his Jewish exploration, only a few days after getting his yarmulke, Ian and a friend were playing dress up in the basement. He emerged at the top of the stairs wearing his white, black and gold KISS costume without the mask, his smiling five-year-old face topped off with the mustard-colored suede yarmulke. It matched the costume perfectly, and Ian was aglow.
As Ian ran back to the basement to play, a random question popped into my mind that surely Google could answer. Is Gene Simmons Jewish? A quick click on Wikipedia and I scrolled through his fascinating story of family, immigration, religion and rock-n-roll. I called Ian back upstairs. We talked about it a bit, and looked at a world map to follow Gene Simmons from his birth in Israel as Chaim Witz to his life in LA and rock star career with KISS. Chaim’s/Gene’s mother was a Holocaust survivor whose entire family was killed in concentration camps. The details that drew me in deeper were lost on five-year-old Ian, but he got the main idea, and couldn’t wait to tell his brother and sister that he shared his chosen religion with KISS.
Now, over a year later, as we stay home with our families indefinitely, culture and religion have come up in many conversations. We’ve seen beautiful photos of quiet Nowruz celebrations from Persian friends, learned the symbolism of red eggs on Greek Orthodox Easter, read the story of Passover and watched clips of Zoom Passover Seders shared by close friends and stars in Hollywood. We watched my sister-in-law deliver a sermon in Pennsylvania, streaming live in our kitchen. With little else pressing on the calendar, we have the time to learn about the things that are important to our family and friends, finding new ways to connect and pull each other closer while safely distancing. I don’t know where our open-ended religious path will lead us, but sharing stories and following our children’s questions is a good place to start.
