@rockvillemom, I think your responsibility to your heritage is to talk to your sons about what is important to you. Your sons’ responsibility to their heritage is their choice. Just don’t shut any doors.
I love all of the perspectives on here! Thank you for sharing.
My friend’s extended family are truly a rainbow. The nuclear family are white protastants, WASPS Their protestant D just married a fabulous guy who is ethnically Korean. My friend’s brothers are all married to Japanese women. The BF of the sister of my friend’s newlywed D is black and training to be a police officer. No idea what religion any of them are. The wedding celebration had people from all over the US, Korea, India and other parts of the world as well. No one bats an eye about the varying religions and colors and races in the family.
My relative is in a mixed race couple–Asian/White. His family has alreayd had other mixed race couples, Asian/White, so everyone seems pretty OK with the combination. My extended family is mostly different types of Asian, but some Asian/White marriages as well.
No idea what folks are kids are dating but so far no one has indicated any serousness, so we don’t have any visceral reactions about any of this. Our kids went thru confirmation to please the grandparents but are largely agnostic like H & me. Most of my sibs (Catholic) married Christians, most of whom have converted to Catholicism. All the nieces and nephews have been raised Catholic.
I would not be able to cut my kids off for any reason, but definitely do feel for folks whose famlies try to force them to choose between a beloved and the family. My folks have been pretty tolerant, never saying a word when I dated people who were agnostic, Jewish, Taoist, or Mormon. They basically just quietly waited until each of us were engaged and then welcomed the person into the family. Before the engagement, they largely ignored the various people we dated, even if we dated them for many years and were fairly serious. For their sanity and preservation, that was a good strategy.
@snowball - I read your post several times and this made me tear up.
“Both my son and daughter are engaged/new married to non Jewish people. My husband and I adore both of their fiancees, but do know that our son’s children will not be Jewish.”
It sounds like you and your children are handling it well and trying to compromise and be respectful. But it must be difficult on some levels.
Interfaith marriages have not been the norm in my family either, until my children’s generation. One of my cousins married a non-Jew, but everyone else in my and DH’s family in our generation all married Jews. But almost all my nieces and nephews, or cousins’ kids, are dating or married to non-Jews. It’s not just in your family, RVM.
This discussion is so interesting! As I said, I’m an atheist. My father was raised in a very conservative (politically and religiously) Protestant faith. He broke away from the church when he was serving in the Army during WWII. All his siblings married people either of the same faith (as far as I know) or the same ethnicity (ancestors from the same country in Europe) or both. Same with my cousins on my dad’s side, with a few exceptions. My dad was not kicked out of the family but we NEVER visited his mom (my grandfather died in the 1940s) on a Sunday: never.
I was raised Catholic and married a methodist. That was not a big deal until I decided not to raise my kids Catholic.
I don’t see how you aren’t upset if you truly believe your faith and your child marries someone outside that faith. But I’d be far more upset if my kids married an atheist than someone who had some kind of faith. But I do believe Jews have more in common than not with christians. Except for the whole Jesus thing 
There is a fundamental difference with Muslims that goes back to Abraham and Sarah vs Hagar as the mother of the lineage of religion that I don’t see ever being resolved.
The race thing I don’t get being upset about, except being concerned about how others may treat them. I live in a pretty tolerant area so I don’t think it’s a huge deal but I’m not sure if that can be said everywhere.
As an atheist who is much more law-abiding and moral than my religious in-laws, I advise not being concerned about atheists, either.
Wow, just wow!
Rockvillemom: Thanks SO much for starting this thread! I’m late to join this discussion because I was out to dinner with my mil, while my H is working late tonight. This thread became a hot topic quickly!
I just read three pages of very wonderful insights and well written posts. On page one, there were two separate posts that I want to briefly address:
The first is that this is really NOT about having bigoted views. You can be very tolerant & accepting of all peoples and many religions and still want your children to find like minded spouses. That is not a bigoted view.
Number two: This does not mean at all that someone is “not good enough” because of their different religion, faith or color. It again means that many of us want for our children to have like minded spouses with similar upbringings.
Rockvillemom and I are going through similar feelings about our sons dating non Jewish girls. In both of our cases, the sons are still young enough that they may not ready for marriage…in my case this is my son’s first “long term” relationship (@ 6 months or so) and he has many years (I hope) before he settles down & marries. He once told me at (Jewish) overnight camp he attended many years ago that the way he would be sure to marry someone Jewish was to not date anyone non Jewish. Well that didn’t happen! Now he says he would consider marrying someone non Jewish but would raise his children Jewish. At least he’s thinking about what he wants and doesn’t want.
My first cousin’s husband is Black and at the time of their marriage, my Aunt literally did have a heart attack! It just wasn’t done! He’s an incredibly nice man, but he isn’t Jewish! However, his wife is and their one daughter became a Bat Mitzvah and went on the (Jewish) Birthright trip to Israel! The daughter is now 30 years old and has a son. She is the most beautiful girl ever. Reminds me of what Malia Obama will look like when she becomes 30.
The Jewish faith is very complicated and not easy for many Jews to understand, let alone non Jews. Because of their history and their tiny numbers of people around the world, due to many factors: The Holocaust obviously played a huge role in the number of Jews in this world today…intermarriages, deaths…we Jews have all been taught from an early age to keep the race alive by marrying into the religion and having more than two children, to replace yourselves and to add one in order for the race to grow again. Many religious Jews have 9 or 10 kids, for this reason!!!
There really are no easy answers. But please: it has nothing to do with bigotry or someone not being good enough. I cannot imagine my child raising a child of his own and driving him to catechism class and then to hebrew school…and lighting a menorah for 8 nights of Chanukah and having a Christmas tree…I know it’s done all the time, and it’s their choice, but it is not as easy as some of these posts make it out to be.
My parents neighbors disowned each of their kids when they married outside their race. I think they disowned practically all of them. I’m not sure whether they eventually made peace with any or all of them yet or not. They’re in their 80s, so time is not on their side if they want to make up. I believe they finally DID make up with all their kids because we did see a holiday greeting card that pictured all of them, tho not sure how old the card was.
I’ve never understood disowning a loved one, absent terrible abuse of some sort. Disowning someone because they love someone whose skin, race, or religion differs from your own, because they may move far away, because they choose a major different from what you envisioned, none of these things make sense to me and seems to shrink your world.
Sure, traditions are important and it’s sad to see them change, but for me love is about caring for the individual above and beyond any “traditions.” Isn’t that what love IS?
The article linked in the first post was more about a family disowning the daughter for marrying someone of a different race. Wonder how the family’s restaurant (in San Francisco and the planned one to open in Washington) will do afterward…
Well…first, I want to say I think the WaPo article is incredibly unfair. From what I can figure out, at 23, Ms. Upshaw got involved with a 38 year old married man who had a teenage son, moved in with him in another city and lived with him for 3 years before he divorced his first wife and married her. Yep, he was African-American. Her version is her parents were racist bigots.
Now, I suspect the fact that he was African-American wasn’t a cause for celebration. However, it might be that wasn’t the only thing they disliked about the situation.
I’m going to answer before reading the other posts, which is not my usual.
I would NEVER disown my child for any reason. Now, is it possible I might struggle with their choice of spouse, for any number of reasons? Yes. If it were simply a matter of race or religion, I could certainly deal as long as they treated her well. I would have more of a problem if she fell in love with someone from a culture or religion where women are not respected. So that would be less for the fact that the race or religion differs from ours and more about the fact that she is not respected. I guess the reason she is not being respected is rather irrelevant; I would find that impossible to accept. But what can you do? When they are adults, they run their own lives. I would state my opinion, but remain engaged and part of her life. It wouldn’t do any good to disown her and throw her headlong into an abusive or bad situation without a sanctuary in the event she came to her senses.
Rvm and chocchip-I understand exactly where you are coming from on this issue. I do believe that it is quite difficult for non-Jews to understand what many observant Jews believe. Not only are Jews a tiny minority, but observant Jews are a really tiny minority and we have been raised to understand that our religion will, literally, die out if our kids marry non-Jews. I was concerned enough when my oldest married a woman whose father was not Jewish, but I know they will be raising their children in the Jewish religion. Probably not nearly as observant as my son was raised but when I see the intermarriage happening all around me, I need to be content with what is.
An earlier poster chastized Cbreeze:
“@cbreeze comments like yours seem like an attempt to shut down an honest discussion. Matters of faith are always sensitive but if you insist that opinions that don’t reflect your own are so offensive, maybe this conversation is not for you. I have no idea if you are a person of any faith at all but if not, you can’t possibly understand the depth of feeling and pain rockvillemom is describing.”
- I thoroughly disagree. That is, I am with cbreeze (and Himom) on this one. I have never understood such bias. It's immoral.
- Can't help but wonder if Christian and Jewish folks who express religious bias or bigotry would be happy if they were compared to the Taliban or Isis.
- I would NEVER disown or discard my love for my child. NEVER. As someone said much better than I could have said it: we raise our children to prepare them for a path. We shouldn't try to prepare the path for them.
How would one feel if the grandchildren are adopted? different race and culture?
@jonri - the WaPo article was strictly from her perspective - so I am sure her parents have a different version. She framed it as being about race - which is why I thought it was an interesting lead in for this conversation - presenting one extreme viewpoint. As I mentioned earlier, my cousin’s Indian wife was disowned by her father when they married 10 years ago - so it still happens.
I have always wanted my sons to marry Jewish girls. Finding a college for S2 with an active Jewish community was a priority. He is fairly active in Hillel, belongs to a predominantly Jewish fraternity and had an amazing Birthright experience, so I am perplexed when he responds that marrying a Jewish girl is not a priority. I have avoided the topic of late because I really like his gf and because I do not want to cause problems. I don’t want a scenario where I express my concerns to him - he shares conversation with her - and suddenly my relationship with her is damaged. If there is even a slim chance that she is my future d-i-l, I don’t want any friction.
Intellectually, I am advocating (to myself) to accept our changing society where intermarriage is more common and to be openminded. But on an emotional level - it is such a different story.
My parents weren’t thrilled with some of the men I dated and even had pre-marital counseling about, but NEVER threatened to disown us. I would be heartbroken if they decided to love and marry anyone who didn’t treat them like the wonderful people I know my kids to be, but even then I could never disown or stop loving my kids and can’t understand anyone who would.
One of the things that shocked my Jewish BF was that his step-mom actually seemed to like and accept me. He was positive she would hate me. We even got counseling from a rabbi about potential marriage, but happily for both of us we waited as neither of us was in the right stage of our life to marry. I have met his wife and she’s a charming Jewish woman and I believe his Jewish faith was A LOT more important to him that it had been when we had been seriously dating.
My extended family met a good number of the men I dated. They remained neutral and only voiced a mild concern about H’s age (he’s considerably older than I), when we announced our engagement. My folks don’t understand and are sad for their contemporaries who disown their family members and feel it is very short-sighted and would break my folks’ hearts. I just could never disown a loved one–may disagree and raise concerns, but never disown.
Adoption? Very interesting question. Honestly have not given it any thought. No one in our family has adopted a child so I have no personal experience to draw on, but I would certainly love and cherish any grandchild. It’s never been about disowning my sons or not loving their wives or their children. It’s about our religion being a family bond and what happens to that bond when there is intermarriage. I don’t know the answer today. Ask me in 10 years. I’m just thinking about it and looking at examples of what works and what does not.
My husband and I are of different religions. What we did when the kids came along was to join a Unitarian Universalist church and sent the kids to the Sunday school there because they discuss all of the “big questions” of life from the perspectives of all the world’s religions. We figured our kids would be educated about religion in general, and later on could choose for themselves if they wanted to practice any of them. As for holidays, we open the Hanukah gifts that come from my side of the family on the appropriate day, and the Christmas gifts that come from his side of the family on that appropriate day. But we started our own family tradition in which we exchange gifts in our nuclear family on New Year’s Day. This way we’re not picking Hanukah over Christmas or vice versa, we have a different day that we make special for ourselves!