Into the city of faithfulness:
Donnelly, Daria
INTO THE CITY OF DARIA DONNELLY FAITHFULNESS NEGOTIATING A JEWISH-CATHOLIC MARRIAGE it poet and friend of...
...Rosemary Ruesbn• those college classes and later, in Jerusalem, I was able to talk '7.rrtrnilltrnt1r •7{r,rsy:1a °,Ua1•irTtar!-',bars) "7i•,rnvlnr.tire...
...squares...
...1993 ASSOCIATE There are great challenges ahead of us...
...New York, N.Y...
...And the squares of the set on a hill...
...we bought cookies and train-shaped birthday cakes in a bakThus said the Lord of hosts: I will rescue my people from the lands of the east and from the lands of the west and I will bring them home to dwell in Jerusalem...
...In a strange way, I feel that my marriage disqualifies me from the intellectual Jewish-Christian dialogue...
...Our neighbors were all either Jewish or Catholic and the only Ir 1111 fill 11111 111111 111l1 11111 tall hill 11111 111111 I barrier to us children playing together was that we all went to different schools...
...Love and marriage do not mark the beginning of my particThus said the Lord of hosts: There shall yet be old men ipation in what is known as the Jewish-Christian encounter...
...This is of the corner of two cloaks: the Jew Jesus and the Jew with the passage as it was read for our wedding: whom I am sharing my life...
...We go around issuesgood and evil, the meaning of pain-and there is a core difBenefactors $1,000 Charter $125 ference that rationality cannot penetrate...
...In a modest way we see (Memberships are tax deductible...
...Thus said the Lord of hosts: Peoples and the inhabitants of many cities shall yet come-the inhabitants shall go to the other and say, "Let us go and entreat the favor of the Lord, let us seek the Lord of hosts...
...The fam- regularly with them...
...On the NATIONAL slope was a bakery, a bagel factory, a religious supply store, CENTER all of which seemed for other people...
...This increased self-examination and criticism is a gain be protected whether by the state or salvation br something but also a burden...
...In moments of grace these two Thus said the Lord: I have returned to Zion, and I will cloaks are seamless and one...
...We have realized that COMMONWEAL ASSOCIATES two intensely rational, intellectual adults have a center that is 15 Dutch Street...
...Of the thousand ways in which we illuminates the triumphalism and plain wrongheadedness of are all vulnerable, this aspect of our identity seemed no more our practice of faith in a way we might repress were we alone...
...We are sometimes weary and want to rest else...
...It was as if his life energy were poured out in front of us...
...The wedding was close minyans converging on Jerusalem...
...We have not had the Supporters $500 Sustaining $50 great fortune to have a child as yet, but our anticipation and Patrons $250 anxiety are already alive...
...10038 beautifully and terrifyingly irrational...
...Christianity and rabbinic Judaism ample, I was told of two Orthodox Jewish women reciting the were born at the same historical moment as reformations of temple-based Judaism...
...times I am overwhelmed by the perfect contentment in my The most persistent and oddest negative response to our mar- husband's love...
...We hadn't considered Sometimes we are cranky because the presence of the other ourselves safe or unsafe...
...Jerusalem will be called the City of ,,of the contrary pulls, a confusing array of identities and deFaithfulness, and the mount of the Lord of Hosts the Holy sires...
...Our ntermarried couples are the repository of both the good prayers, candle lighting, Mass, and synagogue attendance are news and the bad news of ecumenism...
...I was told I was making thing...
...Mount...
...And do not contrive evil against one another, and do not love perjury, because all those are the things I hate-declares the Lord...
...The church and synagogue are moments of high seriousness and comedy...
...about issues as both a disinterested and an implicated party...
...We are comtantamount to caricature...
...I had to put away received Lt L>:.~7.~-G -ra rUfF' pieties and encounter a text that suddenly seemed alarmingly Voo a•.' 01-TIFF unfamiliar...
...In class he was animated, demanding, agonized...
...at our apartment door to drop off his pale son for a violin lesson with my roommate...
...liturgy and asked us to read Zechariah 8, I love this passage for many reasons: I feel the heartbreakwhich she had heard at daily Mass...
...This truth is thrown into sharper relief in inter- had thought it a beautiful prayer, taught it to them, and said it marriage, particularly around the wedding celebration...
...C, Annapolis, MD 21401 arly debate...
...In Bishop.%1ihsef Keanp Bishop Jane Di os, Rev...
...significant than our gender or the era and place in which we I find myself rolling my eyes at sermons that present the lived...
...Stein, gave way to the sociological: the hilltop as wealthier, more assimilated, more cosmopolitan...
...We deepen the other's faith by proximity, r I discussion, even debate...
...Phone (410) 266-5462 Who would be surprised that religion is lived not only with Commonweal 18 June 1993: 19 mind and heart but also with personality, family, and com- Our Father at the funeral Mass of a writer...
...Explaining kosher laws to an Italian forted with stories, with a family appreciation for both sets of chef and my desire for butter to my husband's family were spiritual insight and observance...
...In college I began to think about my neighborhood differently...
...remind me of the balance In our marriage, born of desire, we are trying to bring each in 6 months...
...I have taken hold con, stopped us, allowed us to see what we were doing...
...Ir"jlir Grnh 1...
...Yet even this strangeness had its familiarity...
...The professor, who was thin as O.11tiI SIIUREIIA.S1 I-I(YI7•:I a stick, seemed like a ghost when he appeared each week .V'sIIINGroN, D.C...
...the other and the shocking newness of those we heard The real challenge in our marriage comes from within, about ourselves, as if prejudice had entered our skin so from what we are and what we have internalized...
...l Now I am a Christian who is married to a Jew: I am more 1 111111 ( IJ,i Fiji 11')e 1111 111)1 I1 needful of the dialogue and I also understand that a marriage such as ours is at the center of controversy in the dialogue...
...Everywhere BECOME A we hear echoes...
...my SIZES AMERICAN roommates and closest friends in college were Jewish and Catholic...
...At that moment, we were ple and elusive desires: to live long and in safety, to have joyful pasting and cutting for our program, discussing and fretting over children...
...We barely spoke to each other at these times...
...Somemirror held to nature...
...My husband was accused of at- ed into a love that contains thirst and cannot grasp this other tempting to find safety from his identity...
...l ilgil Eiisondo Dr...
...I wept in my teacher's office...
...Zechariah stood like a bea- My husband is a Jew and I am a Catholic...
...Thus said the Lord of hosts: In those days, ten men from nations of every tongue will take hold-they will DARIA DONNELLY grew up in Pittsburgh and teaches literature at Boston University...
...They shall be my people, and I will be their God-in truth and sincerity...
...Yarmulke, payess, LEADERSHIP and wigs adorned the men, women, and children in the streets...
...Mourning the tragedy of Sarajevo, we embrace the comedy of our marriage...
...life I studied the Gospels with a Jew...
...I blanch at the words to hymns like "Lift High the Christian understanding of the Jews as marginal, as unable to Cross...
...I appreciate the weird comedy of the international details that now cannot be recalled...
...myself vulnerable to a life of contempt...
...emony, china and silver patterns...
...Auschwitz, and Jewish intellectuals, such as Simone Weil, who were moved by Jesus...
...the slope as more Orthodox, poor- L IN er, more insular...
...When asked how munity-and with all the prejudices, quirks, and drama that they knew this prayer they said that their mother, a pious Jew, these imply...
...I entered them only once FOR or twice as a child and felt I shouldn't be there...
...mind and heart...
...She called while we were planning our you...
...Stein took measurements for my Catholic school uniform...
...People fection of those moments are central to understanding the work believe we need more kindness, more consolation, more proof ecumenism...
...I I 11111 1111111 11111 8111a 1111 II feel fewer resources for the intellectual debate because my For a brochure with complete information contact: experience has become so overwhelmingly personal...
...At some level the personal, the encounters with Mrs...
...We are told stories...
...We know that undiscovered fears, assumptions, and prejudices will emerge as we raise an unformed Full Amount enclosed...
...I am discontent each Good Friday their place in America and the world as well as the submerged liturgy...
...These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to one another, render true and perfect justice in your gates...
...we and cultural issues studied Christian anti-Semitism, God and theology after facing The Church...
...in the pattern of faith that has nurtured and consoled us from It is also the deep privilege of the intermarried couple to allow birth...
...INTO THE CITY OF DARIA DONNELLY FAITHFULNESS NEGOTIATING A JEWISH-CATHOLIC MARRIAGE it poet and friend of my mother gave us a mag- take hold of every Jew by a corner of his cloak and say, nificent and enduring wedding gift three years "let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with ago...
...We spent long hours in conversation describing our CHURCH past, talking about our beliefs...
...Last week, for ex- are fundamentally contiguous...
...tection...
...people to express their most sublime experiences of God and We also know that we are immensely lucky in that our faiths of religious ecumenism...
...Jewish deeply that it could only be shocked out by the opacity of the love is thick," a friend told me, "because life is all...
...At the same time it gives me a different perspective on that dialogue...
...As one descended the hill the differences sharpened...
...The outsider mind causes each of us to see aspects of our faith in entirely fresh ways...
...At other times I am more aware dwell in Jerusalem...
...We stayed at the top of the hill, passing down in my father's FUTURE car enroute to school...
...Yet I be- National Center for Pastoral Leadership lieve that our experience has something to say to the schol- 2661 Riva Road, Suite 1042, Deli...
...rimr" Arrrrrrvrr...
...18: 18 June 1993 Commonweal Il 11111 111111 fill PUS 11111 I r u 11111 111111 11IU 1111 ery that had unfamiliar looking bread that we never bought...
...CONFERENCES I majored in religion and in my senior year I had the great fortune to study the New Testament with a superb scholar of FROM 111RI,"T' first-century Judaism and Christianity...
...The course was a permanently S1':Ir1T.•1IBER 17-19,1993 transforming experience...
...The many peoples of the multitude of nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the Lord...
...We met each others' families and ate each ACADEMIC others' food...
...At another level, my understanding of my O F T H E neighborhood and identity became increasingly personal...
...We are Address moved by the love of our communities who keep moving us I I City, State, Zip forward and who allow us to believe that old people with canes I and young children with laughter will fill the streets in safety L J and joy...
...At the top of the hill, where we lived and shopped, city shall be crowded with boys and girls playing in the Mrs...
...For the first time in my -TO OPPORTUNITY...
...I signed up for an- WHOLE CHURCH other course with him...
...Challah and PAST-ORAL kosher meat prices were in store windows...
...Half enclosed...
...The impulse of secular people is to be glad of us...
...0 20: 18 June 1993 Commonweal...
...I and women in the squares of Jerusalem, each with staff was raised in an urban, predominantly Jewish, neighborhood in hand because of their great age...
...The bad news curiosities perhaps, but we stand as a sign that religious difwas the familiarity of the prejudices each heard about ference is not inevitably fracturing...
...Most importantly, the pasenough that in our preoccupied and harried minds marriage had sage reflects what I am struggling to do in my life and my marbecome a series of selections: Each other, an appropriate cer- riage...
...as if from the very beginning I was educatrying had to do with safety...
...I will go too...
...R unique publir forsrnl In this second course eight of us, half Christians, half /or deliberation of key gender Jews, took on the subject of Jewish-Christian relations...
...other into the City of Faithfulness...
...ourselves as a sign of hope in times of increasing nationalism, Name fundamentalism, and religious warfare...
...This is ing beauty of the City of Faithfulness which pictures our simwhat you are doing," she announced...
...The anxiety and af- welcoming...
...This is the beautiful side of the safety coin...
...It revealed the deep fear and skepticism of Jews about Pharisees as mere hypocrites...
...We took one another to Mass, to Kol Nidre service...
...ily and community drama of a wedding reaches an intensity The impulse of religious people is to support us...
Vol. 120 • June 1993 • No. 12
