Regional News
November 29, 2008 01:18 AM
Kim Zarzour
Family harmony in a mixed-faith home can be a challenge at the best of times, but the Christmas season puts those challenges front and centre, says Rabbi Cory Weiss, of the Temple Har Zion in Thornhill.
Rabbi Weiss calls it “The December Dilemma” - what to do in the barrage of Christmas revelry when not everyone in the family is of the Christian faith.
It’s common, he says, for Canadian families of every religion to struggle with how to negotiate with their children while they watch Christians celebrate a two-month long holiday extravaganza.
The rabbi will discuss ways to celebrate the holidays in inter-married families this Tuesday at Temple Har Zion in Thornhill.
If children are not being raised as Christians, Rabbi Weiss suggests, families should make celebrations of their own culture and heritage so kids don’t feel like they’re missing out in the “pervasiveness” of Christmas.
“Every Jewish holiday in our house is a big celebration,” he offers. Yet he says his two sons have learned to respect others’ celebrations.
For Jewish families, December can be a time to celebrate Jewish uniqueness, he says. “We are different. Hanukkah is a minor holiday but it celebrates our desire to be who we are, not to assimilate. The Christian holiday is beautiful and we can enjoy the lights and music, but it’s not ours.”
In families where parents are of two faiths, but the children are not being raised as Christians, he says it’s important to let children know there are similarities in the religions, but they are not the same.
It’s confusing to children to teach them they can be of both faiths, he says. And leaving children to choose which faith will be theirs when they are older can be dangerous, he suggests, “because then they feel like they’re having to choose between parents.”
Studies in the U.S. show that of the Jewish couples who intermarry, 25 per cent raise Jewish children, 25 per cent raise Christian children, and 50 per cent try nothing or both.
“Many in our congregation are working very hard to raise Jewish children in their inter-faith marriage, and we honour that.”
Weiss expects many of the families who attend this Tuesday’s workshop will be grandparents struggling with grown children who have married outside the Jewish faith. He says it can be “very, very difficult”
He advises older parents to be tolerant.
“By the time your child has chosen a spouse of non-Jewish background, there’s not much can do about it without driving them away. Those days of saying “you’re dead to me” are gone, and it does no one any good. The families who have driven their children away are not happier for it.”
Rabbi Weiss has told his own sons, aged 12 and 17, that he hopes they will marry within their faith - “but children are not puppets; you can’t tell them what to do.”
Rabbi Weiss will speak at noon Tuesday, Dec. 2 at Temple Har Zion, 7360 Bayview Ave.