The Fear of Sending My Jewish Child To Religious School

Three weeks ago, I felt hopeful. After years of kind of going to temple and sort of keeping Jewish traditions alive, my husband and I joined a synagogue, and our 6-year-old son was about to start Sunday school. We sat in Yom Kippur services and listened to a speech in which the president of the synagogue made a joke about generational trauma, and we all laughed. It’s a term that’s tossed around so casually today, but for many marginalized groups, there is nothing casual about it.

This was just a few weeks before Hamas attacked Israel, killing and kidnapping human beings who were cooking a meal in their homes or listening to music at a festival. Before Israel retaliated in Gaza and innocent Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians, children and adults died. On that not so long ago September evening, I was feeling excited — elated even — about sending my son to religious school for the first time. By sending him to Sunday school, I was making my ancestors, who’d fled persecution over a century ago, proud.

And then I became terrified.

I wouldn’t say I’m a devout, or consistent, Jew. We don’t keep kosher, and we go to temple sporadically, at best. When my mom died in 2018, and then my sister two years later, we held onto a few Jewish traditions that helped us process our grief. We shoveled dirt over their coffins. We placed stones on their graves. My son was just a baby then, but I knew, without a doubt, that I wanted him to learn about his Jewish heritage. My parents took me (sometimes kicking and screaming) to religious school, and looking back, I’m grateful. I knew I wanted the same for my son.

Because there have been so many attacks on synagogues in the United States and around the world, there’s always an underlying fear of going into one myself. It’s the same fear I imagine any parent would feel going into a mosque, a temple, or a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Our synagogue has an armed security guard, shatterproof glass, and multiple codes to get into the building, shared via a secure channel, never email. Yellow caution tape adorns the tall sanctuary doors, the result of an anti-Semitic arson attack just a few years ago. There are plans to rebuild what was burned. As a friend recently texted me, “Jews aren’t safe anywhere.” I know we’re not the only persecuted group to feel this way.

There should be a specific word to describe the exact moment that a phrase you’ve heard hundreds of times finally barrels into your soul.

The first morning that I took my son to Sunday school in September, before the recent violence in Gaza, and despite that yellow caution tape, I was giddy. After years of feeling guilty about eating bacon or not going to Rosh Hashanah services, I was finally doing something positive, as far as Judaism goes, for my kid. I decided to tell him the story of his great-great-grandfather “Pop,” so he could feel proud of his ancestors and waltz into Sunday school with a purpose. A passion to learn more! I figured he’d see Pop as a sort of hero, a Jewish Spider-Man if you will, someone to admire. Pop was forced to leave Ukraine in the early 20th century because of his Jewish identity. He was sent to Siberia by anti-Semitic paramilitary groups, to shoe and break wild horses. As the story goes, he escaped to Prussia and befriended a family who took him in. Just before he could be captured again, the family helped him sneak onto a ship, and he escaped to America. Pop landed in Galveston, Texas, around 1915. He had no money and didn’t speak the language, but he sold scrap metal from a wheelbarrow on the street and built a business that still exists today. When I finished telling this grand tale of heroism to my son, I peered into the rearview mirror, expecting to find a look of awe and admiration on his face. Instead, I saw worry.

“Mommy?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Will I have to run away on a ship too?”

My tale of courage and heroism had not landed as planned. That was when it hit me: I had just accidentally passed along my own generational trauma to my son, trauma I didn’t even realize I was lugging around. There should be a specific word to describe the exact moment that a phrase you’ve heard hundreds of times finally barrels into your soul. Epiphany is too romantic. A bolt of lightning is closer, but a touch dramatic. I laughed at the president’s joke about generational trauma that night of Yom Kippur, but sitting in the car that day with my son, I finally, truly understood it.

So I laughed. Isn’t that also part of Jewish generational trauma? We lean on humor as a means of survival. By giggling at a completely inappropriate time, I was adhering to centuries of tradition.

I don’t think it’s fate or coincidence that my first attempt to introduce my son to Judaism, to keep Pop’s memory alive, coincided with this recent violence in the Middle East.

I told my son that of course he wouldn’t have to run away on a ship. He was safe. But what was running through my mind in answer to his question was “I hope not, kid.”

Studies have shown that religion is becoming less important to Americans, with more people distancing themselves from organized religion than in decades past. As a parent, I’m trying to introduce my child to his heritage without weighing him down with the guilt I carry over abandoning the traditions that my ancestors quite literally risked their lives to perpetuate.

I don’t think it’s fate or coincidence that my first attempt to introduce my son to Judaism, to keep Pop’s memory alive, coincided with this recent violence in the Middle East. In a sermon reprinted in The New York Times, the Brooklyn Rabbi Rachel Timoner wrote, “Please do not stop doing all of the Jewish things you do. Every one of them, every Jewish thing you do, matters.” This plea has been necessary for centuries. Continuing with traditions can sometimes feel like a risk, though.

Since that first day of Sunday school, the bloodshed in the Middle East has filled so many of us with fear, even from thousands of miles away.

This past weekend, I struggled with the decision to take my son back to Sunday school or keep him home. Searching for an answer, I called my dad and, sounding like a child myself, asked, “Dad, why do they hate us?”

There is no answer to that question. Or there are a million answers.

The Sunday school director assured me that officers would be patrolling. I felt guilty for even contemplating not taking him, as if I’d be failing as a parent, a person. Sunday morning, I woke up with a churning stomach. I was full of anxiety. What if I dropped him off and something unimaginable happened? What if the clothes I was pulling out of my son’s drawer would be the last clothes he’d ever wear? I know as American parents we struggle with these thoughts even sending our kids to school every day, and yet we live our lives. We don’t let phantom fears keep us from amusement parks or parades or grocery stores. I knew I should take my son that morning, but I just couldn’t.

I told my husband and my dad I wanted to keep my son home, just for this week. I was fortunate that I could even make that choice.

“I hate to see terrorists disrupt our lives,” my dad said. “But you’re the mom. You know what’s best.”

I appreciate his confidence, but do I? Nothing bad happened at the temple that day. I could have dropped him off and he never would have to know about my churning stomach or the news or the terrible scenarios running through my mind. Instead of feeling guilty, though, I’ll try to go a little easy on myself. He missed one day. There will be so many more, I hope, for us all.

Dina Gachman is a Pulitzer Center grantee and a frequent contributor to The New York Times, Vox, Texas Monthly, and more. Her book So Sorry For Your Loss: How I Learned To Live With Grief, and Other Grave Concerns was published by Union Square & Co. in April 2023.