The Decision Process Examined by a Rabbi September, 1994 Interfaith marriages, that is, the marriages between couples of Jewish and Christian faiths, are an increasingly common phenomenon. So long as the new family includes only the two members, couples are remarkably capable of surmounting most obstacles which differing faiths pose. But when children enter the picture, the issue of with which faith to raise the children almost invariably becomes serious and potentially devastating to the marriage.

The Neither is the easiest path. By choosing the path of least resistance, you blend into the majority. When your child asks you, "What am I, Jewish or Christian?" you say, "you're an American."

You can say to her, "Mommy was raised Jewish; Daddy was raised Catholic; you are anything you want to be."

Couples do choose this. With respect to religious identity, there is little conflict. There are no out of pocket expenses such as dues to "organized religion" (believe me, at BJC we try to be organized).

Unfortunately, the weaknesses outweigh the strengths because the child invariably is and eventually feels deprived. I meet them often as adults. When you say to your child, "you are anything you want to be," the child often thinks, "My friends are either Jewish or Christian, I'm neither, I'm nothing."

She'll come back to you one day with, "No fair, Daddy, when you were growing up you knew what you were. You had the church, the priests, Easter egg hunts, Christmas trees, Sunday school, and all that good stuff. And Mommy, you had a Bat Mitzvah. You learned about the Torah. You knew you were a part of certain history and heritage. You had the traditions and the festivals, like Passover and Hanukkah, the food, the humor. Each of you got all this great stuff growing up, and you gave me nothing. Thanks a lot! It's like you couldn't choose between giving me softball or basketball, so I got no ball at all. Undecided between music or art lessons, so I got nothing. No Judaism. No Christianity. I got gypped. You might have at least flipped a coin."

The neither is a very poor choice, depriving the child of an identity and a spiritual heritage. Not fair. "Besides, Mom, my friends are asking me what am I. What am I?" Better to flip that coin.

The Both Route

The Both approach appears to be very promising as a healthy and potentially interesting solution to your dilemma. The first year or two, you'll try to celebrate both sets of holidays. It will be fun. Hannukah comes, you spin the dreidle. Christmas comes, you decorate the tree. You do Passover, then Easter. By the third or fourth year, stress begins to take over, and you are trying to do it all, synagogue and church and all the holidays like all the other Jewish and Christian kids. You're going out of your mind and not enjoying the holidays at all. Life becomes a pressured balancing act. Instead of enjoying the holidays, you are juggling like crazy, trying to be spiritually in two places at once. It's a full time job experiencing double holidays and observing both religions evenly.

You are embarking on a very stressful life, besides confusing your children. Let's take a baby boy. On the eighth day you have the Jewish brit (or "bris"), including circumcision, conferring Jewish identity. Days later or earlier, you have a baptism. Since each ceremony signifies the initiation of a new member exclusively to its religion, you are beginning the child's life with a deception and a contradiction.

The contradictions escalate. In order to prevent the Both routine from degenerating into Neither, you have to give your son an education. On Saturday you send the child to synagogue and on Sunday to church. You believe you have the best of all possible worlds, but you are teaching opposing theological doctrines that can't both be right or "feel" right. Stress and confusion revisited.

You can't very well teach the boy on Saturday morning that Jesus was a nice rabbi and a good guy, but "we Jews don't see evidence for a messiah", then on Sunday teach the child that yes, Jesus was the messiah, indeed the Son of God. And also virgin birth, resurrection, the trinity, original sin, and the death of a God all of which are to be believed and disbelieved simultaneously? It's not fair to the kid. The messiah came or didn't.

Eventually the child has to choose one or the other, but he won't be choosing between Judaism and Christianity. Be sure of that. The child is invariably, inevitably forced to choose between Mommy or Daddy, and this is the most compelling reason not to go the Both route.

Many couples try it, and discover that Both splits up families. One child aligns with the mother and the other child, often for reasons of sibling rivalry, with the father. I see it - half-families - in my own congregation, and the families soon stop trying to convince themselves and me that they are united and happy. I see fractured families. They aren't celebrating holidays together. Siblings aren't close. One is Christian, the other Jewish. I cannot see anything healthy or interesting in that.

Growing up in the modern world is hard enough. It isn't fair to dump such a heavy decision on a child. It is the parents' responsibility to make those tough choices for their offspring. It's not surprising that the Both and the Neither routines are discouraged by almost all psychologists and clergy. The alternative -- choosing between raising the child Jewish or Christian -- is much happier and healthier and adds the richness of culture to a child's upbringing.

You can boil the disadvantages of going 50/50 -- half Jewish, half Christian to this: on every test, 50% is failure. 100% is excellence.

The Christian Route

As a rabbi, while I make no pretense of being objective, I can, however, observe like the proverbial "fly on the wall." What I have seen is this. The Christian choice is a good choice. It's the majority choice, it's much the easier choice. And you don't have to go out of your way very much, since Christianity is all around you. The child won't be self-conscious in any way, will never feel the disadvantages of being a minority member, and will never face anti-Semitism. There's a lot to be said for the Christian route.

The tough part of course is for the Jewish parent. Raising a Christian child involves erecting a wall of doctrine that a Jewish parent has trouble surmounting. "Mommy, how come you don't believe in Jesus as your savior and the Son of God? Why don't you believe in virgin birth and resurrection and original sin? Aren't you going to be saved? Why do I believe these things and you don't?" These are all very difficult questions for a Jewish parent to answer without expressing doubts or uncertainties about Christianity or evading the answer with "go ask your father." The Jewish parent can't easily accept her Christian child being "indoctrinated." After all, Jews have no doctrines, no compulsory beliefs. (And beliefs often change so radically over the course of one's life.)

There are some Jews who have handled this route reasonably well despite the "wall of doctrine." Many are happy, from what I can tell. Others have expressed remorse to me that they are the last in the line of Jewish continuity -- that the four thousand year chain ends with them. Usually the matter of lineage and continuity becomes more important as one gets older. But the wall of doctrine is rarely breached, frequently widening through life. Often it is precisely because of the articles of Christian faith that the Jewish partner feels left out.

Despite this, the Christian route unquestioningly the right decision if the Christian partner believes that unless the children are raised Christian, they will not be saved, and will suffer in the world to come. When this is an issue, I have on occasion turned to the Jewish partner and said, "Look. You have nothing as heavy as the afterlife in your arsenal of Jewish identification and religious conviction. Your spouse is going to go through much anguish over a lifetime believing your children will be damned if not baptized Christian."

For Christians, salvation is the equivalent of Jewish survival in emotional magnitude. While Christians talk about salvation in the next world, Jews, who are so few in number, talk about survival in this one.

These issues are serious, and the weight of each partner's convictions needs to be considered. Tough choice.

The Jewish Route

Now for the Jewish Route. The Christian route is clear -- it's the easier way, the majority way, and particularly appropriate if the Christian party believes in salvation.

The Jewish route has a lot of downsides. Anti-Semitism is a good example. Judaism is the minority way, and as such, requires special effort. I often point out that it's similar to being a pianist. You can't call yourself a pianist unless you really learn how to play the piano. It's difficult to call your kid a Jewish kid without the often rather expensive education that goes with it. That means you must send your child to Jewish supplementary school, and both partners must invest time, energy, and money. These are negatives.

A big positive for raising the child Jewish is that there are no must-believes. There aren't any theologies that will cause the Christian parent to roll her eyeballs toward the ceiling in despair. For example, it's not a contradiction to be an atheist and a Jew, but you cannot be an atheist and still be a Christian. For the Jewish person, "identity precedes ideology, belonging before believing and folk not faith." He sees himself and his religion more as a rich culture, a shared history and chain of continuity, a legacy to pass on, not a collection of beliefs.

An analysis of the positives and negatives of the Jewish trade-off is developed in part two of this paper. For those couples contemplating the Jewish route, the following FOUR AGE-APPROPRIATE DIALOGUES may serve as a paradigm or lifetime game-plan.

Part Two

Four Age-Appropriate Dialogues Issues related to interfaith marriages may be resolved by deciding to go the Neither, the Both, the Christian, or the Jewish routes. The various tradeoffs were explored above. What follows are the four age-appropriate dialogues between a Jewish child and a non-Jewish parent addressing the aspect of their religious differences.

Once a couple has decided to raise their child Jewish, it is useful for the non-Jewish parent to become familiar with four age-appropriate dialogues with the child. These dialogues are essentially responses formulated when the inevitable question arises, "Mommy, how come Daddy and I are Jewish and you're not?"

As your child matures, your dialogue with your child naturally becomes more sophisticated. Many couples who make use of this paradigm of four age-appropriate dialogues have generally kept these ideas on the shelf for the right moment and have initiated these dialogues at various points of time in the developing life of the child.

Age 4 - 6: Shut Up and Eat Your Porridge

First dialogue between Jewish child and non-Jewish parent: The non-Jewish parent begins by answering this way: "We had to make a decision. We didn't want to confuse you by trying to raise you Both, nor deprive you by raising you as Neither. So because Judaism and Christianity were both very good choices, we could have flipped a coin. We picked Judaism. You are going to have a Bar/Bat Mitzvah. You are a Jewish kid. Shut up and eat your porridge. I want to compliment your questioning and not be abrupt. But we want it clear that we thought about it a lot and Mom and Dad together decided you'd be a Jewish kid. That's what parents do. They make hard decisions." It's clear to the child that you had to make up your minds, you thought it through, and of course you might add, "I love your mother very much, and your mother cares deeply about her heritage and Jewish continuity. I am happy with this decision."

Age 6 - 8: The Common Denominator

The next answer, given when your child is more mature and requires better reasons is this: "We decided that you'd be Jewish because Judaism is the common denominator between Mommy and Daddy's religion." "We chose Jewish identity for you because everything about my Christianity, (as well as Islam and much of Western Civilization), is rooted in Judaism. Jesus was Jewish. His mother and father and everyone of his friends were Jewish. Should Jesus come back, he'd go to a synagogue and feel at home. "Judaism is the foundation stone for Mommy and Daddy. You are learning the values, history, and ideas that both Mommy and Daddy share. Your and Mommy's Judaism is like the tree trunk, and I am the branch. We have the same roots. Judaism is the bedrock on which both your parents stand. "Because Christianity came from Judaism, Mommy and Daddy both feel fulfilled. We both stand on your common ground. If we had chosen to raise you Christian, Mommy would have found all these beliefs in which she does not believe difficult to teach you. Jewishness does not have `you must believe' in it. But I am very happy about you being a Jewish kid, because everything I was taught was rooted in Judaism. Your being raised as a Jew is win-win for both Mom and Dad." At this point, you have explained 1) that you had to make a decision, and 2) that the decision you made is Judaism because you both have Jewish roots, that is, Judaism is your common denominator.

Age 8 - 10: The Pianist Answer

The third dialogue between Jewish child and non-Jewish parent presents the majority/minority dynamic. If you raise a kid a pianist, he's not deprived of everything else. He still enjoys sports and rock `n roll, art, theater, rollerblading, cycling, whatever. However, he has been taught this special skill at piano and that makes him a pianist -- a member of a minority. And here is the point: the minority child gets the majority culture too. Not so the other way around. If you raise a Jewish kid in a world of 880 million Catholics and a billion and a half Christians, when there are perhaps only 13 million Jews in the entire world, the Jewish kid can't miss getting both cultures. There is no way a Jewish kid in America doesn't get exposed to Christianity. He only has to walk down the street, flip on the radio or TV. Everywhere, there is Christianity. This does not work in reverse. Jews are too tiny a minority to expect anyone who was raised as a Christian to get exposed to Judaism and Jewish culture. You have to go well out of your way for that exposure. You don't get to be a pianist by anything short of study and practice. You have to go after it. You have to give the child piano lessons. You don't call yourself a pianist unless you know how to play the piano. You don't call yourself Jewish without a Jewish upbringing and a Jewish education. But when you make a special effort to teach a minority culture, the majority is not lost on the child. This method is the only way of doing the Both routine that actually works. I've never met a Jew ignorant of Christianity. Moreover, Jewish children are not taught anything negative about Christianity. After all, Jesus was a rabbi. So you say to your child, "We wanted you to have exposure to everything, so we gave you Judaism. We knew you'd get all the information on Christianity at school, at your grandparents, and everywhere. You'll know about both religions, which makes you a pretty sophisticated kid." This dialogue is also win-win; he knows he's special, and there's a lot of potential for pride in that.

Age 10 - 12: Jewish Parent and Parent of Jews

This final dialogue of the four part paradigm addresses the relationship between the non-Jewish parent and the child who has been raised Jewish by both parents and is now approaching Bar/Bat Mitzvah age. According to Jewish law, the child of a Jewish parent (Orthodox Jews would stipulate a Jewish mother) is a Jewish child. Matrilineal descent is recognized by all branches of Judaism (even if not by every single rabbi). In Reform and Reconstructionist circles, where the patrilineal also applies, the child of a Jewish parent (father or mother) who is provided with a Jewish upbringing is a Jewish child. A brit/circumcision or baby-naming ceremony, and enrollment in a Jewish school program, publicly and formally initiates the child into the Jewish community. And for the rest of the child's life, his Jewish observances confirm his identity. That's a matter of law.

But the fact, as distinct from law, as I see it, is that the parent of a Jewish child becomes over time, for all intents and purposes, a "Jewish" parent. That means, that just as this kid of yours is learning about Judaism, becoming immersed in the heritage, you are right there with him observing festivals, taking the child to a Jewish supplementary school, doing Jewish things.

As your child wades ever deeper into the Jewish stream of life, you, the parent, are holding his hand and are also being carried by the same current. The deeper you wade, the more you'll find Judaism appealing. After all, it's a rich tradition. You will always be raising your eyebrows in astonishment that there is so much to this culture. So while you're raising your Jewish kid, you are raising yourself Jewishly, too. You are not very different, in fact, from a Jewish parent, just different in origin. But doing pretty much what born Jewish parents do for their Jewish kid.

At this point in counseling I tell the non-Jewish partner, "No one is converting you, no one wishes to. Jews do not offer salvation. You'll get no next worldly, only this worldly, benefits. Jewish tradition comes toward you with a prediction: you will get to like the Jewish way of life. You could derive much joy from your familiarity with Judaism and from your Jewish family.

In many ways these words serve as a warning and an embrace at the same time: If you live this life, raising a Jewish child, you are really a part of us. How very different are you really from "other" Jewish parents? You share the same objective: to raise a happy, well-adjusted, sophisticated, proud Jewish kid, and to provide a good context for your family. Just like Jewish parents, the non-Jewish parent grows into the role of "Jewish parent", or, more precisely, a parent of Jews.

Once you turn to your beloved who by the quirk of fate and history was born into Jewish identity, and say, "I can hack it, I can raise Jewish kids," you become part of us, a part of our history, "a friend of the folk" (Ger Toshav). It's not a conversion of course, but in fact a transformation. You haven't walked into the Jewish mansion to look around for a room that's comfortable, yet. But you know that the mansion is there, and that you are welcome to come in and check it out. Remember, for Jews, identity precedes ideology. After you enter the mansion, you can look around to see what conceptions and convictions -- we Jews have no required beliefs -- make sense to you as a family. Choose the room which is right for you. The beauty of it is, there are not doctrines, no "you must believes" in order to be welcomed inside. We are connected by history, not theology. And you have become a part of our continuity.

These FOUR AGE-APPROPRIATE DIALOGUES constitute the paradigm, the model. This is what you need to explore at marriage, the intersection of your lives. Keep in mind, you'll be changing, growing constantly, so your beliefs will be ever-evolving. And the we, we, we, is totally different than the I, I, I. Sometime before that first kid comes, it's good to have made up your collective mind, become the we, and to formulate your game plan. There isn't any urgency right now, necessarily, to make heavy decisions. In the meantime do some comparison shopping called research. It's part of the process of I to we.

Having these dialogues available might very well ease the process and help a couple take a step closer to each other and together to turn toward that objective of providing a nourishing religious environment for their children. I'd appreciate your comments.