RACHEL COWAN
RACHEL COWAN Most of the Jews wanted Jewish children but did not want to be unfair to their Christian spouses. The Christians couldn't understand why it was so important. The table was spread with...
...Alarm bells go off at that idea...
...Of course not—we were celebrating differences, not homogenizing them—but still, working on this frontier is sometimes scary for a committed Jew...
...And then what...
...Could they expose them to both parents' religions or is that too confusing...
...After all, nobody can argue with statistics—40 percent of Jewish men and 25 percent of Jewish women are choosing non-Jewish marriage partners...
...Now a voyage of spiritual and intellectual discovery lay ahead of them...
...This will be important in my home only if I make it important...
...Yet if we turn fear into a spirit of hope and challenge we can make our current situation an opportunity to help Jews and their non-Jewish partners ask significant questions and even find significant Jewish answers...
...Many Jews still believe we should not work on this border...
...The Christians couldn't understand why it was so important to raise Jewish kids when their Jewish partner never seemed to do anything religious...
...Many of us worry that so much intermarriage will result in a significantly diminished Jewish population and culture...
...When Paul, my late husband, and I first wrote a column on Jews by Choice in moment (see "Our People," March 1983) we were among the few voices speaking out on the subject...
...The Jewish partner, gentile spouse in hand, may be forced to ask questions about Judaism that two Jews never ask...
...Their voices, though, are not powerful enough to prevent creative new programs from being developed...
...Seven interfaith couples were throwing a holiday party to celebrate the end of an eight-week workshop...
...The table was spread with bowls of lathes, sour cream, homemade applesauce and sufganiyot (Chanukah do-nuts)—and with plates of Christmas cookies, Polish cruscik and Japanese sushi rolls...
...Is "exposing" an adequate concept of religious education...
...When we began the workshop, each couple defined their problem as a simple one—they did not know how to raise children in an intermarriage...
...Are we just trying to make it easier for Jews to abandon their Judaism...
...Most of the Jews felt strongly that they wanted Jewish children but did not want to be unfair to their Christian spouses...
...The Jews decided they had to learn about Judaism as adults: "Now I have to take responsibility for my Judaism...
...By the end of the workshop, they saw that each couple must find its own way...
...They remarked that they had gained a new respect for the spirituality of Judaism, which they had previously seen primarily as their partner's ethnic identity...
...They had spent two and one-half hours a week talking, role playing and sharing memories as they worked to understand the religious and ethnic differences between them, and to explore the spiritual values that would be infused into the lives they planned to lead together...
...Now, to use Egon Mayer's phrase, the community's response has changed from "outrage to outreach...
...Let's look more closely at the interfaith couples celebrating the end of their workshop...
...The Christians felt they had to reexamine the premises of their Christianity...
...The Jews came to see that if they were proud of their Judaism they could in turn come to see their partners' Christianity as something their partners valued, not as something that threatened to destroy the partnership...
...They hoped I could tell them the "right way...
...Although many argued that money spent on the intermarried would be wasted on "bad Jews," outreach programs have brought many Jews into the warm folds of tradition, commitment and community...
...What is this— another attempt to syncretize Christmas and Chanukah into a seasonal holiday...
...And the religious-school educations they had fled in early adolescent rebellion did not give them enough intellectual, emotional or spiritual grounding to discover their way...
...Now they knew there were no pat answers...
...Paradoxically, a marriage that looks like a step away from the community is often a confrontation with the importance of Jewish identity...
...They all found that the workshop had given them a unique opportunity to rediscover that talking about religion, ethnicity, cultural identity, history and spirituality is fascinating and significant...
...For we know that not every couple will ultimately choose to celebrate Chanukah rather than Christmas...
...Lathis and Christmas cookies...
Vol. 15 • April 1990 • No. 2
