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| Jenny T. Burns |
By Jenny
T. Burns
My family, like so many families, has a very busy
weekend and it is bookended by family dinners. It begins with Shabbat. When
we’re able, our Shabbat dinner is a multigenerational affair with cousins,
grandparents and a great-grandparent. It is a weekly endeavour to coordinate
who is hosting, who is bringing the challah, the gluten-free challah, the wine,
the dessert (you get the idea). In short, it is a cacophony and one that I
value weekly.
My family’s weekend ends with dinner at my in-laws,
with grandparents and an army of aunts and uncles, not to mention the active
array of cats and dogs. Most of the humans in the house are devoted Wesleyan
Christians. In my in-laws’ home, phrases like “OMG” are considered rude, and
dinner is started with a grace that ends in thanking “Jesus, our most precious
savior.” To be honest, years of Sunday dinners and that phrase still makes me
uncomfortable. In short, it’s a far cry from the Shabbat dinner of two days
prior.
While my partner and I are best termed an interfaith
couple, we have no Jesus in our home. Ours is a Jewish house with a seder plate
and chanukiot in the china cabinet. Even a decent chunk of the art on our walls
is rooted in Judaism, from the papercut hamza in our kitchen to the modern art
piece, “Jacob’s Ladder,” that hangs in our sitting room. Yet, once a week, my
kids are in a deeply Christian house. At the moment they are little, but one
day at the end of Sunday dinner’s grace they may ask who Jesus is or why Mommy
doesn’t say “amen.” They may even ask more pointed questions that I have yet to
dream up.
So how do we juggle these two families and dynamics?
How do we keep shalom bayit (peace of the home) in an interfaith
environment?
Now please bear in mind that everyone’s situation is
unique, and what works for my family, may not work for yours. In our case, I
find it helpful to have soft lines in the sand and firm lines in the sand, like
a fence around the Torah.
I’ll give you some examples. Soft lines in the sand
are places where dialogue and shared experience can happen. Rather than
‘othering’ my in-laws, I can focus on the aspects I admire about their religion
and use them as a common ground. For instance, I love that their branch of
Christianity supports egalitarian leadership. I love that their love of God and
their spirituality is open and unabashed. Sometimes in synagogues, I find
people are hesitant to even talk about God, so it’s refreshing to converse with
people who are operating on the baseline of “of course, God is real!”
However, in my back pocket, I also have my internal
firm lines in the sand that my partner and I have discussed. These are lines of
non-negotiation. For instance, while we are happy to support my partner’s
family in their religious expressions, like attending someone’s Christmas
concert or someone’s baptism, those practices do not come into our own home. We
will not accept religious gifts from my in-laws. We will never host a Sunday
dinner in our home because we won’t allow their grace to be said in our home.
These firm lines help reinforce that our home and my in-laws’ home are
different and that that’s OK.
Now, with regards to my kids’ reactions, how do we
reinforce these soft and hard lines in the sand? My attitude right now is that
we can dissuade certain non-Jewish practices without diminishing. The same way
the phrases “no thank you, not safe,” and “sharing is caring” are practically
mantras in my kids’ lives, I can create similar phrases that acknowledge and
respect others’ points-of-view while establishing our lines in the sand. “We
don’t do that in our home,” or “Nanny and Grandpa do things a little
differently,” are phrases I’m toying with at the moment.
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