The Kitniyot Question: What’s a Convert To Do?

By Elizabeth Savage at The Jewish Daily Forward

The question of kitniyot presents an interesting challenge for the converted. Kitniyot — literally, “little things” — is the umbrella term used for the specific foods not eaten during Passover in the Ashkenazi tradition, including rice, corn, beans and lentils. It’s a practice whose origins are unclear; but what is clear is that this anti-legume custom, passed down from generation to generation, raises a significant question for those who have chosen to be chosen. What should converts do when faced with a specific minhag, or custom, whether a food tradition or otherwise? As someone who converted to Judaism, I didn’t realize how stressed I must have been by this until my subconscious gave me a very particular gift: my kitniyot nightmare.

The dream begins quite innocently, as many horrible dreams do. My husband and I are hosting three very important and incredibly pious rabbis and their equally religious, shaytled, balebuste wives. Everyone is gathered around the dining room table. No one is smiling. I am busy in the kitchen, nervously preparing to bring out the meal. From the dining room, I can hear the rabbis deliberating, handing down religious rulings of some kind.

“That can’t be right,” I say to myself. “You can’t do that on Shabbat.” Then my heart begins to race. “Can you?”

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Setting The Passover Table Made Easy

This article has been reprinted with permission from InterfaithFamily 

Passover is the Jewish holiday that celebrates our freedom. Along with a ritual meal, we tell each other the dramatic story of our slavery in Egypt and our escape to become the Jewish people.

Did you know that the descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob weren't the only people to leave Egypt with Moses? Yes, even in ancient times there were others who chose to throw in their lot with the Israelites. Together they witnessed the splitting of the sea and together they walked safely across on dry ground. Today's interfaith families reenact that ancient joining together on Passover when they retell those events.

Retelling the story of our slavery is the core of the Passover celebration. Every generation before us has expanded the story with references to other times of slavery, added new customs and traditions. No need to be a slave to the past! Learn the basics and customize your seder!

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 For more information, recipes and great ideas for Passover, check out Jvillage's Passover Holiday Kit. 

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Downton Abbey Portrays Reality of Interfaith Relationships

By Gerri Miller. This article has been reprinted with permission from InterfaithFamily.com

 Nick Briggs/Carnival Film & Television Ltd. 2014 for MASTERPIECE

For five seasons, Downton Abbey has hooked viewers with its irresistible plots laden with love, lust, secret liaisons, betrayals, tragic deaths and even darker stories about rape and murder. The PBS Masterpiece series has given us a glimpse into the world of an aristocratic British family and their household staff, and used these haves and have-nots to explore themes of class divide, inheritance, changing attitudes and tradition versus progress early in the 20th Century. The subject of politics has always been front and center, but religion has not—until now.

As long time viewers know, the Abbey’s Lord and Lady Grantham, Robert and Cora Crawley (Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern), are an interfaith couple: She is Jewish on her father’s side (meaning not that she was necessarily raised Jewish, but that she has Jewish ancestry). Though the fact that Cora is American always mattered more to her upper crust British in-laws than the fact that she was from an interfaith family and Judaism rarely came into the storyline. But in this season’s fifth episode, creator Julian Fellowes introduces a Jewish love interest of Russian heritage, Ephraim Atticus Aldrige (Matt Barber), for Lady Rose (Lily James), and their relationship quickly meets with parental resistance on both sides. (Learn more here about the history of Jews immigrating to England.)

The entire series aired in the U.K. last year, and “it was generally well received,” says creator Julian Fellowes, who received a personal thank you from a Jewish peer in the House of Lords for truthfully portraying what it’s like to be a Jew in British society. Even though the series is set 90 years ago, themes of anti-Semitism, unfortunately, still resonate today, “when such feelings are on the rise in Europe,” he notes.

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I Don't Want To Be Jewish Anymore

From the Seesaw at The Jewish Daily Forward

When I was young woman I converted to Judaism. I had just married a Jewish man who wanted to raise Jewish children, some for his parents but also for himself, and so before we got pregnant I went through the process and became a Jew. I can’t say I remember ever feeling truly Jewish myself, but I did it for my family, so we could be part of a community and a value system that I believed in.

We now have two adult children, one married to a Jew and one engaged to one, and one Jewish grandchild, a toddler who goes to a Shabbat class once a week. Mission accomplished. Seesaw, I was raised Quaker and now that I my children are grown and my house is quiet I have found myself longing to return to worship with them. I feel guilty about this, but also excited about the prospect of returning to a form of spirituality that I connect with – or at least once did. I would still accompany my husband to synagogue whenever he wants and participate in services as I have over the years, and would still host holidays at our house with joy. So, if I do go to a Quaker meeting, what would this mean for my family? My Judaism? My marriage? —Straying

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Intermarriage, I Do!

A Conservative rabbi takes the plunge

By Adina Lewittes for Tablet Magazine

It was an intimate wedding at our local park where we take the dogs to run and where we throw our crusted sins into the stream each year on Rosh Hashanah. Between the couple, some of their friends and relatives, my wife, and me, we numbered just 10.

I led a niggun and shared a teaching from the Vilna Gaon about love. Blessings were made, vows and rings exchanged. The bride and groom stepped on a glass, triggering shouts of “Mazel tov!” Like many weddings I’ve done in 22 years as a rabbi, this was a beautiful seal placed upon a love that was meant to be. Sort of. For the couple, it was their long-awaited marriage. For me, it was a heart-wrenching divorce. The bride was Jewish; the groom wasn’t. To marry them, I had to leave the Conservative movement.

In 1988, while in rabbinical school at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary, I thought I’d be the Conservative rabbi whose sons wouldn’t be subjected to circumcision and who’d one day rewrite the rules on intermarriage. Who was I to tell a Jew whom they could or couldn’t marry? I was wrong on all counts. My three sons were circumcised (which I endured with copious amounts of Manischewitz at their brises). And while I recently performed my second intermarriage, I had to leave the Conservative movement, which I’d served for 27 years, to do so.


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