Jewish/Non-Jewish marriage

December 1, 2005 5:19 PM

InterFaithFilter: Jewish/Non-Jewish intermarriage. Any Mefites have personal experience?

Were there any particular difficulties in reconciling the difference in faiths? How about dealing with family? I'm not really looking for tips or advice, just personal stories and experiences.

posted by luftmensch to Human Relations (25 answers total)

I'm the son of such a union. Never saw any particular problems.
posted by Captaintripps at 5:20 PM on December 1, 2005

My Jewish grandpa married a conservative Christian lady. At his funeral, all these old Jews were there, and the Christian side of the family dropped the bomb that he'd converted and found Jesus.

Needless to say it was an awkward situation you want to avoid.
posted by johngoren at 5:36 PM on December 1, 2005

I have been half of the equation. It depends on how religous your families are and how open they are to the idea. His parents didn't agree with the marriage, mine were fine with it. After his parents divorced, his mother was fine with it.

I always tried to keep in mind, (as did he), the common thread of both religions--guilt.

I would talk with your Rabbi (Priest wouldn't be as open to one of you marrying outside the religion). A good reform rabbi has seen interfaith marriages and can advise you better.
posted by 6:1 at 5:39 PM on December 1, 2005

My sister (lapsed Catholic) and brother-in-law (Jewish) don't seem to have had any problems -- they celebrate Xmas/Hannukah and Easter/Passover with the kids; if anything, it's my sister who's the more proactive one in making sure they celebrate Jewish holidays. This has led to such amusing moments as the one at their seder earlier this year, in which sis asked BIL a question about something in the Haggadah, and he said, "honey, how would I know? You're the good Jew in the family."

No problems with parents on either side -- heck, I think I always disappointed my parents by failing to marry a nice Jewish boy like my sister did, and my BIL's parents are actually an interfaith couple themselves.
posted by scody at 5:42 PM on December 1, 2005

He was Jewish, I was nothing in particular. Both families were cool with the marriage. I converted to Judaism for my own reasons a few years later. I think it worked out well for everyone.
posted by gokart4xmas at 5:48 PM on December 1, 2005

My brother-in-law identifies himself as a "secular Jew." I asked my sister how they plan to raise their kids, and she said "as little secular seculars."

And that's what they are doing, and as far as I know, everyone is fine with it.
posted by ambrosia at 6:05 PM on December 1, 2005

I'm the child of a secular Jewish mother and an atheist Anglo father. It worked out well for all of us from my POV. We were raised in no particular religion (easy to do in New Zealand, which is a far less religious society than the US). My sister has become devoutly Orthodox Jewish. I am a heathen but will help make up a minyan if required, and said kaddish for my mother when she died. My father is an honorary member of the local Jewish community. My mother rediscovered Judaism in middle age, albiet of an eclectic Reform kind, and Dad was cool with that, seeing it as more a cultural practise than an assault on his disbelief.

From a strict Orthodox perspective, I'm a disastrous outcome. Assuming you are the Jewish half, I suggest you think long and hard about your duties to your ancestors and your religion. You may decide, as I have, that you owe them none, and that it is up to each generation to do what they will in their own time. Or you may have a vision of future heartbreak, which is a very real risk.

My aunt preceded my mother in marrying out and caused my grandparents great distress, to the point where my grandfather refused to attend the wedding. No religious issues in the nuclear family because my aunt joined the Catholic church in order to marry my uncle. That branch of the family is still solidly Catholic.

So when my mother went for it, her sister had already drawn most of the sting. It was pretty hypocritical of grandpa who was a commited communist anyway.

I will say that my indifference to things Christian has startled and disappointed women who were raised Christian and expect other people to privilege their religion.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:12 PM on December 1, 2005

My Dad's a lapsed-Jew. My mom's a lapsed-Christian. My Jewish Grandma was as atheistic as you could hope for. No problems.
posted by signal at 6:14 PM on December 1, 2005

The Jewish tailor 5 generations back and all the Christians were assimilated into the family's overarching doctrine of iconoclasm and cussedness. We save our contempt for the Dutch.
posted by Marnie at 6:22 PM on December 1, 2005

my mom is jewish and my dad is a non-practicing-general-christian-family-viewpoint. growing up we always celebrated christmas/hanukkah, passover/easter, purim, etc. my sister and i started hebrew school when i was in 3rd grade, which was a little late. i was bat mitzvah'd but she never was. my whole family is pretty much atheist, but i definitely believe in judaism as a cultural heritage moreso than a religion, so yeah. regardless, religion was never really an issue and we have fun celebrating all of the holidays. my boyfriend is non-jewish, and he still celebrates all of the jewish holidays, including shabbat, with me, but we go all out for christmas too.

on the other side of the coin, before dating me he dated another jewish girl whose family is hardcore jewish. they broke up because she didn't want to date someone who wasn't jewish anymore and is currently living in israel with her brother, who goes to yeshiva. if that were the state of the jewish relationship-member, i don't think intermarriage would work very well.
posted by booknerd at 6:33 PM on December 1, 2005

I'm a Jewish-by-heritage atheist, and my wife is a lapsed Catholic. We have no real problems with religion, but then our kids aren't old enough to be asking many questions in that regard. We celebrate Chanukah and Christmas, and Passover and Easter, and other than that neither of us does much related to religion at all.

Nobody in my family much cared that I was marrying a gentile, which was probably helped by the fact that my aunt married an Irish Catholic man in 1975, my brother is married to a woman who was brought up Lutheran, and my first wife was also a lapsed Catholic.
posted by cerebus19 at 6:49 PM on December 1, 2005

Sister is a lapsed Catholic, BIL a secular Jew. The kids (2 and 5 years old) are exposed to all the major holidays. Passover is given more emphasis over Easter and Christmas more over Chanukah. The approach is largely from a heritage standpoint. FWIW, they also observe Three Kings' Day, my side of the family being Spanish. (Again, the emphasis is on the cultural aspect.)

My sister and BIL are in the process of moving to a planned community. Sis is thinking of joining a church at that point. She would like to see the children baptized, but will likely not go any further with the sacraments unless they show an interest.

As a point of interest, both she and I were allowed by our devout Catholic parents to decide if we wanted to be a part of the church anymore once we were confirmed (this was at age 15 -- Sis stayed, I left immediately). I'm not sure if my BIL had a similar choice. I do know both have agreed not to impose any religious obligation and I wouldn't be surprised if the kids are given a similar "offer" once they come of age.
posted by Sangre Azul at 7:03 PM on December 1, 2005

My mom's Christian and my dad's Jewish, neither of them are really religious, my grandparents are all cool with it, and I got to grow up w/o being pumped full of dogma, which was pretty awesome.
posted by speicus at 7:08 PM on December 1, 2005

My dh was married to a Jewish woman and had two children. He was a lapsed Catholic at the time and didn't particularly care. The boys are now teens, one a Bar Mitzvah, one soon to be. They are pretty typical secular Jews, I guess, in that they have gone through the Hebrew school thing but after that will only go to Temple twice a year. The celebrate Christmas with all the trimmings, since her new husband is also a lapsed Catholic.

Since marrying, my dh and I have become more active in our faith, and joined an Episcopal church. We and our children attend church every week and tend to talk about churchy things more often. It's led to some interesting conversations over the years.

I think if both partners are very involved in their respective faiths it can make things complicated should there be children. You can try to celebrate everything, but you can't actually practice both faiths sincerely, I don't think.
posted by Biblio at 8:02 PM on December 1, 2005

My wife is a lapsed Catholic, and I was raised Jewish. We had a co-faith wedding (both a priest and a Rabbi), and are now 7 years into our marriage. We have 2 kids, and we celebrate both Christmas and Hannukah. We don't attend any regular organized religious stuff - tried some churches and CSL, but didn't/haven't found anything that works for us. We say grace before dinner every night ("We thank you Lord, for this food, and for each other"), and talk with the kids about spirituality, etc. However, although I like the community aspects of a organized religion, I'm happy with how things are right now...

Things might be different if either of us was a hard-core "believer", but we're both pretty much on the same page, so that helps. HTH - N
posted by noahv at 10:14 PM on December 1, 2005

I'm Jewish and I married a woman (in Hungary) who wasn't ever actively Christian (parents were communists), but when my son was born the Mom-in-law went bonkers and started worrying that "her grandchild" was going to have his penis cut and then everybody would know he's Jewish and his name was "too Jewish." As you can expect, the marriage went belly up. I almost became a Hasid baal-tsuvah in response. I'm glad I didn't.

My son is now 12, and knows that he is not officially Jewish but does identify as a Jew (heck... he just sang a Hasidic song in Yiddish on my latest Klezmer CD project) and when he grows up, if he wants to do so, he'll convert and become an official Jew. It is up to him.

My present Significant Other is Japanese, and although my work puts me in daily contact with a lot of Orthodox Jews and even Hasids, I make no secret of my relationship with her. They may not like it, but I am not forcing my life on them, so we get along.

My good buddy here in Budapest is an observant Jew who has fallen in love with a woman who is Roma. Her family had to break off her decade long betrothment to some guy (pay back the dowry and all.) They came to me for advice (since not too many Ortho Rabbis speak Romani), because they want their children to be raised with both Jewish and Gypsy identities. What I told him was that the main thing was to know ahead of time whether Religion would rear it's ugly head in the future, especially as regards raising children and dealing with things like Christmas. But the most important thing any child needs is parents who love and respect each other.
posted by zaelic at 3:44 AM on December 2, 2005

Raised a Christian, ecstatically happily married (7+ years) to a woman who was raised Jewish.

Really, the only "mixed marriage" issues that we've had to deal with have much more to do with the fact that she grew up eating Kansas City-style barbecue (brisket, burnt ends), while I grew up eating Eastern North Carolina-style (pulled pork.) That barbecue thing was almost a deal-breaker.

Back to religion. We celebrate important holidays in both traditions. Should we raise children, we'll make sure to offer them religious instruction in both traditions (my wife is a borderline Buddhist these days, and I'm an evangelical agnostic, but we both had religious instruction as children and feel that it's important that if one rejects faith, that it be done on an informed basis.)
posted by enrevanche at 3:54 AM on December 2, 2005

I am a (fairly secular) Jew and my wife is Christian (daughter of a Methodist preacher, actually), and it's not an issue. Of course, it helps that we're both pretty open-minded and appreciate large parts of the other tradition and we both dislike fundamentalism an awful lot.

Her father (again, a Methodist preacher) performed a mixed wedding for us (under a Chuppah!) and everyone has been fine with it. That having been said, she never sees her fundamentalist grandmother, and she hasn't mentioned that I'm Jewish. It might not go over so well....

We're not planning on having kids, so that's not an issue, but if we do, we think it'd be best to expose them to both.
posted by JMOZ at 4:54 AM on December 2, 2005

My Father was a Jewish convert to Christianity, and married a Christian, and his family wasn't happy. He'd converted to Christianity years before, and his family wasn't really very religious at all, so I think it was more of a cultural thing than a religious issue.
posted by unreason at 6:13 AM on December 2, 2005

I heard a stand up comic say that he was the result of a marriage between a Jewish man and a Catholic woman, he said that when asked he tells people he's a "Cashew." Since his mom was Puerto Rican, that made him a "honey roasted Cashew."

Hey, at least there's a career in stand up comedy in the future.
posted by Pollomacho at 7:30 AM on December 2, 2005

I'm an agnostic Jew. Almost all the members of my generation in my family (I'm including first and second cousins here) have married outside the faith. The first cousin to do so, back in 1980 or so, faced considerable hostility from the older generations, some of whom refused to go to his wedding. Since then, they've all loosened up or died. My sister married an indifferent Catholic, and it was actually at the prodding of his family more than anything that they had a reform Rabbi conduct the ceremony. They celebrate holidays from both sides of the fence now.

I do know of one family where the husband is an observant Jew and the wife is an indifferent Christian. He refuses to have a Christmas tree in his house, and every year this causes an argument for them. To be honest, I'd also be very resistant to having a Christmas tree.
posted by adamrice at 7:47 AM on December 2, 2005

Okay, so my parents are Jewish by birth, but neither is devout at all. In fact, my Dad has worked in the department store business his whole life, so we always celebrated Christmas, since so much of his work was focused on it.

None of us went to temple, or were bar-mitzvah'ed. In fact, I was even sent to an Episcopalian private school for my middle and upper school years. My brother married twice - both Christians, and my sister is married to a Quaker.

Now, put this all together, and you wouldn't think that religion would matter to them. Add in that I'm openly gay.

And yet, for all that, my Mother was never as happy as when she found out that my ex-partner had a Jewish last name. (His father was Jewish, his mother was not.) For the 15 years we were together, she always referred to him as her "one Jewish son-in-law."

This from a woman who spent her whole life assimilating. so you just never know.
posted by Futurehouse at 7:54 AM on December 2, 2005

I'm the product of a Jew/Catholic marriage, and all you can really say about it is it depends on a lot of things. It's also very generational. Intermarriage now is not nearly the family-destroying controversy it was thirty years ago.

When my parents got married, my Jewish grandparents refused to go to the wedding because it was being held in a church. Also, my mom, a Catholic, had two long-time, close Jewish family friends, and she went to visit them with my dad before the wedding. When she got up to go to the bathroom, they started accosting my dad, whom they had just met. They told him he couldn't do this to his people and how wrong it was to marry a shiksa. Needless to say, my mom never spoke to them again.

A friend of mine had intermarried parents. The dad wasn't Jewish, and said he wouldn't convert, which made a lot of waves, and then six years after the wedding, he converted out of a genuine desire to embrace the faith and raise their child as a Jew. That's a much happier intermarriage story.

Intermarriage can be tough, mainly if the parents of either person aren't OK with it, but you have to say fuck them if people don't get it. The one thing that always needs to be worked out beforehand is whether the kids will be raised with one of the faiths.
posted by TunnelArmr at 9:35 AM on December 2, 2005

I'm the agnostic/ex-Episcopalian half of an intermarriage. We raise our kids Jewish, celebrate only the Jewish holidays. My wife always asks me if I want an Xmas tree, if she should serve lamb at Easter, but I always politely decline. I stopped talking to my imaginary friends years ago, but I'm perfectly happy to join in a conversation with hers. My joke is that I'm not actually a Jew, I'm only practicing.
posted by johngumbo at 2:07 PM on December 2, 2005

Coincidentally, a Mefite who shall remain anonymous forwarded me this story just a few days ago, and I think it's pertinent to your question...

I think the #1 overriding question in such marriages is whether or not the couple intends to have kids. If the answer to that question is "no", then there's really no issue, provided both people are considerate of each other's beliefs or lack thereof. If the answer is "yes" or "maybe", then they should tread with considerable caution. And if the Jewish side of the family isn't Reform, as mine isn't, then it pretty much just ain't happening, not least of all because the non-Reform Rabbis will refuse to marry the couple, nevermind the social and familial stigma.

I come from a Jewish family that has run the gamut in the past 80 years from non-Jewish Argentineans happily converting before marrying in, to Italian-American ex-nuns refusing to convert before marrying in (though she and my great-great-uncle didn't dare marry until after his Orthodox immigrant mother had died [in the 1940's], and they never had kids). And right now my widowed uncle and his long-time non-Jewish girlfriend are running into this issue with my observant grandfather, who is perfectly polite to her (but no more than that) when he has to see her, and would likely boycott their wedding. My mother even looks a little askew at my brother's lovely girlfriend because one of her four grandparents wasn't Jewish, even there's absolutely no religious basis for that view, just her own prejudices...

My point is that I'm glad this has been such a non-issue for other people, but it just doesn't work out that well in a lot of other cases and families. Your mileage may vary.
posted by Asparagirl at 11:53 PM on December 2, 2005