This is a piece I read last night at Bar Flies, the monthly spoken word series at Valley Bar in downtown Phoenix. In the coming months I’ll write more about the girls’ b’not mitzvah (that’s what it’s called when there are two girls participating) and how the process is working specifically for Sophie. So far, so good. 

A few weeks ago, I took my daughters to a local synagogue for Friday night services.

We don’t typically ring in the Jewish Sabbath at a house of worship. Bacon and eggs at the International House of Pancakes is more like it, followed by a hard crash on the living room couch.

But here we were — a little late, dressed up and awkwardly juggling prayer books meant to be read back to front (because Hebrew is read from right to left).

I didn’t realize I was singing along with the prayers until my younger daughter poked me.

“Hey mom,” Sophie stage-whispered, “how come you know the words?”

“Well,” I whispered back, “a long time ago, I had my own bat mitzvah and–” I stopped, noticing that we were drawing stares, and not only because Sophie had insisted that we sit in the center of the front row.

Sophie is 12 (12 and five sixths, she’ll quickly tell you; she turns 13 in May) and she has Down syndrome. People stare.

My older daughter Annabelle — who is almost 15 and therefore wants nothing more than to be invisible — shushed us both, and we all turned back to the service.

Afterward there was cake and fruit and we chatted with a nice family – a mom, a dad, and two girls about my own daughters’ ages.

“This must be hard for you, doing it all on your own,” the mother clucked, motioning to Sophie.

I looked at her, confused. Then I got it.

“Oh!” I said, laughing. “I have a husband. He’s just not here tonight.”

I toyed with telling her the truth, that earlier in the day I’d invited Ray to come along to synagogue and he’d quickly declined, announcing he was quite certain he’d be turned into a pillar of salt if he dared to step foot in a house of worship.

Instead I stammered something about how he had to work late.

I am fond of telling people that I have a mixed marriage. Ray is a Republican (well, more of a Libertarian), and I am a Democrat (ok, sort of a communist). He likes to camp, I prefer hotels. He is pro-gun and pro-cat. I am neither. He has a PC, I have a Mac. He likes Game of Thrones; I watch Girls.

And he was raised Catholic. In my own defense, I swear to God – or, you know, whoever’s up there – that when we met, I thought Ray was Jewish. You would have, too. We were in our mid twenties, he was an ad salesman at New Times with dark curly hair and glasses. He grew up in Queens! HIS LAST NAME IS STERN.

So kill me. I assumed.

One Monday morning, not long after we’d met, Ray asked what I’d done over the weekend. I told him that I went to my cousin’s bat mitzvah.

“Bat Mitzvah?” he asked. “Huh. Is that for a boy or a girl?”

FUCK.

In the end – rather, at the beginning – it really didn’t matter, because Ray had given up Catholicism long ago and I wasn’t much of a Jew.

I am not sure when he stopped believing – if he ever did believe – but by the time we met, Ray had amassed quite a collection of fossils, which he kept around the house to show to the children of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to the door.

I remember my own moment quite precisely. I was in first grade, at religious school, in the middle of making a paper mache replica of the torah when suddenly, it hit me like a bolt of lightning:

“We are doing all this shit for that God person everyone keeps talking about.”

I chuckled quietly to myself, shook my head, and went back to trying to wrap wet newspaper around empty cardboard toilet paper rolls, mostly because I knew that after that we were going to bake challah bread, and I was hungry. Also because I was 6, and did not yet have access to a car.

And so went my Jewish education. It was easier to go along than pitch a fit – and the food was pretty good.

So who cared that our religions didn’t match? Ray and I were married by a judge; our friends read passages by Pablo Neruda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. We walked down the aisle to both Led Zeppelin and Bach.

I like to think that Ray and I have made our own kind of religion as we’ve gone along. For all of our differences, we share a joint belief in more things than you’d guess: the Beatles; annual trips to Disneyland; that giant black dogs are awesome pets; that Rent is the greatest Broadway musical ever; that it’s important to stay up till 2 am on Christmas Eve, wrapping presents and chugging Bailey’s; and that our girls should be raised Jewish.

Up until the kid part, we made it work without much effort.

One night, when I was about six months pregnant with Annabelle, Ray and I were out for pizza and talk turned to religion. I had been avoiding the topic for years. What if he’d changed his mind about the Jewish thing?

He hadn’t. We talked about what it meant to be in a minority in our hate-filled world, particularly our corner of it, in Maricopa County, Arizona. 9/11 was a few months off; we had no idea how hate-filled the world really was.

“I want our children to know they’re Jewish before someone else tells them they’re Jewish,” he said.

I swooned.

Putting the Jewish thing into practice proved more difficult. Neither of us had any desire to partake of organized religion beyond stockings hung with care and the row of candles in the menorah – and so we didn’t.

Until last fall, we still hadn’t come up with a plan to get the girls any sort of formal religious education.

The closest we got was our annual Passover seder, the springtime dinner party held to commemorate the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. These seders have grown more irreverent as the years have passed. Last year’s theme was “Passover the Musical.” We sang some traditional songs; Annabelle played her ukelele; then Sophie and and a friend sang Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” Ray played Metallica’s “Creeping Death,” his own nod to the story of the Jews’ exodus.

Sitting in our backyard with flickering candlelight and sangria (my version of the traditional, terrible Passover wine), surrounded by people we love, I felt almost spiritual. It was just right.

We didn’t need any more than this. Or did we?

With Sophie’s 13^th birthday looming, I felt a decision had to be made. To bat mitzvah or not to bat mitzvah? We’d already missed the deadline for Annabelle. We were close to blowing it altogether.

I visited synagogues, interviewed rabbis, got into some fights on Facebook, and ultimately decided to go rogue. We hired a tutor and I’m calling this Our Year of Living Religiously. Most Sunday mornings the girls and I drive to Mesa, where they spend an hour learning prayers and asking questions. They now have Hebrew names. They’ve been to a Friday night service. We have made hamantaschen for Purim, an obscure (and really fucking hard to make) pastry for an obscure holiday.

It feels right. It’s not much, but it’s something. And both girls are loving it. They haven’t even started asking about the party – yet.

That leaves Ray. He had not partaken of any of our Jewish activities until last weekend, when we all traveled to Denver for my niece’s bat mitzvah.

My sister took a different path than mine. She married a guy she met at Charles Pearlstein in the Pines, the summer camp that all the Phoenix Jews (but me) attended when we were growing up. There was never any question about how Jenny and Jonathan would raise their kids. Kate’s bat mitzvah was lovely and traditional. And long.

Ray, Annabelle, Sophie and I lined up on a hard wooden bench at Tempe Israel on a crisp Saturday morning. The girls and I opened our prayer books, back to front. Ray’s book sat awkwardly on his lap. But he rose and sat with the congregation and he was wearing a tie – hell, he was THERE — so I could hardly complain.

A few minutes in, Sophie dropped her prayer book. It made a loud, embarrassing thud and before I could lean over to grab it, Ray had it in his hands. He whispered the page number to her, carefully helping her flip the right spot.

And when he sat down, I noticed he opened his own book.

“My Heart Can’t Even Believe It: A Story of Science, Love, and Down Syndrome” will be published by Woodbine House April 15. You can pre-order it from Changing Hands Bookstore and come to my release party May 1 or pre-order on Amazon. For more information about tour dates visit myheartcantevenbelieveit.com and here’s a book trailer.

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time in synagogue.

No, I haven’t found religion. It’s bar/bat mitzvah season. Those kids my friends and family had 13 (or so) years ago are all grown up (sort of) and many are participating in the traditional coming-of-age ceremony for Jews.

I love watching these kids get up in front of dozens of people and practice what others have preached for centuries — continuing traditions, creating their own community, demonstrating pride in their heritage.

I want that for my own kids. Ray agrees. He was raised Catholic, but abandoned that ship long ago and we’ve raised our girls as Jews — if you count apples and honey at Rosh Hashanah and seders with themes like “Heavy Metal Seder” and “Passover on a Stick” at Passover. They’ve had no formal Jewish education; they are certainly not ready for bat mitzvahs.

And yet, if it’s going to happen, it’s time. Past due, actually.

So this afternoon, I have an appointment with a rabbi. I’m starting at the temple where I was bat mitzvahed. I called last week to get on the rabbi’s schedule and the receptionist asked me to spell my last name. I started very slowly then stopped and said, “I guess I don’t have to spell so slowly for you?”

She laughed. In Phoenix, one grows accustomed to spelling an “exotic” name like  Silverman several times — no one ever gets it right. I often find myself translating Yiddish terms,  explaining even the most basic Jewish holiday. My high school was lily white; as a Jew, I was the minority. I still am, most of the time. So are my girls.

Before Annabelle was born, Ray told me, “I want the girls to know they are Jewish. I don’t want someone else telling them.”

I loved that. But actually educating Annabelle about Judaism has been awkward, since she announced when she was a toddler that she doesn’t believe in god.

No surprise, springing from our firmly agnostic household. I stopped believing when I was in first grade — I remember where I was standing in the Temple Solel arts and crafts room, shellacking a challah or gluing macaroni into the shape of a Star of David, when I suddenly stopped and thought, “Oh, this is all supposed to be about god? Well, that’s ridiculous.”

I did enjoy the arts and crafts, though. And the music and feeling of community. But after my Bat Mitzvah, as I like to tell people, I took the Lucite and ran. (If you were around in the mid 70s, you’ll get the joke.) My religious education ended there — and I was guilty about that for a long time. I’m not anymore. I no longer went to services, and yet, my Jewish identity remained. I’m proud to be Jewish, and I still remember the words to the prayers, which I murmur along during all those bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies, feeling connected — to something, if not a traditional sense of god.

It’s hard to imagine Sophie having a bona fide bat mitzvah, which is on my list of things to discuss with the rabbi today. I have talked about it with the girls, and they decided they’d rather have a b’nai mitzvah, which means two people doing it together — and I love that idea. Annabelle says she doesn’t want the spotlight all to herself, she’d rather be there to help Sophie. Sophie says she’ll leave the Hebrew to Annabelle. I think they will both find meaning in studying Judaism and learning a torah portion (a story from the Old Testament), and Sophie’s already planning her “mitzvah project,” which involves giving back to the community in some way.

For my part, I like the idea of educating our friends about our heritage, putting together a program that explains the meaning behind the traditions. I haven’t seen a copy in years but I still remember the program my mom made for my bat mitzvah; she cut out tiny illustrations from The New Yorker and put them between the prayers and it made me feel so special.

Ray has been okay with it so far. “Huh?” he asked, when I told him the latest plan. “A benign mitzvah?”

That sounds about right to me. This morning I called to confirm my meeting with the rabbi. “Wait a second,” his secretary said. “He wrote it his calendar himself. Amy Silverstein?”

I’m not religious but I’m big on signs, and that might be a sign that this won’t be the right place for us. We may go rogue — but we’re going to do it, one way or another.  I’ll let you know when we have a date.