About twenty two years ago my brother became a religious fanatic of sorts. It was when his daughter was born and she weighed 1.9 lbs that he made a deal with god that he would be a good Jew and would devote himself to god if she would live and thrive.
Recently, a friend wrote and said I should take Tin to the synagogue, teach him the path of Judaism because he will need god at some point in his life and he will have to know the way.
I thought about how I would provide Tin with a religious education in the household of one atheist mom and one wandering Jewish mom, and my only answer is to teach him everything and more.
When we were going to adopt, we asked the birthmothers if it were a boy to not have him circumcised. My brother was aghast when I told him this. But I have been to enough bris’s in my life to tell you there is no good that comes from circumcision and its ritual is archaic and not relative to the modern world. There is a group now trying to make a law against circumcision – of course this is a grassroots movement in California, which makes me feel better about the west that seemed to have lost its way as an upstart and was becoming as static as the east because its affluence – sometimes a little economic uncertainty is a good thing.