Transcript for the Piece Audio version of An Open Gate

Series Title: Illuminations Jewish Culture in the Light of the World
Program Title: An Open Gate

Show Intro (Schoen):
Welcome to "Illuminations: Jewish Culture in the Light of the World. This program, "An Open Gate" explores Jewish Christian intermarriage.

Marriage is a contract between two individuals in a public context. In the modern age, people make their own choice of marriage partners. But family, community and even government still have their say. It wasn't that long ago that marriage between Blacks and Whites was illegal in the U.S. And it's still illegal in most places for two men, or two women, to marry. Today, religious intermarriage is common place. Yet, their is still pressure to marry within your own tribe. How else, it's argued, will your children know who they are? How else will tradition be carried forward?

Albert Greenberg and Helen Stoltzfus grappled with these questions -- both personally and professionally. Albert is a Jew and Helen a Mennonite. Both are former members of A Traveling Jewish Theater. When Albert and Helen married and began discussing children, they also began to write a play on the subject. The play, "Heart of the World," was the result of their work.

"An Open Gate" draws from this theater piece. And from the wisdom of others who are exploring the path of Jewish Christian inter-marriage.

Music (Weave of Latin and Hebrew Singing)

Narration: For 2,000 years, Jews and Christians have lived in adjacent, but separate worlds. Set apart by different beliefs, their relationship characterized by suspicion, intolerance and a long history of violence. Now Christian/Jewish intermarriage is opening a gate of understanding between these two worlds. What happens when families pass through this gate? Can intermarried couples teach us anything about living in a world where cultures and religions are mixing at a rate unprecedented in human history? I'm Naomi Newman, a member of A Traveling Jewish Theatre. We created a play called Heart of the World, which explored these questions. That exploration took us into the lives of Jewish/Christian couples.

Music

Linda: I grew up in a classic WASP household in Southern California. And I went to church all the time I was a kid. It was a Protestant church. I sang in the choir. But being in church never really did much for me.

Harvey: The town I grew up in, we were almost the only Jewish family in the town, so all the kids that I grew up with and went to school with were Christian. And it gave you a feeling of being an outsider.

Heidi: I was born in Munich and raised Bavarian Catholic. That's redundant in a way because Bavaria is Catholic.

Bernie: I was raised in a Jewish household, very culturally Jewish. We did attend a synagogue and since the synagogue in our neighborhood was orthodox, I was raised in an orthodox shule.

Margaret: My father was a Methodist missionary in south India. And I spent my childhood there.

Cathy: My Dad is an immigrant. He's 89 now. And he came from orthodox Jewry and escaped from Russia during the progroms (sic), to this country, when he was in his early 20's.

Bruce: My parents weren't anti-Semitic, but I think my grandparents were. And when we were living in Miami, in the 60's, there were hotels where Jews were not allowed to stay and clubs that Jews were not allowed to join. And there were frequently anti-Semitic remarks.

Cathy: I didn't have any strong background. When they got married, I think for maybe three days my mom kept kosher. And after that, they just assimilated (laugh) completely.

Heidi: I loved Catholicism. I loved the ritual, I loved the mysticism about it. And I loved the songs and I loved the incense.

Narration: These individuals are all in intermarriages and part of what has been called a demographic revolution. The Jewish community has been particularly shaken. Roughly one half of all Jews now intermarry. But behind the numbers are people with memories and stories.

Music

From Heart of the World
Lydia: (sings)
I walked into a subway one night
There were twenty people from Ohio
from a Mennonite Church
and the women were all wearing
long print dresses with gathered waists
And they were singing hymns in four-part harmony
And I stood there
as though I didn't know who they were...
as if they were strangers
Joseph: (sings)
The sidewalks of Los Angeles
were as empty as the rooms in our house
The weather was mild
Tempers were mild
My mother and father overdressed
as if they were still living in Warsaw
They closed the windows whenever we left home
even though the weather hadn't changed dramatically in five years.

Narration: That scene and the other scenes in Heart of the World were written by Helen Stoltzfus and Albert Greenberg and guest director Martha Boesing. Early on in the process of creating the play, two characters began to take shape, Joseph, a photographer--and a Jew, and Lydia, a translator of German poetry, from Mennonite Christian background. Although the characters were fictional, the issues they raised were not.

Stoltzfus: I grew up in a closely knit Mennonite community in central Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. The community was centered around a small Mennonite college. My father taught church history. My mother is actually one of the few Mennonite ordained women preachers. So I grew up with a very strong sense of being Mennonite. And feeling very safe and protected in this community. I remember going to church prayer meeting on Wednesday nights. Going to church Sunday mornings. Going to church Sunday evenings. And in between you went to someone's house for dinner. Or they came to yours. Everybody knew you. Everybody knew your family, knew your parents. You lived your whole life within the church. It was a very safe, protective womb.

Greenberg: I guess, a lot of my awareness of being Jewish was around watching daytime television, say on Saturday mornings where they would have these Holocaust, WWII Holocaust films. And there were the Jews in the camps. And that was me. And that was very unnerving and scary. First of all the question kept coming up, why were the Jews victims. And why didn't they fight. And here they were dying in the camps. And then of course the theology of the time in a very working-class area was that we are the one's who killed God. And I felt I was a little young for that.

Stoltzfus: To create the characters Lydia and Joseph, I think we drew our inspiration from a lot of the Americans around us that we saw, who were pretty cut off from their past. They grew up maybe, Presbyterian or Episcopalian, or maybe they had some sort of Jewish past. But they were beyond that now. They were professionals and in the world and making it. And I think for a lot of us that, that rejection happens in adolescence. It's the time when we question everything, including our religious roots.

Music

Bernie: From about age 14 or so I began to drift away And this caused a number of fights at home because on Saturdays or High Holy days I was expected to go to Synagogue. And I didn't want to go to synagogue. And so there were these terrible arguments at home and finally I discovered that it just wasn't worth this big fight and so I got dressed up and, into my suit and presumably went off to synagogue. Well actually I went off to play pool or baseball with my friends. But my parents were satisfied, because they saw me go off well dressed to synagogue and I came back and everybody was happy.

Heidi: The change happened, I think after 12. I went to High School in Munich. And for the first time whether you were Catholic, or not Catholic was an issue. There were Lutherans in the class. And that was as different as it got at the time. We went to all girls schools. And, the priests who taught catechism, their point of view was very, very limited. And I remember clearly that one day our chaplain said, "Well heaven is like this -- it's, it's like a theater. The good Catholics get to sit in the front rows. And the bad Catholics get to sit in the back. And the good Lutherans get standing room." And that was it. And that was it for me.

Oscar: When I went to college, we had to write a paper on our religious beliefs, to provide a rational basis for it. And I couldn't. And so I decided I would just give it up.

Cathy: I left for Berkeley when I was 18. I was very interested in spiritual things and dabbled in Indian mysticism. And I just looked into all kinds of religions. But mostly it was the Aquarian religion where everybody is one. And you meet somebody and if you just really love somebody the idea was to turn the world on by being good and nice and throwing flowers around, and you know, I was much more involved in that movement than anything organized, which was a bad word.

Stoltzfus: The rejection of one's roots is not simply disillusionment with stuffy churches and synagogues. It's often an alienation from an entire culture that one was raised in. I think one of the dangerous ideas in America is this melting pot idea, if it's taken to the extreme, where we're just American and that's it. I see the kids on the street in my neighborhood and I can see the confusion on their faces. They're trying to be American. But their parents are from Korea or Mexico or Thailand. And they don't know who they are. And it's an indication of a very deep cultural amnesia. Where you're unaware of where your from and you feel very cut off from it.

Music

From Heart of the World:
Joseph: Oh wait a minute. Let's stop with this roots nonsense. I've had enough chicken soup to last me a lifetime.
Lydia: You're in a big state of denial.
Joseph: It's not denial.
Lydia: It is denial. You deny everything. You didn't like your mother's cooking.
Joseph: Well you don't either.
Lydia: Your aunt was too loud. So you ran off to New York to become an "artist." You went through eight years of therapy. You really know who you are, don't you? But when it comes to being a Jew, you're still thirteen years old, complaining about your Bar Mitzvah.
Joseph: Mennonites don't translate poetry. Shtetl Jews don't run around with a camera trying to get photo exhibits. If I had a long beard and a yamulke, would we be married? You want to keep a kosher house? Keep a kosher house and you can forget about having a career!

Margaret: The fact that Oscar was Jewish and that I was Christian was not an issue when we were talking about getting married. And I think we were both really rather naive and entered into it rather blindly.

Mary: We're expecting our first child. And the decision to, you know, how will we raise this child, that's when I start freaking out about thinking, this is not going to be the way I grew up. And that's when it starts getting me more emotional and I usually get a teary eye or two. (laugh, sniff) So it's...

Harvey: Well it makes it for keeps. Having a child means that all these discussions are for keeps. And I feel that I would like the, like our child to be raised in my religion and heritage and so forth. And that I think it's natural for her to feel what she does and natural for me to feel what I do. So, this is something that we have a conflict, that we've got to resolve.

Music

From Heart of the World:
Joseph: I don't know if I could have a Christian kid. Could you have a Jewish baby?
Lydia: Jewish. You mean like all Jewish? Like just Jewish? I wouldn't know how to have a Jewish baby. I don't know anything about being Jewish. You don't know anything about being Jewish. You don't know what to do on Friday night. What makes you Jewish?
Joseph: You spend your whole life asking "What makes you Jewish?" That makes you Jewish.
Lydia: So, that's what you're going to teach our kid?
Joseph: Well, what are you going to teach our kid about what it means to be Christian?
Lydia: I don't know about Christ. I don't know what I believe.
Joseph: When the kid comes, in that moment, are you suddenly going to know what you believe?

Bruce: Well, when Cathy and I met, the issue really didn't come up until we were thinking of having children. And then Cathy raised the topic of well, what are we going to do with our children?

Cathy: It was, maybe it was 6 weeks before Alicia was born... it was just such a beautiful afternoon and there was sunlight streaming and we were lying on our bed and I had this huge, you know, womb filled with our new child. And I just had this very strong realization that I wanted her to be a Jew. Because I realized that there was some kind of link I had to my parents, my grandparents who I never met, going back and back throughout history. That I just couldn't say, "I can let go of that".

Music
From Heart of the World.
Greenberg singing: Schlaf, mein kind, mein tyre kind die Goldene Pave is gekummen von der himmel.

Greenberg: Singing that lullaby and other Yiddish songs opened me up to ancestral voices. So I worked with some characters out of my own past, my Uncle Harry who was a very street-wise kind of guy, and a Yiddish teacher that I had, the late Abraham Zeiglebaum, and an imaginary figure of a Warsaw ghetto fighter. I took the three of those and put them, I guess, in a soup. And out of that created a single ancestral figure.

Music
From Heart of the World
Jewish Ancestor: You got to sing, Kindele. You got to dance. And not just at your wedding, but everyday, or the sun wouldn't rise. You stamp your foot and you lift off the ground. You stamp again and you get a little higher. Again and you're floating in the air.
(Sings and dances)
Es kum tzu flien
di goldene pave
Fun a fremden land (etc.)

Greenberg: So in a sense, taking on characters like Uncle Harry or the Yiddish Teacher, finding out who they are, in a sense is finding our who I am. And that's both comforting and discomforting.

Stoltzfus: I created a character which is a mixture of my aunts, my great grandmother, my uncle, various relatives. And this was the first time -- this whole process of creating these characters from our past -- was the first time we each got a real view of what it was that made up our past. So in those moments I definitely felt like I was being inhabited by someone else.

Music

Stoltzfus: You know, if I just moved my legs apart and bent forward in a certain way Aunt Verna was there. She was there. And all her farm knowledge, and who she was would be there for me.

From Heart of the World
Mennonite Ancestor: We're watching over you, Lydia. Your community. It's like a great big quilt. So many lives patched together. That piece there is from your grandfather's tattered blue shirt that he wore at the first harvest. And that scrap is from your great-grandmother's second day dress. If you look a little closer, you see pinks and yellows in the quilt. Those were our children when they were babies. What about your child, Lydia. Will she know where she comes from? Will she know who her great great-grandmother was? Will she know what happened to her great-grandfather?

Musical transition

Oscar: The single most important influence for the family was the fact that my great-grandfather had been a chazen or a cantor who came from Odessa and passed on this legacy to my father's brother. And then when I was 7 or 8 my uncle formed a choir and he taught us all of the traditional singing for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And we preformed as a family in that choir for several years: my brother, my sister, my father, my cousins, my uncle and my aunt. And so it was really, the appeal to me of Judaism was very much wrapped up with Jewish music.

Musical transition

Heidi: When I was kind of in my pre-teens, I had quite an intense little Virgin Mary worship going on which I did in my own room. And I had a little altar that my parents had brought from Italy at one time, which was, like, fake ivory. And you could open it up and inside was Mary and the Baby. And so I would light the candles at night when nobody was around. And it was very beautiful. Very special.

Musical transition

Bernie: We were at a cousin's son's Bar Mitzvah in Florida one time. And it was just sort of a normal, boring Bar Mitzvah service for most of it. And toward the end of the service, the Ark was opened and I remember as this happened, that I sort of, my breath just got taken away! "Aaah". And tears came to my eyes and I sort of recognized that something very powerful had happened back when I was a kid.

Music

From Heart of the World
Lydia: I remember being in church and walking downstairs. There were these women sitting in a circle. They were taking off their stockings. It was a foot washing, so they were rolling down their stockings. And they were singing in very sweet, light voices
(sings)
Breathe on me, breath of God
Fill me with life anew
That I may love what Thou dost love
And do what Thou wouldst do.
Joseph: (sings)
My mother used to walk with me
and tell me how in Poland
whenever she was scared
her father would sing to her
wordless Hassidic melodies
until she fell asleep.
(Sings Hassidic melody)
What songs will I sing to my child?
Lydia: (sings)
Children are something
they're like standing on flowers
children are the gate to the
Lydia and Joseph: Heart of the world...

Narration: In the play Heart of the World, the unborn child becomes the gate for Lydia and Joseph to enter and re-discover their own worlds: Christian and Jewish. Like other intermarried couples, they discover that these worlds still hold an emotional charge for them. They feel this charge in every conversation they have about which holidays they will celebrate and which rituals they will perform. One of the first discussions an intermarried couple may have is whether of not to perform a bris -- the Jewish circumcision ceremony initiating newborn boys into the faith.

Mary: Holding this baby during the circumcision, making me realize that this is a real Jewish little baby, I would probably act like this is real happy and meaningful to me and like this is a wonderful event. But I think that, you know, when everybody's gone I would probably cry a little bit and, you know, just start thinking, "What have I done? And am I going to go to Hell now or...? (Laugh) Or what's going to happen?" At one point I thought, "I'll do a Bris if it's a boy, but I want to have a Baptism too. Just to make sure."

Music

From Heart of the World
Lydia: Are we going to circumcise it?
Joseph: Not if it's a girl, no.
Lydia: OK, but if it's a boy?
Joseph: I'm not always politically correct, Lydia.
Lydia: I think it's OK.
Joseph: Yeah, well don't tell your friends that it's OK. I don't want to turn this into some kind of social-political debate.
Lydia: I can just imagine trying to explain it to my sister at Christmas.
Joseph: Are we going to celebrate Christmas every year?
Lydia: What kind of a question is that?
Joseph: Well, I mean, it's just that it's so unnatural to have a tree inside the house.
Lydia: Joseph, kids love Christmas. Christmas was my favorite holiday.

Music

Heidi: Christmas in my family was a very special time. It was very secretive. It was very exciting. It really was a marvelous holiday for the kids, because they weren't told anything and the room was locked off. And they couldn't see the tree. And they couldn't see anything about it. And we all saw the little angels fly by. And we all know that the Christ child was in there, getting it all ready. And it would build up and build up and then at 5 o'clock, Christmas eve. And the door would open. And the bells would ring. And everybody had bathed and put on their best clothes and their best behavior and tiptoed in and there was the moment. The candles were lit on the Christmas tree. And bells were ringing everywhere. And then everybody took time and wished each other a merry Christmas. And, I miss that here. Because I can't convey it to Bernie and to the boys. What that is like. So, I get... I feel isolated at that time of the year.

Narration: Christmas and Chanukah, the December Dilemma. This is often a time of tremendous stress for intermarrieds. Jews don't share in the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. And yet with the window displays in the mall, the TV specials every night and Santa on every corner, Christmas is almost impossible to avoid. Chanukah, traditionally a minor holiday, has turned into a major event for American Jews. We spoke to Rabbi Alan Lew, a conservative rabbi from San Francisco, to get his perspective.

Lew: The meaning of Chanukah, as a holiday in the Jewish cycle, is... it's the holiday that stands for resisting assimilation. But it becomes... you know such a big deal is made out of it precisely because of assimilation, precisely because it's been projected as the Jewish response to Christmas. (Laugh) This is the final irony.

Pithers: Singing the Blessing over the Chanukah candles.

Cathy: Remembering how I viewed Chanukah was, like... Jewish pride. Being so proud of that little band of men -- whether that was the true story or not -- who came together and were so... I think it might have influenced me a lot in later not being able to just let go of my Jewishness.

Carolers: Singing Silent Night

Ben: Even though it's a Jewish household, we always celebrate Christmas. That's just a part of our Jewish household. (Laughter)

Cathy: The Christmas when Ben was about 4 when he kept listening to all the programs on TV about the baby Jesus and he said "I want to be Christian. I want to be Christian. I believe in baby Jesus."

Ben: And in the songs. When I'm singing about Jesus, I don't really think about it. I think they 're really pretty songs.

Alan: On the second day of Chanukah, my daughter Tanya was going to a Chanukah party in which they were going to spend the whole day and make the ornaments and make the food. And make Menorahs out of clay to light the candles in that night. And when I came back from work, Tanya came up to me and said "Look at my Menorah!" And here was this sort of flat object made of pieces of blue and green clay. And in the middle of the Menorah was a little object of blue with a little green head. It looked like a turtle. And I looked at Tanya and said, "Oh, what's this? Is this a turtle?" And Tanya looked at me sweetly and she said, "No, it's the baby Jesus!"

Lew: If this is a photograph of the reality of American Judaism, as we go into the 21st century, it's a very sad picture indeed. And it's a picture of a community about to loose it's identity. It's not OK for a Jewish person to celebrate Christmas. It's a betrayal of Jewish belief.

Break (Schoen): (Starts at 32:46) You're listening to "Illuminations: Jewish Culture in the Light of the World." This program, "An Open Gate" explores Jewish Christian intermarriage. We'll be back in a minute.

Music

From Heart of the World
Joseph: Sometimes it feels like we're having your child, not mine.
Lydia: Are we going to be like Solomon? Cut it in half? This half gets circumcised.
Joseph: This half gets baptized.
Lydia: This half has Passover.
Joseph: This half wears a little white dress for Easter.
Lydia: This half lights Chanukah candles.
Joseph: This half runs around quoting the Sermon on the Mount.
Lydia: What's wrong with the Sermon on the Mount?
Joseph: How do I know? I don't even know the Sermon on the Mount.
Lydia: Well, learn it.
Joseph: What is it?
Lydia: "Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness..." It's very Jewish, don't you think? "Blessed are the peacemakers for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Can't my child hear that?

Music: (Bach)

Stoltzfus: The issues around, what will our child know about Jesus are important issues to me because, I want them to know the stories. I want them to know that he was an important teacher. And Albert's starting to freak out.

Greenberg: And I want them to know nothing (Stoltzfus laughs) about Je... if I never heard the word Jesus again the rest of my life, that wouldn't be enough time in my psyche, given all the years that I've heard it.

Stoltzfus: (Interrupts) See, that's very painful. That's painful.

Narration: Jesus may be a painful subject for intermarrieds not simply because a couple may have very different interpretations of who he was -- or is. But also because, for the Jewish partner, Jesus represents a threat. It was in his name that Christians vilified and persecuted Jews for centuries.

Greenberg: Christianity has set Judaism up as the enemy. From a Jewish perspective, it is overwhelming to have to confront the anti-Semitism in the New Testament, which is rooted in violence against Jews.

Narration: Harvey Cox, a Christian theologian at Harvard University, spoke to us about Christian anti-Semitism.

Cox: Christians have to start with the recognition that the seeds of anti-Judaism and of anti-Semitism are already there in the texts of the new testament. That's a very hard thing to admit. But they're there.

Stoltzfus: How am I going to feel sitting in church with my kid and hearing references to Jews like: "You serpents, you brood of vipers. How are you to escape being sentenced to Hell?"

Cox: When Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman empire. And had the political power to persecute, and began using that political power, uh, started the whole terrible history which winds it's way through the Middle Ages and the Crusades and the pogroms and up through... no doubt contributes to modern anti-Semitism.

Music

From Heart of the World
Jewish Ancestor: It was Christmas... Or was it Easter? Who can remember these things? And the little Jewish cobbler was brought before the Cathedral, as his predecessors had been brought for countless generations, barefoot, wearing the obligatory pointed hat.. To the strains of the Mass and with great ceremony, the Count of Toulouse administered the traditional blow to his face.
(Sound effect)
In accordance with the ancient custom, the old cobbler thanked the young Count three times. "Merci, Merci, Merci." Three weeks later, he was dead. He died of shame. And his son died in the Inquisition. And his son was sold into slavery. And his son died on the rack. And his son was dragged to death by a Mongol pony. And his son had lead poured into his eyes, his ears, his nose, his anus, one molten drop each day. And his son and his son and his son filled the Polish skies with smoke.

Lew: I can't tell you how many Holocaust survivors have come to me and said to me almost the identical sentence: "What Hitler failed to accomplish is being accomplished in America." I think we have a right to draw that parallel.

Alice: As a young girl growing up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, everything was Jewish. My parents were immigrants and they didn't allow us to stray too much. And the Gentiles were somebody like monsters living on the edge of the, this Jewish rim. So, when we got of age to marry, there was not a question of marrying Jewish. It was just known you would marry Jewish. Well, I have two boys. They grew up very worldly. They spread out. They went to college and out of town and out of state. And when they told me they were getting married to their non-Jewish wives, it was a shock. I spoke to my mother. And she said, "Alice, there was never a non-Jew in my family." And at that I felt a little pang.

Mary: I am prone to, or leaning towards raising our child and children Jewish because I understand the problems that are being faced by the Jewish community in intermarriage. And I guess I would feel like I was helping to preserve the traditions and the faith.

Oscar: I'm not so sure that the best thing to do is to save the Jewish people. You know, my job is to "Seek justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with my God." Does that require that I save the Jewish people or that I try to serve God?

Music

From Heart of the World
Jewish Ancestor: So we fought for nothing in the ghetto. Shmuel, Chava, your grandfather Itzik. Lives, stories. Who cares? In the ghetto, we remembered. In the ghetto, we wrote down, who made bread, who got married, who disappeared. I know the name of your game, kinde. The name of your game is kaput! Your whole past, your whole culture is kaput! Finished! Gone! End of the game. I don't exist. Whatever was, is gone. We call this game kaput!

Linda: Our older daughter wanted to go to a pre-school that was run by the Orthodox synagogue. And I told them that I wasn't Jewish. They said they had never admitted a kid who didn't have a Jewish mother. So Howard and I went in and were questioned at great length (Howard: You more than I.) by representatives from the synagogue. And I found it a difficult experience. I think in some ways Howard found it a much more difficult experience. And at one point said: "If you're going to be treating our daughter or my wife in a way that is not equal, we don't want to be part of this."

Narration: What is the response of the Christian community? Traditionally the church has also disapproved of intermarriage, but for different reasons. They're discomfort stems from the Jews' rejection of the Christian Messiah. Harvey Cox:

Cox: I think a family quarrel is the hardest kind of quarrel. And it is precisely the close relationship, historically, theologically, every other way, of Jews and Christians that has contributed to the painfulness. The belief on the part of the earliest Christians that since God had sent this Messiah, everyone would now be included, Jews, and Gentiles and so on. And their terrible disappointment that some of their own brethren did not get it, from their point of view, didn't see this new opening up of God and therefore missed the point. And then the dynamic of the family quarrel entered in. And if there's a quarrel within the family, one feels the kind of wounding and betrayal in a way that might not be the case were this somebody clearly outside of the fold.

Stoltzfus: Even though Judaism and Christianity share a common history, there are some important differences between them. I think it's critical for an intermarried couple to realize that there is an inherent asymmetry between Judaism and Christianity. Christianity was born out of Judaism and in fact incorporates a lot of Jewish scripture. It's very easy for me to celebrate Passover because that's a story that's part of my tradition. It's in the Old Testament. The same is not true for Albert when it comes to Christmas. That is not a story out of his tradition. Also, Christians view themselves in a qualitatively different way. They see themselves as belonging to a faith. Whereas Jews think of themselves as a people. Those are two very different models. And finally, Christians are part of a dominant culture. And so they are not going to feel threatened by intermarriage in the same way that Jews do. It's not a survival issue.

Cox: It's true, it's not a survival issue. And it's not felt with anything like the degree of emotionality that apparently is true at least in some parts of the Jewish community. So it doesn't carry that kind of freight of emotional overload, you might say.

Wascow: The Jewish community at this moment is in pain and puzzlement about intermarriage. Really Baffled.

Narration: Arthur Waskow, a leader in the Jewish Renewal Movement talks about new ways of looking at intermarriage:

Wascow: For about 1800 years, the tribe has been ethnic in the most full sense. The way you became Jewish -- and this was true about most of the peoplehoods of the world -- was you got born into it. And that's gone. The people who view themselves 50 years from now as the American Jewish community are going to be people who chose to be Jewish no matter what family they happen to get born into. So the Tribe is now going to have to justify itself and bring people into it cause they're excited about it. What will then work is, "It is damned exciting to be a Jew. It is very interesting to be a Jew. There is a culture that is alive and rich and it has art and it has music and it has literature and all that's there." And the task that really faces the American Jewish community is whether it's going to make Judaism interesting and vital and alive. And part of making it that way is making even intermarriage Jewishly exciting.

Cox: One way to see it is as an opportunity. An opportunity to think again about what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be Christian. What a whole new generation of kids growing up who are seriously exposed to both of these traditions might contribute in a world in which we don't need anymore inter-religious strife. How can we think about rituals and religious education and all of that for all of these thousands and thousands and thousands of children who are coming along in this?

Narration: So where does all this leave an intermarried couple? Where is their community? How do couples decide what to pass on to the next generation?

Music

Margaret: When Ben was born we both realized that we had no one to turn to. And we didn't want to be isolated and we wanted to affiliate ourselves to... somewhere, somehow.

Oscar: I sang in the temple choir at Beth Am.

Margaret: Right, we became... went to services up there a few times. But I never felt comfortable on a personal level. And then we started to look at Christian churches. And went to a few locally. And then went to one, it's actually just down the street, the First Presbyterian Church. And we immediately felt comfortable and welcomed. And, and so we have attended that church ever since.

Oscar: One of the reasons that I was committed to the First Presbyterian Church, despite the difficulties, was I knew there was a sense of community. And for me it was almost like a salmon swimming up stream. My kids had to have a sense of community. I wanted them to have a sense of community.

Howard: We've chosen to lead a Jewish life. And we're not practicing different religions.

Linda: We're not mixing two religions, really. And I think its because it's easier. I think it's considerably easier to have one religion than to try and figure out how you're going to mix two.

Heidi: For me, this wouldn't have worked at all. To go back to either one of our religions made no sense. I could not have raised the kids either Catholic or Jewish. And the next best thing for us, since it was a personal thing was to create that personal kind of religion, that the kids can't name. You know, they don't have a passport for it. But to me that is irrelevant. As long as they feel secure within the family. They have that identity.

Music

Mark: I think I'm more on the Christian side. Cause I just like Christianity more.

Eric: In school, you know, I just say that, I'm a nothing really. I mean, I have no religion really. It's just now-a-days no one's being raised under the influence that much.

Ben: I definitely feel Jewish. And I do not feel Christian, or whatever, at all. I feel really strongly about wanting to have a Bar Mitzvah and having a Jewish household when I grow up.

Paul: If its religion, you know, I don't really know what I feel. I don't really feel anything. Like, I feel like I could relate to either of them, you know. But I don't firmly put myself on one side of the line or another, you know, so I'm kind of neutral. It wouldn't really be a big deal if my parents weren't such freaks about religion.

Oscar: What are we saying to these children? I think we say "Yes, you stand at the confluence of quite an historical development. And this is whence you came and these are the traditions. Aitz Chaim, Here, here's a tree of life. Take it. Here's the bread of life, broken for you. Take it."

Alan: Choice is, something that you can do most freely when you have a real deep sense of who you are and that you are entitled to be who you are, and then you are entitled to make your choices. And I was afraid that Tanya was going to have a sense that, oh she could choose, but it was like, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and she wasn't really anything herself in the middle. So she has to, in some sense, be able to be both. And so it's not like presenting it to her as if, "You will choose between these two traditions," or whatever. It's that she really is both.

Wascow: My own sense is this is a profound change that not only Jews are experiencing. It used to be that the boundary between different peoplehoods or cultures or communities was like a fence or a wall. My sense is that it's now much more like a fringe. A fringe is cloth with air mixed in with it. So a fringe is what comes on the edge of a piece of cloth which says, "Hey, I'm still cloth, and I'm not cloth at the same time." Given that the boundaries are fuzzy, are we in the position to be able to say, "Good fences don't make good neighbors, good fringes make good neighbors."

Stoltzfus: When we first started working on the play we had this idea that what would happen would be that the Mennonite character would go into the Jewish heritage and learn about it and perhaps bring back a story. And the Jewish partner would go into the Mennonite's heritage and learn about that. And through that there would be a reconciliation. And what we discovered -- and this was only in doing the play itself, in actually being on our feet and improvising and going through the lives of the characters and embodying them -- that we discovered that that's not how it happens. It was only when the Mennonite character went more deeply into her own Christian roots and honored them and understood them and took them on, instead of running from them. And only when the Jewish character went more deeply into his roots that there, somewhere underneath, was this common stream, you know, was this very deep place of, of understanding.

Music

From Heart of the World
Lydia: Errinerst du dich an mich, Omi?
Joseph: Do you remember me, Grandfather?
Lydia: Have you forgotten me, Grandma?
Joseph: Host du mikh fargesen"?
Lydia: Ja ich kann deutsch.
Joseph: Sure I remember Yiddish.
Lydia: I've looked everywhere for you.
Joseph: Ich hob dir gesucht in ale platzn, over ich dir nisht gefinen'
Lydia: Aber ich konnte dich nicht finden
Lydia: Blest be the tie that binds....
Joseph: Lomir ale zingen. Lomir ale zingen. A zemerl. A zemerl....
Joseph: (Sings in Yiddish)
Lydia: You left with nothing, right Omi?
You got on a ship and you went
And maybe all you had was what you were wearing.
And you went.
Maybe you gave birth on a ship.
Maybe you lost a daughter, or a son on the way.
Maybe you buried them at sea.
Maybe you arrived and there was no one there to meet you.
And you went on and you found your community.

Margaret: I've always felt great joy when I see Oscar being a Jew. (Laugh) I think it's only been recently that he's allowed his Jewish identity and feelings to express themselves. He's developed his singing. He dovens, you know, when he's doing his morning meditations and that's, he sings with all the sort of heart breaking.....
Oscar: Chazonic touch
Margaret: Resonance
Oscar: The Chazonic touch. The Dreying.
Margaret: But this is absolutely wonderful. I love this. This I find very moving and thrilling.

Music (Cantor)

Greenberg: There is something very powerful about staying tied, staying, staying linked to one's ancestors. Now, I know the name of the town in Lithuania where my grandparents came from, originally. But if I don't even pass that much along to my children. Then it's over. The sounds don't exist. The smells don't exist.
Stoltzfus: It's a world. It's a world that dies. Not just a town or people.
Greenberg: We're losing songs. We're loosing stories. I don't know how you weigh that in the real world. But it is something about losing our humanity. And intermarriage forces you to deal with the question. What are we going to do with our child? What will they know? How will we pass this on?
Stoltzfus: What stories will they be told. I mean, what are their stories? What are the songs and the rituals that are going to be incorporated into their life?
Greenberg: And intermarriage opens a door to maintaining one's roots and at the same time, reaching out and saying, "We really are part of each other. We are part of the common humanity."

Music (Mix of Hebrew/Latin singing)

New Music: (Runs under credits)

Credits (Schoen): ?An Open Gate,? is a project of A Traveling Jewish Theatre. It was produced by Claire Schoen and Helen Stoltzfus. Original music and sound design by Albert Greenberg. Narrated by Naomi Newman. Mixed by John Rieger. The play Heart of the World was created and performed by Helen Stoltzfus and Albert Greenberg.

We would like to thank the following individuals, whose voices are heard on this program: Alice Bleaker, Alan Snitow, Mary and Harvey Katz, Cathy, Bruce, Alicia and Ben Pither, Oscar, Margaret and Paul Rosenblume, Linda Strean and Howard Pollick, Heidi Linsmayer and Bernard, Eric and Mark Weiner.

This program was made possible in part by grants from the Koret Foundation, the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture with funds from the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the California Council for the Humanities, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Additional funding from the PRX Reversioning Project. The Public Radio Exchange is at prx.org. I'm Claire Schoen.

Total Time: 59:00

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