While the sun shines
Apr. 14th, 2011 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livSo the first day of the glorious spring weather I heard some disappointing news: my application to the university for partial funding for a PhD student has been turned down. The most galling thing is that the scheme is supposed to be there to help new academics break into the cycle of needing money in order to get money, yet they turned me down in favour of someone coming from a stronger financial position than me! Grr. This despite truly excellent feedback on the quality of my application; apparently if I can get more money together they'll be very happy to help me next year. My feeling is that next year is probably too late for lots of reasons, and if I can manage to raise lots of money independently I don't actually need the relatively paltry top-up they're offering!
First world problems, I know, but I was quite upset by this disappointment, and while it wasn't my last chance it was probably my best chance of establishing a research career. In fact I haven't felt able to talk about it on DW until now, though I've mentioned it to a few friends. Heartfelt thanks to all of you who have been supportive.
Anyway, being miserable about that was somewhat mitigated by a really great weekend. I travelled up on Saturday morning, and spent a completely glorious afternoon and evening with T&R. Most of it was in Epping Forest, which is a marvellous place to be on a sunny spring day. But all of it involved all kinds of interesting conversations about random stuff, which is about the best way imaginable to cheer me up when I'm down.
So by Sunday I was in happy extrovert mood, which only got better after spending the day meeting lots of new people. I attended a wedding workshop for mixed faith couples, organized by some great people called Jeneration. I like Jeneration very much; they were originally set up for people who have aged out of the Reform youth movement, and want to keep up with attending events for like-minded, committed, young Jewish people without trying to prolong their teenage years long past graduation. What's actually happened with it is that it attracts as least as many people in their late 20s and early 30s as immediately post-university people, and its core demographic is people who weren't massively into Jewish youth movement stuff (for a range of reasons).
Jewish community orgs have been trying desperately for years to attract people in the "gap" generation between finishing university and having kids, and Jeneration appears to have stumbled on the magic formula almost by accident. I think it's partly that demographics are changing on their own anyway; the gap generation is just less alienated now than the equivalent generation 10 or 15 years ago. And partly that they've learned from the youth movement experience that people, even young people, greatly prefer getting a bit of funding and support to organize their own social events, rather than having community bigwigs patronizingly arrange "outreach" events for us. And partly that there are lots of people who want to do Judaism in a context with the possibility of both taking religion seriously and deeply questioning the accepted community and religious norms.
The latest thing Jeneration has achieved is to appoint a paid employee (admittedly only a few hours a week, but still an official person) to act as events coordinator for mixed couples. This is among the first serious attempts I've seen to work directly with this group. We've seen a sort of progression from orgs that try to prevent mixed relationships from happening, to orgs and communities that explicitly don't have a problem with mixed relationships, to orgs that try to minimize the harm of mixed relationships through "outreach" to non-Jewish partners, to this which regards mixed couples as a positive subcommunity in our own right. I mean, not a linear progression, there are still preventing and blind-eye turning and harm-minimizing groups around. But for fairly obvious reasons I'm pleased by this development.
I attended mainly because I thought I might meet some interesting people, people who might not show up to the obvious round of community events. I was not at all disappointed in this. In fact, I already knew two of the women attendees,kerrypolka and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ktsqueak, whom I saw very briefly at elemy's wedding but otherwise hadn't spoken to in years. The workshops and discussions were ok, though a lot of the content was either obvious or not very relevant to me, but social events with an ostensible purpose other than just "socializing" always work better anyway.
One minor lightbulb moment was when I mentioned the fact that I have a much bigger family and close social circle thanjack; I realized that this is only partly a coincidence, and in fact it's very common for Jewish people to have a lot more friends and relatives they consider "close" than for non-Jews in this country. I mean, my family is objectively bigger than his, in that I have three sibs and six aunts and uncles and seven first cousins, whereas jack has no sibs and no first cousins and only one aunt and uncle pair. But I also have a much wider definition of people I count as close enough to want to invite to the wedding, rather than people who may be vaguely related to me but I'm not sure and I've probably never met them.
There was a workshop about talking to friends and family, where rather than following our brief of brainstorming ways for handling difficult conversations, we swapped anecdotes about our generally happy interactions with our loved ones. The non-Jewish families seemed to default to "mildly bemused but basically happy", and some of the Jewish families ranged as far as "maybe just a tiny bit disappointed but basically happy". I mean, it's possible that people who have been horribly rejected by their families are too disillusioned by Judaism to turn up to any kind of community events, even if pitched directly to them, but I think in general the Jewish community is showing healthy signs of getting over itself on this issue.
The ceremony planning workshop was the one I was most hoping would be useful, but in fact mostly provided me with stuff to rule out. It was led by an "interfaith minister", who was perfectly lovely as an individual but I'm very suspicious of the concept of an interfaith minister. I am passionate about interfaith dialogue, in the sense of respectful, meaningful interactions between people from distinct religious backgrounds, but I am creeped out by the idea of creating any kind of blend of different religious, which is what "interfaith" seems to signify in this sort of context. If nothing else because it often ends up with a sort of vaguely C of E style "spirituality" which claims not to be Christian because it doesn't mention Jesus by name, at best with trappings from other religious traditions included to add some exotic colour. I most certainly do not want my own culture to be a source of exotic colour in my own wedding!
I think part of the problem is that the distinction between "religion" and "culture" is a lot less clear-cut in a Jewish context than a Christian one. Christianity-without-Jesus isn't magically acceptable to Jews, whether religious or secular / cultural, and it certainly isn't meaningful. Judaism without... well, what is the distinguishing feature of Judaism the religion rather than Jewish culture? The best I can manage is Judaism-without-Torah... is quite likely to fail to be acceptable or meaningful to lots of people, whether Jewish or Christian, secular or religious.
The other issue is that of all the non-Jewish partners present, two had religious parents but had rejected Christianity themselves, and the rest were completely secular. So there didn't seem to be any very good argument for trying to include Christian elements in the ceremony planning. Except that "Christian-style" is kind of the default for how religious ceremonies work in this country; it's evident even in the default format for the supposedly entirely secular, civil wedding rite. Also the opposite may be unbalanced; if you're going to include culturally Jewish things (assuming it's possible to define that category), then you want for symmetry's sake to include some culturally Christian things, except that there's a fundamental asymmetry there which you can't really get round.
Anyway, not nice lady's fault. And she did give us some good tips about stage-management type stuff, such as how to avoid the situation common in default weddings where the couple have their backs to the congregation most of the time. Plus she gave a very nice explanation for the smashing a glass thing that is quite a common custom in Jewish weddings. I wasn't going to bother with it because it seems excessively folksy to me, (see above re not cutesifying my own culture), and also because the traditional explanation is that it's to do with the destruction of the Temple and tied up with Messianism, which isn't relevant tojack and not really my favourite thing either. But I like the idea of breaking the glass to remember, even on your joyful day, that the world is broken and that you have a duty to people with shattered lives.
The third workshop we attended was on communication. It ended up just being me andjack and ktsqueak and her fiancé. That did mean that all of us were at a rather more advanced level than the facilitator had originally pitched for, but she was happy to adapt, and it was good having a detailed intellectual discussion about communication issues. I got a bit cross at the facilitator referencing the stupid Men are from Mars, women are from Venus gender essentialist nonsense, but jack was very tactful at picking out the good points one may take from Gray's book without needing to buy in to the sexism. Again, the workshop was somewhat aimed at dealing with problems, but we joked that we had more cultural differences between arts and science backgrounds or between Oxford and Cambridge educations, than between Jewish and Christian upbringings, and certainly than between genders.
It turned out thathadassah was around, since the event was taking place at the same site as the college where she was studying in the library. So we evilly tempted her away from her homework and sat in the sun talking about anything that came into our heads. We ended up at the Great Nepalese restaurant behind Euston, along with kerrypolka. I'd really been looking forward to getting some time to talk to the latter properly, as we move in overlapping social circles but hadn't properly met beyond saying hi. I was not at all disappointed: kerrypolka is fab! Even though I know that the stereotype about Americans not understanding sarcasm is false, there is something very delightful about sarcastic Americans.
OK, back to the grant-writing grindstone. That weekend just made me feel so much better in spite of the disappointment though. Yay lovely people!
First world problems, I know, but I was quite upset by this disappointment, and while it wasn't my last chance it was probably my best chance of establishing a research career. In fact I haven't felt able to talk about it on DW until now, though I've mentioned it to a few friends. Heartfelt thanks to all of you who have been supportive.
Anyway, being miserable about that was somewhat mitigated by a really great weekend. I travelled up on Saturday morning, and spent a completely glorious afternoon and evening with T&R. Most of it was in Epping Forest, which is a marvellous place to be on a sunny spring day. But all of it involved all kinds of interesting conversations about random stuff, which is about the best way imaginable to cheer me up when I'm down.
So by Sunday I was in happy extrovert mood, which only got better after spending the day meeting lots of new people. I attended a wedding workshop for mixed faith couples, organized by some great people called Jeneration. I like Jeneration very much; they were originally set up for people who have aged out of the Reform youth movement, and want to keep up with attending events for like-minded, committed, young Jewish people without trying to prolong their teenage years long past graduation. What's actually happened with it is that it attracts as least as many people in their late 20s and early 30s as immediately post-university people, and its core demographic is people who weren't massively into Jewish youth movement stuff (for a range of reasons).
Jewish community orgs have been trying desperately for years to attract people in the "gap" generation between finishing university and having kids, and Jeneration appears to have stumbled on the magic formula almost by accident. I think it's partly that demographics are changing on their own anyway; the gap generation is just less alienated now than the equivalent generation 10 or 15 years ago. And partly that they've learned from the youth movement experience that people, even young people, greatly prefer getting a bit of funding and support to organize their own social events, rather than having community bigwigs patronizingly arrange "outreach" events for us. And partly that there are lots of people who want to do Judaism in a context with the possibility of both taking religion seriously and deeply questioning the accepted community and religious norms.
The latest thing Jeneration has achieved is to appoint a paid employee (admittedly only a few hours a week, but still an official person) to act as events coordinator for mixed couples. This is among the first serious attempts I've seen to work directly with this group. We've seen a sort of progression from orgs that try to prevent mixed relationships from happening, to orgs and communities that explicitly don't have a problem with mixed relationships, to orgs that try to minimize the harm of mixed relationships through "outreach" to non-Jewish partners, to this which regards mixed couples as a positive subcommunity in our own right. I mean, not a linear progression, there are still preventing and blind-eye turning and harm-minimizing groups around. But for fairly obvious reasons I'm pleased by this development.
I attended mainly because I thought I might meet some interesting people, people who might not show up to the obvious round of community events. I was not at all disappointed in this. In fact, I already knew two of the women attendees,
kerrypolka and ktsqueak, whom I saw very briefly at elemy's wedding but otherwise hadn't spoken to in years. The workshops and discussions were ok, though a lot of the content was either obvious or not very relevant to me, but social events with an ostensible purpose other than just "socializing" always work better anyway. One minor lightbulb moment was when I mentioned the fact that I have a much bigger family and close social circle than
jack; I realized that this is only partly a coincidence, and in fact it's very common for Jewish people to have a lot more friends and relatives they consider "close" than for non-Jews in this country. I mean, my family is objectively bigger than his, in that I have three sibs and six aunts and uncles and seven first cousins, whereas jack has no sibs and no first cousins and only one aunt and uncle pair. But I also have a much wider definition of people I count as close enough to want to invite to the wedding, rather than people who may be vaguely related to me but I'm not sure and I've probably never met them. There was a workshop about talking to friends and family, where rather than following our brief of brainstorming ways for handling difficult conversations, we swapped anecdotes about our generally happy interactions with our loved ones. The non-Jewish families seemed to default to "mildly bemused but basically happy", and some of the Jewish families ranged as far as "maybe just a tiny bit disappointed but basically happy". I mean, it's possible that people who have been horribly rejected by their families are too disillusioned by Judaism to turn up to any kind of community events, even if pitched directly to them, but I think in general the Jewish community is showing healthy signs of getting over itself on this issue.
The ceremony planning workshop was the one I was most hoping would be useful, but in fact mostly provided me with stuff to rule out. It was led by an "interfaith minister", who was perfectly lovely as an individual but I'm very suspicious of the concept of an interfaith minister. I am passionate about interfaith dialogue, in the sense of respectful, meaningful interactions between people from distinct religious backgrounds, but I am creeped out by the idea of creating any kind of blend of different religious, which is what "interfaith" seems to signify in this sort of context. If nothing else because it often ends up with a sort of vaguely C of E style "spirituality" which claims not to be Christian because it doesn't mention Jesus by name, at best with trappings from other religious traditions included to add some exotic colour. I most certainly do not want my own culture to be a source of exotic colour in my own wedding!
I think part of the problem is that the distinction between "religion" and "culture" is a lot less clear-cut in a Jewish context than a Christian one. Christianity-without-Jesus isn't magically acceptable to Jews, whether religious or secular / cultural, and it certainly isn't meaningful. Judaism without... well, what is the distinguishing feature of Judaism the religion rather than Jewish culture? The best I can manage is Judaism-without-Torah... is quite likely to fail to be acceptable or meaningful to lots of people, whether Jewish or Christian, secular or religious.
The other issue is that of all the non-Jewish partners present, two had religious parents but had rejected Christianity themselves, and the rest were completely secular. So there didn't seem to be any very good argument for trying to include Christian elements in the ceremony planning. Except that "Christian-style" is kind of the default for how religious ceremonies work in this country; it's evident even in the default format for the supposedly entirely secular, civil wedding rite. Also the opposite may be unbalanced; if you're going to include culturally Jewish things (assuming it's possible to define that category), then you want for symmetry's sake to include some culturally Christian things, except that there's a fundamental asymmetry there which you can't really get round.
Anyway, not nice lady's fault. And she did give us some good tips about stage-management type stuff, such as how to avoid the situation common in default weddings where the couple have their backs to the congregation most of the time. Plus she gave a very nice explanation for the smashing a glass thing that is quite a common custom in Jewish weddings. I wasn't going to bother with it because it seems excessively folksy to me, (see above re not cutesifying my own culture), and also because the traditional explanation is that it's to do with the destruction of the Temple and tied up with Messianism, which isn't relevant to
jack and not really my favourite thing either. But I like the idea of breaking the glass to remember, even on your joyful day, that the world is broken and that you have a duty to people with shattered lives. The third workshop we attended was on communication. It ended up just being me and
jack and ktsqueak and her fiancé. That did mean that all of us were at a rather more advanced level than the facilitator had originally pitched for, but she was happy to adapt, and it was good having a detailed intellectual discussion about communication issues. I got a bit cross at the facilitator referencing the stupid Men are from Mars, women are from Venus gender essentialist nonsense, but jack was very tactful at picking out the good points one may take from Gray's book without needing to buy in to the sexism. Again, the workshop was somewhat aimed at dealing with problems, but we joked that we had more cultural differences between arts and science backgrounds or between Oxford and Cambridge educations, than between Jewish and Christian upbringings, and certainly than between genders. It turned out that
hadassah was around, since the event was taking place at the same site as the college where she was studying in the library. So we evilly tempted her away from her homework and sat in the sun talking about anything that came into our heads. We ended up at the Great Nepalese restaurant behind Euston, along with kerrypolka. I'd really been looking forward to getting some time to talk to the latter properly, as we move in overlapping social circles but hadn't properly met beyond saying hi. I was not at all disappointed: kerrypolka is fab! Even though I know that the stereotype about Americans not understanding sarcasm is false, there is something very delightful about sarcastic Americans.OK, back to the grant-writing grindstone. That weekend just made me feel so much better in spite of the disappointment though. Yay lovely people!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-14 01:43 pm (UTC)I quite liked the ceremony lady (we are intending to use her as an officiant if the lay leaders we've contacted at my synagogue get back to us and say they aren't comfortable doing outs), but I suspect I have a slightly higher tolerance than you for touchy-feely evocative rituals that may or may not be directly based on legal or textual tradition.
I think I'm also in favour of interfaith ministers as a thing, although I'm uncertain about calling them "ministers". One of the things Ewan and I talked about after it was confirmed that our rabbi wasn't allowed to do our wedding was whether we wanted to go the rent-a-rabbi option with someone else we didn't have such an excellent relationship with. We took a very short time to decide that we didn't. It would give off the air that we really wanted a "real" Jewish-Jewish wedding, and were going to do a pretend Jewish wedding anyway that was as close to the "real thing" as we could get it and just ignore the fact that Ewan wasn't Jewish for all the bits where that mattered. We are a positive-mixed couple, not a negative-halfnotJewish couple, and it makes sense for us to have an officiant who explicitly does mixed services instead of an officiant who does Jewish services ohandthere'sEwanbutignorehim.
I agree that interfaith officiating can tend toward wishy-washy C of E "spirituality", but I think that's a problem with the individials, not with the idea of interfaith officiants in the first place. IMO interfaith ceremonies that aren't Here Is Some Exclusively Jewish Stuff, Here Is Some Exclusively Other Stuff, but that take important aspects of each and rework them in a meaningful way are both possible and good (I am aiming to create a ceremony like this, so I should think so!). I definitely agree that adding a balancing aspect to represent someone who is not of a particular religion or cultural tradition except the cultural Anglicanism all British people have is the most difficult part of ceremony ritual planning.
I do actually disagree quite a bit that Judaism-without-Torah isn't meaningful to a lot of people! I think symbols and ritual actions can have meaning that isn't directly related to their "original" or textual meaning, and that eg smashing a glass doesn't have to mean second Temple to be important to people; it can mean "I remember this from my late grandfather's wedding and this is the way we do things in our family". Although I'm not in favour of doing things without examining why, I think "because this is what a wedding looks like to me" is a good and valid reason to have something in a wedding ceremony.
Also, it was excellent to meet you properly too! :D I do not think of myself as particularly sarcastic, but most US Americans one sees on TV are painfully earnest, so I probably am in comparison! *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-14 04:30 pm (UTC)It's particularly good to know that the ceremony lady appealed to you. I liked her as a person, even though she's touchy-feely, I just didn't like her approach to religion. I'm a bit of a Litvak about ritual stuff. I mean, obviously this is going to be somewhat emotive, it's a wedding! But I want it to be grounded in something, I think.
[Continued later; my gym buddy just called so I should go and be energetic instead of playing on the internets!]
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-14 10:17 pm (UTC)I agree that it isn't so much disagreement as having different preferences (and, I mean, a wedding is a pretty excellent place to throw one's preferences around!) and hopefully being able to talk about those preferences meaningfully. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-14 07:49 pm (UTC)Your ideas about ways a potential interfaith ceremony sound very positive to me, yes. If Jack were a practising Christian I would feel a lot more inclined to go down that route, in spite of the difficulties. I definitely want to do something more positive than simply not mentioning God and not including obviously "religious" elements. One aspect is the venue; I want to get married in my parents' home (because I see it as couples who have to get married in public for logistical reasons going to lots of effort to create symbolic homes), but
Thanks for the really great point about the meaning of ritual. I have an instinctive prejudice against that kind of argument because it's so often used as an excuse for misogyny, but it can actually be valid in its own right, absolutely. I think I more feel that Judaism without Torah can't be assumed to be meaningful, not that it necessarily isn't.
*bounce* Let's get together again, possibly after you're married because I imagine you don't have a lot of free time just now.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-14 10:27 pm (UTC)Yes!!
I mean, I think we will probably end up consciously not mentioning God anyway, but that is because neither Ewan nor I believe in God and I think it will be fun to construct a meaningful set of non-theist rituals, not because of any idea that taking God out will make it less religious.
I think I more feel that Judaism without Torah can't be assumed to be meaningful, not that it necessarily isn't.
Ah yes, that is very sensible. I think what it really comes down to is examining things actively vs going along with them passively; the problem isn't with the mostly-cultural or mostly-religious things themselves, but with going "oh well OK then I guess we have to have that" without thinking about it and positively deciding it is what you want.
The Guildhall is an actually excellent venue, so there! *g* We always knew we wanted to have ours in a pub because we both love pubs and I think they encompass both the public sense and the homey hearth-of-the-community sense, so that was lucky that we both agreed and felt that was right right away. :)
And yes, we should definitely definitely get together sometime! Things are really super ramping up in the wedding department in the past week, but I suspect in Julyish they will be a bit calmer. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-15 09:44 am (UTC)With this (I see this isn't something you're going for)... I think you have to be careful if you're not sure how well the two families are going to get on together - especially if there's a possibility that there might be religious or ethnic or racial tension. This may be very subtle - one family might think everything is fine, but the other family may feel unwelcome. Likewise with receptions at one of the parental homes. Neutral territory might be advised under such circumstances.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-24 10:52 pm (UTC)Hello! Sarah here. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-14 02:09 pm (UTC)Attempts at constructing atheist/humanist rituals, especially ones that start with removing the G-d from the Anglican ones usually fall very flat :-( I don't envy you in your wedding planning task.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-14 04:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-14 05:07 pm (UTC)It's interesting to see the different models people use for how to conduct a mixed marriage ceremony. For Alec and me it really made sense for us to have two separate marriage ceremonies because neither of us likes smooshing our religions together (Alec has been rolling his eyes at his church having a Maundy Thursday seder) but it was important to both of us to feel that we were married according to our own point of view. Then there was just the issue of how to negotiate each ceremony so that it wasn't uncomfortable for the other partner participate in. A HinJew couple who were at our wedding said that they thought they'd take a similar approach at their wedding.
I've been thinking for a while of maybe doing a Limmud session on interfaith weddings.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-15 03:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-22 09:56 am (UTC)