Jewishy Irishy for real...

Today I'd like to take a break from the flow of general-lifely-blogging...

to think about Jewishy Irishy for real. (Maybe because nothing much happened yesterday?)

Right now I'm in the process of writing a kid's book for interfaith families and also, I'm attempting to compile a collection of essays by half-Jew-ish writers.

But I'd like to take a minute to think about WHY this matters, why it's worth my time at all.

When JewishyIrishy.com began last month... it began because I was lonely, because I felt a need to make a little community of my OWN KIND. I had discovered a few JewishyIrishy types and I felt a kinship with them...

and I wanted more.

But in thinking about this anthology, I find myself thinking about it as an exporation of the diversity within the interfaith community.

I don't want to DESCRIBE what it is to BE JEWISHY. I want to provoke a dialogue about how it feels to be outside the streamlined religious identity. I don't want to create a whole new subset (though that subset IS forming), I want to discuss being outside, with people who feel outside.

Which is different, I think.

Because I think anomalies are interesting, and this may not be an anomaly for very long. I think it's possible that the reason I know so many in-betweenish writers...

is that there is something in the nature of being in-betweenish that makes one self-examine. That there is something about identifying OUTSIDE the norm that makes one want to think about identity differently.

Which is, often, fruitful.

Anyone disagree?