some people's children
Nov. 16th, 2009 03:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleI went to services Friday evening, as I occasionally do. The community is very welcoming in a lot of ways, so I've been going off and on for 11 years now. They try hard not to trigger scent allergies, which makes them more physically comfortable than any other synagogue I've attended--more comfortable than most gatherings of any kind. And they're feminist, and concerned about poverty and fairness. So I go there when I want to go to services, even though I usually feel stupid, between how much of the service is in Hebrew, how much the grammar changes to reflect feminism, and how much language-learning ability I've lost. (I never had much. But it bothers me to confront the loss of pattern recognition that doesn't usually matter that much to me.) I go, even though the singing doesn't sound familiar, and the group is so small there's not a reliable minyan. A welcoming community that shares my values is IMPORTANT.
A couple of new people showed up in the middle of services on Friday. It shouldn't surprise anybody when people turn up half an hour late this time of year, considering that services started at 7 in the summer (and early fall) and start at 6:30 in the winter. It still makes me smile when the front door opens in the middle of L'cha Dodi so the congregation is getting up to welcome Shabbat just as strangers are coming in to be welcomed.
After the service, we all introduced ourselves, and stood around making friendly conversation. A 6-year-old, who has been attending these services regularly since infancy, wanted to know what languages each of us knew. I cringed, because my inability to understand any language except English is a sore spot. Everyone else in the room spoke of knowing at least 3 languages, and some had 5 or 6. I tried to remember there's no way a child in a bilingual home (whose parents are trying to teach her other languages early) would think of it as a sensitive topic. It's *not* generally a sensitive topic. Just...ouch.
Then there were polite adult questions about where people lived, and how long they'd lived there, and oh that's a great area, so convenient. And the child asked if each of us was Jewish. The first few people she asked directly didn't seem to notice that the question was problematic. Yeah, sure, of course. One of the newcomers tried to dodge the question while I was still trying to think of what to say that would stop her from feeling attacked and unwelcome, without sounding like I was pushing the idea of keeping shameful secrets. (Yes, I know there are lots of ways to do it. I couldn't come up with any of them fast enough.) Meanwhile, the kid kept asking, until this stranger finally acknowledged that her parents were Catholic. And the child went on to ask the next person.
When she asked me, I told her it was a very rude question. She obviously didn't know. I was uncomfortable about presuming to say something like that to a child whose family I don't know very well. I like knowing the community is so free and informal, that children are welcome and included, even at the expense of decorum. But I'm a lot more concerned about newcomers turning up uncertain of their welcome, and getting challenged to defend their religious background in the social space of what's supposed to be a welcoming community. There are some situations where it matters if a person is Jewish or not, like the Torah blessings. But there's a difference between a polite question to an individual and this kind of social badgering.
That's when it got ugly. She still wanted to know if I was Jewish, and I said I was. And her mother elaborated about the need to treat people the same way whether they were Jewish or not. And somebody said something about not doing anything tonight where it would make a difference if somebody was Jewish or not. (I'm not sure if anything was specified. I can't think of anything that would properly be done on a Friday night, come to think of it. But I digress all over the place.) The child explained that it did so make a difference, and she had to ask because she couldn't see if people were Jewish. She tried just looking, but she couldn't tell who looked Jewish and who didn't. (There was an extended parental interruption here.) The poor put-upon child went on, yes, she really can't tell. Sometimes non-Jews trick her by looking Jewish. (More adult interruptions, on the distinction between the viewer being mistaken and the person viewed being dishonest.) The root cause of the problem appeared to be that so many people in the room were new acquaintances, and the child didn't know how she could trust them to be friends without seeing if they were Jewish or not.
Before the difficulty had been completely sorted out, I lost patience, thanked heaven she wasn't MY kid, and went home. What a tangle. As I said, I don't know the parents at all well, but I know them well enough to be reasonably confident they didn't teach her the appalling stuff above on purpose. It just didn't occur to them to teach her it was wrong until she put it together in that cringeworthy form.
A couple of new people showed up in the middle of services on Friday. It shouldn't surprise anybody when people turn up half an hour late this time of year, considering that services started at 7 in the summer (and early fall) and start at 6:30 in the winter. It still makes me smile when the front door opens in the middle of L'cha Dodi so the congregation is getting up to welcome Shabbat just as strangers are coming in to be welcomed.
After the service, we all introduced ourselves, and stood around making friendly conversation. A 6-year-old, who has been attending these services regularly since infancy, wanted to know what languages each of us knew. I cringed, because my inability to understand any language except English is a sore spot. Everyone else in the room spoke of knowing at least 3 languages, and some had 5 or 6. I tried to remember there's no way a child in a bilingual home (whose parents are trying to teach her other languages early) would think of it as a sensitive topic. It's *not* generally a sensitive topic. Just...ouch.
Then there were polite adult questions about where people lived, and how long they'd lived there, and oh that's a great area, so convenient. And the child asked if each of us was Jewish. The first few people she asked directly didn't seem to notice that the question was problematic. Yeah, sure, of course. One of the newcomers tried to dodge the question while I was still trying to think of what to say that would stop her from feeling attacked and unwelcome, without sounding like I was pushing the idea of keeping shameful secrets. (Yes, I know there are lots of ways to do it. I couldn't come up with any of them fast enough.) Meanwhile, the kid kept asking, until this stranger finally acknowledged that her parents were Catholic. And the child went on to ask the next person.
When she asked me, I told her it was a very rude question. She obviously didn't know. I was uncomfortable about presuming to say something like that to a child whose family I don't know very well. I like knowing the community is so free and informal, that children are welcome and included, even at the expense of decorum. But I'm a lot more concerned about newcomers turning up uncertain of their welcome, and getting challenged to defend their religious background in the social space of what's supposed to be a welcoming community. There are some situations where it matters if a person is Jewish or not, like the Torah blessings. But there's a difference between a polite question to an individual and this kind of social badgering.
That's when it got ugly. She still wanted to know if I was Jewish, and I said I was. And her mother elaborated about the need to treat people the same way whether they were Jewish or not. And somebody said something about not doing anything tonight where it would make a difference if somebody was Jewish or not. (I'm not sure if anything was specified. I can't think of anything that would properly be done on a Friday night, come to think of it. But I digress all over the place.) The child explained that it did so make a difference, and she had to ask because she couldn't see if people were Jewish. She tried just looking, but she couldn't tell who looked Jewish and who didn't. (There was an extended parental interruption here.) The poor put-upon child went on, yes, she really can't tell. Sometimes non-Jews trick her by looking Jewish. (More adult interruptions, on the distinction between the viewer being mistaken and the person viewed being dishonest.) The root cause of the problem appeared to be that so many people in the room were new acquaintances, and the child didn't know how she could trust them to be friends without seeing if they were Jewish or not.
Before the difficulty had been completely sorted out, I lost patience, thanked heaven she wasn't MY kid, and went home. What a tangle. As I said, I don't know the parents at all well, but I know them well enough to be reasonably confident they didn't teach her the appalling stuff above on purpose. It just didn't occur to them to teach her it was wrong until she put it together in that cringeworthy form.
