by janet silver ghent
After two days of skiing in Tahoe, we were sprawled out, exhausted, on the couch of the rented condo. We were curled up with books, except for my husband’s 5-year-old granddaughter Shelby, who was busily drawing. Then she rushed over to show us what she had done.
She had filled a piece of white cardboard with capital letters in various colors and sizes, some crossed out, some on top of one another. The first word was “BROO.” A couple of lines down was “ELO HAY NOO.” At the bottom, in pink, was “SHBT SHLOM.”
This kindergartner, who isn’t Jewish but often spends Shabbat with us, had written the Motzi blessing phonetically, and she was quite proud of herself. So was I. I didn’t know the Motzi until I was almost 19.
So here I am, a self-taught Jew raised by secular parents who were raised by secular parents who were raised by secular parents. As a young adult in a mixed marriage, I raised my own children Unitarian. Now, after turning to Judaism in midlife, I’m a Jewish grandma who has to explain myself to grandchildren who aren’t being raised Jewish. Talk about challenges.
Like at Chanukah, when my daughter and her husband visited with their two daughters. No sooner did they come through the door than 6-year-old Kelsey asked us if we were Jewish. Then she said, “Jewish means you don’t believe in Jesus.”
Actually, I said, “if you’re Jewish, you don’t pray to Jesus.”
Later, at the dinner table, Kelsey said, “Everybody raise your hands if you’re Jewish.” Her parents put the kibosh on that.
The challenges keep coming, often out of nowhere. A few months ago, while I was reading a bedtime story, Kelsey’s 8-year-old sister, Lindsay, said, “Jews don’t believe Jesus is the son of God.”
“I believe we are all sons and daughters of God,” I responded. That answer seemed to satisfy the girls, for a while.
But there are minefields. The next morning at breakfast we were discussing my son, who lives in Prague but is getting married in Yorkshire. We got out a globe. Prague, the girls knew, is “under the U,” in “EUROPE.” Yorkshire is closer to the E.
My husband, taking a cue from Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth,” began explaining how South America and Africa once fit together but had drifted apart a long time ago.
“When you were young?” Lindsay asked.
“No, millions and millions of years ago. Before my parents. Before Jesus. Before there were people,” I said.
Then Lindsay said, “Man was created on the sixth day.”
It was too early in the morning to tackle Genesis. “Days were longer then,” I said. Then we changed the subject.
My husband and I, both previously married to non-Jewish spouses, are operating without a script. This is improv, but there are rules. My daughter says we should emphasize what we share, rather than what separates us. With her family, we share our traditions, but we recognize that there are boundaries. When the girls brought our Girl Scout cookie order in the middle of Passover, we explained that we had to put the cookies in the garage until after the holiday. Nor did we bake that day.
When I married my husband seven years ago, I felt like the Grinch who had taken away his daughters’ Christmas. But this past year, when my husband’s older daughter had no plans, and the thought of Chinese food two days in a row was too depressing for all of us, we invited her and Shelby over for roast chicken and homemade apple-cranberry pie. Isn’t that what a grandmother’s supposed to do?
At the end of the week, there’s always Shabbat. My husband’s daughter, a single mother, has no problem with us taking Shelby or her brother, William, to services. Neither does Shelby.
One Friday night, when we arrived at 6:15 but the service wasn’t until 8, Shelby cried. We distracted her by singing the Motzi in the car. When we got home, her handwritten prayer was sitting above the kitchen table, reminding us of our blessings. She sang it with gusto. I’m looking forward to hearing her sing it again tonight.
Janet Silver Ghent, former senior editor of j., is a freelance writer/editor living in Palo Alto. She can be reached at ghentwriter@gmail.com.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California