I'm sitting in a Rabbi's chair, at a Rabbi's desk, listening to Iron & Wine's Jezebel, and in the background there's another Rabbi's voice booming from a tape deck in the children's rooms as they pretend to fall asleep.
I'm sure they don't understand half the words coming out of those speakers, but this is how they go to bed, listening to a man preaching things they don't understand, can't comprehend, and are too young to even contemplate. But it soothes them, and I find that interesting more than anything else.
It really is true that the way a person is raised molds them into who they are, even if longer down the road they reject everything they were ever taught. My dad was raised as a religous Jew in Israel his whole childhood, went to religious boarding schools and almost got expelled when he talked to a girl, and the second he got out of there and he dropped the act, because that's what it was for him, an act. He used to tell me about how the first time he tried pork he dashed under the table for fear of G-d smiting him, which is of course an embellishment, but you see the point. But even now, after being rejected by some of his family members, scorned and so on, he is proud of me when I learn something about our heritage, about our religion, sing him a song or prayer in hebrew, and sometimes he sings along with me. Maybe it's just because he's my dad, or maybe it's something else, but he truly admires and is happy that I love just what he ran away from.
So maybe it's not exactly true that how you're raised is how you stay, because I wasn't raised with these prayers and songs and facts in my life, but I found them, I sought them and now they are with me.
Whether or not I believe in all of these things my religion calls truth is a different story, and I question just as much as any other. In fact, my views on the presence of G-d change constantly. All I know for sure is it's nice to have something to hope for, to pray to, and I notice even those with no faith or so-called religion sometimes pray for things as well.
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