A little lost

Hey everyone,

So long post but I wanted to make sure I got everything here.

I will first start by saying I am not a practicing Jewish person— I am a baptized Christian. I am cognizant that I may be encroaching on space I shouldn’t be and want to be mindful of that.

The long and short of what I’m asking about is this: I was born in a interfaith marriage. My mother is a practicing Catholic woman and my father is a practicing Jewish man (Reform I believe). Sometime before I was born the decision was made that I was to be raised Catholic and that was it. My family still observed the holidays—we went to family Seders every year and Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur service (belated L’Shanah Tovah by the way). I was exposed to it but it was made very clear that I was to be an observer and nothing more, that I was Catholic.

Since graduating college and starting out in the world I think I’ve had a chance to process all of that and I think there is an immense amount of regret that I never got a chance to really acknowledge or embrace that part of my family and its faith practice. I think after some deconstruction I want to at least reflect on what all of that means to me personally.

Here’s the summation: I don’t claim to be Jewish because I just never went down that path in faith practice, and I don’t think that’s fair to those who do practice, particularly my family. But I think that I want to explore that side of my heritage and discern what that means to me spiritually. I guess my question is a matter of what questions I should be asking of myself and how I should approach that level of reflection.

I’m sorry for raising this here, I just don’t know where else to go with this.