Breaking My Promise: Teaching My Son About His Jewish Identity at Sea

Published originally in Hebrew: Haaretz, Family and relationships section, August 20th, 2024. 

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"When your kids reach a certain age, if you want them to be Israeli, you should return to Israel," a friend explained to me a few years ago after returning to Israel following several years of relocation in New York. But I wanted exactly the opposite.

When our firstborn son was born, I was clear that I didn't want to raise him in the state education system. No "Shabbat Father" visits to kindergarten, no receiving a Torah scroll in second grade - I'd prefer they learn to respect people rather than flags. I don't want indoctrination about how good it is to die for the homeland, any homeland. I want to raise them to want to live. And to want others around them to live too.

"Living a nomadic life on a boat was perfect: we wouldn't raise them with Israeli nationalism or Israeli violence, but we also wouldn't commit to any other place."

I knew that if we lived in Israel, I would look for mixed Jewish-Arab schools, frameworks that instill values of equality and peace. Values that would hopefully prevent my child from wanting to mark X's on weapons. But I also knew these values would sentence my sons to be second-generation "traitorous leftists" in a country increasingly hostile to its peace-seeking left wing. And I thought that wasn't fair to him.

Living a nomadic life on a boat was perfect: we wouldn't raise them with Israeli nationalism or Israeli violence, but we also wouldn't commit to any other place. We'd keep our eternal freedom to rise and sail. For the past three years, we've been living as seafarers without a country or permanent address, trying to raise our children as human beings, atheists, and citizens of the world.

Technically, We're Jewish

It was important to us not to impose nationalist ideas or base identity on polarized positions; they're simply two children who speak two languages, with two parents. They sail the world and meet friends from many places and languages. But as much as I tried to keep them from developing Israeli nationalism - my firstborn went and developed American patriotism.

"USA! USA!" he shouts and cheers, wanting to buy every hat with the American flag on it. "No way. We don't wear flags," I answer. "But why?" he persists, claiming that Texas (his best boat-friend's home state) is the best place in the world. I shudder slightly and try to explain that there's no such thing as a perfect place; but even if there was, it's probably not Texas. He's still too young to discuss abortion bans.

One day someone asked if we were Jewish or Muslim. Curious to hear his answer, I passed the question to my son: "Are we Jewish?" With a frightened look, he answered, "No!" My father, my grandfather and grandmother, and all their ancestors, those who survived the Nazis and those who didn't, simultaneously turned in their graves. "Technically, we're Jewish," I told him with a slightly embarrassed smile. "True, we don't believe in God or religious authorities, but you were born Jewish. And hey, even Hitler couldn't eliminate us," I blurted without thinking, and he replied, "Mom, what does 'eliminate' mean?"

The question of when you know it's time to leave has always troubled me. How significant this sentence is in Jewish lives. How did those who left Europe before it burned them know it was time to go? What's the difference between those who knew they had to flee, like my grandmother, and people like her father, my great-grandfather, who didn't believe they were taking Jews to die?

Or in our current life's terms: when do you abandon a sinking ship? At sea, it's quite simple. If the boat is filling with water, for example, it becomes clear very quickly; you try to seal the source of the water entry, and if that's not possible, you abandon ship. Maybe you can save the passports, maybe there's time to grab computers and iPads; sometimes there are situations where all you can do is leave and save your crew and yourself.

I started telling my son more about Jewish holidays. Luckily, I couldn't find carp in the Bahamas, so he's been spared gefilte fish for now. But I tried to counter the damage of our first Christmas celebration with Hanukkah. It wasn't enough. After his good friend from Texas invited him to a beach church for an improvised Easter mass, I decided we needed to light him up about Passover.

I told him Passover is the Jewish Easter. I enlisted another gray food for the cause: introducing matzo balls! And let him roll the balls. Later, we made homemade matzah and hid the afikoman. He asked more questions. "Who was Pharaoh?" he wanted to know. So I introduced him to the story of the Exodus. "We were slaves... now we are free," I sang. "Mom, what does 'free' mean?" he asked. I explained and told him about the ten plagues, and as I counted them, I began to feel uneasy. How would I explain to my firstborn son that one of the miracles performed for us was the death of another group's firstborns? Wasn't this exactly what I wanted to keep him away from?

"How would I explain to my firstborn son that one of the miracles performed for us was the death of another group's firstborns?"

I turned to YouTube and found a children's video about the Exodus. In an instant, my innocent firstborn discovered not only that he was Jewish but also that Jews were slaves. "Are Jews still slaves in Egypt?" he asked, frightened and sad, and I replied, "Of course not! Let's continue, my love, here come the plagues, next plague - the death of the firstborn." He started crying and asked me to stop the video.

I didn't understand what was happening to me. After all, my partner and I had done everything in our power to keep the children away from definitions of religion or nationality, and here I was presenting this to him as if it were normal. As if it makes sense that thousands of years later, we're celebrating a holiday where God stood by our side and killed all of Egypt's firstborn. Now our firstborns are being killed, and Gaza's firstborns are being killed. Endless rivers of blood in the name of some god.

I wondered why I was choosing to scar my firstborn son's sensitive soul; that gentle soul I had until now protected so fiercely. And all this before I even got to the crushing line, "In every generation, they rise up to destroy us." I stopped his Jewish identity reinforcement journey and hugged him. As I drew him close with my heart racing, I thought: Can I distance him from this existence? Can I tell him a new story? One where they're not always rising up to destroy him?