By Renee Greif, Outreach Chair
Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss, is a childhood favorite that is hard to forget. Throughout the book, Sam-I-Am is trying to convince his friend to try green eggs and ham, but his friend has no interest in the bright green dish no matter how Sam-I-Am tries to present it.
Sam-I-Am’s friend is given a lot of choices, until he eventually tries the dish so that Sam-I-Am will leave him alone. To his surprise, he likes it—and is willing to try it with all of Sam-I-Am’s choices. In the rain, on a train, in a box, with a fox- you get the picture. It is a simple rhyming book for young children, but to me it is a book about choice and exploring options that we may not have considered.
Often, this is the time of year that interfaith families confront the “December Dilemma” and seek to find the best “choice” for their family. Sometimes it becomes an exhausting array of choices, and a suitable family fit seems sadly out of reach. Like Green Eggs and Ham, we wonder if we will like it this way or that, and we struggle because we can’t predict how our choice will impact our children as time marches on. As members of a Reform temple that welcomes the beauty of choice, no one will dictate what you must do. As a result, interfaith members have found numerous ways to weave holidays and traditions into their homes while balancing the needs of raising Jewish children. There is no one solution, and I cannot do justice to the topic in a brief article. However, if you are struggling with an approach that will best suit your family, I highly recommend that you check the following website to see what others have tried and how it worked for them. I am also including a website that was created by members of Temple Israel, which offers explanations and numerous ideas on how to celebrate Jewish holidays with your children.
Remember, our Rabbis are always available to discuss this issue with you, and with their help and some outside reading, I wish you not a December Dilemma, but a December to Remember.
Websites:
InterfaithFamily.com - Scroll down to Resources and click on December Holidays.
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