Love as a guide: Coping with intermarriage in the family

Susie Newday shares her family’s experience with intermarriage and offers advice on how to avoid mistakes they made in dealing with it.

By SUSIE NEWDAY
Jewish wedding_521 (photo credit: Rinat Gilboa)
Jewish wedding_521
(photo credit: Rinat Gilboa)
I doubt there is anyone who hasn’t wished they’d handled an event or a situation differently. I choose to live my life without guilt or regret, so I simply try to learn from the past and use the knowledge gained to better my future.
I would like to share the insights I have gained from an event that nearly ripped my family apart. Twelve years ago, my sister came to study medicine in Israel. Among her many friends was a male classmate, a non-Jew, who described himself as an atheist. During the years in medical school, they grew closer, although he was dating someone else. My husband and I met him a few times, and he came over to our house. He was kind, soft-spoken, polite, intelligent and eloquent.
I am not exactly sure when their relationship morphed into something more than just friendship. About 10 years ago, after they had moved back to the US to finish their medical training, my sister finally admitted their relationship to me when I confronted her about it point-blank. Ironically she was the most observant of us three sisters. She wore skirts, her shirt sleeves covered her elbows and she had a heartfelt connection to Judaism. We grew up in an Orthodox household. Our grandparents were Satmar Hassidim.
As much as I had known deep down, in the moments when I was being honest with myself, that my sister was having more than a friendly relationship with someone who was not Jewish, it was another thing to know for certain.
I confronted him to see whether there was any chance at all that he would consider converting. I was desperate enough to tell him that it didn’t matter whether or not he believed in God – if he loved her, he would do this for her. When that tactic failed, I tried to convince him to leave my sister. After all, if he really loved her, he would do that for her, because for her to marry him meant she would be walking away from Judaism and life as she knew it.
His answer was that she had to make that decision, not him. I was stuck feeling helpless. I truly felt she was making a mistake and forsaking all she had grown up with. I was also a bit angry. I was a lot more naïve back then, and as far as I was concerned, there was right or wrong. For me, shades of gray did not exist.
A SHORT while later, they moved together to the West Coast of the US, and another few years passed. Then my sister e-mailed my parents to tell them she was getting married. They didn’t receive the news well. Those few months are a bit of a blur, and I’m not quite sure when exactly she told us she was pregnant as well. After a few days and trying to get my thoughts in order, I wrote her a five-page letter.
I expressed my view that there are so few red lines left in modern Orthodox Judaism today, and intermarriage is one of them. I reminded her of our two grandmothers who had survived the Holocaust and how this would affect them. I had my personal beliefs and I also felt the obligation, as the eldest sibling, to stand by my parents and “take their side” (as one other sister was taking her side). I told my sister that if she married a non-Jew, I would accept her and her kids, but I was sorry, I could not accept her husband. I felt this would be sending my children the wrong message.
It was not until much later that I realized how hurtful that letter had been for her. It would be about another three months before I had any contact with her again.
My parents, after speaking with a rabbi, decided to cut ties with her. From every single angle, it was heartbreaking to watch this drama unfold. From my parents’ point of view, their nice, religious daughter had completely left the path. They were heartbroken and torn. They were also ashamed, blaming themselves, and not letting any of their friends and only a few of their family members know what was going on.
From my sister’s viewpoint, she was in love, and torn between the man she loved and her family, religion and way of life. I was torn as well, wanting to help my sister, help my parents and figure out how to cope with someone who had strayed so far from what I believed was religiously correct. I think my own fear also popped up. If my sister, who seemed so much stronger than I was religiously, could stray, where did that leave me?
Two years passed, and my parents once again went to the rabbi. They told him that cutting my sister off had not worked, she had still not returned to the fold, and could they try to bring her back to Judaism by having contact and a relationship? Sure, they wanted her to return to the Judaism they believed in, but I’m pretty sure they were yearning for any connection at all. The rabbi agreed that my parents should establish ties again. Better late than never, but the damage had been done. My sister wasn’t interested in returning to her religious roots.
IT HAS been quite a few years since then. My sister lights Shabbat candles, says kiddush, celebrates Hanukka, Succot, Pessah and all the other holidays. For Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, it is important for her to find a synagogue, and she travels to a city nearby that has one. She and her husband also keep some customs from my brother-in-law’s childhood, such as celebrating Christmas. For him, as an atheist, it does not have religious meaning; it’s simply a custom he grew up with. I can’t say it was something easy for me to hear or deal with, yet I knew that my life was mine, and my sister’s life was her own journey.
My sister and brother-in-law have two children, whom they are raising with love, tolerance and a tremendous amount of patience and attention. They lost a third child at 36 weeks into her pregnancy. In the phone call I got at 4:30 a.m., she somehow got the words out to tell me that the baby, a boy, had no heartbeat and she needed a C-section.
Then she asked me a question I was not expecting: “What am I supposed to do with the baby after I deliver it? Will the baby need to have a brit?”
In her darkest moment, she still held on to her religion.
Judaism is about more than just Halacha. One cannot possibly arrive at the proper halachic conclusions without also considering the principle of love, which is the crucial ingredient for interpreting and applying these laws and commandments.
What I have learned in these past years is that pushing people we love away for the sake of Judaism fosters hate and intolerance. There is absolutely no situation in Judaism that should ever rip a family apart.
I can’t go back in time and change what was, but I am sharing this story because if it helps even one other family, it will be worth the heartache it has brought to mine.