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I know a few interfaith couples and all of them impressed me as extremely tolerant. I also noticed that they seemed happier with each other than other MO married friends. Could be a coincidence. Maybe the difficulties that they had to overcome to be able to join with their soul mate strengthened their bonds more than the average couple.My cousin was dating a non-Jew for many years and was obviously in love. She faced objections from both sides, often bringing her to tears. Joe offered to convert but some brilliant brother-in-law said there wasn’t proper intent and that’s not good enough. She married him despite the objections and she has a wonderful family. To this day, I know she is still in pain from the conflict; still feeling alienated from a family that does truly love her. She feels unaccepted even when we try to include her in our get-togethers. I was too young at the time to have been involved with that incident but I am aware of its repercussions and the devastation she experiences on a regular basis. All this was the price she paid for wanting to be with the person she loves.
I met a woman named Ettie last month at a friend’s wedding. She is happily married to a Christian man. I felt I had so many questions to ask her about such a relationship but I did not, for the same reason I never asked anyone else I knew who had an interfaith marriage. I didn’t want to come across as judging or nosey. But I really want to understand their lives and I am truly happy for anyone who has found their soul mate.
What particularly sparked my thoughts was a book I’ve read by Israel Finkelstein about David and Solomon. I will write in a later blog about the details from the book. Apparently, the traditions ascribed to David & Solomon have changed and been remodeled to suit the times and achieve a certain agenda. Initially, early Israelites used it to justify the right of Judean hegemony then later toward religious and political reform. The interesting thing that Christianity did was, it took these traditions and made them universal. They claimed that Jesus perfectly fulfilled the messianic requirement derived from Davidic lore. He was supposedly of Davidic lineage (even though that line had died out centuries earlier) but his message was that of brotherhood of mankind and love to one’s fellow human. While I feel, the Christians and Jews have continued to use the traditions of David & Solomon for their own agenda and have strayed far from the original purpose, we do have to recognize the value of the lessons they derived from David and Solomon just as each of our generations learns new lessons from reinterpreting the texts.
With this in mind, I want to believe that our love of God should be able to be reconciled with our love of each other. When we seek to comprehend what God asks of humanity, surely the answer is to foster love and good graces rather than hatred and enmity. And while it seems to be human nature to create artificial boundaries that describe ‘us’ and ‘other’, perhaps it is time for humanity to create a more tolerant, more loving world. Don’t judge others who aren’t conforming to our standards and our vision of the way life should be.
LIVE AND LET LIVE.