religious teachings

i would say that i grew up without religion
if you ask my parents, perhaps they have a different recollection.

my memory and understanding of christmas and passover and sometimes roshashana or yom kippur was not related to religion or a belief /thought system, but simply a practice of tradition. the same way my family had a tradition of going to mcdonald's on the weekends when i was young and we were poor, or talking about our day at the dinner table when we were older.

i like to think that we provide our family with religion in a similar way...which is to say, not religion, but a sense of identity through the traditions we have - many of which, perhaps, are born out of religion, but some that are not. we have more traditions now, different traditions, - friday night dinner tradition, a lighting of hannukah candles tradition, christmas in vermont tradition, a bagel store outing on the weekend tradition. 

so when my five year old started kindergarten at a mennonite school this fall, i wasn't sure what to expect. we had based our decision to send her there off of second-hand recommendations and a little bit of desperation to find a school for her after an abrupt relocation.

i know that she is being exposed to things that i would not otherwise expose her to, and that in the end, that is always a good thing - to see and learn more. we will see what she makes of it...for now i get to chuckle at the little ironic moments like when she told her father and i that jesus put her in my belly. i imagine that being the daughter of a jew and a sex educator she will develop a different version of that story, but for now, this is part of her exposure to an endless world of thought and understanding