We Just Don't Want a Bris

Seesaw in the Jewish Daily Forward

I was raised Conservative but in a kind of just going through the motions way. I never really clicked with Judaism, and it surprised nobody when I married a non-Jew. We had a rabbi officiate our wedding, but not for spiritual reasons. We just liked some of the fun Jewish traditions, and also couldn’t come up with a better alternative, and knew the rabbi would make my family happy.

Now I am pregnant with a boy and my family is putting pressure on me to have a bris. I will circumcise him in the hospital, but I just feel no need to have a whole ceremony and party a week after I give birth. The reality is, it means nothing to me and I don’t feel like I should have to do this just for my parents. We aren’t going to raise him Jewish, so there is no point in pretending we are at the beginning. Seesaw, how can I get my parents to understand that I just don’t care about being Jewish?

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You say ‘intermarriage’ like it’s always a bad thing

By Sarah Tuttle-Singer, The Times of Israel New Media Editor

My dad wasn’t born Jewish.

My dad celebrated Christmas. He went to Church every Sunday.

Hell, he sang in the Episcopalian choir at his church — “If you can’t sing well, sing LOUD” his father told him, and loudly my father sang, his voice booming through the rafters clear to the high heavens until the choir master said “son, why don’t you try basketball instead.”

And then one Spring evening in March 1968, he met a woman with dark hair and darker eyes, a woman whose skin was still bronzed by the Israeli sun where she had spent the year picking sweet oranges in the fields, a woman who wore her Jewishness like a coat of many colors.

My mom’s people fled from Poland and Russia, although their name and the stories they tell trace all the way back to Baghdad, when by the waters of Babylon they lay down and wept for thee, Zion, their real homeland.

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My Dad’s One Big Question

by Liz Polay-Wettengel;

This article has been reprinted with permission from InterfaithFamily

It started as most modern romances do these days. Girl logs on to a website. Spies a boy. Sends notes back and forth. But it was 2000 when I met Dave, long before dating websites—a time when chat rooms and websites catering to different hobbies and interests were just starting to bring people together.

We corresponded via Internet and phone calls before we ever met in person. I was living in Brooklyn and needed to be in Boston for a work event in May 2001. We thought we should have dinner. Dinner turned into a weekend, which turned into weekend trips between New York City and Boston for quite some time.

Aside from the travel, it all seemed so simple.

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Dear Gefilte: I Want to Convert, but My Husband Won’t Approve

From: deargefilte@kveller.com

Dear Gefilte,

My husband was brought up basically without any religion. I grew up very Catholic. My mother-in-law converted to Judaism several years before we met. Hubby doesn’t take her conversion or any religion seriously.

Here’s the deal, I desire very much to convert to Judaism myself. I’ve finally found a religion that really speaks to me. Problem is I know my husband will not only be shocked…he won’t support me in this. What do I do? How do I approach this?

Yours truly,

Jewess-in-training
—
Dear Jewess-in-Training,

Here are a few things that often require “support”:

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