Divorce, Interfaith Style

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In the past year we’ve had several posts on this blog about the sensationalized Reyes divorce case where the father took the child to church against a court order etc.

Karen Kushner provides a much more sane approach to the whole subject of divorce in interfaith families in a recent interview with Virginia Gilbert, the “Divorce and Parenting Examiner” for Examiner.com/Los Angeles. Some of her points:
• Don’t embrace religion as a way of expressing anger at an ex.
• Children of divorce need stability–and that includes maintaining religious practices and traditions observed when the family was intact.
• Exes can find empathy for each other by separating values and traditions from religious rites.
• A child who is secure in one religious identity should not be barred from participating in celebrations of another parent’s different faith tradition.

There’s lots more in the article, including advice from our friends Arlene Chernow, a URJ outreach specialist, and her husband Eli Chernow, a retired California judge.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Julie Wiener, Mayyim Hayyim, Joseph Reyes

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I’ve been preoccupied lately with the Jewish Community Heroes voting contest, which ended today. (I think I made it into the top 20 vote getters and am eligible for an award, but more about that another day, after the official results are announced.)

I’m catching up on what’s been published lately and it occurred to me: if there were to be a voting contest on who is the best writer about interfaith family issues today, Julie Wiener should clearly be at or near the top of the list.

Julie has two great blog posts this week. In Harboring Boston Envy, she writes about many of the features that make Boston a great Jewish community (full disclosure – I’m a Boston loyalist), and especially about our wonderfully welcoming community mikveh, Mayyim Hayyim. A great example of Julie’s perceptive sensitivity is this:

More important than the aesthetic is the facility’s warm, welcoming and nonjudgmental approach, with volunteer mikveh guides trained to be sensitive not just to the needs of men and women, liberal and Orthodox Jews, first-timers, converts, grieving Jews, joyous Jews and those about-to-be married (including lesbian and gay couples), but also to interfaith families.

In one of the four preparation rooms hung a beautiful framed photo and certificate of sorts that not only commemorated a family’s conversion of their baby but that explicitly acknowledged that while the baby’s non-Jewish mom is not herself converting, she plans to be supportive of and involved in the child’s Jewish upbringing.

I’ve seen that photo and certificate, it is stunning, and Julie is exactly right about Mayyim Hayyim’s warm, welcoming and nonjudgmental approach.

A Message from Joseph Reyes is about the divorced father who at one point was ordered not to take his daughter to church, raising all kinds of publicity that we covered months ago. Julie writes about a message she received from Mr. Reyes. To me he sounds more than a little paranoid, but her take on the complexities of interfaith divorces is well worth reading.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Are Interfaith Marriages Really Failing Fast?

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I wish Naomi Schaefer Riley had consulted with us, or at least looked at the resources available on InterfaithFamily.com, before the Washington Post published her story, Interfaith marriages are rising fast, but they’re failing fast too.

My main complaint about the article is that it cites no compelling evidence whatsoever to support the thesis of the title that interfaith marriages are failing fast. It is a common perception, to be sure, that interfaith marriages fail at rates higher than same faith marriages, but I have never been able to find reliable evidence to that effect. In addition to citing a 1993 paper (but not any data in it comparing inter- and intra-faith divorce rates), Riley says that “According to calculations based on the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001, people who had been in mixed-religion marriages were three times more likely to be divorced or separated than those who were in same-religion marriages.” Who made the calculations? Are they published some place – and available to be scrutinized?

It seems that Riley’s article was prompted by the notorious Reyes case in Chicago. We’ve blogged about that extreme case several times. It’s not fair to generalize to all interfaith marriages, however, from a case where the husband converts to Judaism, the couples splits up, and the husband then takes their child to church trailed by TV cameras.

Last August we published a report on a study by Janice Aron, Interfaith Marriage Satisfaction Study Yields Answers and More Questions. Her conclusion:

The study found absolutely no difference in marital satisfaction between people who were married to partners of the same faith, and people married to partners of a different faith.

This is an interesting finding because it seems to herald a new trend in the psychological research in this area. There is a body of research supporting the idea that homogamous marriages tend to be happier than heterogamous ones, but some recent research like mine finds no difference. Perhaps this is the trend of the future. I am hoping it means Americans are becoming less suspicious about, and more accepting of, other religious views. Perhaps the more heterogamous our society becomes, the more we are forced to re-examine our assumptions about others.

It is commonly reported that the overall divorce rate in the United States is 50%. Young people are doubtless aware of that, but thankfully they continue to marry. As a practical matter, which Riley recognizes, young people in love are probably not going to be dissuaded from pursuing their interfaith relationships by calculations of a higher risk of divorce. I think it is unfortunate, though, to have yet another negative pall cast over intermarriage.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Catholic Father, Jewish Daughter, Part Two

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The Joseph Reyes case that we blogged about a month ago is in the news again – there is a court hearing today on whether he should be punished for violating a court order that he not expose his daughter to any religion other than Judaism.

I’m concerned about the news slant on this story – on the ABC website part of the headline is “Afghanistan War Vet Faces Jail Time For Taking His Daughter To Church.” If you don’t know more, it makes the Jewish mother look bad, objecting to her child being exposed to the father’s religion.

The child’s best interests are paramount in a divorce case. Joseph Reyes converted to Judaism and obviously he and his wife must have agreed to raise their child as a Jew. Courts should require parents to live up to their agreements in a divorce. I would feel the same way if the mother were Catholic, the father converted to Catholicism, then divorced and wanted to expose the child to Judaism.

Plenty of intermarried parents have written for us that they are raising their children Jewish but on occasion take them to a church service. If the Reyes’ child were older, I don’t think there would be any problem with doing that, and don’t think the mother would have a good reason to object if her ex-husband requested her agreement. But baptizing a young child seems to clearly indicate an intention to raise the child as a Catholic, contravening the parents’ earlier agreement.

I would never say that it is a mistake to convert just prior to a marriage or in order to get married, because in many cases when that happens the conversion is sincere. But apparently, Joseph Reyes’ conversion was not – he is quoted as saying he did so because his in-laws wouldn’t accept him otherwise. If that was the case, it certainly was not a good way for the marriage to get started.

There are other parts of this story that strongly suggest that Reyes’ motivation is not one of sincere religious conviction, but instead just part of a bitter divorce struggle. Reyes, a law student, says that Catholicism “falls under the umbrella of Judaism”? That he was just taking his daughter to hear the teachings of the greatest Jewish rabbi ever? Please. He called a reporter to film him going to church in violation of the court order?

Again, the child’s best interests should be paramount to both parents. Exposing children to conflict like this between two trusted parents is the worst possible thing. And to repeat, I’m not disapproving of Reyes’ conduct because he is trying to raise a child Catholic who would otherwise be Jewish – if he were trying to raise a child Jewish who would otherwise be Catholic, I’d feel the same way.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.