Mixed marriages and the responsibility of being a spouse in these Jew-hating times

 

When a Jew enters into a mixed marriage, it comes with responsibilities. When you enter into a mixed marriage with a Jew, it comes with responsibilities. Judaism has a unique set of knowledge that needs to be understood if you are going to enter into a lifelong relationship. Most people don’t know or understand this.

If you ask someone on the street about the Holocaust, you'll most likely get some form of "6 million Jews were killed and that is awful". It's not a big leap from there to say that a million black, LGBT, Roma, and disabled people were also killed so why don’t they count? This is the stand that the progressive left has taken recently and it is exactly why we need our spouses in mixed marriages to be curious, vocal, knowledgeable advocates. The small, short-sighted answer is that of course they count. And they DO count. And to their families, that is everything. But. To understand why we say never again shouldn’t be appropriated as "never again for anyone" and why the 6 million matters more in the historical context (y'all love looking at context, nu?), you need to understand the actual history of why the Jews were targeted and how so many people worldwide were coerced into not caring and worse, believing that it was ok, and even worse than that, that it was deserved. Only then can you make the connection to what is happening today in 2024 and why Jews are screaming at the top of our lungs that this is the 1930s all over again.

To understand the history, you need to go deeper than “6 million Jews were killed.” As the spouse or partner of a Jew, you bear a responsibility to understand these deeper constructs, and if you don’t, you need to ask. If you think you understand, you should ask anyway, because your understanding might not be correct or might not match your spouse's or their family's. Never assume that you know better than them.

As the Jew in the relationship, you bear the responsibility of ensuring your partner understands. When my husband and I got together, we were babies. I was 18, he was barely 19. In 1985, although he grew up in the San Francisco peninsula, he knew nothing of the Holocaust or Judaism other than 6 million Jews died and his (only Jewish) friend Steve had a pool and his bar mitzvah was fun. His mother, who went to Catholic school until college (hey, if you’re gonna go, go all the way I say), didn’t know literally anything about the Holocaust until she got to college in the late 1950s. When she shared this with me, as a young 20-something who grew up immersed in Jewish culture, I was shocked. She grew up in California. She was well educated and extremely liberal and open-minded (I miss her tremendously). All this to say, never make assumptions about what people know.

My hubby and I have had some very frank conversations. It helps that he's a historyphile. It helped that he spent 10 years celebrating holidays & simchot with my family before we married. But getting to the root of it all – well, 40 years later, he considers himself Jew-ish, but it's not baked into his DNA like it is mine. He asks all the questions. I answer. We looked things up together. 40 years later, I'm still lecturing him about our 3000 year history, about Israeli politics, about why Netanyahu is so disliked in Israel, about why it's such a huge deal that he fired Gallant. But also why Israel and Jews in the diaspora are sticking by him until this war is over, and that Jew hate did not start in 1930s Germany.

My family escaped from (what is now) Ukraine in the pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th century Russia. But Jew hate did not start there. It didn't start back in the Spanish Inquisition, when Jews were expelled from Spain. It didn't even start back when it was claimed that Jews killed Jesus. (BTW, that was the Romans). As long as there have been Jews, there has been Jew hate. What it looks like morphs and changes depending on the ills of society at any given time. As a Jew, and as a spouse or partner to a Jew, you need to know this.

My sons are both in mixed marriages. Times are different. I'm one generation more removed from the old country. I'm trying hard not to be a busybody mother-in-law. I love my daughters that they have brought into our family. But my children. HAVE YOU HAD THESE CONVERSATIONS?? Not about this war, but about ALL of it? Judaism, our history, WHY the Holocaust focused on Jews, WHY antisemitism is always the go-to for everything and everyone in hard times? My new daughters, DO YOU UNDERSTAND all of this? Not because you think you know, but because it's been explained to you by a Jew?

And all of you out there in mixed marriages, do you understand the same? Do you take the time to go to the holidays, to the simchot, to be part of the Jewish family, not just the family? Judaism is not just a religion. It's an ethnoreligion. An ethnicity. A culture. And yes, a religion. And you need to understand all of this. Because it is your job to speak out. To internalize the antisemitism that is aimed at your spouse whether they embrace their Judaism openly or not. 

Because when they come for the Jews, your spouse/partner – man or woman – whether they embrace their Judaism or not, will be first and foremost a Jew.

And your silence is complicity.