Leora- Thank you for your involvement!

I am an intermarried mother of two Jewish girls. My husband was raised Catholic. He has identified as an atheist since I married him, and still does. While he agreed from our second date (really!) that he was fine with raising children Jewish, at first, he felt very uncomfortable in Jewish communal settings. He felt certain that people were ignoring him because he wasn’t Jewish. Over time, after a wedding by a reform rabbi (that left half of his family saying ‘I wish I could have had a Jewish wedding!’), after his being welcome to be a full participant in our baby namings in shul and our rabbi-led simchat bat, and many other moments of hands reached out to him by rabbis, congregants and educators, he now joins us by choice every shabbat at kiddush and puts up our sukkah. He is the parent of a day school student and one about to enter day school, and never for a moment balked at this expense, because he feels good about being part of a Jewish family, even if he himself is not Jewish.

Incidentally, I would have married my basherte no matter what I expected the reaction to be from the community. It was my love of Judaism, and my many positive experiences starting in childhood and well into my 20′s and 30′s, that made me committed to raising my own children as Jews.

here’s a dvar torah i wrote about what a difference in our Jewish lives it made for us to be weclomed, not shunned or “tolerated.” http://homeshuling.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/dvar-torah-parshat-emor/

You’re absolutely right – these discussing do first and foremost belong in the home.

But at this point, the discussion is being had – a lot – on what should the Jewish community as a body do or say about intermarriage. Do we think that intermarriage is good or bad for the Jewish community’s continuity as a whole, and what should we do if we think it’s not good?
I think that’s a very valid thing for a community to consider, if it is interested in its own survival, and facing rapidly dwindling numbers.

I absolutely agree that people must maintain the choice to do whatever they like. I am generally very pro “people being free to choose to do whatever they like,” in pretty much all instances.

But in this case we’re not really talking about any sort of large scale “policy change.” Historically, most rabbis did not officiate in mixed marriages, and Judaism has generally always frowned on the practice. The question is, what do we care to do about it now that it’s here, and so very common (and getting more so every day). Theoretically, we could choose to do nothing, and simply say that those who will care to remain Jewish will, and if we lose the rest, so be it. Personally, I think that would be a shame, but it is one possible way to go. Or we can try to admit that this is a problem for us as a community, and try to decide what we can do about it.

I also don’t think that it is invalid for rabbis to choose not to support the creation of something they see as problematic, either from a religious or a communitarian point of view. People are still free to get married – why should an individual rabbi be required to officiate that marriage?

And I think it is certainly valid for rabbis (as religious leaders) to determine and teach that they and their religious communities are for or against certain things. That’s what they do every day – that’s really what being a religious community is all about – that you all believe a certain set of principles, and yes, rabbis tell people that you’re “supposed” to believe these things if you are part of this community (whatever those things are for each community). Not everyone does, of course, but there are the guiding principles of a religious community, and they define and teach them every day. I don’t really see why this one principle is any different. Now it’s the beauty of Judaism that you can be a Jew, and still be free not to believe any of the things that any rabbis say, and you are still a Jew just by virtue of your birth (I certainly know plenty of atheist Jews, and they are no less Jewish for it), but that does not mean that rabbis cannot stand in their synagogues and teach that you’re supposed to believe in one God (even though are you free to choose not to).

So I don’t think we’re talking about forcing anyone, or taking away any choice here – we all know that in the United States, you are free to do or believe what you like. The real question is what do we want to believe and teach and try to create for our communities and our children to help grow and perpetuate our communities and their survival and vibrancy (and not end up with a United States in which only ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Jews who reject the gentile world fully, exist, and the rest have embraced the rest of the world so much, and mixed in so much, that they don’t exist as a distinct community, with a distinct set of Jewish values, at all anymore).

I do, however, think that “policy changes” like rabbis not marrying interfaith, and Judaism as an institution teaching against it, etc. crosses the line into forcing people to believe what we believe. We can teach and model for our kids what our heart’s desires are. But then we need to teach them how to make those decisions for themselves.

IE: If you believe it is so, tell them how hard it might be to raise children in an interfaith household so they go into their decisions with their eyes closed. But don’t make those decisions for them.

Believing that the option should be there for those who choose it is not the same thing as being pro-”it.” As in, I’m certainly not “pro-divorce” but I sure am glad that the option is there for those in a marriage that isn’t working.

I guess I just don’t see that “taking away the choice” will yield anything positive in the end. You can’t actually force anyone to do anything; nor should you want to.

As for the hollywood love thing– well written point and i love the getting splashed by a car analogy. although it does, indeed, feel that way!

Thank you for bringing up that point. I think that’s an important issue to talk about.

I think we can all agree that in the personal arena, once you have children (or friends, or what-have-you) who have intermarried, absolutely you obligated to try and support them as best as you can, and try to help them be as happy and successful in their marriage as possible. I think few people would argue against supporting our friends or families, whatever their choices. It think it is also not for us to judge those choices, or those making them – we all walk a different path in life, and we don’t know what road brought people to the choices and lives they have made for themselves.

That said, I feel that, even as we support those in our communities who make any choice (that is what being one people is all about, after all), there is still room to consider, in a larger, community-wide sense, what will help us survive as a people, and what will not. So as a community, we can then choose to support, or try to stem, certain things. For instance, we may decide that people marrying too early would be a threat to our community (not likely), and we would then try to teach and advocate against it, and take actions to try and prevent it, even while certainly accepting and supporting those individuals in our lives and our communities who choose to do it anyway. So I think that has been the focus of my remarks – what is likely to benefit us a wider community, and is that something worth worrying about on a community level.

The other thing that I have noticed is that I feel that we, as a community, focus too much on the “but we must support our children if it happens to them” question, and I feel that that interferes with a straight discussion on prevention. Basically, because we’re all so focused on the fact that well, we just want our kids to be happy, and if they’re already in love, we wouldn’t stop them, etc., etc., we forget to step back and say, OK, that’s all fine and good, but how do we prevent that situation occurring in the first place? And can we just admit that it’s not a desirable one (while still welcoming and supporting those of us who have made it)?

Here is the thing that puzzles me: many of us act as if “falling in love” is something that just happens to people. They’re not involved in any way, it’s just a random and immediate accident, like getting splashed by a passing car. You bump into some guy on the street, and “pouf!” you’re in love! I mean, let’s face it – things just don’t happen that way. Sure, you meet people. You might kinda like one of them. At that point, most of the time, you make a *conscious decision* to perhaps go out for coffee with them, perhaps pursue a potential relationship, perhaps act on your atraction. The love develops later – it’s not some mud you just fall into. Yes, there are exception, and I am very aware of them (I’ve certainly been there myself), but most of the time, being so in love you want to marry this person and spend your life with them takes time, and conscious effort and conscious choices along the way. And so I don’t think it’s too great a burden to consider what those choices would mean – early along the way. And maybe not do those early things that might lead to the point where you’re so in love that your mom just has to grin and bear it at your wedding. And I don’t really see anything wrong with encouraging our kids (and ourselves) to consider those elements when making these choices.

Technically, your kids could fall in love with a married man, as well. And yes, that’s something that should stop them. Not everything falls by the wayside in the path of love (no matter what Hollywood says). And they could just happen to like a married man, too – and I happen to think that they should stop, and not pursue that attraction, because “it would be a bad idea to fall in love with this person.” So why can’t the same thought process apply if the man’s, say, Catholic? Perfectly nice, and perfectly lovable, and a perfectly great guy – but in some way not for you, if it’s important to you to build a Jewish life for yourself and for your family.

It’s funny that there are plenty of things on which we think it’s not a good idea, but we would support our kids through it if it happened to them, and we are comfortable advising our kids against those things. Teenage pregnancy comes to mind, or drug use. Would I support a daughter of mine if she came home pregnant at 16? Sure I would! Would I like her to be in that situation? Absolutely not! And while I realize that I would give her all my support should it happen, I would also feel perfectly free advising her against this eventuality, and trying to raise her so as to avoid it, and encouraging community action that might help her avoid it, too. This approach works for so many things. I had extremely open-minded parents myself, and they were always very open about the fact that no matter what happened to us, they would support us and be there for us. But they were also extremely open about the fact that they didn’t want these things to happen to us, and the things they saw as “acceptable” and “not,” whether or not they would support us after the fact.

But somehow, when it comes to intermarriage, we seem, as a community to be unable to make this distinction. We seem so caught up in the idea that if we say intermarriage is not OK, then we are saying that we won’t support our kids when they end up in it, and so we say nothing at all, until it’s way too late. I don’t really see how that follows. Yes, we support someone’s not-great decisions – I would support my child if they were in love and marrying a gambling addict, too – but I don’t see why I should not advise my child, well in advance, to avoid ending up in situations where they are that entangled with a gambling addict.

One final thought (and then I’m done, I promise!) We hear a lot of talk about how people should just be happy in their marrige, and happy with their spouse, and it’s more important that he’s a nice guy, and all of that stuff. But assuming that it is important to you to build an actively Jewish life, and actively raise Jewish children in a Jewish home (it’s not for everyone), a non-Jewish spouse is an impediment to that (though not insurmoutable), and is therefore an added unnecessary source of conflict in the marrige. Just like a gambling addiction would be. Perfectly nice guy – big potential source of conflict or dissatisfaction, and something I think is a valid consideration. And once there are kids involved, there are other, and more long term, issues, as well. You can divorce a jerk husband. A husband who baptises your kids, or kids who choose to follow’s “daddy’s faith” – that’s something you have to live with forever.