Our People
Cowan, Paul and Rachel
OUR PEOPLE A new monthly column exploring the tensions of the intermarried and Jews by choice PAUL AND RACHEL COWAN During the past decade, both of us have moved into the mainstream of Jewish...
...Nevertheless, there are still times when she feels different from the Jews around her...
...For Rachel, the flip side of feeling different from her non-Jewish friends is feeling different from her family of birth...
...In their new column, the Cowans will deal with issues that arise around conversion, intermarriage and related matters...
...For example, those whose decision to convert puzzles their friends display a pride in Judaism that can inspire people who were once indifferent to the religion...
...In time, the tensions do ease...
...Now, she has enough confidence in her Judaism, her authenticity, to forget about it completely...
...Jewish parents get used to their daughter-in-law who is shomer shabbos and whose father is active in his church (i.e., their grandchildren have a zayde who's a deacon...
...It is a marginalizing experience—for all...
...This year her family refrained from serving the prize Smithfield ham that her father—and Rachel's father—had given the Whites as a Christmas gift...
...Peggy is a very supportive person...
...Paul as an increasingly observant Jew by birth who chronicled his experiences in the book An Orphan in History...
...As a potential convert who actually became a Jew just two-and-one-half years ago, Rachel still feels some of the tensions that most Jews by choice express...
...We have become acutely This is the first of a regular series by Paul and Rachel Cowan...
...Some are stranded between their old community and their new one, such as the woman whose Catholic parents were saying novenas for her soul while her Jewish in-laws insisted upon referring to her, in the third person, as "that shiksa...
...So we want to use this space to start a dialogue with readers about those tensions—especially those that affect Jews by choice, who represent an increasingly large proportion of the Jewish people...
...Both forgot the second anniversary...
...Sometimes Rachel still refers to Shabbat as Sunday—her childhood day of worship...
...Now they don't...
...Thousands more are unwilling to even admit to the problems, or to evaluate their conversions because they are wary of being regarded as pariahs in the Jewish world...
...Her overwhelming experience is one of growth...
...She and her children lit Chanukah candles with the Cowans one year, Shabbat candles this year...
...Indeed, we have come to feel that the problems of Jews by choice—and marginal Jews and potential converts—pose a healthy challenge to the rest of the community...
...Sometimes people tell her that she doesn't look Jewish...
...The man had been an observant Jew until the conflict arose...
...So we are particularly interested in working with marginal Jews, Jews by choice and men and women who are considering conversion, to help them feel comfortable in the community we have come to love...
...Such converts-in-name-only often muse that they don't "feel Jewish" and worry that they are transmitting their indifference—or their subtle longing for their Christian past—to their children...
...Sometimes we encounter a completely different hidden problem...
...As a result, they have the paradoxical feeling of being inside the religion, but outside the community...
...Still, there is a difference...
...Since most converts are motivated by a religious belief, not a slightly guilt-ridden desire to maintain tribal identity, they often become more observant than their spouses or in-laws...
...Many of those who were rejected, initially, by in-laws establish Jewish homes that given them immense pleasure...
...For instance, recently there was a brunch at Ansche Chesed during which the scholar and writer Nahma Sandrow gave a fascinating lecture on Yiddish Theater in New York...
...Of course, many people—parents and children, brothers and sisters—experience such separations as they grow up...
...Rachel's discomforts are mild compared to those of many Jews by choice she and Paul meet in workshops...
...During the past two years, we have spoken in scores of Jewish communities...
...Many single people become Jews because they are attracted to the theology—not because of the role religion can play in their families...
...The paradox of this silence is that, since the time of Ruth, converts have brought new energy, a refreshing way of seeing both the Torah and the community, to the Jewish world...
...Christmas is now Peggy's holiday, not Rachel's...
...Often, they complain that they are regarded with distrust or even disbelief by Jews by birth who can't understand how someone could choose freely to feel pride in being a Jew, or pleasure in a halachically observant life...
...Some Jews by choice are rejected completely by their spouse's family...
...In this age, when Judaism must be spread by invitation, not by obligation, the longings and the problems of those who can't find a way to enter the community can force the rest of us to evolve ways of providing an open-spirited, nourishing, intellectual and spiritual home...
...She and Paul and their kids celebrate Christmas at her sister Peggy White's house every year...
...To our continuing surprise, we keep finding ourselves living by the Jewish calendar, not the secular one...
...But it is one of the few times in the course of a year when Rachel feels she has lost something by becoming Jewish...
...But she still thinks it is important to remain aware of her lingering ambivalences so that she can understand them, and so that she can identify with those who feel as much "outside" as she did a few years ago...
...Then, their decisions to observe kashrut or Shabbat trouble the very same people who were once disturbed by their non-Jewish pasts...
...Even after the couple was married, their parents never invited them home...
...She used to feel a very thin barrier between herself and many other Jews, an unspoken feeling that, in their eyes, she could never quite understand what being Jewish is, never lose her New England poise and experience the emotion of being a chronic outsider...
...What happens when someone converts in order to please the family of an intended spouse, but neither partner is particularly interested in living a Jewish life...
...She wishes she could feel that her real parents were at the bimah with her...
...Paul and Rachel bring a kosher turkey to Peggy's house, and she doesn't put butter on the vegetables...
...aware of the barriers that can separate converts, potential converts and their spouses from the Jewish world...
...Furthermore, in time, the Jews by choice are accepted by their communities...
...Afterward, he came to feel that his father's brand of Orthodoxy left no room for human tolerance...
...By now, Rachel can never remember, off-hand, how long it is that she has been officially Jewish...
...And Paul and Rachel both feel uncomfortable and annoyed when kindly ladies on the street remark that their blond-haired son "looks like a little sheigetz...
...Of course, the conflicts we describe—from the nostalgia Rachel occasionally feels to the rage of the couple who became Unitarians—are not emotions that define Jews by choice as a group...
...She always feels a twinge of sadness when she is called to the Torah as "Rachel bat Avraham and Sarah," not "bat Arthur and Margaret...
...One man, the son of an Orthodox rabbi, described how his father yelled at him, wept, even fainted when he chose to marry a woman who had already decided to undergo an Orthodox conversion...
...At some level, they continue to wish that their mate or their Jewish friends would help them feel committed to Judaism...
...Now he and his wife are members of the Unitarian Church...
...In this column, we hope to explore some of the unresolved tensions that Jews by choice still feel so that, as a new and growing group, they can strengthen the people they have decided shall be their people...
...On the first anniversary of her conversion, Paul bought her an orchid...
...When Nahma observed that Yiddish Theater was about "our" experience of homesickness, newness to America, group solidarity and adjustment, Rachel felt keenly aware that Nahma was not describing "her" experience—that her ancestors tilled the rocky soils of New England, worlds away from the shtetl...
...Paul has lectured about An Orphan in History, Paul and Rachel have conducted dozens of workshops for intermarried couples and for Jews by choice...
...Their decision to convert seems to bring out the worst sort of self-doubt in their non-Jewish friends...
...And finally, each year, the nostalgia for Christmas becomes more of a memory, less of a pang...
...But we retain keen memories of the years when Saturday was just another day, when Yom Kippur might have been an occasion for a fast, but not a season for t'shuvah...
...It is an adventure that never seems to end: one that enriches our lives, involves us in fascinating textual and communal debate and makes us feel part of a loving, contentious extended family...
...A selection from Paul Cowan's An Orphan in History, "Jewish Extensions," appeared in these pages in October 1982...
...Finally, after studying, praying, arguing and working with hundreds of Jews, she decided to ignore the barrier...
...Sometimes, though, that can cause a different sort of problem...
...Once, the sisters shared it...
...We instill hectic weeks with the promise of Shabbat...
...Although she has an answer that always brings a chuckle—"funny how Jewish looks these days, isn't it"—she still doesn't like the way the casual remark separates her from "normal" Jews...
...Thousands of people still express problems such as those we've described...
...OUR PEOPLE A new monthly column exploring the tensions of the intermarried and Jews by choice PAUL AND RACHEL COWAN During the past decade, both of us have moved into the mainstream of Jewish life—Rachel as a Jew by choice who is now program director of Ansche Chesed, a synagogue in New York...
Vol. 8 • March 1983 • No. 3
