Children

What About the Children?

(Image: Guinness Hamentashen for Irish Jewish kids!) What about the children? If you are in an interfaith/intercultural family then your children have family members who are not Jewish, who may follow other religions or traditions, yet these people are an important part of your child’s life. How can you recognize and honor this part of…

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Programs coming in 2022

I’ve scheduled a couple of terrific classes for 2022 and want to give you a heads-up. First, we’ll look at a topic that people fear for no reason: Honoring Your Jewish Child’s Non-Jewish Heritage How will you teach your children about the “other” parent’s traditions and heritage?  Every child must know who they are, where…

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Patrilineal Jews: Can there be Two Truths?

There’s a song from the sixties by Buffalo Springfield with the line, “Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.” It’s been more than 50 years and we still can’t seem to get past the idea that “I’m right and that makes everyone else wrong.”  How appropriate is Cantor Linda Hirschhorn‘s email to her congregation, Beth Sholom of…

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Make the most of December

Last week I wrote to you that experiencing Christmas will not destroy your child’s Jewish identity and it won’t. Period. But that still means you have to GIVE them a Jewish identity. Going without Christmas won’t build a Jewish identity; you have to proactively teach your child that they are Jewish. So if you’re hanging…

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