Hanging the mezuzah on our interfaith door
Aug 14th, 2006 by Rachel
So. Girl meets boy, girl likes boy, girl and boy move in together.
Girl takes out Shabbat candlesticks. Boy goes, “What’s that?”
Girl says, “Oh yeah, and don’t touch my plates with your meat, I’m building a hut on our balcony and could you move out of the way while I swing this chicken over my head?”
Okay, so it didn’t go exactly like that - for one, I don’t do the swinging-chicken thing. (Partly because I’m a vegetarian, but mostly because I don’t swing friggin’ chickens over my head.) But the rest of it is, well, pretty much true. I’m a Conservative Jewish American girl in an atheist Christian African boy’s world. It’s crazy, confusing and sometimes reduces me to tears, but it is what it is - the relationship I always dreamed about, that just happened to turn on its head pretty much everything I ever imagined about my life.
As a kid, growing up in my insulated suburb of Washington, D.C., going to my Jewish day school and the synagogue’s Torah Club, I was so utterly convinced that I was going to settle down with a nice Jewish boy, it wasn’t even a question. We’d keep kosher and we’d have wine and challah on Shabbat. We’d send the kids to day school and take them to Israel. We’d use words like “tush” and “keppe” - in other words, we’d live just like I lived, back home with my parents, back when I thought pretty much everyone was Jewish and those who weren’t were, well, just missing out. Nothing would change.
I’m just not the kind of person for whom life changes dramatically. But then I met D. And all of a sudden I found myself driving with D across the country, to a mythical place called Silicon Valley, searching for a new life, and a new place to hang my mezuzah.
D isn’t Jewish. And not only is he not Jewish, he didn’t grow up with anything Jewish. He’s from a small town in South Africa - which means there were probably no stores with their requisite “Happy Hanukah” decorations alongside the Christmas lights. No matzah in the supermarket aisles. Definitely no Jewish friends skipping school on Yom Kippur.
We’ve lived together for a little more than a year now. And in that time I’ve started to introduce him to my Jewish world. I taught him about how I keep kosher, I started our own tradition of Friday night Shabbat dinners, and I put that aforementioned mezuzah on the doorpost of our suburban apartment. We’ve done holidays together - Chanukah and Shavuot, Purim and Passover.
Often, though, I wonder if I can do it. If I can pull off this whole interfaith relationship thing without sacrificing my beliefs, my traditions, and the way I want to live. What if I want to swing the chicken someday? And will I be the one saying Kiddush at Shabbat dinner for the rest of my life? Will I have be the one to teach the kids about Sukkot, and will I be the only one fasting on Yom Kippur?
I like to think that I can pull it off. But it’s a hard road. One I never really expected to go down. Am I ready?
Rachel:
You may not feel ready (who does?), but I’m confident that you have the strength for the path you and D are on. Who knows: you may find that it’s not as hard as you think–and that the path you expected to take wouldn’t have been such a smooth one after all.
I, too, expected to create a family whose religious practice & culture was like the one I grew up in–and I, too, have ended up being surprised by the changes wrought by my partner’s religious choices. But my story looks in some ways like the inverted-mirror image of yours, though we may have grown up little more than 10 miles from each other.
I spent my childhood years on the other side of Washington, D.C.–with a view of the Washington Monument from our back porch in Arlington but only 3 other Jewish kids in my public elementary school class of 90. (Changing to the Episcopalian-affiliated National Cathedral School actually gave me more Jewish compatriots–around 20 out of the 60-70 girls my year.) So my circle of friends was by no means solely Jewish–but then again, neither was my family.
My father and mother were married under the chuppah by a Reform rabbi, but my father has never converted to Judaism (though he practices no other religion). This fact did little to set me apart: I went to Hebrew School at the local Conservative shul, spent both days of Rosh Hashanah in synagogue with my family, kept all 8 days of Passover, had my Bat Mitzvah…
and soon after, in the summer of my 13th year, met the boy I’d marry.
At 14, his Catholicism was already of the lapsed variety. As our relationship became more serious through high school and college, I wasn’t worried about the difference in religious backgrounds. Judaism wasn’t so foreign to him: he’d grown up with a Jewish best friend (and this in a southern university town with one Reform synagogue). And besides–I’d been brought up in a Jewish household with one Jewish parent and one supportive non-Jewish one. Why shouldn’t we follow the path they had taken before us?
Our wedding date was already set–but still a year away–when that path took an unforeseen turn. We’d known each other for nearly a decade: I’d heard about his time as an altar boy, he’d watched my brother’s bar mitzvah video; we’d accompanied his parents to Saturday evening Mass, and celebrated Passover in Jerusalem with friends…
so I wasn’t expecting it when he said:
“I’d like to find out what would be involved in converting to Judaism.”
That was just over ten years ago. One year later–a year that had changed our lives in ways we would never have anticipated–he went before the Beit Din at my hometown synagogue, immersed in the mikvah, and was welcomed into the Jewish people.
It may be that our Jewish life together now looks more like the household you describe growing up in than the one I knew as a child. We keep kosher, have wine & challah on Shabbat, celebrate Chanukah and Shavuot, Purim and Passover…and, like you, take pride in building our sukkah but take a pass on swinging chickens over our head Yom Kippur. Nevertheless, we can discuss the practice of shlogn kapores and much else in a Yiddish whose proficiency is none the worse for not being learned at bubbe & zayde’s knee. And as for Jewish cooking? The midsummer mikvah was a formality: the minute a friend tasted the latkes he’d cooked up for the seder, she pronounced him Jewish on the spot.
I’d be happy to say more about the path we’ve taken–not the one I expected us to be on, but one I’m by no means sorry we’ve gone down. It may not be exactly the one you envisioned on your childhood roadmap (which probably didn’t feature Hanukkah presents from Catholic in-laws), though I’d say it runs on a parallel course.
I can’t tell you what you’ll find on the road you’re on: each couple discovers it for themselves. I can tell you that from here, it looks a lot like the one my parents have taken; the one that we traveled for nearly a decade ourselves and expected to be on; the one that many others–even some from your day school and Torah Club, no doubt–have gone down before you. It is true that the map is not the territory, and that the experiences of others are no certain guide–but this is not uncharted terrain, unfamiliar though it may look right now.
You say: “I wonder…if I can pull off this whole interfaith relationship thing without sacrificing my beliefs, my traditions, and the way I want to live.”
I can tell you that my mother did; she has; she does.
“What if I want to swing the chicken someday?”
I can tell you: no one in my family swings chickens (yet?), but we do a lot of other things we never used to do and once would have found odd or excessive. (E.g., my mother davens with a tallit that I brought her from Israel, and was a minyan regular during the year of kaddish for her father.) And my husband & I no longer do other things that we used to (like travel or spend money on Shabbat, or eat non-kosher meat)–to our families’ inconvenience at times, but they accommodate us. You’ll work it out.
“And will I be the one saying Kiddush at Shabbat dinner for the rest of my life?”
Maybe, maybe not: would that be so bad?
My mother makes kiddush–but she can also prevail upon me, or my husband, or my brothers, to do so when we’re there. My father can’t do so–but he raises his glass and joins in the melody–and we are still one family around the Shabbat table.
“Will I have be the one to teach the kids about Sukkot, and will I be the only one fasting on Yom Kippur?”
My family’s experience would answer yes to the first, and no to the second–though I can’t tell you when my father began fasting on Yom Kippur (probably when we kids got old enough not to be eating either).
“I like to think that I can pull it off.”
I like to think so too! Let us not forget Herzl: “If you will it, it is no dream.”(Though my husband says he now always thinks of that quote in the voice of John Goodman, as Walter in The Big Lebowski–a character also not born Jewish, but introduced to Judaism through a romantic relationship…)
“Am I ready?”
No–because no one ever is fully prepared for what life brings us.
And yes–because you have the strength to know who you are while loving someone else…and to know that you are not alone.
I too grew up in an observant home- went to day school, was active in USY, the works. But when I left for college in a small town without a Jewish community, I “stopped being Jewish.” In fact, I acutally decided that all religons, including Judaism, were for weak people who needed direction and guidance in their lives- obviously somthing I didnt need. And then I met J who was raised Lutheran, but now felt the same way about religon as I did. We had wonderful conversations about how historical leaders used religon to control people and what horrible crimes have been committed for the sake of religion. We started dating and living completely secular lives. But as I matured out of my college years, I began to understand Judaism differently. I read more, talked about it more, and wanted to do more in my life. At first J was completely thrown off guard and rejected it. But slowly he came to see how much I enjoyed it and he began to wonder what it was that made me so excited to be Jewish again. Over time he joined me in our learning and practicing of Judaism. We now celebrate our own version of shabbat every friday and saturday. He knows the kiddush and motze. And while i’m still the one driving our engagement with Judaism, he’s a willing partner. He hasnt converted and doesnt plan to. And i’ve accepted that fact that he will probibly never be as excited and involved in Judaism as I am, but thats ok. I just want someone who will support me in my search and join me when it comes to our family’s Jewish lifestyle. The biggest thing i’ve learned through this is that I cant push him. He must come to Judaism on his own. And he does. Whenever he sees how excited I am or how happy I am because of something I read or started doing, he wants to be a part of it. Who knew that two anti-religon college students would end up like this!
Rachel - I grew up in a Traditional Conservative home and did my best not to date non-Jewish boys. But here I am married 17 years to a man who grew up Catholic, but has been an atheist since after his confirmation.
In many ways I have become a very different Jew but not necessarily not observant. I have learned many things about why I do the things I do — mostly because I have always had to explain. Yes, I make Kiddush and have for 20 years now. We now have our own traditions on Shabbat, Pesach and other holidays. I like that. It is not the fantasy I had growing up, but is it ever?