Jewish World Review Nov. 10, 1998 / 21 Mar-Cheshvan, 5759

Thank you, Margaret, for breaking up with me --- and making me a better Jew

By Yaakov Stein

THIRTY YEARS AGO, I ARRIVED ON THE MIDWESTERN CAMPUS that was to be my home for four years. I was a 17-year-old freshman with little idea of what I wanted to study and only a vague idea of what I wanted to do with my life.

With a misplaced belief in my own invincibility, I signed up for an advanced placement calculus course. Academically, the course was a disaster. I received a "D" and only that grade because the professor was too nice to fail me. But, I did get something out of the course. The professor and I became good friends --- and I met Margaret (not her real name).

Margaret was a pretty, petite brunette --- and she was infectiously friendly. She told me that we were also in the same economics class. (I was flattered that she noticed me in this once-a-week class with 150 students.) Four times a week we sat next to each other and chatted. Dating did not figure in the picture, both of us had other interests. Several months into the semester, she dropped both calculus and economics, and I did not see her for a while.

My first college semester was an academic disaster. My second, however, portended an even greater social disaster. My dating relationship broke up, and not at my initiation. In general, I have never been able to handle rejection, and went into a terrible depression.

That is when Margaret reappeared, her dating relationship also having broken up. We resumed our friendship. And I found out much more about her.

Margaret was a local and lived at home. Since her parents did not want her in college, she was working almost full-time and putting herself through. We spoke about our broken relationships; talking to her was a comforting experience.

Margaret also told me about her religious beliefs.

She was a devout Catholic and a product of their parochial schools. Her high school social life revolved around church youth groups. At one point she thought of becoming a nun, and spoke freely of the various religious orders whose members she admired. She was the first religious Christian I had ever talked to, and I was probably the first Jew with whom she spoke about religion.

Margaret was good company and a good conversationalist. I have always been awkward in social situations, and never really able to converse easily with anyone, male or female. With her I was more comfortable than with anyone else I could remember. I would meet her after her work and we would talk and talk.

We talked about college and our courses. (Her major was somewhere in the humanities; mine would become anthropology). We talked about religion, what her Catholicism meant to her and what my Judaism meant to me. Our conversations could be serious (such as one about the long history of Christian anti-Semitism), or lighthearted and flirtatious (I've never been to a Jewish wedding; tell me, what's it like?) We would argue about politics (she was conservative, I was basically liberal).

We argued about divorce and abortion, all in a high spirited and good-natured way. We agreed to disagree, and we disagreed most agreeably. Neither of us really proselytized the other. Occasionally, she would exhort me to meet her religious retreat leaders (she went on retreats often, and always returned with her spirits up), or to see the movie version of The Shoes of the Fisherman. I was willing, but it never worked out.

For my part, I just answered whatever questions she might have asked me. One afternoon, while listening to some folk music, I asked her out to an orchestral concert. She accepted my invitation, and that was our first formal date. I felt no guilt asking her, no sense that I was endangering the Jewish people. It was just the natural thing to do. She seemed to have few qualms, although she had told me earlier that her parents did not want her dating Jews.

So who or what was I, dating a gentile for the first time? My family was basically non-observant. My parents were members of a Reconstructionist synagogue, which they attended on high holidays. My mother lit Chanukah candles for me and my brother's benefit. I started afternoon Hebrew school in fourth grade, but two years of Israeli teachers almost destroyed my interest in Judaism.

Miraculously, though, some feeling for Judaism remained.

As a result of my urging, my mother lit candles Friday night, and we usually made kiddush and motzi, but mostly, my family considered it a joke. Somewhere in seventh grade, I started becoming interested in Orthodox Judaism. After my Bar Mitzvah, I began to attend Saturday and holiday morning services at our local Orthodox synagogue on a regular basis. Around the same time, my parents took me out of their congregational Hebrew school and placed me in the local Conservative synagogue's Hebrew high school; this provided a very strong program, and I stayed there for three full years, until eleventh grade. Several months after my Bar Mitzvah, I was refusing to ride on Shabbes.

One year later, my religious fervor weakened, although I continued to attend services regularly. Several good friends were synagogue contacts. I dated infrequently, but always Jewish girls. (In my high school, nearly all the non-Jews were "greasers" and "hoods". This was, after all, the 1950s.). When I came to college, I stopped going to services (there were no Saturday morning services on campus and Friday night services had not been part of my high school experience), although I went regularly when home on vacation. I joined Hillel, but was not terribly active.

OUR FIRST FORMAL DATE was a most pleasant experience. After that, I began to see Margaret more often. There were feelings of both friendship and affection and for me, that was fast becoming love. Our conversations continued as before, but sometimes they turned more serious. I wanted her to come visit me at home; she seemed amenable. We speculated how her parents would react to me; she thought that they would like me once they met me. I had told my parents about the relationship; they expressed no qualms openly; years later, they told me they suffered quite a bit of anxiety.

Pesach and spring break were fast approaching. The seders fell during the vacation period; I was home, wishing Margaret was with me. Back on campus for the last days of Passover, I brought two things for Margaret, a matzoh and a copy of the Haggadah. (I figured she might be interested in knowing more about the seder, since the Last Supper, upon which the Catholic Mass is based, was most probably a seder.) She accepted both graciously. Our relationship continued.

Something, however, had changed.

Margaret was now talking about an old boyfriend from high school. He had dropped out of college after one semester, enlisted, and was sent overseas. He was now home on leave and seeing her frequently.

Furthermore, her parents wanted her to marry him, or so she told me. Old Boyfriend and the idea of marrying him took up a good part of our conversations over the next two weeks, much to my discomfort. I was glad to hear that his leave ended and he went back overseas, but things didn't change much. He remained the subject of much of our conversation.

Again, we went out on a formal date; afterwards, while driving around in her car, she quietly informed me that she had no romantic interest in me. I was devastated. As I said, I have never been able to handle rejection. This time, however, I kept up our friendship in the hope of renewing the romance. It was in vain; several weeks later, she told me that she was going to marry her old boyfriend. More devastating, she politely informed me, that even if she wasn't going to marry him, she still looked at me as a friend and only that. For my part, I valued her friendship so much so that I accepted our relationship for what it was.

I never asked Margaret why she had no romantic interest in me, though I asked myself often enough. It could well be that she didn't find me attractive: After all, who could be attracted to an immature, whiny Jewish neurotic who has no idea what he wants to do with his life? Seriously, though, I believed that religion played a big part in her decision. When she returned my Haggadah, there was the look of regret in her eyes.

Whenever I mentioned some Jewish topic in our conversations, she became very angry. (From then on, we almost never discussed religion.) In time, I concluded that Margaret was dating to find a husband, and a prime requirement was that he share her religious values. Obviously, I didn't qualify, and that was that. Far from being hurt, I respected her for making that choice, if in fact that was what she did.

My high school health textbooks called the dating process a learning experience. This one definitely was, and the lessons I learned were invaluable. Before college, I had little respect for Christian religious beliefs; to my mind, anyone with half a brain could see that Christianity was untenable. Maybe without intending to, Margaret had taught me that no matter what I may think of the Christian religion, I must respect the strength and sincerity of those who practice it. More important, once again, I started to think through my own religious beliefs and practices. I tried to envision what my adult religious life would be, and what I might expect of my future wife, whomever she might be.

I saw myself leaving work early on Fridays, in order not to work on Shabbes, even if I didn't observe Shabbos according to Halachah. I saw myself attending synagogue services Saturday and holiday mornings, just as I had done in high school. I saw myself observing Succos, Shavuos, and Pesach with the same devotion as Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur, if not with the same solemnity. I saw myself building a Succah and eating there for the holidays, dancing on Simchas Torah, hearing the Megillah on Purim. I saw myself sending my children to Jewish day schools. I saw regular Shabbes and holiday dinners, and a wife who lit candles.

Obviously, Catholic Margaret, despite all her good points (of which there were many), just wasn't compatible with the life I saw for myself. Any further romantic relationship would have led to a breakup and much heartbreak.

Throughout my high school years and afterwards, I had assimilated the message "Don't intermarry" without giving it much thought. Suddenly, looking at how I wanted to lead my adult life, I came to a realization of why I shouldn't intermarry.

To use a non-Jewish word, I had an epiphany that changed the way I looked at romantic relationships. It would be nice to say that I learned my lesson and never dated a non-Jewish girl again. My social life being what it was (I was still awkward), I dated whomever I could. The Jewish girls I dated ranged from totally non-observant to observant Conservative. But something had changed.

From that point, I kept my adult-life expectations in mind when I was dating. I asked myself, how does this person fit into my visions of the future? This definitely colored all my dating relationships. After a number of years and relationships of varying intensity, as I defined myself more clearly, I embraced Orthodox Judaism and the right-wing Orthodox ethos of dating. Twenty months later, I met my future wife.

When I started college, intermarriage and how to prevent it was already a hot topic. Today, the issue is not "how" but "if." There are those who say prevention is impossible; therefore, we should accept the intermarried and make them feel as much as home as possible, in the hopes that they will raise their children as Jews. Then, there are those who believe in prevention; if we "just say no" enough times and do the right things, our children won't intermarry. .

But parents and teachers have been preaching "just say no" with decreasing success. Unfortunately, no one has given a coherent, logical answer to the question "Why?" As Egon Mayer puts it, "All the market forces that determine mate selection favor interfaith marriage, which means that one would have to face an enormous amount of self-restraint in the face of that to enter intermarriages with attractive available others.

"Until our youth have reasons to exercise that self-restraint - reasons that are coherent and logical to them - they will not forgo the opportunity to meet, date, fall in love, and marry non-Jews." The opportunities are always there. If my high school was somewhat sheltered, the college I attended had a large Jewish student population and was located in a city with a vibrant Jewish community. Still, I met Margaret. Also remember: Who we date, who we love, who we marry are among the most personal decisions we make, and any decision to refrain from entering into a relationship will be for purely personal reasons.

So what are our reasons not to intermarry? Reason number one: Intermarriage endangers the future of the Jewish people.

But does it really? Or are the factors that cause intermarriage, such as the unimportance of Judaism in people's lives or the ability and willingness to assimilate, the real danger? More important, even if intermarriage is such a menace, most people of dating age will answer, so what? Why should that concern me?

Reason number two: The marriage will be more difficult, raising the children will be more difficult. Try explaining that to someone in love.

Reason number three: Non-Jews react differently than we do to issues such as anti-Semitism and Israel. Anti-Semitism and Israel may be such a small part of a younger person's psyche that it doesn't really matter. These reasons and others you can find in Rabbi Alan Silverstein's book, It All Begins With a Date. I read it and asked myself, given such a wonderful person as Margaret sitting next to me in class, what would have convinced me that I shouldn't ask her out? The answer was, little, if anything.

Given the traditional reasons, the "just say no" argument will fail because there is no compelling "why." Parents can forbid their children to interdate, but once they go off to college or a job or a home of their own, they are no longer under parental control. Ellen Jaffe-Gill, in her book, Embracing the Stranger, quotes a Jewish college chaplain as saying, "The only students I meet who don't interdate are the ones who have really not left home emotionally. They talk about the terrible anxiety that they live with if they think about dating a non-Jew; because they know exactly what their parents' reactions are gonna [sic] be . . . and they're really quite fearful of those reactions, so they're the ones who emotionally have a harder time leaving home."

Now, I'm well aware that when children grow up, they appreciate all the discipline their parents gave them as children which they hated then. This is because they finally see the logic behind it. But for most young people, interdating does not fit into this category; there is almost nothing that will convince a young adult that his or her parents were right to forbid dating non-Jews.

After reading so much of the literature on intermarriage and looking back at my own experience, my reasons for not wanting to intermarry related entirely to my life and how I wanted to live it. I was fortunate to have been exposed to a model of "adult" Judaism (as distinguished from the pediatric variety) that I knew would be a part of my life for the rest of my life. Because I had that, I knew that the woman I married would have to be compatible with that model. If we expose all our children and young adults to such a model, if we give them something that they can absorb and internalize, then chances are very good that they will look for a mate that has absorbed a similar model and wants to live the same type of life. Invariably, that person will be Jewish.

For those of the younger generation, I cannot presume to give much advice.

Please remember: You are not alone in making these agonizing decisions. Not only are there other Jewish teenagers who are doing so, but even in past generations, even among your parents and elders, there are those who have struggled with the problems. I know I did.

One thing I ask, and it is a tall order. In any relationship, Jewish or non-Jewish, ask yourself the question: Can I see myself married to this person and being with him or her for the rest of my life? If the answer is yes, ask yourself how your religious identity fits into the picture, and how you think your potential mate will react.

If the answer is no, I wouldn't expect you to break off the relationship, but just ask yourself: Why am I in this relationship, and what do I hope to get from it? The answer you arrive at is not as important as the fact that you attempted to answer the question. After Margaret, I asked myself those two questions about every relationship in which I was involved.

For more than a year after she told me she had no romantic interest, Margaret and I continued to see each other on campus. Our discussions were almost as lively as before, although they never touched on religion. Every once in a while, she would confide to me that she was having qualms about getting married. I felt complimented that she thought enough of our friendship to confide in me. As the time got closer to her wedding date, we talked more about her wedding and expected sojourn overseas; she joked with me that I would finally get to see what a Catholic wedding was like.

Two months before her wedding date, I left college for my summer vacation. I wrote her from home, to make sure she had my address; she neither wrote back nor sent me an invitation. I was disappointed, but I understood. She obviously decided that I was a part of her life that she had to put completely behind me, and if I was truly her friend I had to respect that decision.

(I can still say that I have never been to Catholic wedding.)

When I came back to college in September, she had married and gone overseas with her husband; I have neither seen her nor heard from her in more than 28 years. In that time, I have become an Orthodox Jew, married a wonderful woman who has tolerated my foibles and idiosyncracies with a saintliness I would never have found elsewhere. We are raising a family of children far removed from the way of life in which I grew up. Still, I remember Margaret fondly; even had she really tried, she would never have made me a Catholic, but because of her, I am a much better Jew.

Yaakov Stein resides on the East Coast.

©1998, and courtesy of the Intermountain Jewish News