Before I had kids, things seemed so simple. My husband and I combined what we were already doing religiously. On the High Holidays and Passover, he usually went to work, so there was no conflict. At work, he ate what he wanted, and at home, we continued to eat matzo. It was the same when the kids were born. That is, until he began working from home, but we continued to make it work as we blended our two religions with our children.

Our wedding was an interfaith ceremony as well. We were married under a chuppah or canopy. We had a Rabbi and a Priest. We (my spouse) broke the glass, which represents the remembering of the destruction of the temples in Jerusalem. We celebrated Christmas and Easter with my in-laws, and the Jewish holidays and Thanksgiving with my family. This continued after our kids were born.

After we were married, we continued to celebrate the Jewish holidays with my family. We also celebrated Thanksgiving with my family and then went to my husband’s family for Christmas and Easter. Thanksgiving somehow felt Jewish to me. It wasn’t overly religious, especially if your family didn’t go to church. I also felt that it was inclusive of all traditions. No one was left out. Now, I realize today that when I thought that I wasn’t thinking about the Indigenous people who we peripherally celebrate on that day as well, but to me as a Jewish person, it was the one holiday that I wasn’t left out of things. It became a bigger holiday for me, and for my kids.

When my kids were born, I knew that they would be raised in both faiths and celebrating both sets of holidays – Jewish on my side and Catholic on my husband’s side. Even though he and his family weren’t religious, they still celebrated Christmas and Easter in his family, and we continued that with our kids.

We would travel from our home in upstate New York to our families: mine for Thanksgiving, which my in-laws would attend, and his for Christmas. We would still see my parents during that time, but the primary celebration was spending Christmas Eve at my in-laws and spending the night. We didn’t begin to stay at our own home on the holidays until we had a house and wanted the kids to wake up there on Christmas morning.

As a parent in an interfaith family, we observed/celebrated less Jewish holidays than I had as a kid. Our Jewish year still began on Rosh Hashanah, which coincided nicely with Back-to-School season making it easier to explain as the New Year, followed by Yom Kippur. My kids didn’t fast; they weren’t expected to. I still fasted each year. I still fast on Yom Kippur even though I’ve joined the Catholic Church, but part of that story may come later. My usual observations included reading Biblical passages, reading Jane Breskin Zalben’s children’s books, and other readings that I’ve saved for the holidays. As a child, I’d argue that writing wasn’t work; it was fun. That didn’t fly with my parents. We did use electricity and the telephone, and that continues in my adult household. I don’t use the computer.

As is custom, all of our kids are named for and in honor of relatives who’ve passed. Six people between them.

In December, often around my birthday, Chanukah falls. I try to keep Chanukah separate from Christmas. I don’t hang “Chanukah ornaments” on our Christmas tree. If we do Chanukah presents (we don’t always do them), they are not combo Chanukah/Christmas presents. Décor is distinct. For Chanukah, our typical gifts are dreidls and gelt. When the kids were younger, we did do one larger gift on the first night. On occasion we did do eight small gifts depending on when Chanukah fell in relation to Christmas. This year, following October 7, I did more than usual. We hung blue and white lights outside, and also put a door hanging up with an interactive menorah. We lit candles inside, and one of my kids (who are all adults or teenagers now) would add the fabric candle to the menorah on the door. I was sick with covid and missed the last two nights of Chanukah, but when I was well again, we lit the eight candles for the last night of Chanukah, even though it was two days late. It was simply too important to me to let it be ignored this year. I made latkes, and to be honest, they were probably the best ones I’ve ever made. Dreidls and gelt and a new story to read – There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Dreidl; a rollicking fun tale with fantastic pictures based on famous paintings. Ten out of ten would recommend.

But there were still some conflicts, especially at school.

In the first school my oldest attended, they were very welcoming and invited me each year to bring Chanukah into his classroom by reading a story, sharing gelt, doing a craft, playing dreidl. It was very different when we changed school districts. I talked about that same son and his fourth-grade teacher in Part One. The year my middle son started kindergarten, school was scheduled to begin on Rosh Hashanah. The school had no concept of how important that holiday is, and it was the first day of kindergarten. The School Board was also dismissive of our concerns and suggested that they can’t give every holiday observance off. They did ultimately decide to begin a day later, which made many of us have to make the decision to forego observing the second day of the holiday.

Another issue with the schools ignoring important religious observances is when they give perfect attendance awards which are an annual affair in the elementary school and announced and applauded at assemblies. Jewish kids never get these even if they’ve never missed a day of school apart from the Jewish holidays.

It’s not a huge thing, but it is frustrating at how we’re just not seen. We’re erased. We’re expected to move aside while the world revolves around one religion that preaches tolerance, but often is anything but.

For the Passover holiday, schools are often in session. My kids would bring a plastic container of what they were allowed to eat, since most of the cafeteria food revolves around bread and bread products: sandwiches, pasta, etc. While our family doesn’t keep kosher, I do try to keep kosher-like during the holidays, especially when there is a prescribed food requirement. Some of the foods I’d send to school were gefilte fish (when they actually ate that), carrots, grapes, matzo, sometimes with butter, cucumbers. Leftover chicken was a favorite and of course, potato chips. We eat more potatoes during Passover than St. Patrick’s Day, Chanukah, and Thanksgiving combined.

My first two kids are boys, and when they were born, there is an immediate need to find a temple, find a mohel, and have the bris. I was of a mixed mind on this. On the one hand, I knew that it was required, a sacred covenant that had to be done. On the other hand, I didn’t know what to do, and despite my mother trying to guide me from over two hundred miles away, it was still frenzied and ridden with anxiety. Our apartment wasn’t big enough to have people in it, but I felt the weight of five thousand years of history that I am a part of. I felt the history, the tradition, the law, and I felt it deep in my bones. We figured the two boys out. Those boys wearing tiny yarmulkes, being prayed over in Hebrew, squirming, and simultaneously looking back thousands of years and looking forward.

My had father died before my second was born, but my mother walked me through who to call and the things that needed to be done for both boys. I was still recovering from a c-section, but the requirements are specific: eight days. My mother died a short time later (weeks) and before my daughter was born eighteen months later. I had to traverse the unknown alone. We brought her to the temple and had her naming. Family came, and we celebrated. Half of us also got food poisoning but that’s another story.

These were things that were important to me; to continue the Jewish life that I grew up with. I belonged to something special, something important, something profoundly meaningful, and I still feel that way.

In Part Three next week, I’ll share what, along with October 7, brought many of these thoughts to the front of my brain and drove me to reckon and reflect on the antisemitism I’ve faced, the misinformation my children are encountering online and in school about the current war, and how to continue forward while delighting in and appreciating our shared past and keeping the Jewish people alive for the future.