When my mother was visiting us, she and I had an argument that left me in tears. She and I rarely argue these days so I suspect it was a surprise to both of us. Worse, despite strong pragmatic streaks in both of us, it was over an issue with little practical value and no clear resolution. My mother and I argued over religion even though I have spent more than forty years of my life sidestepping that fight. I must be out of practice or perhaps I am just weary and I think we ultimately agreed to disagree. Maybe we agreed never to discuss it again but I�m not even sure about that. All I know for sure is that we both backed away.

I have jokingly said on many occasions that I am the product of a long line of mixed marriages. In its own way, it is true. My grandfather came from a Chassidic Jewish family which believed in a form of Judaism that elevates faith and spirit over formal learning. My grandmother came from a Mitnaged Jewish family that disapproved of the Chassidic movement and held to the supreme importance of learning, particularly learning of Torah. I�m told that my great-grandfathers could not be left in a room together. Grandpa, who had little formal education but was self-taught and an intellectual by natural inclination, easily embraced learning for his children. I know that my father felt the pull between the families. He has explained that his mother worked to keep distance between him and his father�s family. What I do not know is whether he felt any religious pull between the two.

My parents too are both Jewish. My father, a first generation American, came from a family that observed every holiday. As he grew, they moved a bit farther from their Orthodox Jewish roots but religion was a part of every week and every season. My mother, whose family has been in this country for quite some time, grew up in a family that observed nothing Jewish by the time she joined it�and they had a Christmas tree. While my grandmothers could be left in a room together, that fact was a testament only to their manners, not their natural inclinations.

Currently, I believe they have come to an agreement on religion�or at least they are very close. But religion was a hot topic in the household of my youth. My mother agreed to send me and my siblings to religious and Hebrew school on Sundays and select days after school. She nominally joined the synagogue and she drove the carpools to get us both to services and to the school. She allowed us free participation in my Dad�s family�s religious rituals. But I always knew that she did not believe�no, it was more than that she did not believe�and that she did not like it.

To be fair to my mother, religion was used as a weapon against her. My Dad�s mom did not like my mother. Probably, she would not have liked any woman who married my father. I suspect if the weapon had not have been religion, it would have been something else. My Dad has suggested that she would have liked a more pliable woman from a more similar background to his. But my grandmother was far more complex than that. She would have disliked that type of woman because she would not have respected her. I�ve always believed that, conventional as she wanted to be, she could not stop herself from admiring spunk.

I came away from the experience with an odd message. �Go to religious school, make the best of it, but don�t like it.� I was a failure. I could either stay away or go and like it but I couldn�t go for years and years and not like it. Worse, I cannot participate and not discuss it. I am a talker and that�s the way it is.

And the person I most like to discuss religion with is my father. He has a breadth of knowledge and background and he is intellectually curious. He is not wedded to conventional views. With him, I can safely test what I think and what I believe. Although he no longer believes, we enjoy the discussion.

But it bothers my mother. It makes her feel left out and different�and she is not shy about saying so. She is welcome to join the conversation, of course, but she does not want to. She wants to stop the conversation and often I�ve let her.

But these days I rarely see my parents or speak to my parents when they do not come as a matched set. My house is small and I�m not sure it would help to have me and Dad take our conversation to another room. We are rarely at her house without the rest of the family around. If I call, chances are that I will get both parents and working to get him alone seems more exclusionary.

And I am torn between my parents, torn between expressed desires and unexpressed ones, torn between families and beliefs, not knowing where loyalty or disloyalty lies.

I feel like I am seven again. But even today, even forty years later, I cannot find the bridge to bring it all together.

I�m sorry, Mom, but I don�t know how to make this one right. I never did.

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