When you say "keep a Jewish home," what does that mean?

January 19, 2018 6:40 AM

I recently said in the context of conversion that it was important to me to "keep a Jewish home" but then when I was pressed for what that meant, I realized that there was not one universal definition even though it seemed very obvious and self-evident in my head. I'm interested in hearing yours. If you "keep a Jewish home," what does that mean to you?

Examples, things you do and don't do, decisions you have made with your family or significant other, etc. I'm super interested in the different ways this is defined. For some people it is "no pork in the house," and for others it is "we only celebrate Jewish holidays in the house and no Christian ones," or even "we try to make sure our menorah is more prominently placed than our Christmas tree." Or, "we have mezuzot on all our doors."

If you're willing, please also include your age/ish, sex, where in the world you live, and whether you were raised Jewish-religious, Jewish-secular, etc.

posted by juniperesque to Society & Culture (19 answers total)

I'm 34, born and raised in NJ but currently living in New York state. I consider myself an agnostic, but culturally Jewish. My mom is Jewish; my dad was Christian, and we were raised as "half-Jewish," celebrating both holidays.

To me, keeping a Jewish home means keeping kosher, observing Shabbos and other Jewish holidays and no Christian ones, definitely mezuzot, cleaning out the chametz before Passover, that sort of thing. I would also expect (though it's not really required) more traditional gender roles in the family, with the wife, if there is one, doing most of the at-home religious observances. That's pretty much how my Orthodox-ish grandmother maintained her household.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:32 AM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]

By having an argument about what is a Jewish home, you are keeping a Jewish home.

My good friend (lesbian couple, 50s) does not keep kosher, but they light candles on Friday night and have a big meaty dinner. Their ketubah is on the wall of their home. They celebrate the major holidays, and their vocabulary is sprinked with Yiddishisms, what a putz, etc.

Yeah, it varies from house to house and person to person in that house.
posted by Melismata at 7:33 AM on January 19, 2018 [35 favorites]

My household is exactly what Melismata describes. And I think it is personal - you get to define it (of course people who are more religiously conservative may disagree).
posted by anya32 at 7:51 AM on January 19, 2018

Don't keep strictly kosher here, but no treyf in the house, and no pork gets eaten at all (even outside.) Shabbat with candles, kiddush, challah, benching etc at home every Friday; we don't accept social invitations on Friday evenings. Sometimes havdalah on Saturday evening if I think of it. All major and some minor holidays celebrated, often with guests invited. Sukkah built every year, with lulav ceremony; we eat out there at least once and sometimes kids sleep in it. Major fasts observed. Passover gets fancy traditional seder with guests, Hagadah reading, etc. Involvement at attended synagogue. Nobody here believes in standard "God."

I also wouldn't presume to tell anyone else they're doing it right or wrong, with the exception of the folks whose practices include deliberate, performative contempt for the rest of the tribe's beliefs and traditions. Unfortunately there are enough of those out there to make them a category.
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:55 AM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Like everyone else says, most Jews who aren't Chasidic (who have exceptionally strict and codified rules about such things) define this for themselves more-or-less. I grew up among mostly-secular (occasionally atheist, even) Jewish Soviet immigrants who, if asked, would absolutely say that their pork-containing household is a Jewish Home because there's Jews living in it and if the pogroms come back they're coming back to their household as much as any other Jews.
posted by griphus at 7:57 AM on January 19, 2018 [38 favorites]

(For demographics: 33, moved from the USSR to NYC in 1991 as a small child, raised with "Jewishness" being primarily our family's ethnicity, not particularly affected in any way by keeping up any aspects of the culture and/or religion. )
posted by griphus at 8:04 AM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

By having an argument about what is a Jewish home, you are keeping a Jewish home.

Exactly. There's definitely a thing within Judaism that "keeping a Jewish home" is one aspect of really practicing the faith as opposed to just saying "Hey I was born this way" My background is a lot like PhoBWanKenobi's and I didn't really consider myself Jewish until college but now I really do. I am from Massachusetts, live in Vermont, am almost 50, mother's family still very Jewy and very familail with me. Father's family very WASPy and mostly standoffish. I'm not sure if I keep a Jewish home in any intentional way but what I definitely don't do is celebrate any other religious holidays. I make matzoh ball soup occasionally. I have a (tilted) mezuzah on the front door and "kiss" it when I go inside. I light a menorah for Hannukah most years. But I also eat pork and don't observe basically anything else Jewishwise.

because there's Jews living in it and if the pogroms come back they're coming back to their household as much as any other Jews.

To me, I have a Jewish home but I'm not sure if it's the same as "keeping" one just because I don't have kids so there's not a sense that there are people in the house being educated in the Jewish traditions. I have local friends who observe most of the Jewish holidays with their kids and their parents (they always invite me over which is sweet) and do the very Jewish thing about talking about all the holidays that have come before and who said what to whom and remember that one time back in Brooklyn... etc.
posted by jessamyn at 8:21 AM on January 19, 2018 [9 favorites]

I have a Jewish home but I'm not sure if it's the same as "keeping" one

Yeah I was actually trying to craft a followup bc I realized this question is in the context of conversion and the idea of converting to Judaism doesn't have a neat place within the context of "being Jewish" as an ethnicity. I def. agree there's a difference between "having" and "keeping" a Jewish home.
posted by griphus at 8:24 AM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

To me, I have a Jewish home but I'm not sure if it's the same as "keeping" one just because I don't have kids so there's not a sense that there are people in the house being educated in the Jewish traditions.

Personally, I'd say we are a Jewish household (my husband has a background similar to mine) but that we don't keep one--we celebrate a few Jewish holidays (Passover and Hanukkah, mostly) but also Christian/Pagan holidays. I have a mezuzah on my office door, but that's our only one. We occasionally, but rarely, light candles. Our practice lacks a broader intentionality on cultivating a "Jewish" environment, which I think is what's meant by "keeping a Jewish home."
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 8:27 AM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

if you're looking for advice (I know you didn't say you were... offering it anyway because I think it's what my convert husband would say) I'd say that weekly traditional Shabbat dinner is probably the single most important thing you can do to "keep a Jewish home." It combines frequency; regularity; centrality (food, and the demarcation of the working week vs home/family time). It is pleasant. It is home-centered. It is inexpensive (as opposed to, say, keeping kosher, which is pricey unless you're vegetarian.) It can be as simple or as fancy as you want, its religious ritual as involved or as bare-bones as you want, while still being recognizable as what it is.
posted by fingersandtoes at 8:45 AM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]

We keep on re-telling my grandparents silly borscht-belt jokes despite their relative lack of funniness. (They become funnier each time we tell them?) We celebrate major holidays. We talk about how to raise our children with a sense of being Jewish-- while generally failing to follow through in any actionable way. We don't celebrate Christmas even in a secular sense. We are aware of how being Jews has impacted our near family- The Soviet Union for my husband's parents, the Holocaust for my grandparents. We do Shabbat when we get around to it. We *feel* Jewish both inside and outside our home.
posted by jeszac at 8:45 AM on January 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

For me, the phrase "keeping a Jewish home" implies a more observant home than what someone might describe in saying that it's important to maintain Jewish traditions in their home, or who says it's important to have a culturally Jewish family, but one that is less observant than a home described as "kosher" or "shomer shabbos."

My assumption would be that the home of someone who self-describes as "keeping a Jewish home" would have things like a mezuzah, wouldn't serve pork (and possibly also shellfish) and would celebrate the Jewish holidays. But I would also assume that the family did not have a divided kitchen, probably is okay with mixing dairy and meat, doesn't purchase OU-certified kosher foods, doesn't strictly observe the sabbath, etc. Mostly, this is because they would tend to use a more specific descripotion if thag wwere the case.
posted by slkinsey at 9:13 AM on January 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

40, Rust Belt for lyfe, raised in a very lightly observant Conservative home (Shabbat candles lit on Friday nights, no treyf in the house although some of us ate it elsewhere, schlepped to temple on high holidays). After my parents divorced, half of my family became *very* observant, eventually identifying as Modern Orthodox, and the other half slid into even more lax practices. Once I left home and was able to choose for myself, I became non-practicing but do identify as culturally Jewish, even while not maintaining any observances.

While I personally agree with everyone who says that a Jewish home is what you make it, if someone said to me that they were, "...keeping a Jewish home," I would probably assume that they were a) keeping kosher, including divided sinks, separated dishware, etc. and b) keeping a traditional Shabbat, with phones and electronics off from Friday sundown to Saturday night, walking to temple on Saturday, etc. I also wouldn't be surprised if children were being sent to a Jewish day school and if adults were keeping to traditional dress codes, with tzitzit and head coverings for the men, covered hair and modest dress for the women. But that's definitely my own experience speaking!
posted by merriment at 9:21 AM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'd expect to see the following:

* shomer kashrus (recognizing that this is itself its own rabbit hole of complexity and differences of opinion)
* shomer shabbos
* attending shul on the major Jewish holidays (Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, etc) and at least some of the minor ones. I'd say you could call yourself "keeping a Jewish home" and not go all out for Tu B'Shvat.
* I wouldn't necessarily expect shomer negiah but anybody who practices shomer negiah would likely self-describe as keeping a Jewish home.
posted by theorique at 10:32 AM on January 19, 2018

For me, "keeping a Jewish home" means you're making an effort that, at least when you are at home, you're identifying as 100% Jewish. So nothing explicitly pertaining to other religions goes on there (no celebrating Christmas or Easter, no saints or shrines on the walls or the mantle), and that you're actively making an attempt to be Jewish while you're there - keeping the sabbath in whatever way is meaningful to you as a day of separation and rest (whether that's lighting candles, or eating chicken noodle soup, or having the whole family eat dinner together and stay in, or turning all phones off, all the way to full-on keeping shabbat), celebrating the holidays (either all of them, or all the ones you know about), and owning - and using - at least a few Jewish ceremonial items (a menorah, mezuzahs on the doors, a seder plate).

If someone in a mixed marriage said they keep a Jewish home, I'd assume that meant the kids were being raised as Jews, not as both.

For what it's worth, in the Orthodox world you say you "keep a kosher home" if that's what you do - if someone told me "I keep a Jewish home," I would assume they don't keep kosher (or the sabbath) unless told otherwise.

Late 40's, raised religious Conservative, now Modern Orthodox. The above are only personal opinions.
posted by Mchelly at 10:44 AM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]

My house has a mezuzuh on the main entrance, shabbos candlesticks prominently displayed next to our tzedakah box (the havdalah set used to be with them, but it was banished to the dining room), three different siddurs randomly lying around the house, a menorah on top of the fridge because we still haven't gotten around to cleaning off the rest of the top of the fridge so we can get to the cabinet where the menorah should be kept, lots and lots and lots of Jewish books, a seemingly bottomless supply of gelt in the kitchen junk drawer because I always buy it for Hanukkah but never give it to Kid Ruki, a giant bottle of Kedem grape juice for Kiddush, and approximately 47 boxes of matzoh ball mix in my pantry.

Some guys from Chabad stopped by last year on Purim and they haven't been back since, so I guess I keep a sufficiently Jewish home. (Dear Chabad of Northern RI: When a woman who is home alone answers the door to four men in their twenties, the appropriate greeting is not "We're here to party" even if it IS Purim.)
posted by Ruki at 12:11 PM on January 19, 2018 [13 favorites]

a Jewish home is a home where Jews are.

they'll also probably have some Jewish stuff, for being Jewish with - Jewish books, Shabbat candles, maybe a mezuzah on the door. Jewish things are done there.

kosher really isn't a big deal in the circles I run in - some people are, some people aren't. It doesn't change the Jewishness of the home.

/convert, reform, 1885 Pittsburgh Platform for the win.
posted by jb at 7:52 PM on January 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Conservative Jew, born & raised in NYC, still live here, 40 yo, m. I keep kosher at home & out (though of course, everyone's precise practice for keeping kosher varies), including two sets of dishes/cutlery/cookware, etc.; candles/kiddush/challah on Shabbat when I'm with my partner; attend services for Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur and the occasional Friday night; mezzuzah on my front door; a cabinet with a bunch of Judaica in my living room; several books on Judaism/Jewish topics on my bookshelf; light candles for Chanukah and display menorah in window; own a tallis & wear it at services on High Holidays.

Not shomer Shabbat but take off work and stop using computer/phone on High Holidays. I also have been helping my partner, who is Jewish but was not raised in a particularly Jewish home, learn the Hebrew alphabet.

When I was married, I had a large ketubah that was prominently framed on my living room wall. I miss that ketubah.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 10:48 PM on January 19, 2018

Oh, meant to add! Hold seders & kasher my home for Passover. I used to have separate sets of dishes, etc. just for Passover, but (in a rare reduction of observance for me), I stopped doing that after my wife died. Just too much effort. I'm also leaning toward consuming kitniyot on Passover this year.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 10:52 PM on January 19, 2018