WFMW: My Faith (a confession)

This post represents a distinct break from the usual content you will find here at Trial and Error Home Ec. Over the last year, I have put together notes and ideas for homeschooling. DS E (hereafter known as “The Bat”) has just turned three, and he is eager to learn “grown up stuff,” like counting, the letters, and about animals. We are quickly approaching the “preschool” phase of our homeschool.

As we embark on that journey, homeschooling will become part of this blog’s regular content, and with it, information about our lifestyle. However, many aspects of our lifestyle are not mainstream, especially our religious convictions. After much discussion with my husband—which mostly consisted of my being hesitant and his being enthusiastically supportive—we’ve decided that this blog needs to be about our lives, rather than just about isolated tips-and-tricks or cute things the kids did. Trial and Error will still have those components, and I’m not much for journaling, so those components will still dominate, but there is going to be a new level of transparency into our lives. That transparency starts with this post.

My family’s biggest divergence from mainstream America, “conservatism,” or even “religious conservatism” is our faith. To put it bluntly, we’re Jewish. You will never find a pork or shellfish recipe on this blog, and I don’t put milk in my meatloaf.

By the same token, though, we are pretty different from most Jews, too. We belong to a small, Jewish minority called Karaism. Most Jews have rabbis who lead their services and function in much the same way as a Protestant pastor or priest. Karaites do not have rabbis. Most Jews (called Rabbinic, because they have rabbis) follow a set of laws and doctrine developed from commentaries on the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament in a different order) called the “Oral Torah.” Karaites do not believe in an Oral Torah. We draw all of our law and doctrine from the Hebrew Bible, and, for the most part, are hesitant to draw law from anywhere other than the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). We use the other books of the Hebrew Bible as sources for explanation, inspiration, precedent, and tradition. To bring that back to common parlance, we do not have Rosh Hashanah or Hanukkah; we do not separate meat and dairy other than that we do not boil red meat and milk together; and we do not dress like Orthodox Jews. If you are curious for more information, please follow the link to my husband’s blog, Benei Mikra (Sons of the Scripture), where I am also a contributor.

While that is a significant difference from most of the blogs I frequent, the fact is that my values, social beliefs, and political convictions are pretty similar to those of many conservative Christian mommy bloggers. Having been raised in a very liberal family and region, Christian blogs are one of the few places I can go for encouragement in my convictions, even though we have different belief systems informing those shared convictions.

Neither my husband nor I were raised in religious households—we were secular, liberal Americans. We both came from broken homes, and wanted better for our children. We also have goals that were distinctly unwelcome in liberal circles. As is the case with so many of the Christian bloggers I read, a conservative, religious lifestyle is something that happened after marriage through experience, trial and error, and most importantly, God’s Grace.

I welcome any questions and comments that are respectful and sincere. Between now and April, I will be sharing parts of my story a little at a time. I know from very personal experience (some of it quite painful) that my faith Works for Me.