“Discouraging
Intermarriage, Encouraging the Intermarried”
Rabbi Joshua Heller
Delivered First Day of Rosh
Hashanah 5768, September 13, 2007
Life is a lot more complicated than it used to be. Families are a lot more complicated than they
used to be. Life's rites of passage used to fall into a few basic categories-
births, weddings, deaths, and then the anniversaries of the above. And families were simple, too. You knew who the players were: mother, father, sister, brother, kids and
grandparents. It was easy to find the store-bought greeting card that matched
the right combination of milestone and relative. Somehow, life has gotten away from us. Hallmark's card writers have not kept up with
the world in which we live, where messages can be mixed. Try going to your local card store to find
something for one of the following occasions:
“Best wishes on your dog's "Bark Mitzvah"”
“Sympathies on your ex’s re-marriage.”
Or, if you were paying alimony, “congratulations on your ex's
re-marriage!”
“Happy father's day… to
addressee.”
Or, with the right surgery: “Happy father's day..Mom!”
There was one family in the shul where I actually got to write the
note: “Congratulations on your bat mitzvah and your mom's wedding” (This really happened in our congregation- actually ended up being a beautiful weekend,
and they saved a lot of money on flowers!)
“Congratulations on having a disease, or state regulation named
after you.”
Last High Holidays my family experienced a moment which was sad,
rather than fanciful, but
Hallmark-defying nonetheless. My
wife's grandmother's fourth husband passed away one year ago on Rosh
Hashanah. People were very kind to us,
but it's a difficult sentiment to express, your wife’s grandmother's fourth
husband passing away over the high holidays:
“May you be inscribed for a happy new year, and … who was this again?”
With all awkwardly
expressed sentiments aside, today is a yahrzeit for me. Ron Anderson was a mensch. And we cared for him. So the week between RH and Yom Kippur, when
rabbis have nothing better to do, Wendy and I flew up to Michigan for the day
to be with her extended family for the funeral.
And, even though Ron was a lifelong Catholic, with a priest performing
many of the funeral rites, I wrote and delivered a eulogy for him.
When you find the
rabbi writing a eulogy for a Catholic during the High Holidays, when you find
the rabbi cooking a strictly kosher Christmas turkey- (that's a story for
another time) you know family life is more complicated than it used to be. The
boundaries, the borders, between Jew and non Jew have dropped clean away. Intermarriage has an impact on our Jewish
community today that it has never had before. As I look around the room, I see
at least a few people whose husbands or wives are of another faith. A few more whose inlaws are of another
faith. Many more who are headed in that
direction, though not all may not know it yet.
And, if my experience is typical, 90% of the people in this room have a
cousin, or a niece, or a nephew, or a close friend, who is intermarried.
The statistics tell us
that about between 40 and 50% of Jews getting married today are marrying a
non-Jew. So, if you take the pessimistic
approach, out of four Jewish kids, two are going to marry each other and the
other two are going to marry non-Jews. Four out of five Jewish dentists may
recommend sugarless gum. But only three
of those five are going to marry another member of the Jewish faith. Is there anything that can be done? That should
be done? Does it even matter? What does it mean to us, here sitting in the
pews at B'nai Torah on the first day of Rosh Hashanah 5768?
One hundred years ago,
if you heard that your child was going to marry a non-Jew, you would sit shiva,
like in Fiddler on the roof. Of course,
fiddler on the roof is a great play. But tradition hasn't held up as well. Nowadays on Broadway, you hear Harvey
Fierstein and Rosie O'Donell croon "Do you love me," and it’s just
not the same. You'd have to put up a protective harness and a sign "beware
of falling fiddlers."
And in the larger Jewish
world, a majority of Jews don't care.
They are “over it.” A recent study suggested that 50% of Jews don’t see
anything wrong with intermarriage, and 78% would like their rabbis to officiate
at intermarriages. After all, this is
a free country. It's a melting pot.
Isn't it racist to say that there are people you should and shouldn't
marry? I was recently talking to someone
who said that we Jews have been inbred for so long that our gene pool has
gotten a little shallow, what with Tay Sachs, Goucher's, and all of the other
genetic diseases that we are succeptible to, a little fresh water wouldn’t
hurt.
So, why does it matter?
Well- I'll tell you why it doesn't matter.
It's NOT about race. If you look
at our Tot Shabbat and Junior congregation rooms on Saturday morning, or this
morning, you will see Jewish faces that are black, that are asian,
hispanic-looking, plenty of faces. God’s
covenant is open to all, not just Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe.
It's not about whether
the non-Jewish partner is a good person or not.
Because often they are nice, decent, ethical people. And
after all- if somebody tells you they think your kid is great, are you going
to argue with them? And if you insist
on playing the blame game, you can point fingers in a lot of directions- the
community, the schools, the synagogues, the parents, the Jewish spouse. The one person you can’t blame is the
non-Jewish partner. THEY actually want to marry
someboday Jewish!
So why
does it matter?
So why does it matter? It's about the Jewish community, and it’s
about the health of individual families.
It’s about the Jewish
community, because it about the continuation and survival of our Jewish
faith. The statistics tell us that when
two Jews marry there is a 80-90% percent chance that their child will grow up
to consider themselves Jewish. When a Jew
and a non-Jew marry, it's about a third.
That’s why it’s a Mitzvah from the Torah to marry within the faith. Judaism has survived a lot of things. We've survived many nations wanting to kill
us. What we haven’t figured out is what to do when other nations want to kiss us. This thing that we have- this faith, this
tradition, this covenant, is important.
It matters in the world. We want
to preserve it, because it preserves us, and we are indeed, an endangered
species, and every Jew that marries a non-Jew increases that danger. You might not believe it by looking at this
room today, by looking at the parking lots in our neighborhood, but there are
fewer Jews in America than there were 10 years ago, and those numbers continue
to change.
It's not just about
the macro scale, about the Jewish people.
It is also important at the level
of individual families. Marriages may be
made in heaven, but the details still have to be worked out here on earth. The Beatles may have sung "all you need
is love" but in fact, you need more than that. Couples have to manage differences about many
things; family, parents and in-laws, child-rearing, money, even sex. Religion just adds another thing you have to
balance. And it’s hard: 50% of
marriages end in divorce these days, even if you factor out Elizabeth
Taylor. There are a lot of reasons for
that, but one is that children of my generation and younger, come into
relationships with unreasonable expectations.
We expect that everything will just work itself out. We think that we can put off difficult
choices and difficult discussions and eventually we will get our way. We expect
that we are going to be better off than our parents. And maybe we will, and
maybe we won't. It's hard enough
figuring out what furniture you need for the living room and how you are going
to pay for it. Add to that figuring out
the respective positions of a Christmas tree and a Menorah, and it can get
pretty complicated. And it’s harder to
pass on a consistent, meaningful set of values to your kids if you and your spouse
don’t have a common starting point.
I think if you were to
ask some members of B'nai Torah, they might tell you that things are different
here- that this is somebody' else's problem.
When I first arrived in Atlanta, many families would whisper to me
"we're an intermarriage- I grew up Orthodox and my spouse grew up
Reform." Actually marrying outside
the faith was practically inconceivable, and so they repurposed the term. Indeed, if you look at our membership, there
are less than 10 families in the whole congregation of 570 that are currently
intermarried- there are far, far more where a non-Jewish partner has converted.
But the fact is, the
wave is washing over us, as it has everywhere else- even in the Orthodox
world. It's an issue where Conservative
or Traditional or Egalitarian, is not
going to make a difference. 60% of the
respondants to our synagogue survey would "do anything they could" to
prevent a child from marrying out. Now
even so, I don’t have the hard statistics on intermarriage statistics amongst
the kids who grew up here, but anecdotally, it seems like the numbers are close
to those everywhere else. I see it with
children of Shabbat and weekday regulars and children of respected and
committed lay leaders. Children whose
families are committed to Israel and to important Jewish institutions. Children
who graduated from Hebrew School, and Hebrew Academy, Epstein and Yeshiva. As for Weber and Davis-
give them time. Almost every week, I sit
in my office with parents who are trying
to come to terms with the decisions that their children are making. Are they going to try to draw a line in the
sand and fight it? Are they going to let
it go, and rejoice that their children have found love? Do they find themselves on some bittersweet
middle ground?
Almost every week, I
talk to couples that are navigating these questions for themselves. What is Judaism going to mean to them in
their married lives? How will they
resolve things with parents? And they
are trying to make decisions for themselves.
What do we tell them, through our words and through our actions?
Take the story of
Dr. Noah Feldman, who was one of my
contemporaries at Harvard. Now if you
ask my mom after services, she will tell you that I was the smartest kid at
Harvard. But Noah who was a couple of
years ahead of me, was clearly smarter.
He won a Rhodes scholarship, then
was first in his class at Yale Law. He clerked for a Supreme Court Judge. He helped write the constitution for Iraq
(well, nobody’s perfect). Now he's a
professor at Harvard Law School. He was
also regarded as one of the finest products of the Modern Orthodox world. He attended Maimonides- one of the most
prestigious Orthodox day schools in the country. He was chair of the Orthodox minyan at
Harvard. He can layn any Torah portion
you like, on sight.
He even reached the
pinnacle of intellectual achievement in the New York Jewish community- the is a
frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine and Op-Ed section, and this
summer he wrote an article called “Orthodox Paradox” which reflected his
struggles with the Orthodox day school that he attended through high
school. He married a non-Jewish woman,
and he submitted messages to the Maimonides alumni newsletter about their
marriage and their life together. He was
shocked to discover that his announcements were not printed, that he was a
persona non-grata. He and his wife did not appear in printed reunion photos,
and he accused the school of cropping him out.
The story gets a bit murky- did the school really crop him out, or did
the photo only include a portion of the graduates to begin with? His took a number of swipes at Judaism that
seemed only tangentially related to his personal experience.
Noah Feldman clearly
feels great pain and disappointment. Responses
to in the Jewish blogosphere (if you don’t know what that is, don’t worry about
it) ranged from the fiercely antagonistic to the sympathetic. The sympathetic
offered him welcome and congratulations on his “coming out.” The antagonistic
noted that it is unfair to expect
positive recognition from a community if you defy one one of its basic
norms. “You made your bed, now sleep in
it.”
The only approach that I can offer is a nuanced approach, which is
not always an easy balance to achieve:
Discourage
intermarriage, but encourage the intermarried.
Look back at our Torah portion this morning, Genesis 21. This is not the first time that we were in
danger of losing 50% of the Jewish family. Abraham had two sons, Ishmael,
through Hagar, and Isaac, through Sarah. Sarah sees that Ishmael is
"Metzachek"- acting out. The
commentators have different suggestions as to how that behavior was expressed,
but clearly he's acting in a way that Abraham and Sarah don't approve of, and
that is disruptive to the family, and to the covenant that binds the very first
Jewish family. Sarah takes the zero
tolerance approach. Abraham, it appears,
is reluctant, but then at God’s command sends him away. Ishmael and his mother have supplies, but
they are not sufficient for the journey as they wander and get lost. Everyone abandons Ishmael- even Hagar turns
away as he seems about to die of dehydration. But then an angel calls out to
Hagar and points out a well, and reassures her that he will save Ishmael because
he has heard his voice “B’asher Hu Sham”- where he is.
That is a very important
phrase. Whatever else may be going on, no matter what bad things he may
have done, or what may lay in his future, God can see that Ishmael is a person
of value and worth, and is deserving at that moment. God promises “I will make him a great
nation.” And indeed, Ishmael goes off and carries out the covenant in his own
way. The Midrash, the Jewish homiletic
tradition, imagines a moving reunion between Abraham and Ishmael years later.
What do we do when our children, our brothers, our sisters,
parents and grandparents, don't live up the the expectations of the
community? Do we drive them away, or
keep them in the camp? Can you love
someone even if you might be uncomfortable with the choice that they've
made? What preparations, what
provisions, do we present to our children before we send them off into the
wilderness? Are we prepared to see them
“where they are?”
What our options? Jewish
communities have sometimes functioned on the basis of isolation and forced
compliance with imposed norms. The
rabbis understood that there was a protective value in isolation. For example, I’m often asked “Why does wine
need to be marked kosher? What could be non-kosher about wine? Are people
putting pork in there?”
It’s rarely an issue of ingredients of unkosher origin. Ernest and Julio Gallo say they will “sell
no wine before it's time.” Not we will
“add more swine before it's time.”
There’s an concern that some wine might have been used in pagan rites,
and thus be rendered forbidden. While
this still might be an issue on the college campus on a rowdier weekend, what does that have to do with Two Buck
Chuck? They don't have an altar in the
back of Trader Joe’s where they are sacrificing virgins to Ba'al. At least not at the Sandy Springs location.
There’s another
factor. The Talmud, Tractate Avodah
Zarah 36b explains that non-Jewish bread is forbidden lest you drink non-Jewish
wine. Non-Jewish wine is forbidden lest you engage in social
contact with non-Jews, which is forbidden lest it lead you away from the
faith. It might seem like the kosher
version of “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” but it makes sense if you think about
it- if you can’t go out to a bar and drink, it reduces your chances of meeting,
hooking up with, dating or marrying, the people who hang out there. Once they do that, they may be led out of the
faith. That’s what the Torah says- don’t
let your children marry non-Jews, lest they be led astray into other faiths, or
at the very least, out of our own.
However, our community is not willing to return to the ghetto. We want
our children to go to college and have non-Jewish friends, acquaintances and
co-workers.
So instead,
we send our children, our brothers, our sisters, Even our parents, and grandmothers, off into
the desert. Are they prepared? What experiences do we give them? What preparation do we give them?
It’s worth asking: why do people date- why
do we seek relationships? It’s because
we want companionship. We thirst for
human connections. Apple has sold 1
million iPhones. I’ve heard suggested
that the next Apple products will make the iPhone more like the iPod. Perhaps even the iPhone shuffle: for when you want to call someone and you
don't care who! An argument has to have
at least some weight to convince someone to be lonely on a Saturday night, and
has to pretty compelling to convince someone to give up on a possibility of
lifelong companionship.
Steven Cohen, a Jewish
sociologist, summarized some of the best data on intermarriage in a report
called "A Tale of Two Judaisms, the
‘Inconvenient Truth’ for American Jews.”
He found that there are certain experiences that correlate with
in-marriage vs intermarriage.
According to the
statistics, kids who had multiple Jewish experiences- camp, youth group and an
Israel trip, had a smaller chance of intermarrying- better by 12 percentage
points. Day school gave you a 14%
smaller chance of intermarriage.
Religious school two days a week was about even. One-day-a-week religious school made you slightly more likely to intermarry.
That’s mind-boggling. Do you burn down the religious schools! Or, as we do here- try to make them better,
more compelling, more meaningful.
Intermarriage makes
complete sense unless you have been presented with a compelling reason not
to. Do we present a compelling vision of
why Judaism matters? Of how Judaism
makes life different, and hopefully for the better? Where kids grow up and say "I can't
imagine a life without Shabbat. I can’t
imagine a home without Jewish holidays, and kosher. I can't imagine a life without Israel
meaning something. Without reading
Jewish books. Any relationship I have is
not going to work unless my partner is someone who will get with the program
and be a part of those things with me!”
It’s not always easy to raise kids with that approach, but it’s the best
way I know of.
Back when I was growing
up, there were stereotypes we created and bought into about Jews, and Jewish
desirability, and I think they are still out there. You’ve seen and experienced
them. You probably take them for
granted: Jewish men being whiny momma's
boys, not good at sports. Jewish women
being demanding or unattractive. Think
about it: all the jokes about Jews in sports.
It was a Jewish woman who created Barbie, but… she doesn’t look
Jewish. We underestimate the destructive
power of all those JAP jokes. If you are
raised your whole life to think that the members of your own group are
substandard, then of course you are going to look elsewhere.
There is a joke that I want to retire here today.
A woman goes to see her
Rabbi.
"Michael and David are
both in love with me," she says, "Who will be the lucky one?"
The wise old Rabbi answers:
"Michael will marry
you. Sol will be the lucky one."
Riotous laughter
ensues. And that’s my point! We've given ourselves a complex, a crisis of
self-esteem.
Jews can be dangerous and ride motorcyles- we’ve got one member
who rides a Harley to synagogue! Jewish
women are attractive. As far as I’m concerned, the most beautiful woman in the
world is the one I’m married to, and she’s Jewish. But we’ve bought into idea and stereotypes
that don’t match up. We foster and feed into these negative
stereotypes. I know people who are
saying "I wouldn't date a Jewish boy" "I wouldn't date a Jewish
girl." And it’s funny, because
non-Jews don’t share those stereotypes.
On JDate (so I’m told by some of our regular participants) you have a
category for non-Jews willing to convert.
Discourage
Intermarriage, Encourage the Intermarried
And so, we live in the real world, and we
choose a middle path. We discourage intermarriage, but encourage the
intermarried.
We seek a path where we want to share what
is important to us while defining what makes us different. A community, to be a community, must have
definitions, and customs. A community
must have its fences. And so anyone is
welcome to attend any synagogue activity, to learn more about Judaism. But to participate fully in some activities,
to have an honor in the service or take a leadership role you must be Jewish. Being a full member of a synagogue, I think,
means standing for something. It means
committing to its basic principles and ideals. Privileges are always a product
of responsibility.
We can’t be shy to say that we have a problem
with intermarriage, even as we continue to be in relationship, in friendship,
with those who make that choice. Part of
having a healthy, mature, and loving relationship with someone is being able to
disagree with them about even very important things- especially very important
things One must be able to express both
approval and disapproval with love and candor, each on their own scale. One must be able to recognize both shared
values, without being overwhelmed by, or ignoring, areas of difference.
I
joked earlier about Hallmark cards for unusual events. I find that when faced with intermarriage, I
have to respond with my own mixed messages, which may create a “Conservadox
Paradox.” As individuals, we may be
pleased that someone we care about has found a loving partner, and indeed, it
would be unusual not to. As formal
representatives of the community, as those who are concerned about the
continuation of something sacred, as keepers of Jewish family traditions, our
joy is tempered by concern that those traditions might be diminished or even
lost, even if unintentionally. It’s for that reason that as a congregation, an
institution, we don’t offer formal congratulations or “Mazal Tov” on an
intermarriage, even while individuals within the congregation may share in the
joy of the event.
However, that does not limit our obligation
to be able to see each Jew as God saw Ishamel
“B'asher Hu Sham”-wherever he is at that moment. And that is where we as a community can do
something positive. We have an
opportunity to reach out, first of all, to the Jewish partner. Every soul matters. There are 613 commandments in the Torah.
Jewish marriage is one of them.
However, even if you are not in a position to observe any one Mitzvah,
there are 612 others, paths to create connections to God and community, and the
remaining ones become all the more important.
So, turning to my own life, I could not have
participated in the celebration of Ron and Grandma Lenore's wedding, let alone
consecrated it, but I could see Ron as
caring companion for someone who was dear to me, and as a
great-grandfather figure to my children.
And when he passed away, I came to mourn his loss. Over the past years, I've done a number of
brisses and baby namings, bar and bat mitzvahs, where a Jewish parent and a
non-Jewish parent have agreed to try to create a Jewish home. And so while I could not have blessed their
original union, I could still offer support and encouragement on their Jewish
path. And when my particular spiritual approach was not appealing to them, I
will try to help them make a connection with a rabbi, or a community, that will
be a good fit.
Conversion
Which
brings me to an even more important role for the community, in reaching out to
the non-Jewish partner. Now, Judaism
is, by nature, not a missionizing religion. In fact, if someone comes to your door to convert you are supposed to drive them
away three times (this also works with solicitors, and girl scouts selling
cookies) Some of you may be familiar
with the story of the great Rabbi Hillel. A man came to him and said
"convert me to Judaism by teaching me the whole Torah standing on one
foot"- Hillel began with one teaching and encouraged him to continue his
study. Less well-known is that before
that, the same fellow went to Shammai, another prominent rabbi. Shammai hit him over the head with an
architect's ruler! You catch more flies
with honey than with vinegar. And God
knows it's Rosh Hashanah so we've got honey to spare.
If a couple has made a
decision to do something more to create a Jewish home- we have the obligation
to support them in that aspect of their relationship. There are things that we can do within our
congregation, and there are excellent programs in the larger community as
well. “A Taste Of Judaism” and “The
Mother’s Circle”are just two examples.
And sometimes it takes time. A
non-Jewish partner may not be ready until children arrive or until they reach a
level of knowledge such that they are ready to make an informed decision and do
it for their own sake, and not just "Yes dear."
Often couples will show
up at my door, and the non-Jewish partner is considering conversion. Often some other rabbi has already hit them
over the head with a ruler. It used to
be that 30-40% of non-Jewish prospective spouses would convert. Now it's closer to 15%. We can, we have to, bring that number back
up. It's a tremendous investment of the resources of the congregation, but
there is nothing more important. Make
them feel welcome. Invite them for Shabbat
and holiday meals and activities. Those
who choose Judaism, and embrace it, are some of the best things we have going
for us. People who have have chosen
Judaism, and embraced it wholeheartedly are members of our board, and are
spouses of board membes. They have
served as chair of the preschool PTA, and been active in every synagogue
activity, from Lasagna baking for new parents to morning minyan to the Hevre
Kaddisha burial society.
There’s a joke that’s told about the father who tells his son
“whatever you do, don’t marry a non-Jewish woman.” The son, as sons do, doesn’t listen. But his
wife becomes excited about Judaism, studies with the rabbi and converts. She
gets excited about holidays, about Shabbat, about prayer and synagogue. And a few months later, the father asks the
son to come help out at the store on a Saturday morning.
“I can’t dad, my wife is making us go to synagogue on Shabbat.”
“I told you not to marry a non-Jewish woman!”
Conclusions
So, is there anything to be done?
In life, you can be a thermometer, or you can be a thermostat. Do you report about, complain about, the cold
or heat, or do you make a change?
It’s possible to make a difference. It’s about a few key things:
It's about raising children who have religious self-esteem, who
are so turned on to Judaism, to whom Judaism is so important , that it would
never occur to them not to reflect that in their families, share that with
their spouses, and to pass that on to their children.
It’s about being clear about preferences and expectations, and the
risks to the survival of our community, our family traditions, that
intermarriage can bring.
It’s about raising children who are realistic about what marriage
is all about- about compromise. Children
who can be honest about tough decisions, about balancing different demands and
desires in a relationship, and don’t shy away from having the important
conversations early enough.
It's about breaking down stereotypes and social phenomena that
keep Jewish kids from connecting with each other. Jewish society has always tried to create
mechanisms to create good matches. In
ancient times, Yom Kippur was one of the most joyous days of the year. The Jewish women would dance in the fields,
and many matches would be made. Yom Kippur- women would dance in the fields,
each wearing white. Now we have JDate.
It's about a tremendously delicate balancing act of preserving a
heritage, and maintaining the cohesiveness of a community, while reaching out
in a dozen, in a hundred ways. It’s
about recognizing that Jews make their life decisions for a host of
reasons. We may need to have fences, but
the gates must be many, and there must always be those ready to open them if
someone wants to come in.
We stand at a crossroads in American Jewish
life. We have only a few choices. We can choose to return to a world without
choice: to a ghetto and isolated
enclaves.
We can choose not to be
chosen. We can simply melt away into
the background noise, where being Jewish is no different from being of any
other ethnicity.
Or we can choose to create a vital Jewish life, a life which
is so compelling that our children could not imagine leaving it behind, and
which creates opportunities and incentives for Jewish young people to find each
other, and to find each other attractive.
We can choose to create an
atmosphere of support and encouragement for those who want to maintain their
Jewish connections.
We can choose to create a
community that encourages others to choose Judaism.
What other choice do we
have?