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Speaking Each Other's Language

© Jill Critchley Rubin

After deciding to pursue an interfaith relationship, we are faced with the challenge to learn an entirely new language. When my fiancé and I were engaged, I began to think more seriously about our religious differences and similarities. I was surprised as to how little he really knew about Christianity, and I found there is a lot more to Judaism than I had originally thought. Okay, so we’ve established that there is much to learn, but how and where do we begin?

If you do the research, you’ll find there are still not a large number of support organizations designed to advise interfaith couples. Classes held be Jewish organizations are somewhat more predominant, yet these are often built around the hidden agenda of conversion. And, Christian-based classes for interfaith couples seem to be limited to the few sessions required during pre-marital counseling. So, now what?

The answer is different for each couple, but a possible start would be to join an online interfaith listserv. There are a number of such lists available, and through this forum one can post their own questions as well as learn from the experiences of others.

It is also important for partners to express to each other their understanding of their own faith and what their faith means to them. Susan Weidman Schneider makes the claim in her book “Intermarriage: The Challenge of Living with Differences between Christians and Jews” that Jews often have a hard time both conceptualizing and expressing what Judaism means to them and why it is important to them.” (p.51)

Schneider also mentions that one has to go out of one’s way to learn about Judaism and that it may be more difficult for a Jew to be explicit about his or her identity because “Judaism encompasses more diverse facets of experiences than Christianity.” (p.51)

At the same time, Reverend Donna Schaper, an ordained minister for the United Church of Christ who is married to a Jewish professor, says in her book “Raising Interfaith Children: Spiritual Orphans or Spiritual Heirs” that Protestants have a similar problem with interfaith relationships. “Our problem is that of fuzzy borders. As Robert McAfee Brown puts it, Protestantism is all over the place. It does not have recognizable boundaries; it is extremely difficult to know when an individual or a church has ceased to become Protestant.” (p.21)

This not only makes it difficult to explain our faith to our Jewish partners, but it also makes it difficult to incorporate a balance of Protestant values with those of the Jewish faith to our children.

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