Celebrating the Spring Holidays
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0 The Paschal Season: Celebrating the CD Spring Holidays n the Christian/Jewish household, Easter, your only problem is to CO the spring holidays are an ever- remember not to eat meat at break• '+-« changing challenge. fast or lunch on the first two days so CO I that you're free to partake of the Jewish Passover, preceded by Purim seder. Unless, of course, one of those and Christian Easter, preceded by days falls on Thursday/Friday or on Lent and Holy Week, are both Tuesday/Wednesday, if you're determined by the lunar calendar, abstaining then too. Well, a perfectly but the Christian church made a C/) lovely, if unconventional, seder can deliberate and largely successful be made without meat. effort to sunder them by using a 0 different system, so in a mixed If seder night falls on Holy Thursday, marriage you'll seldom have the you're in luck, sort of There is a same spring schedule two certain piquancy in realizing years in a row. that many Christian churches now encourage their faithful to Ash Wednesday comes first celebrate some form of seder (March 21 at the latest), and on the Thursday before CD Lent begins. But then comes Easter, as a recognition that Purim. Isn't the celebration what Christians call the Last out of keeping with the Supper was evidently a spirit of the Christian Passover celebration. But CD season? On the other hand, \ recognize that this kind of Purim is a nice holiday for kids, "— combination of elements of the sending costumed children out to seder with a commemoration of bring sweets to the neighbors and the institution of the Eucharist may encouraging mild mayhem with make the Jewish partner uncomfort• noisemakers during the synagogue able, and talk out what you both service. want ahead of time. Since the Catholic Church has When there's a seder designated for relaxed the rigor of fasting require• Good Friday, the situation can be ments to merely abstaining from emotionally sticky for the Christian meat on Wednesdays and Fridays, and having meat only once a day the rest of the week, Catholics should be able to work this out. A Christian abstainer might reckon days in the In This Issue Jewish manner, sunset to sunset, and therefore be able to abstain from The Fifth Question 3 meat on "Friday" —i.e., starting on Thursday evening—and still have Grandma's Gefilte Fish 5 flanken for Shabbat dinner. (As for Awaiting Resurrection 7 what canon law might say about this Dovetail on Television 8 adjustment. Dovetail adviser Eugene Letters to the Editor 11 Fisher suggests: don't ask, don't tell.) Holiday Calendar 2003 12 The real comphcations set in later Doing for Dovetail 13 on. When Passover falls well before Volume 11, Number 4 March/April 2003 ^Dovetail Mary Helene Rosenbaum is editor partner, who may feel uneasy about whole idea of Easter, often associated the celebratory atmosphere. It might with pogroms and slaughter in of the Dovetail Journal; Stanley be useful here to concentrate on the Europe, may make a Jewish partner Ned Rosenbaum is a director of reason this Friday is called "good," on edgy. the Dovetail Institute. Portions of this the close kinship between the holiday Once that's been worked out, article were adapted from their book. in which Jews celebrate their freeing recognize that the two holidays from bondage in Egypt and the one Celebrating Our Differences: have similar spirits—celebrate them that Christians believe marks their Living Two Faiths in One Marriage together as much as feels comfort• freeing from the bondage of sin. able to you both. (Shippensburg, PA: Ragged Edge Easter can fall as early as March 22 Press 1994; pb ed. 1999), available or as late as April 25. The range for We hope this issue of Dovetail helps at www.dovetailinstitute.org or the first or second nights of Passover you explore these issues. Reading (seder nights) is March 25 to April 800-530-1596. Copyright© 1999, about others' insights may support 25. The chief problem with Easter you to find a mode of celebration all rights reserved. Reprinted by and Passover coinciding is that the that suits the choices you have made permission. for your own family. ^ Many thanks to the following benefactors for recent especially generous gifts or low-interest loans: Thomas and Jennifer Cafferty Dr. Sarah C. Rosenbaum Please remember us in Dr. Florence M. Smith your will and trusts. Dovetail's website: www.dovetailinstitute.org. Online discussion group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/interfaith. Dovetail's mission is to provide a channel Dovetail (ISSN 1062-7359) is published Dovetail's Staff of communication for interfaith couples, their bimonthly (6 times per year) by: The Dovetail parents, and their children. No matter what Institute for Interfaith Family Resources, their specific choices regarding faith for their 775 Simon Greenwell Ln., Boston, KY 40107; home and children, the more interfaith tel 800-530-1596; fax 502-549-3543; Email [email protected]. Mary Helene Rosenbaum families can share their ideas, experiences, resources, and support, the more they can A one-year subscription is available for Editor make peace in their homes and communities. $29.95 from the above address. International Jewish and Christian perspectives can dovetail. subscriptions are $35.00. Single issues are available for $5.50 each. (Michigan residents Dr. Silvine Farnell Believing that there are no definitive answers to the questions facing interfaith families, Dovetail please add 6% sales tax on back issue orders.) Associate Editor strives to be open to all ideas and opinions. Dovetail welcomes article submissions Editorial content attempts to balance and respect (query or completed manuscript), letters the perspectives of both Jewish and Christian Joan C. Hawxhurst, M.A. to the editor, and comments or suggestions. partners in interfaith marriages, as well Send to M. H. Rosenbaum, Editor, at the Founding Editor as the diverse perspectives of parents and above address. children of interfaith couples. Inclusion in Dovetail does not imply endorsement. Copyright © 2003 by Dovetail accepts a thoughtful and constructive William D. Rosenbaum The Dovetail Institute for discussion of all related issues in the Letters to Design Consultant Interfaith Family Resources. the Editor section, and reserves the right to reply. All rights reserved. March/April 2003 page 2 The Fifth Question by Nan Meyer oth my husband and I have Difficult Days Nan Meyer, a retired journahst, is the interfaith marriages in our author of a user-friendly haggadah. Those days were not happy for me. families, going back three The Inter-Faith Family Seder Book: B I had left a career I loved to care for generations. He had a Jewish How to Celebrate a Jewish Passover my Alzheimer's-stricken mother-in- grandmother; I had a Christian Supper with Christian In-Laws & law. This lady hadn't liked me that grandfather. His Protestant father Non-Jewish Friends, which she much when she had her mind. Now and Catholic mother had to elope. originally wrote for her own family. as cruel as a naughty child, she was My parents were an atheist and an See page 19 for ordering informa• heaping anti-Semitic comments on Orthodox Jew, which is a really tion. me daily. Our daughter was looking mixed marriage. However, there seriously at a handsome young man, is also a straight, unbroken line of who wasn't Jewish. Oh no, not her Judaism in my family reaching back too, I thought. Both our sons were through the centuries. married to lovely, but non-Jewish, And every year at the Passover Seder spouses. So much of our religion is table, when the traditional Four home-oriented. Without a young Questions are asked by the youngest Jewish family, who would continue person present, this ritual reaffirms the traditions, make the Seder, when our connection with those who came I got old and tired? before us. In our immediate family, Even my Jewish niece was going after our daughter chanted the Four out with a young man who was very Questions in Hebrew, she would turn pleasant but Christian. That, I could to her much older brothers and understand. She had grown up demand, "When are you guys going without any religious training. to get me out of this?" And little Her father had died too young; sister's "Fifth Question," as we began her mother, angry at God, had to call it, was still being asked long fled Judaism. after her brothers married, and our daughter grew to be a beautiful Our daughter was our last child, our young woman. last hope for a link with the future. But I was home now; I had time. My Finally, there was a grandchild, a daughter's boyfriend was always glad clever tyke who could easily have to eat with us. (Truthfully, he was learned the Four Questions, but she always glad to eat.) I would start had a Christian mother who couldn't inviting him on Friday nights and teach her Hebrew. Besides, the child expose him to our Sabbath dinner had been baptized, and her parents traditions. I'd always lit Sabbath didn't want her confused. The candles. Now I became conscientious family's Judaism had survived with all the rest: the challah, saying imprisonment, pogroms, and the Kiddush, a dinner with a Jewish I admit my heart swelled Holocaust. Now, however, there flavor, served on a finely set table. as I heard his young voice weren't many of us left and Judaism And from sundown Friday to requires people. I worried, was sundown Saturday, I would insist singing the traditional everything Jewish going to end in on Sabbath peace, which I needed words.