Looking forward to meeting/seeing you next week. Shabbat Shalom. Jay
NATURE VS NURTURE REVISITED - THE TWINS
Debbie was 45 when she learned that she was adopted. Not only that, but she learned for the very first time that she had a twin! Although separated as infants, the two girls grew up with different families only 45 minutes apart in New Jersey. Debbie was eventually reunited with her twin sister Sharon with whom it turns out she shared a surprising number of traits. One intriguing difference - Debbie was raised as a Jew; Sharon was raised as a Christian. When they finally met, they were enriched by one another's faith in ways that almost none of their adoptive siblings could relate to. They seemed to share their religious passions almost genetically. As Sharon said, "I think I am programmed to be religious...whatever religion I was exposed to as a child would have been very important to me throughout my life."
Debbie and Sharon were part of the world renowned study called the Minnesota Twins—but not the baseball team. Its real name is the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart (MISTRA), a longitudinal study of twins who had been separated at a very young age, raised apart, even in different countries, and then reunited years later. I became intrigued by it in the wake of a question from a parent of twins who responded to some earlier comments I had written about nature versus nurture and, fortunately, a comprehensive book on the subject was just recently published. What better way to examine this issue than by examining identical twins who had been raised in often completely different homes. For if we can remove "nurture" as a factor, namely, the influence of our families when we were growing up, then we can better identify what is "nature" and we can ask how religious would we be? How much of faith is something that is in our DNA versus something that we were raised with? If my parents had not dragged me to shul, would I still be religious?
Debbie and Sharon were just one example. Another is two volunteer firefighter brothers who didn't meet until age 31. Both had been raised by Jewish adoptive parents. Both thought of themselves as Jewish when asked. But neither of them showed any interest in religion; was this coincidence, family environment or genetic destiny? (Of slightly different interest is the famous case of Oskar and Jack - one of whom was raised in Nazi Germany and became part of the Hitler Youth and one of whom was raised as a Jew in Trinidad and went on to become an officer in the Israeli navy.)
The study (not without its critics) ultimately concluded that the role of genetics was huge across the board, relating to everything from personality to preferences in food and jewelry. While we tend to recognize some of the genetically determined characteristics or character traits of our children, we sometimes miss the fact that religious sensitivities could also be one of them which the study seems to strongly confirm. In the area of religiosity, they determined that there was a 50% genetic influence! A subsequent study of twins (Bradshaw and Ellison 2008) found the number to range 19-65% depending on what aspect of religiosity was being measured. Assuming that these statistics hold true for the general population as well, what are the implications for raising religious children? How much influence can any of us, whether parents or schools, have on initiating children into religious life if it's all encoded in their DNA from the very outset?
The answer, of course, is quite a lot. One of the founders of the Minnesota study framed the issue not as a nature vs. nurture but rather "nature via nurture." That is to say, genetic factors are expressed by "influencing the character, selection and impact of experiences during development." (Born Together Reared Apart, p. 104) Some kids (who grow up to be us) have a predilection toward the spiritual - toward singing, toward awe and wonder, toward prayer and a sense of the transcendent. While others are inherently less comfortable with these things -- this does not mean that they do not need these experiences, for we are all born in the image of God and all of us have a soul, however you define it. Rather, it means that such experiences do not come quite as naturally to them. They require even more nurturing or more focused nurturing in this regard.
In short, all of this gives special meaning to King Shlomo's admonition to "educate each child according to his own way." What works for one child may not work for another. While one may love shul-going, another may find it irksome, while one may see the beauty of Shabbat in the lighting of candles, another may find it in singing, while yet another may need it framed purely in its connection to family.
As I've said once before, this is the way that I have always read the midrash which comments on the verse that Rivkah knew that she was experiencing an unusual pregnancy. Says the midrash, when she passed a bet midrash, Yaakov would kick vigorously; when she passed a pagan house of worship, Esav would kick vigorously. Is this not the Rabbis anticipating the Minnesota Twins study? But, as Rav Shimshon Hirsch notes, Rivkah and Yitzchak made the mistake of treating both children the same. Had they not tried to make Esav into another Yaakov but instead had cultivated his own unique inborn spirituality, then perhaps he would have turned out quite differently.
In practical terms, ask yourself how much of your own religious sensitivities might be encoded in your DNA? Which of your parents are you most alike in this regard? What aspects of your home life or life experience did or did not influence your genetic predisposition?
Now ask the same questions about your own children. And then the big final question: how will your nurture their religious nature?
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Jay Goldmintz Ed.D.
Headmaster
Ramaz
Upper School
212-774-8078
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