On the big question of religion and marriage, Sylvia Telser and the Orthodox rabbis agree: mixed marriages are a threat to Judaism.
The rabbi says he had no choice but to complain. “We could not condone the idea of counseling mixed-dating couples,” says Rabbi Philip Lefkowitz. “The only counseling one should give is that one should not mix-date.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Telser had over 20 years of counseling experience when she went to work for JFCS in 1986. Initially she offered workshops for widows, widowers, and recent divorcees. But by the late 1980s she was studying the impact of interfaith marriage on what social workers and rabbis call “the continuity of Judaism.”
“It’s not always easy for some to be Jewish in a largely Christian society for it means being different–and few people dare to be different,” Telser says. “This is why I think some Jews put up Christmas trees. Personally, I think it’s illegitimate for Jews to put up Christmas trees because a tree celebrates Christ the messiah and Jews don’t recognize that. You have to come to terms with the fact that in some ways any minority is different. Even Mormons in Utah are different in their own way than the rest of society.”
“I didn’t intend to use the phrase ‘dual heritage,’” says Telser. “I added it at the insistence of my supervisors, who said without it I wasn’t respecting the autonomy of non-Jewish partners.”
The ruling made no sense to Telser. “It does no good to tell someone to stop dating,” she says. “That’s too authoritarian for most people. They’ll just say no thanks and then they’ll leave. And this notion that only rabbis can counsel–that’s wrong. Some people won’t go to a rabbi about these things; they want to go to a more neutral person.”
In the future, will it be open to interfaith daters?
