I have served in the past as the rabbi of the National Institutes of Health where scientists conduct research and provide medical service impartially to individuals of all varieties of faith, nationalities, cultural traditions and every religious stripe across the board. My fellow chaplains and I in the Spiritual Ministry Department of the N.I.H. worked as a team dedicated to addressing the religious and spiritual needs of all patients, their families and loved ones in a health care clinical setting. In times of personal crises and at various stages of a patient’s illness, through uncertain worrisome times and fluctuating degrees of recovery and return to health, as well as at life’s closure, chaplains provide spiritual and emotional support, and an attentive ear.
Over a number of years I have conducted research on the affects of crises, trauma and catastrophe upon individuals who have walked through the valley of the shadow of death. My book, The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors, is based on an in-depth survey of over seven hundred Jews who endured the devastation of Hitler’s Europe. In that previous study conducted for the most part in Israel, I applied the most rigorous sociological research methodology to examine and determine how, why, where and when, concentration and death camp survivors were spiritually, religiously and in other ways, changed by their ordeal.
Often enough, issues arising from interfaith marriages and the agonizing but necessary decisions on the identity of children of interfaith households, develop into crises of critical impasse, entanglement and deadlock. Terms such as catastrophe and disaster may not apply to interfaith issues. Interfaith couples, whatever the challenges they must overcome and whatever the perils of their chosen pathway – even one that presents itself as a potentially explosive minefield to traverse - are not in danger of losing their lives or the lives of loved ones. But the life and death of a relationship and the breakup of a household amount to severe and formidable crises nevertheless! A kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome accompanies not a few who have gone through them for many years after.
I have served over four decades as rabbi of Jewish congregations with numerous interfaith families as members. My duties included guiding many of them around and over the countless crises looming like imposing obstacles and shepherding others through and past the decisive turning points in the pathway of life upon which they have embarked. These responsibilities have motivated and perhaps even inspired me to develop the approaches presented in these chapters that were conceived to best address, realistically confront and resolve the hazards of their interfaith predicament at critical junctures in their lives: preparing for marriage, for parenthood, for their children’s life-cycle milestones, for the times of the death of loved ones.
I have been encouraged by interfaith families of every stripe and description to share what I have learned with others who must decide among the several pathways arrayed before them, and with their loved ones as well, that they too understand the dynamics at play: The obstructions, stumbling blocks and complications likely to build up along whichever road they choose as well as the comfort, gratifications and blessings that may be realized during journeys down the various byways. That is, I have written this book for you, the personally affected, deeply interested and solicitous reader. You, who love your family! Perhaps it can serve as a kind of beacon pilot to steer by.
The question whether a particular interfaith union is to be seen as an Inter-marriage, an Intra-marriage, a Mitzvah-marriage or a Mixed marriage will be reviewed in the forthcoming pages. The many couples/families/households of the greater Washington area and beyond I have come to know over the years have taken every path described in this book. It is upon their feedback that I base my counsel, the advice and the recommendations I offer. They helped me formulate the approaches to the subjects, issues, themes and propositions this book advances. They have contributed extensively and indispensably to the development of the guidelines and directions I advocate.