SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — Robin Margolis was in her 30s when she found out her late mother was Jewish.
It was 1984 and she was cleaning out her mother's closet when she found
a bag of old documents. The woman she knew as Marie Margolis was
born Marie Levine.
The revelation, though sudden, was somehow comforting.
"I'd been drifting toward Judaism for years," Margolis says. "I had
Jewish friends, dated Jewish men, even thought about conversion. When I
found out I already belonged, it felt natural."
Today Margolis
belongs to a Jewish Renewal congregation in the Washington area and
advises synagogues on how to reach out to the adult children of
intermarried parents. But she also runs The Half-Jewish Network,
[www.half-jewish.net] an online support group for anyone with a Jewish parent, whether they identify as Jewish, Christian or something else.
"I don't push anything," she says. "All I can do is offer them warmth and welcome."
Margolis' story, though extreme, illustrates the emotional complexity
of growing up with parents from different religious backgrounds. Even
those raised unequivocally as Jews have an entire side of their family
that is not Jewish.
And while in past generations they may
have been cut off from that other half, in today's more tolerant world
it's likely they share holiday traditions, family lore and ethnic
cuisine with their non-Jewish relatives.
Margolis, 56, is
from a generation in which interfaith marriage was rare and the Jewish
side often got lost. She says today's young adults from intermarried
homes, who have grown up in an era of outreach and welcome, don't
understand what she and her peers went through.
"These
Gen-Xers were raised as Jews in the '80s," she says. "They look down at
us older ones who weren't raised Jewish, who identify as ‘half.’ But as
they get older they'll learn there's another side of themselves that
needs to be cherished and respected. And it won't make them any less
Jewish."
Joelle Berman, a 23-year-old Bostonian with a Sicilian
Catholic mother and Jewish father, says she grew up with Jewish
religion and Italian culture.
Berman says she has "a strong
sense” of her Italian background, but considers herself Jewish and even
works as a Jewish professional.
Even conversion doesn't erase family ties.
"Of course I'm Jewish, I made a legal conversion, but that doesn't undo
that other part of my life," says Laurel Snyder, 33, of Atlanta, editor
of "Half Life," a collection of essays by writers from intermarried
homes. "There's a big difference between walking away from Jesus and
walking away from your grandmother."
Snyder says the
"half-Jewish" moniker used by Margolis and some other activists "is a
tricky word," but it expresses the duality many people feel.
"Of course halachically there's no such thing," Snyder says, "but that doesn't matter."
Jewish outreach to intermarried families, no matter the denomination,
is predicated on the hope that the children will be raised as Jews.
Experts stress the importance of giving such children a good Jewish
education, as research shows that this makes them much likelier to
become committed Jewish adults.
But it's no guarantee. Children
ultimately choose their own path, despite their parents' carefully laid
plans. Siblings from one family, raised the same way by intermarried
parents, sometimes make different religious choices.
Margolis' three younger brothers are all "sincere, committed
Christians" following the Protestant faith in which they were raised.
One is even a minister. None chose her Jewish path.
Margolis suggests a "family Jew" resides in every intermarried family, one child who is innately drawn to the Jewish side.
Researcher Pearl Beck, who conducted a 2005 study for the Jewish
Outreach Institute [www.joi.org/flame] of young adults from
intermarried homes, says she came across anecdotal evidence of siblings
making different religious choices but doesn't know how widespread it
is.
Siblings that Beck interviewed for her study attributed their different
choices to "different personality characteristics," she adds.
Jill and Tom Docking of Wichita, Kan., raised their children, Brian and
Margery, as Jews, sending them to Hebrew school and Jewish summer camp.
"I had a much more dominant relationship with my religion,"
says Jill, noting she was the only one of her 24 Jewish cousins to
"marry out."
Tom, the son of the former Gov. Robert Docking,
was less tied to his Christianity, though the family always puts up a
Christmas tree.
When Brian became a bar mitzvah, the Dockings
pulled 8-year-old Margery out of Hebrew school after what Jill calls an
unfortunate encounter with a visiting rabbi who spoke sharply about the
dangers of intermarriage.
"Tom said, ‘If this is what they're getting at temple, I don't want them there,’ " Jill recalls.
Brian had never cared for religious school, but when Margery was 13,
she asked to go back. Tom agreed willingly, and Margery had to work on
her Hebrew with a private tutor. A year and a half later, she
celebrated her bat mitzvah at Masada in Israel.
Today Margery identifies as Jewish. Brian, 27, is more equivocal.
"If people ask, I say I was raised Jewish and I leave it at that," he says.
But Brian says he has a "Jewish sense of humor" and is culturally Jewish.
"I love matzah ball soup," he says.
For many children of intermarried parents, choosing a religion can
smack of favoring one parent over the other, with attendant feelings of
guilt, anger and abandonment. That's particularly true, and hurtful,
when parents divorce.
"Religion becomes a battleground at a
time when everything else is a battleground, and the kid has to pay,"
says Snyder, who says she has met hundreds of adult children of
intermarriage in her professional career.
"The Jewish parent going through a breakup becomes much more emphatic that their child should be raised Jewish," she says.
If the kids are lucky, circumstances help make that choice for them.
Marty Wasserman converted to Judaism after her divorce two decades ago
in Santa Fe, N.M., and began raising her two children, Max and Meredith
Murray, as Jews.
Max, now 26, dropped out of Hebrew school
after a year, saying he didn't bond with the other kids. He ended up
spending most of his teenage years with his Catholic father. He
attended a Catholic high school, chose Catholic University and today
considers himself Catholic.
Meredith, now 24, stayed with her
mother and flourished in Hebrew school, where she made her closest
friends. She celebrated her bat mitzvah in Israel.
Like her
brother, Meredith went to Catholic high school, but unlike Max she
always felt Jewish. She stood back when the other students took
Communion or intoned Christian prayers, even when it embarrassed her to
be singled out.
Meredith, like her mother, identifies today as Jewish.
"Honestly, it's a Mom-Dad thing," Max says. "I had more allegiance to
Dad's side of the family. And I think it was also a young adolescent
boy not wanting to do what his mother wanted."
But there was also something inside each sibling that resonated to a different spiritual message.
"I'd go to synagogue with Mom and try to be respectful, but I didn't
feel this is who I am," Max explains. "In Catholic Mass, I felt I can
associate with this better."
Some intermarried couples are
unable to choose between their religions, particularly when both
spouses observe their own traditions. In many homes the mother's
religion wins, as more often the woman sets a family's religious tone.
Some couples choose a third option, raising the children Unitarian or Quaker. Some split the difference.
Samantha Facciolo, 23, was raised Jewish by her Jewish mother, while
her younger brother was raised Catholic by their father. The parents
made that decision as each child was born.
All four lived together, celebrating each other's holidays at family get-togethers, but splitting up for religious practice.
"It was pretty clear-cut," Facciolo says. "I went to synagogue with
Mom, he went to church with Dad. He was baptized and had First
Communion. I had a baby naming and bat mitzvah."
The siblings
retained the identities their parents gave them: Facciolo was active in
her college Hillel and is now a Legacy Heritage Fellow with the Israel
on Campus Coalition in Washington.
"I don't question the choices they made," she says.
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