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February 11, 2005/Adar 12 5765, Volume 57, No. 24
Love and (inter)marriage
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
"We fell in love, like in the movies. ... The kind of love that makes you ache when you're not together, that makes your stomach flip when it's him on the phone. ... the kind of love when he is always on your mind. ... It was wonderful."
So Patty Hruby describes how she and Ron Boninger met as college freshmen and fell in love. But in her book, "Two Worlds, A Family Memoir about the Holocaust, Intermarriage and Love," she also describes how their relationship was tested by difference. Patty is Catholic; Ron is Jewish.
Patty has been married to Ron for 18 years. They have two sons, Jason and Nathan, and the family belongs to Or Adam Congregation for Humanistic Judaism.
Her book weaves together both the story of her marriage and also the story of Ron's family, Holocaust survivors. It is a testimony to the rigors of making marriage work - any marriage but especially one predicated on religious difference - and the understanding of how our identity as individuals, as families, is tied inextricably to those who came before.
Patty's poignant story could be the story in any number of American Jewish households. It traces the couple's disparate backgrounds, contrasting the intensity of their attraction and deepening commitment to each other with the points of tension - a lifecycle event, a holiday celebration - that threatened to undo it.
And it is a story that resonates, whether we like it or not, as the intermarriage rate climbs beyond its estimated 50 percent midpoint, as the number of intermarried couples raising their children as Jews hovers at 33 percent.
There are currently a million intermarried households, reports the Jewish Outreach Institute, and we need to find more and better ways to engage them.
Patty credits a welcoming Cleveland rabbi and a supportive family with encouraging her to pursue Judaism. Others appreciate the warmth of local congregations, the openness of friends.
"The road to growth runs through the intermarried household," says the JOI, exhorting us to worry less about intermarriage and more about raising Jewish children.
Controversial stuff, for those who hew to the prohibition against intermarriage and the innate values of marrying Jewish.
Yes, we need more and better ways to expose ourselves, and our children and our children's children to the richness and beauty of our tradition and instill in them a desire to protect and sustain it. And yes, we need to find more and better ways for Jewish singles to meet and marry.
And, yes, we need to fully embrace those who have chosen Jewish partners and accepted the responsibility to raise their children as Jews. We need to welcome them into our midst; we need to include them; we need to value them.
At the end of her book, Patty tells of her decision to share Ron's family's faith but her hesitancy to convert. Still, she writes, "When someone asks, 'What religion is your family?' I say, 'We're Jewish.'"
Contact the writer here
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