Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Choosing Jewish

YNet is running a feature (originally published in the Detroit Jewish News) about an intermarried couple debating how to raise their children. Ultimately, the Christian father writes:
In the end, we decided to raise our children Jewish. We would make sure that our kids learned about my religion, too. But, they would not be “both.”
How did we know it was the right decision? It’s hard to say, but it just felt right. Everybody has their own reasons, but for us, we knew it would also ease Bonnie’s transition to moving away permanently from her family in Boston. I was born and raised here in Ann Arbor. We see my family all the time. I realized that I’m still connected.
It shows something about the difficulty the Jewish community has fighting for these kids when such important decisions can be made on such flimsy grounds ('ease Bonnie's transition') -- and when the parents themselves sometimes don't even fully understand or can't fully articulate why they've chosen one religion over the other.

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