ArcaMax

In this season of sacred holidays for Judaism (Passover), Christianity (Easter), Islam (Ramadan) and Hinduism (Holi) it seems to me like a good time to face the challenges of interfaith dialogue on a deeply personal level.

What are we to do when the challenges of understanding the faith of our neighbor is not the result of some abstract theological reflections but the result of an intermarriage of someone in your own family with a person of another faith?

Q: For a year, I have been struggling with my hurt and anger against a great-nephew who converted from Judaism to Islam before marrying an Arab woman he met while at college. We had a bitter exchange of letters when I declined the invitation to his wedding. I feel he has betrayed a long chain of ancestors who struggled mightily so that he could enjoy his privileges of life in the USA and I cannot forgive him for denying his heritage. My grandchildren, however, all attended the wedding and are very accepting of his conversion.

At the recent marriage of my granddaughter, this great-nephew made a point of deliberately seeking me out and greeting me as if nothing had changed. Unhappily, just seeing him made me feel worse and I told him I did not have any Muslim relatives. Now, with a grandson's wedding looming in the spring, I dread another encounter with this same great-nephew.

How can I make it somewhat on the pleasant side without giving him the idea that his conversion is OK with me as that will never be the case? – (From A)

A: Let us try with compassion and humility to distinguish between belief and bigotry. I can walk with you and support you as a rabbi in your deep desire to see a continuation and strengthening of Jewish identity. The only way to achieve that is through the creation of Jewish families and the best way to make Jewish families is by having a Jewish mother and father work at it by together raising Jewish children. I also understand, though you did not mention this, that after one out of every three Jews on planet earth who were alive in 1933 had been murdered by 1945 the obligation of surviving Jews to create Jewish homes and Jewish children to replace in some small measure the millions of Jewish families who perished in the Holocaust is an ethical and spiritual demand.

However, the right of every person of every faith and no faith to marry for love is also a powerful need and is one of the foundations of personal freedom that we all seek and all treasure.

The ability to marry for love is a very recent freedom. For less than a century, members of different religious and ethnic groups have been able in large numbers to ignore past taboos and prejudices in order to follow their heart and find each other. The freedom to love and the need to preserve are clearly in tension in our culture and our world now.

Now let me respectfully push back on some of your reasons for opposing this marriage. Are you opposed only because of his duty to preserve the Jewish people or are you opposed because you do not like Muslims? I can tell you that during the Middle Ages in the Christian empire of Europe Jews were persecuted, but in the Islamic Empire of the Middle East Jews were protected. Maimonides was the court physician to Saladin. Thousands of Jews were murdered by Christians in the Inquisition and during the Crusades. Islam is no more represented by jihadist terrorists than was Christianity by the Crusaders. We must hold our oppressors accountable, but we must resist the temptation to blame a group for the sins of the few.

I also am disturbed by your decision to inject your strong opinions into the life of a great-nephew. He is not your immediate family, and you describe him as courteous to you despite your vituperation. Let him live his life and stop behaving in ways that risk fracturing your family. Remember that the freedom to marry for love is one of the great gifts of the modern world.

In the little Jewish towns of Eastern Europe there was no intermarriage but the price for this Jewish unity was that the Cossacks were waiting to pounce on us from just over the hill. With all its problems of continuity and assimilation I still choose freedom.

(Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including “Religion for Dummies,” co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman. Also, the new God Squad podcast is now available.)

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