spiritual roots

i come from a blessed and wonderful spiritual background. my father was raised in an orthodox, jewish home with 2 siblings on the south side of chicago. his parents immigrated here from russia.  there was never any proselytising on my grandparents' part, because modern day jews don't believe in that. i am privileged to have his parents' passover dishes (the only china we have). i learned a bit of yiddish from dad and his family growing up. i wish i knew more. i bought a great book on yiddish at the library sale a few years back which helps some. mostly i just say oy vay! a lot, the easiest to remember and use.

my mother was raised with 13 siblings in a very orthodox, pentecostal home in the sticks of arkansas. anyone heard of point cedar?  her parents have irish roots, tho i don't know much else right off hand about their immigration history.  there's native american indian somewhere in the family.  mama took a fabulous trip with one of her 6 brothers to ireland several years back. 

my granny and papa DID share their faith and used to read the KJV bible to us grandchildren when we'd stay over. i LOVED it and they were my spiritual parents. it was scary when they talked "hell, fire and damnation" but i still connected with the God they shared with me and His love came through. it also helped that in elementary school i went to the baptist church with my friend cindy and her parents where i became a christian at the age of ten.  maybe the baptists helped temper my grandparents' fear-oriented theology.

suffice it to say each of my parents rebelled against their roots in marrying one another. neither was banished from his/her respective family which i find amazing.  another of my mother's sisters married a jewish man from michigan (close to illinois), also named bill!

so when dad and mama were raising the 5 of us kids it was : whatever you want to believe is fine with us. you wanna go to the baptist church? go ahead. you wanna be baptised? no problem. you want money off my dresser (my dad's) for the offering plate? fine. (that's a really sweet memory.)  you want to believe in nothing, that's up to you.....well, now that i think on it, dad did get real upset when my younger brother came home from the baptist church he attended and told my dad he was going to hell.  he continued to attend a while longer but is the agnostic today.

best i recall, 3 out of 5 of us did visit churches. 2 did not. some of us, don't know who in addition to me, visited the tent revival meetings with granny and papa. currently, 2 of us go to church, 1 converted to judaism, one is agnostic and the other lives in santa fe NM so that might tell you of his eclectic spiritual leanings. mama doesn't go to church. dad died in 1997 and i believe he had a death-bed conversion but that's a real long story and some folks might interpret that as wishful thinking.

growing up, every year we had a christmas tree (beautiful ones, mama is very talented) with a star of david she made on top of the tree to honor my dad's jewishness. we always had a traditional jewish lox and bagel breakfast on c'mas morn and typically ate corned beef on c'mas eve. we had homemade stockings hung by the chimney with care filled with old fashioned hard candy, halvah (a jewish candy made of sesame seeds), horoscope books and other goodies. yes, i did say horoscope books. there was no Jesus in our c'mas but at least we did have christmases and they were wonderful!

there's a book or five i could write on all this but since i tend to write posts that are way too long, i'll just leave it be for now.

hat tip to a.s. for encouraging me to write about being from jewish and pentecostal "stock."