Tulips For Easter

A young woman friend, who joins us regularly for Friday evening dinner, brought my wife for Easter a vase of beautiful red tulips and a box of delicious chocolate candies. The Friday dinner is the Sabbath meal. My wife is a Jew; but she has reclaimed her Jewish heritage only in past eight years, since 9/11 shocked us out of our spiritual and political torpor. We begin the meal at sundown with lighting of candles and recitation in Hebrew of a prayer of thanks to God. My wife's parents were secular Jews, so my wife was raised with nary a religious sentiment. Her mother is still at eighty-three years hostile to establishment religion. Nonetheless, her mother loves Easter baskets. The baskets satisfy the unsuppressed anthropological curiosity with which she observes non-Jewish religious practices. My wife took her a basket a day ago. When my wife was in college and for some years after, she was fascinated by the Quakers; but she did not convert to Christianity. Nonetheless, our friend's Easter gift was appropriate and we love her for it. We are an interfaith family. I was raised Christian, but lapsed into a shroud of doubt. My wife's nephew, who lives with us, is a Messianic Jew. We all rejoice this Easter. And we hope your spirit bathes in Easter's promise.