Modern Mishpocha: ‘Practice makes permanent’

Jenny T. Burns

By Jenny T. Burns

My dad is forever fond of the phrase, “practice makes permanent.” As a music teacher and b’nai mitzvah tutor, he would try to impress on his students that practicing something incorrectly will create an uphill battle. As a kid and student, I was scared this meant I would be stuck with false information or incorrect music scales forever, like eternal earworms.

As an adult, I’ve come to see this phrase as comforting.

Let’s put a pin in that thought.

In my less-than-tidy dining room, my three-year-old saw me clear a space on the table for a breadboard. On it, I placed a loaf of bread and the bread cover. He watched me hunt for my last IKEA candle, which I had to cut in half and put in two candleholders. He watched all of this and said, “Challah! Shabbat!”

My heart burst. My Shabbat was utterly imperfect. The table had notebooks, a bullet journal, my stack of ‘to-read’ books, some confiscated soothers and half-drunk mugs of coffee. I was 100 per cent going to be using my phone and television over the next 24 hours. We’re talking about a far-from-kosher Shabbat here. The Talmudic sages would probably have turned their noses at my Shabbat table, but whatever! My three-year-old was demonstrating that for him, a challah cover and candles means Shabbat! Shabbat means special bread with a special name. Hopefully, more deeply than this, he will come to feel excited and happy when those objects and traditions make their weekly appearance.

Practice makes permanent. This is how I’m going to raise a Jew. Repetition. Practice. The comforting concept of what is practiced becoming permanent.

It does not matter how haphazard our weekly Shabbat dinner is. Yes, we aim for our multigenerational affair with home-baked goodies and my parents’ stunning dining room table. Other times, though, our Shabbat is not-enough-chairs for everyone, guests leaving early and roast chicken from Costco. What is practiced and permanent, however, is that we do it. We do the thing. We light the candles and say the blessings. We bless the wine/juice. We say “L’Chaim.” We bless the challah after the flourish of uncovering it (even if that means we’re opening a box of pizza). The framework is permanent. It’s practiced and in place and thus flexible and adaptable to the chaos of the week.

I also know that this framework and permanence exists in my life because my parents fought for it. Fancy desserts, chocolate milk, and sometimes a Torah story after dinner. These were the Shabbat dinners I remember from my childhood, and as I grew older, those dinners and rituals did not disappear. Sometimes we were at the family dinner service at our synagogue. Sometimes we had guests. Sometimes, our Shabbat dinner started hours after sundown because my dad was working overtime. A few times, we did our Shabbat blessings in a restaurant because my dad was playing a jazz gig at said restaurant.

Sometimes I loved it. Sometimes I thought it was embarrassing and limiting! Now, I get it. My parents were giving me an ongoing gift of Jewish identity. They were helping me practice. They were making Shabbat permanent. They made Shabbat so much a part of my life that when I was living in England, I would call them on Friday nights to make sure I was included in the Shabbat blessings at home. What a gift? I want to give the same one to my children, too.

Now, I’ve been going on and on about Shabbat, but let’s clarify something – you do not have to practice a weekly Shabbat dinner. You are your own Jew doing your best in this crazy world. Shabbat is just my example of something concrete in my Jewish identity. What permanent Jewish traditions are you instilling in your life? What warm, safe memories are you cultivating in your family for comfort and even identity down the road? Is there room for more? Maybe the answer is ‘Not right now you nosy writer!’ but you know what, maybe the answer is yes. Maybe it’s about including a PJ Library book at bedtime every night. Maybe it’s inviting guests to a Shabbat dinner once a month. The choice is yours. It’s always yours. It’s a gift of practicing to permanence that we give ourselves and the next generation.

Modern Mishpocha: Friday and Sunday dinners – Juggling our interfaith family

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.

Most importantly though, my partner and I have to help kids learn what it is to be Jewish. Living our Jewish lives, balancing the Sunday dinner with the Shabbat dinner – this may be the most important element of all. All the dissuading and lines in the sand have to be met with something Jewish on the other end, something special worth drawing those lines around.