Judge John Hodgman, Bad Faith (NYT Magazine, Oct. 25)

[rymenhild]

Source

Q. My wife is Jewish by heritage; by rabbinical law, the children we plan to have will be Jewish as well. I would like them to go to Hebrew school. they would study a language and learn about their heritage and the Old Testament. My wife disagrees, because we are evangelical Christians. She thinks it would contradict our faith.

A: I think all religions should be afforded respect, which includes not treating your town's Hebrew school like a Learning Annex course on the Talmud. It's almost literal bad faith. That said, I guess you could ask the school if they were O.K. with your kids just ...auditing Judaism for a while. Who knows? Maybe your kids will have their own conversion experience, as you once did, and be born again in non-Jesus. It's part of their family tradition, after all.

Comments

[ysobel]

...why does rabbinical law matter to evangelical Christians? /headtilt/

[recessional]

I think in this case just because it would get them access to the school.

[rymenhild]

It doesn't, which is part of the problem. I think I detect the assumption that Judaism is the religion that prefigures Christianity. (It's totally not.) What the letter writer seems to want from Hebrew school shows a lack of understanding of what Judaism is today, and that includes rabbinical law.

[rymenhild]

Speaking as a new Hebrew school teacher, I can only say, HELL NO. In no circumstance am I going to want evangelical Christian children as regular students in a classroom where I'm trying to teach Jewish values. The second they bring up Jesus, the teacher is going to have to derail the entire class period explaining why worshipping Jesus is totally not a thing in Jewish culture, and also that the term Old Testament suggests that there is a New Testament, which we do not believe, and you shouldn't use that term here, and on and on and ON. Judaism is not a precursor to Christianity. It is a living religion. If you are not raising your children as Jewish in any way, putting them in Hebrew school is disruptive to everyone. (If the family were, say, Unitarian, and believed that many beliefs and practices are valid, great. The teaching is compatible. But there is no compatibility here.)

[rymenhild]

Thinking further, I wouldn't mind if the couple was raising their children interfaith. Knowing more about the Jewish side of their life would be helpful then. But if they're explicitly saying that they're raising their children as evangelical Christians, Hebrew school is not appropriate to this goal.

[ysobel]

Totally agreed. My sister and I were raised interfaith because our dad's Jewish (patrilineally through his father and also how he was raised) and our mom's Christian and they wanted us to know both traditions equally and to make our own choice about religion (including Something Else or Neither). I may be biased but I feel that was both legitimate and a good way to handle things. But an important distinction between my situation and this? My dad is still Jewish (even if mostly nonpracticing).

[amadi]

I'm making my "no, evangelicals, you aren't 'grafted in' to Judaism and no, you do not deserve access to Judaic institutions, practices or traditions, please GTFO" face. There's not enough no for this LW's plan.

[liv]

I think the response is perhaps unnecessarily snarky, but I keep trying to compose a comment in reply to this scenario and getting stuck on "nooooooooooooooooooooooo".

Everybody's pointed out this is an awful way to treat the Hebrew school, but it's also a really horrible thing to do to the (thankfully hypothetical) children, sending them to a learning environment where they will stick out a mile and all the assumptions about their family background will be way out and people will keep telling them it's wrong to believe in Jesus. And it's horrible to the wife, who has intentionally left her Jewish background and probably has some strong, possibly even conflicting, emotions about that. I'm not surprised she's against the plan, she will understand why Judaism just doesn't work like that.

And look, I'm a Jewish educator in a locale where the Jewish community is a tiny minority and a certain proportion of my energy gets taken up by Christians, mostly towards the Evangelical end of the spectrum, who think Judaism is "part of their heritage". But this is adults, and they're cautiously welcome in my synagogue if they respect boundaries. Kids who haven't had the chance to become secure in their own religion (or secure enough in their own ideas to reject it, for that matter), no way.

Oh, and as I'm writing this I've worked out why I'm uncomfortable with your kids will be born again in non-Jesus; Jews don't proselytize. We don't believe in being born again, any Jewish educator would be horrified if Christian children in this situation started feeling drawn away from their own religion and towards Judaism. It's not a symmetrical situation at all with leaving Judaism to become an Evangelical Christian. Plus I'm not even convinced this guy's interpretation of rabbinical law is correct; people with Jewish ancestry who are active members of other religions aren't accepted as Jewish by most denominations, and not by Israeli law either. Because, you know, we respect people's autonomy in their religious choices.

Anyway, nooooooooooooooo.