INTERMARRIAGE

My dearest Aaron Hershel,

 

Your latest question took me completely by surprise. What do I think about a marriage between a Jew and Gentile? I don’t know what prompted you to ask this question, but your timing is uncanny. Just this week Rochel Miriam, the baker’s daughter, ran off to marry a Christian. What a shanda (scandal)! Her parents came to me to help set up the shivah (a period of mourning; when a Jewish child converts, the parents are to act as if she has died). Rabbi Levi ben Joseph was out of town, so it fell to me. Tell me, what should I have done? What would you do? Tradition is tradition. And yet I could not do it.

I sat them down and said: “Two men are wandering lost in the woods. Neither has any idea how to get home. In time they come to a fork in the path they are taking. One goes east, the other west. What they do not know is that both roads lead them home. Soon they have walked far enough apart that the one is no longer visible to the other. Suddenly the man on the eastward road starts to wail. ‘My friend is dead,’ he cries, ‘my friend is dead.’ Does this make sense to you?”

Shlomo the baker’s face was hard as a three-day old bagel. He said: “No, the friend is not dead, only on a different path. And in time both will meet each other at the trails’ end.” His wife sobbed quietly.

“So?” I said.

“So?” Shlomo said. “What do these crazy wanderers have to do with us and our daughter?”

And then his wife, Chana says to him in a cracked and weary voice: “The three of us are the wanderers, Shlomo. Rochel is on one path and we are on the other. Should we mourn for her, and pretend she is dead, or should we wait for her to finish her path and meet us at home?”

Shlomo stared at me.

“Shlomo,” I said. “I cannot help you sit shivah for a daughter who is not dead. Nor can I believe that God is so narrow that only one path leads to Him. God is not Jewish or Christian or Moslem. God is God. It is we who imagine different gods at the end of different paths. But we shall see when we arrive that there is only the One.”

Shlomo said: “So?” His voice was barely audible.

“So,” I said, “Go home with your wife, and send a letter to your daughter telling her that you will always be her parents and she your daughter, and that your door is always open to her, her husband, and, God willing, her children.”

“And when our friends ask us what happened, what do we say then?”

“Tell them that your daughter is happy. That she is a good woman who has married a good man and together they will raise good children. Tell them God is happy for her as well, for God needs good people to find each other and raise good families. The world needs more good people.”

“And when we hear them mocking us behind our backs?”

“Then you will know they are not your friends. Some will mock you. But others will sigh with relief that someone finally had the courage to end a custom that comes not from God but just the fearful hearts of frightened parents and their rabbis.”

So do you know what happened, my dear Aaron Hershel? Shlomo and Chana went home and did not cover a single mirror for two days. (It is customary to cover mirrors during shivah). Then Reb Levi returned and declared that the entire town sit shivah for a week!

It can get pretty lonely here, Hershele. And pretty late. God bless you.

 

B’Shalom