Being (kind of) Jewish in the heart of the Bible Belt

I love living in East Tennessee.  Our mountains are amazing, we have the perfect balance of all four seasons and for the most part, the people are some of the friendliest I have ever met.  You will never meet a stranger here.  Everyone is quick to hand you a nice tall glass of iced sweet tea, and then they ask you, "Have you found a Church yet?" Or, "What Church do you attend?"  We usually stutter and give a reply along the lines of, "We haven't found one we like yet."  They always invite us to come by and visit their Church and we always thank them politely.  

I was not raised very religious at all.  I never went to Hebrew school. We celebrated all the major holidays with family, I know the Hanukkah prayers and I had my own Haggadah.  I even had a little plate I made myself for the Passover Seder.  It wasn't until we moved to South Florida when I was 12 that I really ever attended Temple.  I would occasionally attend Friday night services with the next door neighbors, and of course once I approached 13, there was a flood of Bar and Bat Mitzpha invites to attend.  But that was pretty much the extent of my religious upbringing.  

I have ALWAYS loved the holiday season.  I know it upsets people to hear "holidays" rather then "Christmas" but as Hanukkah goes by the Hebrew calendar and Christmas is the same year after year, plus a week later you have New Years and then Three King's Day, it truly is a season full of Holidays, not just one.  As far back as my memory goes, I remember going to my parent's business partner's house on Christmas Eve.  Her kids were teens, much older then I was.  We would go out before dinner, buy a live tree and decorate it, the. The kids would all shuffle back out to the mall and do their shopping last minute, lock themselves in their rooms wrapping while I just stared in pure joy at the twinkling lights and shiny ornaments.  Should Hanukkah overlap with Christmas that year, they always welcomed us to bring our Menorah and light the candles with them.  The flames would dance off the tinsel like Sprites.  These are some of my most fond memories.  Notice there is very little religion on either side.  It is the brightly colored decorations, the excitement, the togetherness, the family, that I love.

When we moved to Knoxville almost 4 years ago, I found not a single roll of Hanukkah wrapping paper.  I finally found light blue with 6 point snowflakes and decided it was close enough.  My mom mailed me candles from FL which somehow managed to get mangled in the mail, so she brought another box when she came up for Zoey's birthday.  For some reason, not that I was somewhere my "religion" wasn't, it called on me to want to find it, I was going to show Knoxville there was more the. Just Christmas.  The following September we were roaming Toys R Us and overheard a family suggesting to their young daughter that she should add the item she had just seen to her Hanukkah list.  These poor unsuspecting souls.  I still apologize to them on a regular basis.  I almost literally jumped on them in the middle of the store and screamed, "Where do you buy Hanukkah wrap?!?!?!?"  They invited us to an open house at their Temple the next day for the start of the Sunday School year.  We went, bought some wrap at the gift shop, Zoey even attended the Sunday school for a while.  We did make a couple of friends, but the Temple was far, and 5-year-olds don't much care for getting up at 7:00 on a Sunday to go to school.  It was then I realized I was there more because I had to prove I could find it, then because I really wanted to be.  We still occasionally visit with our friend who are now with a different Temple, still quite a distance, but I like it there a lot more.  It has more of that homey/family feel.  

Now we live up in the mountains, in G-d's Country.  Both kids are in school this year and every Monday the talk at lunch is what all the others did at Church the day before.  There seems to be 2 main Churches in the area, a Baptist and a Methodist.  Deron was born Methodist, but he is quite far from a religious person today.  Zoey is asking.  Zoey has actually begged.  Her friends learned this about Jesus, and they know that about Jesus and I want to go to Church with them.  I am not going to lie, I have considered taking her.  It would be a great way to meet people as we are new to the area.  But I feel as if I would be deceiving them, meeting under false pretenses.  It leaves me quite torn.

So now the holiday season is upon us.  The Menorah has been cleaned and the tree is up.  I guess we'll just continue this journey as we have been, one day at a time.