Tinkering with Judaism, interfaith dilemmas and being ‘different’

Three-year-old Ryan knows Chanukah ended long ago, but he’s keeping an eternal light in the menorah. As soon as he arrives at our house, he asks for our Tinkertoy set, which has extra-wide plastic dowels and large wooden spools. Then he points to the dining room cabinet and says, “Tinkertoy menorah.”

Assembling his tools like his engineer grandpa, Ryan places an orange dowel into the middle candleholder, tops it with a round wooden spool and then fastens another dowel on top to form a tower. Before the whole assemblage topples over, he announces in his toddler soprano, “This is the shamash. This is the shamash.” Then he proceeds to fill all the candleholders with dowels and spools.

As far as I know, Tinkertoy is not in the Judaica business. But Ryan is. Big time. Some people might call what Ryan is performing an act of hiddur mitzvah, beautifying the mitzvah. I call it toddlerizing the mitzvah, reinterpreting the commandment by making it fun.

Ryan’s mop of copper-colored curls may resemble a Jewfro, and he loves singing a Chanukah song that he learned at his secular preschool. Yet Ryan, like all seven of our grandchildren, is only one-quarter Jewish. My husband and I are their only Jewish grandparents. Twelve years ago this month, we celebrated our first Jewish marriage.

We both had long-term marriages to non-Jewish partners. I returned to Judaism — a religion in which I was not raised — after my first marriage ended in 1988. My children were raised Unitarian, dubbed “the demilitarized zone.” Today I enjoy the rare distinction of having married two years after my bat mitzvah.

Unlike me, my husband had a solid Jewish education, and his children were raised with the cultural earmarks of Judaism, though not with the faith. He joined a synagogue for the first time since childhood after marrying me.

Now, as active synagogue members as well as the elders in the family, we are keepers of the flame to kids like Ryan who are not halachically Jewish, as well as to grandchildren who are being raised in another faith.

We can share the peacefulness of Shabbat, latkes at Chanukah, matzah balls at Passover and honey-dipped apples at Rosh Hashanah. Certainly, we can share our values. But that does not make our grandchildren Jewish, and we are not in the conversion business. Our interpretation of shalom bayit, keeping peace in the home, means respecting the beliefs of our children.

When I returned to Judaism at midlife, most people in the community welcomed me home — and it was a homecoming. But I had to learn how to be Jewish, and it wasn’t a one-step process. I gave up the Christmas tree, bought a menorah, attended weekly Shabbat services and learned to read prayerbook Hebrew.

These days, the child I’m raising as Jewish is myself. Our grandchildren are witnesses to the way we live and the rituals we love. Some wonder why we don’t press our palms together and hold them upright when we pray, as Christians do. They’re also amused that we sing our prayers. “Is that why you’re Jewish?” one granddaughter asked. Above all, our grandchildren know that we are different — and not afraid to be different.

Maybe the Tinkertoy menorah, and the Lego versions he’s constructing at home, will kindle something deeper in Ryan. Maybe when he joins us for Shabbat dinner, he’ll experience a sense of the special — if not the sacred — if we can get him away from the Tinkertoy long enough to feed him. But we hope he will discover that Jewish life has a rhythm and a time to pause. What’s more, it sets aside time for us to bless the children, Tinkertoy and all.

Janet Silver Ghent, former j. senior editor, is a Palo Alto–based writer and editor. She can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).