Choosing His Religion
I'm Catholic. My husband's Jewish. What does that make our son?
by Erin K. Blakeley
April 23, 2007
My husband and I aren't terribly religious people; at best, I am a Christmas and Easter Catholic and he is a High Holiday Jew. So when the Lord's name is uttered in our house, it usually means that we have lost our Internet connection or that someone has broken a wine glass.
But despite our utter lack of piety, we were raised in homes where religious practice was a central part of family life. While that experience didn't make true believers out of us, it did produce a common belief: we both feel that religion is something we should "do" together, as a family.
Of course, "doing" religion requires choosing one. For years, we have avoided making this choice, largely because nothing in our lives really compelled us to do so. But when I became pregnant with our first child last summer, we could no longer avoid the obvious question: Would there be a bris or a baptism? Or, as we liked to put it, would we dip or would we snip?
Most people settle the question of how to raise their children before they get married, and six years ago, when we were planning our wedding, many people advised us of the wisdom of this course of action. We ignored them. Instead, we planned an interfaith ceremony, and thanks to the wonders of the Internet, found a Rabbi and Priest who agreed to conduct a joint ceremony. Of course, by the time we eliminated We weren't searching for enlightenment; we were searching for a family identity.all the phrases the Rabbi rejected and crossed out all the things the Priest wouldn't say, we were left with a wedding that was remarkably similar to the scene in The Princess Bride, where Prince Humperdink urges Peter Cook's bishop to just say "man and wife" and get the whole thing over with.
This time, the "let's do it all" approach didn't seem like an option. As a ceremony, our interfaith wedding lasted all of eleven minutes. But as a lifestyle choice, doing both would be interminable. A bris at eight days. A baptism a few months later. Shabbat on Friday nights and the Sabbath on Sunday mornings. Catholic doctrine classes one afternoon a week; Hebrew school two days a week. Unless our kid happened to find a higher calling out of all that holiness, he'd be miserable. And for two quasi-heathens, schlepping our child between church and temple five days per week sounded like, well, hell.
For a few months, we kicked around the notion of abandoning both our religions and choosing a new one. We found no shortage of options: Unitarian-Universalist, Episcopalian, Congregational, Secular Humanist, Buddhist. But the problem was that neither of us a wanted a new religion. We weren't searching for enlightenment; we were searching for a family identity. The only virtue in choosing a third option was that neither of us would get what we wanted — which we realized wasn't virtuous at all.
©2007 Erin K. Blakeley and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Erin Blakeley is a freelance writer and journalist whose work has appeared in the Star Ledger, NYC24, and Tiempo, among other publications. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and son.
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