IME it’s possible to be observant and firm in your religious beliefs and still date/marry someone outside them. Mr Petrichor and I share a number of values and strongly held opinions We differ on the issue of the number and nature of faces of the Divine, but we can agree on other values like honesty, kindness, respect for the earth, personal responsibility, etc.
I understand the position of the Jewish mother. Judism is not a proselytizing religion, and each generation a good percentage of Jews drift away from the faith and marry Christians. The only way for the Jewish culture to survive is for Jews to marry Jews, and the various religious observances are in fact interwoven with family life.
I would think children would know their family and whether they would be accepting or not; some are and some are not. The solution is to never go on the first date with someone who would not be fully accepted by one’s friends and family. It may be wrong to allow ones family and friends to essentially winnow down one’s dating pool, but it’s either that or accept that you might have to choose between them.
The best advice you can give a teen is to never date someone they wouldn’t marry. A teetotaler should not date a regular drinker. A regular drinker should not date a teetotaler. A Jewish boy who wants to marry a Jewish girl some day shouldn’t go out on a single date with a Christian. And so on.
This.
My husband is Jewish but not at all religious. I’m not Jewish, and I’m also not religious. When we got married, we didn’t see any particular conflict in our backgrounds, and my parents had no objection. In fact, it was my mother who introduced us, and she strongly supported our relationship.
But my future husband’s family was very upset. They were upset even though his parents, who had divorced a few years earlier, had both remarried – and both of the new spouses were not Jewish. His parents believed that it was OK for them as middle-aged people to marry people who weren’t Jewish because no children would be born during those marriages, but it was not OK for us to do it because we could have children, and those children would not be part of the Jewish community.
And we did have children. And we raised them without any religious faith (although we did celebrate Christmas in a secular way because that’s what all the grandparents did, and we didn’t want them to think that you only get presents at your grandparents’ houses, not at your own). Today, our now-grown children don’t identify themselves as Jewish, and technically, they aren’t Jewish by either the traditional or Reform definitions of who is a Jew.
There’s a legitimate issue here. I have to concede that my in-laws had a point. Even if I had truly understood that point at the time (which I didn’t), I wouldn’t have done anything differently and neither would their son. But they did have a point.
In our case, there was no question of non-acceptance. My in-laws accepted me and treated me well. They attended our wedding (which was a civil ceremony), and invited me to their homes. My mother-in-law had died by the time we had children, but she would have accepted her grandchildren. My father-in-law certainly accepted his grandchildren. There was no hostility, and my husband never had to choose between me and his family. But there was disappointment, and there was a legitimate reason for it.
The racial issue did come up in my extended family many years ago when a female cousin decided to marry a Japanese-American* because her parents and everyone in their generation still had bitter memories of the brutal occupation and violent Japanese invasion of China in the 1930’s and '40s.
This despite the fact his family had been in the US since the 1890’s and had no involvement with Imperial Japan’s colonialist or militarist campaigns. Her parents openly expressed their displeasure and discomfort with her as a result of this history. Thankfully, my parents and other older relatives of that very same generation acted to mediate and to get the parents to understand that 1.) It’s been over 50 years since the war ended. 2.) His family had nothing to do with the Imperial Japanese brutalities and violent invasion and occupation. and 3.) He and his family are wonderful people who love and care for their D and that’s what counts.
- I know of some Jewish and American individuals and families from an older generation who had serious issues with their children marrying German fiances for the same reasons. One of those Americans who took part in liberating one of the concentration camps in Germany was so outraged at what he saw he refused to buy German made products or be agreeable to his children/grandchildren marrying anyone who happened to be ethnically German to this very day.
Thanks again to rockville mom for starting this thread. The posts are interesting to read. It certainly is a relevant topic with families these days.
I do want to mention that as a mother of Jewish boys (as is rockville mom and I think shellfell too), it goes one step even further. The synagogue recognizes the mother’s religion. So as mother’s of boys, should they decide to marry non-Jewish women, their children would also be non-Jewish in the eyes of the synagogue. However, I do see that changing slowly. I am a conservative Jew and for those who don’t know what that means: it’s right in the middle between reform (most liberal) and orthodox (most conservative). My son has told me that even if he does marry a non Jewish girl, he would raise his children Jewish (I assume they would TALK about it beforehand! :-S )
I happen to have many friends that have inter married where the mother is raising their children Jewish or vice versa. It really depends on the individual person. Yes, Judaism is more than a religion. It’s a culture, a way of life and it’s pretty all encompassing. We also have a homeland, Israel, that we are proud of, to visit and have relatives there that settled after WWII.
For me personally, I was taught to keep the race going by having lots of children who grow up to marry other Jews and everyone keeps having babies to bring back the race that was on the verge of collapse after the Holocaust.
Again, my S1 is still young and this is his first long term relationship, but even if he marries someone eventually who is non Jewish (which is very likely) as long as he doesn’t forget his roots, I will be quite accepting. I just hope he helps to keep the continuity of a Jewish family tree so that the race keeps growing and doesn’t disappear.
conmama, my apologies, I DID somehow read that the girl in question was black, but you didn’t actually say. And I appreciate your bravery for telling the story and for realizing eventually that you were wrong.
My daughter may be biracial, but because she has brown skin, no one sees her as white-she is seen as black-period. With that comes all the assumptions and prejudices that go with being 100% African American. She has felt, more than once, like the girl you told your son not to date. It pains me that as a country we have not moved beyond that.
However, being “colorblind” is not the answer. It’s OK to see color. It’s there. Pretending that one DOESN’T see it is like rendering the person invisible. As explained by a local person of color, saying you don’t see color says you don’t see ME, as color is a part of me. Where it goes wrong in seeing color is to think that person is “less than” or not worthy because of it. So see color, and celebrate it. Learn about it. Accept it. Don’t pretend it isn’t there. It’s what we do in our large extended family.
Again, this discussion has been fascinating. I’m not religious, so it really doesn’t concern me if my kids marry outside their faith. My youngest is very involved in her church, which she began attending with her aunt as a small child. But like many teens, she’s questioning, as she should. I hope that should she meet and marry a young man of another faith, she would be welcomed with less than heartbreak, hopefully quite the opposite-with open arms.
I’m Jewish. We have a Jewish home: observe Shabbat to some extent, attend services, keep kosher, take part in adult study programs, build a sukkah, blahblahblahblah.
Our parents told us that we “couldn’t” marry non-Jews (which was rather hypocritical coming from the spouse’s parents, given they provided their children with absolutely no religious education or at-home Jewish experiences). We’ve not told our D’s that they can or can’t marry someone because of faith. But if there are grandchildren yes, we’d like them to be Jewish. It’s something that is out of our hands. It’s unlikely that our children would marry someone who feels strongly that they want to raise their children in a Christian/Muslim/Hindu/etc house. If they marry a non-Jew, odds are that it would be someone who was non-religious, who celebrates Christmas as a secular holiday and is fine with coming to Seder at our house. As others have said, marrying a co-religionist is no promise that your grandchildren will be raised in your own faith.
I see many people’s relationships with faith and religion changing over time. I’ve seen day school (i.e. Jewish K-12) educated young people enter their 30’s with no interest in the jewish community whatsoever. I’ve seen kids go the other way, turning into Haredi Jews who would never now visit the synagogue their parents attended during their childhood. I’ve seen adults in their 40’s and 50’s drift away from observance after their children finish formal Jewish education, and I’ve seen adults in that age range who’ve had nothing to do with Judaism since leaving home rediscover and re-engage with the community…and their non-Jewish spouses have investigated, studied, and finally converted. Ya just don’t know what the future is going to hold.
Intermarriage in our families has ranged all over the map. Some of our generation married non-Jews who aren’t religiously observant. There’s a Christmas tree in December, maybe a menorah as well, and that’s it on the “religion” front (scare quotes because this really doesn’t have much to do with religion). Another relative became an evangelical Christian, married another evangelical Christian. And another relative married a non-observant non-Jew, but their children are being raised as Jews–religious school, celebrating holidays, following some kashrut laws.
I’ve become a big fan of Christmas since we don’t have to do anything to celebrate it 
We’ve helped decorate trees; helped play Santa one year (wrapping presents and assembling toys in the wee hours of the morning at a friend’s house–an intermarried couple btw). I love the Charlie Brown Christmas special and A Christmas Story with the dogs eating the Christmas turkey. Love going to see the lights, and eating (vegetarian) tamales. But it’s not my holiday, thank heavens. There’s more than enough work in observing my own holidays, thankyouverymuch.
My Catholic mother married 2 Jewish husbands.
Husband #1 - my bio father - didn’t work out (though had nothing to do with religion, as neither of them cared).
When she married husband #2 - my grandmother decided that she wasn’t going to go to her wedding because she was “marrying another Jew.” Even though he was a good, upstanding person, treated me (his stepdaughter-soon-to-be-daughter) like a princess, and treated them with the utmost respect and care throughout the years.
That was ~ 45 years ago. It still is a wound between my mother and grandmother. My grandmother has quasi-apologized, but nothing will ever make up for the hurt of her mother not attending her wedding.
Never, ever, ever do something like this. Ever. I beg all of you.
^^Well Hi ya Sitheytove and thanks for being part of the conversation!
I just went back to read the link rockville mom gave in her first post. No, I don’t agree with parents abandoning their child over her choice of a spouse. I’m sure it happens all the time. I would be so sad if I decided never to have contact with one of my children. It just wouldn’t happen in my case.
I would like to think I’m tolerant. This thread is opening my eyes a bit. I have to say that I always thought, “that wouldn’t happen to me”, or “that wouldn’t happen with my child”, but the reality is that it happens every day. And who said raising children was easy?!?! 
“We have not discussed the issue very much, partly because I struggle to formulate a position. I dated a non-Jewish African American man for years in secret. Doesn’t that make me quite the hypocrite to say marry within your faith? But marriage is challenging even with similar backgrounds. But then, plenty of marriages between people of the same faith end in divorce too.”
See, I think that’s such nonsense to attribute difficulty to religion. As I just mentioned, my non-practicing Catholic mother married two non-practicing Jewish men. They were each ultimately divorced - one after a few years, one after 30 years - but religion had nothing to do with it and these were “good marriages” that just didn’t work out. OTOH, my in-laws are Jewish and they should have gotten divorced two days after they got married - they’ve had a contentious relationship as long as I’ve known them. So who cares that they are still “together” if it’s a bad marriage on many levels.
My S has a serious girlfriend who happens to be Jewish but is of a different race (Asian - she was adopted as a baby from China). I couldn’t care less what race and religion she is, as long as she makes my son happy. My H cares a lot more than I do, which upsets me.
I was raised without religion but became a Methodist to be eligible for the basketball league and youth group with my friends but stopped going when I aged out at 16. When Magwife and I got engaged, I made the decision to switch to Catholicism for simplicity as her church was important to her. My mother had a Catholic father and a Christian Science mother, alternating her Sundays between the two churches, and I wasn’t going to do that to my wife and kids. I would not be surprised to be ex-communicated, though, after registering my displeasure of their “abortion holocaust” display across the street from a school, and the Bishop’s insistence we sign a political petition at the end of Mass.
On a different topic, I for one would be thrilled if our lily-white youngest somehow met the daughter of @sseamom; she sounds like an exceptional young woman going places in life.
Well this has been an interesting thread to read. I had thought my old Irish Catholic relatives were bad! My three children were raised Catholic but none of them identify as Catholic now. Oldest D is marrying an Episcopalian who attends church more than she does - great. Son doesn’t believe in religion, younger D interested in Buddhism. I don’t really know any Jewish people, but reading this thread has made me hope none of my kids marry a Jew whose parents would find it heartbreaking. That would be difficult for them starting off a marriage that way.
“I picture a scenario (which a cousin endures right now) where the grandchildren attend church and a Christian nursery school. She sees them - and they tell her all about baby Jesus. That is awkward for her. They go to church with the maternal grandparents on Sunday - she is excluded. There will be no Bar or Bat Mitzvahs. That is disappointing.”
My children were raised Jewish. They have 3 Jewish grandparents (my father, my husband’s parents) and 1 non-Jewish grandparent (my mother). i*
At their b’nai mitzvah, there is a part of the ceremony where the grandparents and parents “pass down” the Torah from generation to generation ending with the kids. Our rabbi is super-reform and very cool and inclusive so my mother was on the bimah with the other 3 grandparents, us and kids, but was not included in this. So the passing down went from my FIL to MIL to my father to H/me to our kids, and my mom just stood there and smiled. Luckily I think most onlookers didn’t catch on that one grandparent was being excluded, and my mom didn’t make a big deal of it.
Because I have to say, for all the Jews who worry about being the odd man out if their children celebrate Christmas, very few of them seemed to sympathize / empathize with my Catholic mother being the odd man out in this scenario.
Two more anecdotes:
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My great-grandfather was very prejudiced in general (as were many men of that generation). He was Irish Catholic. When my mother (his granddaughter) married a Jewish man in 1964, he said - “Well, he may be Jewish, but at least he’s not Italian.”
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My FIL has said to his grandchildren (including my children) - “If you marry someone Jewish, I will give you a wedding gift of $XX. If the person isn’t Jewish, I will give you (half of $XX).” I consider this personally insulting to me as the product of a mixed marriage, and it frosts me to no end, but the rest of the family tells me just to ignore it, who cares what he gives, the kids are going to do what they want to do. I still think it’s offensive.
@sseamom You are right…not color blind, but to acknowledge what is different, but not let that be an obstacle to love. It makes me feel continually ashamed when I read what your daughter had felt. Because I embody those people who made her feel like that. It was so wrong. Once I saw her, she became a real person with hurt feelings, not just a faceless person of another race. That whole thing really had an impact when I saw who I really was…and I don’t want to be that kind of person.
“I think that sometimes (actually I’ve heard it said here) that some nonChristians think that Christians are all fundamentalist and rigid in their Christianity. But there are many practicing, progressive Christian families that are not and would be much more attuned to religious differences of one side of the family. My kids would not have been babbling about Jesus at every person they met, and would have been taught from the time they had any conception of religion that there are different ones, they are valid, and grandma’s is just as important.”
I find that my Jewish husband and his family often commingle Catholic points of view with fundamentalist / evangelical Christian points of view, and I have to constantly explain the difference. (No, dear, Catholics don’t want religion taught in public schools the way you hear about down south. They start their own parochial schools if they want their children in a religious setting. And no, dear, Catholics believe in “mainstream” science, evolution, etc. just fine.) I think they tend to lump them all together in a big “Christian” tent, and having had some Catholic background, it bugs me!
When I told my dad I was engaged, he said, “Well, you know I can’t come to your wedding…” because future DH belonged to a different church than the one I grew up in. But my mom convinced him it would look awfully weird to his colleagues if he didn’t attend his own daughter’s wedding, so he did. And even paid for it! Religion is still a sore spot with him, though, so I avoid it at all costs. If I ever mention ANYTHING connected to church (like the monthly birthday parties I help put on with a church group at the local youth detention center), Dad’s eyes literally glaze over and he doesn’t respond at all. It doesn’t really hurt me, because I know that’s the way I was raised.
^^mamabear:
You may be missing the point of the entire thread!
You know that fundamentalist and evangelical are not the same, right? That many evangelical denominations are as liberal as you are, believe in mainstream science, evolution, have had female clergy for decades, perform same-sex marriage, have had commitment ceremonies for years, and don’t want religion taught in public schools. As always, I refer anyone unclear on this to the World or National Council of Churches.