Our People/Jews By Choice-And Acceptance
Cowan, Paul and Rachel
OUR PEOPLE JEWS BY CHOICE -AND ACCEPTANCE PAUL AND RACHEL COWAN Not so long ago, traditional Jews used to sit shiva if a son or daughter intermarried. These days, few parents go that far,...
...Now the entire family could have Friday night supper together, and Barney had the exquisite pleasure of bringing his son Ari and his two grandchildren to shut with him every Shabbat...
...Apparently Ari couldn't either...
...I would never have sent them Christmas presents...
...She's going to study Judaism and if she passes the test we'll get married...
...Kristin's mother, a widow, was present at the ceremony, looking sad and lonely...
...He brought Judy home quite often...
...But in the end I'd have bowed to Sarah's feelings...
...She'd hated the Baptist churches she attended as a kid, and had always felt some sort of attachment to Judaism...
...But it was...
...That's what made it so heartbreaking," Barney says...
...Kristin mentioned that she was fasting...
...But how could I have forced myself to look happy on an occasion that made me so angry and sad...
...She and Ari were wed under a chuppah in a Conservative synagogue in Westchester County...
...He laid tefillin every day until he was 21...
...Some, like the middle-aged, New York-based couple we'll call Sarah and Barney Liebman, are not even sure how to deal with a prospective son or daughter-in-law who plans to convert to Judaism...
...Ruth kissed Kristin...
...She was interested in Judaism before she knew me...
...But it was terrible to go to his apartment afterwards...
...Most of the time he went out with nonJews," Sarah recalls...
...Brooklyn...
...Barney, whose father had been in the window-cleaning business, was raised in an observant home...
...Ari was living at home, working parttime in the electronics company, and taking courses in filmmaking at NYU...
...Ruth and her Israeli-bom husband Rafi had decided to live in the States, not on a kibbutz, and Rafi had taken a full-time job in Barney's business...
...I wasn't willing to accept the possibility she'd convert...
...She sends them Chanukah presents, and New Year's cards at Rosh Hashanah...
...After all, Judy hadn't...
...On Friday, the entire family lit Shabbat candles, but most Saturdays Ari went to services with his father while Sarah and Ruth stayed at home...
...Sarah's father, a union organizer, had been "violently anti-religious," she said...
...By the time Ari graduated from college, in 1976, his parents had begun to notice that his attitude towards Jewish women was different from his attitude towards synagogue and Israel...
...As a teenager, Ari, whose Hebrew was excellent, sometimes led the entire Saturday morning service...
...He wouldn't go outside, or even eat or shower...
...And even if she did convert, they weren't sure they could accept a Jew by choice as easily as they could accept a Jew by birth...
...He had belonged to the Workman's Circle, and sent his children to learn the Yiddish language and Jewish culture at a militantly secularist Sholom Aleichem shule in Paul Cowan, a staff writer for the Village Voice, and Rachel Cowan, program director at Ansehe Chesed...
...In 1970, when Ari was a junior in high school, he spent a summer in Israel, working on an archaeological excavation...
...They seemed to regard themselves as surrogate parents of the Jews in the group—youngsters who reminded them of their son Ari, whose fiancee was taking conversion courses...
...But a family fissure was developing...
...When they heard she disliked one of the rabbis she was studying with, they were half-convinced she had given up on the entire religion...
...Nevertheless, her daughter-in-law has surprised Barney and her with the intensity of her commitment to Judaism...
...I felt a terrible sense of loss and failure...
...As a result, the two saw every random difficulty on Kristin's road to Judaism as a sign of sure failure...
...I was terrified that Ari would marry a woman who wasn't a Jew...
...So I hated the idea that religion was dividing Ari and Judy...
...We always invited Christians over to our house for our holidays...
...Rafi leapt up and, whooping, gave Ari a fierce hug of joy...
...These days, few parents go that far, but many spend countless anguished hours wondering how— and whether—to maintain relations with a son or daughter who has wed a non-Jew...
...His parents were very fond of her...
...He never tried to shield Barney or Sarah from the fact that he was failing in love with Judy, an Irish Catholic who was deeply committed to her family and background...
...Barney and Sarah were alarmed, though they muted their feelings...
...It was as if he was sitting shiva...
...Kristin is different, Dad," Ari said...
...A gentle man who speaks in a sweet, hesitant voice, he took it upon himself to see that the shul had a morning miny an...
...We would have loved to have her in our family, but she was so attached to her roots that we though it would be wrong to ask her to convert...
...At Christmastime, we'd make a point of going over to Christian friends' and we would tell our kids to respect their holidays...
...he and Ruth bought a home five miles away from the Liebmans...
...are the authors of this regular moment feature...
...So we watched, and worried...
...I just don't see how someone who was born a Baptist from Oklahoma can respond to the world in the same way as someone who was born a Jew in New York...
...Though Ari rented an apartment in Manhattan, he spent almost every weekend at his parents' beautiful new house in Westchester County...
...The Liebmans are such a close family that, as a matter of course, Barney gave Ari a job in the electronics company when he graduated from college...
...Ari, Rafi and Ruth knew that...
...In retrospect, it seems clear that Kristin always meant to convert...
...But neither of us wanted to discuss the subject with them," he says...
...That fall, out to dinner with Kristin and the family, Ari made an announcement: "This dumb shik.se wants to be a Jew...
...In May 1982, Kristin became a Jew...
...It was lunchtime and we were eating...
...For years, his son Ari seemed more comfortable in synagogue than did Sarah or their daughter Ruth...
...So I felt almost bereft when Ari said he was going to marry Kristin...
...In the spring of 1982, they attended one of our five-week YMHA workshops for interfaith couples...
...It was a terrible time," Sarah says...
...The wedding was getting closer and Kristin still wasn't converting...
...They wanted to work out their emotions in the presence of strangers...
...There are still times when Sarah feels somewhat estranged from Kristin...
...They had a specific worry...
...I didn't know what to say to her," Sarah reminisces, "but I wondered if she was going through what I would have gone through in her position...
...The more Ari and Kristin talked, the more attracted they were to each other...
...I think I might have wanted to go," Barney says...
...His senior year, he devoted Sunday after Sunday to giving slide shows and speeches about the dig—and about Israel—to synagogues throughout Long Island...
...She has accepted Kristin's new religion, though...
...That nuance of difference reflected itself in their worst fear for their son...
...The Liebman's story, in spite of its special wrinkles, resembles hundreds we have heard...
...on Pesach, she taught us how to prepare a seder table...
...I don't believe religions should divide people," she says...
...At NYU, a mutual friend introduced Ari to Kristin, a graphics designer, a Baptist from Oklahoma...
...Sarah's secularist background made the conflict seem especially tragic...
...As soon as she realized Ari was Jewish she told him she was eager to learn about his religion...
...Why risk it again...
...Barney and Sarah were terrified...
...Barney liked Kristin's warm, outgoing manner and believed her when she said she planned to convert...
...My food almost stuck in my throat...
...We didn't want to pressure them...
...I certainly felt sorry for her...
...In her home, May Day was almost as important as Passover...
...It would have been a tragedy for me and for my son...
...They were about 30 years older than most other people in the group—and the only resolutely-Jewish couple there...
...Every so often she would noodge him with remarks like, 'Couldn't I just have a Christmas tree in the house?' I couldn't stand that...
...The next year, 1980, the Liebmans must have seemed like a particularly harmonious family to their friends...
...In a way, Sarah and Barney were themselves "an intermarriage...
...Rafi became Ari's closest friend...
...My family thought Sarah wasn't really Jewish," he told the class one day...
...But Sarah and Barney, blinded by their parental fears and cultural assumptions, couldn't see the situation clearly...
...Maybe I feel a little uncomfortable in synagogue," she says, "but my whole life consists of Jewish things...
...Only once did Barney mention it to Ari: "What are you trying to do to yourself...
...It was torture for her, for Ari and for us...
...Once Kristin became a Jew by choice, they felt a sense of relief, which has by now blossomed into joy and a real sense of respect, for their increasingly observant daughter-in-law...
...I knew I wouldn't go to the wedding...
...Soon they began to date steadily...
...Was my own son going to make a decision that would lead to the loss of more Jews...
...His family kept kosher and went to shut on Shabbos...
...A fight over a Christmas tree convinced him to break up with Judy," Barney says...
...The kids always knew that our attitude was that they could date anyone they wanted, but if they married a Gentile they would be in serious trouble...
...Sarah was even more upset than her husband...
...I don't even have a business to distract me...
...Kristin, the fiancee, was such a mystery to them that they studied all the nonJews in the workshop for keys to her character...
...In his 30s and 40s, when he was devoting most of his time to his flourishing electronics business, he became very involved with the Conservative synagogue he and Sarah had joined when they moved to Long Island in the 1950s...
...Even though she had promised to go to the bet din and the mikveh before she married Ari, the wedding was approaching and they feared she would renege...
...I love to read Yiddish writers, to go to Jewish theater, to collect menorahs and Israeli coins, to take classes in Judaism...
...But there was a problem...
...We never said anything about it...
...They loved sharing the bounty of their religion with the group: On Purim, Sarah baked us hamantaschen...
...You've just been through hell with Judy...
...Last Tisha B'Av she and Ari came out to the house...
...While Sarah didn't want him to marry a Gentile, Barney, remembering Judy, was worried about how his son would withstand the agony of a separation from Kristin...
...For a while, he was very involved with an Italian Catholic...
Vol. 8 • May 1983 • No. 5
