On Family Issues - Jews Vs. Judaism
Gold, Michael
On Family Issues-Jews Vs. Judaism Jewish Marital Status Edited by Carol Diament Jason Aronson, 1989.424 pp, $30 Reviewed by Michael Gold The challenge for rabbis and Jewish communal leaders...
...In the second, he speaks of the danger of living on the hyphen in Judeo-Christian marriages, trying to distill Judaism and Christianity to some common denominator that destroys the integrity of both...
...Yet, as this book shows, many if not most Jews do not live this way...
...Judaism has never tolerated defiance well...
...We should avoid narrow definitions that exclude any Jews...
...He has two in this collection, one on sexuality and one on intermarriage...
...Jewish Marital Status is an excellent book for anyone who cares about strengthening Jewish life in our modern society...
...In reading the book, one sees how large the lacuna is between the Torah's ideal vision of Jewish family life and the reality of how Jews live today...
...The book is an anthology of essays dealing with issues of personal status and family life: single Jews, marriage, premarital and marital sex, divorce, widowhood, remarriage and step-families, intermarriage, gay and lesbian Jews, and childlessness...
...Sinai...
...The book ends with two essays on family by Susan Handelman and Martha Ackelsberg...
...How does a community, like Aaron, the peace lover, reach out to Jews wherever they are, without losing sight of Moses' vision on Mt...
...The same rising rate that now alarms us also reveals an improvement in intergroup relations...
...I was deeply touched by Gail Katz's mix of prose and poetry as she describes being left a widow with young children in the Orthodox community at age 31...
...Divorce, although permissible, is a sad last resort...
...One can be part of a community even in a non-traditional family setting...
...Or to quote the very first essay, "Singles are seen by the Jewish community as deviant...
...Without condoning intermarriage, Sarna claims that we must accept it as a fact...
...or fixed up . . . Isn't the issue really dignity of choice...
...Infertility is a tragedy...
...It is community, not family, that is party to God's covenant...
...An intermarried Jew need not be a traitor or rebel...
...As with any anthology, the quality and relevance of the essays varies...
...The family is the unit that creates life, welcomes and protects it, is intimately involved with it, and therefore is the most powerful agent of transmitting personal and collective Jewish memory...
...He writes that "the intermarriage rate serves as a barometer of Jewish-Christian relations...
...Moses would say, "Let the law split the mountain: this is how Jews ought to live...
...The essays by Harold Schulweis are always a joy to read...
...In contrast, David Feldman is an articulate spokesman for the traditionalist point of view...
...Can the gap be bridged...
...This new study edited by Carol Diament, Jewish Marital Status, does an excellent job trying to bridge the gap...
...Handelman argues for the traditional family as the only guarantor of continuity to future generations...
...The 43 short essays in the book are collected from MOMENT and other magazines and various original sources...
...In the first, he, a liberal rabbi, makes a passionate plea for the traditional values of sex within marriage...
...On the issue of intermarriage, Jonathan Sarna calls for an end to the disease metaphor, saying that it obscures more than it clarifies...
...Approximately half are personal statements by Jews about their own situations and their relations to the community...
...The Torah's vision is clear...
...Having children is a commandment and large families ought to be the norm...
...My own experience as a pulpit rabbi tells me that Sarna is right...
...In the argument between Handelman and Ackelsberg, we have the difference between Moses and Aaron moved to a new generation...
...There is a gap between Judaism and Jews...
...Diament's book is a call for outreach and understanding of Jews who do not meet Moses' ideal...
...The other half are insights by rabbis of all denominations and other Jewish professionals...
...He is the author of And Hannah Wept Infertility, Adoption and the Jewish Couple UPS, 1988...
...To be single is to be incomplete...
...On the issue of homosexuality, Janet Marder uses her experience as the rabbi of a gay congregation for a powerful plea to change the way Jews view gays...
...At the other extreme, I was also touched by Liz Galst's attempt to explain her lesbian lifestyle to her grandmother as they make Passover gefilte fish...
...Ackelsberg takes issue with this...
...Marriage is the ideal state, preferably at a young age...
...Judaism Jewish Marital Status Edited by Carol Diament Jason Aronson, 1989.424 pp, $30 Reviewed by Michael Gold The challenge for rabbis and Jewish communal leaders today is to combine the qualities of Moses and Aaron...
...The book therefore contains an excellent mix of the experiential and the informational, the traditional and the liberal...
...Can the community respect the dignity of choice (or lack of choice) of those Jews who are single or divorced or intermarried or childless or gay without losing sight of the vision at Sinai...
...The gap between Judaism and Jews, between the family ideal of the Torah and the reality of how Jews live is more pronounced than ever...
...Michael Gold is rabbi of Beth El Congregation of the South Hills in Pittsburgh, Pa...
...Intermarriage is forbidden and homosexuality is an abomination...
...Sex belongs in marriage, and even within marriage there are sexual disciplines known as family purity...
...on the contrary, marriage out of the faith is often the catalyst to reconnect with Judaism...
...Hadassah, which assembled this collection, is to be commended for grappling with these issues and Carol Diament for choosing and editing the essays...
...As needing to be fixed...
Vol. 15 • February 1990 • No. 1
