By: Elicia Brown
Here's a twist on "mixed marriage": He's Reform, she's Orthodox. Or she's Sephardic while he's Ashkenazi. So even though they're both Jews, all is not milk and honey at home or in synagogue. But for most couples with differing views of the same religion, peace can be found within the embrace of our very flexible faith.
Many years ago, I dated a man with whom I could clearly imagine a future—so long as we stayed in synagogue. As darkness descended on Friday nights, we chanted the lilting tunes to welcome the Sabbath bride. We slipped each other secret smiles as we prayed, rejoicing in an unspoken sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves, something rooted in our common histories, something transmitted from generation to generation. Beyond the sanctuary, however, I wasn't so sure about us. Conflict often replaced calm.
I didn't marry that man. Instead, I found Jeremy.
Jeremy, who taught me the thrill of cycling down country roads, who introduced me to jazz and blues and rock, Jeremy who fills my mornings and afternoons and nights with laughter. Except for every once in a while, when the topic turns to religion, and I suck in my gut as a familiar unease washes over me.
Though we hail from similar upbringings—New York City born and bred, left-leaning politics, proudly Jewish but not religiously observant—Jeremy and I veer toward different expressions of Judaism in our adult lives. I want more Shabbat, more synagogue, more Jewish education for our two young children. He wants none of the above. If it's a sunny Saturday morning, he aches to plant his feet in a bucolic sanctuary, not the synagogue kind.
We are products of what I call an intramarriage, a union between two Jews of different practices or traditions.
Such couplings are nothing new. According to Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, there were several Sephardic-Ashkenazi marriages in the tiny Jewish community of Colonial America.
While the joining of Jews of different backgrounds may be almost as old as Abraham, in more traditional communities such as the shtetls of Eastern Europe, the couples tended to resemble each other in background becausethey were arranged. If husband and wife weren't homogenous, "the matchmaker didn't earn his fee," says Sarna.
Today, some scholars believe the number of intramarriages may be growing. Other experts give equally compelling reasons why they may be shrinking. One of the preeminent sociologists
of American Jewry, Steven Cohen, e-mailed me: "Oy. Great topic. No research. Wish I could help you and don't know anyone who can. My regret."
So I conducted my own research, all anecdotal, meeting with three couples whose members hail from more starkly different backgrounds than mine and Jeremy's. How do they manage? Or do they?
Adina and Avi: Spiritual Merger
Adina Frydman and Avi Orlow are a Midwestern couple with an unlikely pairing of identities. He: an ordained Orthodox rabbi. She: a trained Reform cantor. Opposites attract, we've all heard, but this sounds like an ideological brawl, the religious equivalent of the bipartisan marriage between Democratic strategist James Carville and his Republican counterpart, Mary Matalin.
But our first conversation challenges my preconceptions. Avi informs me in his friendly, matter-of-fact manner that he and his wife "live our lives in complete unison."
This feat seems mysterious, almost miraculous. Then I spend another hour speaking to Avi, who at 33 is the campus rabbi and assistant director at St. Louis Hillel at Washington University, and yet another hour with Adina, 31, who runs Israel programs for the local Jewish Federation. The couple, each of whom embarked on a spiritual journey before they met, chose the same road once their paths intersected.
Their romance didn't begin with a bang. It almost didn't begin at all. When Adina, then a cantorial student, first learned that Avi, a rabbinical student, adhered to the Jewish precept of kol isha, which restricts men from listening to a woman singing, Adina said, "Forget it." She wasn't interested in a blind date with a man who would turn a deaf ear to her aspirations.
By chance they met anyway, bumping into each other one Chanukah evening at an Orthodox synagogue in Manhattan. That night ended at dawn as they passed the hours at a coffee shop on Broadway, "talking, talking, talking," says Adina, until 6 a.m. Adina admired Avi's big, green, sparkling eyes and his tough questions. "I loved his ability to hold up that mirror and ask the difficult questions, and to demand that I hold it up for him."
To this day Avi and Adina continue to challenge each other, though sometimes the roles seem reversed. "In many ways I am more liberal than she is," says Avi. "I'm a doubtful person. She has a much richer language of faith than I do."
In their daily lives, Avi and Adina both embrace the routines and rituals of Orthodox Jews. They belong to a Modern Orthodox synagogue. They won't drive on Shabbat. On weekdays, they pack kosher lunches for their sons, Yishama, 1, and Yadid, 3, who attend a local day-care center without religious affiliation.
Long ago Adina renounced her ambition to work as a Reform cantor, since, as she says, "It would be inauthentic for me to be head of a community I no longer feel part of." She
continues to sing, however, and even founded a Jewish women's choir.
Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, an Orthodox scholar who wrote The Committed Marriage, among other books, and who uses the Yiddish title traditionally granted to rabbis' wives, says that when you get engaged it's important to make sure that "you're not just looking into each other's eyes," but also "looking in the same direction." Adina and Avi did just that.
But for many of us, religious differences continue to surface after the wedding day.
Carole and Gil: Culture Wars
Carole and Gil Golan attended two of New York City's elite Modern Orthodox yeshivas, yet grew up in homes with distinct traditions: one rooted in the Sephardic Jewry of Aleppo, Syria, the other in the Ashkenazi heritage of Eastern Europe.
For an hour, Carole has been talking at high speed in her low, sonorous voice about the beauty of Sephardic customs. Pushing her 2-year-old son, Ezra, in a stroller through the busy, rainy streets near her Manhattan home, she demonstrates with great gusto the Syrian music for the High Holy Days. If this were a movie, her song would stop traffic.
Carole tells me that the Sephardic pronunciation of Hebrew is more authentic. And when she hears the shortened Ashkenazi version of the Kiddush over wine, she's just not satisfied.
And how, I ask, does Gil respond when you say these things?
"Not so good," she laughs.
The truth is that Carole, who is 38 and a Judaic studies teacher by training but now stays home with Ezra, and Gil, a 38-year-old vice president for Credit Suisse, both acknowledge the importance of Shalom bayit, a peaceful home. And except for an occasional ripple, lately it's been smooth sailing through the religious seas.
Carole also feels she gains the best of both worlds by her exposure to Gil's Ashkenazi culture. When her parents learned of the engagement, they were thrilled, agreeing with her that "Ashkenazi men make great husbands."
Of course, she quickly adds, Sephardic men can also make fine spouses. But in the Syrian enclave in Brooklyn where she grew up, women were expected to marry at 18 and bear children soon after; they were not expected to attend college, earn two master's degrees, and stay single into their 30s, like Carole. Finding a like-minded husband from this community would have been difficult. It made sense for Carole to look elsewhere—even if that meant other concessions.
And so the Golans make compromises, think creatively. Carole follows the more stringent Ashkenazi rules pertaining to kashruth in her kitchen. She keeps two sets of sponges, and runs the dishwasher separately for dairy and meat dishes. Gil keeps many of the customs of her family, throwing pieces of challah toward guests at Shabbat meals; chanting a longer version of the Kiddush at Saturday lunch; and dining on tahini (sesame paste) and kibbe (Arabic-style meatballs).
When Ezra was born, as an offspring of a Sephardic-Ashkenazi marriage he joined the ranks of Mordechai Luria, the famous 16th-century mystic, and Jerry Seinfeld, the famous 21st-century comic. But the new parents faced a challenge: How to name him? According to Carole's tradition, the firstborn son is named after the father's father regardless of whether he is alive or dead. In Gil's tradition, it is taboo to name after a living relative. So they named Ezra after Carole's father, Eddie, but used his Hebrew name. While the decision didn't pay homage to Gil's Ashkenazi heritage, the Hebrew name pleased Gil's parents, both of whom grew up in Israel.
The addition of children can raise the emotional temperature in a mixed-Jewish family. Trust me. Just the other day, my son Joel, nearly 3, yelped in agony for milk with his chicken. Jeremy, on board with our kosher home, believes that young children shouldn't have to sacrifice their milk. But Jeremy wasn't home that day. "No milk," I told Joel. Then I felt a bit like crying too.
Of course, heated conflicts can arise (and then dissipate) well before children appear on the scene.
Leora and Doug: I'm a believer. I'm not.
On the AIDS Ride in 2001, Leora Kaye, a rabbinical student, couldn't help but notice the cute guy in bike shorts leading the pack. She pedaled up to him during a rest stop and found herself drawn to his sense of humor. Doug Gordon, a writer and the pack-leader in question, was struck by her lack of materialism.
What Leora calls their "la-la land of love" was interrupted three months later when Doug solemnly announced that he had "something to tell her."
What could it be? What dark trouble lurked in his past? Doug's admission: He doesn't fast on Yom Kippur. For Leora, this was dark trouble, indeed.
Leora, who at 34 has the bubbly personality, swinging ponytail and pretty face of a high school cheerleader, actually reads the Zohar, a difficult mystical text, for fun. Unlike many Reform Jews, she tries to abstain from spending money on Shabbat and keeps strictly kosher. When the benching starts—the prayers observant Jews recite after eating a meal—Leora wishes it could go on and on.
Doug, 33, wishes it would never start. "You could be in the middle of the most wonderful conversation at the dinner table, and all of the sudden someone will say, ‘Okay, everyone has to bench now.' " Though he identifies proudly as a Jew and is an ardent Zionist, Doug feels apathetic about many religious aspects of Judaism. Like God, for example. And bar mitzvahs: He almost didn't have one, until his mother reminded him what it would mean to his great-grandmother.
During that first difficult discussion with Doug, Leora recalls, "I was in my studio apartment, progressively getting more and more agitated as the conversation went on. I was up against another person who felt so strongly, who wasn't even on some spectrum of belief."
The year that followed was a rocky one. Intense arguments erupted every month or so, typically ending with a red-faced Leora screaming: "It's not like you didn't know this about me. I was in rabbinical school when we started dating."
But Leora emerged from that year believing that every rabbinical student should face Doug as an exit interview. And Doug loves that he's married to someone so knowledgeable. "It means I have to articulate my own beliefs more substantively. Ultimately, I think Leora's observance has shaped my agnosticism more than anything."
Leora and Doug learned how to smile while they spar, and also how to compromise. Doug doesn't go to synagogue, but they keep kosher in their Brooklyn home. Most of the time, they enjoy Shabbat dinners with friends. Once in a while, they absorb a full-blown Friday night in a traditional home.
But some weeks, as Shabbat approaches, Leora says that Doug will declare: "You have Jewed me out over the last three weeks. Can we please go to the movies?" And they do.
I've learned some things in eight years of intramarriage. If the sun shines on Saturday morning, don't suggest to Jeremy that we go to synagogue. If it's Passover, don't buy substandard kosher cheese. And if Talia, our 5-year-old, starts asking questions about God, divert her attention elsewhere.
But I've also learned some things in these last few weeks. I've thought more about how, like Avi and Adina, Jeremy and I have forged our own spiritual identity as a family, different from what we both knew as kids. I've admired how Carole and Gil weave both traditions into the fabric of their rich Jewish life. And I've learned a crucial lesson from Leora and Doug—the importance of letting go.
So when Rebbetzin Jungreis turns the tables during our interview and asks me, "What about you and your husband, are you on the same page?" I start to hem and haw.
"Well, we're not on the same paragraph," I say, but then I consider our weekly Shabbat dinners, when we lay out the white tablecloth and watch the dancing flames above the thick white candles, when the children can't wait to sink their teeth into the hot challahs we bake together. And I think about how rested, how removed I felt during a recent Saturday afternoon in nature.
"Yes," I tell her, "We're definitely on the same page."
