I personally don’t believe that someone from a Christian background (approx. 2.2 billion people) who is married to someone of Hindu background (approx. 1 billion people) – especially someone who exhibits a remarkable ignorance of Judaism and Jewish history and the actual meaning of “chosen” – has any business whatsoever expressing such belligerent disrespect for (and resentment of) people who are Jewish (approx. 14-16 million people!) for whom the preservation of the Jewish people, God forbid, actually means something both in a general sense and in terms of their own family.
Does wis75 understand that it’s only in very recent years that the worldwide population of Jews has approached its pre-Holocaust level? Nothing wis75 or her children do – or, frankly, any other Christian or Hindu or Muslim does – has any material effect on the survival of their people or their religion (even leaving aside the fact that for most Gentiles, their religion isn’t also an ethnicity).
It’s very different when you belong to a group that came close to being exterminated within living memory. Especially for people like me with a direct family connection to the victims of that extermination. As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor (my mother) who lost most of her immediate family and innumerable collateral relatives, and who told me when I was a child that I was her symbolic answer to Adolf Hitler (quite a burden to place on a child, but it was something I always understood instinctively) – and also because my mother died very young herself, when I was 20 – of course I feel an ineradicable loyalty and obligation to her memory, and, in turn, to the Jewish people.
The idea of marrying someone who wasn’t Jewish didn’t bother me particularly when I was young, although I always recognized that it would be easier for someone Jewish to comprehend what my background meant to me. But of course it would have bothered me to have children who didn’t identify as Jews – I would have considered it a betrayal of my family and my people. And I honestly think it would have bothered me even more to have children who identified with a religion that was essentially founded on the idea of superseding Judaism (go read something like James Carroll’s “Constantine’s Sword” if you don’t know what I mean, or at least keep in mind that when Christians refer to what they call the “Old” and “New” Testaments, they’re not talking about chronological order), and, regardless of recent ecumenical trends, has a nearly 2000-year history of its adherents persecuting and often slaughtering Jews. And, even now, regardless of denomination or political leanings, has all too many of its adherents who are all too eager to show their disrespect for Judaism (consciously or not) by reflexive denigrations of the so-called “Old Testament God,” and by using buzzwords like “harsh,” “vengeful,” “legalistic,” “judgmental,” and “Pharisee” (apparently not realizing that the Pharisees were essentially the populist, non-aristocratic party of Jews, and the precursors to rabbinic Judaism) by contrast to Christian love and mercy, etc. (And people criticize Jews for supposedly thinking their religion is “better” than others?)
So to me, having Christian-identified children (or children who identified as anything other than Jewish) would have made me feel very uncomfortable, and would have felt disrespectful to my ancestors – who have all been Jewish for at least the last 300 years. If anyone can’t understand that, that’s fine, and they’re entitled to their opinion, but as harsh and judgmental as their opinion may be, it doesn’t change how I feel.
Of course, having children who identified as something other than Jewish would have been very unlikely for me, because I can’t imagine having married someone, Jewish or otherwise, who didn’t agree to respect my feelings on the subject.
The fact is that I did marry someone Jewish – in fact, everyone I ever went out with, with one exception, was Jewish. And my son’s Jewish identity is almost as strong as mine – like mine, in a historical and familial and “Jewish values” sense as much or more than a strictly religious sense. I’m sure he would have been infinitely more shocked had I changed my religion than he was that I changed my gender/sex!
I really don’t care very much at all if my son ends up with someone Jewish or not, although, all else being equal, it would make me happy if he did. As for grandchildren, I have a feeling that it’s going to be many years (if ever) before that happens, but if and when it does, of course it would please me if they identified as Jewish, and of course it would make me sad if they didn’t – and even sadder in the unlikely event (knowing how my son feels) that they affirmatively identified with a different religion, although of course I would still love them. All I have to do is look at my father’s family, in which all three of my first cousins married Gentiles, and none of their children – or, now, grandchlldren – seems to have a tangible Jewish identity or any real knowledge of Jewish history or Judaism. (So much so that at family gatherings, which we do still have on occasion, nobody except my son seems to “get” that when everyone sits down to eat, and is asked to join hands for a prayer, it makes me very uncomfortable that the prayer invariably mentions “Christ our Lord,” which is why I always make sure to unlink my hands before that point!)
Another thing that bothers me about wis75’s views – apart from the fact that apparently people aren’t allowed to have any feelings at all about their children’s choices! – is her seeming implication that the survival of the Jewish people (whether viewed in terms of religion or ethnicity) has no independent value (especially given all the religions and peoples that have been extinguished in the past), and that we’d all be better off if there were no diversity in the world in terms of religion or ethnicity – or, by the same logic, language or nationality – and all minorities were absorbed by majorities. I guess Roma people and Native Americans and other marginalized people who’ve been the victims of genocide aren’t allowed to prefer that their children continue their culture and traditions to succeeding generations? I guess it was a matter of indifference when the last indigenous Tasmanian died sometime in the 19th century? And when the last native speakers of so many languages have died? And when Coptic Christians in Egypt are endangered? Or is it only Jews who aren’t allowed to have pride in their people and history and religion, and to feel sad at anything that decreases the likelihood of their long-term survival?
I wasn’t going to comment at all in this thread, because I wasn’t interested in evoking the same sort of negative reaction that rockvillemom did, but wis75’s comments changed my mind. I simply didn’t want to let them pass by without expressing my feelings. Because “offensive” is an extraordinarily mild term for how I see those comments.