Growing up,if we sat down to dinner as a family,the discussion ran something like this:
Me: Pass the taco shells?
Big Brother (not ever picking his eyes up from his book): No.
我：妈妈！他不会给我贝壳的！
妈妈（从厨房里喊道）：耐心点！
Enter Sisters,giggling.
妹妹1：EWWW！Someone farted!
Mom (jumping in from kitchen): We don't use THAT WORD at the dinner table!
结束场景。On Shabbat,the dinner dialogue was similar,但包括我爸爸和他60个表兄弟中的一些，再加上一些孩子或者其他人在摩托车还没完工之前就崩溃了。
Cut to nowadays.我答应当我有自己的家庭时，我们会尽可能每晚都有文明的家庭聚餐。In fact,周五晚上几乎是only时间到了，我们不能一起吃饭了，因为我们和一个拉比结婚了。
说到家里有个拉比…我想我们家的晚餐谈话有点不同，like this recent example:
Me: Just because it's healthy doesn't mean it's not yummy.
Almost 11-Year-Old Daughter (bringing the cups for water): How was everyone's day?
15-Year-Old Daughter: Well good,but my teachers don't know ANYTHING.
Youngest Daughter: Mine does.但是数学很难。
Husband: Someone died today.
这常常使我们的谈话停顿下来。The youngest did not like this topic.She was terrified of the mere mention of the word.I figured there was no reason to push her too early to confront her fears,所以我请求我的拉比丈夫不要谈论这个话题。
与此同时，the eldest shares my own fascination for with death.Casualty of being an artist I suppose.
Death is,crass as it may sound,a common occurrence in a large congregation,所以我想知道为什么要把这个提到我们的餐桌上。Looking at his face,it was clear he was heavy with pain.No matter how many years in the rabbinate,葬礼没有变得容易,for how does one synthesize or truly summarize the life of another?But it wasn't just the mystery of how to communicate this person's life to others that I saw in my husband's face that night.
"It was just so hard.This woman truly asked me to tell her the meaning of life in the aftermath of her sister dying."
We listened.An older woman,80多岁时，在一个相当合适的地方失去了生命，自然原因有点像。After spending some two hours with her family—time for a clergy member to get to know all the details about the deceased so as to plan a eulogy and give the family some time to vent—our sweet rabbi drove home for dinner with his own family.姐姐在路上给他打电话。她的声音，他说，had a degree of determination.她坚定不移地试图从我丈夫那里了解宇宙的秩序，她的犹太教教士and she wanted answers.NOW.
我们讨论过这个。在这艘黑暗的生命之船上，只有我们为自己建造的锚是多么可怕。我们谈到上帝是一个可能的概念来寻求安慰，but for the academics and teenagers at my table,那种感觉太笼统了，无法给出答案。We talked about what this woman might really want—did she really believe that the guy we joke with,他们叫爸爸的那个真实的andonly王国的答案？We talked about what he might be able to offer her.
I was proud of my girls.I was proud that they didn't run away from this one and its non-concrete answers.Our older one is very invested in her own teen version of this search for meaning,她和其他男演员的朋友一样，and I was grateful that she was confronted by an older person's quest.From this less attached place,我觉得她更加同情我。
The truth is,I am happy that such a discussion goes on at my dinner table.When I was younger,我每年都会跑到夏令营去探险，and was only fed pocket answers of gratitude and religion at home.我嫁给了一个成为拉比的人，and amongst the things I love about being the clergy's family is that we have the honor of exploring topics that are often avoided or talked about insensitively,gossipy.
My children claim that it is very difficult being RKs (rabbi's kids) and I know it truly can be,but when such challenges persist,these unique opportunities for growth abound.
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