{"id":47333,"date":"2015-09-04T20:14:42","date_gmt":"2015-09-05T00:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/?p=47333"},"modified":"2015-09-04T20:16:12","modified_gmt":"2015-09-05T00:16:12","slug":"attending-a-catholic-college-but-becoming-jewish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2015\/09\/attending-a-catholic-college-but-becoming-jewish\/","title":{"rendered":"Attending a Catholic college but becoming Jewish"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"80375127_201f866e9a_o\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is an interesting meditation<\/a><\/strong> by the daughter of a mixed-faith family\u2014but it seems to me this shows the potential pitfalls of choosing to not<\/em> choose a faith for your children:<\/p>\n

\n

Growing up in Harrison, New York, 10 minutes outside the Bronx, everyone I knew was Italian, Jewish or both.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Mine was a pretty secular home, run by an Italian-Catholic mother and a Canadian-Jewish father. We had a Christmas tree and a menorah. I ate chicken scarpariello and bagels and lox. I had an Italian grandfather with shiny veneers and a pinky ring and a Jewish grandmother with an awesome kugel recipe and a stack of haggadot. I wouldn\u2019t go as far as to say that I was proud of my interfaith heritage, though \u2014 I was almost completely unaware of it.<\/p>\n

I went to a Jewish preschool, but when I was a sophomore in high school, I took a World Religions class \u2014 it mandated a trip to a house of worship outside each student\u2019s circle of familiarity. I chose a tiny white Episcopal church, across from a park I\u2019d played at as a child.<\/p>\n

My first trip to church was on Pentecost, so the church had hired a quartet of sharply dressed old men, all with very white hair, to play horn instruments. I was ecstatic. I loved church! I returned the next week only to be deeply disappointed by the lack of big band jazz standards. I was also uncomfortable with the discussion of Jesus dying for my sins.<\/p>\n

I articulated my confusion to a friend. I liked the idea of church, but there were some things that irked me. She stated what should have been obvious: I believed in one almighty Old Testament God? Heaven and not hell? An intentional omission of Jesus Christ? Judaism was my answer, though I didn\u2019t really understand it until later. That is, until I went to Catholic school.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

She recounts how attending Boston College, ironically, connected her to her Jewish roots. And she then concludes:<\/p>\n

We\u2019re a comfortably interfaith family \u2014 but where does that leave me, a young woman who\u2019s chosen one faith for herself?<\/p>\n

Without a Jewish mother, there are large swaths of the Jewish community that will never embrace me. I always loved decorating a Christmas tree with my parents, but when I have a home of my own, I simply won\u2019t have one. Choosing sides hurts, and living in the middle aches, too. When will I be proud of my background? Or even just be comfortable with it? It could be BC. It could be Boston. But it also could be me, forever caught in the in-between.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read more.\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Photo via Creative Commons<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an interesting meditation by the daughter of a mixed-faith family\u2014but it seems to me this shows the potential pitfalls of choosing to not choose a faith for your children: Growing up in Harrison, New York, 10 minutes outside the Bronx, everyone I knew was Italian, Jewish or both. Mine was a pretty secular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,469],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-jews"],"yoast_head":"\nAttending a Catholic college but becoming Jewish<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This is an interesting meditation by the daughter of a mixed-faith family\u2014but it seems to me this shows the potential pitfalls of choosing to not choose a\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2015\/09\/attending-a-catholic-college-but-becoming-jewish\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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