At our daughter's
Bat Mitzvah, we celebrated the similarities among our friends and families
rather than emphasize the differences.
Family
As the youngest of
six, I am very fortunate to have nieces and nephews who are close to my age.
So, our daughter was raised with first cousins who are like aunts and uncles
and second cousins who are her contemporaries. Her first cousin was like a
second mother to our daughter when she was a baby. Dropping her off at her
cousin's house was the easiest part of being a working mom. My niece and her
family have included us in all of their family celebrations. Our relationship
with her family has been integral to our children's' connection to my side of
the family. My niece and her husband are the epitome of what it means to live
the golden rule. They have always been kind, loving, and supportive, and they
expected nothing in return. So, at our daughter's Bat Mitzvah, we asked my
niece to select and read a passage from the Catholic Bible that had the same
theme as our daughter's Torah portion, the golden rule.
Friends
Our neighborhood was
unofficially a 55-and-over community in its early days. We were the babies. So,
when our daughter was about 6 years old, and we found out that we had new neighbors
with children, we ran over to the playground, hoping they'd show up. Our children
quickly hit it off with their children. And the mom and I became fast friends.
When my neighbor mentioned that her mother-law's native language was Arabic, my
mind began to race, "Oh no, what if when they find out our kids are
Jewish, they decide that our children cannot play together?" I waited
several meetings before broaching the subject. As it turned out, my new friend
had figured it out, and it was okay. Now, our kids fondly refer to the dad as Baba.
He even came to our congregation to talk to my book club about Islam and
forever changed, in a positive way, a Jewish group's view about Muslims. (That's a future blog post!)
When my husband was
rushed to the ER in the middle of the night, it was this friend who came out on
an icy night and slept on our couch until I came home. It was she who sat with
me for 10 hours at the hospital. They are wonderful examples of doing to others
as you would have them do unto you. At our daughter's Bat Mitzvah, we asked
them to select several readings from the Quran with the same theme as the Torah
portion - and read them from the bimah.
We wanted to remind
our friends and families that our similarities are so much greater than our
differences. Our goal was to embrace what joins us.
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