HOME / family: Snapshots of life at home.

For God's SakeWhy it's worth bringing your kid along to pray.

By Mark OppenheimerPosted Friday, April 10, 2009, at 5:47 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

RSS

If we can agree that that's a bad argument for tradition, then we need a better reason for taking Rebekah to the children's services every Saturday. Fortunately, there are many better reasons. To begin, one of the great virtues of religion is its routinized nature. Indeed, it's hard to imagine something qualifying as a religion without holidays, whether weekly or annual. Most parents I know feel they don't have enough time with their children, so any activity that parents and children can do, together, at frequent and predictable times, is probably worthwhile. I can already hear somebody saying, "But why must that activity be religious? Why not just a regular Wednesday afternoon walk to in the park?" And in one sense, a weekly park stroll is just as good as weekly religious attendance. (If ducklings are involved, it's probably better.) But it's a fact of life that routines are easier to establish with some outside regulator, and two of the best are nationalism and religion. The Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, Passover and Hanukkah—experience teaches us that these holidays work, bringing families together at regular, predictable times. Their nonideological and secular counterparts, like Mother's Day, don't work as well. The anti-religious and anti-patriotic can despair of this aspect of the human condition, but while they despair I'll be with my daughter at synagogue or at a Fourth of July cookout.

I do consider this activity, this synagogue-going, valuable in itself, too, not just as a weekly father/daughter date. Here, my perspective may make the most sense to Jews, but I bet it will resonate with others, too. As a conspicuous minority, a perennial "other" in most countries where they live, Jews are often asked what it is they believe; we're often asked, in other words, to explain ourselves. For most of my life, I had no idea how to answer Gentiles' questions. I could name a few Jewish holidays, and I had a vague sense of what was considered Jewish culture, although queered by my grandfather's particular tastes, like the humorous troubadour Allan Sherman. I suppose some people never wonder more deeply about their roots, but in my experience they're the rarity; to the contrary, most Protestants raised in liberal churches wish they knew a little better what made them as, say, Presbyterians different from the Lutherans they knew. One of the great jokes about Unitarian Sunday school is that it spends all its time teaching about world religions but forgets to schedule a week on Unitarianism.

It is always possible, of course, that children take religious teaching to heart in a way that, as they age, makes their parents uncomfortable. By exposing my daughter to Judaism, I take the risk that she will believe all of it, literally. For some Jews, this would be the perfect result, but not for me: I want my children to grow into mini-mes, skeptical but enthustiastic! Questioning but curious! Proud but not chauvinistic! I hope she'll develop my religiosity, in which devotion, beautiful in its own right, need not be tested against rationality. Alas, that's probably a vain hope. My daughters are young yet, but from what I hear, children surprise us. Sometimes the surprise is that they heed our teachings too well. I know a faithful Catholic who is horrified that her son became a priest; lots of good liberals are upset that their children are radicals. My daughter may not turn into the Jew who I vigorously pat myself on the back for being—but that's just another way of saying that she won't be me. In the meantime, I can expose her to activities I love—and I love the mysterium of Sabbath services—trusting that when she turns them to her own ends, she'll do so in a way that makes sense for her, though perhaps not for her dad.

The best reason I have found to keep letting my daughter take me to shul is that, so far, anyway, she always manages to find something to teach me. She models the best of religion. For her, it's educational, it's joyful, and it's social. And she makes sure to keep it that way: If she gets bored 15 minutes in, she just walks out, strolls around the building, and returns when she's good and ready.

Page: 1 | 2SINGLE PAGE

E-MAIL

RECOMMEND... Get Slate RSS Feeds

Mark Oppenheimer, editor of the New Haven Review and director of the Yale Journalism Initiative, is finishing a memoir of high school debate.

Illustration by Rob Donnelly.

COMMENTS

Your daughter's enthusiasm reminds me of myself in Sunday School. Looking back about 65 years, to the ten-year-old me, I see a self important little miss, loving the familiar rituals which I associated with adulthood although my parents never attended church. A well run Sunday School program can be a useful way to integrate family and community. I can't speak as an experienced S.S. teacher; one of the teenagers in my short-lived career with a class later became my student at the university and an outspoken atheist--he enjoyed pointing out that I had been his S.S. teacher. I found that amusing, but his mother did not. Over the years I have observed many children enjoying the social elements of family church participation. No matter what they make of religion as adults, the experience can be good for both parents and children.

-- alphonegaston
(To reply, click here)

What did you think of this article?

Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum

POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES