What is your background?

JRKmommy

Mon, Dec 11 2006, 11:08 am

Well, put me down as utterly mixed up, lol.

Parents: both 3rd generation Montrealers, had grandparents come over from somewhere in Eastern Europe other than Poland. Apparently, my mom's grandfather and dad's grandfather both came from the same little town in Bessarabia (Moldova), and I've got some relatives from Romania as well, plus a great-grandmother from Lithuania and a great-grandmother from Minsk.

Father: Grew up Modern Orthodox, and went to an old Sephardic shul. Paternal grandfather was very frum, but his dad rebelled against this somewhat. Still has some very frum cousins.

Mom: Grandparents were just plain Orthodox. Parents rejected traditional religion in favour of socialism (although they were never anti-Jewish, got along with Orthodox friends and had a soft spot for some aspects of traditional Judaism - basically, they saw Jews as an oppressed group, and directed most of the hostility toward the Catholic Church).

Parents married in a modern Orthodox, Sepharic shul, then moved to Toronto and co-founded a traditional Conservative shul with several other families.

Never met a Sephardic Jew until I was 14. Somewhat ironic, considering....

FIL: Born in Iraq, raised in Israel. Follows Iraqi/Sephardic minhagim. Rice is served on Pesach. I tell dh this is one of the reasons I married him!

MIL: Born in Poland, raised in Israel. Her maternal grandparents were frum, everyone else is largely secular. Parents were so assimilated that they spoke Polish, not Yiddish, at home.

Dh sent to traditional, community Hebrew Day Schools, ends up more observant than his parents.

Dh and I go to a few kiruv-oriented Orthodox shuls, and are currently members of a Chabad shul.

We went to the Spanish and Portugese Shul in Montreal a couple of years ago, and concluded that it was probably the one place that reconciled all of our backgrounds and philosophies (my parents got married there, my bubbe went there, I love the rebbetzin, lots of Iraqi families and good Sephardic kiddush) - but since we live in Toronto, it's not exactly walking distance on Shabbat!

I like having the perspective of different groups. I just found it a bit confusing in Israel: we couldn't get the folks at the Babylonian Heritage Museum in Or Yehuda to believe that we were there to learn about the family's heritage, and very few Anglos have any connection to Sephardic Jews, esp. in places like Ramat Gan or Or Yehuda. Instead, Or Yehuda is actually a "development town" twinned with Ontario, Canada.