Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

It is one thing to face a book. It is another to face a person. When you open a book you find facts, data, information. The book makes it easier to classify, to universalize, to pass judgment: this is legal, this is illegal, this is healthy, this is diseased, this is permitted, this is impermissible. The books that line my study symbolize stability, assurance, even certainty. But a book is not a person. A book doesn't squirm or stammer or grow nervous or get angry or talk back. A book doesn't cry.

I am different with a book than with a person. I am different talking to a congregation from the sanctuary or in the lecture hall than I am in my study face-to-face with an individual person.

Sam sat with me alone in the study. "I know you hardly know me but rabbi I was Bar Mitzvah here and I come to the Synagogue on the High Holy Days. To come to the point rabbi, I would like you to officiate at my forthcoming marriage to Jane. My parents would be especially pleased."

"Tell me about Jane."

"Well, Jane is not Jewish but she is kind, warm, intelligent. We met on the campus. We took a number of courses together and we found that we have many things in common: skiing, music, concerns with ecology and a desire to battle the scourge of AIDS."

"What is Jane's religious background?"

"Well, I really don't know."

"Is she a Catholic or Protestant?"

"Jane is a Christian I suppose but she doesn't go to the church and her parents are not churchgoers either."

"How do her parents react to you? They know that you are Jewish."

"They're totally accepting of me. They're very pleased that we are going to get married."

"Have you talked to Jane about her becoming Jewish?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Well, I've avoided the issue because frankly I don't want conversion to be a condition for our marriage. I don't want to hold the gun to her head."

"Do you have to present it to Jane in that manner? Is conversion a matter of coercion?"

"Well, I wouldn't mind her being Jewish. I certainly think it would please my parents. But to tell you the truth, religion doesn't mean that much to me. Mind you I've never denied my being a Jew but I'm really not religious and neither is she."

This is pretty much a typical, conventional, open exchange that I have with those who seek answer the kind of request that Sam has made. Sam is not a defiant person, he is not disrespectful, he carries no hostility towards his parents nor towards Judaism, nor towards me. Sam's future in-laws are far from hostile to Jews or Judaism. They reflect the results of a Gallop Poll which revealed that 69% of Americans approve of marriages between Jews and Gentiles.

Is that good or bad for the Jews? Probably both and my answer probably describes much of Jewish ambivalence. We want to be liked but we don't want to be loved; we want to mix but we don't want to be married; we want to integrate but we don't want to assimilate. WE SEEK INCLUSION:

We have fought against the pariah status; we have fought to get into society, to get into colleges, to get into the professions. We have fought against the quota system.

We are strong believers in education for our sons and our daughters and also for the sons and daughters of our neighbors. Recently in May, 1992, the national survey by the Anti-defamation League conducted by the Boston firm of Mirtilla & Kiley revealed that anti-semitism is most prevalent amongst older people, blue collar workers, upon people with high school education or less. The survey found that education is a potent antidote to anti-semitism among all ethnic and religious groups. Incidentally it also exploded the myth that well educated Blacks are more likely to be anti-semitic than poorly educated Blacks. Most of us believe this and want to believe that it is good to be educated, that education civilizes. Sam and Jane are well educated. After all, where did Sam and Jane meet? They met in the same way that Hillary and Bill met, on the campus in college.

The sociologist, E. Digby Baltzell, pointed out that in a meritocratic society the college Dean of Admissions functions as a de-facto marriage broker. The Dean of Admissions is a shadchan.

Because of this there are some who argue that college is the disaster area for Jews and as such they would like to keep the children away from the contagious contact in a secular atmosphere of a college or university.

But for most Jews this kind of self-ghettoization is not a viable option. If Judaism is so tender and fragile a plant that it must be hatched in an incubator, and kept from contact from the outside world, it is not likely to persevere.

To become a victim of agoraphobia, to be afraid to step outside one's home into the open square is a terrible price to pay for this layered security.

Sam and Jane on paper are an interfaith couple seeking marriage.

But in reality, Sam and Jane are an interfaithless couple. There is no religious or cultural battle going on between them. There is no theological tension, neither between them and not between us. Shall I discuss with them the comparative religious nature of original sin or the virgin birth or the belief in immaculate conception or salvation? It means nothing to them. It does not figure into their scheme of things.

Around the December month the issue of the menorah or the Christmas tree has become a joking affair. The Christmas tree has been so neutralized and secularized that it does not represent a serious Christian symbol to Jane. The secularization and commercialization of X-mas is a target of church leaders. As for the menorah, even Chabad in its argument before the courts that the placing of the Channukah menorah on public property of the state is no violation of the separation of church and state principle, that the menorah is in fact a secular artifact and not a religious symbol. Who can get excited over two secular symbols?

Sam and Jane are "neutrals" and they live in a "neutral" public square. They are paravedik, neither categorized milk or meat. You remember the old Yiddish joke: what happens when you mix breed a hen and a rabbit? The answer is "nisht a hin un nisht a her".

When the topic is off what would please the parents, the conversation will drift to the children. How will the unborn children be raised; as Christians or as Jews?

And just as earlier, the rational and logical voice declares "I don't want to force Judaism on Jane," the new voice protests forcing faith on the children. "Why can't we expose the child to both Christianity and Judaism and then when they are older they can choose?

"Why do we have to indoctrinate them at such an early stage?"

I am then put on the defensive for it is as if I am asking to coerce the child, to deprive the child of free choice, to indoctrinate them, to brain wash them.

It is difficult to answer Sam satisfactorily. For Sam has to understand that what he calls "religion", especially for Judaism, is far more than a series of dogmas or doctrines or philosophical points. The truth of the matter is that to be Jewish is not only an intellectual affair but far more, it is a matter of belonging, of feeling, of behaving and of associating songs and legends and language and holiday with a people, with a culture, with a family, with a "civilization". Becoming Jewish is not like converting to a church - it is more like entering a family. For Judaism incorporates both ethnicity and theology. There may be no Episcopalian humor or Roman Catholic folk-story, or Baptist love of language and Zion or Christian Science folk dance but there is Jewish humor, Jewish lullaby, Jewish attachment to Israel, a love of Yiddish or Hebrew. There are the affective and spiritual dimensions of "Jewishness" that are not part of any principles of religious faith. To call some one a Christian or Moslem atheist is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron, that does not apply to identifying oneself as Jewish atheist. The point is not that Judaism is not a religion, but that it is so much more. Judaism is a way of living in a civilization. And civilization is not chosen in the manner that dogmas and doctrines are. As a Jew, Sam, you gain your identity, your fidelity, your joys, your hopes, your loves by living within an environment, a total culture.

How Sam do you propose to expose your children to Judaism and at the same time expose your children to Jane's Christianity? (1) The child is influenced by so many unconscious ways: the way Papa and Mamma talk at the table, the way they eat, the kinds of celebrations they have, the kinds of friends with whom they associate. (2) It's unfair to the child to let him choose. It turns the home into a place of rivalry. Living a faith cannot become a contest for the child's loyalty. It becomes an unspoken rivalry if on Sunday the child is in Mamma's church and on the Sabbath the child is in the Synagogue with Daddy. It resembles the tragic manipulation for a child's loyalty that divorced parents frequently report. Each parent wants to associate greater joy and happiness with its own faith so there is a contest between Passover and Easter, between Channukah and Christmas, between chocolate covered matzos versus hot cross buns, eight gifts for eight nights against one Yuletide Christmas stocking.

In all this what is lost for the child is the stability in identifying with a parental pattern of life. It places such strain upon a child to choose, as it were, between Papa's faith or Mama's faith, between the Bar Mitzvah or the church confirmation. And what's more the choice comes early, too early for the child.

There are eight days from birth that the decision has to be made either b'rith or baptism.

But our discussion runs silly. What kind of Judaism would the child be exposed to in Sam's home and for that matter what kind of Christianity would the child be exposed to in Jane's home? I'm not angry at Sam. Sam is like Disraeli, the Prime Minister of England, who was converted to Christianity by his father but also felt himself Jewish. Once, Queen Victoria asked him "What testament do you read, Disraeli?" He responded, "alas dear Queen, I am the blank page between the Old and the New Testaments." Sam is not atheist nor believer, not self-loving or self loathing, not lover or hater - he is just that neither/nor - or blank page. And as we talk I am convinced that he is not happy with his vacuity. I recall Philip Roth's complaint "What a Jewish child inherited was nobody is law, nobody is learning, no language and finally no lord."

So it's hard to answer Sam.

The offer to expose the child to both traditions is ludicrous because you can't expose the child to both when the parents are neither.

And even in those cases where Judaism and Christianity is better represented by the parents, how will the child be exposed to Judaism and Christianity? Are they really Tweedle dee dee and Tweedle dee dum, the same thing with just a few different taste buds? You say "holly" and I say "challah", you say "Santa" and I say "Simchah". Judaism and Christianity if they are properly presented and respectfully presented for all their commonalities are major religious opposites to self and community and history - profoundly different and importantly contradictory. Judaism is not Christianity and the Mosaic tradition is not that of Jesus as Christ and we must not denigrate authentic faiths by watering them down to a matter of taste.

Sometimes in my frustration I reach out to absurdity. I remember once saying to Sam when he insisted that we compromise and have both a minister to satisfy Jane's parents and a rabbi to satisfy his parents. "Can we get such a rabbi?" "Why don't you let me officiate at the marriage and I can serve both as rabbi and minister? After all, I know the Christian sacrament of marriage. I received that at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. I know the Jewish ceremony of marriage. I can have you kneel and later break the glass. You have in me two in one." "That would surely be a crazy thing, rabbi." "Yes it would and you know it cannot be done. Neither at the wedding nor at home. Not with me, nor with you, nor with your children."

I often win the argument but in truth I have lost the issue. For we have dodged the real issue. For the issue is not about Papa, Mama and pleasing them and it's not even about raising the children. The issue is not about ceremony or place or the officiant. The issue is not about forcing Jane or indoctrinating the unborn children. The issue is about you Sam and only Sam. It's about your soul and your life. You raise questions that are specific, concrete but all external. And I fall into the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. I'm not talking about your parents -what if there are none or about your unborn children - what is you decide to have none? I am talking about you. And I have no complaint about you. We are sitting here face-to face. I am not finding fault, passing judgment, blaming you or your parents who ask me "What did I do wrong?" I make only one request. That you be serious about this matter. That you be serious with yourself.

You are dealing with a choice of a mate and the choice of a family. You are dealing with matters of love and identity and of continuity.

Don't play games with me, with yourself and with Jane.

Sam, you know the problem is not your liberalism, not your refusal to use coercion on Jane but the failure to exercise your conviction. It's not the use of compulsion but the lack of commitment. I ask of Sam seriousness with himself and with Jane as well.

Sometimes Jane converts to Judaism. She has gone for instruction at UJ; she has immersed herself in the waters of the mikvah, and she appears before the Beth Din and assumes the name of Ruth. "Your people shall be my people, your God my God. Where you will lodge, I will lodge, where you will die, there will I be buried." She enters into Judaism with serious expectation but it ends up in deep frustration not because of deliberate deceit of Sam but because there is in Sam's home, in his life, in the life of his family no spirituality, no yearning for prayer because there is no narrative and no song and no Jewish poetry. Jane was promised something. She expects a Jewish family, she expects its warmth and she expects a larger connection with her new family. What she receives however, is an odd reluctance on the part of Sam and his family to join in with the fate of their people, to attend a service, to celebrate a festival. She feels abandoned by Sam. Jane-Ruth feels that the conversion and the mikvah were meaningless. Her complaint is not with Sam's coerciveness but with his emptiness. It is not that too much has been demanded of her but that nothing is demanded of her or of anyone else.

What I can say to Sam may be too late but it must be said anyhow. I ask of Sam that he stop assigning motivations, guilts and blames to others. I ask him that he not play with me or with the tradition or with Jane. I ask of Sam that he be serious with himself. I ask him to have integrity. I ask that before he makes request from a tradition of 4,000 years that he ask himself what that tradition means to him. That before he decides to marry Jewishly, before he makes a commitment to his wife that he makes a commitment to himself.

If it is a game that he is playing to impress parents or community, then it is a dangerous game because it affects the life of many people. Sam, by the grounds of Jewish law, by the halachah, you are Jewish because your mother was Jewish. That's the law. But Sam, Jewishness existentially cannot be determined by the womb or the semen. Jewishness is a matter of the will and heart. In the congregation I talk sociologically, but here in the privacy of my study we are individuals. I care nothing about saving the soul of Jane - I don't count scalps. Jane, as we will see, needs no saving of soul. Be fair to Jane. Don't enter into a relationship of love with a loveless biological fate. I would love to stand with you and Jane-Ruth under the Chuppah and I would love to hear you say with all your heart, mind and soul "Behold thou art consecrated unto me with this ring in accordance with the law of Moses and Israel." I ask of you seriousness, responsibility to the promise.

It is you Sam who must study, who must immerse yourself into the waters of Torah, who must accept your bride and sustain her and both of you her home.

But before all the other issues are dealt with, there is one that is at the root of all. Sam, you must become a Jew by choice. It is a decision that will affect your people, your family, your home - but most importantly your soul. Will we see each other again?

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