We’re a few weeks into the new year, and I’ve resolved to get this blog restarted. Or, well, started. The good people at InterfaithFamily are giving me this opportunity, and I need to start using it. Mea culpa for my absence.

To tell you the truth, I haven’t felt much like writing lately. I’m going through an interfaith crisis. And it’s hard to think about, much less blog about.

But I have to try. Maybe this is the only way I’m going to get through it.

For the little over a year that D and I have been living together, he’s been pretty supportive of my Jewish observances. Occasionally we’d quibble over the necessity of keeping separate meat-and-milk dishes, and I always knew that he wasn’t “into” religion, but for the most part he was very accommodating and sweet. Once when we were in Napa for a weekend, I mentioned offhand that it was Friday and we weren’t doing Shabbat - and he apologized. And when I messed up during Kiddush once, he tried to get me back on track, even though he didn’t quite know how to pronounce the words. *melt*

But things have changed. We’ve changed, our relationship has changed. And out of nowhere recently, D said that he didn’t want to “do” Jewish anymore.

Worse yet, he didn’t want me to, either.

As I’ve mentioned before, D is an atheist. But not just an atheist - he doesn’t believe in religion. Actually, he hates religion. Is there a term for that?

D thinks religion is stupid. In those words. He thinks people who are religious are weak, that they’re wasting their time when they could be spending it on “fun” things. And, he says, he wants me to give up my religion so that I can be “free” with him - free of the constraints of the laws and commandments, free of the requirements of holidays. Just free.

It’s hard for me to know how to respond to that. Is it possible to explain why going to synagogue on Simchat Torah might be more fun than playing Xbox? And is it possible to describe the loneliness and emptiness I would feel if I really did give up my religion, something that’s been pretty much my whole life for 23 years, and the disappointment I would face from my family?

On the other hand, I can see that for D, being areligious is like a religion. He believes in not believing. And I know Judaism, with its rules and restrictions and obscure customs, can be a particular deterrent to people who “just aren’t that into religion.”

At this point, it’s sort of like we’re pushing against each other and getting nowhere. I want D to embrace something he doesn’t yet feel comfortable with, and may never feel comfortable with. He wants me to give it all up so, together, we can be truly independent, of everything.

I’m hoping he’ll change his mind. I really am. I’m willing to give it time, but it’s hard. This isn’t just interfaith, it’s no-faith. Sometimes I think it would be so much easier if he were a wildly observant Muslim or Catholic or whatever - at least he’d understand why I have to do this.

It’s hard for me to go without saying Kiddush on Friday nights, and it’s even harder for me to feel embarrassed and guilty about basically begging him to stand with me at the table while I say it. He’s not a bad guy, far from it, he’s just stubborn. Especially about religion. We both are, I guess.

It’s weird, though - lately, I’ve felt different about religion, too, and I hope it’s not going to turn into a bad thing. These High Holy Days, as I sat in synagogue (alone), I honestly wished I weren’t there. I mean, I never REALLY want to go to shul on those days, and spend most of my time reading a (Jewish-themed) book behind my machzor and counting the number of pages we have left, but I’ve never felt this much boredom and malaise. I felt like I had just wasted $250 on something that I was only doing to make my parents happy, to make myself feel like I went, I participated.

But what was the point? Was God going to hate me if I spent that weekend camping on a beach, writing my sins on rocks and throwing them into the ocean, and praying into the surf? Or was this just the part of me talking that feels guilty about being religious around D, and wants to do what he asks?

It’s hard to get someone into being Jewish when they don’t want to be - and you’re not exactly sure where you stand, either.

I’ve been on hiatus for a bit, which is a long story…and it’ll make a good couple blog entries in the very near future. But I had to say this…

I just got a comment on the previous entry, about the kosher barbecuing. The commentator, “Dave,” wrote the following:

Since there is no Jewish prohibition on the eating of treif by a Gentile why would it matter what your husband ate?

Religiously observant? Try religiously ignorant

So I’m ignorant? Well, Dave, of course there’s no Jewish prohibition on a non-Jew eating treif. That wasn’t the point of my entry at all!

My qualms about the barbecue issue were that treif meat was being prepared on the same grill as my kosher food. Do you see the difference? If his treif meat touched my food, it too would become treif - and the grill would be treif as well.

Anyone interested in reading a really good explanation of the laws of kashrut can take a look at Judaism 101. One line reads: “Utensils that have come into contact with non-kosher food may not be used with kosher food.”

I am admittedly ignorant about many things, but this isn’t one of them.

It’s Friday afternoon, I’m at work and thinking about Shabbat dinner tonight.

D has expressed interest in having a barbecue, pretty much his favorite thing in the world. I already have steaks in the freezer - beef for him, tuna for me. (I sort of lied in my first entry when I said I was a vegetarian - I’m actually a pescetarian.)

I got D a grill for his birthday in July, and the night of, I got all the fixings for a birthday barbecue, including a big, bloody, non-kosher steak. We cooked it on the grill with my veggie burgers, and I didn’t have a problem with it - per se. But, you know, the more I thought about it, the more it kind of bugged me.

Most people (who don’t keep kosher, that is) would probably think I’m being ridiculous. After all, my food doesn’t mix with his steaks, and we clean the grill with Easy-Off after every use. Surely a good dose of Easy-Off is enough to make our grill reasonably kosher again?

No rationalizations could help here - it just bothered me. I know I’ll probably never have a totally kosher home like the one I grew up in - D likes buffalo wings too much for that (oh, Empire could make a fortune in buffalo wings!). I’m not going to quibble too much, because I know it’s difficult (if not impossible) to find kosher versions of the meat products he likes - and I love him far too much to tell him never to eat wings again. For this reason, we have separate dishes for when he eats non-kosher.

(As a side note, many, if not most of the non-Orthodox Jews I know don’t keep kosher anyway. I’m definitely the exception, not the rule! Case in point: I’m the resident “kosher expert” at the Jewish newspaper I work for, since I’m the only one who keeps kosher there.)

But I can keep the grill kosher. Our local Trader Joe’s sells kosher chicken and beef, and as long as they do, I can barbecue in the right. Right now our freezer is stocked with kosher chicken, steak and ground beef. Even though I won’t eat any of it, it makes me smile a little every time I open the door.

The last time we barbecued, D had the kosher steak, which he announced was one of the best steaks he’d ever had. I doubt he knows how happy (and, okay, secretly proud) that made me.

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?