Madeline & Ernie:
Marget, Madeline
MADELINE & ERNIE HONORING WHAT WE DO NOT SHARE MADELINE MARGET I am Jewish, my husband is Catholic, and for the fifteen years of our marriage religion has been important. Ernie and I were, in the...
...We are not...
...Ernie's example...
...The idea of being separate frightened us, when we had promised to bind ourselves together...
...I wanted to find only that which I was sure we could share...
...I think he does so not only because of the trust between us but also because of his religious experience: Ernie believes in the reality and importance of that which you cannot see or touch or taste...
...My religious husband regularly reminds me of it...
...On other political and ethical issues, we have learned from each other through osmosis...
...Ernie raises an eyebrow, though he sees no harm in having such skills...
...I quote it a lot on the subject of marriage, another very imperfect institution, but the best, as far as I can see, for most of us, most of the time...
...Much of his life is an effort to act honestly, kindly, wisely...
...one acts on that understanding, even in the absence of evidence...
...I believe my children can, too, and I tell them so with assurance...
...The real differences between us are something else again...
...Our children were astonished, excited...
...I don't even want to...
...He knows most of the world is not Jewish, that most people do not carry with them, always, as Jews do, a fear of annihilation and a conscious pride in having survived the centuries with dignity and humanity...
...As a result of this teaching I have, over the years, become an optimist...
...For years, Ernie and I alluded only to the cultural differences, which we ascribed, correctly, to geography and income as well as religious training...
...But I believe in possibility...
...When I was a young teenager, our rabbi told my wise-guy religious school class that it didn't matter whether any of us believed in God or not...
...The first time I took them—Ernie came too—we had the time wrong, and arrived late...
...He is happy to discuss a question of ethics or mystery...
...Those, we discuss calmly...
...There was the good that could be legislated—we'd each moved to Washington in order to help see to that...
...I assume that it's a middle-class child's birthright to learn how to swim with rhythmic breathing, and to suffer through piano lessons...
...There were the satisfactions of raising a family...
...But I'm forty-four now, almost forty-five, so I've lived through and struggled with sadness and defeat, as well as joy and hope...
...Nevertheless, I was excited and astonished, too...
...He is always willing, and usually able, to see human beings as essentially good...
...Not that Ernie, and life with him, can't be sour...
...In this realm, the choices are plain or need not be made: the only heat comes from worry over our children's normal problems, and juggling time and stretching money...
...Our expectations and views were different because of the way each of us was raised...
...This confidence, in my life, is tied tightly to religion in two ways...
...The reasons for sadness and grief and confusion are not apparent, but they exist...
...All my life, I have been taught that it can happen here...
...First, it is an outgrowth of the fact that Ernie and I have to articulate what, in a more homogeneous union, would be implicit...
...I explained it as coincidence—it happened that this was the month in which my aunt had died, but although I hadn't thought about it, this was the temple my grandparents had belonged to...
...Here, the way in which we disagree is a result of Ernie's Catholicism...
...Ernie can, because he believes, always, in redemption...
...I recognize much of what I've been through and what I face as common human experience and therefore I find myself, lately, eager to declare myself as a Jew, and to return to the formal observance of the religion in which I was raised...
...When I told Ernie, still a churchgoer, that I thought I might start going to temple, he asked why...
...I'm always quoting Churchill, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except all...
...It was all perfectly explicable...
...We celebrate—secularly—both Christian and Jewish holidays...
...In the case of abortion, for example, we seem to think as one: abortion should be legal, is generally undesirable, and is a matter for individual conscience...
...He expected we would send our children to parochial schools...
...My children have asked to go to Friday night services...
...And with religion especially we did not want to acknowledge disagreement—it seemed too much like reading labels...
...Ernie was not...
...Often, I find them, because my married life has taught me to look, and hope, for them...
...Some of that, of course, is true...
...I know I can count on him to try to help me...
...Nor that I don't have plenty of lousy moods...
...Talking about history and politics, our conversation, often, is heavier, confronting actual rifts...
...If I wanted an abortion, I'm sure Ernie would support me, and fairly sure he wouldn't agree with me...
...When Ernie and I were married (in a Catholic ceremony where no one knelt, the sign of the cross was not made, and neither the word Jesus nor the word Christ was mentioned) the priest said we would be as one...
...Ernie and I were, in the first place, bound together by youth...
...Most of them stem from the fact Ernie is Catholic and I am Jewish...
...He honors me, and in the face of anti-Semitism I am afraid...
...The fact is, I've changed my mind through living with Ernie's faith...
...She read the name Bertha Marget Krinsky—my aunt, who died in childbirth sixty years ago, when my mother was fourteen...
...Life has form and purpose...
...When, recently, a woman who had been Anne Frank's pen pal said it hadn't occurred to her that her correspondent was Jewish, and murdered by Hitler, until she was told, I was flabbergasted...
...I was horrified at the idea...
...He kissed me goodnight...
...My family had more money than his...
...I answered that I wanted to go for the children, I wanted to stand up and be counted, that most of all I wanted religion for the enlightenment and consolation I see it brings...
...It was Ernie who first heard the name...
...Generally this is the case not because Ernie is a Catholic, but because he is not a Jew...
...Still, our discussions about politics are generally our most amicable—both of us are liberal and progressive, and we both, still, believe government can right wrongs—but over Jesse Jackson we have had to agree to disagree...
...Not that I necessarily follow it: I am more forceful and emotional, more driven, than he...
...More importantly, I try to credit other people—at least, the people to whom I'm drawn— with Ernie's virtues...
...After all, I'd never been interested in going before...
...Our disagreements about the practical are rare and shallow...
...On our first date, sitting outside on a hot night, we discussed the good life until two in the morning...
...There was religion, I said...
...Where concrete, daily issues are concerned, stress supplies the fuel...
...And like democracy, marriage is a chance to learn from someone different from yourself...
...I think I can accomplish something worth doing, make an impact on the people around me and on those to come...
...So was everyone else I told...
...In middle age we argue more than we used to...
...Catholics and Jews have a lot to learn from each other...
...But because he was Catholic—a real one: a believer and a churchgoer—I put that subject aside...
...When my husband and I were first in love, first married, we did not want there to be differences between us...
...To an adolescent this was an unintelligible idea...
...but I'm also pretty sure it will never come up, because I'd hate to have an abortion...
...We spent most of the night talking...
...As we walked in, the congregation was reciting Kaddish—the prayer in memory of the dead...
...A year later, we got married...
...I'll probably join a temple...
...And yet, Ernie agreed not to vote for Jackson, because he takes completely seriously promises—to him sacred promises—he made when we were married...
...My husband credits what we do not share...
...Specifically, by sexual attraction and our common idealism...
...Ernie found that a very interesting statement...
...Here, the prolife and prochoice forces would do well to emulate us—in this instance our marriage is a model of ecumenism and political compromise, achieved through love of one another...
...I am an easterner, Ernie's from the Midwest...
...Ernie is well-educated in his religion, and a reflective person...
...Most of it boils down to how much the same we are, but like other complicated understandings, the details are worth as much as the synthesis, and take a long time-probably a lifetime—to accumulate...
...I cannot forgive "Hymietown...
...He keeps them, holding the life we have in common above our separate backgrounds and different conclusions...
...Another reason I am able to act positively is MADELINE MARGET is a writer, now working on a book about the humane delivery of hi-tech medical care...
...The rabbi read names of people who had died recently, and those whose Yahrzeits (anniversaries of deaths) fell that month...
...Ernie, the person I know most intimately— the example of humanity closest to me, and most constant—bears witness to his beliefs...
...I'd be obstinate not to see its strength and beauty...
...The point of faith, he says, is that you cannot know...
...God existed, said the rabbi, regardless of what any of us thought...
...To an adult it's a welcome one...
...those others that have been tried from time to time...
Vol. 115 • September 1988 • No. 16
