Finding Similarities among the Differences

For someone like myself who grew up in a suburban middle class neighborhood, prejudice was not a regular part of life. I would like to attribute this to my own sensitivity, but truthfully, in my isolated community there were no minorities to test how I would react in the face of the prejudicial attitudes of others. Here, I was never taught to be prejudiced, nor did I witness prejudice. Thanks to my open-minded parents, I turned out to be a rather well rounded person, not hesitant to challenge the typical beliefs that others accept without giving it much thought. I can honestly say that I emerged from this community with a good sense of myself and a belief that we are all children of God.

So, while there was a moment of hesitation when I approached my family to tell them I had fallen in love with a Jewish man, my uneasiness was quickly washed away by my mother's excitement at the prospect of planning a wedding. I thank God for the love my parents are able to share with me for the man who has changed my life. While we do have our share of struggles, Robert and I are not faced with the same cultural and religious obstacles many others are forced to overcome.

A sign of my own naiveté, I once believed that out of all of the possible interfaith combinations, the coupling of a Christian and a Jew would be one of the easiest to harmonize, when, in fact, the opposite may be true.

As stated by a commentator in the book Love and Tradition by Egon Mayer, the director of the Jewish Outreach Institute, "Modern intermarriage has become revolutionary, particularly for Jews, precisely because the marriage partners are working at integrating different heritages, customs, memories and histories that have been tragically at odds for thousands of years."

At odds? I recognized that in the past the relationships between Jews and Christians were severed, as atrocities such as the Inquisition and the Holocaust were carried out in the name of Christ. Yet, I knew in my heart that Christ would not condone killing in God's name, and so, I was able to disassociate myself from the Nazis. They were not, at least in my opinion, true Christians, proven by the fact that their actions clearly went against the Word of God. Therefore, I had been able to see past the tragedies and file them away as history, and I selfishly expected everyone else to do the same. I have since come to realize, however, that the similarities in religious backgrounds and even the sharing of many of the books of the Bible will not be enough to overcome the past and unite all Christians and Jews.

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